Chapter Eight #2
And she kept up the easy, professional talk as she did it. “It always surprises me how much members of certain tax brackets, where the air is always rarified, truly enjoy pretending that they are normal people for a day.”
“Wealth is isolating,” Antonluca replied, without realizing he meant to say such a thing. He blinked, then continued. “That isn’t a complaint, I hasten to add. But I am not at all surprised that a great many wealthy people like to create feelings of authenticity here and there.”
“It was certainly that,” Hannah said. “If authenticity comes with the ability to wander about a crowded city as if it was theirs alone while receiving priority treatment at every turn.”
“For them, it does,” he replied.
She was still wearing her coat as she straightened from her desk. He noticed it because it fell open over the dress she was wearing, a lovely winter white that she’d been wearing earlier and seemed particularly perfect, today.
For a long moment, they gazed at each other.
And Antonluca did not know what to say, so he simply held out his hand and waited.
He thought that a clock was ticking as he waited for her to put her hand in his, but there was no ticking clock in this office.
It turned out, he discovered after a few moments, that it was merely his heart.
Keeping time. Keeping him company, until, with a deep breath that he could actually feel in every part of him, she slipped her hand into his.
Then he stood there without moving, because this reminded him too much of that first night in New York. Her delicate-looking but surprisingly strong hand in his. That compelling green gaze of hers and the way the air seemed to change between them.
And he was certain that he meant to say something, but all he could do was feel the full circle of this. That moment to this, like a straight line. As if there had never been any deviation. As if they’d always been meant to come directly here.
He felt something inside him, like a deep hard pull from the deepest part of him. Some kind of well springing up from part of him that he wasn’t sure he even knew.
“Hannah,” he began.
She squeezed his hand and her smile changed, but he couldn’t have said how. Only that it did.
“Shall we go get married, then?” she asked, a shade or two too brightly.
And he was…not frustrated, not quite that as she pulled her hand back and stepped in front of him to head out of the office. Leaving him to trail behind her, watching as she nodded to all the staff as she headed out.
It occurred to him to wonder if she considered him, and their relationship, some kind of secret. Did she really think that she could marry him and no one would know?
Did she think they were not already the topic of speculation?
He was pondering this question as they stepped outside into the cold, and walked in silence through the dark.
“You do know that it will be impossible to hide the fact that you are marrying me and that Dominic is my son,” he said, and didn’t like that he could hear something like temper in his voice. He could only hope that she did not.
If she did she only glanced at him, then away.
“I have no intention of hiding anything,” she told him in that same maddeningly even way.
“But I also think that nothing good can come of rubbing everyone’s face in it.
I assumed that we would simply carry on as usual and keep our private life to ourselves. ”
That was more or less how Antonluca preferred to live his life, so he could not have said why it was that hearing her say such a thing…rankled.
She went to keep walking down toward the forecourt where most of the staff kept their cars, but he stopped her. Then he inclined his head toward his Range Rover. It sat, gleaming and shiny, in the owner’s spot in the circular drive that swept up to the hotel’s main entrance.
“We will take my car, I think,” he told her, with perhaps more intensity than the matter of transportation required. “I do not think it will be necessary for you to drive that questionable Fiat of yours again.”
“I like that questionable Fiat.” There was a frown between her eyes. “It has served me well.”
“It is unsafe,” he replied coolly.
He opened the passenger door to the Range Rover, and beckoned for her to get in. He thought there was some resistance there. In the way that she frowned at him. In the fact that she did not respond to his safety concerns.
But in the end, she swung herself into the seat and settled there, gazing out the window as if she was the very picture of serenity.
What he could not figure out was why he did not feel that as a win.
“I thought you preferred to walk, even in the cold,” she said once he swung into the driver’s seat, started the car, and began to drive.
“I do,” he said, and was surprised as he said it to discover that he truly meant it. He’d begun his walking as some form of penance, perhaps. Or acknowledgment. And maybe it was both. But he had also come to enjoy the time alone in his head.
Something in him kicked at him, urging him to tell her that, but he didn’t.
“Tonight, however, it is our wedding night,” he said gruffly, in case she’d forgotten that. “Even I know better than to take a bride tramping across the field in the cold.”
And when she didn’t reply, he glanced over, and saw what looked like the most real smile he’d seen today on her lips as she gazed out the window.
This time, it felt like a win. It felt like winning a grand prize, in fact.
He drove into the village and then out again, then down into the fields once more only to climb back up toward the castle.
The lights were blazing tonight, and he supposed that was more of an announcement to the village than anything else could have been.
Since he preferred, generally speaking, to minimize that sort of thing.
A candle in the dark and the dream of former kings, is that it? one of the old men in the village had asked him once, during a break from the bocce tournament.
A man is nothing but his dreams, old man, Antonluca had replied.
Though he hadn’t believed that, not then. Tonight he pulled into the old gates and across the stone slabs that had once been some kind of courtyard. And then he led the mother of his child, this woman who would soon become his wife, into the castle that was his.
And now hers, too.
There was a part of him that wanted to go back in time to find that street kid he’d been and tell him that it was all going to work out. And for the best.
Because this was the dream he’d never dared dream, not back when he didn’t know if he’d manage to keep his siblings fed.
Inside the grand hall, Dominic and Cinzia were waiting for them. The little boy came charging over to his parents as they came in, tossing himself at Hannah—and then put Antonluca’s heart at risk by doing the same to him.
The quicker they married, he thought fiercely, the better.
He ushered them all into the same room where he’d entertained his brother and that weaselly man Rocco had produced out of nowhere. Until this very night, this had been one of the very few furnished rooms in the castle, outside his kitchens.
The priest waited there, smiling benevolently, and after introductions were made, they all walked together through the castle and out once more into the courtyard. Once outside, they hurried through the cold toward the tiny chapel that was tucked into one corner.
“A beautiful example of medieval fortification,” the priest said to Antonluca as they walked. “I’m delighted that you have kept the whole of this castello so pristine. Such attention to historical detail.”
“Historical detail is my passion,” Antonluca replied dryly, and wasn’t sure why he’d even done such a thing until he saw the way Hannah’s lips quirked.
And in that moment, he had the distinct, lowering impression that he—world-famous, too wealthy to ever worry about poverty again—felt like every teenage boy who had ever existed. Because he understood that he would do absolutely anything to entertain this woman.
He had just proved it.
That made him feel almost dizzy. It was disorienting in every way, so he was pleased to enter the chapel and have them all cluster together there at the ancient altar, because that meant that this was happening.
He was sure that, once it did, he would stop being victimized by all these feelings.
The priest made a meal of it, but that was only to be expected.
“Antonluca,” he intoned, “do you take Hannah, here present, for your lawful wife according to the rite of our holy mother, the Church?”
Antonluca was the one who had wanted a religious ceremony, not merely a civil one, to make certain these bindings between them stayed put. And now that he was standing in a drafty old chapel, he wished they could hurry it all up.
But first there were these vows. “Lo voglio,” he growled. “I do.”
Then found himself on tenterhooks as he waited for the priest to ask Hannah the same question. An eternity passed, it seemed to him, as he waited for her to answer. As her solemn green gaze held his, then moved to the priest.
“Yes,” she said, her voice clear. “I do.”
After that, the service was otherwise swift and to the point.
Or Antonluca thought it was, in any case, having not attended any weddings before.
He repeated the words that he was told to repeat. He listened as Hannah did the same. He held her hands in his as they said ancient words and followed old rites to bind themselves together into one.
And then, at last, he slid a dramatic emerald that matched her eyes onto her hand, then followed it up with the matching band that slid in tight to the emerald and made the entire set look more intricate, more unique.
He handed her the ring that he had selected for himself and there was something shocking about how deeply he liked the fact that in pushing that ring onto his finger, she was claiming him, too.
That understanding seemed to flash between them then. Scared and sweet.