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He took his time settling himself in his preferred chair, then indicated that she should take the one opposite him. And was not surprised when, instead, she sat on the leather couch that put her farther away from him. As far as she could get while remaining on the same plane.
It was hard not to admire these little rebellions, however futile. At heart he would always be the rebel he’d been raised to become. Even now that he had secured a different future for his beloved island.
“I sympathize with your situation,” he told her when they were both seated, though only he was anything like relaxed. And it was not entirely untrue. “It cannot be easy to learn that you are not who thought you were.”
She blinked a few times, rapidly, then scowled at him. “If you sympathize, you wouldn’t have turned up out of the blue, dropped a bomb, and then taken advantage of the mess you made to push your bizarre agenda.”
“You misunderstand me.” He inclined his head. “Sympathetic as I might be to your plight, that does not change the facts.”
He had grizzled old advisors who dared not argue with him. But this little farm girl crossed her arms, tilted her chin up higher, and dug in. “The facts as you see them, you mean.”
Cayetano smiled. Patiently. “Facts do not require a certain perspective to be true, though I know many people these days like to pretend otherwise. Facts, you will find, are true whether you like them or not.”
She only sniffed. “You can keep making pronouncements all you like. It’s not going to change the fact that regardless of what any test says, there’s not one single cell in me that is in any wayprincess material.”
He did not say what he could have. That the only material that mattered was her DNA, it was inarguable, and her feelings were irrelevant. Somehow he knew that would not land well—and it seemed almost churlish to belabor the point when he’d already won.
“I understand that this is difficult for you,” he told her as the plane began to taxi. He saw her look of panic, quickly hidden, and the way she reached out to grip the arm of the sofa. Though she never made a sound. Not his Princess. “I admire your bravery, little one. To charge headlong into the unknown takes courage, whatever your reasons.”
“I don’t really think I’m charging anywhere,” she told him, still arguing though her voice was a bit higher than before. “For one thing, I don’t have a passport. So at some point or another, you’re going to find that your big plans are destined for—”
But she stopped midsentence as he drew an American passport out of his breast pocket. “I took the liberty of arranging one for you.” He flipped it open so she could see that it was, in fact, a picture of her.
She did not look pleased at his forethought. “How is that possible?”
He lifted a shoulder. “You will find that a great many things are possible when you are willing to pay for it.”
Delaney’s scowl deepened. “I don’t understand. I thought you were some ragtag band of freedom fighters, off in the hills somewhere. How do you have private jets? And enough money to do things that shouldn’t be possible?”
The plane leaped into the air then and she let out a soft gasp that she clearly tried to muffle.
Cayetano extended her the courtesy of ignoring it. He furrowed his brow as if lost in thought when really, he was allowing her a few moments to look out the window and pretend she wasn’t panicking.
“The Ile d’Montagne crown has spent a great deal of time and effort attempting to dismantle the wealth and status of those they like to call rebels,” he said when the plane leveled out and her cheeks took on some color again. “And for a long time, they succeeded. We used to have to hide ourselves and the truth about our capabilities. There were sanctions, embargoes, and cruel laws that targeted only our part of the island. We built a castle hidden in the side of a mountain so that only we would know it. Many of these things changed with the last peace accord. We no longer have to pretend. And because my family has always taken care to hide our resources outside the reach of the grasping Montaigne family, we did not have to build ourselves up from scratch.”
He knew this personally. He had been one of those resources—deemed too precious to the future of the country to be permitted to grow up there, no matter how peaceful things were meant to be in his lifetime.
Cayetano could still remember with perfect clarity his first trip to cold, drizzly England. His father’s gruffness as he was dropped off at boarding school, left in the care of his ever-present and always watchful guards. Because he was an easy target. Everyone agreed. There was a security in the fact his whereabouts were known by the international press, but all it took was one overambitious Montaigne to shrug and decide the global condemnation was worth it and he’d have been done for.
His visits home had always been more stealthy. It was always best that the Queen not know precisely where the rebel faction’s hope for the future was at any given moment, particularly not on the island where she claimed her sovereignty. It was healthier.
And he was as educated as any Montaigne princeling had ever been when he finally returned home to claim his birthright at twenty-one. To wrest it back from his unscrupulous would-be stepfather and try to find it in him to forgive his mother her betrayal. He still tried. Because he understood loneliness, after all his years in the north. He had never taken part in the heedless, reckless shenanigans of the careless students around him in the places he studied. Not Cayetano. When he was not studying, he was fighting. Or learning all the things he might need to know should he do what no one else had done and break, once and for all, this Montaigne stranglehold on his island.
Because the peace might still hold, but everyone knew that the Montaignes could renege on their part at any point.
Cayetano had been raised to act as if there was no peace. As if he was as ancient as the wrong done to his people, a warlord from long ago, prepared to battle with his hands if that was required. Any time he might have been tempted to waver, he needed only to remind himself of those who waited. His people, who waited and prayed and supported him, even when he was far away on that cold island so unlike his own.
A pity that his own mother had not managed to do the same.
But he had handled her as he handled everything. It was his duty. And Cayetano Arcieri always, always did his duty.
“And when you speak of the grasping Montaigne family, you mean...my family,” Delaney said, snapping him back to the present. “Mygrasping family, according to you.”
“I do not know if you are grasping or not.” Cayetano kept his voice mild despite the unpleasant memories kicking around inside him. “How could I? But I can think of no other way to describe the work our false kings and queens have done for centuries.”
“If it is so terrible, and has gone on for so long, how do you hope to change it?”
He studied her for a moment. He did not expect such cynicism from an American. Were they not a country raised on hope? Yet he could see the flush in her cheeks and suspected she spoke not because she was particularly hopeless, but because she was out of her depth.
