Page 10 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

His grandparents had gotten to know each other when they were already married, and really only once they had a baby on the way. If then. Gianluca smiled at the thought, because he could hear the way his grandmother would have said the words herself. She had never been one for too much mawkish intimacy, as she would have called it. She had famously preferred distance and her own company. And given that she and his grandfather had ruled the nation through turmoil aplenty for some fifty years, none of it emanating from their marriage, how could Gianluca not look to them as his guides?

But as he gazed around the ballroom, pleased that he had crossed this particular thorny issue off of his list, his eyes caught on the one person at the party who seemed to have no issue whatsoever scowling.

Directly at him, the King of Fiammetta, when no one else would dare.

“Is your cousin well?” he asked his bride.

This time, her laugh was audible. “Faith is perfectly well. Just rather...protective.”

“Do you require protection?” he asked, and there was something, then, in the space between them. He could not say he knew what it was. He could not say he liked it.

It had something to do with her small, elegant hand in his, skin to skin. It was the memory of standing at the altar and peeling back her veil, then pressing his mouth to hers for the very first time.

That moment poked at him, and Gianluca didn’t like that, either. He had congratulated himself at length on not touching her at all in the lead-up to their wedding. It was a long road between untouched and no longer a virgin, of course, but he had not taken so much as a step along it.

He had been certain that he had made that choice simply because it was the right one. He had felt morally superior.

Then he had kissed her, standing at the front of the cathedral for all to see, and he had the lowering thought that perhaps the real truth was that he hadn’t dared kiss her in private.

Because she was far too potent, and kissing her packed a hard punch.

Gianluca had the most astonishing thought then, and again now. He actually wondered if he’d kept himself from touching her all this time because he knew that once he started, he wouldn’t stop.

As if he was a slave to his own desires the way his parents had been.

It was insupportable.

“It’s more that my cousin intends to marry for different reasons,” Helene was saying, with charming diplomacy. “She has a different take on the enterprise, that’s all, and is not certain that she can fully support how we are going about it.”

“The history of the world is filled with examples of marriages like ours,” he told her, perhaps more repressively that he might have done had he not been questioning himself in real time. “It is not until recently that such arrangements were viewed with suspicion instead of acceptance.”

“But were they happy?” Helene smiled when his gaze came to hers, perhaps too sharply. “I am, naturally, transported with nothing short of joy, Your Majesty. Gianluca,” she amended as his brows drew together. “It is my cousin who worries that if a couple does not start in a state of tested and true happiness that they can only find themselves miserable.”

“Your cousin sounds silly,” he replied matter-of-factly. “For even a few moments of research instead of reckless feelings would make it clear to her that when it comes to stability, arranged marriages are more successful. Precisely because the union is not based on such odd notions as happiness or romantic attachment. And our union, Helene, must last. It must stand all tests, of time and trial alike.”

He lowered his voice as he said that, lest anyone overhear and imagine there was already trouble, but Helene only nodded.

“I remember what you told me in Provence. No scandals. No separations. One smooth, unified front at all times, forever.” She held his gaze as she said that. “I agreed to those terms.”

She had. They had been walking in a field of gold and purple and the sun had seemed to seal the bargain they were making, so solemnly, out where they were nothing but a woman and a man. He could not have said why the way her cousin looked at him got under his skin.

He could not recall ever being quite so prickly before. He could not say he cared for it.

As other couples took to the floor when the music changed, and he was once again called upon to perform for his public, Gianluca found himself questioning that moment over and over.

As if it mattered far more than it should.

And as if he really ought to have been paying closer attention to why it felt that way—

But finally, after an eternity of duty, it was time for him to take hold of his bride and leave the reception behind.

Like everything else about this very public wedding, there were stages to the departure. Everything had to be properly photographed, recorded, and disseminated to the papers, the news shows, and all the rest of the industries that fed like parasites off of his position. A ruler should not be a celebrity, to Gianluca’s mind, but that was a battle that had been lost long ago.

But soon enough, the necessary steps had all been taken and he and Helene waved for the last time from the balcony of the palace.

And then, at long last, retreated within.

Though they were not alone.