Chapter 12
Summer had come with its rich palette of colours in the flowerbeds and rose gardens. As I came out of the royal chapel, dressed in a white gown studded with pearls, my eyes were half-closed against the June sunshine. I looked down at the ring on my finger and was struck by an awareness of my gesture. Was I really married? The term “forever” was something I still couldn't comprehend. Nor could I understand how I had come to agree to bind myself for ever to a man I had never even seen.
Ferdinando Moncada, Fabrizio's younger brother, bowed gallantly. “Signora, the honour of acting as your escort is eclipsed only by the fact that I am marrying you by proxy.”
He was around thirty with dark hair, elegantly dressed in black, his doublet edged with a diagonal design in silver, his ho
