Page 28 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

She’d trusted that they would, no matter how they appeared.

But now...was this really what her life was going to be like? This...fakeness in public followed by so much darkness in private? Part of her wanted to get up immediately, snatch up her mobile, and beg Faith to come break her out of here after all.

She considered it logically, and for a long time. It would never work, for a number of reasons. First of all, her cousin was loyal and true, but she was no match for the royal guard. And even if she somehow managed to get into the palace, there was no way she was going to abscond with the Queen. Besides, even if Helene attempted to trick her way out of this, she doubted Gianluca was going to let her traipse off on some kind of holiday anytime soon.

Did queens even take holidays?

And in any case, it wouldn’t solve anything. Even if she did run away. Helene and Faith could ski on their bottoms all the way into Italy and set themselves up in a lovely pensione, and it wouldn’t make her any less the new Queen of Fiammetta. It wouldn’t solve her marriage. It wouldn’t do anything but give Gianluca more proof, somehow, that she was this person he thought she was. A liar who would also run away from him, thereby causing an even bigger scandal.

Still, she stayed where she was for a long while, her forehead against the glass and her breath a little more ragged that she wanted to admit even to herself. And slowly, that great tide of tears and despair seemed to ebb away.

Helene wrapped herself tighter in her cozy throw and angled herself away from the window, so that the winter cold was no longer pressing into her skin. She pressed her fingers to her eyes, blew out a breath, and then straightened her shoulders.

The truth was, she had spent the entirety of her life learning how to manage a man who never acted as if he cared for her at all. Herbert had been a marvelous training ground in that regard. She had watched her mother do it, then she had done it. And while she couldn’t claim that she had actually pleased the man, because he couldn’t be pleased at all and certainly not by her, the situation she found herself in here in Fiammetta was nothing new.

The specifics might be different, and more personal, but it was the same old game.

If she looked at it that way, the only problem she was currently having was that the cold marriage she’d imagined she would escape turned out to be the one she was in, after all.

And the real trouble was that they’d had that wedding night. So now she knew. She knew.

Helene was certain that she could handle the rest of it. The tragedy was that her body had other ideas.

Even now, sobbing her eyes out and plotting foolish escapes from captivity, she could feel that insistent heat between her legs. That slickness that whispered dangerous things to her. That she should get up and try the door to the King’s bedchamber. And upon discovering it locked, as she thought she would, why not head out into the hall and find a different way in? Or better yet, go outside, and see if she could make it along the wintry balcony that separated his room from hers?

She’d always thought that the best-case scenario would involve civility by day and a friendly, businesslike approach at night. She’d hoped that she wouldn’t find whatever husband she ended up with physically repulsive, but even if she did, she’d hoped they could at least both behave with a certain amount of kindness. And everyone claimed that children were their own reward, so she was looking forward to that, too.

It had never occurred to her that she, born and raised to be a peacekeeper no matter her own feelings, could find herself in a situation like this.

Helene thought there must be something wrong with her, because all of her schooling had led her to believe that the most anyone could hope for when it came to marital relations was something pleasant. Perhaps gentle laughter might be involved, and a certain closeness.

Not this.

Not the enduring sensation that she’d been hollowed out by her own desire, left raw and unfinished, and possibly deformed by the things she wanted.

The good news was that it seemed as if Gianluca was so focused on what he believed to be her deception that he hadn’t noticed.

Helene sighed a little bit and ran her hands over her hair. She had been trained to deal with her marriage. She would deal with her marriage, come what may.

But she wasn’t her mother. She was not the sort of flower that could make do with any old soil and bloom prettily, on demand. Look what had already happened, and all she’d done was marry as expected.

She was going to have to choose a different sort of blooming altogether.

Helene turned that over, again and again, and what she kept coming back to was the enduring ache inside her.

And the sure knowledge that no matter what Gianluca pretended now, he had been as bowled over by their night together as she had been. As she still was.

Maybe, she thought then, frowning at the cold glass and the world beyond, she was going about this all wrong.

Maybe it was time to stop playing his game and start playing her own.

“Besides,” she murmured, her breath fogging against the windowpane, “it’s not as if he can hate me more, is it?”

So she might as well try to get at least some of what she wanted out of this.

And maybe the prizes wouldn’t be quite so stupid after all.

CHAPTER SEVEN