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And she realized with a start that she hated it.
More than hated it.
Because Delaney was used to feeling personally comfortable in her own skin. She was used to feeling grounded. Centered. She knew who she was. She knew what her life held and would always hold.
She’d taken pleasure in those things. She’d enjoyed them.
And now she was standing here in clothes that weren’t hers, her hair twisted beyond recognition, while a strange woman eyed her down the length of a strange room as ifshewas somehow the problem.
“I take it that I’m supposed to be intimidated by you,” Delaney said.
The tiny woman moved only one eyebrow. It rose up, edging toward her towering beehive that made up the better part of her height. “Are you not?”
Her English sounded precise, but with a hint of an accent. Only the barest hint.
“I’m used to a farm,” Delaney told her. “The livestock does get a little fractious and plants are known troublemakers, but you learn to deal with it. But no, I wouldn’t say that I’m ever intimidated by posturing.”
She expected temper. Or more of that haughty affront she’d seen from the majordomo.
But instead, the older woman cackled.
“Marvelous,” she cried, clapping her hands together. “You’re wildly inappropriate and borderline offensive, and that’s what makes you perfect. This will be fun.”
She waved Delaney to the seat at the head of the table, still laughing, and settled into the other seat. “Come,” she urged Delaney when she hung back. “Everything must be quite strange to you here, myself included, but the food is phenomenal.”
And she waited so expectantly that Delaney found herself moving to sit down. Then, not knowing what to do with herself, she watched as the other woman rang the bell beside her dramatic place setting. Vigorously. The sound was still hanging in the air as servants swept in, laden down with trays of food.
“Tonight, we eat,” the Signorina said as Delaney blinked down at the array of utensils and piles of plates heaped before her. “We will concern ourselves with the stuffy rules of etiquette tomorrow.”
Delaney was shocked to find that she spent a surprisingly enjoyable evening in the Signorina’s company. It wasn’t until she was in her absurdly oversize bed, finally alone, that she remembered that she really wasn’t supposed to enjoy any part of this.
Why not?a voice inside her asked. Sounding a lot like Catherine, who was merrily not taking Delaney’s calls—the way she had the summer Delaney had gone to camp for one miserable week.
“You’re supposed to be trying to figure out how tonotmarry that man,” she told herself sternly. “Or at the very least, discovering things about the Montaignes. And therefore, you.”
But she dropped off to sleep before she could start coming up with a plan to do just that.
And as one day became several days, then a week, Delaney realized two things. One, that she didn’t seem to be in any hurry to come up with a plan, and she probably ought to think about why that was. And two, that she knew how Cayetano expected to wait out his month.
He’d put her on a schedule.
Because the days followed a sort of pattern. During the day, there was usually some time dedicated to wardrobe concerns and somehow this led to more and more items in those spacious closets that went on forever. And her three bright and cheerful servants never seemed to be able to find the clothes that Delaney had brought with her, so sorry, so they used the new clothes instead. They dressed her for every meal save breakfast, which she was allowed to eat in her bathrobe while they bustled around her, telling her what her day would hold.
Delaney told herself she hated these things, but the truth was that she quite liked the clothes that were picked out for her. She liked the hair, the makeup, which she would never have done for herself. She was getting more and more comfortable with the stranger in the mirror.
She told herself that it was in her blood, the inner Princess she’d never known was there.
Even though, if she was honest, her blood scared her a little. Maybe more than a little. Not the battles recorded in musty old books. She figured that was history. Packed full of events no one wanted to happen to them—but then, history was a lot closer on this side of the Atlantic. People here spoke of the fourteen-hundreds as if they were last Tuesday. What scared her was that the old books with the gold-edged pages weren’t filled with tedious facts she would need to regurgitate for some test.
They were records of things her family did.
Mostly to Cayetano’s family.
And she didn’t want to feel connected to either part of that equation. She was supposed to be having an adventure, not finding herself in history books. Especially not when what she should have wanted was to find her way back home.
But sometimes, late at night in her bed, she admitted another truth.
If Cayetano had kissed her like that in a “MIDWEST IS BEST” T-shirt, what would happen when he saw her like this? Dressed like she belonged here? Could it get better than a hurricane?
