Page 143

I swallow hard as we walk closer and closer to the house, such a sprawling collection of red-roofed wings and whitewashed newer builds that somehow work together. It should be a monstrosity but instead it becomes the whole of the horizon.
I decide I have never seen anything more beautiful, unless it is him.
The Marquess. My husband.
I can feel my heartbeat in the crease of my elbows, the back of my knees, and deep in the soft center of me.
“You are now a de Luz,” he tells me, and I can see that smile in his gaze. “Annagret Alden de Luz, Marchioness of Patrias.”
I wonder, then, if I am the only one who sees that smile. Every other part of his life is so serious, and I can feel something in me become immediately protective at that thought.
What I know is that I would fight to make sure that he keeps looking at me, just like this.
I do not intend to let him know that. I focus on what he said, and not on how the sound of that title seems to land on me, hard. “I don’t know what on earth makes you think I’ll be changing my name.”
“It is tradition, of course,” he tells me. “There is no such thing as the wife of de Luz who does not take on the mantle of the family name.” Again, that smile is in his dark eyes and I want to lose myself there. “Indeed, it is considered an honor in some circles.”
“I warned you,” I tell him, unable to keep myself from smiling, too. “I told you that I am American and would inevitably bring with me my own deep stain. Perhaps that is the retention of myactualname.”
“But my dearcosita,” he says, and he is openly smiling now, and it makes everything inside me dance wildly, “you are the marchioness now. No matter what names you call yourself privately. And the Marchioness of Patrias cannot be anything but perfect. It is the law.”
He adjusts his hold on my hand. The hand where he slipped those rings earlier, and I can feel the weight of them on my fingers now, gleaming platinum reminders that this is real. That I married him.
That he gave me a title and expects me to use it.
I’m not sure I can process it.
And I suspect he knows it, because I can hear the low rumble of his laughter as he leads me into the private wing of the house.
Once again, he leads and I follow, wondering why it is that he is the only man alive who can compel me to do so.
He leads me back into that courtyard that I’ve never seen before today. There is a covered bit, wrapped round with flowering vines, and it all looks a bit wild. Beneath it, the staff has set up a table and two chairs, and I can see another meal laid out for us.
It looks like we’re about to have a wedding feast in a perfectly lush garden.
“My mother was supposedly a marvelous gardener,” I tell him as he takes me over to a chair and helps me into it, as if I am not fragile, but precious. It makes me feel something like teary. “When I was little, sometimes my father told me stories about gardens she kept. I always hoped that I inherited her green thumb, but I’m not home enough to keep a plant alive. So I still haven’t had the opportunity to dash my own hopes.”
“Here we have many gardens you can play in, if you like,” Taio tells me. He sits in the other seat, more next to me than across from me. “Or you may simply admire the work of the gardens as they are. Whatever you prefer.”
And still, I feel that sensation like a sob deep inside of me. That ache that has plagued me for months now. Thatthingthat some nights I wished I could dig out with my hands.
Today I have an inkling of what it is.
“Taio—” I begin.
But someone clears their throat. And whatever spell this is breaks. I can feel it fall apart around us, crumbling into ash.
Or maybe it’s simply that Taio’s demeanor changes at once.
“Mother,” he says in a formal voice I have never heard from him before as he gets to his feet.
I don’t know why it hasn’t hit me until this very moment that it’s strange I haven’t met his mother. And stranger still that she was not at the wedding ceremony.
I follow Taio’s gaze, and there she is. Francette du Luz, the previous Marchioness. She looks exactly as she appeared in that portrait I saw in the gallery here, with discordant features that are somehow stunning, although she’s older now. Her dark hair has become an elegant gray. She is tall and the sort of slim that makes her seem even taller and more forbidding. She is dressed to perfection in what I imagine she considers a casual outfit. It is only that the trousers and jacket she wears are quite evidently from one of the most exclusive fashion houses in the world, the epitome of understated elegance.
She looks at her son. Then she looks at me, and I, who have stood tall in far more difficult moments than this one, feel the very strong urge to quiver in my seat. I repress it, but her eyes are a fierce and pitiless hazel, her lips do not even twitch in the corners, and I think she knows.
“Mother,” Taio says again. “It is my honor to present to you my wife, the new Marchioness of Patrias.”