Page 8 of Wedding Night In The King's Bed

“Will you not rise to greet your own mother?” she asked with a merry sort of laugh that they both knew would look like a bit of maternal devotion, as if the two of them were close. “On your wedding day?”

“Your invitation was all the greeting I intend to give, Madam,” he replied icily, though he had to keep the affront from his expression as she helped herself to the chair reserved for his new bride and sat in it. With, again, a familiarity that they both knew would send any number of false messages to the avidly watching throng.

This was another reason Gianluca did not trust her. She was much too good at these games while his father had too often seemed a victim to his own temper.

“The new queen seems like a lovely girl,” Elettra said quietly. “But does she know, truly, what she is in for with you? This heart of stone you carry in your chest might crush you both. Not to mention your unwillingness to forgive. You cannot think these will serve you well now you are wed.”

“Have you come to give me marital advice?”

She had the grace to wince, however faintly. “I do not offer advice, Gianluca. How could I? Still, you might learn from my example.”

“But here’s the difference, Madam,” Gianluca said, leaning closer to her with a faint smile that would be read as possibly affectionate from afar. He hoped. No doubt reading the truth of his feelings, his personal aide started forward, but Gianluca stopped the man with the barest shake of his head. “My bride will not betray me. She is not you.”

And he was well used to his mother’s performances by now. The way she tipped her head back as if struck. The way she let her shoulders sag, making herself the very picture of despair for one, single beat before rallying again... But then, she had always been an accomplished actress. And he knew full well he was not the audience to whom she played.

She liked a crowd, did Elettra.

“My bride does not require your concern, Madam,” he said, and rose then, ending the conversation before Elettra could up the ante. “You and she will have no relationship. I see no reason to let you poison the well, simply because you find yourself bored once again.”

“I haven’t even met the girl,” his mother protested.

Gianluca inclined his head with his polished smile on display for all to see. “By design.”

He left her there at the table, making his way through his own ballroom and nodding to all those who bowed before him as he passed—taking care to look like the merry groom he rather thought he actually was, all things considered.

Not that he had much experience with merriment.

He blamed his parents for that, too. And try though he did to put Elettra from his mind, he could not understand why his mother still, after all these years, pretended she did not understand how things were done. Or that he was not going to indulge her displays like his father had—something she should have picked up a long while ago, because he had not exactly hidden his criticisms of her even before his father’s death. What she should have done tonight was express her gratitude that he had allowed her to attend this wedding at all.

Instead she spoke of his stone heart. As if, were that the case, she had not rolled that boulder there herself.

But he caught sight of Helene and thrust all thoughts of the Dowager Queen aside. He made his way toward his bride, who was now in the clutches of her own questionable father, as the grasping little man steered her around the room like a prize bit of horseflesh that he intended to use to open as many doors as he could.

For some men’s ambition only grew through their children.

Gianluca knew a lot about that, too.

A hush fell over the little group as he approached, though he noted that it was Helene’s father who was the last to take note that the King himself had appeared.

“If I may claim my queen,” Gianluca said, quietly enough. But when he spoke, his words created a kind of ripple of reaction. As if he had shouted when he had not. He was used to this effect, so he used it to take Helene’s hand and draw her to him.

And he liked very much the way she came to him, that smile all over her face and her steps so light, her lovely eyes fixed to his.

Gianluca was not his father. He was not in love with another woman. He was not in love at all, of course—though he did not mind if the watching crowd thought otherwise. Or even if Helene did, as a sheltered girl likely might in her situation. He had found himself averse to the very notion of love from a young age, so often did his parents bandy it about the palace, hurling it at each other as if the word itself was a weapon.

At the same time, he could not deny that he had liked Helene from the start.

All the options that had been presented to him over the past ten years had been beautiful. He supposed that was a prerequisite when a man was a king. But he had found that most of the beautiful women offered to him were the same sort of beautiful that had nothing to do with their specific looks. They had all been cold. Icy, even. They would, each and every one of them, have looked lovely at his side. They would all have complemented him in their own ways and he imagined that would have been pleasing enough.

But Helene made him...hungry.

He took her hand now, aware that it was cool to the touch but then heated, quickly. He could see that same fire in her cheeks, and watched, fascinated, as it turned the skin of her neck a faint peach hue.

And he remembered standing outside on a summer’s morning in France, catching sight of her for the first time. The way she gazed up at him from where she crouched down with surprising elegance to stroke a sprig of lavender in a simple shift dress that only drew attention to her lush beauty.

She had looked at him with a kind of stunned longing, as if he was a wish fulfilled.

When she could not possibly have expected him to appear as he had. They never did. Most of them had never seen him at all before they were formally introduced and never knew that he had seen them first, unguarded.