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It seemed to take her a lifetime or two to straighten her shoulders, then find a practiced sort of smile that he knew came straight from the Signorina. He recognized the particular contours of what the old woman had called hercompany smile.
But he had never wanted to lick a smile like that off anyone’s face before.
“This is very disappointing,” Delaney said, but she sounded arch and amused, not disappointed. And not really likeDelaney, either. “The Signorina has been at great pains to tell me that you’re an excellent conversationalist. Yet all I get is glowering.”
“I’m looking at you, this is true. But I am not glowering.”
“Did you know that conversation is an art?” Her smile deepened. “It seems you and I have something in common after all. We are both of us artless.”
And that caught him so completely off guard that he laughed.
But, however surprised he might have been at his own laughter, that was nothing next to Delaney’s clear astonishment that he was even capable of making such a sound.
She looked...spellbound.
He had not intended to move from where he stood and yet he found himself crossing the room. When he reached her side he took her hand, perhaps because the last time he’d done so, she had looked equally astonished. In the same way she did now, shot through with heat and awareness and the same kind of wonder he could not help but feel when he looked at her.
He led her not to the table that waited for them, but out through the doors to the wide balcony that let in the cool spring night. The stars were already out, thick in the night sky. The valley was inky black below them, the lights in the villages soft, buttery clusters against the dark. The air was not warm, but it was soft as it moved over them.
Usually, Cayetano took this view as seriously as he did everything else. Every point of light he saw before him represented a swathe of people. His people. He had spent years standing here, renewing his commitment to them. Night after night, he had rededicated himself to the cause.
But tonight he let himself marinate in the sweetness of this moment he had often worried would never come. His very own princess in his castle, his wedding in a couple of weeks, his future finally secured.
And through him, his people’s destiny forever changed.
Justice was winning. After all these centuries. And it was all because of her.
He had been delighted to find his lost princess, particularly when so many had been certain she didn’t—couldn’t—exist. He would have brought her here no matter what. But tonight Delaney had transformed herself. She had made herself his dream come true.
Cayetano doubted that had been her goal, or if she’d even had one, but she had done it all the same.
He could not help but take a moment to bask in it. In her.
There were lanterns lit all around, and he liked the way the soft light played over her face.
“What I cannot understand,” he said quietly, as if not to disturb the dark, “is how no one in that cornfield of yours recognized the fact that you could not possibly be one of them.”
That was as much a statement of fact as some kind of compliment, so he was unprepared when she frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Look at you.” He was still holding her hand as they stood there against the railing. He indulged himself with his free hand and traced the curve of her cheek. “Your sculpted and aristocratic lines. The House of Montaigne is in your face. It is unmistakable.”
“The funny thing about that,” she said, in a voice that made it very clear that she did not think anything was particularly funny, “is that what I look like is a Clark. Salt of the earth. Kansas through and through. The freckles on my nose come from working in the Kansas sun. I have calluses on my hands that are there thanks to Kansas dirt and stubborn Kansas fields. Until you showed up, anyone who’d ever known me would’ve laughed at the notion that I could ever be anything but a Clark.”
Cayetano managed to keep his sigh in check. “I understand this is difficult for you.” He did not, in fact, understand. But what could it harm him to say otherwise? He was not precisely lauded for his empathy, but he cast about for some now. “It cannot be easy to be so far from your home, thrust into unfamiliar surroundings, and expected to behave according to others’ wishes. I do not envy you.”
Her frown eased somewhat. But then it turned speculative. “Is that what it was like for you? When you were sent off to boarding school at a young age?” He must have stared, because she blinked. “The majordomo told me all kinds of history. Some of it was yours.”
Cayetano felt himself tense, but tried to dismiss it. “If there were hardships, they pale in comparison to the hardships my people have suffered.”
Normally when he said things like that, anyone who heard him started nodding vigorously, because the cause was always paramount—and especially for him. No one actually saidamen, but it was implied.
Delaney did neither. If anything, she looked quizzical. “It’s not like suffering is a pie and if one person gets a piece no one else can have some. Tragically, there’s always enough to go around.”
Cayetano felt something inside him...tilt and go precarious, suddenly. He didn’t understand what it was. “I don’t believe I attempted to quantify suffering.”
“It’s what you do, though, isn’t it?” She phrased that as a question, yet did not appear to actually be asking. “You never actually talk about your feelings. You talk about your country.”
“My country matters,” Cayetano retorted. His fingers tightened, ever so slightly, on hers. “My feelings do not.”
