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“Forgive me.” His voice was scathing. “I must have misinterpreted your loving remarks about preferring cornfields to my company.”
“Cayetano.” She turned toward him, and faced him, there in the back of the car. The beautiful island was putting on a show in the syrupy gold of the coming sunset, but she couldn’t focus on this place. Because what was this place to her without him? “I married you. You do know that for all your bluster, I didn’t have to do that, don’t you?”
“I know that is what you like to think.”
He pulled his hand away and she wasn’t surprised to see him curl it into a fist, there on his powerful thigh.
“I like to think it because it’s true,” she said, her voice no longer as steady as she would have liked. “You forget, I’ve met your people now. They would never have cheered as they did on our wedding if I had not looked happy. They would not have supported you if you had behaved the way they believe the Montaignes have behaved for so long. I might not have known that you were bluffing about forcing me into marriage at first, but after all these weeks, how can you imagine I haven’t learned the truth?”
That hard, beautiful face of his changed again, until he looked less like the man she’d come to know. Less like the lover she knew so intimately now, there in the dark of their bed. Less like the leader he was in the eyes of his people, who would follow him anywhere, willingly.
“If you do not intend to try to leave me, I do not see the point of this conversation,” he bit out as if this was one of his wars. “I never made any secret of the fact that our marriage must serve a purpose. I apologize if that purpose was not made clear to you, or if you did not understand what pursuing that purpose would entail. I will have words with the majordomo.”
“I understand perfectly,” she retorted. “And I think you know that your majordomo would hurt himself before he would neglect his duty.”
It was amazing how much affection she’d come to have for that stuffy old man and his uniform. She would hear no word against him, not even from Cayetano.
Beside her, Cayetano nodded stiffly, so Delaney continued.
“I have no problem with the purpose. Our purpose. But I want more than a few stolen hours in the middle of the night.” She waited for him to look at her, his burnt gold eyes nearly dark now. So dark she had to repress a shiver. “I want everything, Cayetano. I want a real marriage. I don’t see why our marriage can’t be like the weeks that preceded our wedding.”
“Because they cannot,” he bit out, and the anguish that streaked through his gaze took her breath. “It can never be like that again. You wouldn’t like it if it was.”
“I don’t understand,” she began, though a trembling sort of uncertainty had taken up residence inside her, and surely this time, touching him wouldn’t help. No matter how much she wanted to. “Cayetano, surely—”
But he sat forward, cutting her off that easily. She had started taking lessons in French and Italian, but her few hours of wrestling with two new languages wasn’t enough to understand his rapid-fire instructions to the driver. She sat there, her head spinning, as the driver turned off the main road, followed a few side streets, and then headed back into the hills. But instead of taking the road that led back toward the valley, when they reached the spine of the mountain, the car went the other way.
“Where are we going?” she asked. Softly.
Almost as if she didn’t want to know.
Cayetano didn’t answer her. He only shook his head, staring out the window with that telltale muscle tense in his jaw.
Delaney blew out a breath, then directed her gaze out the windows, too. The car followed the narrow, twisting road that wound its way along what was nearly the very top of the mountain. It was an undeniably stunning drive, though she doubted very much that Cayetano had been seized with the sudden urge to take her sightseeing. Still, they were so high up that Ile d’Montagne looked like something out of a storybook. On one side of the car there were views into the beautiful valley she’d come to love so much these last couple of months. And on the other, down the slope the outside of the mountain, picture-perfect villages nestled with the sparkling, beckoning sea beyond.
She wished she could appreciate it all the way she wanted to, but her pulse was hammering at her. And Cayetano seemed farther away than he ever had been before. It made her stomach twist.
The car pulled out onto a kind of overlook, then stopped. For moment, nothing happened. Delaney snuck glances at Cayetano beside her, but he looked as if he really had turned to stone. Only that clenched fist and the muscle in his jaw gave him away.
After some time had passed, his nostrils flared. Then he threw open the door beside him and got out.
Delaney took a breath or two, gave up trying to do something about her drumming heart, and then followed him.
It was windier up this high, and she was acutely aware of the foolish clothes she was wearing—all dressed up tonight to meet the current Queen. At first they’d felt like bizarre costumes, these dresses. But the Signorina had helped her feel at ease in them. She had taught Delaney to dance in them. And more than that, had encouraged her to run through the halls of the castle, play, walk outside, and fling herself messily on this couch or that as it moved her. Until Delaney no longer felt as if her chattering trio was dressing a mannequin—a mannequin who wasn’t her—every time she dressed for one of her events.
But here, on this rocky outcropping with such a steep drop below, the sun dripping toward the horizon and the sea all around them like a deep blue halo, all she could think about was the absurdity. This dress with its silly ruffles and shoes better suited for circus, they were so much like stilts, as she wandered around this island playing princess games.
Yet it was an absurdity she had come to appreciate.
All because of the man who stood at the edge of the overlook, staring out into the distance.
She had the stray thought that she wished she could jump back in time to show herself who she’d become, because she knew the old version of Delaney would have laughed herself sick at the very idea.
But even as she thought that something in her rejected it.
The old Delaney was gone now. She wasthisDelaney now. Princess Delaney, the papers were already calling her. And there was no possible way she could ever go back. Cayetano was a huge part of that, but it was more than simply him.
She had gone too far from Kansas to ever imagine she could sink back into the life she’d left there. Delaney understood that she would no longer fit.
