Page 16 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed
She pulled one of the quilts that had ended up in a heap on the floor around her like a cape, and pushed her way out through the door. Alpine air bit at her, in a harsh rush, and her breath deserted her. She could see it.
Her husband stood as if he could not feel the cold, but at least he was dressed. He stared out at the view of his kingdom, nestled there before them in the long, narrow valley that was the heart and soul of Fiammetta, and all Helene could think was, This is the life we get to live.
She opened her mouth to say it to him, too, but something in his stillness stopped her.
Gianluca did not turn around to greet her. And somehow, she felt that everywhere. Like a bit of foreboding.
Maybe more than a bit.
And when he did turn, it was as cold as the air around them and with far more bite.
Even before he spoke.
“I thought that the rules were clear from the start, Helene,” Gianluca said, and his voice made the cold winter morning so high up this mountain feel balmy in comparison. His black eyes seemed fathomless. There was no star in sight. “You were supposed to be a virgin.”
CHAPTER FOUR
HELENE WAS EVEN more beautiful with the morning light pouring all over her, making her eyes sparkle and her cheeks get pinker in the mountain air. She looked regal, standing there in nothing but a quilt that looked as if she might be wearing royal robes. She was picture-perfect.
She was beautiful, she was the Queen of Fiammetta, and she was a liar.
How had he missed all the signs? The way her mouth dropped open now, the way his mother’s always did when it was convenient. Her eyes going wide, as if she was in shock.
How had he married his mother when he had gone to such great lengths to make that impossible?
Helene opened her mouth, then closed it. Then she tried again. “What?”
Gianluca shook his head. “Is that the best you can come up with? I felt certain you were far more imaginative.”
He had woken in something as close to a panic as he had ever felt. He had bolted upright in his bed, rumpled and still warm. And he had stared down at the woman sleeping there beside him, his wife and queen, curled up like the very picture of innocence.
But the entire night that they had spent together suggested otherwise.
Had he dreamed that unpleasant truth? Or was it simply that he woke with that longing for her heavy in him all over again when that was not like him? He had always been as measured in his bed as anywhere else in his life. Not for Gianluca the tyrannies of emotional involvement with anyone, for hadn’t he witnessed, personally, where it all led?
He knew that misery all too well.
Images he knew were not nightmares, not quite, rolled through him. His mother claiming her favorite stage, loud sobs and the destruction of hapless objects while his father raged at her, in his insulting, belittling way—
All while Gianluca tried his best to disappear, right where he stood.
He had vowed he would never ransom off his reason to his emotions. He knew too well where it led.
Do yourself a favor, his father had sneered at him once, over a sea of shattered things that Elettra had hurled at him in one of the private salons. Find a queen who does not simply aspire to the crown, but knows how to wear it.
Gianluca thought he’d chosen so astutely. He had not rushed. He had done his research. And still this had happened.
Surely no innocent could have participated the way she had last night. It defied all reason.
When he had first awoken he had tried to find a reason. Any reason at all, but he couldn’t convince himself that the woman who had taken him so enthusiastically so many times was not only a technical virgin, but untouched.
At first he had felt a deep rage that he could not fully identify. It did not seem clean and righteous like the fury he had always felt toward his parents. It had taken him some time before he’d understood. This was betrayal.
And then the rage made sense, much more sense than that yearning that had sat on him so heavily.
It was, for a few scant moments, even a kind of relief.
That was what got him up and out of the bed. He’d paced around the bedchamber as the new day dawned, trying to think his way into a solution for what had happened here. Her betrayal.