Chapter Twelve
Tiberius pushed his way through the crowd, abruptly unable to bear being in the ballroom any longer. A hot, painful feeling was pressing against his chest, making it feel as if he was suffocating, and he was desperate to get outside and breathe the cold mountain air.
He found some doors that led to an outside terrace and managed to get them open, stepping out into the clear night, his chest heaving.
But even taking deep breaths of the cold Swiss night didn’t relieve the burning sensation, or the tightness. It was as if something enormous was sitting on his sternum.
It was all to do with Guinevere, and he knew it.
Her dark blue eyes looking up at him as she told him that she was in love with him. The wild rush of joy that had filled his veins in that moment, and then the aching bitterness that had followed it, because love wasn’t for kings. Or at least not the kind of love that she deserved.
He’d hurt her, bastard that he was. He’d made her cry.
He’d told her that she would be better off without him, and she would.
She needed someone who could give her their whole heart, not just a small piece of it.
She’d had nothing all her life—nothing but her brothers’ fists and her father’s indifference.
It was incredible how her bright, warm, effervescent spirit hadn’t buckled under the fear and violence she’d experienced, or at least crumbled away.
But it hadn’t.
Despite how her father and brothers had treated her, she was undaunted. And he’d watched her turn from a mouse into a lioness, all beautiful, strong, brave and caring.
A woman like that deserved the entire world—not to be tied to a man who’d never be able to put her first. A man who’d never tasted happiness and had no idea what joy looked like. What could he offer her? Pleasure in bed, that was all.
He walked over to the stone parapet and gripped it, looking out over the lake at the mountains looming dark and forbidding in the night, the caps of snow gleaming.
He didn’t know where that left him.
Divorcing her felt impossible, and yet that was the only option he could see. The only option that would give her the freedom she needed and deserved. Freedom from him and from Kasimir.
Free to make her own choices—choices that hadn’t been forced on her the way he’d forced them on her at the very beginning, by demanding that she marry him, that she pay for her family’s crimes.
The pain in his chest deepened, excoriating him.
He couldn’t bear the thought of letting her go, and yet he had to.
To be a ruler required sacrifice, his father had told him. Both of his parents had made that sacrifice. And so would he.
He had to follow their example, otherwise what was he?
An empty, hollow man. A man without purpose, whose whole life had been for nothing.
Tiberius stepped back from the parapet. He’d go and find her now and tell her that she had to leave him, that she should be free, and he had to do it quickly. Make it swift and hard, like ripping off a sticking plaster, so she could heal faster.
He turned around, moved back to the doors.
And found Guinevere standing there, shining in the moonlight, sparkling and glittering like the fairy she was, her eyes, dark in the night, burning with her lioness courage.
He froze, the pain in his chest an agony. ‘I told you we’d have this conversation later,’ he said, his voice rough and raw.
‘It is later,’ she said levelly, and stepped outside into the night. ‘But we don’t need to have this conversation at all. You’ve said your piece, I’ve said mine, and we’ll agree to disagree.’
That was not what he’d expected.
‘Guinevere,’ he said, forcing the word out. ‘I have made a decision. I can’t give you what you need, and as such I can’t ask you to stay with me. So I’m going to start divorce proceedings—’
‘No,’ she interrupted flatly, and crossed the space between them, coming straight up to him and putting her arms around him, her head on his chest. ‘You can start proceedings, if you want, but I’m not leaving you. I’m never leaving you.’
He couldn’t bear to push her away, yet he also couldn’t bear to touch her because if he did, he knew he’d never let her go.
‘You have to.’ His voice was wooden. ‘You deserve a man who can love you the way—’
‘And I have found him,’ she interrupted yet again, lifting her head and looking up at him. ‘What I deserve is to be with the man I love, and that’s you. So, no. I’m not leaving, Tiberius.’
His heart felt like it was chained in barbed wire, little hooks digging into it, tearing it. ‘Lioness, I can’t…’
‘I’m not going to ask you to put me first,’ she said. ‘I would never ask that of you. All I want is a little corner of your heart that is mine. That’s all.’
A little corner of his heart…
‘Guinevere…’
‘You love an entire country,’ she said. ‘Are you telling me you really can’t spare a small piece of that great heart of yours?’
He looked down into her eyes and he could feel the fear wrapping around him, squeezing tight. The fear that she hadn’t just claimed a small piece, that she’d claimed all of it. All of him. And he was afraid, because where did that leave him?
‘If I love you,’ he began roughly, ‘then what is there left for Kasimir?’
Her eyes were midnight-blue and her arms around him were warm as she said, ‘Why do you think love is limited? That if you give it to your country there’s nothing left for anything else?
Think bigger, my king. Love is boundless.
I can love you and love my country. It’s just a different kind of love. ’
His will was fading, his strength to put her from him failing. ‘I can’t make you happy, Guinevere. I don’t even know what that looks like.’
Strangely, she smiled at him. ‘Yes, you do. It’s me and you in the orchard, lying on our backs and looking at the stars.’
She’s right.
It burst through him then, in a brilliant flash of light.
Yes, he had been happy with her that day in the orchard.
He’d been happy with her in every one of their daily two-hour meetings, and he’d been happy because of her.
Because she’d showed him what it felt like.
And it was lying on his back with her in his arms, looking at the stars.
It was her in his lap, kissing him and touching him as if he was precious.
It was her smile—the one she gave him every day—and it was her in her yellow dress, looking like a splash of sunshine.
And it was her, her eyes dark, telling him she loved him.
She was happiness.
Which must mean that the agonising pressure in his heart was love.
Because he did love her, even though he’d been telling himself he didn’t. Even though he’d been telling himself it was impossible to love her and his country at the same time.
In fact it was perfectly possible, and he’d been doing it for at least a couple of weeks now.
He lifted his hands and cupped her face between them. ‘Guinevere…little lioness…it cannot be just about me. You need happiness in your life too. You deserve it.’
* * *
Guinevere looked up into his beautiful face, her arms tight around his narrow waist. There was anguish there, and something fierce and hot and bright.
Her king. Her enemy. Her husband.
The man she loved without limit and without reservation.
She’d known that the minute he’d walked away from her, leaving her standing alone in the ballroom. After telling her that he couldn’t give her what she deserved and that she’d be better off if she’d never met him.
But she’d told him the truth—that she’d still have been hiding in the walls if he hadn’t come along and shown her the courage that had always been there inside her.
And as he’d walked away from her she’d known she couldn’t let him. That he needed to learn a lesson too, and one that only she could teach him.
A lesson about the love she knew lay in his heart. The love for his parents that had translated into a driving need to make their deaths matter. The love for his country and for his people that had kept him on the path to the crown.
This king was made of love. And it wasn’t a distraction. And loving his country didn’t mean he couldn’t love her.
Not that she needed him to love her, she’d decided as his tall form disappeared in the crowded ballroom.
It didn’t matter in the end. Because what she wanted was his happiness, and that was all that mattered to her.
He had no one. His parents were gone, he had no siblings, no friends.
He was an island, in splendid isolation, and she was his only bridge.
He might decide to divorce her and he probably would—‘for her own good’.
But she didn’t care if he did. She wasn’t going to leave him.
She couldn’t leave him. And she’d rather be trapped inside the walls of the palace with him than be free to go wherever she wanted, because his happiness was her happiness and there was no freedom without him.
So she’d gone after him, to tell him that she wouldn’t be leaving him, and had found him on the balcony alone, a look of despair on his face.
He’d muttered something about divorce, but she’d ignored that, showing him, then telling him, that she wasn’t going to leave.
Her heart felt barbed and sharp, but the pain wasn’t as bad as when she’d stood in the ballroom, because she’d made a decision. It hurt now, though, with his warm palms against her cheek, his expression fierce, silver eyes blazing as he told her she deserved happiness.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I do. And luckily I already have it here with you.’
‘Guinevere…’
‘You make me happy, my king. And you don’t need to do anything more and you don’t need to be anything else. Just you, as you are.’
‘Two hours a day,’ he said roughly. ‘You wanted more than two hours.’
She tightened her arms around him, holding him fast. ‘If you can only give me two hours, then I will be happy with that.’ Her eyes prickled with the force of her emotions. ‘I will never be happy without you, Tiberius. Don’t you understand that?’
The look on his face intensified, and the silver flames in his eyes burned impossibly bright, and for a long time he just looked down at her.
Then he said, his voice hot and deep, ‘You told me that love isn’t something that’s finite and I think you’re right.
I’ve been afraid that I can’t love you and my country at the same time, but I think I’ve been doing so for the past two weeks. ’
A hot wash of shock went through her, her painful heart igniting into flame. ‘You…love me?’
Tiberius smiled, natural and brilliant, like the sun coming out.
‘Yes, little lioness. I love you.’ Then he bent his head and kissed her, his mouth hot and demanding, and when he came up for air, he growled, ‘Two hours, my queen. I demand two hours of your time every day. Two hours for the rest of my life.’
‘Two hours? My king, I will give you eternity.’
And she did.