AllFreeNovel
Share Us
THEDAYOFthe wedding dawned blue and bright at last. Cayetano had barely slept.
And not for the usual reasons these days.
He allowed himself a smile where he stood, aware that such things as smiles came easier these days. He had dispensed with Delaney’s guest quarters and had her moved into his the morning after the night she’d given herself to him, because he hadn’t wanted to waste a single moment more. It wasn’t just her body, that lush wonder, that called to him, though it did. It was her.
Cayetano hungered for the stories she told him, at first haltingly and then, when he asked for more tales of the alien place she’d come from, with a little theater. He longed for the wisdom wrapped up in the tart sayings she ascribed to her grandmother, so different from his own experience with family. And more and more he found he craved the steady way she listened and the calm way she talked, proving to him with every passing day that no one could possibly be more perfect for what lay ahead.
The future might be rocky as they claimed their rightful place. He knew that. But these last two weeks had been a revelation.
He might even call them a joy, had anyone dared to ask.
He would have married her and made her his Queen no matter what, but it pleased him that the Signorinareported nothing but stellar progress. And more, actually liked the woman she called their perfectly imperfect Queen. All the palace personnel adored her. Delaney had applied herself to her new role with all the determination she must have brought to bear back home, season after thankless season in those fields of hers.
And what time she did not spend preparing herself for what was to come when her identity was released to the world, or telling him her homespun stories because she delighted in making him laugh, she spent in his bed.
It had been only two short weeks and yet Cayetano found he could no longer recall another woman’s face. Delaney’s taste haunted him. He even found himself drawing the kinds of boundaries he never had before with his men, because he needed to make sure he got back to her as soon as he could. As often as he could.
Soon enough there would be nothing but the cause again, as there had always been, all his life.
And every time he tripped over his own alarms, his own red flags, he reminded himself that he was not his mother. His aim was to fulfill the centuries-long dream of his people, not pervert it to his own ends. And today, as he waited for his bride at last in the grand courtyard of Arcieri Castle, he admitted to himself that it was true. He had lost his head a little these last weeks.
Some part of him was already grieving that these heady, magical days needed to end, but they did.
You could only give yourself so fully because it was temporary, a voice in him said. He wanted to believe it. He really did.
But it didn’t matter what he believed. Today was the day that everything changed.
He heard a cheer go up and he took in the sight of so many of his people packed onto all the galleries and balconies, even peering out the windows, all of them there to catch a glimpse of this moment.
This moment that was theirs. It belonged to them, after all this time. There was no foreign press, no dignitaries. There was only Cayetano, warlord only a little while longer, and the lost Montaigne Princess—who appeared in the grand entryway dressed in a snowy white that made the black of her hair and the blue of her eyes seem enchanted.
Or maybe her smile did that.
Still, there was only Delaney, who had insisted that she hold wildflowers picked from the valley floor today, endearing herself to his people forever.
Delaney, who’d given herself to him so fully, and with such innocent delight, that even thinking of her beneath him made something deep within him shudder.
But that, too, was about to change.
He had told himself repeatedly over these last two weeks that this was merely a little breath, that was all. He’d spent his whole life fighting and the better part of these last years searching for her. Today he would marry her. No one could fault him for these too-short weeks of enjoying her before the world found out about her.
But now the day had come. Now, at long last, the throne of Ile d’Montagne was within the grasp of an Arcieri.
Cayetano told himself that he was impatient with this ceremony only because it was the final necessary step before he launched himself straight on into his destiny.
But as his beautiful bride held his hands there at the altar they’d made, and repeated her vows in that lovely voice of hers—gone husky with emotion just as her eyes filled with tears—he accepted another truth, too.
He wanted the coming space between them. Because he was terribly afraid that Delaney wasn’t the only one surrendering herself here.
And that was unacceptable. He could not allow himself to falter. He knew what might well become of him if he did.
As the priest intoned the words of the ancient rite, Cayetano found himself searching the windows on the highest level of the castle, looking for the blazing set of eyes he knew all too well.
His mother, trotted out today as an emblem of his enduring mercy. Allowed to attend her son’s wedding, but only from afar, lest she take it upon herself to try take her son’s place.
Again.
But no matter how many times Cayetano told himself that he was done with his mother and satisfied with where they had ended up, when he saw her again it was as if he’d started from scratch.
