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“I know facts are not your friends,” he said. “I came here to inform you, that is all. Because however perverse, I know that at one time, you were focused on the same enterprise.”
“I wanted to cut them all down,” his mother said, her eyes glittering with what he assumed was remembered fury. “As they deserve.”
“You wanted to take my place,” he corrected her. “Violent solutions were the excuse, not the reason.”
She laughed at that, but it was not a good sound. “I pity your princess.”
This was his cue to leave. He knew that. Therese liked nothing more than to poke at him. It was all nonsense and malice that he usually shrugged off as he left. But when it came to Delaney, he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t let it go.
“My princess reclaims her rightful place in the world,” he informed his mother. “She does so with grace and sensitivity, unlike some I could mention. She met with Princess Amalia only last week and came away the stronger for it. Save your pity for yourself.”
It had been a stiff, formal meeting, entirely staged for the cameras to assuage the international interest in the story of babies swapped at birth. The sort of interest Cayetano had always craved, and yet now it was happening, he found he liked it less than he should. It was that hollowness again. But all the tests were in, and conclusive, so the meeting of the two had gone forward. And it had been a strange farce of two similar-looking women, smiling as if their lives hadn’t been upended, shaking hands and then sharing a tea service while scrums of journalists hung on their every stiff and overly polite word.
Still,Delaney had told him later,at least our first meeting is over.It was almost better that there was no chance to talk about anything.
“She loves you,” his mother said now. “It is painfully obvious. And as we know, you are your father’s son. You care only for facts and figures, plots and plans. But nothing at all for the emotions that make any of this worthwhile.”
He restrained himself from rolling his eyes, but barely.
“You will be set free from your remarkably comfortable prison just as soon as Queen Esme issues the proclamation we’ve all been waiting for. An announcement of the new line of succession. If I were you, I would take the time to reflect on the fact that you have not been, as you like to claim, imprisoned forlove. But rather because you attempted a coup. Let us be honest about that, Mother, please. If nothing else.”
He expected the cloud of smoke she blew his way. Sometimes she even threw things at him. But she surprised him by sighing.
“I loved him,” his mother said, far more quietly than usual. ”I can admit it blinded me. But I loved him. And a love like that, no matter how it ends, is worth anything. Even this.” She blinked, and the bitterness he knew best crept back over her face. “You’ll never know that, Cayetano. Because you are precisely how you were made. Cold and cruel and destined to be alone forever.”
That wouldn’t have insulted him a month or two ago. He would have taken it as a compliment. But things were different now.
“If I’m cruel,” he gritted out at her, “you have only yourself to blame. For I think you’ll find that it’s a natural response to a coup attempt. By a mother to her son. No matter how much you dress it up and try to call it a love story.”
“Alone,” his mother said, distinctly. “Forever.”
And Cayetano spent the rest of his afternoon trying to get her voice out of his head.
With little success.
He worked up until the car arrived to take them down from the valley to the sea, where Palais Montaigne had stood almost as long as Arcieri Castle. Almost.
He fielded the usual calls as they wound through the mountains, aware that Delaney was beside him with her face turned toward the glass.
“Are you excited for tonight?” he asked, tossing his mobile aside.
She turned toward him, and he was struck, as ever, by her beauty. By the way she glowed. She looked almost ethereal, in a sparkling gown that made her look as if she, perhaps, was made entirely of froth and sparkling wine. She wore jewels around her neck that had been handed down in his family through the centuries, including the ring on her finger, the pride of many Arcieri brides before her.
Her expression was perfectly placid but still, there was something about the way she regarded him that made him regret...everything.
Cayetano was unused to the feeling. He disliked it intensely.
“It’s a formality, surely,” Delaney was saying. “All your sources in her palace indicate that she will be making her announcement soon. Possibly even tomorrow.”
“We do not need her proclamation,” Cayetano agreed. “The laws of the island dictate that you will inherit the throne, whether she likes it or not.”
“So it is done, then.” Delaney’s blue gaze moved over his face. “You have everything you’ve wanted, all this time.”
And he had spent a great many years fighting. Hand-to-hand combat, martial arts, exercises like today’s with his guards. All in preparation for a future that, as far as he had known, might include more coup attempts from his own mother, assassination attempts from Montaigne sympathizers, and who knew what else.
This way of winning was better than those dark imaginings that had preoccupied him for so long. But her tone of voice sent a finger of premonition down the back of his neck. “I’m sure she also wishes to speak with you.” He kept his voice...careful. “She is, after all, your mother.”
Something flashed in Delaney’s gaze. “She is not my mother. I already have a mother.”
