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“I can see why you came here,” Amalia said softly. Two black birds flew overhead, making rough, croaking noises at each other, as if they were agreeing. “Thank you for bringing me back here. With you.”
Next to her, Catherine made a little sighing sound, then reached over and took Amalia’s hand again.
“Love,” she said, with the sort of gravity that lodged itself inside Amalia’s chest. Right where it hurt. “Love is what matters, Amalia. The world will conspire against you. It will tell you that you must be practical. That you must contain it, hide it, make it palatable. But love is not meant to be hidden away. It is a gift, in any form. In every form. I lost your father before you were born, but I have loved him every day since. It’s agift.” She squeezed Amalia’s hand. “Whatever you do, you must do your best to never squander love, no matter where you find it.”
And all told, Amalia spent two weeks in Kansas.
They stayed in the farmhouse, both of them, perhaps, needing to marinate in what could have been.
Catherine told her stories. Of her father, who she had loved so deeply. Of her grandmother, who, Catherine assured her, would have loved Amalia excessively and as far as Catherine was concerned, did so now from above. Amalia learned all about the Clark family, tracing them all the way back to when the first Clarks had left Ireland long ago. In return, she made her mother laugh and laugh with tales of palace protocol and the secret language of clothing choices, according to the ever-watchful press.
They would sit before the fire in the evening and exchange their stories. And at the end of each evening, Amalia would climb up the narrow stairs and find her way into a neat little bed, tucked up beneath the eaves. And dream about the life she might have had, right here in this pretty little place where life was simple—which wasn’t to say undemanding. Because Catherine also told her why she’d decided to move off the farm. The demands of livestock, crops. The tether she had felt to this land, like it or not, through good years and bad, ups and downs, and everything in between.
But mostly, Catherine spoke of love. In different forms. The love she felt for the daughter she’d raised. The love she said she felt, here and now, for the daughter she’d carried. The love she felt for her own mother as a dutiful daughter who had not always agreed.
The love she felt for her husband, lost too soon and never forgotten.
When the two weeks were up and they agreed that it was time for Catherine to return to her new life in the aptly named town of Independence, Amalia knew that she would return. Often.
And not only because she’d decided not to sell the land.
She’d agreed to an arrangement with Catherine’s closest neighbor, who would tend the land and the crops and claim all but a small percentage of any yield, thereby expanding his operation. Amalia also hired a caretaker for the farmhouse, the barn and the things that went with it—like the vegetable garden—because these things were what made the land a home. Delaney’s home, she knew. The place where Delaney and Cayetano Arcieri had honeymooned, though that was hard to believe. Amalia could not imagine the ferocious warlord of Ile d’Montagne inKansas.
But she could preserve the sweetness of this place for the children Delaney and Cayetano would certainly produce, all of them heirs to the Ile d’Montagne crown—and better yet, all of them grandchildren Catherine would claim as her own.
Making them their own kind of cobbled-together family after all. Amalia was happy to do her part.
And besides, she wanted the opportunity to lie in that cornfield again, and lose herself in the sky.
She left Kansas feeling far richer than when she’d arrived. And maybe that was why she took her mother’s advice, like the dutiful daughter she’d always been to the Queen, and went to London.
In contrast to Kansas, all bright skies and sunny days this time of year, London was cold and damp. She wrapped herself up tight in the same wrap she had once thrown on a hard stone floor to kneel upon. Amalia fancied that if she concentrated, she could almost find Joaquin’s scent clinging to the soft fabric, teasing her.
But then, his ghost had been with her the whole time she’d been out there in those fields. It was a place he had never been, and yet she’d been certain she heard his voice on the breeze. She slept alone, and yet she’d woken in the night—every night—convinced that she could turn over and find him lying there beside her.
One afternoon, while Catherine had napped, Amalia had walked out into the fields on her own. She’d let the stalks of corn whisper to her as she made her way along. She’d followed the directions of the bossy crows, undeterred by any scarecrow.
She’d found her mother’s favorite spot and she’d stood there, her eyes shut tight, trying to feel as if she belonged here. With her feet in the Kansas dirt and her face to the Midwest sky.
As if, finally, she’d found her home.
But the only thing she felt there inside of her was Joaquin. So intently, so completely, that she’d jumped slightly where she stood, convinced that she could feel his hands upon her—
Yet when she opened her eyes and turned clear around the circle, she was alone.
Even now, in a sleek car crawling through traffic into Central London, she could hear Catherine’s voice in her head the way she had that day.Love. Love is a gift. You must not squander it.
Amalia had heard all the things that Joaquin had said to her on the island. She knew that he’d meant them. And she might like to think, in the privacy of her own hopes and dreams, that he could not possibly remain this darkly furious with her if he did not feelsomething...
But if she knew anything in this life, it was that one person could not change another. Her own upbringing at the hands of one of the most stubborn women alive had taught her that. And besides, she’d spent five years trying to change her own mind. Her own heart.
All she could do was accept the gift that had been given to her, or not.
Amalia only needed to make certain that no matter what she did, she honored it. That she did not squander it. That she did not walk away from it, simply because it didn’t look the way she thought it should.
She had dressed like the royal princess she no longer was today, though she’d left her hair down because he liked it. She had the car drop her off at the sleek office building in the city, where she knew he kept his offices instead of at his home. Amalia suspected she was far more likely to be able to talk her way past a receptionist than any domestic staff who were, in her experience, far more keen about protecting their employers’ privacy.
And when she was ushered into Joaquin’s office to find him sitting there, his green eyes glittering while all of London lay at his feet through the windows behind him, Amalia smiled.
