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Geraldine blinked in astonishment at last, but Lionel thought that had more to do with themy Geraldinethan anything else. She looked up at him for a beat too long, then followed his gaze.
To his grandmother, who sat in all her considerable state in what might as well have been a throne, set up on a dais at the far end of the room so she might cast an eye wherever she liked over the proceedings and see everything she would not if she was on the ground.
I am a tiny woman, she had told Lionel on one of their typical morning walks.
Only in physical stature, he had replied loyally.
She had tutted at him.Obviously,nene, she had said reproachfully.I am otherwise grander than the sky, and don’t you forget it.
Hisabuelitasat so that everyone who came to greet her was slightly below her eye level, like the queen she had always been in Lionel’s estimation.
She had always been breathtaking, though she had long since left the sloe-eyed, mysteriously beautiful girl she’d been behind—the one who still claimed pride of place in a great many portraits painted by modern masters all over this house. But DoñaEugenia was not one to cling to her lost youth, freezing her brow or injecting questionable substances into her skin. She had settled into her years with grace and elegance and tonight her snow-white hair was arranged about her face in such a way as to suggest that she might just be wearing a crown. She wore a set of priceless emeralds around her neck, each the size of a small fist. And she clasped a cane before her that was topped by the bejeweled head of the serpent, with rubies for eyes.
Because, she had told Lionel when she’d showed the cane to him last week,I do not wish to betooapproachable.
Even at your own party?he had asked.
Especially at my own party, she had declared.
“She’s absolutely magnificent,” Geraldine breathed.
No talk about how ferocious his grandmother was. No hint of intimidation.
Deep inside, Lionel felt something kick at him, hard.
But his grandmother was watching. She lifted one aristocratic finger and beckoned him close.
“I hope you’re ready,” Lionel murmured to Geraldine.
Then he brought forth the woman he had married to meet the only woman he had ever loved. And felt something twist in him that he could not possibly have explained if asked. As if this, here, was his true wedding. As if this was the only ceremony that mattered.
His grandmother waved the rest of her admirers away. They melted away at her command, because she wasn’t the sort of woman that anyone dared disobey. As she was the first to say, she had been less formidable in her youth.But the true power in this world is outliving everybody, she liked to say with a laugh.
“Abuelita,”Lionel said as he stepped up onto the dais and brought Geraldine with him, “I am certain that you have never been more beautiful than you are tonight.”
“Whereas you used to be far better at flattery,” his salty grandmother responded in her usual crisp manner, presenting her one cheek to be kissed, then the other.
“May I present to you the woman that I have made my wife,” Lionel said, and in English. “Geraldine Gertrude Casey, who did me the great honor of taking my name only yesterday at Lake Como.”
As he spoke, Geraldine stood beside him. She was not exactly relaxed, but she did not appear overly intense, either. This allowed him to pay closer attention to his grandmother. He watched different emotions chase across her usually inscrutable face. Shock. The faintest hint of temper. Then, at last, consideration.
“Have I already gone to meet my maker?” she asked Lionel. In Spanish, because she could not be told or led. “Is there reason that my only grandson saw fit to marry himself off outside of my presence? What can you be playing at, I wonder?”
“We were swept away by passion,” Lionel told her, expressionless. “It was necessary that we marry as quickly as possible.”
“Is that so?”
His grandmother turned that lively dark gaze of hers to Geraldine, and studied her for a long moment. And Lionel did not know if Geraldine realized how critical it was that the way she appeared in this moment was nothing short of perfection. But he did.
“There are only two things that cause anyone to rush to an altar, as far as I am aware,” Doña Eugenia said, this time in perfectly crisp English. “One is a feverish desire for consummation. The other is the fear of illegitimacy. And which was this clandestine ceremony, might I ask?”
Lionel could see the way his grandmother’s gaze still moved all over Geraldine, no doubt cataloging flaws at every turn. She might have been the kindest and approachable of his family members. She might always have been his favorite.
This did not mean she was cuddly.
He should have prepared his new wife better for this. Had he spent less time trying his best not to think too much about her, he might have.
But next to him, Geraldine smiled. “There are some men who only value something if they are required to work for it,” she told his grandmother, in a voice that somehow managed to be respectful and amused at once.
