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The calls had a different flavor this day, Cayetano thought. Now they were so close to their goal.
Yet he wasn’t basking in their triumph the way he should have been. Instead, he found himself thinking about how, when his men had made their discreet inquiries and pretended to be looking for farmland to buy, the first thing anyone had to say about Delaney Clark was how hard she worked. She had put her heart and soul into it, as if it had been her mission since birth to save that farm. Most of her neighbors thought that if anyone could, it was her.
Imagine, what could a woman like that do for my country?he asked himself.
Or for him, not that he chose to accept he needed anyone.
But as a warlord turned king, he would. He would need a queen who could support him, not defy him. Instead of a woman like his own mother, so bitter and resentful. Focused on the past, on avenging any and all historic wrongs, and never what might come next unless it suited her ambition. It was a fine line to walk. History must never be forgotten. He lived that truth. The history of his people and the island animated all he did. But it was far too easy to sink too deep in it and risk losing everything.
This had been his mother’s downfall. Therese Arcieri had imagined herself a kingmaker. Her family’s roots were sunk deep into the island, just as the Arcieris’ were. And she had imagined that after Cayetano’s father died, her favor alone could elevate the man of her choice to the position of warlord.
But Arcieris did not sit idly by while other men attempted to rule their people.
Even if standing up against his own mother had killed something in him, something he doubted he could get back. Something he’d told himself could not matter when his country was on the line.
Cayetano had taken his rightful position by the ancient rites. He had defeated his mother’s lover with his sword, and then had showed him mercy. His people had risen up and called him warlord when he was little better than a lad. A mere twenty-one, but he had stepped into his destiny.
He had showed that same mercy to his treacherous mother, little though she deserved it. And she might have railed against the manner of his mercy, but yet she lived. When he would have been well within his rights to show her the harshest possible justice.
Many had called for it. Some still did.
But on some level, Cayetano understood her. He too thought only of the country. How could he blame Therese for doing the same?
Liar, came a voice from deep inside him.You cannot bear to part with your last remaining parent. You are as sentimental as anyone.
That snapped Cayetano back to the plane he flew on and the men who surrounded him. Because he was no pathetic child. He had never been given the opportunity.
His mother lived because he was merciful. She remained locked away because she deserved to live with what she’d done.
Sentimentality had nothing to do with it.
But when his men left he settled in on the bed in his own state room for the rest of the flight. And he found himself thinking that Delaney Clark was nothing like Therese Arcieri, the would-be Queen of Ile d’Montagne. For one thing, Delaney wanted no part of this. She’d had no wish whatsoever to leave that farm.
To his way of thinking, that already put her head and shoulders above any other pretender to the throne. For anyone who aspired to rule should be prevented from doing it, Cayetano had long believed. He would include himself among that number, save for one thing. He did not want the throne for his vanity. He did not want the power for its own sake.
He wanted what he had always wanted. What he had been brought up to want. And had then interrogated from every possible angle while he’d studied abroad, looking for the lies inside himself.
In the end, it was simple. He wanted Ile d’Montagne to be a country torn asunder no more. He wanted his country whole. And that could not be accomplished, no matter his strength, by a simple show of force. All that would do, if successful, was switch the positions of the two factions. He needed Delaney to bring the country together.
For as long as there was a Montaigne on the throne, the royalists in their seaside villages would fall in line. But only if an Arcieri was also on the throne would his people from the mountain valley do the same.
This was the opportunity his people had been waiting for since antiquity.
Shewas.
Cayetano would do everything in his power to make certain he finally delivered what no other ever had.
And possibly enjoy his little farm girl more than he’d expected he would, while he was at it. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that would make this all the sweeter.
Because she might not think she wished to marry him.
But Cayetano knew she would.
CHAPTER FIVE
DELANEYWOULDHAVEdenied it if asked, but she did feel the faintest stirrings of something like excitement hours later as she peered out the window during the plane’s descent, much as it shamed her to admit it.
Surely she should have been in tears, so far away from home and with no home to return to anyway, with Catherine resolved to sell.
