“It isn’t about hiding you.” He showed the barest hint of discomfort by dropping his hands to the footboard and pushing to stand. “I’m acknowledging you and the heir you’re providing me, but it would be helpful if your role was downplayed, so as not to overshadow Patrizia’s.”
“You’re still engaged?”
“It’s been called off, since I’m marrying you, but—”
“She’s still willing to marry you?” The news pushed her into falling back a step. Maybe it was the realization that he still wanted that marriage himself. Why did that hurt? So much?
“Unless a better offer comes along, she is not averse to reviving our plan after you and I divorce.” He must have read the incredulity in her expression, because he said, “We’re friends. Both ruled by duty. The fact we don’t have strong feelings for each other and she’s not hurt by this—” again with the generic wave at her middle “—is the reason we’re a good fit.”
“But her child won’t be first in line! Or is she hoping mine’s a girl?”
“Gender isn’t an issue in Elazar. First born is first in line, but...” He seemed to debate whether she could handle his next words before he said, without emotion, “Until you deliver a healthy baby, many aspects of this situation remain fluid.”
Trella sucked in a gasp so sharp it went down the back of her throat like a spear, sticking in her heart and pinning her motionless. She tried telling herself the shivery clamp around her was anger, but it was anguish. Dark, blood-red betrayal.
“How dare you give someone hope that I’ll lose our baby.”
“It’s not hope.” He strode away from the foot of the bed in a sudden rush, making her jerk back another step and keep him in her line of sight. “It’s caution. You said this will be your only pregnancy. There is a reason for an heir and a spare. If my uncle had lived, this conversation wouldn’t even be happening. If my mother had done her duty, I would have other choices. I don’t. I will accept what comes of this pregnancy, but I have to ensure there are alternatives.”
She was so appalled that she wasn’t even sure what the cold feeling against her lips was. Her fingers? All of her felt cold and empty and deeply furious.
She barely tracked that his hand flicked the air. Through her own haze of emotion, she had a brief impression of bitterness before he turned his back on her.
Anything close to suffering on his part was imagined, though. Had to be. Everything she had shared with this man was imagination and faulty memory. A wish. Girlish daydreaming. A rescue fantasy.
He was a spoiled prince who had sullied a maiden and was tidying up that mess the most pragmatic way possible.
“This really is medieval times, isn’t it? Women have come all this way, yet I’m still just a vessel. A faulty one.” She knew she was broken. It shouldn’t surprise her that she was being rejected. She had thought she had prepared herself, but she hadn’t. She was gutted and had to fight with everything in her not to reveal how devastated she was.
So many times, she’d wished she could go back to that moment as an impetuous girl, when Gili’s math tutor had called out to her. She had run to tell him he had the wrong twin, that’s all. It had been one second of impulse and she was still being punished for it.
Xavier’s head tipped back as he aimed his gaze at the portrait of an ancestor surveying them from high on the wall.
“If I don’t produce our next ruler, the crown passes to a family living in America for the last two hundred years. Rather than let that happen, our neighbors would squabble to take control of Elazar. Instability would ripple across Europe. The globe. We’re a small country, but a pivotal one. I need more than one child to ensure Elazar’s future. I need a wife with connections that cement our alliances.”
His voice held not one iota of regret or even concern for how his plan would affect this child. Or her.
“Spell it out for me.” She grappled for her most pragmatic tone. “Exactly how is this to work? Because I am not allowing some strange woman to raise my baby.”
“Our child will be raised by nannies, tutors and servants, same as you and I.”
“I wasn’t!”
“You left for boarding school at seven. If you hadn’t been kidnapped, you would have grown up there. Your brothers did.”
“My parents traveled, but they were very involved. We knew they loved us!”
As she stared into his half-lidded eyes and read indifference, it struck her why he was being so dispassionate rather than weighing his decisions through his heart.
“You don’t know what that’s like, do you?” She felt cruel saying it, but everything he had told her about his parents came back to her, bringing his brutally logical plan into focus.
His brow went up in arrogant query. “What?”
“Love.”
He might have flinched, but it was gone so fast that she wasn’t sure. His sigh was pure condescension as he pushed his hands into his pockets. “I told you last night—”
“I’m not talking about romantic love. Family love.”
“Love of any kind isn’t real.” His voice slapped her down for being so gullible. “Look around. Is it here? Keeping anyone in my life but my grandmother? Loyalty. Obligation. Duty. Those are real.”
She would have argued that her family loved her, but something else struck with brutal force. “Are you saying—”
She had a flash of her mother crying with joy because Trella was pregnant. Elisa Sauveterre was worried sick and had strong opinions on how Trella had avoided telling Xavier, but beneath all of that was pure, over-the-moon love for her unborn grandchild.
“Is your grandmother happy we’re having a baby?” Her voice quavered with strain.
His jaw set. “That is not the word I would use, no.”
“Wow.” A jagged laugh clawed inside her chest. “Just wow.” How did one survive such an emotional desert?
The answer was before her. They turned into this—an image of a man with a heart, but one who was actually incapable of deeper feelings. One who scoffed at love.
A fierce gleam—torment?—flashed in his gaze before he steeled himself behind a visage of hammered armor. “But she recognizes we have a responsibility toward it.”
“Precious obligation,” she said shakily. “Here’s some news for you. I will not be shut out of my child’s life and replaced by nannies and tutors. I’ll call in the rescue team right now and barricade us in Sus Brazos for the rest of our lives if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Dramatics will not be necessary,” he said with pithy disdain. “We’ll share custody, fifty-fifty. Aside from security and education, how you meet the needs of our child is your business. Visitations to Spain or elsewhere can be worked out as they arise. But our child lives in Elazar.” He pointed at the floor. “I will provide you with a home here in Lirona as part of our divorce settlement.”
She shouldn’t care how quickly he got rid of her. He was being so cold, acting so far removed from the man she had wanted to believe he was, she could hardly endure facing the next minute in his company let alone four months of marriage.
It still took effort to say, “Well, that’s a relief.” She held his gaze, saying goodbye to those moments when he had held her and touched her as if there had been more between them than obligation. “I can move on then, too.”
His eyes narrowed with warning, gaze so hard and devoid of feeling she struggled to hold the contact. “You can.”
How foolish of her to try getting under his skin. She looked away, thinking that she couldn’t stay this close to him with her defenses annihilated the way they were.
“Where is this dowager wing of which you spoke?”
“You’ll sleep where I can keep an eye on you. You were difficult enough to track down as it was.”
“Confinement. How apropos. And familiar.”
“I won’t apologize. We’ve agreed it’s wasted.”
“I still won’t forgive you.”
“Because I’m not upending my life?”
“Because you don’t want our baby!”
“I don’t want our situation.”
You don’t want me! She didn’t say it. She was appalled she had thought it and turned her face away, boiling in humiliation. Pressure filled her throat and sat livid behind her eyes.
Into the thick silence, he sighed. “What I want has never mattered, bella. Duty to the crown takes precedence. I learned that a long time ago.”
His voice was surprisingly gentle, which made the lash of the words all the more cutting and intolerable.
“Don’t call me that. It’s a family nickname and implies we’re closer than we are, but it’s just something you say when you can’t remember the name of the woman you’re sleeping with.”
Another loaded silence filled the room like an acrid cloud.
“Explain to me how sniping at each other will make this easier.”
“It’s the truth.” She swallowed past the ache in her throat, but it only lodged deeper in her chest. “You called me that in Paris and it made me think you saw me, not my sister, but all you saw was a willing partner. I need to stop thinking we’re friends. Stop acting like we are.”