Page 32 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

Gianluca let out a deep sort of breath. “Your father is, at best, a minor noble. Mostly because of shrewd investments. By which I mean that you, though an heiress of gentle breeding, are not of noble blood.”

“I don’t recall ever claiming that my blood was blue.” The look of something like a wicked amusement passed over her face, making the way she was lounging there seem to grab at him, until he was not at all certain that he was capable of keeping his distance. But he forced himself to stand fast. “I know you must have known this before you ever set eyes on me. I’ve met every member of your staff by now, Gianluca. They are remarkably thorough.”

He did not scowl. That would suggest a bigger reaction than he was having. “Bloodlines are of paramount importance when it is those very bloodlines that determine succession to a throne. Don’t pretend you don’t know this very well, please.”

Helene sat up then and she took her time with it. She stretched like a cat and it was too much. It seemed to punch straight through his chest.

Like a knife, he told himself as he dug his palm against the sudden, searing ache.

The woman was a killer and he was letting her have her way.

But he did nothing as she got to her feet in that same, seemingly languid way she did everything, and then helped herself to one of the silk wrappers that his staff had taken to leaving in his rooms and hers now that there were no locked doors between them. Once she’d belted it and was covered in the finest silk, she drifted closer to him. He thought she might come to him, but instead she perched herself on the end of the bed, as if continuing a fascinating discussion.

When he was certain he had been trying to end it.

She looked entirely too serene. “Do you ever think about the fact that throughout all the ages past, no one could actually tell?”

“I do not know what you mean.” Though he had an inkling.

“There are no paternity tests. There were just...regular people storming about, pretending their feelings were facts. On some level, how can you possibly know what your bloodline is or isn’t?”

“Is this how you think you will convince me of your innocence?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.

And most people would cringe at that. Bow their heads in shame, at the very least.

But all Helene did was shrug.

Insolently.

“I think it’s the guilty who run around trying to get others to buy their story.” And if anything, if possible, she looked even more at ease. “I feel no need to prove my innocence. I know it to be true. I’m the one who’s lived every day of my life, after all. I would know if I had accidentally collected a selection of lovers, but then again, so too would your staff. Funnily enough, I think they’ve come up empty-handed too. Why do you think that is?”

And he could have raged about her offhandedness. He could have made certain she knew that he wasn’t giving up and that he was in fact tracking down every stray lead. He could have put his mouth on hers and quelled her insolence at the source—

But instead, there was a faint knock on the door that indicated the arrival of the food he’d ordered.

Gianluca told himself that was a relief.

Just as he told himself that he was not succumbing to temptation, but merely making certain that he had as many opportunities as possible to get her pregnant as quickly as he could, so this torture might end.

That was why she fell asleep in his bed that night, the way she had been doing with some regularity by now. Even though it was something he’d vowed to himself he would never allow again.

Over the following days, he reviewed his staff’s findings, not best pleased to find that she was right. They had found nothing. Everything she said about her past was easily verifiable. If she was hiding something, it was so well hidden only she knew about it.

“And of course, sire,” his personal aide said in a tone stripped of even the faintest hint of any inflection, “a secret is only really a secret if no one else knows it. And if that’s the case here, it’s unlikely that it’s a secret anyone else could tell. Which is a victory, is it not?”

For he had told them that he wanted to make certain no one could ever step forward with any so-called secrets from the Queen’s past. He’d intimated that there might have been some cause for worry, so that they would look harder.

Instead he was left with something far worse than any confirmation of the sins he knew she’d committed.

And that was his urge to believe her.

But he knew better.

To underscore that some days later—or to remind himself of what was truly at stake here—he gritted his teeth and took his least favorite walk of all. He had watched his queen charm the better part of Europe. He had proven himself unable to keep any promise to himself when it came to erecting boundaries between them. He was disastrously close to becoming a version of his father, and that could not stand.

And so he took himself out one of the small, hidden doors at the rear of the palace. He crossed the wintry grounds, winding his way through the ancient cottages and chapels and ruins of old castles until he could present himself to the guards who stood before the farthest cottage, closest to the stables without actually being a part of them.

It was a bitterly cold February day. Sullen snow fell insistently from low, gray clouds, with winds from the tops of the surrounding mountains sharp enough to draw blood.