Chapter Fourteen
One week later . . .
Caresa
“Duchessa, you look beautiful.”
I stared at my reflection in the floor-length mirror, yet I felt nothing. I was numb. I had been numb for the past seven days, since he’d left me. Today was the final dress fitting for my wedding day. It was strange really—here I was dressed exactly as I’d always envisioned, in my dream lace dress with long sleeves, a corseted waist and a flowing silk skirt. And wearing the floor-length veil adorned with silken vines that I had wanted since I was a child. Today should have been the happiest of my life.
It felt like the worst. I was in a nightmare I couldn’t escape from, and the hero I wanted to come and save me had left me alone. I had cried for seven days straight. Now there was just a deep, dark sense of nothing.
Maria, Julietta and her assistant lost themselves in the excitement, taking pictures for any last-minute alterations that would be made this week. But I stayed silent. I wasn’t sure what I could say anyhow.
“Wait until your parents see this, Duchessa! They get in next week, yes?” Julietta asked as she began to unzip me from the dress.
“Yes,” I replied. I was making sure I listened to them just enough to answer any questions.
“They will be in love!” Julietta said happily, clearly pleased with her work. As she should be—the dress and veil were exquisite. If I were in any mood to feel excited about such a thing, I would share in her joy of a job well done.
I changed into a robe as they packed everything up. I sat down, sipping a caffè as I stared into the flames of the fire that had been lit in my bedroom. It was coming up to Christmas now, and the house staff had decorated my rooms. They smelled of pine and cinnamon from the heavily decorated tree, and the crackling fire was never allowed to die.
Maria came and sat beside me. “Contessa Florentino has called, Duchessa. She would like to arrange a lunch sometime this week.” Pia. Pia wanted to see me.
I placed down my cup and shook my head. “No thank you. Please decline. I won’t be making any engagements this week.”
Maria sighed in frustration. “You cancelled all the ones from last week, Duchessa. And now this week too? It is Christmas soon, and the city expects you to make an appearance. You should have been in Florence days ago. There are festive parties to attend. Our society expects your presence at these functions due to you being their future queen.”
“Zeno can go in my stead,” I said and curled my legs onto the chair. I turned toward the fire, hugging my waist.
“The king will not leave either. I think he is waiting for you.”
I flinched as Maria called Zeno “king”. The word made me think of Santo, and the mess he made when he seduced Abrielle Bandini and took her from her husband. When he had a child and refused to acknowledge him as an heir, because our precious society deemed it inappropriate. Then what she said sank in. “Zeno is still here?”
“He has not left in a week either. You both left the ball and have been hiding in your rooms for a week. You are worrying us all. The king will only see his secretary.” Maria moved closer. “She said he had been injured. Maybe by fighting. He wouldn’t say.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said vaguely, then turned to stare again at the flames.
“Well, your parents are due to arrive next week. Will you be going to the palazzo to meet them or continue hiding here?”
“I don’t want to leave here,” I mumbled. In case he returns.
“The king has cancelled the Christmas banquet at the palazzo, but the wedding is set for the Duomo on New Year’s Eve, and you will have to be there a few days before. There is only so much time I can buy you both.” Maria got to her feet and, in a surprising move, laid her hand on my head. The affectionate gesture brought tears to my eyes. I had been so closed off, so devoid of affection since he left, that I didn’t realize what someone’s caring touch would do to me.
Maria kissed my head. “I know these marriages can be hard, especially on one as young as you. Societal marriages have a way of seeming cold and routine. All any bride wants for her big day is to be loved and have butterflies swirl in her stomach when her eyes land on her groom.” She stepped away, leaving the tears tracking down my cheeks. “But the king is a good man. And the fact that he has stayed here when you are feeling so low is testimony to how fond he has grown of you.”
Maria turned for the door. “I’ll clear your week. But from next week, Duchessa, you must make more of an effort.”
The moment she left me alone, I broke apart, wondering how I had got to this moment. And Zeno? Why was he still here? I had not spoken to him once since that night.
Seeing the time was almost eleven o’clock, I got up from the chair and got dressed. I pulled on Abrielle’s jodhpurs, a pair of short boots and a sweater. Wrapping myself up in a scarf, coat and gloves, I left my balcony and began the walk over to Achille’s home. As with every day since he had left, the closer I got to the cottage, the more mixed my feelings became. I loved this place, found comfort in its small walls, but not seeing Achille in the fields or in the barn was a dagger to the heart.
Yet every day I came. Every day I lived in hope that he would return.
I pushed through the gate and checked the house. It was empty, like every day this week, but it was clean and waiting for his return. I had made sure of it.
Not needing to stay there, I went to the barn and unlocked the doors. I heard the eager sounds of hooves on stall floors, and the briefest of smiles came to my lips. When I arrived at the stables, Nico and Rosa had their heads over the doors. I patted each one on their necks, kissing their noses. “You ready to come out? Sorry I’m late today, I had an appointment I couldn’t get out of.” I released them into the paddock and put out some hay. The grass was hidden beneath a light layer of snow and difficult for them to eat.
When the horses were happy, I went into the barn and took a deep breath. Today was the date Achille was meant to have started the bottling of the merlot. He wasn’t here, so I would have to do. He had talked me through the process weeks ago, and promised that he would let me help him when the time came. This year’s vintage, in Achille’s estimation, would be his greatest yet. I wouldn’t let all this destroy the wine.
This wine was his passion, his life. It needed to be done.
“Right.” I took off my gloves. I started the fire and tried to warm up the vast space. And then I began. I sorted the now-corrected labels and gathered the empty bottles and corks that would be used. I got the sanitation fluid and siphon and began the arduous task of cleaning the wine bottles. It took me hours, but I didn’t stop. I needed to keep going.
As I finished cleaning the last bottle, someone coughed from the doorway. I lifted my head. Zeno walked into the barn, his hands in the pockets of his dark jeans. He was wearing a sweater, scarf and gloves. Like this, he looked just like everybody else. No suit, no attitude, just . . . normal.
But my anger toward him was still simmering. For how he treated Achille, calling him slow, insulting his late father so brutally. For trying to ruin the letter, and for casting him from his land like he was nothing.
“What do you want?” I asked tersely.
Zeno stopped dead. I waited for him to hiss something back, but he bowed his head in defeat. “I didn’t come here to fight with you, Caresa.” I didn’t say anything in response. Zeno stepped forward, looking at what I had been doing, at the bottles that had been cleaned. “What are you doing?”
“Bottling,” I said tightly, then carried on with my task, washing away the sanitizing solution and preparing the siphon to get the aged wine from the barrels.
“You know how to do this?”
Zeno came to stand beside me, watching me with interest. I nodded. “Achille taught me before . . .” He left, I wanted to say. But if I did, I knew I would lose control of my anger and take it out on Zeno.
“He taught you the entire process for the merlot?”
I nodded again, then dropped the siphon I was holding. I rested my back against the counter, remembering when Achille had prepared lunch and made coffee for me in those first few days. I had to quickly rid myself of those thoughts. If I let them, they would drown me in sadness.
And I had a job to do.
Zeno rested his back beside me and stared out of the barn doors at the lightly falling snow. “You are here everyday?”
“Yes,” I replied. “The horses need caring for, and I knew today was the first day of bottling. I knew . . . I knew Achille would want this done. He cares for this wine like no one would ever understand. It is his entire life.” I flicked my eyes up to Zeno. “It is all he has in the entire world. Without this, he would be so lost. The outside world overwhelms him. You . . . you read in the letter that his father kept him sheltered, and why. So your father wouldn’t be suspected of being Achille’s papa.” I swallowed back the burgeoning lump in my throat. “If he doesn’t come back . . . if he doesn’t ever return . . . he would want this year’s wine completed.”
I looked right at Zeno. He was looking back at me with an unreadable expression on his face. “He believes this wine will be the greatest yet,” I said. “Though I’m sure anything he produces would be great.” I shook my head. “You have no idea of the kind of man he is, Zeno. He cares so much, he loves so much and so deeply that I’ve never seen anything like it.” A tear fell down my cheek as I whispered, “He just wants so desperately to be loved back. He deserves to be loved back. He doesn’t deserve all of these blows life keeps giving him—never knowing his mother, his father dying young, and now all of this.” I studied Zeno. “You are not so dissimilar, you know. You have both lost your fathers, never truly got to know your mothers. And you both have had to shoulder these burdens alone.” I wiped away the tear and stared at the ground. “But Achille doesn’t have the tools you do to cope with things. And he should. Because if anyone deserves happiness and love, it’s him. It’ll always be him.”
Zeno didn’t say anything for the longest time, until he ran a hand down his face and whispered, “You love him, Caresa. You truly love Achille.”
I laughed a humorless laugh and fought not to crumble. “Yes . . . he is my split-apart.”
Zeno looked confused, but then said, “I will be gone for a couple of days. I’m going to see my Uncle Roberto in Florence.” He paused. “I have to know the truth. I . . . I have thought of nothing else for the past week. How we used to be so close as children.” Zeno laughed, but it was pained and short. “I think . . . I think he was the best friend I ever had.” He cleared his throat. “Turns out there might have been a reason for that. He may be my brother. My best friend, who I was told by my father and mother I could never see again, could have been the very thing I had always wished for—a brother to laugh with and share my life.”
“His father would not have lied about this.”
“I know that,” he said sadly. “I knew Signor Marchesi. He was a good man. As is Achille.”
“And yet you sent him away,” I said softly.
Zeno stilled. “I know that too.”
He pushed off the counter’s edge and walked to the doors. Just as he left, I said. “None of this is real, you know?” Zeno stopped and, with tense shoulders, turned my way. I pushed off the counter too. “All this, the world we live in. It’s all a mirage. We live like the aristocrats of old, talking of pride and ancestral honor, but it’s all pretend. The country doesn’t recognize us as anyone special anymore, just the relatives of people who used to be someone once. Our titles are by name only, the official lineage papers that we add to with each new birth are practically forged.
“We all pretend that we live in castles made of stone, but in reality they are made of sand, one bluster of wind away from crumbling into the sea of the long-forgotten past. We talk of the lowly classes beneath us as though they are no better than dirt on the bottom of our shoes. But like the gods of old to the mortals of Earth, in truth we envy them, because at least they are free. Tell me, Zeno, who lives the better life? Us, sitting on our fake thrones alone, or them, who spend every second with their soul mates beside them, raising families and loving hard? We are fools because we see ourselves as better, when really we are all just miserable pawns in the great chess game that is our heritage.”
Zeno inhaled deeply. “Yet you and I are still betrothed. We still do as our parents wish.”
The same numbness I had felt all day wrapped over me like a protective blanket, staving off the grief of Achille’s absence. “And isn’t that just the most curious thing?” I said tiredly. “The most curious thing of all. That we know all this, yet do absolutely nothing about it?”
“It was never my intention to make you unhappy, Caresa,” Zeno said softly, and I knew he meant every word.
“I know,” I whispered back. “But it was never in your power to make me happy either. That honor belonged to someone else. It was written in the stars, way before we were born.”
Zeno bowed his head and turned to leave. As I turned my back too, I said, “He would make a better prince than we would ever make a king or queen. Achille is the kind of man you would want at the helm of your family’s legacy. He is the special one here, not you or me.”
I assumed Zeno had left when no answer immediately came. But then just as I took the siphon to bottle the first wine, I heard a whisper. “I know that, Duchessa. Believe me, I’m beginning to see that too.”
Zeno’s whispered words sailed on the wind and struck my heart. And in that moment I wished that the wind were stronger, because then it could drift to wherever Achille was and reach his ears. Because that was the kind of sentiment he should hear.
From his brother.
His onetime best friend.
Someone who should have loved him all his life.
And the brother that maybe now realized he wanted Achille to return . . . nearly as much as I did.