CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
R OSIE ’ S COFFEE WAS cold when she was reunited with it, but what did that matter? She could easily make more coffee. It had been so completely worth it for that. Her cheeks flushed as she replayed how they’d spent the last hour—in the shower, fast and desperate, and then in his bedroom, wet and uncaring, slow and languid, an exploration that had left her breathless for how thorough they’d been. When he’d caught her hands and pinned them above her head with one of his much larger hands, she’d felt imprisoned for his pleasure, and hers, in a way that had seemed to melt her spine.
‘Hungry?’ He entered the kitchen a moment after her, and when she glanced at him, her heart sped up a little. He had dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a crisp white polo shirt with the collar slightly lifted. Her eyes devoured him as if she hadn’t seen him in weeks, and the quirk of his lips showed exactly what she was doing. Mortified, she spun away, back to the coffee, trying to kick her brain into gear.
‘I can make eggs,’ he said. ‘Or pancakes?’
She tried to catch her breath. ‘I’m not really a big breakfast person. I’ll just have an apple with my coffee.’
But he came to stand behind her, so close she could feel his warm breath at her nape. ‘You might not normally eat breakfast, but do you usually expend that much energy this early in the day?’
Her cheeks felt as hot as the sun. She didn’t turn around to face him, but she shook her head a little.
‘I’m starving. Eat your apple, if you’d like, but I’ll make plenty.’
In the end, he cooked bacon, eggs, grilled tomato and mushrooms, and it smelled so good that when he offered her a plate, she agreed with a small smile. ‘Thank you. It looks too good to resist.’
‘Hey, that’s just what I was thinking,’ he murmured, winking so she couldn’t fail to understand his meaning. He sat opposite her at the kitchen counter and owing to the width of the bench—or lack thereof—their legs couldn’t help getting tangled. Neither made an effort to move.
Sebastian ate with a kind of gusto that she now realized was inherent in him. No matter what he was doing, he pursued it with all of himself. Defending his mother, building his business, becoming the next in line to the throne of Cavalonia. Making love.
Her fingers trembled a little as she stabbed a mushroom—buttery and perfectly seasoned—and lifted it to her lips. She groaned a little at the delicious taste. ‘You really are an amazing cook,’ she said.
His laugh was a deep, husky sound that pulled at her insides. ‘It’s just a fry-up.’
‘It’s delicious.’
‘I’m glad you like it.’
Their eyes locked and Rosie had the strangest sense that they were caught in a silent communication, as if their minds were speaking when their lips weren’t. She blinked away, looking towards the horizon. Though they were inside, and the house was cool, she could already tell that the day would be warm.
‘A storm is due this afternoon,’ he said conversationally. ‘We should make the most of the morning.’
She was familiar with Cavalonia’s weather system, those summer storms that often seemed to break in the afternoon, or just as the evening wrapped around them. The smell of rain in the air, the electricity of lightning, the bursting of the day’s heat.
‘What do you have in mind?’
‘How do you feel about hunting for our lunch?’
Her eyes flared. ‘Hunting?’
‘Well...’ He grinned in a way that was boyishly charming. Her heart stammered. ‘Fishing, at least.’
‘Oh,’ she said, relaxing. ‘That sounds fun.’
And it did. But not because she had any particular penchant for catching fish, so much as the prospect of spending the morning with her husband was strangely alluring.
She told herself it was in the service of her stated aim, the purpose for this trip: to get to know him better. But there was a part of her that had begun to worry that the time they were spending together was coming to mean more to her than it should. That she was enjoying it more than she ought.
So what?
It wasn’t reality.
It was a fantasy.
A bubble of escapism from her normal life, and their normal marriage.
She didn’t care about him. Or maybe she did care about him, just a little bit, but so what? He was different than what she’d thought, but that just meant she’d been willing to revise her opinion of him. There was no danger in starting to respect the guy, in maybe even liking him a little. What mattered was that she didn’t love him, and she never would. This was a perfectly sensible marriage of convenience with clearly delineated boundaries. They had a contract to that effect, for goodness’ sake. There was no risk here. She had made sure of that!
And yet, was it any wonder that Rosie, who had such limited experience with relationships and affection, should be finding it difficult, at times, to remember that this was really, at its heart, pragmatic? Of course she was. She was only human, and this situation was a lot . Sebastian was a lot. But Rosie had spent her whole life avoiding entanglements that threatened her ordered, emotionally safe life—and of course she’d be able to do so now. No matter how attractive she found him, no matter how much she enjoyed their chemistry, she could handle this.
Before long, they’d be back in Cavalonia and when they returned to the capital city, everything would be different. Or rather, it would be the same as before.
Despite her desperate attempt to cling to rational thought, the idea of going back to the palace—and the way things had been before—brought a small frown to her face, forming a divot between her brows.
‘What’s wrong?’
She glanced at him, her frown deepening. What did she want? For more? More than the marriage they’d been living in for the last five months? For what they’d started to share on the island, but in the palace? He’d already said he’d never live there.
But she could move in with him.
She caught herself midway through the thought.
That’s not what they were, and it was definitely not what she wanted. Was it? Confusion rattled through her.
She closed her eyes on a wave of nausea, as an image popped into her mind of Rowena—her father’s fourth mistress, that Rosie could remember. She’d been a nurse, and very kind. She’d started coming to the house to spend time with Rosie, even when Grieg wasn’t home. Rosie had liked her.
The ending of their relationship had destroyed Rowena.
She’d still tried to see Rosie, but hadn’t been able to get through even five minutes without bursting into tears.
Rosie heard, six months later, that Rowena had fallen asleep behind the wheel of her car on the way home from a late shift. It was plausible, of course, but all Rosie could remember was the older woman’s plaintive cry that she didn’t want to live without Grieg and Rosie in her life. She’d wondered, ever since Rowena’s death, if she’d actually fallen asleep behind the wheel, or if it had been intentional. Guilt and grief had mingled together. Though she’d only been thirteen years old, she’d carried that burden a long time, wondering if she could have done something differently.
‘Wife.’ Sebastian’s hand on hers shook her out of the memory. ‘What’s the matter? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.’
Emotions swirled inside of her. Pain, sadness and yes, determination. Because those women had let their lives be destroyed by Grieg. He was like Sebastian in some ways: far too handsome for his own good, easily able to charm whomever he wished, and quite cold when needed. Rosie blinked across at Sebastian and had no doubts that Sebastian would cast her aside when it suited him, per their marriage agreement.
This was not real. This was not meaningful. And she refused to hope for more—not when it wasn’t on offer, and not when even the desire for more could destroy a woman.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, resolute, removing her hand and forcing a brittle smile to her face. ‘Fishing sounds great.’
In the end, despite the sobering of her mood, fishing was great. Unlike the handful of times she’d gone as a girl, and spent hours casting in a line, waiting and waiting, and catching nothing, Sebastian took them to a cove with an old timber jetty and they cast off from the very end of it. She caught her first fish within ten minutes, and almost as soon as she threw her line back in, another fish availed itself of the bait. Sebastian focused on the crab pots he’d dangled over the edge, and in a gesture of pure chivalry, handled the bait and fish removal for Rosie, so she didn’t even have to get her hands dirty.
‘Why do I feel like you do this a lot?’
Sebastian grinned. ‘Because I do. Or rather, I did. Before.’
‘Before you came home?’
He nodded once, his handsome features set in a firm mask of concentration.
‘With Mark?’ she prompted.
His eyes slid to hers. Her heart thumped, but she stole herself against such a silly response. ‘He loved to fish. He loved all sports, actually, but fishing was one of those things, he always said, that combined his greatest loves—family time, because we would go together, the importance of feeling like you could keep yourself alive without all the modern crap, like supermarkets, and the peace, and time, to contemplate life. He was a deep thinker, and it wasn’t unusual for us to spend a whole day fishing without saying a word.’
‘Even as a kid?’ she prompted.
‘I liked it.’
‘You were a deep thinker too?’
‘I found I could keep my mind busy,’ he said.
‘Where would you fish?’
‘There was a stream just a mile or so from our house. When I was older, I’d ride my bike down and throw the line in after school, always trying to impress Mark with my haul.’ He grinned, but there was something behind the grin, something she wanted to understand.
‘Was he impressed?’
‘If there was reason to be. Mark was lavish with praise when deserved, but he didn’t believe in gilding the lily.’
‘It sounds like you were very close to him.’
‘He raised me.’
‘You loved him?’
Sebastian was silent. ‘I am very grateful to him.’
‘But?’
‘But nothing. He made my mother very happy.’
She contemplated that for a while, trying to imagine what it had been like for a little boy to accept that reality. He would have been happy for his mother, even when he missed his father and grandfather and old life in Cavalonia.
‘He was a great man. I wish he was still here.’
‘I’m sure you do,’ she said sympathetically.
‘What about your father?’ he asked, handing the rod back so Rosie could throw the line in. She did so, unaware of the deep frown lines that had formed on her brow.
‘You said you’re not close?’ Sebastian prompted, when a minute passed without Rosie’s response.
‘We’re not.’ She’d been guarded about this conversation for a long time.
‘Were you ever?’
She was glad he hadn’t immediately launched into “why not?” because she wasn’t sure how to answer that question.
‘Perhaps when I was younger.’
They were quiet for several moments. Rosie moved her rod a little, but it seemed the fish had calmed down and were no longer biting the moment she cast in.
‘Then something changed?’
Of course he wasn’t going to let it go. He was taking a less direct approach, but Sebastian was not a man to have mysteries in his life. He wanted to know about this, and he was teasing the information from her in a way that was gentle and non-threatening. Never mind the fact he kept his own cards close to his chest.
She sighed a little. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Did you become a teenage rebel? Drugs? Alcohol? Wild parties?’
She sent him a droll look. ‘If I had done any of that, don’t you think the media would have dug it up by now?’
He arched a brow.
‘I was almost depressingly straitlaced,’ she said with a lift of one shoulder. ‘I was more of a tea drinker than anything else.’
‘So, what happened?’
She tugged on the fishing rod. ‘It’s hard to explain.’
‘We’ve got time.’
She bit into her lower lip. ‘I guess it wasn’t just one thing. As I grew older, I became aware of things I couldn’t have understood as a child. Lifestyle choices he made, for one.’
‘Such as?’
‘You know my mother is in a coma?’
‘I remember that, from our wedding arrangements,’ he confirmed with a nod, but his eyes had softened in a way that spoke of sympathy—something she hadn’t expected from Sebastian—and her eyes stung with the threat of tears. ‘She was in an accident?’
Rosie ignored the compunction at the small fib—one she’d used for so long that it was now an accepted part of her narrative. They didn’t talk about what had really happened. For Rosie, it was too painful, a constant refreshing of guilt, of having been the instrument of her mother’s demise.
‘Yes. I never knew her—I was very young at the time. And my father never got over it. He’s still not. He had a lot of affairs with a lot of women, and rather than explaining that he was still very much in love with his comatose wife, he led them on, fully aware that they were falling in love with him, and just not capable of caring.’ She shook her head in an angry gesture of condemnation. ‘I saw these women getting their hearts broken time and time again, and at first, I didn’t understand, or perhaps I didn’t want to put the blame where it belonged. But over time, I came to see that he was being ruthlessly cavalier with their hearts, that he was almost seeming to enjoy it. To punish them for living, with my mother in that state.’
Sebastian’s eyes bore into hers. ‘It is very difficult to accept the imperfections of someone we love.’
It was the perfect thing to say, because it struck at the heart of what she had struggled with. Loving her father, even when he’d disappointed her so badly.
It made her willing to continue, when she never discussed this with anyone, ever.
‘At the same time, as I grew up, I started to look more and more like my mother. You might have thought that would make him care for me more, to see so much of her in me, but it was the opposite. He found it almost impossible to sit across the table from me and share a meal. He would drink too much and tell me not to speak, because even my voice sounded like hers.’ The words were hollow, repeated from memory, and she tried not to let herself feel that pain again. ‘He sent me away to boarding school when I was fifteen, and it was a saving grace. I no longer had to witness his litany of disastrous relationships, except when I came home on holidays, and then, he made himself quite scarce, because I continued to remind him of her.’
Silence, except for the gentle lapping of the ocean against the jetty supports, hung between them while Sebastian absorbed this.
‘Do you see him often?’
‘A couple of times a year. For his birthday, usually for Christmas.’
‘And your mother?’
Rosie’s lips twisted into a soft, melancholic smile. ‘I see her more often. Usually every couple of weeks, whenever I can get away. I know it’s silly, but I like to paint her fingernails.’ She glanced across at him, wondering if he’d think it was a waste of time. ‘It’s something I figure we might have done, had things...if things had been different.’
‘Is there any hope of recovery?’
‘I gave up that hope a long time ago—it was too hard, otherwise. Doctors have always been honest with us. There is the possibility—you hear of cases, every now and again. But it’s so rare. She is comfortable and cared for, which might be as good as it gets.’
It was depressing and upsetting to contemplate and yet she was glad they’d spoken about it. It was such a huge part of Rosie, had been for so long, that somehow it just felt right that Sebastian should understand this about her. Wasn’t that the point of getting to know one another?
‘Her name is Juliet?’
Rosie nodded.
‘And you are Rosalind. Shakespearean?’
Rosie smiled. ‘My mother told my father how much she wanted to name me after a Shakespearean heroine and thought long and hard about whom to choose. She had always felt that her own name disposed her to some form of tragedy or another—perhaps she was right. She wanted my name to be the opposite: a beacon of strength and confidence, and she definitely wanted me to have my own happy ending.’
‘Like Rosalind?’
‘Yes.’
He lifted a hand to her cheek, ran a finger over it. ‘I’m sorry about your father.’
Her eyes shifted to his; emotions tightened in her chest. ‘There’s no point resenting him for any of it. He has made his choices in life. I’ve made mine.’
‘And do you regret any of yours, Rosalind?’
Something yanked at her fishing line, but she was so captivated by Sebastian that she didn’t register the movement. ‘That’s an almost impossible question to answer. Who doesn’t have regrets?’
‘I don’t.’
‘None?’
‘Not really.’
She furrowed her brow. ‘Oh, to be so self-assured.’
‘I make decisions I’m willing to stand by.’
‘Always?’
‘To this point.’
She laughed a little unevenly; her line jerked again.
‘But you don’t?’ he prompted.
‘I don’t know. What about our marriage?’
‘What about it?’
‘Surely you must regret it?’
‘It was the only way to bring my mother home. I’m comfortable with that decision.’
Her eyes fluttered closed for the briefest of moments, while she processed a strange, tightening pain in her chest accompanied shortly after by a swooping of her stomach.
‘Do you regret it?’
A week ago, she might have said yes, but even then, she’d been comfortable with the deal she’d made.
‘No,’ she answered, simply. ‘I suppose there are times when I wish things were different, but we each got what we needed out of this deal. I can make my peace with it, by reconceptualising our marriage as a partnership—more of a business arrangement.’
‘How sensible,’ he drawled, and she wondered at the slight inflection of anger in his tone.
‘Why does that bother you?’ The time for obfuscation and pretence had passed. They had shared too much with one another, understood too much.
‘How do you know it does?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘Because I know you, way better now than I did even forty-eight hours ago. You’re annoyed with me.’
‘I’m annoyed with the sentiment.’
His eyes narrowed.
‘I’m annoyed with your father, for demonstrating again and again all the reasons for avoiding relationships.’
‘We’re not in a relationship,’ she said, her voice breathy and rushed.
‘That’s my point. Would you have willingly married a virtual stranger if it weren’t for the fact your father has made you completely set against the idea of a real relationship?’
Her lips parted in surprise. ‘I was engaged before you.’
‘Yes, to someone else with whom you could have a loveless, transactional marriage.’
‘How dare you?’ she asked, but the words lacked fire, because he was right.
‘You deserve more than this, Rosalind. You should never have agreed to marry me.’
‘I told you—’ she jutted her chin defiantly ‘—there is more than enough in our marriage to make it worthwhile. And before you start banging on about the money, you know that’s not what I mean.’
‘I know,’ he said, surprising her by readily agreeing. ‘I was wrong about you.’
Again, her lips parted, and her line trembled, hard enough now for it to finally get Rosie’s attention. She was glad for the excuse to look away from Sebastian, to focus on pulling the fish from the water. She reeled the fish in but the more she reeled, the more the rod bent.
‘It’s big,’ she said, over her shoulder, but it was unnecessary; Sebastian had seen and was moving to stand behind her, his bigger body and stronger arms working with hers, easily, seamlessly, like a well-oiled machine, combining their efforts to remove from the water an enormous black rucksack.
‘Oh my God.’ Despite the tension Rosie had been feeling only moments ago, she burst out laughing. ‘Catch of the day?’
‘You never know, it could have hidden treasure.’
‘Or some poor kid’s holiday kit.’
They drew it onto the jetty, a puddle at their feet, and Sebastian crouched down, unzipping it. ‘Hat, sunscreen, water bottle, very waterlogged books. You were right.’
‘Poor kid,’ she said, smiling up at him. He smiled back, and everything was right again.
‘We have enough,’ he said, eyeing the icebox that had ten good-sized fish. ‘Let me pull up the pots, and then we’ll go back.’
‘Oh.’ Disappointment spread through her. She was enjoying herself.
‘The storm is coming,’ he reminded her, gesturing towards the horizon. ‘By the time we walk home, it’ll be here.’
‘Right, of course.’ She hadn’t even noticed the darkening clouds. That was the Sebastian effect, she supposed. He was so much—too much—he just took up all of her oxygen and ability to focus on anything else. He drew in the two ropes to reveal several crabs in the pots and Rosie watched, fascinated, as he expertly hooked the pots together for easier transport. The crabs nipped their claws, but Sebastian wasn’t worried.
The cove was not far from the house, and they didn’t talk on the short return journey. Rosie was in her own mind, thinking about their morning, their conversation, about the ebbs and flows that made being here with Sebastian so interesting, even when it was tense. She supposed it had been a long time since she’d done this—gotten to know someone new. Besides the king, there wasn’t really anyone in her life she talked to. It had been nice to open up to Sebastian, and even nicer when he responded in a way that showed he was genuinely interested in her life.
While Rosie showered, Sebastian set to work filleting the fish and preparing the crabs. While she’d enjoyed fishing, she could honestly say she wasn’t sorry to miss either of those tasks, and she took her time blow drying her hair and rubbing moisturiser all over her body when she was done.
By the time she stepped out into the kitchen, the storm had arrived. Rather than the pristine blue sky, they were now engulfed by dark grey, and rain fell to the ground in big fat drops, slowly at first, and then much faster, like making popcorn but in reverse. Out at sea, lightning forked through the sky, so everything was momentarily overbright.
And she shivered, for no reason she could think of. She wasn’t cold—this was still summer, and though the rain would cool things down, it would also bring humidity. No, it was more the darkness of the sky and the persistence of the rain. She couldn’t help but feel an ominous weight beginning to bear down on her. If she were prone to superstition, she might think the storm was in some way a warning, but she had never been one to believe in mystical signs, and so she pushed the feeling away and stepped into the kitchen without any intention of letting a simple storm ruin her mood.