Chapter Nine
FOR A MOMENT, Tadeo froze in place. In utter disbelief.
There were ripples on the surface of the lake and it was almost as if he was dreaming this, or had imagined it, or—
But in the next second, he was moving. He charged down the dock, threw himself into the air, and dived into this lake he had swum in and boated on the whole of his life. Never had he had the slightest moment of concern about these waters.
Yet everything was different now that Esme had sunk straight down and hadn’t come up.
He dived deep, but there was no sign of her. And when he shot back up to the surface for a screaming sort of breath into his aching lungs, something icy and cold gripping him like a terrible fist in his chest—
But he stopped.
Because Esme was there. Floating quite happily and paddling along on the surface of the lake. He could feel his own heart like a drum. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. There was a literal red haze descending upon him, but he blinked it away.
“But you said—”
Tadeo was so furious he couldn’t finish.
“I swim like a fish,” Esme told him merrily. “See? You don’t know me at all. As I have said.”
“I thought—” But he stopped himself again, because he refused to tell her that he’d thought she was drowning. That felt like a bridge too far.
You are already in the water, fully clothed, a voice inside reminded him. Who cares about bridges at this point?
Still, he said nothing. If he told her she’d scared him… Well. He presumed that had been the point of this exercise and he did not wish to give her the satisfaction of telling her it had been successful.
“I want more,” she told him, treading water in all her clothes. Her hair was now plastered to her head, but those luminous eyes of hers were fastened to his. “I don’t want rules. I want a marriage. I want our son to grow up and know that he is loved.”
“Our son will be the King of Bellaza when I am dead. He will grow up knowing this. He will understand his responsibilities—”
“He will grow up knowing that he is loved,” Esme said again, with a certain steel in her voice.
“Do you hear me? Better yet, do you hear yourself? Do you think that perhaps some of the challenges you faced in your childhood were due to the fact that you weren’t allowed to be a child?
Too concerned with responsibilities and your father’s death? ”
“I’m not listening to this,” he growled at her.
He swam to the dock and pulled himself up out of the water, then glared balefully back toward the lake.
Where his queen made absolutely no move to follow him.
Esme was floating on her back with her arms thrown above her head and her belly poking above the waterline, looking as if she could stay there all day.
“I’m not going to take lectures on childrearing from a person so unhinged that she would throw herself into a body of water after claiming she couldn’t swim for the express purpose of proving a point. ”
“Is that unhinged?” She lifted her feet out of the water and kicked off the singe shoe she was wearing on her right foot.
Her left foot was bare. “And what point were you making, exactly, when you hauled me before you in the palace and explained to me how I must remain mute in private, like a good girl, if I wished to earn a place in your bed?”
“That was never—” But he stopped there, too.
“Do you think I don’t know that you set that up so I would fail?
” she asked, and though her face was tilted toward the sky, Tadeo felt that question as if she’d stabbed it into his chest like a dagger.
“Of course I know.” She moved in the water then, so that she was bobbing there, her solemn gaze on his.
“But it didn’t fail, because I’m capable of all kinds of things, Tadeo.
What’s a little stretch of quiet? I’ve been in love with you since the moment we met and you’ve been terrified of that, and me, and what we are together for the same length of time.
To the point you lied about what you felt.
And while I’ve managed to give you pieces of what you want along the way, you’ve never managed to return it, have you? ”
He thought then that he had never felt colder in his life. As if he might start shattering.
“If that is true, it would seem that you’ve wasted a decade of your life. You should do something about that.”
“Behold me doing something about it,” she replied.
She swam toward him then and reached up to hold onto the dock, though she made no move to lift herself up or out. It was possible she couldn’t, with her belly, but she also didn’t ask him to help her.
Instead, she looked up at him and made him feel pinned to the dock where he stood.
“Have you ever asked yourself,” she said quietly, those eyes of hers so intense on his, “what you would do if you could live your life on your own terms?”
“Are you mad? I am the king. I live on no terms but my own.”
“Can you imagine,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken, even more quietly this time, “who you would be if you hadn’t let your father’s fear transform you?”
Tadeo wasn’t even aware of moving back, of staggering away from her as if she’d hauled off and punched him. All he knew was that she asked him that question, and he was gone. He had to put distance between them. He had to do something.
Anything.
He didn’t know how long it took him to make it back up the hill from the lake. He was soaking wet, dressed in his dripping clothes when he came back to himself somewhere in the palace. He was also dripping on the floor.
He stood there, his head ringing and that question repeating again and again and again, until he became aware of Arturo there beside him.
“Your Majesty appears to be in need of a towel,” said the older man, with his typical restraint. And understatement.
“Among other things,” Tadeo muttered.
But he allowed the old servant to usher him up the back stairs through the palace, so that no one needed to see the King in his waterlogged state. A glance in the mirrors they passed suggested that his appearance would likely scare off anyone unlucky enough to venture near.
He rather alarmed himself.
His team would faint dead away.
“The Queen is in a similar state,” he told Arturo when they reached his rooms. “It would be better if she did not parade through the palace as I suspect she will want to do.”
“Say no more, sir,” Arturo said.
“You can bring her to my office when she is dried off,” Tadeo said darkly.
He showered, then dressed. And found that he was still vibrating with that same fury. Because that’s what it was, he assured himself. Sheer, unadulterated fury at her temerity. At her games.
At her.
He walked back through the palace, taking his usual route this time.
Now that he was dry and looked like himself again.
Tadeo walked from his rooms, out of the private wing and down into the public areas, where courtiers bowed and curtsied as he passed and everywhere he turned his head, there were more emblems of the rich history of his country. His family.
His future.
What was important, he told himself sternly, was that a man keep a cool head so that he could better navigate the demands of his position.
As he thought that, it was like he could suddenly hear an echo from the past. From that part of his past he much preferred to keep locked away.
He could remember walking down this same hall, headed to the same office where his father had once sat, always so clear-eyed and reserved.
Tadeo remembered how excited he’d been to share the good news about his meeting with Princess Esme with his father at last. The miraculous news, to his way of thinking—though he cringed when he thought about it now—that he had met Esme of Clarebonne, and it had gone…
Better than merely well. Much, much better. An entire year of better.
That they were in love.
He could still remember how he’d felt that afternoon. It had been late summer outside, the lake sparkling with all the light, yet no match for how he’d felt inside. How he had been nearly bursting at the seams, so certain that his father would be delighted.
His father had impressed upon him—repeatedly—that Tadeo could make no decision more important than who he chose to marry.
As a king, Tadeo would need to rely on his queen and trust her to carry out her own duties in concert with him.
Royal marriages required cool heads and careful planning, King Hugo had always told him.
That was why Tadeo’s marriage had been planned for him.
Never had Tadeo been so grateful for a good plan.
She is…nothing short of amazing, he had gushed when his father had waved him toward a seat and asked him what he had to say for himself.
King Hugo’s preferred conversation opener, even with the son he hadn’t seen in many months.
She is a marvel. I do not know how it is you and her father managed to set us up so brilliantly, but I couldn’t be happier. Neither one of us can believe our luck.
He wasn’t certain when it had occurred to him that his father had not responded in some time. That he only sat there, his gaze seeming cooler and more distant by the moment. Tadeo remembered when the chill in the room had finally penetrated the haze he’d been in.
How he’d felt it roll through him, like he’d suddenly found himself standing outside in a snowstorm.
Am I to understand that you have been conducting an affair with Princess Esme? King Hugo had asked. He had been sitting behind the desk, his hands folded in front of him with his usual tall, straight posture. His blue gaze had been glacial.
I suppose you could call it that, Tadeo had replied. Though he would never have called it that.
You sound besotted, his father had said in the same colorless voice.
Tadeo had laughed at that, because he hadn’t been able to help himself. I suppose I am. Isn’t that wonderful?