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And Geraldine had never felt like this before. As if there was something effervescent stuck in the pit of her stomach, like a kind of indigestion—only she knew that it was not the type that would make her sick. On the contrary, it felt a great deal more like joy.
She suddenly found that she had a great deal more sympathy toward her cousin’s choices than she ever had before. She hadn’t judged Seanna, that was true. But she hadn’t understood her, either.
Suddenly, what had not made any sense to her before seemed clear.
And she wanted to lash out at him, because she felt precarious, as if despite the fact that she was sitting down with a table between her and him, she was still standing on that cliff she’d imagined before. Arms wheeling, legs shaking.
She didn’t like it.
But she also couldn’t quite bring herself to let the sharp edge of her tongue fly. “Every bite was exquisite,” she said. Truthfully.
And that wasn’t a compliment, she assured herself. It was the simple truth. And the fact that the simple act of eating with him seemed far too sensual, well. Perhaps that was something she needed to work on. Within herself.
“I am delighted to hear it,” Lionel murmured.
And when he lifted his gaze just slightly, she found herself sitting up straighter, which in no way shifted that fizzy thing deep inside her. If anything, it made it grow. It was something about the way the candlelight caressed the harshly perfect lines of his face. It was the way he looked at her, pitiless and sure.
It made her want to giggle. Then melt.
“Now,” Lionel said. “It is time you and I discuss exactly will happen tomorrow, exactly what you will do, and what penalties you might expect if you do not obey me.”
Geraldine had never wanted to obey anyone. She had never considered herselfobedientin any way.
But the way Lionel looked at her now, she was reconsidering her stance.
She had to shake herself slightly to make that wondrous aching and sparkling thing that was taking her over loosen its grip. Though she wasn’t sure it worked.
“Tomorrow is my grandmother’s birthday,” Lionel was saying. “She was never shy or retiring in any way, but the advance of her years has made her even less discreet than she was. You must be prepared for this. She will ask you whatever she likes. She delights in being provocative. I expect that you will handle whatever she throws at you with humor and grace.”
“This might come as a surprise to you,” Geraldine replied, though it was harder to sound dry and amused than she would have liked, “but I have actually interacted with eighty-year-old women before.”
“I doubt very much that the sweet pensioners you might have stumbled over in your library have anything in common with a woman some have called the unofficial queen of Spain,” Lionel replied with a hint of amusement in his voice that made Geraldine feel something a little too much like foolish. “You may have a distaste for wealth, but you must not show it. In your American way, imagine yourself somehow equal to an aristocrat, but that is not a position my grandmother shares. Doña Eugenia Lourdes Rosario Asensio can trace herself and her bloodline back across untold centuries, and that means something to her. You will do well to remember that.”
“So far she sounds like a gorgon.” Geraldine only shrugged when that brow of his rose, signaling his disapproval. “Once again, I am forced to wonder why it is you are so determined to do her bidding.”
“She is the only woman on earth whose bidding I will ever do,” Lionel returned, and there was something about the way he said that. It was like some kind of premonition, or foreboding.
Geraldine told herself she was being absurd. “Then what I would like is practical, concrete advice on how I’m expected to behave tomorrow if I’d like you to take responsibility for the child you might have created.” She told herself that she liked the way his eyes darkened at that. And that her growing certainty that she was being set up to disappoint him was a good thing, no foreboding premonitions necessary.
That’s what you need, she lectured herself.To be nothing he wants. To embarrass him. So you remember what’s actually happening here. Not whatever it is you think youfeeltonight.
And so she only half listened as Lionel began to outline the sort of customs and expectations, manners and protocol that a woman like his grandmother would expect. The party was not going to be some intimate gathering, or visit in a care home, as she might have been imagining.La ilustrísimaseñoraDoña Eugenia Lourdes Rosario liked to celebrate herself in style.
“You do not appear to be as overwhelmed by these things as I would expect,” Lionel pointed out after he had talked for some while, and he did not sound pleased by that. “As would be perfectly appropriate for a person in your situation.”
“I’m not worried,” Geraldine replied, and tried a wave of her own hand to indiscernible effect. “I can assure you that I’m perfectly capable of picking up the correct fork a dinner party and managing myself decently enough that I do not embarrass anyone in my vicinity.”
“Because of your vast experience at grand affairs of this nature?”
“Because, once again, I have read across a wide array of topics,” Geraldine said lightly. Or perhaps not quite so lightly, because even she could hear the edge in her voice. “I have likely read a great many more books about customs and propriety than you.”
“I admire your confidence,” he replied in a way that made it clear that he did not.
And Geraldine couldn’t seem to get a handle on all the sensations competing for her attention, deep inside, so she decided it was time she stopped trying. She pushed back from the table, standing up and smiling a little bit as she looked at him, as if she was the one in charge of this. “I will expect that by the end of this dinner party of yours, a fleet of doctors, scientists, whatever you like, will descend upon you and Jules. And that they will answer the question of whether or not you’re her biological father once and for all. That’s the only thing I’m interested in. If I have to make sparkling conversation with snooty aristocrats to make that happen, that seems a small price to pay indeed.”
She was not prepared for the way Lionel rose, then. She’d miscalculated once again, she realized too late, because once he did they were suddenly standing entirely too close to each other.
Much too close, something in her seemed to cry out, its own alarm.
