When she said, “I do,” it reverberated within him, so visceral he knew that he would feel bound by this promise his entire life. She was his responsibility now, but he would have to turn away from her to perform the rest of his obligations. The war of dueling duties already hammered a crack into his psyche, causing a schism that would never heal.
“Do you have the ring?” the bishop asked.
“I’ll only have to remove it when I go into the hospital.” Trella waved off the case.
It was an unexpected swipe of claws at a part of him Xavier hadn’t realized he’d exposed. What did he care that she didn’t even glance at the ring he’d spent more than an hour dithering over, wanting it to match her sparkling, multi-faceted personality?
Her mother’s tiny sniff broke the silence. Mario smoothly withdrew the ring. The bishop quickly finished the ceremony.
“You may k-kiss the bride...” Everyone had got the memo this was not a conventional marriage.
Her wary gaze grew even more vulnerable.
Should he have forgone this custom? Probably. But he set his hand at her waist and drew her toward him.
She braced her forearm along his and clenched her fist into his jacket sleeve, leaning on him for balance as she offered her mouth.
He brought his hand to the side of her neck, felt the cool tickle of a few strands of hair, and reminded himself not to make a fool of himself. Keep it brief.
He nearly groaned at the onslaught of sensation when his mouth covered hers.
As tenuous as everything else might be, in this second, they were as united as they’d been in Paris. Everything in him wanted to deepen and ravish, requiring all his willpower to keep the kiss short and sweet.
Her mouth moved under his with equal restraint, but he tasted the desire for more in the way her lips clung to his. Paradise hovered like a promise, but he couldn’t surrender to whatever this thing was between them. All he could have was this. One kiss.
And it was already over.
* * *
“Mario tells me you wish to cancel Australia.” The Queen looked up from her breakfast. “Why?”
He had cancelled, if Mario had done his job. Xavier filled his plate and gave the butler a nod, sending him from the room so they could speak in private.
“Don’t play dumb,” he said as the door closed.
“It’s an important initiative.”
Unlike some of his counterparts, the royals of Elazar took specific, active roles in government. His entire year had been a series of trade talks in various regions. It wasn’t appearance for the sake of it, but business meetings and presentations to push for expansion of existing agreements that would keep his country from going bankrupt.
“She isn’t due for weeks,” his grandmother continued. “Even when she goes into labor, what help do you think you will be?”
“She’s alone in a strange country, stuck in the hospital. I’m not leaving for a month of press interviews where the first question will be, ‘Why aren’t you with your wife?’”
“Is that why you visit her every day? Because I’m told she keeps herself amused. Drawing. Chatting to family. You wouldn’t be missed.”
Perhaps not. Even Trella had asked if he was only visiting for appearances’ sake.
The press release on their marriage and impending parenthood had been short and vague, playing to concern for a successful pregnancy without going into detail. It had made Xavier sick to hear his team discuss how spinning the pregnancy as a miracle would create a groundswell of support, overcoming judgments about a scandalous, ill-timed affair.
Trella hadn’t reacted beyond a remote, “I’ve played this game a long time. Say whatever you have to.”
She had played the isolation game as well and did know how to amuse herself. He wasn’t needed and didn’t know why he counted down the minutes until he could dodge the paparazzi on the hospital steps and enter the guarded sanctum of her room.
Her prison was as cozy as it could be made. Monitors and equipment feeds were tucked behind panels. The walls were a comfortable mocha, the blankets printed with Elazar’s national pasqueflower—the white buttercup that grew wild in their alpine meadows. Trella even wore regular clothes rather than a functional hospital gown.
But she reclined on the bed twenty-four-seven. Rising to use the toilet or shower was all the activity she was allowed.
Because of potential rupture.
Her doctor had scared the hell out of him when Trella had been admitted, explaining the need for such vigilance.
Trella had been stoic. She had checked into Hospital del Re the night they’d married and, despite only having resided in his apartment for a week, he’d felt her absence. Why? She’d been angry with him, cool when she’d been forced to speak to him, but somehow she had infused a sense of liveliness to the palace. The sound of her laugh in another room, or even just the splash of color from an abandoned scarf, made it less of a museum and more of a... Hell, it had always been his home. How could it suddenly feel like one?
He shook off the impression.
“You’re very well-informed,” he said, realizing the silence was stretching. “Yet you’ve never once asked me how she is.”
“How is she?” She used her among-the-people tone of fabricated warmth, smile inching toward supercilious.
Anxious, he wanted to say. Trella was keeping herself busy, but he read the stress that lingered in the corners of her mouth and the tension between her brows.
“As well as could be expected.”
“Then you should be able to leave her.”
“I know what you’re thinking.” He shook his head. “I’m acting like a decent human being, not becoming attached.”
Yet he was indulging himself with the visits. She hadn’t asked him to come.
I’ve done this before, she’d said of her seclusion, then had revealed her best coping strategy. She was an accomplished sketch artist.
Practice, she had dismissed when he went through her book. He’d been taken with each image. Some were graceful gowns, some intricate patterns for beadwork. Some were colored as brightly as a children’s book and others were shades of gray.
Then he had found one of their wedding day, copied from a photo her mother had taken. Trella’s hint of a smile as she gazed up at him held shy awe. He wouldn’t call his expression tender, but there was no hiding that he was absorbed by her doe-eyed stare. The captured moment was uncomfortably revealing, yet honest enough he couldn’t be ashamed.
“I meant that for Mama, but I think you should hide it in the palace, to be discovered a hundred years from now. Give the art historians something to get excited about.” She tore the page from the book and signed it. Her conspiratorial grin as she rolled it had tugged at him to play along.
It had been the first time she’d warmed up to him since their marriage, eyes sparkling with the vivacity that had first ensnared him in Paris.
He’d accepted the drawing with the strangest tingle of pleasure, liking the idea of her being resurrected generations from now, pulled from the footnotes and celebrated.
For a moment, there’d been nothing between them but this frivolous secret they were planning to keep. Then, as their gazes stayed locked, sexual awareness had crept in. The attraction was still there, ignored and subverted, but in those seconds, he felt the lava churning below the surface, swirling and burning, building with pressure against the cracks.
“Surely you can make arrangements with one of her family members if the round-the-clock care at the hospital isn’t sufficient?”
He snapped back to the breakfast room and his grandmother’s facetious tone. The heat in him faded.
“I’ve discussed that with her.” He had suspected Trella was homesick after catching her tearily viewing photos of her infant nieces. “Her brother and his wife are tied up with their new twins. Her mother is on hand to help them. Her sister can’t leave her new husband.” They were trying to get pregnant, if Xavier was reading the subtext correctly. “And something has gone off the rails with the brother who was engaged. She’d rather not speak to him, so...”
“You’re being manipulated.”
“By whom?” He held her gaze, turning one of her best weapons—barely disguised derision—against her.
“You have obligations,” she began in a very quiet voice that held no hint of a tremble. It was the very lack of emotion, the stamp of inarguable logic, that made her words so powerful.
The splinter he had experienced on his wedding day rent deeper, ringing with agony as he felt himself stretched on the rack of conflicting duties. Wife. Crown. Temporary commitment. Eternal service.
A sharp rap on the door had them turning their attention to Mario as he stepped in without waiting for an invitation.
“Apologies, Your Majesty, but the Prince is requested to go the hospital. Immediately.”
* * *
“They’re prepping her for surgery,” he was told when he called from the back of his car. He broke into a sweat and urged his driver to hurry.
He was shown to a lower floor when he arrived. She was in pre-op, flat on her back in a hospital gown, hair covered in a blue cap, lips white, tubes taped to her arm.
“You made it.” She held out her free hand.
He grasped her fingers, disturbed to find her grip clammy and weak. “What happened?”