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She looked down at their joined hands as if there was some significance there that he had missed. He found himself looking, too, and was furious with himself.
“Is it that your feelings don’t matter or that you don’t know how to identify them?”
“What is the Signorina teaching you?” And he recognized the new sensation rising inside him. It was as if he was preparing for battle. He felt the way he sometimes did, honed and ready, as if at any moment he would be required to fight to the death.
Not the physical battles of his ancestors, swords and blood. His battles had mostly been in the press. But the preparation within him was the same. And he always landed his blows.
And there was a very specific battle he wished to undertake with this woman—but it was not this one. And it was not about blows, but passion.
“You look angry,” Delaney observed with maddening calm.
“I doubt that very much,” he managed to reply, with a reasonable facsimile of calm. Through his teeth. “I cannot get angry. As policy.”
“Says the man who identifies himself as a warlord, angrily.”
“Warlord is a title.” Cayetano made himself smile. Or curve his lips, anyway. “A title I take seriously. A warlord cannot afford anger. Not in these uncertain times.”
She tilted her head to one side, her blue eyes seeing far too much. “Do you actually know when you’re angry?”
And it was suddenly as if everything inside of him was jumbled all around and out of place. He felt out of control again, and he wasn’t even touching her the way he wanted to do. He could not abide themessof it.
Or the fact that it was more than that madness that had overtaken him when he’d kissed her before. It was as if she’d reached inside him and threw everything out of place, and he couldn’t understand how that could be. He was a fortress. And while this was an odd conversation, it was innocuous. Surely it was no more than idle talk.
Yet inside him, the call to battle kept sounding.
Cayetano attempted to settle himself down in the usual way, by thinking about their upcoming wedding. Because nothing mattered but that. All roads led to that ceremony.
“Plans for our wedding are well underway,” he told her. Gruffly.
And only when she drew her hand from his, then crossed her arms, did he understand that he had deliberately changed the subject so that she could be the one on the defensive here.
He couldn’t say he liked what that said about him.
“The wedding of the warlord would normally be an international affair,” he said, pushing forward despite the way she was regarding him. “We have many allies in different countries and we usually like them to take part in our rituals. It legitimizes them. Not that we require legitimacy, but it does make claims to the contrary from the palace below more difficult.”
He trusted that the majordomo had done his job and Delaney knew thatthe palace belowwas how his people had referred to the seat of the Montaigne family’s power, sitting pretty in its own rocky cove on the island’s prettiest beach.
Because of course it did.
“No one’s consulted me about any wedding plans.” And while her tone was still calm, Cayetano could easily read the temper in her gaze.
“Why would they?” he asked, finding it far easier to make himself appear at ease now that it was her temper on the rise. “You have far too much on your plate as it is. Learning to accept your new role. Exploring your new home.”
Becoming his Queen.
She glared at him. “I think that if there are wedding plans, they should include the bride. That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? Otherwise it starts to look a lot like you’re hiding something. Or plotting something.”
“Anyone can be a bride, Delaney.” He was enjoying himself now, even if, somewhere deep inside, where everything seemed to have found its place again, he questioned himself and his motives. And deeper still, he wondered why it was that only she managed to penetrate all the shields he’d spent his whole life nailing into place. “All a bride need do is appear at the wedding. But not everyone can train to become the next Queen of Ile d’Montagne.”
Then he watched as she clearly wrestled with her reaction to the idea of becoming Queen. Very clearly. Very obviously.
He found it more intriguing than he should have.
“One thing at a time,” she said after a moment, though her eyes darkened. “First I need to become a bride. I should focus on that. Something that would be easier to do if I was actually included in my own wedding plans.”
“And byfocus on thatdo you mean you wish to actually plan our wedding?” He wanted to touch her again, so he did, reaching over to run his hand down the length of one bare arm, delighting in the way she shivered at the contact. And the goose bumps that marked the path he’d taken. “Or do you mean you would like to obstruct any wedding plans so that they never come to pass?”
He hadn’t intended to accuse her, or not so directly. It had been more of an idle question, really, because he knew what she did not—that nothing would stop their wedding. This was Ile d’Montagne and he was the warlord. It was his vow that made them one, not her compliance.
