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“I am the leader of one half of my country, it is true.” Cayetano was not ashamed to admit this. Still, he did not love the way his words seemed to hang in the air between them. “I wish to marry you not only because it will grant me access to the throne, though it will. But because you represent the other half of my country and I wish our union to unite all of Ile d’Montagne’s people.”
“Your people, you mean,” she said, more to her lap than to him. “People who have nothing to do with me.”
“I do not want revenge, Delaney. I want renewal. My country needs it. And you are the only one who can make this happen.” She did not respond to that, though her chest moved as if she was breathing heavily. “I don’t know what you think it is a princess does.”
She lifted her gaze to his. It was not a friendly look, but something in him sang nonetheless. And that hunger inside him bit deeper. “I have never given the matter the faintest shred of thought. I have been too busy planting. And farming. And a great many other tasks princesses are not known for, I’d guess.”
Cayetano waved a hand. “It is irrelevant in any case. What matters is what you and I will do. We will create a bright and gleaming future. Your blood and mine will pave the way to the future, together. Gone will be the bitter, bloody factions of the past. Together, you and I will remake the world.” It was a ringing speech and all the better because he meant it—though he had prepared it before meeting her. He had prepared it for the idea of her. He couldn’t have said why that felt wrong, now. He shook off the strange notion. “All you need do is say yes.”
She did not even need to do that, but this was America. Cayetano paid little attention to the doings of the place as a whole, but even he knew that Americans deeply prized their sense of freedom, however elusive it might prove in reality. No need to tell his farm girl that her acquiescence was merely a formality. There was no earthly reason to tell her that he, the warlord of the Ile d’Montagne hills, would be only too happy to toss her over his shoulder and handle the situation in the time-honored fashion of his people.
He did not think she would react to the news well.
It was another indication of how sheltered she was, out here surrounded by her corn and her vegetables. It had yet to occur to her that a man on a mission that was intended to remain wholly peaceful did not turn up with a battalion.
Though he did find that he was suddenly far more intrigued by the notion of his people’s marital wedding practices, which he had always considered archaic, than he ever had been before.
Delaney stared at her hands for a long while, though the ragged movements of her chest gave away her continued rough breathing. She lifted her gaze again, her blue eyes seemed almost tortured, and Cayetano felt...
Not regret. Not quite. But something in him twisted, all the same.
“I wish you the best of luck, then,” she said, almost solemnly. “But this sounds like your fight, not mine. Even if I was remotely interested in some far-off place I’ve never heard of, it would be impossible. I belong here. This is my home.”
She held his gaze as she said it. She looked at him steadily, as if wishing him on his way even now. She was dismissing him, he thought with some amusement, and that was certainly not the way he was normally treated.
It was so unusual that it was almost...nice.
“Delaney,” he began, trying to sound...reasonable.
“There’s no possible way,” she said, shaking her head as if the matter was decided and she had moved on now to be faintly sorry about it. “I can’t even consider it. Maybe you noticed the whole farm outside. It can’t take care of itself.”
The older woman stirred herself then, there on her end of the couch she shared with Delaney. Her eyes were grave as she gazed at Cayetano, then back at Delaney. She looked as if she was taking her time coming to a decision. Then she nodded, slightly.
“I’m needed here,” Delaney said, her voice urgent. And cracking around the edges, to Cayetano’s ear, the longer she looked at her mother—who wasn’t truly her mother. “You can’t do this alone, Mama, you know that. Youcan’t.”
The old woman smiled, and something in it made Cayetano’s neck prickle.
“I do know that,” she said softly, and the softness was not for him. Her gaze had been shrewd when she took him in. The softness was for Delaney, and she smiled when she turned to the daughter she’d raised. And loved, he saw, just as she’d said. “But nonetheless, Delaney, I think you should go.”
CHAPTER THREE
DELANEYCOULDN’TSTOPshaking. She couldn’t remember ever actuallyshakingbefore in her life, and now it was as if she was little better than a leaf in a swift wind. She was actuallytrembling.
And she would have hated that she was so weak, but she couldn’t seem to focus on her body or the things that were happening in it. Not beyond noticing what was happening.
Not when her world had fallen apart.
Cayetano murmured something and left the room, taking his men along with him. She hardly knew the man who had turned up here and set everything spinning madly out of control, so she shouldn’t have been surprised to see him show a little compassion. But she was anyway. Or maybe it was the opposite. Maybe it was a performance of deep cynicism, because he had somehow known what her mother would say. Maybe he was simply, politely, leaving the two of them to talk now that all hisfactswere laid out.
Not that it mattered, because the shock waves from her mother’s surprise statement were still rolling throughher. And Delaney knew without having to ask that for all his apparent compassion—or whatever it was inside a man made of stone—he was not going far.
She couldn’t think about that, either. Or any of the implications when she didn’t hear any car engines turning over outside.
Because now was simply her and her mother, here in this room, where she’d spent the whole of her life. Where she knew every picture in every frame. Where she’d played on the floor as a child, there on the thickly woven rug. Where she and her mother—not your mother, came that terrible voice inside her—sat in the evenings and worked on their sewing, their knitting, and other projects while the light was good.
This farm, this house—this was herlife.
How could her mother possibly tell her to go?
