THAT THE LOST Princess of Ile d’Montagne might not wish to marry him after he had spent all this time tracking her down had never crossed Cayetano’s mind.
He found the very notion of her refusal preposterous. For it was normally he who was forced to crush expectations, maintain boundaries, and make certain that none of his lovers ever got the wrong idea. He had never intended to marry. He rarely intended to spend more than a night or two with a single woman—it was too tempting for some of them to imagine that it meant something it could not.
Because Cayetano was not meant to be like other men. He could sample pleasure, and he did, but his was a life of duty. Responsibility. And the great weight of his people’s destiny.
It was only his country that could inspire him to take vows, and he had made those vows long ago. It was only his country—and the sure knowledge that because his sacrifice was for the island, he would never commit the sins his own parents had. His father by dying too soon and too badly and leaving a mess in his wake. His mother by losing herself and her purpose entirely.
He didn’t like to think of such things. It was too tempting to allow his memory to take him to places far too painful. When he had been a boy, powerless and far away from all the things that mattered to him. Cayetano had vowed then that he would never be so powerless again.
Never for him the betrayal of his duty for love, no matter what it looked like. He would not make the mistakes his parents had. He would not allow emotion to poison him as it had them.
Ile d’Montagne came first. Always.
He had comforted himself with the knowledge, as his obsession with finding the lost Princess grew, that he was not focused so intently on the woman. That would be unacceptable. That would put him on a level with his mother and he could neither accept nor permit such a thing. Cayetano was fixed on her function, that was all.
As they drove away from her farm, he told himself that keeping her functional so that she could play her part was all that mattered. And was why he had...held her hand, as a lover might. That was why he had attempted to give her comfort.
He, who had been bred for war.
Never in his life had he been so pleased to take an irritating call that he barely had to pay attention to as the car pulled away from the farm. He should never have taken hold of her hand in the first place.
It was better that he pay less attention to the woman beside him. Better that he make certain his armor was in place and the vows he’d made to himself when he was young still held true, no matter how perfectly her hand had fit in his.
Or how that hunger within him raged on.
As a set of his advisors tried to one-up each other on the call, Cayetano found himself toying with old memories, frayed at the edges, as they made it to the private airfield. Memories he preferred to believe he had excised. The last time he had seen his father, so distant and remote, the way a warlord ought to be in Cayetano’s estimation—far above the petty concerns and mawkish sentimentality of normal people, surely. And then later, lost beneath the weight of his dismay and powerlessness after his father’s death, chafing at the restriction of his age. Unable to go home and take his rightful place.
He had vowed to himself that once he was old enough, he would make himself the perfect warlord.
No emotions allowed.
But there was no use reliving the past. What mattered was that he had wrested back control of his people. And together, they had all moved on.
There was enough history to fight over when it came to the crown. Cayetano did not care to add his family’s history to the list. Especially when he had handled it all.
The way he handled everything.
As an instrument of his people, stripped free. He concentrated instead on the future. He loaded his precious cargo onto the jet that waited at the airfield, prepared to take the lost Princess back home. Where a new life awaited them. Both of them, and his country, too.
Finally.
His men dispersed as they boarded, taking up their usual positions throughout the plane. Cayetano led Delaney to the area that functioned as a lounge. And watched, with some amusement, as she looked around, her eyes wide.
“Have you ever been on a plane before?” he asked, amused by the notion of such newness. But then, why should a farm girl fly?
“Never.” She blinked, taking in the quiet luxury that surrounded them. And finding it overwhelming, if the way she curled her hands into fists at her sides was any indication. “But I’m pretty sure that any plane I might have gone on would not look like this.”
“You may wish to brace yourself,” Cayetano said, almost idly. “Because you’re a princess, Delaney. You’re going to have to get used to the royal treatment.”
The look she threw him then would have been comical, had she not looked so genuinely horrified.
“I don’t know a thing about that,” she protested. “I don’t want to know.”
But he was already getting to know this woman, whether she liked it or not. And having nothing to do with his body’s response to her. Or almost nothing, he amended. He had studied her in advance and meeting her in person had only added to his arsenal. He knew her tells. Like the mutinous look in her blue eyes just now. And a set to her jaw that spoke of stubbornness, not overwhelm.
He found it cute, really. He liked to watch her spark. Because whatever stubbornness she might possess, it was of no matter in the long run. And certainly no match to his. It might even serve her well in the days to come.
She had wrestled crops, perhaps, in this wholesome life she’d found herself in by accident. But it wasn’t who she was. And he could assume, from the redness of her eyes, that she had a wealth of feelings about her change in circumstances. But Cayetano had been born to a calling. And he had been shaped since was small to be nothing short of the weapon that could finally topple a throne and restore his kingdom.
She could be as stubborn as she wished. It would change nothing.
But he knew better than to say so now.
He took his time settling himself in his preferred chair, then indicated that she should take the one opposite him. And was not surprised when, instead, she sat on the leather couch that put her farther away from him. As far as she could get while remaining on the same plane.
It was hard not to admire these little rebellions, however futile. At heart he would always be the rebel he’d been raised to become. Even now that he had secured a different future for his beloved island.
“I sympathize with your situation,” he told her when they were both seated, though only he was anything like relaxed. And it was not entirely untrue. “It cannot be easy to learn that you are not who thought you were.”
She blinked a few times, rapidly, then scowled at him. “If you sympathize, you wouldn’t have turned up out of the blue, dropped a bomb, and then taken advantage of the mess you made to push your bizarre agenda.”
“You misunderstand me.” He inclined his head. “Sympathetic as I might be to your plight, that does not change the facts.”
He had grizzled old advisors who dared not argue with him. But this little farm girl crossed her arms, tilted her chin up higher, and dug in. “The facts as you see them, you mean.”
Cayetano smiled. Patiently. “Facts do not require a certain perspective to be true, though I know many people these days like to pretend otherwise. Facts, you will find, are true whether you like them or not.”
She only sniffed. “You can keep making pronouncements all you like. It’s not going to change the fact that regardless of what any test says, there’s not one single cell in me that is in any way princess material.”
He did not say what he could have. That the only material that mattered was her DNA, it was inarguable, and her feelings were irrelevant. Somehow he knew that would not land well—and it seemed almost churlish to belabor the point when he’d already won.
“I understand that this is difficult for you,” he told her as the plane began to taxi. He saw her look of panic, quickly hidden, and the way she reached out to grip the arm of the sofa. Though she never made a sound. Not his Princess. “I admire your bravery, little one. To charge headlong into the unknown takes courage, whatever your reasons.”
“I don’t really think I’m charging anywhere,” she told him, still arguing though her voice was a bit higher than before. “For one thing, I don’t have a passport. So at some point or another, you’re going to find that your big plans are destined for—”
But she stopped midsentence as he drew an American passport out of his breast pocket. “I took the liberty of arranging one for you.” He flipped it open so she could see that it was, in fact, a picture of her.
She did not look pleased at his forethought. “How is that possible?”
He lifted a shoulder. “You will find that a great many things are possible when you are willing to pay for it.”
Delaney’s scowl deepened. “I don’t understand. I thought you were some ragtag band of freedom fighters, off in the hills somewhere. How do you have private jets? And enough money to do things that shouldn’t be possible?”
The plane leaped into the air then and she let out a soft gasp that she clearly tried to muffle.
Cayetano extended her the courtesy of ignoring it. He furrowed his brow as if lost in thought when really, he was allowing her a few moments to look out the window and pretend she wasn’t panicking.
“The Ile d’Montagne crown has spent a great deal of time and effort attempting to dismantle the wealth and status of those they like to call rebels,” he said when the plane leveled out and her cheeks took on some color again. “And for a long time, they succeeded. We used to have to hide ourselves and the truth about our capabilities. There were sanctions, embargoes, and cruel laws that targeted only our part of the island. We built a castle hidden in the side of a mountain so that only we would know it. Many of these things changed with the last peace accord. We no longer have to pretend. And because my family has always taken care to hide our resources outside the reach of the grasping Montaigne family, we did not have to build ourselves up from scratch.”
He knew this personally. He had been one of those resources—deemed too precious to the future of the country to be permitted to grow up there, no matter how peaceful things were meant to be in his lifetime.
Cayetano could still remember with perfect clarity his first trip to cold, drizzly England. His father’s gruffness as he was dropped off at boarding school, left in the care of his ever-present and always watchful guards. Because he was an easy target. Everyone agreed. There was a security in the fact his whereabouts were known by the international press, but all it took was one overambitious Montaigne to shrug and decide the global condemnation was worth it and he’d have been done for.
His visits home had always been more stealthy. It was always best that the Queen not know precisely where the rebel faction’s hope for the future was at any given moment, particularly not on the island where she claimed her sovereignty. It was healthier.
And he was as educated as any Montaigne princeling had ever been when he finally returned home to claim his birthright at twenty-one. To wrest it back from his unscrupulous would-be stepfather and try to find it in him to forgive his mother her betrayal. He still tried. Because he understood loneliness, after all his years in the north. He had never taken part in the heedless, reckless shenanigans of the careless students around him in the places he studied. Not Cayetano. When he was not studying, he was fighting. Or learning all the things he might need to know should he do what no one else had done and break, once and for all, this Montaigne stranglehold on his island.
Because the peace might still hold, but everyone knew that the Montaignes could renege on their part at any point.
Cayetano had been raised to act as if there was no peace. As if he was as ancient as the wrong done to his people, a warlord from long ago, prepared to battle with his hands if that was required. Any time he might have been tempted to waver, he needed only to remind himself of those who waited. His people, who waited and prayed and supported him, even when he was far away on that cold island so unlike his own.
A pity that his own mother had not managed to do the same.
But he had handled her as he handled everything. It was his duty. And Cayetano Arcieri always, always did his duty.
“And when you speak of the grasping Montaigne family, you mean...my family,” Delaney said, snapping him back to the present. “My grasping family, according to you.”
“I do not know if you are grasping or not.” Cayetano kept his voice mild despite the unpleasant memories kicking around inside him. “How could I? But I can think of no other way to describe the work our false kings and queens have done for centuries.”
“If it is so terrible, and has gone on for so long, how do you hope to change it?”
He studied her for a moment. He did not expect such cynicism from an American. Were they not a country raised on hope? Yet he could see the flush in her cheeks and suspected she spoke not because she was particularly hopeless, but because she was out of her depth.
Cayetano told himself he was not imagining other ways he could put that flush on her lovely cheeks. He told himself his hunger for her had abated. Even as he had to adjust the way he sat.
“I do not believe that a lie can flourish when faced head-on by the truth,” Cayetano told her, with perhaps more ferocity than necessary. “And you, little one, are the embodiment of that truth.”
“I’m just a farm girl,” she said, but her chin lowered a notch. “I don’t embody anything. Unless it’s Kansas dirt.”
“But you see, the DNA you care so little about will do it for you.” Cayetano was keeping his voice soft, but still she sat up straighter. He reminded himself that she was not one of his people, used to ages of struggle. Moreover, she was not one of his men. She would likely respond better to honey than salt. It was on him, then, to find some honey within. However scant. “It matters not what you believe, or who you think you are. Your blood tells the truth.”
“Maybe it’s different where you’re from,” she said with a quiet hint of steel. He liked that, too. He wanted to explore all her possibilities, when it had never occurred to him that she would interest him like this. It would take getting used to—he had only thought of what she would do for his people, not what she might do for him. Though his sex was interested in little else. “But I’ve never found truth treated as much more than an opinion.”
“I am Cayetano Arcieri,” he replied, with his own suggestion of steel. Or perhaps it was more than mere suggestion. “In some places, the very hint of my opinion is treated like a commandment.”
She blinked at that, but she didn’t alter her expression. Or attempt to curry his favor in any way. She only gazed at him, looking faintly censorious.
That, too, was new.
“That isn’t the least bit healthy,” she chided him. She chided him. “If that’s true.”
And Cayetano had the strangest urge to truly laugh then, when he was not given overmuch to the practice. Still, he found he wanted to throw back his head and let go...when he never let go. That wasn’t who he was. Far too much was riding on this for levity—
But still, the urge was there, making its own ruckus inside him.
“The door to the left leads to a guest room,” he told her when the urge within him subsided. He indicated the door he meant with a nod. “Feel free to make it your own during the flight. If you find you need anything, you can find me either here or behind the door on the right.”
And if he had been an insecure man in any regard, the face she made then would have cut him straight through.
“I can’t think of any reason I would need you,” she retorted.
Much too quickly.
And he waited until she disappeared behind her guest room door, locking it loudly and ostentatiously, to grin.
But the grin soon faded and once it did, he could hardly recall how it had happened in the first place. He called in his men, and tried to get his head back into the business of this thing they were doing here. This glorious thing, this marvelous enterprise, that would finally restore his kingdom.
His life’s work, the work of so many lives before his, this close to fruition.
Yet he soon found that when he should have been thinking critically, planning out how best to launch his lost little princess on the world—with the proof of who she was so there could be no debate, and the inevitability of her ascension, and thus his, secured in the minds of all the world—all he could think about was the scent of her hair. Like sweet almonds. Or the strength in that hand of hers that he’d held in the car. It was no princess’s hand, that was for certain. Her nails were cut low and he had felt the work she’d done all these years in the roughness of her skin.
He should have been thinking of strategy. Instead he thought, It suits her.
And more, he found himself wondering how those hands would feel on his skin. His sex.
Cayetano, who preferred his women draped in silks, round and lush, found himself growing almost uncomfortably hard at the very notion. Of a peasant’s hand on a princess, but then, he knew the truth about her. Even if she did not.
There was nothing common about her at all.
He nodded at something one of his men was saying in support of Delaney.
“She will make us a fine queen,” he agreed.
Yet what he thought was, She will make me a fine wife. Having nothing at all to do with her strategic importance and everything to do with that hunger in him that only seemed to grow—even as he sat with his men. The people who depended upon him to be rational.
He tried to call on that rationality now.
“Her unusual upbringing is a gift, I think,” he said now. “As we know, the Queens of Ile d’Montagne are not known for their work ethic.”
“Their treachery, more like,” one of his men said with a snort.
“And pretenders to the throne all the while,” growled another, setting off the predictable calls for the end of the reign of the Montaignes, once and for all.
The calls had a different flavor this day, Cayetano thought. Now they were so close to their goal.
Yet he wasn’t basking in their triumph the way he should have been. Instead, he found himself thinking about how, when his men had made their discreet inquiries and pretended to be looking for farmland to buy, the first thing anyone had to say about Delaney Clark was how hard she worked. She had put her heart and soul into it, as if it had been her mission since birth to save that farm. Most of her neighbors thought that if anyone could, it was her.
Imagine, what could a woman like that do for my country? he asked himself.
Or for him, not that he chose to accept he needed anyone.
But as a warlord turned king, he would. He would need a queen who could support him, not defy him. Instead of a woman like his own mother, so bitter and resentful. Focused on the past, on avenging any and all historic wrongs, and never what might come next unless it suited her ambition. It was a fine line to walk. History must never be forgotten. He lived that truth. The history of his people and the island animated all he did. But it was far too easy to sink too deep in it and risk losing everything.
This had been his mother’s downfall. Therese Arcieri had imagined herself a kingmaker. Her family’s roots were sunk deep into the island, just as the Arcieris’ were. And she had imagined that after Cayetano’s father died, her favor alone could elevate the man of her choice to the position of warlord.
But Arcieris did not sit idly by while other men attempted to rule their people.
Even if standing up against his own mother had killed something in him, something he doubted he could get back. Something he’d told himself could not matter when his country was on the line.
Cayetano had taken his rightful position by the ancient rites. He had defeated his mother’s lover with his sword, and then had showed him mercy. His people had risen up and called him warlord when he was little better than a lad. A mere twenty-one, but he had stepped into his destiny.
He had showed that same mercy to his treacherous mother, little though she deserved it. And she might have railed against the manner of his mercy, but yet she lived. When he would have been well within his rights to show her the harshest possible justice.
Many had called for it. Some still did.
But on some level, Cayetano understood her. He too thought only of the country. How could he blame Therese for doing the same?
Liar, came a voice from deep inside him. You cannot bear to part with your last remaining parent. You are as sentimental as anyone.
That snapped Cayetano back to the plane he flew on and the men who surrounded him. Because he was no pathetic child. He had never been given the opportunity.
His mother lived because he was merciful. She remained locked away because she deserved to live with what she’d done.
Sentimentality had nothing to do with it.
But when his men left he settled in on the bed in his own state room for the rest of the flight. And he found himself thinking that Delaney Clark was nothing like Therese Arcieri, the would-be Queen of Ile d’Montagne. For one thing, Delaney wanted no part of this. She’d had no wish whatsoever to leave that farm.
To his way of thinking, that already put her head and shoulders above any other pretender to the throne. For anyone who aspired to rule should be prevented from doing it, Cayetano had long believed. He would include himself among that number, save for one thing. He did not want the throne for his vanity. He did not want the power for its own sake.
He wanted what he had always wanted. What he had been brought up to want. And had then interrogated from every possible angle while he’d studied abroad, looking for the lies inside himself.
In the end, it was simple. He wanted Ile d’Montagne to be a country torn asunder no more. He wanted his country whole. And that could not be accomplished, no matter his strength, by a simple show of force. All that would do, if successful, was switch the positions of the two factions. He needed Delaney to bring the country together.
For as long as there was a Montaigne on the throne, the royalists in their seaside villages would fall in line. But only if an Arcieri was also on the throne would his people from the mountain valley do the same.
This was the opportunity his people had been waiting for since antiquity.
She was.
Cayetano would do everything in his power to make certain he finally delivered what no other ever had.
And possibly enjoy his little farm girl more than he’d expected he would, while he was at it. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that would make this all the sweeter.
Because she might not think she wished to marry him.
But Cayetano knew she would.