He stroked her hair. “Family comes first. I won’t take the risk. And you have no idea of the things I want to do where you’re concerned. Pray you never know.”

Despite the irrationality of the act, she found herself clinging to him, because he was the only thing to hold onto. He could protect her from Angelo. She had to get herself together if she wanted to keep his protection.

His voice was quiet when he spoke again. “Next summer you’ll become my wife in name only. I won’t force you. I won’t hurt you. Things will stay as they’ve been the past few days. I know you’re losing so much. I wish things could be different for you. Please believe that.”

He pulled away from her and helped her to stand. “Come finish your dinner. We still need to practice and finish going over our answers on the questionnaire.”

Faith placed a shaky hand in his and allowed him to take her back to the kitchen where their food had been left. He put her plate in the microwave and heated it for about a minute, then did the same with his. While she ate, he stroked her arm and she tried not to jerk away from him.

“Do you have any food allergies?”

The question caught her by surprise. “No, why?”

“It occurred to me that being Irish as well as not having big Christmases, you might not be familiar with our traditions. Our big meal is on Christmas Eve. We have mostly fish, including shellfish, and we tend to have a lot of cookies that have nuts in them on the Venetian table.”

Faith made a face. “Fish for Christmas?”

“It’s an Italian-Catholic thing. We call it The Feast of the Seven Fishes. Not all Italians do it, but it’s been a tradition with my family in Brooklyn since before I was born. We have seven different seafood dishes: calamari, scungilli—which is a conch delicacy—baccala, shrimp, clams with pasta, often lobster with pasta and a red sauce, and then something like salmon or trout. And of course we’ve got other stuff that has no seafood in it like spaghetti without the meat and antipasto.”

“What’s antipasto?”

“Are you kidding? Lettuce, roasted peppers, olives, anchovies, and cheese mainly. Then on the dessert table we have Baci DiDama, which are hazelnut meringue sandwiches filled with chocolate. We have cherry-almond star cookies, and pignoli—those are pine nut cookies. My aunt Lily makes a mean rainbow cookie with an almond filling, even though she’s not Italian. And of course you’ll find some cannoli and various fruits.”

Leo went into a sort of trance. No doubt he was lost inside holiday memories that Faith couldn’t pretend to understand.

After dinner they went through the rest of the questionnaire. She knew all the answers. She’d read them over and over, the threat of the dungeon hanging over her head. The hard part would be pretending she loved him. The easy part was facts and figures. She’d applied herself doggedly to learning everything he’d written down, hoping it would keep him from locking her up during Christmas.