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Delaney was wearing a pair of coveralls that should have offended him on every level, so common were they, marking her as some kind of farmhand when she would be his bride. But she stood in them with such confidence that he noticed her lush form instead. There were freckles across her nose, but they only drew attention to the perfection of her cheekbones. And her hands looked capable and strong, not merely delicate appendages suitable only for the hefting of fine jewels. To think—all this dirt, all these fields, and she was nonetheless the true heir to the kingdom.
She pleased him more than he’d dare imagine.
As did the fact that whether she believed it or not, she would be his.
“There’s no particular reason that such a fairy story should come to my attention,” Cayetano told her. “I do not make a habit of listening to the dark fantasies of bored aristocrats. Yet in this case, the story did not die out quickly the way the most outrageous usually do.”
“At least we can agree that the notion of changelings is outrageous,” Delaney offered. Almost helpfully.
Did she intend to be provoking? He could not tell, so he pushed on. “I could not get the idea out of my head. And the more I considered it, the more it seemed obvious to me that Princess Amalia was not who she pretended to be. Dark-haired and light-eyed, yes. But too many other curiosities that had never before appeared in the Montaigne line throughout history.”
“I think you’ll find that’s called genetics.”
This time Cayetano had no trouble recognizing that she was, almost certainly, provoking him. Or, at the least, defying him in what small way she could.
He opted not to react to these affronts the way he normally would. He inclined his head instead. “When there arose an opportunity to test the genetic material of the current Princess against that of her supposed mother, I had no choice but to take that opportunity.”
“You took blood samples from princesses and queens?” Delaney shook her head as if she hadn’t meant to say that. “This is an entertaining story. Really. I always had a soft spot for fairy tales. But the more outlandish this all gets, the less and less I believe it. And I didn’t believe it to begin with.”
Cayetano waved a hand as if it was nothing, her disbelief. He would not tell her, then, the lengths he and his men had gone to. The risks they had taken. The potential penalties had they failed.
None of it mattered, for they had not failed.
“But the tests were conclusive,” he told Delaney quietly. “Princess Amalia of Ile d’Montagne bears no genetic relationship to the Queen. She is not Queen Esme’s daughter.”
“Okay.” Delaney wrinkled up her nose. “You do know that people are complicated, right? There could be any number of reasons for that.”
“Indeed. And we have explored them all. But I will tell you the most astonishing thing. Are you ready to hear it?”
“Is it more astonishing than all the other things you have said?” she asked.
Rather aridly for his tastes. And yet his hunger to taste her continued unabated.
“Queen Esme suffered from a particular cocktail of ailments while pregnant,” Cayetano told her with a quiet ferocity. “Because of them, she was taken to a specialist hospital in this vast country of yours. A city with the unlikely name of Milwaukee.”
“Yes,” said Delaney, her eyes narrowing. “I was also born in Milwaukee. As were a great many other people, I think you’ll find. This is absurd.”
But Cayetano looked behind her. An older woman had come to the door during their conversation and was standing there on the other side of the screen, listening to him tell this story.
Not just listening, he corrected himself. Frozen into place.
He pushed on. “There were twelve babies born in that hospital on that particular day. Only two of them were girls. One was the Crown Princess of Ile d’Montagne. The other, a farm girl from Kansas.”
“And you think...what?” Delaney demanded. She was frowning even more deeply now, which Cayetano hoped meant she was also beginning to take the truth on board, however unpalatable to her. “That somehow, a princess and a perfectly normal girl from Kansas were—”
“Switched,” came the older woman’s voice. She pushed open the screen and stepped through it onto the porch. Her expression was taut, but her eyes were bright. “There in the hospital. On the third day.”
Cayetano already knew he was right, but that didn’t prevent the surge of triumph that raced through him then. A deep and satisfying roar from deep within, because the throne of Ile d’Montagne was in his grasp at last.
He had succeeded.
Finally.
He studied the girl as she turned, jerkily, as if her mother had taken a swing at her. And had made contact.
“Mama?” Her voice sounded too soft now. Almost plaintive. “What are you talking about?”
“I knew,” the older woman whispered, loud enough to carry across the cornfields. There was a fierce look on her creased face. “I knew they brought me the wrong baby. I said so, didn’t I? The nurses all laughed. They told me I was a new mother, that was all. Drunk on hormones, no sleep, and whatnot. But I knew.”
