AMALIA WANTED TO cry out something like There’s no place like home! as she made her way along the country road, then carefully turned into what she hoped was the correct drive that would lead to the Clark farm.
She was in Kansas. And she had loved The Wizard of Oz. It would be lovely to think of herself as some kind of Dorothy, finally waking up to the place she truly belonged.
But it didn’t feel like home. It felt alien and strange here, flat and unwelcoming.
Then again, that might have been her emotional reaction to leaving Cap Morat and Joaquin once again.
He had not made it easy.
The first thing he’d done was laugh.
You’re tired of sex, are you? he’d asked her, still there at that table on the top of a cliff. Shall we test that theory?
And she would have liked to say that she had held steady. That she had stood firm in her resolve. That she had stalwartly refused to allow him to reduce her, once again, to nothing but that wildfire that forever burned between them. Nothing but lust and need, forever.
But she was not that strong.
She wanted him too much.
He had taken her there, right there on the table where she had barely tasted her food. But she tasted him. There was nothing better, nothing brighter. He’d swept what few dishes remained aside and made her scream out her need and her fury to the stars above.
Recklessly. Heedlessly.
He’d made her do it again and again.
I told you that you can leave whenever you like and I meant it, he had said, his mouth against her neck. You are welcome to leave this island at first light, Amalia. I will call for a boat myself.
She had waited, still splayed out beneath him, because she somehow did not trust this...helpful attitude on Joaquin’s part.
Sure enough, his eyes blazed as he pinned her there beneath him with all that green. But if you leave now, you can never return, Amalia. This is not a safe space for you.
She’d sat up gingerly, as if she expected something to hurt, though nothing ever did. Maybe she wished it would. If it hurt, then maybe it would mean something after all. At the very least, maybe it would teach her a lesson she desperately needed to learn.
Thank you, she’d said, because it didn’t hurt at all. Sensation swirled inside of her, the way it always did. She wanted him all over again, the way she feared she always would. That has been perfectly clear for some time now.
The next day, she expected him to intervene once again. To use her body against her, simply because he could, but he didn’t. She woke alone in that bed beneath the high tide line to find her things packed. And even though that really did hurt, and the hurting was not better, she had decided to take that message at face value.
He really had called her a boat. She had taken it to Barcelona.
Once again, while leaving him and Cap Morat, she had not looked back. There was no need—she doubted she would ever get all the images of what she’d done there out of her head. And she already knew she took the ghost of him wherever she went.
Why bother looking back?
It had been simple enough to hire a plane once she reached Barcelona and fly herself to Kansas. Simple, but not easy. Because she had spent too long indulging her every whim on that island. She felt addicted to Joaquin, strung out on his touch, and it was worse this time. It had been bad enough after that first summer. But at least then she had been filled with purpose when she’d left him. She’d had her work to throw herself into, her role in the kingdom, a place in history. A future to work toward, like it or not.
Now all she had was the slender hope of love, of all things, from a woman she’d never really met—except as a newborn. In a place she would never have visited. As a stepping-stone to a future she still couldn’t quite envision.
Amalia really did want, so desperately, to feel some sense of belonging here. To feel tugged back into the embrace of this land that had made her, but she didn’t. She was grateful that Esme considered knowing how to drive a vehicle essential knowledge, because otherwise, she wasn’t sure how she would have gone about hiring herself a car and drivers so far out in what seemed to be the middle of nowhere. Even so, driving felt treacherous out here where the flat land went on forever, so that the horizon seemed both impossibly far away and on top of her at the same time. The sky was too large here. The fields too secretive, somehow—though she suspected that was only because she couldn’t identify all the crops she saw.
She eased the little hired car down the lane, wincing every time the dirt track gave way and the tires dropped down with a tooth-rattling jolt. But she’d checked and rechecked, and this was the address Catherine had given her.
Amalia had seen images like this her whole life. It was impossible to grow up anywhere, she imagined, without some notion of the American heartland stamped into her brain. Green stalks of corn. Golden wheat. Whatever the other crops she’d seen were, all in neat lines, rolling on forever. But it was one thing to watch a show. It was something else to find herself in the middle of it.
When she got to the end of the lane she was confronted with an actual American farmhouse to one side, an honest-to-God red barn straight ahead, and the fields of corn all around—hemming her in a bit, she thought. She hadn’t really expected the corn to feel like a living wall. But Amalia blew out a breath and told herself that she was no coward.
Even if, at that exact moment, she felt the surely cowardly urge to turn the car around and drive away. As fast as possible.
She pushed open the car door, forced herself to climb out, then stood there, waiting for a sense of homecoming to sweep over her now that she’d arrived at the actual family home where she should have spent her childhood. To make it clear that she had made the right choice. To make all of this feel right.
But instead, she felt profoundly alone. There was only her beneath an endless blue sky above and the corn, watching her as she stood there, trying not to feel dizzy.
Despite herself, she missed Joaquin.
And Amalia hated herself for that weakness. How could she miss a man who didn’t really want her? Or wanted her, but not in the way she needed him to? And yet even as she thought that, her body knew she was thinking about him and shivered with that same unutterable delight it always did.
Even here, a world apart from him after she’d left him again, she couldn’t even work up a decent temper. She couldn’t force herself to fall out of love with him, or want less from him, or stop feeling all of these things that would get her absolutely nowhere.
She just wanted him the way she always had. The way she supposed she always would.
And maybe someday, that would feel like less of a life sentence.
Because at the moment, she would have given anything to press her face into the crook of his neck, say nothing at all, and let herself believe that the way he held her could mean anything she wanted it to. That she was precious to him. That he would hold her forever. That what they were to each other meant more to him than a story he could tell over dinner one night.
Amalia jumped guiltily when she heard a noise. She turned to see an older woman step out from inside the farmhouse, letting the screen door slam shut behind her.
And she knew.
Maybe because there was no reason for any other woman to be staring at her like this, but she thought it was a little bit deeper than that. A little bit more.
This woman was her actual mother. And Amalia knew it. On sight.
After so much nothing, she had to admit that it felt like something.
She moved, jerkily, around the front of the car. Then she made herself walk across the yard toward the stranger. The stranger who was her mother.
Amalia hadn’t known how a person was meant to dress to meet her mother for the first time. As an adult. She also hadn’t known what a person wore on a farm. So she’d gone ahead and winged it, going for jeans and trainers and what she hoped was the sort of T-shirt that everybody wore. Instead of it being the kind of T-shirt that only people like her wore while swanning about, trying to seem relatable, which wasn’t at all the same thing. That she was a fish out of water in every respect would be all too noticeable, she feared—
And worrying about her attire was a lot easier than worrying about all the rest of it.
But when she came to a stop just below the step the woman stood on, Catherine Clark, her mother, didn’t appear to notice what Amalia was wearing. She was too busy staring at her.
At Amalia, as if she couldn’t quite take her in.
As if Amalia was what mattered. As if she was the only thing that mattered.
“Here you are,” her mother whispered. “Finally.”
And it was possible they stood there for a lifetime. Maybe two, just gazing at each other. Both of them, Amalia was sure, were cataloguing the other’s face. Looking for clues or possibly recognition. As if each of them was a treasure map.
And any other time, simply standing and staring at another person would have been awkward. Uncomfortable. But not today. Not with Catherine.
My mother, Amalia thought, in wonder.
It was only when Catherine came down from her step by the door, that Amalia even noticed that she’d reached out to grip Amalia’s hand.
Had she been doing this all along? Amalia didn’t know. But she found she didn’t mind.
Just as she didn’t mind when Catherine led her out into the fields, away from the farmhouse. Straight into the stalks that had seemed like a wall to her. It seemed to Amalia that they walked forever. The corn rose all around them and seemed to whisper as they passed, but Catherine kept walking until she reached a small clearing.
When she stopped, she smiled, and Amalia found herself smiling back. As if she couldn’t help herself.
“When I was pregnant with you I used to come out here,” the older woman told her. “I would lie down on the ground, put my hands on my belly, and tell you how your life was going to be. We couldn’t see the whole sky but what we could see was blue and beautiful, and I wanted your life to feel that way. Endless possibilities, in or out of the cornfields.” She smiled at Amalia fondly. So fondly that Amalia was taken back.
Because Esme didn’t do fondly. And Amalia understood why. Esme hadn’t been raising a daughter and hoping for the best. Esme had been preparing a ruler to take over the country she had dedicated her life to.
And still, on balance, Amalia found she quite liked fondly. She wanted to return the favor. She gripped her mother’s hands and she smiled back.
“I have—I had—a good life,” she said, because wasn’t that what any woman would want to hear from the child she’d unwittingly given away? And the bonus was, it was true. Being away from that life for a little while had made that even more clear. “A very strange life, I suppose. But a good one. I know what people say about Queen Esme, and it’s true that she can be quite formidable. But she loves me. And though I think she would never admit it, because she can’t admit such things without appearing weak, this has all distressed her. Deeply.” She squeezed Catherine’s hands. “I have no complaints. The life I was brought up to lead was a good one. I loved my work. I adored my people. I loved the Queen, my mother. It wasn’t always an easy life, but it was a good one. And now I get to do what very few people get to do in this life, and create an entirely new one.”
She realized as she said these things that they, too, were true. That she had gotten lost in the things she’d given up and a man who couldn’t love her. When all along, it had been a distraction from the real gift, which was this. Getting to stand here, looking into the eyes of the woman who’d carried her within her body. And knowing that whatever happened next, Amalia would be the one who chose it.
If that wasn’t freedom, she didn’t know what was.
“I can’t pretend to understand the doings of queens and princesses,” Catherine said after a moment. “But it brings me great joy to hear you did not suffer. And that these recent revelations have not wrecked you.”
“They felt as if they might,” Amalia admitted. And then, emboldened by the compassion in the other woman’s gaze, continued. “I’ll confess that I used to dream about having a normal life, but that didn’t mean I actually wanted one.”
“I understand,” Catherine said, with a wry sort of smile. “There are few things on this earth more complicated than a wish granted.”
Amalia supposed she would know, and better than most.
“But we are all so lucky now,” she said, because she wanted to believe that. “Your daughter and I have two mothers each, just as you and the Queen each have two daughters. I suppose that makes us all family.”
“And you and Delaney a kind of sisters.” Catherine smiled. “For only the two of you can understand both what you’ve lost and what you’ve gained.”
“This all sounds very wise and knowing and well-adjusted,” Amalia said with a laugh. “I hope to fully believe all of it, someday.”
Catherine’s smile deepened. “I believe you will. And if I may offer a suggestion as you move from one life into a new one, as I myself have just done....?” At Amalia’s questioning look she forged ahead. “When Delaney left for Ile d’Montagne, I left the farm as I’d wanted to do since her—since your father died before you were born. I thought I might sell it to the neighbors then, but as Delaney pointed out to me, the land is yours. You get to decide what to do with it. In the meantime, I’ve been building a life for myself in town. I would tell you I love it, though standing here, surrounded by so much history and so many memories, I feel the tug to return. Though I know I won’t. My time here is done.”
“If you have advice on how to bridge two worlds, I would love to hear it,” Amalia whispered.
Catherine looked at her for a long moment, then beckoned toward the ground. Holding Amalia’s hands, she took her time kneeling down. She sat for a moment, then lay back the way she’d told Amalia she’d done long ago. Then she waited while Amalia, who had not been raised to clamber about on the ground under any circumstances, did the same.
And perhaps it was foolish to feel a sense of liberation as she stretched out in the dirt, but she did. There would be no one to comment on what she was doing here. No one to take pictures of her in dirty jeans and a muddy T-shirt, then write snide headlines about it in the morning paper.
She could simply lie there, looking up at the perfect blue sky framed by the stalks of corn as they reached for the heavens.
It was peaceful here. Protected, yet isolated.
“I can see why you came here,” Amalia said softly. Two black birds flew overhead, making rough, croaking noises at each other, as if they were agreeing. “Thank you for bringing me back here. With you.”
Next to her, Catherine made a little sighing sound, then reached over and took Amalia’s hand again.
“Love,” she said, with the sort of gravity that lodged itself inside Amalia’s chest. Right where it hurt. “Love is what matters, Amalia. The world will conspire against you. It will tell you that you must be practical. That you must contain it, hide it, make it palatable. But love is not meant to be hidden away. It is a gift, in any form. In every form. I lost your father before you were born, but I have loved him every day since. It’s a gift.” She squeezed Amalia’s hand. “Whatever you do, you must do your best to never squander love, no matter where you find it.”
And all told, Amalia spent two weeks in Kansas.
They stayed in the farmhouse, both of them, perhaps, needing to marinate in what could have been.
Catherine told her stories. Of her father, who she had loved so deeply. Of her grandmother, who, Catherine assured her, would have loved Amalia excessively and as far as Catherine was concerned, did so now from above. Amalia learned all about the Clark family, tracing them all the way back to when the first Clarks had left Ireland long ago. In return, she made her mother laugh and laugh with tales of palace protocol and the secret language of clothing choices, according to the ever-watchful press.
They would sit before the fire in the evening and exchange their stories. And at the end of each evening, Amalia would climb up the narrow stairs and find her way into a neat little bed, tucked up beneath the eaves. And dream about the life she might have had, right here in this pretty little place where life was simple—which wasn’t to say undemanding. Because Catherine also told her why she’d decided to move off the farm. The demands of livestock, crops. The tether she had felt to this land, like it or not, through good years and bad, ups and downs, and everything in between.
But mostly, Catherine spoke of love. In different forms. The love she felt for the daughter she’d raised. The love she said she felt, here and now, for the daughter she’d carried. The love she felt for her own mother as a dutiful daughter who had not always agreed.
The love she felt for her husband, lost too soon and never forgotten.
When the two weeks were up and they agreed that it was time for Catherine to return to her new life in the aptly named town of Independence, Amalia knew that she would return. Often.
And not only because she’d decided not to sell the land.
She’d agreed to an arrangement with Catherine’s closest neighbor, who would tend the land and the crops and claim all but a small percentage of any yield, thereby expanding his operation. Amalia also hired a caretaker for the farmhouse, the barn and the things that went with it—like the vegetable garden—because these things were what made the land a home. Delaney’s home, she knew. The place where Delaney and Cayetano Arcieri had honeymooned, though that was hard to believe. Amalia could not imagine the ferocious warlord of Ile d’Montagne in Kansas.
But she could preserve the sweetness of this place for the children Delaney and Cayetano would certainly produce, all of them heirs to the Ile d’Montagne crown—and better yet, all of them grandchildren Catherine would claim as her own.
Making them their own kind of cobbled-together family after all. Amalia was happy to do her part.
And besides, she wanted the opportunity to lie in that cornfield again, and lose herself in the sky.
She left Kansas feeling far richer than when she’d arrived. And maybe that was why she took her mother’s advice, like the dutiful daughter she’d always been to the Queen, and went to London.
In contrast to Kansas, all bright skies and sunny days this time of year, London was cold and damp. She wrapped herself up tight in the same wrap she had once thrown on a hard stone floor to kneel upon. Amalia fancied that if she concentrated, she could almost find Joaquin’s scent clinging to the soft fabric, teasing her.
But then, his ghost had been with her the whole time she’d been out there in those fields. It was a place he had never been, and yet she’d been certain she heard his voice on the breeze. She slept alone, and yet she’d woken in the night—every night—convinced that she could turn over and find him lying there beside her.
One afternoon, while Catherine had napped, Amalia had walked out into the fields on her own. She’d let the stalks of corn whisper to her as she made her way along. She’d followed the directions of the bossy crows, undeterred by any scarecrow.
She’d found her mother’s favorite spot and she’d stood there, her eyes shut tight, trying to feel as if she belonged here. With her feet in the Kansas dirt and her face to the Midwest sky.
As if, finally, she’d found her home.
But the only thing she felt there inside of her was Joaquin. So intently, so completely, that she’d jumped slightly where she stood, convinced that she could feel his hands upon her—
Yet when she opened her eyes and turned clear around the circle, she was alone.
Even now, in a sleek car crawling through traffic into Central London, she could hear Catherine’s voice in her head the way she had that day. Love. Love is a gift. You must not squander it.
Amalia had heard all the things that Joaquin had said to her on the island. She knew that he’d meant them. And she might like to think, in the privacy of her own hopes and dreams, that he could not possibly remain this darkly furious with her if he did not feel something...
But if she knew anything in this life, it was that one person could not change another. Her own upbringing at the hands of one of the most stubborn women alive had taught her that. And besides, she’d spent five years trying to change her own mind. Her own heart.
All she could do was accept the gift that had been given to her, or not.
Amalia only needed to make certain that no matter what she did, she honored it. That she did not squander it. That she did not walk away from it, simply because it didn’t look the way she thought it should.
She had dressed like the royal princess she no longer was today, though she’d left her hair down because he liked it. She had the car drop her off at the sleek office building in the city, where she knew he kept his offices instead of at his home. Amalia suspected she was far more likely to be able to talk her way past a receptionist than any domestic staff who were, in her experience, far more keen about protecting their employers’ privacy.
And when she was ushered into Joaquin’s office to find him sitting there, his green eyes glittering while all of London lay at his feet through the windows behind him, Amalia smiled.
“I told you what would happen if you left,” Joaquin growled at her.
Which, she couldn’t help but notice, wasn’t the same thing as summoning security, having her thrown out, or having refused to allow her entry into his office in the first place.
She took that as an encouraging sign.
“London is an island,” she said. “But it’s not your island. Not just yet.”
“Amalia,” he began, in that commanding way of his.
And she told herself that this was love, not addiction. That this was freedom, because she’d chosen it this time. Maybe, she could admit in retrospect, she’d secretly hoped that Joaquin would turn up on the island when she’d returned to it. This time, she’d sought him out directly. It wasn’t happenstance. It wasn’t luck or coincidence.
It was love, she told herself. And maybe that was the real freedom.
So she unwound her wrap from around her shoulders, then dropped it to the floor as she’d done before, secure in the tinted windows that kept his staff from seeing in. Then she knelt down, smiled at this man she was sure loved her back no matter what he might say to the contrary, and proved it.