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And the fact that it was only the two of them, princess and farm girl, who could possibly understand what had happened to them.
What was still happening to them.
I’m told I come from a long line of farmers, Amalia had said, smiling brilliantly over her tea.How splendid. It sounds significantly more honest than royalty.
Delaney had seen behind the smile. She’d seen the darkness lurking there. The confusion. She’d felt it herself.
Less treacherous, I think, she had replied.But still, I wouldn’t turn your back on the chickens.
Amalia had laughed, and then looked as if the sound surprised her.Never fear, she’d said briskly.I don’t think that will be a problem.
Because she likely had as much interest in farming as Delaney had initially had in princessing. And yet despite herself, Delaney had liked the other woman tremendously.
Liking Amalia felt like the one thing that was hers. There was no betrayal involved. No giving up anything. They had been switched at a hospital when they were days old. If that didn’t forge a bond, Delaney couldn’t imagine what could.
On the drive back, she had found herself even more aware of the gawkers. Lined up to stare, to make up stories, to tell lies—and she’d told herself to get used to it. This was her life now. This bizarre fishbowl.
That day, she’d told herself it was worth it, because she had Cayetano.
Everything in her had changed so profoundly after that first night. Once she had let go of what remained of her old identity, she found she knew herself better than she ever had before. Part of it was him in all hisdark glory. But part of it, she thought now, was what Catherine had been trying to tell her.
It had been what she’d been attempting to explain Cayetano about carrying a burden.
If he hadn’t found her, she never would have thought of the farm as aburden. It brought her as much joy as it did struggle, even if the fight to keep it going had seemed to take more out of her each year.
She hadn’t known how to let go of that. She’d never planned to let go. And she never would have, on her own.
The choice been taken from her and that night, she’d accepted it.
Just as she’d accepted him into her body.
And for a time, she’d truly believed that was enough. It had felt like more than enough in those first days. She’d imagined that what they were building together would bloom. That it would last.
But everything had changed on their wedding day.
Maybe it was one too many betrayals.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said from beside her now, and when she glanced at him the look on his face seemed to scrape through her, leaving her raw.
She looked down at their hands, still joined. She wore his ring now, the ring he had not shown her himself because, of course, he’d never actually proposed. He’d left it in the care of the majordomo, who had told her, with great pomp and circumstance, the historical significance of the Arcieri diamond. Delaney had received a long lesson on the topic before the ring had been packed away, not to be seen again until Cayetano had slid it on her hand during their wedding ceremony.
Every night she slept in his bed. He usually woke her when he came to bed, later and later all the time. No matter how she tried to stay up, she always seemed to be asleep when he arrived, so her marriage so far seemed to her like little more than a fever dream.
Some parts of it were beautiful. She wouldn’t deny that.
But none of it feltreal.
“Are you threatening me already?” he continued when she did not respond. “Do you think there’s any possibility I will let you leave, Delaney?”
And she wasn’t sure when it had occurred to her that she couldn’t leave. Not because he would stop her, though he might. But because she didn’twantto leave. She was too invested.
I never wanted to leave Kansas, she’d confessed to Catherine, who had been almost too understanding about not being present at her wedding. She’d laughed and said it was far beyond her to guess at the reasoning of royalty.I never had the slightest desire to go anywhere.
And now you have the whole world, Catherine had said with all her usual warmth, as if nothing had changed when everything had.I’m so proud of you.
As if she knew Delaney needed that courage. Because she’d always known.
“I don’t think I said I was leaving,” Delaney said now.
