Page 22 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

Including, she discovered, the Queen’s rooms.

It really did pay to nose about, trying every door. Including the one that she knew led into that shared hallway between her rooms and Gianluca’s rooms, which she was somehow unsurprised to find locked.

Against her.

For a moment she stood there, staring at the door handle, while that yawning thing inside her seemed to swallow her whole—but no.

It wasn’t going to be a locked door that was the end of her. She refused.

At first Helene thought that perhaps this meant he’d locked her in, effectively putting her under palace arrest, but soon after she found the door that opened up into the hallway from the Queen’s little kitchen and it opened easily enough.

By this point, happily, she was no longer dressed in a quilt pulled from a bed or a nightgown that she never wanted to lay eyes on again. One of the things her aides had showed her in her daze this morning was her own vast wardrobe. Room after room of it. All of her own clothes, imported from her father’s house, and then entire sets of pieces she’d never seen before.

Gifts for you, Your Majesty, her aide had said with shining eyes.

From the King, who loves me so much? Helene had asked.

And had only smiled serenely when the woman looked at her curiously, suggesting that Helene’s tone had been a touch too sharp.

In any case, she been able to ignore any gifts and dress herself instead in her favorite pair of jeans, the ballet flats that never failed to make her feel both comfortable and elegant at once, and an extremely cozy sweater that held her like the hug she desperately needed.

If there was a dress code for royal travesties, someone was going to have to tell her so.

Helene was out the door and out wandering the halls of the greater palace complex before she realized how strange it felt to be walking around this place dressed the way she had dressed any number of days at the Institut, or in her father’s house, back when she had felt that achieving a feeling of not actively hating her life was the best Herbert Archibald’s daughter ever could feel.

Then she had met Gianluca.

She had imagined a whole other universe of potential feelings all summer long.

And she had married a king, become a queen, and been accused of being a deceitful whore all in the course of the last twenty-four hours.

Yet here she was. Hair twisted back out of her way, her favorite clothes on, and all on her own, again.

Helene told herself, repeatedly, that this should feel like a comfort.

All the comforts of home, in fact.

The other good news about having married the King was that she been given access to her mobile phone again. She suspected it was monitored, but that was what was so funny about all of this. In the sense of not being funny at all. She didn’t really care if Gianluca read every text she’d ever sent anyone. What was he going to find?

She really was exactly as innocent she claimed to be.

And she really did watch that many videos of cats doing cattish things.

Helene texted Faith as she walked, taking a picture of herself in front of an instantly recognizable painting as punctuation.

Her cousin’s reply was immediate.

I beg your pardon, Your Majesty. Dutch Masters and kings? The world really is your oyster.

And for the first time in her life, Helene did not text Faith a full recounting of the night before. She did not tell her cousin what she was actually thinking or feeling. In fact, as she stood there staring down at the screen of her mobile, she felt the strangest feeling creep over her, twining with that knot of vulnerability that seemed to pulse deep within.

It was the headmistress in her head once again. Remember, ladies, she had said in that crisp manner of hers. The ideal wife does not share her marital troubles with all and sundry. She is never a source for unscrupulous journalists and she does not take even her closest friends into her confidence on matters pertaining to the private things that go on between men and women, no matter her station. Why?

Because she has already been bought and sold once already? one of Helene’s more bitter classmates, who was not expecting happy ever anything, had replied.

Madame had only smiled in that flinty manner she did so well. Perhaps, Georgianna. But also because part of her power lies in how she protects her marriage. Men, you see, are so good at making declarations about what it is they want, what it is they demand. They bluster, they bloviate, and in many ways, we must accommodate them. But it is the woman who is the bellwether, like it or not. How she behaves sets the stage for how the world will treat not only her, but the marriage that entirely too many will believe is within her purview to change as she wishes.

Everyone in Helene’s year had dissected that particular nugget and called it utter crap.