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God help me.
I reach into the dainty bowl for an almond. Maybe chewing something crunchy will distract me from my throbbing pussy. Before I’m able to fish one out, he swats my hand away. It’s playful, butnothingwith Antonio is a child’s game.
Are the almonds just for show? Did I violate some arcane dining etiquette?
It’s been a long time since I finished a meal with dessertandfruit and nuts. At home, we eat fruit often—whatever is on sale, and Isabel usually prepares a simple dessert on Sundays, but unless it’s Christmas, we don’t have them together—with almonds, no less. Nuts are expensive. Maybe my table manners are rusty. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No,” he assures me, dismissing my concerns with a single word. “But the almonds are for the Port I want you to try.”
Of course.It’s been so long since I’ve sampled Port, I’d forgotten.
Whenever we had a Port tasting at our house, my father had his butler set out a variety of accompaniments, and we’d play a game. Guessing how a particular Port might taste after eating caramel, chocolate, nuts, or even cheese. Each coaxes a different note from the Port, changing the way it tastes on the tongue. I got quite good at it, but my father was the master.
“May I have some grapes, or are they for the Port too?” I ask with some cheekiness as he gets up and goes to the far end of the room.
“Not yet. Don’t be so impatient. Good things come to those who wait,Princesa. Haven’t you ever heard that old adage?”
“Many times. But I live by the mottotomorrow is promised to no one. If you take too long, I’m going to eat a grape and an almond.”
Antonio shakes his head, but he seems more relaxed than he has been all evening. I am too—relaxed enough to admire how beautiful he is, with long, lean muscle taking up every inch of his sculpted body. He must spend plenty of time in that gym upstairs.
I’m so focused on the way Antonio’s trousers hang on his hips that I don’t catch what he does to make the bookcases swing open to create what looks to be a passageway. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little delighted by the trick.
“How did you do that?”
He disappears without answering the question and comes out with a silver tray that holds a bottle of tawny Port, a small decanter with what appears to be a younger Port, and four glasses.
“Is there a room back there?” I ask with much too much excitement in my voice.
Antonio’s face lights up at my question, and I see the boy who grinned and cocked his chin at my friends and me when we caught him kissing Margarida Pires in the alley.
For a few glorious moments, I forget he’s holding me captive. I forget he plans to enforce a betrothal contract he made with my father. And I want him to kiss me the way he kissed me at the house after my father died.
“King Carlos had the castle built with several secret passages to protect the royal family,” he says, dragging me from my fantasy. “But Nate Turner had several more put in when he lived here.”
“The British spy?”
Antonio nods as he pours ruby liquid from the decanter into two of the glasses.
“First try this,” he says, bringing a grape to my mouth.
I hold my breath while he feeds me from his fingers, avoiding his gaze and trying not to read too much into the intimate gesture. But it’s hard.
When he takes his hand away, I chew the grape carefully to distract myself from the flush at the back of my neck. “Where did you get grapes at this time of year?”
“We do have markets here.”
I roll my eyes, taking another grape.
“They don’t taste familiar?” he asks.
“They remind me of D’Sousa grapes, from the oldest vineyard, but not as sweet.” I don’t say not as tasty, because it seems rude. But they’re a bit like the lackluster grapes from the supermarket at home, rather than the sweet, flavorful grapes grown in the old vineyards.
“They are D’Sousa grapes.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Really?” They don’t taste at all like I remember. “It’s still too early to plant new vines, let alone have anything to harvest from the established ones.”
“They were grown in a greenhouse.” His eyes light up. “We tried to reproduce the grapes from the vineyards that belonged to your mother’s family. We even used some of the soil from the property.”
