Chapter Seven
AS THE DAYS passed and the nights continued to set them both afire, Tadeo came to the careful, considered conclusion that everything was going well.
Or as well as could be expected.
It had been a bit of a rocky start to this new phase in their marriage, he could admit.
Possibly only rocky for him, little as he liked to imagine himself so affected, but the reality was that Esme seemed as unaffected as ever.
As if she had only been waiting for the opportunity to have something far closer to a real marriage and was happy to dive straight in.
As if she was less thrown by the uncontrollable wildfire that still burned between them. As if she liked it.
He could not allow himself to think about how much she liked it when he was attending to his many duties during the day. And yet, too often, he could think of nothing else.
The first night that Esme had come to his room had thrown him.
He hadn’t expected that she would ever manage to keep her mouth shut.
He had never known her to try. The girl he’d met in Boston had been a revelation.
She had shared her ideas, her dreams, her theories, her opinions, her questions, her silliness—all seemingly without a shred of concern that she might be judged for these things.
Indeed, Tadeo had not judged her. He’d been too smitten with her.
Esme had burst into his life and shown him all the light and possibility that he’d been raised to abhor, because his father was a man of neither too few nor too many words. King Hugo prided himself on always being concise. Precise.
Pointed.
And he never spoke simply to fill a space.
Tadeo had aspired to be just like him.
Meanwhile, Esme’s words could fill rooms and paint them too, in all the vibrant colors she held inside her.
Sometimes, in the long years of this cold marriage, he had found himself awake when he ought to have been sleeping—imagining what it looked like inside her head. How bright it must be in there.
How different from this kingdom of icy winters and cool summers, and the deep freeze he kept himself in. Even if it was by choice.
This was why he’d been so certain that the deal he’d made with her favored him. He had never known her to stay quiet for too long. Not even when she should have.
He’d convinced himself she would never manage it. That she would be too busy finding new and clever ways to eviscerate him with her tongue to ever follow the rules that would lead her to his bed. That she might try to make it happen, but would fail at the slightest provocation.
That she hadn’t made him wonder if he knew her as well as he’d always assumed he did.
She had fallen asleep in his arms and he held her there, liking the sensation entirely too much. He stared at the ceiling, wondering if he’d made a terrible mistake.
Again.
But as the night went on, he decided that he could handle this.
He could handle their chemistry as long as it was confined to the spaces where it belonged and could thus be contained.
What he could not allow was it bleeding over into everything else.
He was not a graduate student any longer.
He could not be so reckless this time. He was a king and he had a whole kingdom to consider.
He could not let passion make everything blur.
Tadeo decided that he could do it, and more, that this was a natural and reasonable evolution in their marriage—providing he maintained the strictest control outside the bedroom.
They were husband and wife. Their marriage looked like the fairy tale they’d crafted it to be to please the outside world.
He already knew she was an excellent queen in all the ways that mattered to the kingdom.
There was no reason why she couldn’t make him a kind of wife that he wanted, too, sex included. It had been so long since Boston now. It was all less raw.
He knew better than to let his feelings trick his tongue into admissions that might ruin him.
As long as he maintained the strict control of his emotions that he’d held in place since breaking up with her back then—and they were second nature to him now, a part of who he was, as automatic as breathing—Tadeo couldn’t see why it would be a problem.
And besides, Esme could not help but be who she was. That meant she could not always control her mouth and some nights, he was quite certain she didn’t even bother to try.
“Our presence is requested at the wedding of King Gervais,” he told her one afternoon, as they sat in his office discussing their schedules—one of the anodyne diary meetings he insisted upon.
Not because he could not have had access to her schedule either way, but because he liked to test himself in her presence.
“King Gervais has been married two times before,” Esme pointed out.
“And the heads of all the houses of Europe have been invited every time,” Tadeo replied. “This is no different. We will, of course, make our appearance.”
Esme studied him. The rules of their arrangement had evolved over the past weeks. If the discussion was purely related to the business of their responsibilities, that did not count against her. It did not mean she lost her chance to find him in the night.
If, however, she got emotional about anything—by his reckoning, not hers—it did.
She kept studying him now and Tadeo felt his pulse pick up, because he knew that look in her dark eyes. It was Esme’s version of devil-may-care. The point at which he could almost see her throw up her hands and say, what the hell, though she would never be quite so vulgar.
Or not in front of him, anyway.
“Have you met King Gervais’s intended?” Esme asked. Calmly.
Too calmly, by his reckoning. The kind of calm that typically foretold an explosion, if he was not mistaken.
“I have.”
“I haven’t,” Esme murmured, toying with the hem of the sweater she wore over a dress that made her look entirely too pretty and also—through the magic of fashion he could not begin to parse—not particularly pregnant.
“But I am certain I can list the accomplishments that allowed her to rise to King Gervais’s notice.
” If she saw the reproving look on Tadeo’s face, she ignored it.
“Let me guess, she is significantly younger than him, spectacularly more beautiful than him, and, most importantly, sheltered and naive in every possible way.”
“She is an heiress of no small means from Brazil,” Tadeo said. Carefully. “I believe she was selected because she meets all of the King’s needs.”
Those needs, in Gervais’s case, did not involve dynastic aspirations as his first wife had already provided the throne with its next in line and two spares—along with scathing critiques in the press.
Those needs did not involve the old king’s much-discussed heart, as he had already made a fool of himself over his second wife, a wholly unsuitable actress, who had left him for her personal trainer.
Gervais had cannily selected a new queen who would give him no trouble at all.
Tadeo dreamed of such a queen.
As if she could read his mind, Esme smiled. Tadeo knew immediately, before she said a word, that he’d won today. Though was it really winning when it meant he would not have access to her tonight? Who was he punishing?
But that was a question for another time.
“You kings and your perfect little heiresses,” Esme said, in a perfectly pleasant tone that was at complete odds with that sharp look in her eyes. “It’s like a sweet shop, is it not? Shiny, brightly colored, consumable objects for you to eat up and throw away. How lovely for them.”
He should have ignored this entire line of conversation. And he should not have felt the least bit as if she’d landed a blow. “What you seem to forget, Esme, is that you were raised to be the same sort of bit of candy.”
“Incorrect,” she retorted, and he thought she sat a little straighter.
More, there seemed to be something almost condemning in the way she looked at him.
Or maybe it was worse than that. Maybe she looked disappointed.
“I am my father’s heir, as you know perfectly well.
It was his dearest wish that I married you so that our neighboring nations could once again unite the way they did long ago in antiquity.
If not as one nation, then as the closest of friends and allies.
Our first child is meant to rule Bellaza, our second, Clarebonne.
” Esme tilted her head to one side. “Surely you have not forgotten this.”
He had not forgotten it so much as he had never imagined that it would matter, as he’d never intended to touch her again. But something kept him from saying that.
She continued. “I was never intended to be an object on a shelf, sat there to be admired from afar. I am expected to instruct the heir to Clarebonne in the ways of the kingdom in the same manner that I was instructed myself. You know that.”
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair and blamed her for it. “I remember your father mentioning that, yes.”
In truth, he remembered that her father had spoken for some time about his dreams for grandchildren and the unification of their kingdoms, but Tadeo had not bothered to pay close attention. So sure had he been that such a future would never materialize.
Esme studied him in that same way, and he could not account for how deeply he disliked it. It seemed as if she could see into him. “I can only assume that you’re trying to be provocative, then. Does it make you feel as if you’ve won something?”
He disliked that even more.