Page 52 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed
A deep, surging laugh from the deepest part of him.
He let it come. He threw back his head and let it out, and it felt good. Right.
Just like her.
“Is that a hint of temper I hear in your voice?” he asked Helene. “Are you, a graduate of the Institut and the Queen of Fiammetta...actually displaying your true thoughts to me?”
She wiped at her face again, seeming as shaken by the sound of his laugh as he was. “It appears to be that kind of night.”
Gianluca knew it was. So he pulled her down with him until they were both kneeling on the earth, as if he was trying to re-create the day they’d met. But better this time. More honest.
Maybe he was.
“This is our beginning, you and me,” he told her intently. “For I have been a fool of epic proportions. Starting with the fact that I have never properly asked you to be my wife and tumbling on from there, so let me be perfectly clear, Helene. I have never been the same since the moment I saw you. I would never have said I believed in love at first sight, but I know that it can be nothing else. I would have told you that I have no idea what love might be, but you have showed me, haven’t you?”
This was not a real question. She had. Every day, she had. She had not threatened him like his father. She had not challenged him to think the worst of her like his mother. She had simply loved him, and in so doing, unraveled him from the inside out.
He hadn’t even realized she was doing it.
Gianluca smoothed his hand over her cheek, then let his fingers find their way into those wild, dark curls he adored. “You have weathered my disgraceful behavior. You had every reason to throw temper tantrums, break things, perhaps even leave me here in this kingdom of mine, but you did not. You stayed by my side. You listened to me speak ill of you with compassion. You have showed me, again and again, that love is far more complicated than I could have imagined. And far more beautiful. And so all I can hope is that I have the opportunity to prove to you that I can love you back, in the way that you deserve, and somehow make up for these things I’ve done to you.”
“Just because you didn’t see my reactions doesn’t mean I didn’t have them,” Helene whispered, her tears still falling. “There was a part of me that wanted to leave. There was a part of me that wished, desperately, that I could hate you. There is always this thing in me that is a product of how I was raised and what I was taught, that urges me to make myself disappear in plain sight. To be obliging, reserved, and to live behind this mask of good manners even if it suffocates me.”
“Promise me,” he said, dark and intent, “promise me that you will leave that mask at our bedroom door. That, alone, you and I will not be a king and a queen, but a man and a woman.”
“A husband,” she whispered. “And a wife.”
“I am so sorry, mia regina,” he told her, from every part of him. “Cuore mio, my heart, I promise you that I will do everything within my power to make myself worthy of your forgiveness.”
“Just love me,” she whispered back. “And I will love you back. We will forgive each other whether we deserve it or not, and we will teach our child not only how to love, but how to be loved as we were not.” And she leaned closer, her expression grave again, no matter that her eyes were still so wet. “But Gianluca, I will not be going away to any prison on a mountainside. And I will not send my baby away at the age of six. I don’t imagine I will like it very much at sixteen.”
“Helene, my wife, mia amata,” he said, very seriously. “You must know that I was never going to send you away. I cannot exist without you. I do not wish to. And we will have as many children as you like, who you can tether to yourself if you so wish.” He leaned forward then, and slowly, with great deliberation, began to kiss each and every tear from her cheeks. “I only ask that this tether does not extend into our bed.”
“Of course not,” she whispered back, her own laughter catching in her throat. “Whatever do you take me for?”
High above them, the clouds were finally gone. The moon beamed down, making the gardens they found themselves in glow silvery and bright.
It was not warm, so neither one of them removed their clothing. But he pulled her over his lap and she worked between them until she could take him inside her, and then they moved there, whispering their vows to each other as the long, dark night faded away all around them.
Again and again, they consecrated this new union, this new, true wedding.
And when the morning dawned, it was cold, but it was spring.
Gianluca and his wife rose together and breathed in the new day, the new season. They clasped their hands together, hung on tight, and walked back toward the palace. Because flowers weren’t the only thing that could come back to life after a long, cold winter.
He looked down at this woman who he had given no reason to love him, no reason to trust him ever again, who had nonetheless placed not only her life, but the life of their child in his hands.
And Gianluca knew that no matter what came next, he would do his best to make certain that no winter was overtly long, that no deep freeze could not be melted, and that every summer was bright and bold enough to last them all the way through until the next one.
Because his Helene deserved to bloom.
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE FIRST THING Gianluca did was set about beginning the process of repairing his relationship with Elettra.
Their initial conversation, consisting mostly of apologies, was not long. And moving forward was not easy. It was, he discovered, less the repairing of a relationship and more the building of one. And it would have been only too easy to simply step back from this peace he was trying to weave.
But he didn’t.