Page 48 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

Helene moved toward Gianluca then, putting a hand on his arm that he did not seem to feel, too lost was he in the past.

“You are not to blame for believing this,” she told him fiercely. “You had no reason not to. He was your father. He was the King. From everything I’ve heard, he was terrifying.”

“And charming,” Elettra said, her voice thick. “He could be so charming, out in public. That was what made you imagine he wasn’t a monster. But then we would come home and he would be hideous to me and unkind to you too, and I didn’t know what else to do. I knew he would never let you leave. So I stayed. And then he died and I still stayed, even though you did not want me near, because I could not bear to leave you. I still can’t.”

Helene watched something wash over Gianluca then, like a body blow. And there was the distinct sheen of vulnerability in his gaze when he looked at her. Anguish. Despair.

But then, just as quickly, it was shuttered again.

He took a step back. He shook his head once, then again. “No,” he said, very distinctly. “These are lies upon lies upon lies. I will not let you drown me in the swamp of yours, Madam.”

Though Helene was not certain whether he spoke to her, or his mother.

And then it didn’t matter. “You have outstayed your welcome,” he threw at his mother.

She only sighed as she sat again, looking smaller than before. “Like father, like son,” she murmured.

It was a blow, and it landed. For a moment Gianluca looked as if it might take him down—

But he shook it off.

Then he was taking Helene by the arm, and she let him because she knew what he apparently did not—which was that there was no going back from this moment. There was no pretending that the whole of his life, and all of his beliefs about his family, weren’t stacked precariously on the lies and petty jealousies of a very small man on his big throne.

She waited until they were out in the middle palace complex, with gardens on all sides, the late winter night above them, and no guards nearby to hear.

“It’s surprising that you claim to be so allergic to lies,” she began.

“Yet you keep on spinning them,” he ground out.

Helene stopped walking, and Gianluca whirled so he could face her. And she thought he looked nothing like himself tonight. He looked as close to disheveled as she’d ever seen him. His eyes were wild. His face was twisted.

This should have scared her. But it didn’t.

Gianluca didn’t scare her at all.

That wasn’t to say he couldn’t break her heart. That he hadn’t already. That he wouldn’t again. But she didn’t fear him.

His own mother had not been able to say the same about the King she’d been married to.

“Why are you so sure that I lied to you on our wedding night?” Helene demanded of him now, out here in the dark and the cold. With no trace of her usual calm, her hard-won ease and grace. There was no room for that now. “What is your evidence? Or is it just you have always been taught that women are liars?”

“It has nothing to do with what I have or haven’t been taught,” he threw at her. “It is as simple as this, Helene. Every time I touch you, every time I go near you at all, you burst into flame. What virgin does this?”

“This virgin,” she shot back at him. And she did not shrink. She did not dip her head or avert her eyes. Tonight she was done with strategy, with waiting for the right moment. What moments were left? This was her life. This was her child’s whole world they were discussing, whether he knew it or not. “This woman, who has been in love with you since the very first moment she set eyes on you, and not because you’re a king. You could have been the gardener, for all I cared. I looked up, you were there, and everything changed. I burst into flames every time you touch me because of the fire between us. It’s ours, Gianluca.”

He looked wild, but she couldn’t stop.

“I have never touched another man,” she told him, as if they were standing at another altar. But this one was far more critical. “I have no interest in other men. And no, I can’t prove that. Just as your poor mother couldn’t prove to anyone that she was the innocent victim of your father’s schemes. The same way poor Lady Lorenza couldn’t either. Deep down, Gianluca, I think you know this already.”

He made a sound that was more animal than man. He speared his fingers into his hair and wrenched himself away, turning from her—but he only walked one step, then two.

She thought that when he spoke again he would sound as unsteady as she felt, but he didn’t.

Helene would never know how he didn’t when she wasn’t sure her own heart would ever be the same.

“Do you think I will wait to send you away?” he asked in that voice of his that was all soft fury. “You are a disruptive presence. I will not allow it. I will pack you off to my grandmother’s mountain retreat at dawn.”

“No,” Helene said.