Page 146 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

Though in fairness, I would do it too, if I could.

But my business is back in New York, and I haven’t yet worked out how to tell Tess about my change in circumstance, so no hiding in convenient jobs for me.

“There are matters I must attend to,” he tells me each morning with what seems like stiff and strange courtesy to me.

Because every night, he loses himself in my arms. Every night, we find new ways to tear each other apart.

Every night I am more in love. Every night it’s as if there is less and less that separates us. As if these different bodies we wear are entirely beside the point.

I am beginning to loathe the dawn, like some kind of emotional vampire.

Because no matter how early I wake, by the time I make it to the breakfast table, Taio has retreated once more behind his aristocratic veneer. Perfect suit. Perfectly shaved and showered. A hint of that spicy scent of his to haunt me as he sits and reads the newspaper with his bit of toast and olive oil, and his coffee black.

I eat churros and chocolate and try not togazeat him too much. I want to confront him. I want to parse what his mother said and interrogate the difference in his nighttime and daytime behavior. I want to crawl in his lap and give him something to think about besides the dry financial news.

But I have never been a wife before. Much less amarchioness.

Maybe thesestaidandproperdaytimes are par for the course. Maybe that’s why this house has separate bedrooms for the Marquess and his wife.

Maybethese rich people aren’t allowed to act as if they like getting naked with each other and this is one more obvious rule I can’t figure out, coming from my lowly beginnings the way I do.

I decide to try something completely new to me as a person.

I becomeaccommodating.

“Where are you again?” Tess asks me over the phone after one such breakfast. I’ve had hours to brood about it after Taio took himself off to his offices with a stern look and the ever-so-slightly chidingI will see you,cosita. Later. In case I am tempted to get anyideas.“I’ve never known you to stay away from New York for so long.”

“I know,” I say. I look around these new, separate rooms they moved me to, adjacent to Taio’s. I might end up every night in his bed, but we must maintain the pretense that sleeping in my own bedcouldoccur at any time. “Attending that ball really upped our profile.”

“Oh, it did. We’re getting more calls than we can handle.”

But she laughs, because she loves a challenge, which is only one of the reasons I love her.

And I discover that I am something like ashamed to tell her the truth. Not the whole truth—since that would involve both Taio and myweddingand the fact that the man she thinks is our boss not only isnot,but we have no boss either because I made him up—but the fact that I’m on something of a holiday.

Because I never take a break. I haven’t had a vacation in ten years.

It’s always been a point of pride. If I tell Tess I’m relaxing, she’ll assume that’s a cry for help and alert the local authorities.

I can’t tell her that. I can’t. “If you need to hire support staff, the budget can support that,” I say instead.

“Finally,”Tess breathes. “I’ve always wanted my very own minions.”

The truth is, I hardly know what to do with myself. I spend the first few days as Taio’s wife wafting about like a lady of leisure. A realmarchioness,I tell myself.

I take walks through olive groves and vineyards. I try to read books in languages I only wish I spoke. I flip through European magazines. I swim in the heated pools, curl up in the cozy armchairs in a variety of salons, and gaze out the window.

By the third day, I am deeply bored.

By the seventh, I am considering building a tree fort in the olive groves with the various bits of wood I’ve found littered about the place, but I suspect that this is the sort of lowbrow, non-aristocratic urge that his mother is concerned about.

I wander around the absurdly gigantic house until I find my husband. He is tucked away in what I assume is his office suite—this, too, looks like it could double as a throne room with no file cabinets or copiers in sight—looking through stacks of documents.

He glances up when I enter and once again I watch his face run the gamut of expressions. First, and I don’t think I flatter myself, I see pure delight. Then something more likeconsternation.

And now this, the stern gaze he reserves for me.

“I need something to do,” I announce without preamble. “I’m not used to not working. I’m becoming nonfunctional.”

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