Was it even his house? Honestly, Mateo Vincente wasn’t entirely certain. He didn’t want to appear to be a half-wit for not knowing, but he’d not yet gone through all the properties and holdings of the late Viscount Abbott. There was quite a lot to learn about the estate that had belonged to his English grandfather—it was a vast network of investments and partial ownerships. And he was utterly baffled with the strange business about the purchase of some sheep that seemed mired in complete confusion between the viscount’s estate and the shepherd.
Mateo had been in England a little more than a fortnight, and knew only two things with certainty: one, that this very large house was in the middle of London, situated near the excellent Hyde Park, and boasting a fine, but diminutive, garden, where he was just now, trying to escape the noise in his house.
And two, he wished every day he was home in the Duchy of Santiava, at Castillo Estrella, the mountain castle where he’d lived since he’d become duke six years ago.
The newspapers called him ermitaño. A hermit. Some called him mad. One gentleman, a prolific contributor to the Santiavan presses, said he was a simpleton, and his mother kept him hidden away so that she could rule.
None of those things were true. But it was true he preferred his own company to that of the world.
England felt foreign to him. His mother was English, but England itself had always seemed far away and inconsequential to the quiet life he led in Santiava. His grandfather had died without a male heir, and his estate and title had passed to Mateo through his mother. Which meant this house, presumably, and the rest of the estate, presumably, and anything else, presumably, in the ledger provided by the very helpful and rotund Mr. Callum belonged to him now.
Viscount Abbott. A very English name and title for a man who was not remotely English.
His mother, Elizabeth Abbott Vincente, la duquesa viuda de Santiava, had married his father at the age of seventeen, had borne him at the age of eighteen, his brother, Roberto, and sister, Sofia, shortly thereafter, and had lived most of her married life in Santiava. While she’d periodically returned to England to look after her parents, she’d brought her children only on occasion. Mateo remembered when he was twelve or so, his grandfather had been honored by Queen Victoria with the Order of the Garter. What he remembered about that visit was not the august ceremony, but the terrible row his mother had had with her father, in English, at a pace so frightening that he could hardly follow. The duchess and her children had left England shortly thereafter.
He’d seen his grandfather only once after that.
His mother, as far as he knew, had never mended her relationship with her father. Like mother, like son. Mateo’s relationship with his father had been fraught with misunderstandings and resentments, too. He imagined he knew a bit how his mother felt now that her father was gone. Not that she cared to speak of it. “The past is dead and buried, Teo,” she would say.
He wished he felt the same. His father had died six years ago, but unfortunately, that past still lived on in him.
His mother wasn’t much help to him. At forty-six years, her memory of the Abbott estate was foggy. But even if she’d remembered every last detail since they’d arrived in England, she’d been too occupied with entertaining and being entertained to be of any help to him. Oh, she popped into the study now and again to chastise him for not eating properly (he did) or having refused an invitation (a few). Mostly, she spent her time receiving what seemed like cartloads of ladies in colorful gowns and expensive hats and left all the business of settling her late father’s estate to him.
Even now, he could hear voices drifting out of the windows of her sitting room, reaching him in the garden. Gay, twittering voices. Dios ayúdame.
The small garden was exemplary. The path from the house was lined with dozens of rose bushes. The shrubbery that blocked the rest of London from this tiny patch of paradise had been meticulously shaped. And if one were to walk through an arch cut into the shrubbery, one would find a smaller, private garden, and a bench near a small fountain where one might read or close his eyes for a few moments.
Or enjoy a few pastries. He had a plate with him today.
He’d baked them himself. Another small part of his past that lived on in him. His father had insisted that no self-respecting duke or English viscount would ever bake pastries. It was ironic that Mateo’s interest in baking was his father’s doing—he had to give the old man credit for having left him and his siblings alone so much in their youth.
More practically, Mateo had learned how to bake from Rosa—more formally known as Señora de Leon—who had been with Mateo’s family all his life. When his parents flitted off to Madrid or Seville or Paris, Rosa would gather Mateo and his siblings like chicks to her. She would read them stories of Santiavan knights and ladies, of pirates and heroic sea captains. She would encourage them to imagine a life beyond the palace or castle walls.
Mateo’s imagination in those years had run wild. He’d fished in the mountain streams and hunted in the forests. He and his brother had built a fort deep in the woods, fashioned like the infamous Fuerta del Monte Parson, the fort atop a great ocean cliff where the small Santiavan army had held the Weslorian navy during the War of Independence.
Mateo liked military history and had collected books about it over the years. His father had believed this hobby to be a waste of time, too. “The study might have had utility in an earlier era, but it’s useless now,” he would say. “We’ve been free for more than fifty years. Study trade, study politics. Anything but old war tales.”
On the contrary, Mateo thought his study had more utility now than ever—there was something to be learned from the history of great battles waged and won, and those lost. For a small duchy like Santiava there had been a certain amount of cunning required to protect against threats from much larger countries like Spain, France, and Wesloria. Who knew when it might come in handy again?
His father felt equally annoyed with Mateo’s interest in astronomy. When an uncle had given Mateo the gift of a telescope when he was nine years old, Mateo was so enthralled that he’d made his own charts of the sky and pinned them to the wall.
“Head in the clouds,” his father would say dismissively.
The Santiavan newspapers could sense a father’s disappointment in his heir, and that had added to the pressure to be perfect. They wrote about Mateo’s appearance—as a boy, he’d been thin. They said he looked weak. On those occasions he’d been forced to make public remarks, he was so fearful of his father’s disapproval that he would inevitably stumble over his words, and the newspapers wondered if he was a simpleton. So Mateo had learned to say as little as possible in public.
He’d spent a childhood seeking a way to be right in his father’s eyes and never finding it. Rosa was the only adult in his life who had always seemed to accept him as he was.
He and Rosa were currently perfecting the art of crafting miguelitos, which required the layering of a dozen thin sheets of unleavened dough to form delicate pillows into which chocolate could be stuffed. Delicioso. Naturally, Mateo had insisted that Rosa accompany the entourage to England. He didn’t intend to give up his hobby just because he was an English viscount now.