Page 21 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed
They weren’t the same thing at all.
That yawning thing inside her seemed to get bigger and heavier, and she really was afraid that if she gave in to it, it would never stop. So she took a moment and tied her hair back from her face, knotting it on the back of her head. She took a few moments to search around for the nightgown she’d worn so briefly last night.
She made herself breathe. In. Out. Again.
And she had only just settled herself in one of the chairs by the fire, no longer naked and marginally calmer, when the doors were flung open and a set of palace aides streamed in.
Her aides, Helene realized belatedly. The same group of women who had dressed her last night, though that felt like a lifetime ago now. They came in and swept her out of the King’s bedchamber, chattering happily.
“The day is fine and bright, if cold,” one said in French. “Surely this must be in celebration of our new Queen!”
“What a romantic wedding!” cried another in Italian. “The King and the Queen were all that is elegant and beautiful—all the papers are swooning!”
“It has even been picked up all the way in America,” said another in German. “They had to show the location of Fiammetta on a map, naturally, but this does not take away from the fact your special day received international notice, Your Majesty.”
Helene was surprised to find this all a comfort, as she was not called upon to respond in any way. They marched her off the way she’d come, down that long hall that snaked along an interior wall of this part of the palace for the sole purpose of letting the King and Queen come and go from each other’s apartments as they chose. Or did not choose.
It was possible, Helene thought, that she might stick a chair in front of her side of the door forevermore.
Though no matter how entertaining it was to think such a thing, she knew she wouldn’t.
“There’s a bath drawn and waiting, Your Majesty,” one of the women said. “We’ve taken the liberty of sprinkling in some soothing herbs. A lovely soak might be just the thing.”
“That sounds perfect,” Helene murmured.
And it was indeed a lovely soak in an epic sort of tub could have held a family or two, placed advantageously in a set of windows that looked out across the whole of the Fiammettan mountain valley. A place she’d expected to call home. And now...
Somehow, home wasn’t the word that came to mind.
When she was pickled straight through she got out of the bath, expecting the staff to descend upon her once more. She imagined all kinds of things they could do now. Perhaps march her off somewhere, having packed up all her things, so she could be divorced? Or arrested? Or whatever it was Gianluca thought was going to happen now that he’d decided she was a liar and a travesty.
But instead they led her into one of the smaller rooms, bright with the winter sun, where she ate a solitary breakfast. And rather hated herself for it, all things considered. Because surely, after what happened between her and Gianluca, she should have had no appetite whatsoever. She should have been wan and pale, better suited to a fainting couch than the hearty meal—“A great favorite of the field hands, Your Majesty,” one of the aides told her when she asked for more coffee and a second helping of sausages—that she tucked into as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.
Though she hadn’t, really. There had been too many dress fittings and too much nervous fussing on the part of her father and too many dire warnings about appearing in photos and appearing on television and how Helene was going to have to get used to thinking about the end result on film, not what she might see in a mirror. That had rather dulled her appetite.
Then, of course, there’d been a great deal of physical activity last night, and none of it—despite what Gianluca seemed to think—anything she was used to at all. That would make anyone hungry, she thought.
“And if I’m soon to be kicked out of the Kingdom, I might as well build up my strength,” she told herself. Particularly if it involved going over those towering mountains into Italy.
But she couldn’t eat forever. And by the time the afternoon rolled around, she had napped and showered again and had a huge lunch, and found herself...bored silly.
Something that had never occurred to her before, in all her life, because there had always been an inescapable thing bearing down on her. Her mother’s sickness and death. Her father’s ambitions. Her inevitable graduation from school that would mean it was time for her to actually do the things Herbert had talked about all her life.
But now she’d done all those things. She’d actually thought yesterday that she’d won some kind of lottery. She’d been so proud that she’d managed to make all the things she’d dreaded, but had been resolved to do anyway, work for her.
“You know what pride goes before,” she muttered to herself after her sixteenth turn through the Queen’s apartments.
They were expansive and luxurious. She had rooms for everything and anything. Her own gym, her own media room, a selection of salons and lounges, studies, an office, a small kitchen should she wish to have things on hand rather than having to ring down to the palace kitchens, her own library, two separate art galleries, a balcony that it was too cold to investigate fully. It was far nicer than any other place she’d ever stayed.
But she was antsy and filled with dread, which meant she couldn’t concentrate on anything. And she didn’t want to sit still—that way could only lead her to that pit of vulnerability and something too much like despair deep within.
Better to call it boredom and do something about it.
Happily, Helene knew a thing or two about the Fiammettan palace that was now her new home, because she’d been taken on a great many official tours of the place. First when she’d visited here after she and Gianluca were engaged, and then, as the wedding drew closer, when she’d lived in one of the royal residences on the palace grounds and her tutors had used the palace’s many riches as a part of their lessons.
That meant that she knew that in addition to the grand library that was sometimes open to the public and better resembled a ballroom than a place of quiet study, there were any number of smaller libraries placed here and there in the palace’s many wings. As if various royals in the past had felt it was beneath them to walk to the larger, more centralized library and so had created their own.
Fiammettans, Helene had discovered, liked to have more than one of everything. More than one official language. More than one city that called itself the capital of the Kingdom, depending on the season. Just like there was more than one door that led out of every room in every official building in the Kingdom.