It took longer than the originally agreed-upon three years for the world to begin to accept not only that they were going to stay married, but that Giaco Tavian really had calmed down. That he really had taken himself off the market, turned a new leaf, and become not just a better man but the perfect husband.
There was much mourning across the land, gnashing and wailing, but there were far more people who watched the two of them and saw something beautiful.
“All it takes is the right person,” he liked to tell the paparazzi, who clearly missed his exploits. “Then it is easy to find great beauty in the life you lead without having to attempt to amuse yourself with quantity rather than quality.”
Ivy laughed when she read that quote in the paper.
“You really do love to torture all of your acolytes,” she said. “You know they conduct grieving rituals on a daily basis, praying for my downfall.”
“If their prayers worked, I would have found them more interesting in the first place,” he replied.
And then demonstrated what he meant bygreat beautyright there on the floor of their library in Rome.
Ivy never returned to Umberto’s castle. She didn’t miss it, either. She certainly didn’t misshim. Though she did take Leontina up on her offer to be the family she was missing. It turned out that the relationship they should have had when they were girls was easy now that they were grown women.
Suggesting that it had been all the external forces in that castle that kept them apart back then.
It was five years after their wedding, on her thirtieth birthday, when Ivy discovered that she was pregnant. And Giaco loved a celebration. He threw her a birthday party, then whisked her off to the villa in Capri, the place they still thought of astheirs.
And so she told him there, where the fact that they were in love had been impossible to deny any longer, that they were going to be a family all their own.
He grinned at her, holding her against him in that dreamy pool and running his hands down her sleek, naked back.
“Fantastic,” he said. “I can’t wait to taste you when you’re ripe.”
It turned out that he quite liked that taste. So much so that she spent most of her thirties having his babies. Four wild boys who looked just like their father and two little girls who also looked like their father, though some of them had her blue eyes.
They also adopted some of the orphans who stole Ivy’s heart, to the point that some of their detractors in the papers made snide comments about theirhome for wayward youths.
But they wouldn’t have it any other way.
Having been raised in that cold, isolating castle, no amount of family was too much. And love never ran out, like a tap. It only grew and grew.
Their life was loud. Hectic. But any time they began to feel too far away from each other, they found each other again. In their bed at night. And in that villa on Capri. They loved each other wildly, brightly, ferociously.
Time did not dim it. Age only made it glow.
They always held hands. They very rarely went to bed angry. They spent precious few nights apart.
And over the years, Ivy found herself profoundly grateful for her mother’s legacy. For a heart so big that it could hold all of the people that Ivy was lucky enough to love. But she couldn’t think of that legacy without a pang of sorrow, too. Because she knew that her mother had not always had the love that she’d given returned to her as she deserved.
Not the way Ivy did. Fierce and hot and deeper every day, because forever wasn’t nearly long enough for Giaco and his little saint to love each other as much as they wanted. As much as they needed.
Though they gave it their very best shot.
