"Then I hope she comes," he says quietly, his hand on my shoulder.
I do, too.
“Let’s get out there, shall we? The Autumn Ball waits for no man,” I say.
“Or woman,” Sofia says.
“Max is right. Let’s greet our guests,” Mummy says, and we begin to file from the room, heading to the ballroom.
I feel a hand on my arm and turn to see Amelia. “What?” I ask, both eager and terrified to get to the ball.
Will she come?
“What’s going on with you?” she asks.
We’re alone in the room now, so I come clean. “I’ve invited…well, I’m hoping Fabiana will be here. Valentina, I mean.”
“Fabiana? Are you mad?” she guffaws.
“Maybe?”
She narrows her gaze. “You fell in love with her, didn’t you?”
Slowly, I nod my head.
“Even though she lied to you about who she was?”
“I’ve realized she had good reason. She needed to put distance between herself and her family name. I couldn’t hear it at first, but I understand now.”
“Are you sure, Max? About her, I mean. She’s been pretending to be someone else for years, someone who persecuted you.”
I shrug. “I guess we’ll see.”
She studies my face before she pulls me into a hug. “I want the world for you.”
“I know you do.”
We join the rest of the family, and together we enter the ballroom, announced at the top of the sweeping staircase as is tradition. As it is every year, the room is decorated in an autumnal theme, with garlands of maple and oak leaves wound around marble columns, and delicate bronze pheasant figurines nestled among floral arrangements in reds and yellows and oranges.
I smile and make small talk with everyone I meet, always keeping an eye on the double doors.Hoping…hoping…
Mother announces the dancing, andeach of my siblings and their spouses step onto the floor, looking elegant and in love, just as they always do. Several women catch my eye, hoping for a dance, but all I do is smile at them and look away.
There’s only one woman I want to dance with, and she’s not here.
It had felt so romantic to simply invite her tonight by sending her a dress anonymously. Now, with almost half the evening gone, I wish I’d been more direct. I wish I’d simply turned up on her doorstep and told her how I feel about her. Tell her what I’ve learned.
But I didn’t, and right now, with the ballroom double doors firmly shut, what hope I’d held that she would come begins to dwindle like the last echo of a fanfare in the palace courtyard.
An elderly woman in a black velvet dress, her long gray hair captured in a bun, approaches me. She has a pleasant face, and when she smiles her eyes twinkle in the golden glow of the ballroom.
She inclines her head, dipping into a shallow curtsy. “Good evening, Your Royal Highness,” she says.
“Good evening,” I reply, wracking my brain for which member of the aristocracy this woman is. I come up with nothing. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” I say, keeping one eye on the door.
“My name is Lady Violetta Romano,” she says, and immediately she captures my full attention
“You’re Valentina's grandmother?” I ask, my heart stuttering.
