“I’m sorry,” Eloisa whispered, cradling her arm. “Really, Taviano, I don’t know what got into me.”
“Let me look at your arm.”
She shook her head and stepped back. “It’s all right. It was a mistake coming here. None of you listen anyway. You do what you want. What Stefano thinks is best. He always thinks he knows so much more than I do.”
Nicoletta got up and went to the freezer without saying a word. Taviano pulled a chair out at the table and got his mother to sit. His woman handed him the ice pack as she sauntered back to her chair, not even pausing so that Eloisa didn’t seem to notice. He wrapped the pack around his mother’s arm.
“We listen to you, Eloisa. Even Stefano listens. We’re loud and we argue, but we take what everyone says into consideration. It’s a generation thing. We’re noisy. In the end, we do what’s right for the family.”
“Do you? Are you certain of that?” Eloisa asked.
Taviano picked up his cell and texted Henry, the man who had taken care of their family the longest. He’d been in their lives as long as he could remember. He loved cars and kept theirs in perfect running order. He seemed to love Eloisa no matter how she acted. He would bring a car out to the estate to take Eloisa back. Taviano didn’t want her riding the shadows with an injured arm.
He poured his mother a cup of coffee and added cream. She never took sugar in her coffee or tea, but always took cream. “Would you care for an omelet?”
He glanced at Nicoletta to see if she was eating. She hadn’t been eating very much lately, and to him it was worrisome. Her nightmares tended to come in bouts, and he’d noticed patterns. She often stopped eating for days before the nightmares became severe. She was pushing the food around on her plate.
Eloisa shook her head. “No, I ate earlier. I had some reports to finish and send to your aunt and uncle. Taviano …” She hesitated. “I thought we put all that behind us. You’re a grown man now.”
Nicoletta sat up, her back ramrod straight. Taviano had to find a way to silence her. She was furious all over again. There was no way to “put it all behind them.” His mother couldn’t understand that. She never would. She didn’t want to understand it. He saw no reason to have it out with her.
“Where are you going with this, Eloisa? Just come out and say it. You’re not one to beat around the bush. If you have something to say, just tell us.”
“If you bring this up now, even after all these years, you know your brother. He’ll lose his mind. We already have enough to contend with, thanks to …” She trailed off and studiously looked out the window to the beautiful view of the woodlands and brush. “We just have enough going on right now without your brother getting crazy. I don’t know why you felt it necessary to tell her anything at all …”
“You mean share my past with my wife?”
Eloisa flinched. “Really, Taviano? Your wife? Who is she really? Do you even know?”
“Yes, Eloisa. Like you, I did my homework. Stefano, you, the entire Ferraro family, from the lawyers to the Archambault family, no doubt, investigated her lineage.” Taviano couldn’t keep the sarcasm from creeping into his voice.
He took several deep breaths to try to keep his temper from flaring. He wanted his mother safe, and that meant keeping her there until Henry arrived with the car. “Seriously? You know damn well who her mother was. She was Leora Aita, from a very respected family that in the old days, long before they were stamped out by the Saldis, produced riders. A few of the Aitas escaped that massacre, but no one heard of their children producing riders after that tragedy. Leora married Asce Archambault, a cousin of the riders of France. He died when Nicoletta was two. I know you have this information, Eloisa.”
Sometimes his mother exasperated him on so many levels. She made no sense at all. She had protested every one of his brother’s wives, when all of them had come from good families and could produce riders for the Ferraro family. The only conclusion he could draw was that she objected to the fact that they were love matches rather than arranged marriages.
Eloisa had the reports on Nicoletta’s birth mother and father. She knew as well as he did the family she came from. The Archambault family—riders or not—were renowned in their world for the strength of their psychic talents.
Taviano glanced at Nicoletta’s face. She had gone unnaturally still. Her dark eyes were on him, not his mother. Again, when normally Nicoletta was an open book, now she was impossible to read. He didn’t like the fact that she was so withdrawn that when he shifted to connect their shadows, he didn’t feel the jolt of awareness that always slammed so hard and deep into him. She’d taken herself somewhere else, and it was deliberate. She was protecting herself, and it wasn’t from his mother—it was from him.