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“May I assist you, Miss Bella?” The question sounded more like an order than an offer, but I turned and smiled at him, and he blinked in surprise.
“I’m fine. I just need something to eat—I’m famished.” I set the food down on the wide wooden table. I found a fresh-baked loaf of bread on the counter. “Can I get you something?”
Wrong thing to say. He looked shocked, and I realized that Bella had no trouble thinking of the servants as servants, creatures put on this earth to serve her. After all, they were being well paid for their work, and why should she feel guilty, she’d always said.
But I was half-American, and more sensitive about class issues. I’d never been comfortable with people waiting on me, and the people working at Mariposa had always been my friends, including Maldonado. He’d taught me to play dominoes and told me stories about Spanish fairies when I was younger; he’d been a safe haven when Ian had been a pain and Bella and Marcus had gone off together. I looked at him and realized I’d missed him almost as much as Granda.
“Certainly not, Miss Bella,” he said. And then for a moment he unbent, just a bit. “But I thank you for your kind offer.”
“No problem,” I said, perching on one of the stools. “Sorry I left my room, but I had to see Granda, and then I realized I was starving.”
His momentary softening vanished as he stared at me in disapproval. “You visited your grandfather?”
“I did.” My throat tightened for a moment, and I put my sandwich down. “He looks awful. He really is going to die this time, isn’t he?” I couldn’t keep the grief from my voice. I should have been more flippant about it; Bella never liked strong emotions, but I couldn’t help it.
“Yes, miss,” he said in a marginally kinder voice.
“How long has he been like this?” I was almost afraid to ask.
“He’s been going downhill for the last two years. You should have come sooner.”
Yes, she should have. “I...I had other obligations.”
“He kept asking for you, Miss Bella. And you kept making excuses.”
There was no reason why guilt should stab me. It was Bella who had kept away by choice, not me. I felt a faint, seismic shift in my perceptions. Why the hell hadn’t Bella come?
“Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?” I said breezily, shoving a hand through my hair in her patented gesture. “And I told him I’d stay as long as he wants me here.”
I’d managed to surprise Maldonado. “Indeed, Miss Bella?” He sounded skeptical. “Do you need me to make arrangements for the rest of your clothes?”
I’d forgotten that by Bella’s standards, my wardrobe was scant indeed. “It’ll be fine,” I said. “Though I might want to look into renting a car while I’m here.”
“There are more than enough vehicles in the garages, Miss Bella, including your Alfa, and needless to say they’re all kept in excellent condition. You only need ask your cousin Ian.”
Not on my list of top ten favorite things to do. Ian always had and always would be a pain in the butt, a necessary evil, the dark side of Marcus’s golden prince. But in the last few hours, things had shifted, our original plan of an afternoon’s charade had gone to hell in a handbasket, and I had embraced the new reality without regret. I was staying here as long as I could. If the worst happened, and I was unmasked, what could they do? Only Bella could be damaged by the truth—I was already stripped of my membership in the family, an outcast. If they found out, I would simply leave, enjoy my time in Paris, and return home, at least having had the chance to say goodbye to Granda and Mariposa.
And Marcus.
Maldonado hadn’t moved, towering over me disapprovingly. I smiled at him. “Are you going to stand guard while I eat my sandwich? Because I thought I’d take it outside and go for a walk. It’s been a long time since I was last here. You can keep me company if you wish...”
In the past, Maldonado would have walked with me, spinning stories of when Granda’s father had first come back to Mariposa, after the Spanish Civil War, when everything had been in an uproar and he’d been determined to take the small holding and turn it into one of the world’s premier makers of the particularly Spanish form of liquid gold. Olive oil.
But Maldonado had changed. Or maybe, just maybe, it had to do with the woman he thought he spoke to. I couldn’t remember whether he had ever liked Bella, but she’d never had any time for him and his stories.
I almost opened my mouth to reassure him, to tell him I’d changed in the years I’d been gone. But that would have accomplished nothing. In the short run, it might make me happier, but in the end Bella would return, and for all her charm, there was no denying she was a cheerfully self-absorbed creature who evinced little interest in other people’s stories, particularly those of the people put on earth to serve her.
I immediately felt guilty, disloyal. Throughout my exile, only Bella had remained as part of my family. But loyalty didn’t mean being blind to someone’s faults and Bella had plenty of them. She just managed to make them seem inconsequential with one of her blinding smiles and sweet words.
“I’m afraid I have work to do,” he said in his dour voice. “You should keep to the gardens. Mr. Ian wouldn’t want you interfering in the farm.”
“Noted,” I said breezily, heading back to the massive, restaurant-style steel refrigerator. I observed the lack of Diet Coke with appropriate grief, then grabbed a bottle of limonata. Two months without DC? Impossible! “Could you see if it’s possible to get me some Diet Coke? I don’t know how hard it is to find around here, but I’d appreciate it.”
He stared at me as if I’d grown two heads, and I knew a moment’s unease. I quickly scrambled to cover any possible slip-up. “I decided it isn’t so bad. But if they don’t have any here, then it doesn’t matter. Just a thought.”
He was still looking at me oddly. “I’ll see to it, Miss Bella.”
“Cool.” I turned, ready to escape, just in time to see Granda’s Bentley glide to a stop by the kitchen door, and my heart sank. Marcus wasn’t coming till tomorrow, which mean that it could only be the cousins, Mary Alice and Valerie. I wanted to pound my head against the wooden counter. Mary Alice was the most interfering female I’d ever met, and the momentary peace at Mariposa would be effectively shattered by her presence.
