“Attraction comes from the unlikeliest of sources,” she finally said, standing once more. “Come on. I have to buy something to compensate for all the trouble I put that poor saleswoman through.”
“You should wear something short,” Fiona said as Siobhan looked at a normal gown. “And red. Fire engine red.”
Siobhan laughed. “What are you talking about?”
Fiona grinned, holding up her glass. “Just think of what kind of fits his mum and mine would have.”
“You’re evil,” Siobhan said, unable to help herself from picturing the look on Catriona’s and Aileen’s faces if she did something so brazen.
Fiona gave a half shrug. “I wore a short, red dress once. Mother said she would disown me.”
Siobhan laughed imagining the fit Aileen must have had seeing the very proper Fiona in a feisty red dress.
“And you know, Siobhan, it might not be a bad idea,” Fiona smiled at her friend.
Siobhan laughed and shook her head at her friend. For the future, maybe. For now, there are more than enough sparks and embers burning in the palace.
7:35 p.m.
Diamanta stared at the sinking sun, wondering at what point would the sky explode into the thousands of stars she used to count as a child, when times were simpler, and her life was as well. She had tried and failed so many times now, and the thought of carrying forward, to right what had been wronged, seemed just a silly dream, a fantasy really. There was nothing else for her, no victory in what she had tried to do, no relish in the defeat of what the king would taste yet again.
There was nothing, and she in turn, was a failure.
“Mother, what are you doing out here without a coat on? Do you not feel the chill in the air?”
She turned to see Javert walking toward her, one of her beloved colorful shawls in his hand and she drank in the sight of him. He would be so disappointed in her once the truth came out, upset the woman that raised him had been an utter failure in all senses.
She could not stand to see that hurt in his eyes, that anger that matched her own. He was her greatest triumph. “I do not feel the cold.”
“Then you must have drank too much at dinner,” he chuckled, throwing the shawl around her shoulders. “Snow is in the air once again; do you not taste it?”
She reached up and patted his cheek lightly, giving him a weathered smile. “I am nothing but an old woman.”
His eyes darkened to a burnished gold, and she saw another resemblance, one that had haunted her all these years.
“Are you well, Mother? This is not like you.”
She waved him off, her heart heavy with what had to come to light soon. “I am fine. Just the cold settling in my bones.”
“But you just said you felt nothing,” he remarked with a worried laugh. “I believe you need rest, Mother. I hear you pacing at night. You are not sleeping again.”
He was right. She wasn’t sleeping but she could not tell him why. He had enough to worry about and this was her burden, and hers alone. It had been her assignment to see it through. “I will take more medicine then.”
“I love this country, you know? It was this I missed most when you took me away. This peace, this beauty.” He tucked his hands in his pockets, looking at the dying sun with her. “It’s something I never grow weary of.”
Diamanta felt the tears form in her eyes as she watched him. No, she would never grow weary of sharing these moments with him in the country where he was born, where he rightfully belonged.
She might have failed her mission, but she would not fail her son.
34
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
9:00 a.m.
This morning Angus was in a mood to be irritated, Siobhan knew, and there was nothing better than breakfast with his mother to suit Angus’s dark mood all too well.
She hated him for what he’d asked of her, for forcing her to be a part of this mad play, but at the same time, she understood him. Siobhan knew better than most what desperation and unrequited love drove one to do.
The Dowager Princess set her cup down with the finality of a mason slapping bricks in mortar and looked at him. The clinking china interrupted a silence that seemed weighed down by a hundred conversations mother and son never had.
“I suppose you’re angry about what I did,” she said, tilting her chin in the air, like the Queen of Sheba upon her throne, “but you must know I had your best interests in mind.”
He simply folded his arms and looked at her. She would try a saint on Sunday.
“Did you hear what I said?” Catriona asked louder.
At the other side of the long and formal table, Angus closed his eyes briefly and prayed for patience; a marvel in and of itself, as he’d never been the praying sort, and certainly not religious.
I heard you, all right. Even as he wished he hadn’t, or that he’d misheard or mistaken her. “I won’t let you do it again,” he said. “I won’t let you drive another away.”
Another? Siobhan inhaled sharply.
“And we get to the heart of it,” Catriona said, waving a footman forward for more tea. “Your precious, silly love.” Then she turned to Siobhan. “Not you, of course.”
She turned back to Angus who, despite his silence, revealed more than he should have.
She had wondered at the way he’d spoken of love weeks earlier: It is not the stuff of poems and fairy tales.
And while she’d kept from asking if Catriona had hurt the girl he’d once loved, he’d answered her nonetheless: As though she’d held a pistol to her head.
“And this one?” Catriona prompted, waving a hand in Siobhan’s direction, oblivious to her thoughts, and only focused on goading her son. “Do you love her as well?”
This is a mistake. Siobhan stiffened with silent realization. She didn’t want this. Any of it. She didn’t want him to fabricate a love, didn’t want to play-act it. When his confession came, she wanted it to be for real, freely offered, never lied for the sake of others.
She looked to Angus, recognizing the silent fury on his face, knowing that he cared a bit for her, but love?
She already knew why he couldn’t give her his love. All the little moments of laughter and caring and undeniable lust, probably paled in comparison to his love for another, long gone.
“Don’t leave the poor girl wondering, Angus Augustus,” Catriona fairly drawled. “She is a royal, after all.”
Angus looked to Siobhan and time seemed to slow.
Siobhan could hear her heart beating, knowing she could not believe the words he said, whatever they might be.
She did not want him to say he loved her. She didn’t think she could bear hearing the words for the first time and know they weren’t true.
And, somehow, strangely, she did not want him to not say that he loved her. She didn’t wish to be the means to his end, the royal broodmare.
“Siobhan knows precisely how I feel about her.”
It was the faintest praise she’d ever received, and it stung more harshly than all the aristocratic scorn she’d ever heard. With those simple words, Siobhan was through.
She wanted to be more than that. She wanted to be more than he offered. She no longer cared about any politeness—not in the face of this moment. Not in the face of her desire for something else. For more.
She didn’t want to be a part of this back-and-forth, this battle between powerful, wealthy people who didn’t know a thing about what was really important in the world.
She folded her napkin into a perfect square and stood.
Angus stood with her, his ridiculous manners seeming to somehow matter in this, but not in the rest.
Siobhan bit back a laugh at that, turning to Catriona and inclining her head, she said, “I find I’ve lost my appetite, Your Royal Highness.”
“No doubt,” she replied in a voice devoid of surprise.
“I shall take my leave,” Siobhan replied.
“I shall come with you,” Angus said, already movin
g around the table. “We can have breakfast in our rooms.”
He looked positively gleeful that his mother could not accept her. So, this is the entire point of this breakfast. Even if I’m royal, I am not acceptable. Not to mother. But not even to the son?
“No,” she said, the single word sounding like a gunshot in the room.
Angus stopped, halfway around the foot of the table.
“I shall take my leave,” she repeated, glad for Ewan’s lessons. “Alone.”
He moved once more, his long legs eating the distance between them with speed and purpose.
“You needn’t be alone,” he said, the words firm and strangely forthright before he added, softly, “She needn’t come between us, Lieben.”
The endearment did her in. What a terrible lie he told. What a terrible mistake she’d made.
She lifted one hand, staying him again.
“She’s not between us,” she said, her voice calm and cool and filled with truth. “She is not the problem.”
“It certainly isn’t you who is the problem.”
“I’m quite aware of who the problem is.”
He looked as though he’d been struck, but Siobhan took no pleasure in the moment.
She was too busy keeping her back straight and her tears at bay as she turned and left the room.
Siobhan was turning out to be very good at making scandalous exits and absolute rubbish at knowing what to do next.
She couldn’t return to her rooms, as she did not wish to be found, and she couldn’t leave the house, because she had nowhere to go.
She did not think Angus would take well to her appropriating one of his cars, either way. He’d likely consider it stealing.
And it went without saying, her bodyguards would follow.
It wasn’t much fun snooping around Lenox Palace with a dozen SAS type men trailing along behind her, but Siobhan managed.
After a while she pretended they weren’t there, just as she pretended His Royal Pain-in-the-Ass was nothing more than an annoying brat that could be taught, and went to her jewelry floor.
Siobhan sighed wistfully as she paused by a vaulted window on the bridge which linked one wing to another to savor the view of the tranquil snowcapped mountains.
At that very moment, as if summoned by her wayward thoughts, Angus walked into her line of vision in the bailey below, leading one of the largest black chargers she’d ever seen.
Siobhan started to turn away, but her feet would no more walk her away from the window than her eyes would avert themselves, and in spite of her best intentions to ignore him, she stood watching him.
Love certainly was not at all the rapturous emotion portrayed by poets. So far it had brought her only jealousy, doubt, fear, and pain. No, it was much more like a dire illness complete with unpleasant aches in the pit of her stomach and the hot flush of fever.
No, love was not at all as it was represented. A falsehood no doubt perpetuated by others in love who knew the true nature of this plague and wanted the rest of the world to be as miserable as they were. Unfortunately, discovering the truth meant one were already beyond hope.
It was such a simple truth: unrequited love reeked.
35
11:00 p.m
“Tell me your day was better than mine,” Angus said, as he exited the bathroom, hair still damp from his shower, wearing just a black silk robe.
“Mine was all about our wedding. I went through a thousand and one lists of unending things that needed to be ordered.”
Siobhan found it funny to be having this ‘How was your day, dear?’ conversation with him. As if they were a long-wed couple and not a couple to-be-wed in less than two months.
But the two of them had started to fall into rhythms, the only possible disruption being Siobhan’s desire to meet her relatives, which was kept mute by mutual agreement for the time being.
Each night after dinner, they ravished each other—even if he’d managed to drop in over the day.
During those stolen daytime trysts, he’d have her ride him on whatever settee was near or take her atop her desk, with his hand over her mouth to mute her desperate moans as he sunk his teeth into her neck to stifle his own shouts.
If he came before her, he’d drop down and use his mouth to bring her over the edge. The first time he’d done this, she’d cried, “Oh! Ohhh…” and felt obligated to say something before he tasted his own seed. He’d answered, “It’s me mingled with you.”
Every time he brought her to climax, she grew more sexually confident. And he grew cockier. Each of them found the other’s changes hot as hell.
Sometimes, the things they imagined proved anatomically impossible, and they ended up collapsed in a laughing heap on the floor. Sometimes—like the time he took her in a frenzy from behind, standing up, with her plastered against the wall—it was unbiasedly good.
Once the worst of their need had been slaked, they would read the newspapers, then the estate correspondence together, before indulging in lovemaking again.
He always wanted her opinion on things. More than once he’d told her her insight rivaled that of his best advisors at times.
But tonight, there was something different in him and Siobhan chalked it up to the private dinner he had with his mother and aunt—to settle some rules, he had told her.
“Some newspapers,” she said, “are saying you are making a dreadful mistake in marrying me.”
“They’re wrong.” Despite her smile, there was something in her eyes which told him she was sad.
“All of them, whomever they are.”
He joined her on the chaise-lounge styled sofa Siobhan had ordered for them in front of the TV, pulling her on his lap and kissing her. “You are the best choice I have ever made.”
There was a light in her green eyes when she looked at him, one that made him feel a thousand feet tall. He could have conquered an entire army with her at his side. Whatever it was that could go wrong would come out right.
It was almost too much to believe.
And so instead, he dipped his head and kissed her again.
He kissed her with no finesse, no gentleness that was part and parcel of their nightly trysts.
He kissed her with all the emotion he hadn’t shown since he’d kidnapped her—fiercely, savagely, as if he’d returned from a long absence, or was about to go away, and needed to remind her of everything they had together.
His arms came around her, wrapping her to him as tightly as chains, his body a scorching heat against hers.
He gave her kiss after kiss, scarcely allowing her to draw breath and she scarcely noticed when he lifted her up and set her on the low center table in front of the chaise.
He left her mouth long enough to suck on her earlobe, neck, collarbone—little spots of pleasure he had mapped and treasured—as he untied the knot on her wraparound dress, pulled it open, and disengaged her bra.
“God, Angel,” he breathed against her breast. “What will I do without you?”
“Why would you ever have to know? I’m not going anywhere.”
His mouth closed over her nipple and she gave herself over to him.
Somehow that fact—that he’d been so desperate for her he’d not even bothered to remove their clothes all the way, he’d pushed her on a hard table instead of taking her on the chaise—only heightened her desire all the more.
There was nothing but the heat of his tongue against her, the savagery of his hands on her hips as he tore the thin ties of her panties, his fingers searching for her. Her body was slick to receive him.
“I’m here,” she said, undoing the belt of his robe and rubbing his pulsing hard erection over his black underwear. “I’m not going anywhere.”
But he didn’t seem to hear her.
He pushed his underwear down barely enough to bare his all too potent arousal and when he plunged in, her tight muscles squeezing his large girth, he let out a harsh shout.
She gasped at that first intrusion. Angu
s was a big man and his cock was no exception, stretching her insides, making her arch her back and dig her nails in his biceps.
“God,” he groaned as with a powerful flex of his hips he buried himself all the way inside her. “You’re so tight, so hot.”
There wasn’t anything pristine and proper about this lovemaking.
It was something far more feral, an elemental force she’d never experienced before. His demanding mouth on her breasts; his unyielding fingers on her clitoris; his hard and forceful thrusts inside her.
The glorious slide of his body into hers seemed even more delicious, even more forbidden.
“I want you,” he said fiercely on her lips, his chestnut hair falling down around them. “God, I want you. Why can’t I have you?”
“You can.” She clenched him tightly inside herself. “You do.”
But he didn’t speak in response. Instead, he took her harder, faster, making her come with a scream at the swift orgasm that shattered reality into bright white stars of pleasure.
He seemed almost in a frenzy as he chased his own climax, hammering himself inside her in wild thrusts, devouring her mouth. He growled one final time and came.
As his climax passed, his kiss faded from savage to sweet. He gently pulled away, took in a shuddering breath, and looked around, as if to verify he had just had his way with her on top of the table.
Panting, he disengaged from her and sat on his heels.
“I had something for you,” he said, gesturing to a black velvet box which was forgotten on the chaise. “Well, I have…but…”
She sat up gingerly. “If you say one word other than God, that was magnificent, I will smite you,” she said.
“God,”—he let out a laugh—“you are magnificent.”
He picked her up in his arms and took her to bed. After he’d taken his robe and her dress off, he took the long diamond necklace with an enormous emerald drop from the box and fastened it around her neck, arranging the emerald at the top of the valley between her breasts.