Page 148 of Peasants and Kings
“Hmmm?” I looked at her when she trailed off.
“Do you think this was the ring he’d have given me if I’d been the one to marry him?”
“Probably,” I admitted.
I thought of the diamond jewelry Hadrian had bequeathed me. It was still resting on the nightstand in the guest room.
“I wonder if his first wife wore the same ring,” Gisella said, dropping my hand and gazing at the fountain.
“First wife?” I asked quietly. “He’s been married before?”
She nodded, her eyes sad. “He married her soon after your mother left. She died only a few years into their marriage.”
“Any children?”
“No.”
“How did she die?” I asked, a knot of horror forming just below my breastbone.
“In a car accident. I don’t know much about it. It was kept quiet…”
Kept quiet.
“What’s he like?” Gisella asked.
“Who? Raphael?”
“Not him. Hadrian.”
My entire body softened when I thought of him. “What’s he like,” I repeated. “He’s indescribable.”
“Try,” she said in amusement.
I squeezed her hand, knowing she was trying to distract me from the horrors of my situation.
“He’s,” I began, “big.”
“Big?” She raised her eyebrows.
“Tall and muscular,” I said. “Beautiful.”
Ruthless.
I closed my eyes so I could picture him. The smile that came to his lips when I surprised him with my sassy attitude. The breadth of his shoulders when he slid into me. The scars marring his body. The rough, callused hands that touched me with reverence and passion. The strawberry blond hair of his warrior ancestors. The blue-gray eyes that held so much pain.
The wind changed and I could almost smell the scent of rain blowing in from the ocean, and it reminded me of his skin in the early Shetland morning.
But when I opened my eyes, all I saw was the Rape of Proserpina, carved in a fountain that rested on my family’s land.
Talking about Hadrian would only remind me that he hadn’t come for me.
“What happens to you, Gisella?” I asked, changing the subject.
“What do you mean?”
“Now that you’re no longer embroiled with Raphael, do you have a choice? Can you marry someone you love?”
Her eyes grew despondent. “I’m a Moretti. I’m not given the luxury of marrying for love.”
