Prince's Son of Scandal(13)

“We’ll be at the palace in ten minutes.”

“Good. Get her into a quiet bedroom, keep the lights low, blinds down, guards at the door. She needs to let it run its course without fearing people are going to see her. Keep her warm and whatever she says, remind her she’s safe. If you can’t stay with her, I’ll come.”

“I’ll stay with her.” His voice was grim. He handed back the phone.

She ended the call, mortified by how needy her sister had made her sound. Appalled because it was true. She hadn’t tried to weather a spell on her own since they had first started. It had been a disaster.

Nevertheless, she screwed up her courage, pressed the phone between her breasts, and spoke some of the hardest words that had ever passed her lips. “You don’t have to babysit me.”

She held her breath, dreading the prospect of going it alone.

“I’m not letting you out of my sight until that baby is born.”

The harsh words jarred, taking her brief flash of gratitude and coating it in foreboding.





CHAPTER SIX

XAVIER HAD THE car drive to the postern gate, where delivery trucks and other utility vehicles came in. They took a lane through the back garden to the private apartments. It was a longer, slower, but much more discreet entrance into the palace built by a king three hundred years ago.

Did coming in this way also allow him to avoid Mario and any mention of his grandmother’s expectation that he present himself? A man did what he had to for the mother of his unborn child.

Xavier didn’t do emotion. Fits and tempers were signs of poor breeding. He’d been taught that from an early age. When women became histrionic, he offered space.

Not possible today. And as much as he wanted to hold himself apart from the way Trella was behaving, he couldn’t. She was shaking, hair damp at her temples, eyes darting. When he helped her from the car, she clung to his sleeve and looked to every shadow.

It was unnerving. Even stranger, her sense of threat put him on guard.

He kept reminding himself this was a panic attack, something he knew very little about except that it was a false response. Nevertheless, her fear provoked a very real primal need in him to offer protection. His heart pounded with readiness and he scanned about as they moved, fingers twitching for a weapon. He’d never experienced such an atavistic, bloodthirsty reaction. He was not so far removed from his medieval ancestors as he had imagined. He was completely prepared to shed his cloak of civility and slay if necessary.

Staff leapt to their feet as they walked through the kitchen. He said nothing, only pulled her into the service elevator.

Gunter came with them, frowning as he saw how distraught she looked. “Are you in pain?” He tried to take her pulse.

Trella shrank into Xavier.

“Leave her alone.” He closed his arms around her. Her firm bump nudged low on his abdomen, reminding him that her panic attack was only the tip of the iceberg where this confounding day was concerned.

His valet, Vincente, met them as they entered his apartment. Xavier had moved into his father’s half of the rooms when he’d finished university and never even glanced toward the adjoined feminine side, but it was kept dusted for the ghosts of past queens.

He pressed Trella toward the canopied bed of gold and red then started to close the doors, telling Vincente, “I’m locking us in. Leave sandwiches in my lounge. If I need anything else, I’ll text. No one comes in here. No one.”

“Of course, sir.” He read Vincente’s apprehension. “But I believe the Queen—”

“Inform her I’ll be along when I can, but it will be some time.”

Xavier did as he’d promised, moving to lock each door and close all the drapes, turning on one bedside lamp as he went. Then he shook out a soft blanket from a chest and brought it to where Trella sat on the edge of the bed.

She clutched the blanket around her, back hunched, still trembling.

All he could see was a nine-year-old girl. Was this what that experience had left her with? He had a thousand questions, but heeded her sister’s advice and only said, “You’re safe, bella. This is my world. Nothing can harm you here.”

Tears tracked her cheeks and she swiped the back of her hand along her jaw, skimming away the drips.

“I didn’t want you to see me like this.” Her voice was thin as a silk thread. “I wanted you to think I was Gili. She cries at proper things, like weddings and stubbed toes. She’s afraid of real things, not stuff she makes up in her head.”

Was it made-up? He used the satin on the corner of the blanket to dry her cheeks, not sure where the urge to comfort came from. It wasn’t taught or ingrained. Manners and platitudes got him through displays like this, not affection.

But he felt responsible for her and her attack. “I only wanted to talk to you. I didn’t expect things to go off the rails like this.”

“Don’t blame yourself. I take everything further than it needs to go.” She drew in a shaken sigh. Her eyes filled again.

“Is this what you were hiding, staying out of the spotlight all those years?”

She nodded jerkily. “It started after Papa died. We were fifteen. I was starting to feel like I might be able to go back to school and have a normal life. But we were seen as sex objects, I guess, because the most disgusting men found us online. I’d already been through an eating disorder and trolls mocking me for it. Then all these men started sending photos and telling me what they wanted to do to me. It hit a switch.”

A streak of impotent fury lodged in his chest. His entire life, he had struggled against this particular irony. He was a future monarch, charged with great power and responsibility, godlike in some eyes, but he couldn’t control how people treated each other. He couldn’t prevent the kind of harm that had Trella drawing up her knees so she was a ball of misery. His inability to help her struck at the deepest part of him.

“I’m a woman of extremes. You might as well know that about me. Give me that pillow.”

He dragged it closer and she fell onto her side and buried her face in it. She sobbed so deeply, was in the throes of an anguish so terrible, he was stricken witnessing it. How did she withstand it?

Let it run its course, her sister had said. That seemed cruel.

He settled on the bed behind her, rubbed her arm and soothed her shaking back. It took several minutes for her crying to subside. She lifted her head and breathed as though she’d been running for miles.

“I keep worrying I’ll have an attack while I’m in labor. My doctor says this won’t hurt the baby, but I’m so scared all this adrenaline is causing damage. What if we go through all of this and our child isn’t fit to reign? What if that’s my fault because I can’t control this?”

“Is there nothing you can take? Something safe during pregnancy?”

“No. I mean, maybe, but I can’t. Won’t.” She threw her arm over her eyes. “I tried drugs years ago. They made me depressed and dependent. I was close to taking a whole bottle just to end this.”

She dropped her arm and twisted to stare at him from between matted lashes.

“I shouldn’t have told you that. You’ll declare me unfit and take our baby away. Oh, God...”

She rolled around the pillow again, dragging the blanket with her and pulling it over her head.

“Trella.” He was no mental health expert, but he knew a tailspin when he heard one. He settled on the mattress behind her, propped on an elbow, letting his body heat penetrate the blanket as he gave rubs of reassurance against her shoulder and arm. He wanted to fold right around her, absorb whatever had such a terrible grip on her.

“Let’s take this one thing at a time. Hmm? The baby is well. Your doctor said so, yes? Do you know the sex?”

It took a minute, but her breathing settled to something more natural.

“I’ve been afraid to ask, thinking it would make me more attached. I’m so scared I’m going to lose it.” She shifted, pushing away the blanket to reveal her face, then peeled the blanket all the way back, piling it on him as she exposed her bump. She smoothed her shirt over the roundness. “It’s moving. Do you want to feel?”

He stalled, reality hitting him like a train. He let her draw his hand across the tense swell of her midsection. He had thought it would feel like an inflated beach ball, but she was warm and there was give within the firmness. A shape. Something that felt no bigger than his knuckle pressed outward, moving across the palm of his hand.

He almost jerked back, yet he was too fascinated and kept his hand in place, waiting to feel it again. “Does that hurt?”

“It reassures me. Hola, bebé. Cómo estás?”

Another tiny kick struck his hand, prompting a soft noise of amusement deep in her throat. She turned her head to look at him. Her eyelids were red and swollen, but her smile was so filled with joy and wonder, she took his breath away.

The moment snaked out like a rope to encircle and draw them together, binding them, inexorable and eternal.

He sucked in a breath, drawing back as he tried to pull himself free of what threatened to carry him into deep waters like a deadly riptide.

“How are we even here? How—Why me, bella?”

“Why did I sleep with you? I didn’t plan to sleep with anyone.” She curled around her pillow, rubbing her face against it, drying tears. “I only wanted to practice being in public. I was so proud for having the courage to talk to a man, then to be alone with one. You made me feel normal. Safe. I needed that. I was using you. I admit that. But sleeping with you?” She craned her neck to look at him, her expression helpless. Anxious. “I couldn’t help myself. You said we were volatile. That...”