The eleven o’clock sunlight poured over him from the stained-glass windows high on the walls, making his skin glow, his raven hair glint, every thread of gold on his costume gleam with sparkles of magic. Deepening the impression was the crimson cape of kingship, with Castaldini’s crest emblazoned in gold, that hung from his shoulders and flowed down his back. He looked daunting, majestic, a man born to be lord of all he surveyed.
As he approached, a movement to the side caught her eye.
Durante and Paolo were helping their father to his feet. He’d now perform another first in Castaldinian history. An abdication.
No new king had ever been crowned while the old one lived.
The head of the Council headed toward the king’s throne to perform the transfer of power and the coronation rituals.
Her breath caught in her lungs as all the players converged toward the momentous event.
Then Ferruccio diverged from the path.
He left them all staring after him in total loss.
She sat there, her every muscle slack as he approached her with those inexorable steps.
He stopped right above her. Her breathing stopped, as well.
He bent, took her clammy hands, bowed deeply, planted a kiss on the back of each hand, then into her palms. She was quaking by the time he straightened. “Shall we, regina mia?”
His queen! “B-but you have to be crowned first.”
“I’m going to be king in minutes. I say what happens first. First you sit were you belong, on the throne. Then I join you.”
He was talking quietly, intensely. But she knew everyone around her had heard him. Judging by the buzz that swept the chamber like a gigantic swarm of bees, everyone had. Luci was suppressing giggles and fanning herself with exaggerated speed.
Ferruccio seemed unaware of anything or anyone but her, his eyes on her like a tractor beam, making her float beside him to the platform. He led her up the five marble steps that were covered in a crimson carpet printed with Castaldini’s crest.
At the queen’s throne, he stopped, the intensity in his eyes rising as he pressed her hands. “This is your throne, Clarissa. This is your crown, too. Yours alone.”
She didn’t get it for a moment. Then comprehension exploded.
It was…too much to believe. He couldn’t have. Could he? How? When? Why? And she choked out, “You mean…?”
He pressed her hands harder. “I had them made for you. Everything is yours, Clarissa, no one else’s.”
This wasn’t the throne her mother had sat on. This wasn’t the crown she’d worn. He’d known. He’d understood. How she’d feel that they were tainted by turmoil and unhappiness. And he’d made her new ones, free of the blot of the past.
She collapsed onto her throne. Her king’s gift. Of a pure and new beginning, of a future all her own to write.
It was too much. What he was. What he kept giving her.
Surely this meant she wasn’t just his convenient bride, if he’d go to these lengths to anticipate her desires, to circumvent and negate her anxieties and discomforts?
He bent and kissed her eyelids as she had his that night he’d claimed her, driving her nightmares away as she had his.
He crooked her a smile. “The sooner I get the formalities out of the way, the sooner you can show me how creative you’ve been.”
A smile trembled on her lips as he walked away. Tears filled her down to the roots of her being, with gratitude so fierce it was exquisite agony. They flowed down her cheeks throughout the magical moments, as she watched the men who were the pillars of her life secure the future of her beloved Castaldini, as her father, passed the power and the responsibility to the man who most deserved it. Her lover. Her king. And within this day, her husband.
“Dio, who are all these people?” Clarissa squinted up into the extensive, packed, semicircular Roman theatre.
It was built into the hillside overlooking the royal palace, had stood there neglected for as long as she’d lived. Now it looked as good as new, bursting with lavish Roman-Moorish decorations, with thousands of guests milling around the sloping, steplike seats. Not to mention countless scurrying photographers from media agencies from around the world, and cameramen transmitting the wedding on global live feed.
Every detail had been brought into existence by Ferruccio’s vision and orchestration, in the six days he’d specified.
He turned to her with a smile rivaling the summer afternoon’s sun. “Those are your relatives and subjects, regina mia.”
“The relatives are yours now, too. And the subjects are yours first, mine only by association. They’re here because you invited them. You see those six ladies over there?” She pointed to her friends, who burst to their feet waving and hooting. She waved as enthusiastically back. “They are my contribution to the crowds.”
“I know. Your friends from your college and postgraduate years.” She blinked at him. He knew? No, he more than knew.
“You did something, didn’t you?”
He waved to the ladies, who swooned down to their seats. “I took the liberty of returning the plane tickets you bought them, sent them my jet instead.”
Her mouth fell open. “Dio, Ferruccio. The things you keep doing. I don’t know whether to be delighted or alarmed.”
“Be delighted. I’ll never suffocate you or railroad you.”
“Really? Strange. I remember you doing some of the first and a lot of the second in very recent memory.”
His smile froze. She wanted to kick herself in the teeth.
Why had she said that? Those had been the sentiments she’d hidden behind until she faced the truth.
The truth was that she would have never agreed to marry him if she hadn’t been dying to anyway. More important, she believed he would have never coerced her, would have let her go.
And if a voice taunted her that he still might some day, she couldn’t and wouldn’t listen to it.
“I thought we were past the hostilities, that you’ve accepted our situation, saw the good in it.” He waited for her answer, but protests and explanations clogged in her throat. He seemed to misunderstand her frustrated stare. His voice thickened. “I wanted to make the best of it, to do things for you that only I can.”
That was what he was doing? Making the best of the situation?
Suddenly the euphoria and optimism that had fueled her for the past hours drained out of her system, left her feeling helpless, hopeless. “And you can do anything, can’t you?”
His eyes grew darker as they roamed her. “Not everything, no.”