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“Some of our old ways are enshrined in law as well as custom,” he told her, maintaining his posture of seeming ease when he did not feel easy. He was not making up the old ways here. He could marry her in the morning if he chose, ending this farce that she had a choice in the matter that quickly. Cayetano liked that notion. A lot.
But it did not strike him as particularly strategic. He reminded himself that he had already won—she was here. What would it hurt to attempt to woo her a little?
Or, at the very least, not rush her.
“Let me guess,” Delaney said in the same dry way. “The men in charge forgot to update things around here because why bother? They like it medieval.”
Cayetano ran his tongue around his teeth and abandoned anywooingplans. “It is not necessary to imprison you, Delaney. I need only keep you for a night, then claim you in front of my brethren come the dawn. Only one, if I like, though at least three is more traditional.”
She stared at him as if waiting for more, then scowled when no more was forthcoming. “That’s barbaric.”
“It was necessary in a certain era.” Cayetano waved an idle hand. Mostly to infuriate her. A success, if the look in her blue eyes was any indication. And he should not have taken such pleasure in these games. This woman was a means to an end, not a pleasure. He could not fathom why he kept forgetting that. Or why, despite himself, the way he wanted her felt more like a roar within him every moment. “There was a time when this island was far more lawless than it is now. Times were perilous and lives were short. Men in need of wives took them where they could, and it became necessary to make sure that their children were legitimate.”
“You can’ttakeme,” she said. And it took tremendous control on his part to refrain from pointing out that he had already done just that. That she had packed for the privilege. “I demand that you release me.”
“Little one,” Cayetano said, his voice rich with amusement, “where do you think you are? This is not the American Embassy. The only person who can intercede on your behalf with me...is me.”
Her breath left her in an audible rush. Her mouth opened and shut more than once, before her cheeks flushed red and she snapped her teeth closed. It took her a fair few moments to gather herself once more.
“You cannot think that this will actually work,” she seethed at him.
He found himself caught, anew, at her reaction. There was no hint of fear on her face, which would have stopped him at once. Or made him approach this differently, at any rate. But she didn’t look remotely uncomfortable. If anything, she was ablaze.
At theinjustice, unless he missed his guess.
And Cayetano was very rarely wrong when it came to reading people.
Though he was finding it difficult to read himself tonight. Why should her reaction, whatever it might be, make his body tighten with desire? He was not used to this intensity. Not for anything but his purpose, his promises.
He hated the very idea that a person could turn him from his lifelong path. Was he no better than his parents after all?
The very notion appalled him.
“I do not wish it to work,” he told her, more severely than was necessary. Perhaps he was directing that at himself. “I would far prefer that you decide, of your own volition, to marry me. Freely. Who would not wish this? I do not want a prisoner for bride, Delaney. But you should know this about me now. I will always do what I must. When it comes to this island, and my people, I always will.”
She seemed almost electrified, as if a current ran through her. She shook slightly—but with temper, he thought, still not fear. Then, suddenly, she shot to her feet, her hands in fists at her side that suggested that he was right. “None of this is okay.”
He might not understand himself this day, but he did like to be right.
“I do not think this the tragedy you’re making out to be,” he countered, and it was easy, in the face of her outrage, to sound very nearly lazy again. “Please bear in mind that in order to achieve my goals, I am forced into the match as much as you. There are worse things than wedding a stranger, Delaney. Trust me on this.”
Her blue eyes were a storm. “That’s easy for you to say. You’re the one doing this.”
“Because I must,” he said again. With finality.
“Butwhy?” she threw at him, as if the query was torn from somewhere deep inside her.
He would not have responded to temper. He would have laughed at a demand. But he found he couldn’t ignore a plea like this, as if it hurt her.
“This is a fractured place,” he told her, and this was no prepared speech. The words simply welled up from within him. “It has been broken for so long that the people here have come to imagine that they are broken, too. And nothing will fix it. No talks. No treaties. No wars. As long as there are two sides, there will be conflict. It is my job—my calling—to do what I can to dispel it. Not because I do not have the same urges as the rest of my people, to rise up and take what was taken from us. Of course I do. But I know that in these skirmishes, we all lose. I am so tired of loss, Delaney.”
He had never said such a thing out loud before. He had not known the words existed within him.
He wasn’t at all sure that he liked knowing that they’d been there all along, but he pushed on. “But there is only one way we can do away with these sides. Not so that I can win a throne, but so all of us can win back what was taken from us so long ago. So that we can move forward without this loss that marks all of us, royalist and rebel alike. We can only be whole if we come together.”
She stared at him, round-eyed. “You truly believe this.”
“I do.”
