If she did she only glanced at him, then away. “I have no intention of hiding anything,” she told him in that same maddeninglyevenway. “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 thiscastelloso 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.
