He ground his teeth, wishing at least Pia was here, chronically shy and uncomfortable as she might be. His sister was off studying snails or some other mollusk in the Galápagos Islands, however. Cesar had taken Sorcha and the boys to visit Sorcha’s family in Ireland. There was nothing to soften this hard, flat evening for Poppy.
“My father, Javiero Montero y Salazar, Excelentísimo Senor Grandeza de España, and my mother, La Reina, the Duque and Duquesa of Castellón. You both remember Poppy.” He wasn’t trying to be facetious, but it came out that way.
His mother smiled faintly. “Welcome back.”
Poppy was so pale he reached for her hand. It was ice-cold.
She delicately removed it from his hold and gave Lily’s dress a small tug and drew the girl’s finger from her mouth, smiling with tender pride. “This is Lily.”
His parents both took a brief look at their granddaughter and nodded as if to say, Yes, that is a baby.
“A room has been prepared upstairs,” Rico’s mother said to the nanny, dismissing her and Lily in a blink.
The light in Poppy’s eyes dimmed. It struck Rico like a kick in the gut.
This is who they are, he wanted to tell her. There was no use wishing for anything different, but he could still hear the thread of hurt and rejection in her tone as she had told him about her parents never coming back for her.
He wanted to take her hand again, reassure her, but at his mother’s invitation, she lowered to perch on an antique wing chair, hands folded demurely in her lap.
Champagne was brought in; congratulations were offered. Poppy’s hand shook and he neatly slid a coaster under her glass before she set it on the end table.
His mother very tellingly said, “I imagine you’re still settling in. We’ll move into the dining room right away so the baby can have an early night.”
This evening would not be a drawn-out affair. The rush was a slight, but Rico didn’t want to subject Poppy to their company any longer than necessary so he didn’t take issue with it.
The first course arrived and Poppy tried offering a friendly smile at the butler. It was countered with an impassive look that made her cheerful expression fall away. She blinked a few times.
The staff would talk to her when his parents weren’t around, he wanted to tell her. This was how they were expected to act with guests and she shouldn’t take it as a rejection.
His father cleared his throat.
Poppy glanced at him with apprehension. Rico briefly held his own breath, but his father only asked Rico about the progress he’d made on some alloy research.
Annoyed, Rico was forced to turn his attention to answering him, which left his mother to make conversation with Poppy.
“I’m told you enjoy photography, Poppy. How did your interest come about?”
Poppy shot him a look, but he hadn’t provided that tidbit. This was also who his mother was. She would ferret out any item suitable for small talk that would avoid addressing more sensitive horrors like the fact Rico had messed with the maid, had an illegitimate child and brought them into the villa as “family.”
Poppy spoke with nervous brevity. “When I was ten, my grandfather asked me to help him clean the basement. We came across his father’s equipment. My great-grandfather was a freelance photographer for newspapers.”
“What type of newspapers?” his mother asked sharply.
“Mother.” Rico quit listening to his father and gave the women his full attention.
“The national ones,” Poppy replied warily, sensing disapproval. “Sports, mostly. The odd royal visit or other big event. I was intrigued so my grandfather closed in a space and showed me how the development process worked.”
“You should have shown me.” Rico was ridiculously pleased to hear she shared the same spark of curiosity that had drawn him into chemical engineering.
“I haven’t used it in years. We quickly realized the cost of chemicals and paper wasn’t sustainable. I switched to digital photography.”
“Metol or hydroquinone,” Rico’s father said in one of his stark interjections, as though he’d retrieved a file from the dusty basement of his own mind. “Sodium carbonate and sodium sulfite for proper pH and delay of oxidation. Thiosulfate to fix it. None are particularly expensive, but there’s no market for the premixed solutions. We got out of it years ago.”
“Only niche artists are using them, I imagine,” Poppy murmured.
“Speaking of art,” his mother said with an adept pivot from boring science. “I’m attending an opening in Paris next month. I imagine you’ll be decorating a house very soon. What sort of pieces might you be looking for?”
Poppy looked as though a bus was bearing down on her.