CHAPTER NINE
“F INALLY ,” M AGNUS SAID when Lexi walked out of her bedroom in a robe and slippers the following morning.
After a long, stilted dinner with Katla and Sorr, she’d left Magnus with a few cross words about things moving too fast and locked herself in her room to call her mother. He’d peeked in on her a few hours later, finding her fast asleep, so he’d left her to sleep alone.
Twelve hours later, he was concerned enough that he’d canceled a morning meeting. He set aside the report he was reading and rose to press the backs of his fingers against her cheeks and forehead. She was warm, but not too warm. Pink, but not flushed or glassy-eyed.
“I was about to put a mirror under your nose. Are you ill?”
“Yesterday was a lot.” She blinked foggily. “So is assembling a baby.” She sent a startled look to the servants who bustled in to reset the breakfast table for her. “It’s only nine thirty, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but we have a lunch engagement.”
“Thank you.” She smiled as a young woman set a dish of yogurt and berries in front of her. “Should I skip ordering eggs? What time is lunch? Will it be here?”
“Late. At the cottage.” He nodded for the eggs.
“What cottage?” Lexi asked.
“My mother’s. The one where she grew up. When I called to ask her to come for the wedding, she wanted to meet you right away so I had them flown in this morning.”
“Them?”
“My sister and her family live with her. The house in Bergen is very big.” Magnus had provided it once he had access to palace funds, so his mother would have the privacy she deserved. “I usually visit her there, but she still has her parents’ cottage here. She’s staying until the wedding.”
“Magnus—”
“You need to meet her regardless, Lexi.”
Lexi paused with her spoonful of berries halfway to her mouth. “I guess this is her grandchild, isn’t it? Her first? No, you just said your sister has children.”
“Two, yes. She’s still on maternity leave with the second.”
“What about your brother? Will he be there?”
“I don’t know.”
Lexi delved for more, but he looked away, signaling for a coffee he didn’t want, loath to explain that the last time he’d seen Freyr had been his brother’s wedding, but it had been strained by the fact that Sveyn had been there. They hadn’t had much contact since.
Magnus couldn’t seem to talk to his siblings. How was he supposed to talk about them? He turned to a more pleasant topic.
“We should discuss our honeymoon, since security will have to prescreen the location. I can only clear one week. Do you have any thoughts on where you’d like to spend it?”
“Seriously?” she asked snippily. “I’ve told you I’m not ready to marry you and, frankly, the only place I’m eager to go is back to bed—” She winced and covered her eyes. “I mean...”
“Oh, no.” He chuckled, enjoying this. “You can’t back out now. You said it so that’s where we’ll spend it. I’ll tell Ulmer to keep a chiropractor on standby.”
“Stop it,” she said firmly, still blushing. “I’m saying I’m not interested in more travel. And if we don’t get married, we don’t need a honeymoon.” She poked her tongue out at him!
They were getting married. He drew the line at bullying her into it, but he’d find a way to convince her.
In the meanwhile, he quietly told Ulmer they would honeymoon at the health spa on one of the smaller islands. It was a pretty location with natural pools of different temperatures. At least two of them were touted as beneficial in pregnancy so he knew it would be safe for her.
Whatever lightness had come into his mood while contemplating his honeymoon had dissipated by the time they left for the cottage.
The palace was situated on the south side of the mouth of the fjord. The cottage was all the way on the north side, but they took the ferry, which cut forty minutes off the drive.
Forty minutes that Magnus could have used to brood.
Family visits shouldn’t be this oppressive! In many ways they were no different from other appearances. Dress up, show up, shake hands, listen politely, pose for a photo if asked.
They weren’t even strangers. Well. They were to some extent, he supposed. He had a standing appointment in his calendar to call his mother and made a point of seeing her a few times a year, typically around birthdays or holidays. He had attended his siblings’ weddings and texted appropriate felicitations on other life events when prompted by Ulmer, but he was no longer close with them.
Today, that felt more significant than usual. He wasn’t sure why. He wasn’t worried that his mother would say something to upset Lexi or the other way around. He wasn’t embarrassed by his roots, either.
His visits with family were always prickly, though. Rather than address things, they swept them under the rug, but they were still there—his mother’s pain, his father’s abandonment, Magnus’s abrupt departure to Isleif and his sense of being cut off from his brother and sister against his will.
Yes, he did feel blamed for it, even though it was merely the hand he’d been dealt.
He had a feeling Lexi would navigate all of it without any problem, though. She was a people-pleaser, barely in the palace twenty-four hours and the staff was already charmed by her.
Something about introducing her to his family grated on him, though. Some of it was possessiveness, he acknowledged. They were new and she was his. He wasn’t ready to share her, but there was more to it.
A latent fear that she would take sides, perhaps? Take their side?
“Are we here?” Lexi had been watching out the window with great interest and now sat up taller as they turned into the long drive. “How does she keep sheep if she doesn’t live here?”
“She sharecrops with a neighbor and lets the house for vacation rentals. Security has gone through here. Don’t worry.”
“I can honestly say I’ve never felt so safe as when I’m with you,” she said wryly.
That remark should have pleased him. It did, before the SUV rolled to a stop outside the stone cottage and an unexpected threat emerged with the rest of the people pouring out the front door.
First was his mother, Truda, with her white-blond hair coming out of its knot and her smile faltering as she shaded her eyes. His four-year-old niece was next. She jumped up and down and waved madly.
His sister, Dalla, hurried out to set her hand on the little girl’s shoulder, trying to keep her feet on the ground. Dalla’s husband came out with a swaddled infant against his shoulder. Then Magnus’s brother Freyr and his redheaded wife. She looked almost as pregnant as Lexi.
Last was a man who had a lot more gray in his beard than he’d had when Magnus had spotted him at Freyr’s wedding two years ago.
“Why the hell wasn’t I advised he was here?” Magnus barked. And why was he looping his arm around Truda?
“He was on the list, sir.” The bodyguard in the passenger seat took out his phone. “I understood it had been forwarded to you—”
“Oh, for God’s sake. It doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“Who—?” Lexi asked warily.
“My father. Sveyn.”
As far as Lexi was concerned, it was a pleasant afternoon. Everyone was polite and friendly if careful not to overstep. The women had a lot of questions about her pregnancy and how Lexi and Magnus had met. The men asked if she knew this or that action star. The food was excellent and the children were adorable.
In many ways, they were the kind of close-knit family Lexi had always longed for, with their cheeky asides and small digressions into each other’s lives.
It would have been a perfect day if Magnus hadn’t been such a looming presence through it all, speaking very little, creating a tension that was so thick, it could have been spooned into bowls like porridge.
At one point, while Lexi was in the washroom, she heard a few sharp words in Isleifisch. When she came back, the room went silent. Everyone wore stiff expressions. Sveyn had left the room.
“Would you like to walk with me to the beach?” Lexi asked Magnus’s niece, even though the little girl didn’t speak English. It was a windy day, but Magnus had warned Lexi that they might walk so she’d worn short boots, wool trousers and a cowl-necked sweater with a short coat.
Dalla came with them. Lexi could see her trying to engage Magnus, trying to repair whatever disagreement had happened in those few minutes Lexi had been absent.
Lexi deliberately lagged behind them to study a tide pool, pointing to interest the little girl, trying to give Dalla a minute alone with Magnus, but he only stopped and waited for her, expression stoic.
When they got back to the cottage, Truda tried to speak to Magnus alone, but he insisted they had commitments at the palace to get back to.
Looking teary, Truda hugged Lexi and said, “I know you’re both very busy, but we’ll be here all week. Come by anytime. Anytime.”
“Thank you. It was so lovely to meet you all.” Lexi said a warm goodbye, aware of Magnus only offering stiff nods.
He said nothing on the way back to the palace and they were both tied up for a few hours once they returned. She didn’t know what mysterious meetings he had, but she was met by a stylist and her team of seamstresses who were assembling a wardrobe of maternity fashions to give Lexi an appropriate selection through the rest of her pregnancy.
The woman had a handful of wedding gowns for Lexi to try on, too.
Mindful of the fact the woman was only doing her job, Lexi went along with choosing one, but after their visit with his family, she had more doubts than ever about rushing into marriage to Magnus. If things didn’t work out between them, would she wind up sitting in a room full of undercurrents like today? She wasn’t sure if he was holding a grudge or what, but it had been very uncomfortable.
She was exhausted when she finished with the stylist, but she went looking for Magnus, determined to take a stand on the wedding before this runaway train arrived at the altar.
Their apartment took up two corners in this wing of the palace and his bedroom was suitably grand with a massive fireplace, a sitting area, a desk and a bed the size of an ice rink. He was seated in a wingback chair, a glass of something amber in his hand.
“Do I have to dress for dinner tonight?” she asked after he invited her to enter.
“It’s just us. It’s in the schedule,” he said stonily.
She knew. She’d used the question as an excuse to come in here. Now she pressed the door closed behind her.
“Can we talk?” she asked.
“Not about my family,” he clarified into his glass.
“About the wedding.”
He gulped, then hissed out a breath. “My mother asked if my father could come as her date. They’ve reconciled.”
“Oh.” She didn’t know what surprised her more. That statement or the fact that he was sharing it on the heels of insisting he didn’t want to talk about his family. She came forward to perch in the chair that sat at an angle to his. “Did you tell her you’d rather not?”
“I said I didn’t care. They’re adults. They can do what they want.” He took another hefty gulp.
She studied him, trying to read more in his expression than he was saying aloud, but he was very good at hiding his thoughts and feelings.
“It must have been a shock for him to learn his wife had had an affair, even though it was before they were married.”
“It wasn’t an affair,” he said darkly.
“A—” A hookup like us? That was what she almost said, but her heart twisted in her chest as understanding dawned. Magnus wasn’t sulking or holding a grudge. He was hurting. “Oh, Magnus.”
He only curled his lip and sipped.
“Did the queen know?”
“Yes. She helped my mother leave the palace the night she was assaulted, then paid her to keep quiet. Or, I should say, she offered a settlement that my mother agreed was fair,” he said pithily, as though quoting something he’d been told but didn’t buy. “Once my father—Sveyn—realized it hadn’t been consensual, he wanted the truth to come out, but my mother wouldn’t hear of it.”
“It’s her story.” Lexi had had her own run-ins with handsy men over the years. It had never been as grave as what his mother had suffered, but she preferred to put those experiences as far behind her as possible, not revisit them. She completely understood Truda’s desire to forget.
“My father couldn’t see past his anger at the palace. Once I agreed to live here, I became one of them. The enemy.”
“That’s horrible. But his reaction is not your fault, Magnus.”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me.” He flashed an icy glance at her. “I knew what I was doing when I agreed to come. More or less. I mean, I didn’t want any of this, but Katla is very persuasive. She suspected from the time I was born that I was her brother. She said she gave me that time with my family. And that if she’d had her own children, she wouldn’t have prevailed on me, but I was being called. What kind of man was I, at my core? The kind who knows he’s needed and walks away?”
“That was a lot to put on you when you were barely a man.” The words hit her like a ton of bricks. She could only imagine how they had landed on him.
“I thought my father would eventually see my side of it, that I didn’t really have a choice, but he wouldn’t talk to me. He didn’t talk to any of us for a good year, not until he divorced my mother. Then he insisted on shared custody of Dalla and Freyr, driving us further apart.”
“He turned them against you?”
“Maybe it would have happened anyway. I couldn’t see much of any of them. I was here and they were still in Norway, but I speak to my mother every month. She never mentioned that she’d been seeing him since Freyr’s wedding two years ago . He’s been living at the house I bought her for four months .”
“And this is the first you’re hearing of it?”
“Yes.”
“And it feels like another secret that was kept from you.”
“That’s exactly what it is.” He drained the last of his drink and clacked the empty glass onto the side table.
She left her chair and slid into his lap.
He stiffened. “I don’t want pity.”
“It’s comfort.” She draped her legs over the armrest, ignoring his scowl. “That was very insensitive of them.”
“I don’t expect them to be sensitive,” he muttered as his arm curved behind her back in a way that seemed more reactive than conscious. His other hand found her hip so he could pull her more snugly into him. “I expect them to be honest.”
“Then be honest with me. You weren’t happy about our going to see them even before we saw Sveyn was there. Why?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded irritated. “I knew they would like you and they did.”
“I liked them.”
“I knew you would.” He hesitated, then he continued in a very low voice. “I knew you would have a place with them, that they would welcome you like you’re one of them. But I don’t have a place with them anymore. I didn’t want to watch you go where I couldn’t.”
Oh, Magnus.
She tucked the side of her face into the hollow of his shoulder and cupped the silky whiskers on his jaw.
He caught her hand and drew it down, but held on to it.
“I feel like a ghost when I’m with them. I watch them get on with their lives without me. Now even my father is back in the picture.”
And it hurt him so much, he could hardly speak of it.
“I think they love you and don’t know how to reach you,” she said, thinking of the way they’d looked to Lexi to be that conduit, asking her questions that Magnus never would have answered.
“Because I’m here . And what the hell am I supposed to do about that?” he asked.
She didn’t know, but she felt for his family, unable to scale the real and invisible walls that surrounded him. She had a suspicion he’d just told her more about his feelings for his family than he’d consciously clarified to himself before. And, if he was anything like her, he was about to pull back inside his protective walls and shut her out, rather than stay in a state of exposure.
But she was here . And this was the kind of intimacy she longed for between them. The kind that gave her hope and the confidence to reach out to him in a way they both could accept. A way that would reinforce these delicate emotional bridges.
She curled into him, lifting so she could set her mouth into the crook of his neck while she slid her hand up his arm to his chest, where she touched one of the buttons on his shirt.
His hold on her changed. He looked down with eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Still comfort?”
“Opportunity,” she said lightly. “Unless you’d rather wait until after dinner?” She pretended to try leaving his lap.
“No.” He gathered her as he stood and carried her to the bed.
“Lexi.” Magnus brushed the hair off her neck and buried his lips against the spot that made her shiver and gasp. “You have to get up and get dressed.”
“No,” she grumbled, scowling at the daylight pouring through the open curtains, then glanced over her shoulder to see him sprawled on the bed behind her, fully dressed. “Why are you up already?”
“Because your mother is landing soon.”
“Magnus.” She rolled onto her back to glare at him.
He lifted onto his elbow. “I told you I was having her flown in for the wedding. Are you going to tell me you wanted your brother and sister here after all?”
“No. They’re out of my life. But I told you that I’m not prepared to marry you in some rush-to-the-altar, shotgun wedding.”
His expression cooled. “Was there something in the prenup that you didn’t like?”
He had forwarded the documents after dinner last night, when she’d still been floating in the afterglow of their lovemaking. Then he’d left for a conference call.
Annoyed, she had nearly deleted them unread, but she never considered a role without reading the fine print of the offer so she had begrudgingly pored through them.
Despite seeming very fair, they had put her to sleep. He had come to bed later, not disturbing her beyond a spoon and a kiss, so they hadn’t talked about the wedding and now her mother was here, expecting to see her daughter married.
“The terms are fine.” She sat up. “It’s the unreasonable demands of the director that are putting me off. You can’t just book a wedding and order me to show up for it, Magnus. That’s not how it works.”
“Have you been paying attention at all?” He swung his legs off the bed and sat there a moment with his back to her.
She saw his fist clench before he smoothed his hand open and rubbed it on his thigh. Then he drew a breath and stood to look down on her.
“I will be at our wedding the day after tomorrow. Whether you join me at the altar depends on what kind of woman you are, doesn’t it? What are you afraid of? That this life might be hard? It will be. Life is hard. This life, here in the palace, can be very hard. It is lonely and it is bigger than either of us, but you are carrying the next person who will shoulder this burden, Lexi. What are you going to tell them? That you didn’t marry their father because you didn’t have the guts for it? Fine. If that’s true then you’re right. You’re not fit to wear my ring or a crown. I have places to be.”
He walked out, pulling the door closed firmly behind him.
Lexi refused to cry, but she was still upset when she collected her mother from her guest room and brought her to the suite she shared with Magnus.
“I knew you did more than dance with him,” Rhonda said the second they were alone. She wasn’t looking at her, though. She was taking in the decor of rare art and hand-loomed carpets and luxurious furnishings. “I thought our room was nice. Did he make you sign a prenup?”
“Mom.”
“What? Don’t be stupid, Lexi. I presume he’s making you give up your career. You’d better protect yourself.”
Rhonda wasn’t a bad person, merely ambitious. If an opportunity presented, she wanted a piece of it. And having watched the spikes and dips in Lexi’s career, she knew things could change in a blink.
Always keep something for a rainy day was her motto.
“Are you?” Rhonda asked. “Giving up acting?”
“I’ve spoken to Bernadette,” Lexi admitted reluctantly. “I told her I should be able to keep my funding in place, but that I can’t commit to the role.” Lexi had plenty to invest now. Magnus was covering her expenses and the prenup left all her previous assets in her own hands. Plus, it made arrangements for her support moving forward. It was actually very generous, not that she told her mother any of that.
“You’re not sleeping.” Rhonda spied the shadows beneath Lexi’s eyes despite the cover-up she’d applied. “Nerves? It’s one day. One performance.”
Is that all this wedding was? Why was she agonizing then?
The performance part of it didn’t bother her, even though the “family only” guest list had bloated to over a hundred and fifty dignitaries from Isleif and neighboring countries. The ceremony was being broadcast internationally and a parade was planned so the people of Isleif could glimpse their future queen in the flesh.
But that was Rhonda. It doesn’t matter if you’re running a fever. The show must go on.
“This is a lot of power, though,” her mother mused as she cast another concerned look at the mural on the ceiling and the hand-carved molding and the portrait of the queen on the wall. “What if you decide to leave? What if they decide they don’t want you here?”
“Magnus wouldn’t throw me out. He wouldn’t do that to our baby.” She felt confident in that, at least. He had made it clear that he wanted their baby to know both its parents and he had confided how cut off he felt from his own family. “If he wanted to get rid of me, he wouldn’t be marrying me.”
“Or he’s cementing his position.”
“ Mom. Don’t be so cynical.”
“You know better than to be naive about something like this. What happens to the baby if you divorce him?”
“The baby grows up here. It’s their heritage. I respect that.” She did. And she understood that meant her baby would always be here so she should be here, too.
What would happen if she didn’t marry Magnus? Would he marry someone else who would not only be his queen, but would have influence over their child’s life? No. That didn’t sit well with her at all.
She didn’t get a chance to talk privately to Magnus again. She saw him at dinner, but it was a small but formal thing with her mother, the queen, and a handful of royalty who were visiting for the wedding. The day before the wedding, Lexi entertained those wives while Magnus was in talks with their husbands. Queen Claudia, the one Lexi had been so awestruck by in Paris, along with Queen Cassiopeia—“call me Sopi”—and Princess Amy of Vallia were all delightfully down-to-earth, which reassured her that maybe she could rise to the station Magnus was offering her.
If he was still offering it. He’d been very cold yesterday.
I will be at our wedding , he had said. But would he?
After such a busy day, she couldn’t keep her eyes open and fell asleep before Magnus got back to their suite. Suddenly, she was waking to a light breakfast and more fussing than any red carpet she’d ever walked.
Her mother did her makeup and praised the A-line gown as “perfection” with its lace sleeves and chiffon overlay on the skirt. Queen Katla had provided a tiara to hold the veil and Magnus had gifted her beautiful teardrop diamonds for her ears.
When it came to the ceremony itself, Lexi hadn’t weighed in much. She’d been letting Magnus make all the decisions while she had stubbornly sat on the fence. As a result, he’d chosen a traditional vein and she was told that most of it would be performed in Isleifisch.
At the last second, she sent him a note with a request.
She didn’t receive a response. She was only told that he’d seen it.
They arrived at the chapel and Lexi was an uncharacteristic mass of nerves. It was worse than any stage fright she’d ever experienced, but it had nothing to do with the crowds or the unfamiliar words or the huge step she was taking.
Would he do as she’d asked? It felt hugely important that he make this one small concession. Would he?
The music began and his niece led the procession of bridesmaids out the door. Prince Sorr was supposed to escort her down the aisle. She could have asked her mother, but Lexi had grown up as something that her mother lent out. She didn’t want to be “given away” by anyone. She didn’t want to become something that Magnus acquired.
So Prince Sorr was already at the front of the chapel next to the queen. Lexi was forced to take on faith that her future husband understood her at least a little and would be waiting to walk down the aisle with her.
She stepped out of the anteroom, breath held, and there he was, acutely handsome in a green military-style jacket with blue cuffs and collar. It had gold epaulets and he wore his sash with various medals and other regalia. The hilt of a long sword sat against his hip.
He wore his long hair smoothed into its customary gather. His beard was freshly shaped. He held out his gloved hands and she went toward him without hesitation.
“I knew you wouldn’t disappoint me.” His rasped words and the glow of pride in his gaze brought tears to her eyes. “You were made for this, goddess. You were made to be mine.”
Was marrying him a huge mistake? In this moment, it felt like the best and only decision she could make. She took his arm and walked down the aisle with him, feeling as though they were giving themselves to each other. It felt right .
When she spoke her vows, she did so with care, clearly and firmly even as her chest was filled with butterflies. They exchanged rings and were pronounced married and he lifted her veil.
Everything fell away—the pomp and the crowd and even the baby swelling her middle. In that eternal space between heartbeats, they were simply a man and a woman, pledging their lives to each other. He pressed his mouth to hers and it was done.