Page 41 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

Instead, the look on her face was rather more speculative. Gianluca did not like it.

He found himself perilously close to a scowl, right here in public, but caught himself at the last moment and merely took Helene’s arm.

Then inclined his head toward Lady Lorenza as she curtsied before him.

“It is a pleasure to see you, as always,” he said, with great formality.

“It is an honor, Your Majesty,” she replied, with her usual faultless manners.

It all made his jaw hurt, this sharp game of courtesy, and he ordered himself to unclench it. There was nothing objectionable about this woman, he told himself, not for the first time. She could not be blamed for having dated the young King Alvize. But Gianluca also knew that every second he spent in her presence led to tabloid whispers, unsubstantiated rumors, and a resurgence of all the old nonsense he liked to think dead and buried.

And suddenly he had the strangest memory. Of being all of seventeen and at a party a great deal like this one. He had come across Lorenza there, and they had talked politely, about nothing in particular that he could recall. Had she not been the infamous Lady Lorenza, he doubted he would have remembered the interaction at all.

But Like father like son! the tabloids had blared.

Gianluca might have laughed the whole thing off, so absurd was the very notion that anything untoward might ever have happened between them—much less when he was a teenager—but his father had gone into a terrifying black rage.

He didn’t like to think about the things that had happened then. The things his father had said. And done.

And worse, threatened to do.

Gianluca avoided Lorenza as much as possible without being impolite, even though his father had been dead a decade.

He made his excuses now as he steered Helene away from her.

“That was rude.” Helene’s voice was very pleasant and pitched so that only he could hear what she said. Anyone else would take it for far happier conversation. “She and I were speaking.”

“You and she have nothing to speak about.”

“All anyone ever talks about when it comes to Lady Lorenza is your father. Did you know that she’s actually an incredibly interesting woman in her own right?”

“I cannot imagine that you’re going to tell me anything I don’t already know. But what I can tell you, what you should know above all else, is that this is not a topic I wish to discuss. Ever.”

Helene carried on as if she hadn’t heard him. “After she finished with your father, she went to school. Back to school. Whereupon she got numerous degrees in anthropology and now spends her time either on digs or at the offices of the University of Fiammetta, where she is also a professor. Her son has followed in her footsteps, and though he teaches at a rival university, they have managed to fund a fair few digs together. Her daughter teaches literature at one of the colleges here in the city. They are a very brainy, learned, academic family, including her husband, who has something of a mad scientist bent and, while not swanning about being an aristocrat, invents things in his spare time.”

Gianluca could not stop dead in the middle of the floor the way he would have liked to do. That would give all the gossips something else to chew upon, and they would. With relish. So instead, he pulled her along with him until he could steer her outside, where braziers had been set out in the renovated castle’s courtyard to cut the chill of the winter night. Once there, his guards quickly cleared the space of the inevitable trysts and smokers so that he and the Queen could have a moment alone.

He hoped this would seem romantic to the audience watching them from within.

And to help with that, he turned his back to the glass doors and windows so anyone gawking would see only Helene. “I cannot imagine what makes you think I wish to know the details about that woman’s family. Or anything else concerning her.” He bit that out, not sure he liked his words any better when he could see them puff in the air before him. But that didn’t make them any less true. “The Lady Lorenza is not an appropriate person for you to be seen talking to, Helene. Surely you must know this.”

“She didn’t do anything wrong.” Helene’s gaze seemed particularly intense, there beneath the glow of the artificial heat, and he found himself moving closer to her. To block her from anyone watching, he assured himself. That was all. “Do you know why she broke things off with your father?”

Gianluca did not understand why she was continuing with this line of discussion when he had made it clear that it displeased him. “She has always stated that she found the media coverage entirely too intense.”

“I’m sure that’s part of it. There’s no denying that it’s all a bit mad. The paparazzi can take the most intrusive pictures, then say anything they like, and there’s no recourse.” Helene frowned, suddenly. “Just yesterday I read an unhinged story about us. You apparently have a secret mistress stashed away on the palace grounds who you visit in secret, right under my nose. You are your father, naturally, and I am being cast as prudish yet also angelic, as if they haven’t quite worked out what character I’ll be playing.”

He did nothing to control his scowl then. “You shouldn’t be reading that trash. It’s forbidden in the palace for a reason.”

“I hate to break this to you, Gianluca, but there is such a thing as the internet.” She shrugged as if she didn’t see the look on his face. “Besides, my cousin Faith and I have an ongoing competition to see which one of us can find the most outrageous tabloid article about me. Some days, it’s a draw. But my point is, that’s not why Lady Lorenza broke up with your father.”

Gianluca couldn’t navigate the shifts in this conversation. He couldn’t—or he didn’t want to. He wasn’t certain there was a difference.

He felt, again, that he was out of his depth. He, who had only yesterday navigated his way without incident through a thorny political issue that the more serious papers had felt certain would take him at least twice as long, and would likely end in failure. In every other area of his life he not only considered himself well prepared, but fully capable of steering events to the conclusions he preferred.

And in this case, he once again had the strangest sensation. Strange, but familiar over the course of these last couple of months. Despite the familiarity, it took him long moments to realize it was him feeling like some kind of fool.

Again.