Cursed: Gowns & Crowns, Book 5

by Jennifer Chance

  Still, as he half listened to Caroline’s and Marguerite’s joyful reunion with their sister, Vince watched the trio make their way through the crowd. Despite the net of security, they stopped for one man, then another, and at each new contact Silas stood a little straighter. One man shook his hand, another clapped him on the back. No less than three old women hugged him. A young couple approached, and then another, and the king and queen stood at his side in silent affirmation of his status with the royal family, as he slowly, and then with greater speed, welcomed the distant relations of the Saleris, come to pay their respects.

  Vince didn’t know what would happen once the shock wore off for the man, but for the moment, he was away from Edeena, and that was all that mattered.

  “Vince.” Edeena turned to him now, and the slightly dazed sound to her voice matched his own reaction. It was almost impossible to believe that he’d proposed to the woman, she’d accepted, and what seemed like half the country had applauded the move. He wasn’t at all sure how she would feel about it in the morning.

  Then again, that wasn’t very fair of him. He knew how he’d feel, after all.

  But still . . .

  Edeena reached out to him when he didn’t respond, her expression now shaded with worry. “We’ll have to run the gauntlet at some point,” she said, motioning to the teeming throng surrounding the gazebo. “Are you ready?”

  Her voice was as hesitant as her gaze, but he quickly stepped forward, letting her pull him down the gazebo stairs. They made their way back through the crowd much the same way Silas had—with rounds of back clapping, hand shaking, hugs and smiles from people he’d never seen before but who now were addressing him as if they were old friends. Marguerite and Caro got into the act, too, meeting relations they didn’t know they even had—as well as some they clearly did—each reunion more boisterous than the last.

  By the time they re-entered the more formal internal ballroom, Vince knew that if he never saw another crowd as tightly-packed as this one, it would be too soon. Still, the interior of the Visitors Palace atrium was like an oasis of calm after the rowdier open-air party. He grinned as he watched Caro and Marguerite give one look to the more staid couples dancing in a formal waltz, then disappear back through the open doors.

  That left him alone with Edeena—his favorite place to be.

  Liberating two champagne glasses from a passing waiter, he offered a flute to Edeena. She took it, but there was no missing the sudden nerves that sparked in her expressive eyes.

  “Countess Saleri,” Vince said, touching his glass to hers. “I’d ask you what you were thinking, but I think I already know.”

  “Vince . . .” Edeena blew out a quick breath, pursed her lips. “I . . . all of that happened so quickly, I don’t know what to say.”

  He nodded. His heart had suddenly stopped beating correctly in his chest, but there was no better time than now for them to have this conversation. It would have to happen sooner or later. Better to know whether he should be working on contingency plans or, well . . . on moving plans.

  The unexpected weight of that thought must have shown on his face, because Edeena drained her champagne flute, then eyed him over the rim. “You don’t have to go through with this, Vince.”

  “Edeena.”

  “No, let me talk. I’ve been preparing for an arranged marriage of one type or another since I was ten years old and my father first told me about the curse. He’d told me how his generation didn’t fit the criteria to solve it, but mine did, and when the time came, that would be that.” She released a long sigh. “So while I could never have predicted the events of today, I . . . well, I was ready for them, in a way. You weren’t. All of that happened so quickly, there’s no way I will hold you to a mar—an engagement to me.”

  She smiled bravely, then went on, already solving the problem aloud. “We’ll wait a day, let everyone get back to their routines—maybe two days. Maybe a week. Then we’ll announce a long engagement. You’ll go back to South Carolina, and my sisters will as well, if they want, and I’ll . . . well I’ll . . .”

  Edeena’s manner was fraying along with her words and her smile started to wobble around the edges. As much as Vince wanted her to have her say, he found he couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Edeena,” he said again, setting his own flute on the table next to them, then taking her hands in his. “If you’re telling me that you don’t want to marry me after all, then of course I’ll respect that decision.” He waited a beat, watching her eyes flare in dismay. “Is that what you want?”

  “I don’t want you to feel trapped, Vince.”

  Her words were so soft it was a miracle he even heard them, but he squeezed her hands, drawing her closer.

  “You didn’t trap me tonight. You didn’t force me to say the things I said out there, to offer to spend the rest of my life with you, loving you, supporting you, helping you to achieve whatever dreams you set your heart on.”

  “Stop,” Edeena practically groaned, her eyes once more bright with tears. “You don’t have to talk like that anymore. No one is listening.”

  “No one is listening,” he agreed. “Apparently, you least of all.” He laughed as she blinked hard, a single tear trailing down her cheek. “If I need to pledge my love to you every morning and remind you again every night, Edeena, I will. If I have to wake up next to you with reassurances for the first year of our marriage, and kiss you to sleep every evening when we’re both white-haired and frail, I will. I’m aware we only met three weeks ago. I realize it’s sudden. But the Rallises, we have a long-standing tradition of knowing the woman who will change our lives the moment we meet her, and well, you changed my life the day you stepped off that plane. I fully expect you to keep changing my life every day forward.” He peered at her, trying to read the expression in her eyes. “Does that help?”

  “But you don’t even know me,” she whispered, her gaze searching his, as if she needed to somehow warn him away from her.

  “I don’t,” he agreed, making her blink with surprise. “Not all the details. I definitely don’t know all of your newfound cousins and distant relatives. I don’t know where you live, I don’t know your favorite book or vacation spot. But there are some things I do know already, Edeena. I know you love your sisters and would do anything for them. I know you feel responsible for everyone else’s happiness, but aren’t so good about your own. I know you miss your mother terribly, and it’s driven you to try to be everyone else’s caretaker.”

  He drew her yet closer. “And I know you make my heart pound every time you walk into the room, that your smile lights up every dark place in the world. I know that I would be lucky to call you mine, and that my family will spend the rest of their lives wondering what I did to deserve someone as beautiful and gracious as you.”

  “Your family!” she gave a little gasp. “Your mother has no idea.”

  Vince smiled, thinking of the last conversation he had with his mother—had it really been less than a week ago? “I think she has some idea,” he said wryly, “and trust me, when we do finally make our way back to Charleston, I’m pretty sure she’ll let everyone know she knew it the moment she met you.” He smiled, brushing away another tear as it softly tracked its way down Edeena’s face. “She’s got a knack for things like that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Isn’t it funny how I’m overlooking one of the most beautiful oceans in the world, and all I can think about is a totally different beach?”

  Edeena glanced over to Caroline, who was sitting under a large umbrella, staring out at the Aegean. They’d all gathered on one of the palace’s tiered decks, sipping mimosas and eating from great platters of fruit. Edeena hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the fruit of Garronia, how much she’d missed its sunlight and beautiful views. Strange that Caro was taking the exact opposite approach. “I’m not sure most of our neighbors here would even classify that little sandy inlet a proper beach.”

  “I know!” Ca
ro gestured to the rolling blue-green waters that were as much a part of the Garronois life as the mountains and the blue sky, and shook her head. “South Carolina is so much . . . softer, in a way. All those trees hanging with moss, the silence of the water, the nature preserve on the other side of the waterway from Heron’s Point. It’s like it has all these secrets to hide, and it won’t give any of them up easily.”

  “Well, I’m only interested in the secrets its people give up,” Marguerite commented from Edeena’s other side. She adjusted her position on the teak bench, tucking a pillow underneath one arm. “You would not believe how people act like you’re not there at all when you’re refilling their coffee cups. And the best time of day to get the best dirt is in the morning.”

  “The morning?” Edeena frowned. “I would have assumed at night, when there’s alcohol flowing.”

  “I totally thought that, too, before I started working at the Cypress. But I was wrong. It’s breakfast or brunch—sometimes lunch, but the secrets that usually get dropped there are work related. Totally boring.” She wrinkled her nose.

  Edeena considered her sister from under the brim of her wide hat. “You’ll go back, though? With Caro?”

  “Well, duh,” Marguerite swatted her calf. “I’ve already missed days of gossip. I may never catch up.”

  “Gossip about anyone in particular?”

  “Well, if you must know, yes,” Marguerite said, pitching her voice in the signature slow drawl of a South Carolina matriarch. “I do hope that Wyndham Masters is finally done sowin’ his wild oats. He is a disgrace to his mother.” She pitched her voice in another falsetto, as Caroline giggled. “You don’t say. Tell me he hasn’t done anything else to blacken the family name.” And back to the first. “Why, I can tell you no such thing, Penneh, because it simply would not be true.”

  “Stop!” Edeena cried, staring at her younger sister. If she didn’t know better, she would have thought her Prudence’s own daughter, her drawl was so exactly right. “They didn’t actually say those kind of things.”

  “Oh, honey, that was only the beginning,” Marguerite grinned. “I’ve decided that after Caro finalizes the house sale, I’m going to write a book set on an unnamed fictional island, and I’m going to title it something insane, like The Wicked Ways of Wyndham. And then I’ll send him an email about it from a cloaked account when it goes on sale.”

  “You’d better hope you’re hiding out on an island halfway around the world when you do,” Caro said, though her tone was more indulgent than serious. “Wyndham Masters’s family owns half of the Eastern Seaboard, according to the shopkeepers I’ve chatted with. And what they don’t own, they recently sold.”

  “Ooooh, I’m totally using that line.” Marguerite sat back in her chair and grinned out at the gorgeous late summer day. “But enough about me, Caro. When are you going to tell Edeena what you’ve been doing up late at night since we’ve returned to the fair shores of Garronia?”

  “Oh?” Edeena swiveled her head in time to see Caro’s eyes flash wide in dismay. “What is it, Caroline? Have you found your own Wyndham?”

  “What? No!” Caroline shook her head vigorously. “I simply thought, well, depending on how long it takes us to sell Heron’s Point and get Prudence resettled, maybe I could look into taking some classes. I’d be allowed to do that, right? Take classes as an overseas student?”

  Edeena considered it. All of them had attended college at the National University in Garronia, of course, but Edeena’s classes had been business, and business only, under Silas’s strict rule. It’d been worthwhile, since she now had her mother’s fortune to manage, but Edeena couldn’t get out of college quickly enough. Marguerite hadn’t even made the attempt to study anything outside her core courses, but Caro had legitimately enjoyed learning and had taken the widest variety of classes. If she wanted to continue her education with a course or two in South Carolina, why shouldn’t she? Perhaps she’d finally let herself relax and meet someone.

  That settled it. “Absolutely,” Edeena said. “Wherever you want to go, as long as they accept international students, say the word. We’ve got more than enough money in the trust, and masters courses would be an excellent way to use it. That goes for you, too,” she said, turning back to Marguerite. “Once you can tear yourself away from the adventures of Wyndham the Wicked, if college is appealing to you . . .”

  “Ugh, no thanks,” Marguerite lifted a hand. Still, her face had taken on a pensive aspect. “I’ll need to figure out a focus, though,” she mused. “With you and Vince checking off the marriage box and Caro going all Brainiac, I suppose I should have a game plan.”

  “You could become a spy,” offered Caroline from the shade of her umbrella. “I’m sure Garronia needs another secret agent.”

  Marguerite barked a laugh. “Excellent. And that’s probably easier than a life of crime.”

  “Better accommodations for sure,” Edeena said drily, but she studied her sister closely. She knew Marguerite better than to encourage her too much toward a particular path—her sister would go the other way simply out of contrariness. But she’d continue to watch both of them carefully over the next few weeks while she plowed her way through the Saleri family records. Apparently, if her marriage to Vince was going to stick, she was the new head of household for the Saleris. Silas had stepped down to focus entirely on his own new family, and from the sound of their lawyers and accountants, he’d paid no attention to their various holdings since he’d taken on his new bride.

  She smiled, shaking her head. A month ago she would have scoffed that anything could draw her attention away from her obligations so completely. Now . . .

  As if in answer to her thoughts, a door opened behind her, and a rich, rolling South Carolina drawl flowed out to surround them all with warm amusement.

  “Now, how did I know that this would be where I’d find you fine ladies,” the soon-to-be Count Vincent Rallis Saleri asked.

  Dragging Edeena away from her sisters was easier than Vince feared it would be, and for that, he was grateful. Because if he had to spend another minute facing the gauntlet of family advisors, lawyers, concierges and—God forbid—tailors by himself, he was seriously going to lose it.

  “What are you doing?” Edeena giggled as he hustled her back down the long corridor to the suite of rooms that had been given over to the Saleris in the wake of the unprecedented success of the engagement ball. Apparently, the Saleri mansion was being staked out by the press, waiting for the Countess and her Count-in-waiting to nest there, and wiser minds had advised that they all remain safely locked away in the royal castle until some other news story had taken hold.

  Now, Vince pushed Edeena into the conference room where he’d been closeted away with a half-dozen Saleri functionaries for most of the morning. He’d finally sent them away for an early lunch—never mind that it was barely past eleven—but they’d taken pity on him and told him they’d be back after three. By three, he and Edeena surely could make some sense of the mounds of paperwork in front of him. Even though much of it had been translated into English, it was still far too much for him to take in at once.

  “Did you know you have family holdings in thirty different countries?” he said to her as she looked from the stacks to him. “Thirty!”

  She smiled. “Yes, Vince, I’m aware of that, though I’ve inherited management responsibilities only. Silas remains the signatory on most of those parcels.”

  “Of course,” he grimaced. He wasn’t worried about the real estate holdings, though they had given him pause. But he wanted to work up to what he was worried about slowly. Edeena had already been through a lot, and he didn’t want her to worry. About anything.

  Especially something so strange as what he’d discovered in the real estate account logs of Heron’s Point.

  “And the charitable foundation. You know your father hasn’t made one appearance at any of those events since you fled the country.”

  “We didn’t flee the count
ry,” Edeena protested, but Vince raised a hand.

  “You absolutely fled the country, Countess Saleri, for which I’ll forever be grateful.” Her face softened with the flattery, and his heart gave another tug. Maybe he could put off telling her the bad news for another few minutes, anyway.

  He stepped closer, even as Edeena cast a glance down to the nearest ledger book, a smile playing over her face as she drew her fingers along its top. “I can’t believe there’s so much history we didn’t even know about,” she said. “With the curse so entrenched in Silas’s mind, he refused to look at these old books. He didn’t have any idea how far the family had spread, or where our distant cousins had landed when they’d stopped including the Saleri name in their family trees.” She shook her head. “I didn’t either.”

  “But the disaffected Saleris themselves did, even if they didn’t claim the name any longer,” Vince said. He’d moved closer to her, and when she looked up, he was only a step away. Her eyes, always so beautiful, now warmed in genuine affection as she took him in. He could spend the rest of his life staring into those eyes, he knew, and never grow tired of that soft look.

  “They did,” she said. “They kept the rolls and marked the books, and they knew the curse as well as anyone—better, really. It was the queen’s dressmaker who reminded her that the Saleri curse wasn’t capable of being overturned merely by princes, and the queen, of course, told Silas, worried about him marrying me off indiscriminately.”

  “And Silas, in turn, called you home, where we seemed to find more Saleris around every corner, even though we had no idea who they were.”

  “Exactly,” she laughed. “They knew me, the curse, and your potential place in it . . . and we didn’t have a clue.”

  “Yeah . . . about that clue,” Vince began, and Edeena’s head tilted as his arms went around her. Somehow, holding her so close made what he had to say a tiny bit easier.

  “What is it?” she asked, but her smile remained on her face, the worry about her family somehow banished to a manageable level now, no matter what life threw at them.