Chapter 2 At the Edge of His World
YSABEL
He came back in under two hours, just like he promised.
I was still in the green dress when I heard the car on the gravel, still sitting on the edge of the bed with biscuit crumbs on my fingers and the taste of almonds on my tongue.
I hadn't moved to change or wash my face or do any of the sensible things a person does when they've decided to stay home for the evening.
I just sat there, eating my grandmother's biscuits one by one, thinking about nothing and everything at once.
When Leon appeared in the doorway, his jacket over one arm and his hair slightly mussed from running his hands through it the way he does when he's anxious, the first thing he said was, "You ate all of them."
I looked down at the cloth in my lap. "Not all of them. There's one left."
"One." He crossed the room and sat beside me, close enough that our shoulders touched. "You made a full plate."
"I was hungry."
"You were stress-eating."
"I was appreciating my own excellent baking." I held up the last biscuit. "Do you want it?"
He took it from my fingers and bit into it, and something in his face softened. "These are really good."
"I know they are. I made them."
"I should have stayed."
The words hung between us, simple and true. I didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say that wouldn't sound like either forgiveness or accusation, and I wasn't sure which one I was feeling. Maybe both. Maybe neither.
"My aunt asked where you were," he said, still chewing. "I told her you weren't feeling well. She said she hoped you'd feel better soon and that she missed your biscuits from last time."
"She remembered them?"
"She remembered them." He finished the last bite and brushed the crumbs from his fingers.
"She also said, and I quote, 'That girl has more warmth in her little finger than your mother has in her entire body.
' Then she drank three glasses of champagne and told my cousin that his new mustache makes him look like a confused walrus. "
I laughed, surprised by it, and Leon smiled at the sound.
"I should have stayed," he said again, quieter this time.
"You're here now."
"That's not the same thing."
"No," I agreed. "It's not."
He reached for my hand, and I let him take it, and we sat there together in the quiet of our bedroom while the evening settled around us.
It wasn't a resolution. It wasn't even close to one.
But it was something, his hand in mine and his shoulder warm against my shoulder and the taste of my grandmother's biscuits still sweet on both our tongues.
Later, after I had finally changed out of the green dress and washed the flour from under my fingernails and crawled into bed beside him, Leon pulled me close and pressed his face into my hair and said, "I'll do better."
I wanted to believe him. I always want to believe him. That's the problem with loving someone as much as I love Leon. The wanting gets in the way of the seeing.
The next morning, while Leon is in the shower, I sit at the small desk in our bedroom and open my laptop.
The transfer is the same as it has been every month since we married: a modest amount from my own savings, the money I had before I became a Rosciano, sent to my parents' account for whatever the farm needs.
Feed for the goats, repairs to the fence, seeds for my mother's vegetable garden.
They never ask for it. They would never ask.
But I know what things cost, and I know what a small border farm brings in, and I know that my father's pride would let the whole place fall down around him before he admitted he needed help.
I close the banking page after the transfer goes through and find myself looking at the folder I keep meaning to delete and never do.
It's labeled "Someday," which is either optimistic or stubborn depending on my mood.
Inside are sketches and notes and half-formed plans for the thing I wanted before I became someone's wife.
A bakeshop. My own place, small and warm, with a counter full of almond biscuits and orange-zest cakes and all the recipes my grandmother taught my mother and my mother taught me.
I used to imagine it so clearly I could smell the sugar in the air.
A shop in town, maybe, or a little stand at the market.
Something that was mine, built with my own hands, serving people who came because they wanted what I made and not because of whose name I married into.
It's a good plan. It was always a good plan. I just never figured out how to make it fit into the life I actually have.
"What are you looking at?"
I turn to find Leon in the doorway, half-dressed, his shirt unbuttoned and his hair still damp from washing. He looks soft like this, unfinished, more like the boy who used to meet me in the alcoves than the Don he becomes when he's fully assembled.
"Nothing," I say, and then, because I'm tired of saying nothing when I mean something, "My bakeshop plans."
He crosses the room and looks over my shoulder at the screen. I watch his face as he takes in the sketches, the menu, the careful calculations. His expression is hard to read.
"You never told me you had all this."
"You never asked."
"I'm asking now."
I close the laptop, suddenly self-conscious. "It's just something I used to think about. Before."
"Before what?"
"Before things got busy," I say instead.
Leon sits on the edge of the desk, facing me. "You know you don't have to work, right? You don't have to do anything you don't want to do. We have enough. More than enough."
"That's not why I want it."
"Then why?"
"I'm good at it," I say finally. "Baking. Making things. I spent my whole childhood learning how to do something well, and now I just... don't do it. Except when I'm making biscuits for parties I don't get to attend."
"The reception tomorrow," Leon says. "You'll be hosting that. That's important."
"Hosting isn't the same as making something."
"It's a skill. My mother's been doing it for forty years."
"Your mother has been running this estate for forty years. I've been arranging flowers and staying out of the way."
"We could talk about it," he says slowly. "After the reception, after things settle down. If you really want to do something with the baking, we could figure out what that looks like."
"I'd like that," I say.
He leans down and presses a quick kiss to the top of my head. "I have to go. The estate manager wants to review some accounts before the week gets away from us. Will you be all right?"
"I'll be fine."
He leaves, and I sit there for a moment longer, looking at the closed laptop with my someday plans hidden inside. Then I open the desk drawer and pull out the notebook where I keep my handwritten recipes, the ones that matter too much to trust to a computer. I tuck it into my bag.
***
By early evening the next day, I am standing in the doorway of the formal sitting room, watching Vera direct the staff like a general preparing for battle.
The reception was planned months ago, a small gathering to welcome neighboring families and members of the old estate circle.
The kind of event that happens regularly at Tenuta Rosciano, that has happened regularly for generations, that I should by now be comfortable attending as the lady of the house.
Instead I am hovering at the threshold like a guest who arrived too early and isn't sure where to put herself.
"The lilies go on the side table, not the mantel," Vera is saying to one of the younger maids. "And those candles are completely wrong. Where are the ivory tapers I ordered?"
"I think they're in the storage room, Donna Vera."
"Then fetch them. Quickly. The guests will be arriving in less than an hour."
I step into the room, and Vera's gaze flicks to me as I come through the doorway. "Ysabel. Good. You can help Lucia with the flower arrangements. She seems to be struggling with the concept of symmetry."
Lucia, who is twenty years old and has been working at the estate since she was sixteen, shoots me an apologetic look.
I know that look. It's the look the staff give me when they're not sure whether to treat me as one of them or one of the family, when they're caught between the woman they used to work alongside and the woman who technically outranks them now.
"I can help," I say, because I can, because arranging flowers is something I actually know how to do. My mother taught me when I was small, before I understood that knowing how to make things beautiful was considered a servant's skill and not a lady's accomplishment.
I cross to the side table where Lucia is wrestling with an armful of white lilies and begin sorting them by stem length. The familiar work steadies me. This, at least, is something concrete, something I can point to at the end and say: I did that. I made that beautiful.
"Shorter stems in the front," I tell Lucia quietly. "And angle them outward a little. It makes the arrangement look fuller."
She nods, grateful, and together we work through the lilies while Vera continues issuing commands to the rest of the staff. I enjoy working beside Lucia. What bothers me is Vera deciding where I belong before I have even greeted anyone.
When the arrangement is finished, I step back to admire our work. It's good. The lilies cascade elegantly across the table, white and green and perfectly balanced. Lucia smiles at me, a real smile, and for a moment I feel like I've accomplished something.
"That's lovely," Vera says from behind me, and I turn, surprised by the compliment. "Though perhaps next time, Ysabel, you might leave the finishing touches to Lucia. The guests will be arriving soon, and you'll want to freshen up."
"I'm fine," I say. "I'll just wash my hands."
"Of course." Vera's smile doesn't waver. "Leon is in the study, by the way. He asked where you were."
I find Leon in the study, standing at the window with a glass of something amber in his hand. He turns when I enter, and his face softens the way it always does when he sees me.