Chapter One #2
Tadeo had felt as if his chest was cracked wide open, and she was to blame for it.
Just as she had been the first time, years ago, when they’d finally met each other on the other side of the world.
He had been doing his graduate work in the sort of business, economics, and public policy issues that could only serve the kingdom.
She had been an undergraduate in the same city.
A city that seemed like a long-lost daydream to him now.
The Boston of his memories was always covered in towers of snow to mark its bitter winters.
There were no mountains to speak of, when Bellaza was ringed with them.
More, the wild Atlantic was forever seething about at the end of streets and in the distance, as if keeping watch.
He liked to tell himself that he had been happy to leave that strange, small city—but he still woke up from dreams that smelled like the salt marshes of Cape Cod on a quiet spring morning, or sounded like the rattle of the T, or had him remembering walking along the Charles River on a picture-perfect fall afternoon.
Tadeo exited the car outside the manor house, shutting the driver’s door sharply behind him.
Then realized that he was standing about because he wasn’t used to arriving anywhere and not being immediately greeted by staff.
He was quite certain that there was staff at the manor house.
What he did not understand was why none of them made themselves known as protocol demanded.
Thoughts of Boston felt like a reprimand, but then, he had known at the time that those years were an indulgence.
That he was permitted to indulge in a kind of freedom there—the independence to walk where he pleased and live a life with far less scrutiny in a country not his own. He had known he never would again.
Still, he found himself shaking off unwanted memories yet again as he started for the main door, painted in a revolting shade of pink.
If he was a vindictive man, he might have been tempted to make Esme pay to restore the house to its traditional state before releasing her. But that would only prolong this.
And to Tadeo’s way of thinking, their entire relationship had already been entirely too prolonged.
He had known that he was betrothed since he was a child.
He was five years older than Esme and had been showed pictures of her over time.
She had been raised in Clarebonne, which was even smaller than Bellaza and had always enjoyed favorable relations with it, dating all the way back to the time in antiquity when the kingdoms had been joined.
Their betrothal had been speculated about in the press all throughout their teenage years because it was not a formal, legal betrothal in the old style. It was an understanding.
An understanding between two kings was as good as law, in some places, but the two kings in question had been very deliberate about the way they’d handled Esme and Tadeo. The two of them had not met. They were deliberately kept apart, in fact.
No one expects you and Esme to molder on shelves, at least until you meet, Tadeo’s father, King Hugo, had always said. You can enjoy yourself as you wish, as long as you remain ever-conscious of your duties and scrupulous about your reputation.
Yes, sir, Tadeo had murmured. He had been all of fourteen and did not wish to think about his duties any more than necessary, given he had already found them crushing. Much less his spotless reputation, though that part he was admittedly more concerned with.
King Alain and I are agreed that you and Princess Esme should meet when she is finished with her studies.
What that means, his father had said, perhaps more sternly than before, is that you may do what you wish, but you should never be linked in public with another woman.
Neither one of you must ever be seen in any kind of amorous situation, or in any questionable position that could be interpreted the wrong way.
You might find this onerous. But it is excellent practice for your future.
His craggy face, with the blue eyes Tadeo had inherited, had been somber.
I expect there to be no scandals, Tadeo. Not one, not ever. Do you understand?
Tadeo had always understood.
He had only been eleven when his mother had died, off in a boating accident in Italy with one of her many lovers.
Some had claimed that Tadeo was too young to understand what was happening then, but they were mistaken.
He had understood completely. And even if he hadn’t, he certainly would have heard every sordid detail at school, where his status as crown prince had long since lost its luster.
Even if he’d wished to avoid his mother’s exploits, he’d been unable to.
For years at that point, it had been impossible for Tadeo to avoid the sordid details that his mother seemed to have no shame sharing with the whole world.
Everybody knew the story of the selfish, unsatisfied Queen of Bellaza who had provided the kingdom with its needed heir and then declared her duties and responsibilities completed.
The rest of my life is mine, cries the Queen! the headlines screamed.
Tadeo had understood completely and totally that he could not, as that queen’s son, create that kind of scandal. No matter what.
Even if he hadn’t been told exactly that by his father, repeatedly, he would have come to the same conclusion himself. The kingdom prized its calmness. Its peace. Scandals were for other, more volatile nations.
It was Tadeo’s duty not to become a scandal. He took that seriously.
He had therefore enjoyed himself, but always with women who understood his position.
And who, more to the point, he trusted not to sell him out to the papers.
This meant that he was significantly less of a player than many of his boarding school friends, but he would not be the one to put the family’s name into the mud again.
He had vowed it after his mother’s funeral. It was the first, last, and only time he had ever seen his father cry. Or, more precisely, allow his eyes to look damp. For the smallest moment.
Tadeo had learned over time that there were warning signs when a woman he might have been interested in was the wrong choice.
Bright red flags that would indicate when a woman was appropriate for him or not, and it was his duty to look for those flags and react accordingly.
He liked the women he dated, very privately, to be circumspect in all things.
Modest, practical, and smart enough to think twice when it came to exposing him.
He had never chosen wrong.
If it had been up to him, he would never have chosen Princess Esme.
Tadeo had been the one to initiate their meeting in Boston.
He’d been in graduate school across the river in Cambridge and even though he did not go out of his way to keep up with the Princess’s every move, he could not avoid knowing that she was attending nearby Wellesley College, a very highly selective women’s college with an august reputation.
His palace handlers—now his team—made certain he knew.
They were both far away from the intense press interest that surrounded them in their own countries.
They were both still immersed in their studies, so there would be no chance of accelerating the march toward their wedding.
Tadeo had thought it would be safe. Easy.
A smart move to build a friendship in advance, so that the years they would spend together as husband and wife could only be better for it.
Too well had he understood the point of the stories King Hugo had told about his own courtship of Tadeo’s mother.
Lady Marisol had not been his family’s first choice.
She had not been a choice at all. She had been impetuous, bright, and bold.
The King had fallen hard and had insisted that he would marry her or he would not marry at all.
But soon enough, Marisol had grown bored of royal life. Just as everyone had warned the King she would.
What had followed had haunted his father for the rest of his life, and now haunted Tadeo too.
The ghost of Marisol was what lay beneath every decision and every plan Tadeo made for his life and his reign.
He thought about the scenes she had made, the extramarital affairs she had flaunted, the contempt with which she had treated the kingdom in general and his father in particular, and vowed to do whatever was necessary to protect the kingdom from a repeat of such embarrassment.
He had married Esme because their kingdoms were invested in their wedding, a choice he would make again if necessary. Just as he would divorce her now because she could never be an appropriate mother to his heir. She was too difficult. Too…problematic.
Back in Boston, Tadeo had possessed absolutely no desire to repeat history. He’d had no intention of ever allowing the kind of passion that had blindsided his father and made him turn his back on his kingdom for the pleasures of the flesh to level him as well.
He had been completely and totally unprepared for Esme, in other words.
Another familiar feeling he very much wished to banish from his life entirely.
No servants appeared at the door, or responded when he knocked, so he opened it himself and went inside. And in case he’d imagined that the exterior of the building was the only place that his wife had allowed her creativity free reign, he was quickly disabused of that notion.
The color scheme—though that word, scheme, suggested some kind of a plan, which Tadeo doubted very much had been used here—continued inside.
He walked through, finding that his jaw was tense and that he was grinding his teeth as he looked from one ruined room to the next.
There was nothing in the whole of the historic house that she had not changed.
Nothing.