She has no idea how much power lives inside her.
A young girl's life is about to change. By her father's arrangement, Gabriella is to marry a local merchant twice her age in the spring of 1693. Though she is afraid to leave her family, the fifteen...
A week after that lubricated dinner, I arrived home from shopping to find Maximo sitting in the front drawing-room. He smoked a cigar and read that morning's Times just as casually as he had eight years earlier on the day I left Washington.
"Gracious! This is a rare favor," I said with surprised laughter.
"I found I needed to see you."
He set his cigar into the ashtray and folded the paper, then stood up and offered me a warm kiss on the cheek.
"How lovely. Will you stay awhile?"
"That all depends on you."
"Whatever do you mean?" I asked, receiving the first sign of unease from his mind.
"I understand that you've moved on to more than a new address."
I felt my heart race in my throat. It offered Maximo immediate proof that his suspicion was correct. After all those years, my lies fell apart without a single word. I stared at his lovely green eyes to see them filled with something far more effective than accusations or disappointment. He felt injured, and his unmasked mind didn't spare me from the wrenching emotion.
Maximo reached for my hand to draw me beside him on the sofa. I felt stunned more than anything, and I looked away, attempting to gather my mind.
"Have we been together too long?" he asked with his steady tenor.
I couldn't form an answer and remained silent.
"I'd never felt separated from you while you were here, even though you were hundreds of miles away. Appraising it now, I see how intensely stupid I've been. It felt like you were only in the next room. I hadn't felt apart from you since that day we ran away from Como."
He stopped and stared off, and I saw the memories playing in his mind. First, how we flew through the country and alps, fighting through anything that stood in our way. Then how we floated in the pond at night, holding hands and staring at the brilliant stars. I saw the joy in old Baron Roussade's face when I said goodbye. I felt the century of security and joy while we cultivated the Roussade vineyards. With them were the endless drunken nights of laughter and passion.
"That is until this week," Maximo continued, "when Richards showed me a letter written to him by Henry. After reading it, I wondered how the things the boy described could be possible. And as this absurd idea he described took hold in my mind, I wondered how blind I might be. How could it be possible that you'd moved on and left me behind without so much as a word? Even now that I see the truth in your eyes, that the boy's concerns were justified, I still can't fathom it."
He sighed uneasily, and I felt the massive well of despair building within him.
"It makes no sense to me; the silent deception; the disrespect. And I'm left with my first question: have we been together too long? It's the only thing I can think of to explain my blindness."
I trembled as he spoke, and now I placed my hands over my eyes in utter shame. Every mindless thing I'd told myself before this moment—that our love had changed, that he wouldn't care, that it would be meaningless after so long—all of it all came crashing down as his dignified pain flooded through me. I sensed the utter betrayal he felt, and he still didn't know the full extent of it.
To my abject horror, he placed his arm around me and pulled me into him, nuzzling his head against mine to comfort me. It was too much, his selfless affection, and I fell to deep sobs as he cradled me like I was some hurt child instead of a treasonous adulteress.
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