'But still, my father's men came for me one day. Maggie . . . I owe her more than words can ever express; Maggie spotted them, told me to get away, and went to deal with them herself.
'And you know the rest. I met Ricardo's accomplice on the trip across the Atlantic, took a passenger-ferry to the Bahamas, and Ricardo brought me here. So now you know pretty much all there is to know about the misadventures of Kara nee Savalas.' She sighed. 'I wish my adventures were over, but it seems that I still have one or two to go.'
'Well, now you have a champion to see you through them,' Roman said with a smile in his voice. 'At the least, you have no more need to run.'
'True,' Kara murmured sleepily, 'but oh, the things I've seen along the way.'
After the first weeks, Kara was feeling a bit frayed around the edges by the changes to her life and the uncomfortable state of vigilance that surrounded her. A day came when she was feeling listless and miserable, and as if in answer to her need, the sight of a gaily coloured open carriage broke her mood like a bubble. Anana was here with her child and husband and his parents, Pietro and Theresa.
Sensing Kara's need for a little privacy, Anana decided the two of them and little Michel should have an afternoon picnic on Kara's favourite knoll in the meadow that overlooked the lake.
'So, you've discovered that marriage is not the end of the story, but that it is only a minor footnote,' Anana said as the two young women arranged themselves on the blanket they'd spread. The light breeze still held some of the cool freshness of morning, and made ripples on the lake surface and teased their hair; the grass about them moved in waves, and the wind's hissing in the trees sounded very much like surf upon a beach, imbuing everything will a timeless, ephemeral quality.
'I'd never given it any thought, one way or another,' Kara told her. 'And thinking ahead was always directed towards planning my next escape. There was never any room left over for thinking about having a normal life.'
'And now you are thrust into living a normal life,' Anana said, smiling to herself as Kara watched Michel, her features a mixture of longing and curiosity. 'And an empire lays at your feet.'
'I don't want to think about that quite yet,' Kara muttered distractedly. 'If I'd had any real idea, I don't think that I would have married Roman. This place alone . . . the farmlands, the lake and the wilderness around it . . . the mill and the Casa . . . are all that I can manage to comprehend for the moment. But the Castellan empire . . . it is alien to me, and quite overwhelming.'