Page 40 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

He was beginning to wonder if he had overcommitted to this charity circuit of his, all of it calculated to prove to his people that he was a far better king than his father had ever been.

That his reign would be filled only with positive things, and as few negative things as possible.

But it had been easier to focus on such things when he wasn’t married. When there wasn’t Helene.

Because liar or not, he would far rather spend an evening with her, alone.

She told him happy little stories of her time in that boarding school she’d gone to, making the whole thing sound like a sparkling adventure when he knew full well it was one of the most restrictive schools in existence. She told him stories about her late mother and growing up in that château in Provence, where, in her telling, it was always a sunny day in summer and even Herbert was an entertaining character, in his way.

Gianluca even liked it when she argued with him, in that understated way she had. As if, could she only prod him gently enough, he would realize the error of his ways and happily see her side of things.

And she did it all so adroitly that sometimes, he almost did.

But his father had taught him well what liars women were. And how could he have believed otherwise when a man so grand, so captivated by his own magnificence, had declared such things? Had shouted them? Had overturned tables as punctuation?

Something in him hitched at that memory, but he shoved it aside with the ease of long practice.

Women lied. Especially when they claimed otherwise. And though Helene had fooled him well—she had revealed herself on their wedding night. Much as he might wish that she hadn’t. Much as, some nights, he lay with her curled around him and wished he could forget it.

The truth was the truth whether he liked it or not.

Because if it wasn’t, then he would not need to watch himself so carefully when he was around her. He would not have to fight so hard to contain this wild addiction to her. To let it out only when they were alone and he could make sure not to say anything he would regret, by filling his mouth with her instead.

These were all things he would prefer to do back at the palace, he admitted tonight. Instead of having been dragged into some tedious conversation with other world leaders that had nothing to do with governing and everything to do with the photo opportunity.

Gianluca was sick unto his soul of photo opportunities in place of reality.

Though he did not intend to delve into why that was. Not tonight.

He looked for his queen instead.

As ever, Helene was not hard to find. She was too bright, too astonishingly lush, in a sea of Afghan hound sameness. There were a great many glittering jewels on a great many aristocratic necks in this elaborate mountainside venue tonight, but there was only one gleaming queen.

And she was his.

Gianluca was so enchanted by her, the way he did not like to admit he always was, that it took him a long moment to recognize the woman she was speaking to. The two of them stood close together over by a set of the voluptuous orchids that were serving as the better part of the decor for this gala.

He had to blink to be certain, but there was no mistake. Helene was deep in conversation with none other than the Lady Lorenza, his father’s infamous first lover.

There was no reason for a chill to go through him, as if he was looking at some kind of ghost.

No reason at all, and yet he started moving through the crowd at once, hardly noticing how easily it parted before him. And as he moved, he accepted the unpalatable truth that Helene was the only person he had ever encountered who made him feel that he was some kind of a fool.

It was always something.

There was always some hint that she was outmaneuvering him when that should have been impossible. He was the King of Fiammetta and she was a sheltered girl who’d been raised to marry a rich man. To contribute her lovely genes to a set of predetermined bloodlines, and no, he did not care to think too closely about the comments she’d made about the provenance of those bloodlines.

As he moved across the gala floor, Gianluca entertained the possibility that Helene really was that girl, bright and sparkling perhaps, but without the ulterior motives. That girl might very well have found herself speaking to the Lady Lorenza who, despite her past with King Alvize, had ever since lived an entirely blameless life. Gianluca had seen her earlier in the evening, here at the charity gala with her own son—who despite much speculation in the press, bore an unmistakable resemblance to her husband and not to the former king. And there were a thousand reasons why the Queen of Fiammetta might speak to one of the Kingdom’s aristocrats.

But, somehow, Gianluca knew none of those were Helene’s reason tonight. Not only because he knew that she was not as naïve as she might pretend. That even if he had somehow misread the situation on his wedding night—an impossibility—there was the fact that the girls who came out of the Institut were taught how to function as weapons, not merely wives.

It was why he’d asked to meet her in the first place.

More fool you, he thought darkly.

He closed the distance between him and his wife and as he did, it was Lady Lorenza who saw him coming. And in so doing, confirmed what Gianluca already thought, by putting up her hand as if to stop whatever Helene was saying to her.

When Helene looked over her shoulder to see him there, Gianluca thought she should have looked guilty. With her sins all over her face, for once.