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Yet even as she wondered about kissing him, she couldn’t help wondering if, for all his talk about healing the fractures on this island, he wanted to marry her because she looked too much like all the paintings she’d seen reproduced in his books. Of his enemy.
Sometimes the notion made her sad. Other times it made her shiver.
Still other times, she questioned why she was focusing so intently on Cayetano at all when her family tree was just down the side of the mountain...
Each night she would fall asleep resolved, planning to wake up and demand to be taken to Queen Esme. Because she wanted to look in the other woman’s face andnotfind herself there.
Yet every morning she woke and made no such demands.
Possibly because, deep down, she was terrified that what she’d see in the Queen’s face was the inarguable evidence that they were mother and daughter.
And she already had a mother. Even with Catherine’s blessing, it felt like a betrayal.
She spent the bulk of her time with the Signorina. There were usually lunches and teas, during which Delaney learned comportment and manners and customs, and, if it was only the two of them, dissolved into cackles more often than not. When there were others at these meals, Delaney practiced all of the above plus what the Signorina called theart of conversation.
“Everybody knows how to talk,” Delaney said the first time she brought this up.
“And all they do is talk,” the other woman replied. “Talking, talking, talking while the world spirals into wreck and ruin.Talkingis not an art. It is merely moving your lips so that sounds may escape and collect them into sentences. What you and I are concerned with is conversation, which is not only an art, but a rather underestimated and lost one, in my opinion.”
“We’re having a conversation right now,” Delaney retorted.
The Mediterranean sun streamed down all around them as they sat out in a lush garden, tucked away in one of the private courtyards. Birds sang above them and bees hummed along merrily.
The Signorina set down her teacup and smiled. “And would you categorize the conversation that we’re having here asartful, dear?”
Delaney was forced to concede the point.
“At the sort of events you will attend in your formal role, one does not talk about oneself,” the Signorina told her, holding her teacup aloft.
That was how she liked to refer to Delaney’s supposed upcoming wedding. Herformal role.And maybe it said something about Delaney that she didn’t correct her—but this wasn’t the moment to talk about herself, was it?
“It is not the time for personal revelations, confessions, or monologues,” the Signorina continued, as if she could read Delaney’s mind. “None of that is artful conversation. That is what one saves for one’s diary or inflicts upon one’s intimates. The point of a good conversation is to engage. The point of the kinds of conversations you may find yourself in, with so many agendas and competing interests, is to entertain without revealing anything you do not wish to reveal. While at the same time trying to make whoever you’re speaking to reveal too much. It is very much like a dance.”
“I don’t dance.” Delaney brushed the crumbs of her scone off a dress that probably cost more than her entire previous life. She looked back at her teacher sheepishly. “Maybe that’s obvious.”
“It is one more thing you and I shall have to remedy,” the Signorina said with a laugh. “But first, we will converse, you and I.”
And the more they practiced, the more Delaney understood why. It wasn’t about the talking. It was a skill, and one she would be expected to use once the world found out who she was. She had no illusions that Cayetano would keep those DNA tests to himself. Whether she married him or not.
She had told Cayetano that she didn’t understand the point of pretty rooms filled with all that talking, but now she understood it was in those pretty rooms that a great many decisions were made about what went on outside them. The Signorina was merely teaching her how it was done.
Very much as if she really would be a queen someday.
Her stomach twisted a little more every time she thought such things.
Though she couldn’t quite tell if it was panic...or a complicated kind of excitement.
And no matter what it was, it never propelled her into actuallydoingsomething. She never demanded that she be taken to Cayetano so she could tell him howshewould like to handleherfamily situation. She never took the opportunity to tell him what he could do with his threats of marriage.
The marriage the Signorina prepared her for every day, as if she wanted to make herself into the warlord’s perfect bride.
Sometimes she was tempted to imagine that was what she truly wanted. That she could let herself be swept away by his will alone, and let that be enough, because if she couldn’t go back to Kansas and unknow what she’d learned about her parentage...why not be the princess bride of a man who looked at her with burnt gold eyes, dressed her like a queen, and kissed her like a hurricane?
Maybe he was the adventure after all.
One night, two weeks into her time at the castle, Delaney walked to dinner with one of the servants. She knew all their names by now and knew that this one, Ferdinand, was far too overawed by the castle to talk much. She kept catching glimpses of herself in the various mirrors they passed, and it was different, now.Of courseshe had no intention of going through with anything like a wedding, or so she was telling herself tonight, but she no longer saw a stranger in her reflection.
She saw the future Queen all these people were trying—tryingso hardand she didn’t always help, she could admit that—to make her into.
