CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER EIGHT
T HERE WERE MANY things she loved about the island, but one in particular was impossible to ignore. It hit her between the eyes at every turn.
Here, she was free.
Truly free in a way she wasn’t sure she’d ever been, and especially not since marrying Sebastian.
She stopped walking and stood, arms outstretched, face tilted to the sunshine, a smile on her face as she felt every sense burst to life. The sun was warm, the breeze cool, the water beneath them pristine as it continued its predictable, reassuring roll towards the crystalline coastline. In the distance, their beloved Cavalonia was a familiar landmass with buildings huddled to the edge.
‘Do you need a break?’
Sebastian’s deep voice broke through her silent reverie. She blinked open her eyes and fixed him with her gaze, shaking her head. ‘I don’t need a break. I just wanted to take one to enjoy this.’
He looked around, as if to understand what she was talking about.
She let out an exasperated laugh. ‘It’s just so beautiful. And do you know what else?’
‘Surprise me.’
‘No paparazzi,’ she pointed out. ‘It doesn’t matter that I’m wearing yoga pants and a loose top.’
‘Or that you’ve got mud on your cheek?’ he asked with a teasing tone.
She lifted a hand to her face and dashed at it. ‘Or that my hair is messy from where I got into a fight with a branch and the branch won.’
‘The path needs maintenance,’ he said, eyes lifting to her head, frowning.
‘The path is perfect. It’s all perfect.’
He looked around then, and now she knew he wasn’t just trying to see it from her perspective, he really was.
‘I suppose I’ve always looked beyond the island, rather than at it,’ he said. ‘Most of my memories of visiting this place are not good ones.’
‘No?’
They began to walk once more, the climb to the top of the hill gruelling in a way Rosie found pleasant.
‘I have spent countless nights on that deck, looking towards Cavalonia, and hating. Hating my grandfather, my father, even the country and people,’ he admitted, ‘though that was probably childish.’
She glanced towards the archipelago. ‘You hated me,’ she pointed out thoughtfully.
‘Disliked,’ he reminded her.
‘Past tense?’
He turned to face her, scanning her features thoughtfully. ‘It’s hard to say now, isn’t it?’
She cleared her throat and glanced away, something about the depth of his perceptiveness unnerving. ‘Were you tempted to sell the place?’
‘Why?’
‘Well, you bought it for your mother, and she didn’t want to come here. It brought you little pleasure when you visited. Why keep it?’
‘Hatred can be very motivating.’
She considered that, but it was hard for a heart like Rosie’s, built in exactly the same good-and-kind way as her mother’s had been, to comprehend the sentiment. ‘In what way?’
He made a scoffing sound. ‘You really cannot imagine how much it meant to me, to prove myself to the king? To my father? Both men cut me from their lives, as though I was nothing. As though I was worthless. Do you not think my success, professionally, was something I achieved because I wanted to prove them wrong? Because I hated, with every single cell of my DNA?’
Her voice faltered a little, the vehemence in his making it hard to think straight. ‘I think,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, ‘you would always have been a success.’ And to her surprise—and his—she reached down and weaved their fingers together, the contact sending awareness zipping through her veins. She squeezed his hand and then dropped it.
But a moment later, Sebastian reached for it once more, holding on as they walked. ‘You sound like my mother.’
She pulled a face and he laughed. Conversation closed. But something in his words stuck with her, and as they travelled across the island on foot, it occurred to her that the man she married really did have a darkness within him. She wondered if there was nothing he would stop at to achieve his aims? And his aims had centred, for a very long time, on reclaiming what he saw as his, what had been taken from him: the right to rule Cavalonia.
‘I don’t want to disturb them,’ she said, nonetheless stepping dangerously close to the edge of the cave and crouching down, gripping the rocks so she could balance carefully and see beneath them.
‘You won’t. They’re sunning themselves and wouldn’t care if twenty Rosalinds came to spy.’
‘They’re beautiful,’ she said, honestly.
‘No, they’re not,’ he laughed gruffly. ‘They’re quite possibly some of the ugliest marine animals to exist, but they’re endangered, and harmless, and this is their home.’
She threw him an exasperated look. ‘How can you call them ugly?’ She pointed to one seal, out on a more distant rock, who was almost glaring at the others. ‘Look, that one even reminds me of someone,’ she said, tapping a finger exaggeratedly to her chin. ‘Dark hair, soulful eyes, brooding expression...’
‘Careful, wife. I will find ways to make you pay for that.’
She laughed with delight, and he ignored the strange tightening in his chest. He was playing a part, that was all. Making her relax to see that they could make co-parenthood work. He was just doing it so well that sometimes even he forgot his main priority was ensuring his place on the throne.
‘Soulful eyes?’ he muttered, as she stood, dusting her hands on the front of her pants and coming to stand with him. ‘Really?’
‘Sure. When you’re not staring daggers at me, I’d say they’re very soulful.’
‘Is that what I do?’
‘All the time.’ She lifted her hand and cupped his cheek; their height difference meant she had to stand on the tips of her toes and her breasts crushed against his chest. Suddenly, he regretted the impulse to suggest this hike. He wanted to be home with her. Then again, what did four walls and a mattress matter? This island was private; she was his wife. Anticipation began to tighten in his body. ‘At least, you used to.’
His gut churned. He didn’t like her use of the past tense. Rather, he didn’t like the supposition that anything between them had fundamentally changed.
And yet it had.
When they returned to Cavalonia, he hoped it would be with her agreement to try for a baby, and he hoped that was something they’d be able to achieve, and do together, without the animosity they’d shared for so long impacting the baby’s life. But this was not the beginning of a relationship. He needed her to understand that, even as he knew he couldn’t say anything that would jeopardise this tenuous peace they’d forged. He simply had to trust his ability to manage things as required. He didn’t want to hurt Rosalind. When they were back in Cavalonia, he’d work out how to establish the necessary boundaries to create the kind of relationship with which he was comfortable, and he would do so delicately, respecting whatever she might want at that point.
Satisfied that he could manage this, and that his intentions were better than at times he suspected, he wrapped his arms around her waist and held her to his chest.
‘Want to swim?’
She glanced towards the water, her body beaded in a fine covering of perspiration. ‘Yes,’ she agreed without hesitation. ‘I’d like that.’
The water was even better than she’d hoped. Having walked all morning, her body was sore and her skin over-warm. She sank into the sea gratefully, flipping onto her back and spreading her arms and legs like a starfish, floating and staring up at the sky. She could hear Sebastian near her, the sound of his feet underwater causing little ripples that vibrated all around.
They were not so deep that he couldn’t stand, and she wasn’t at all surprised when his fingers curved around her ankles and drew her to his waist, wrapping her legs around him easily. She smiled at the feeling of nearness, of his proximity to her; she simply smiled because she was happy.
His hand came around her spine, lifting her from the water, and then he kissed her, the taste of the ocean mingling with the now-familiar rush of adrenaline that filled her body and mouth when they came together.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever grow tired of this, and the prospect of trying for a baby was now something she relished.
Except—
Again, she remembered the way he’d spoken of his hatred, and how it had fuelled him, and she shivered despite the sensual warmth flooding her, because it was a darkness so totally unfamiliar to her, so troubling for how easily he’d allowed it to motivate him.
His hand ran down her spine, and slipped inside the elastic of her underpants, making it hard to hold on to that thought. She would wade through her perceptions another time, not now. Now was for this, for pleasure, for enjoyment. He spun her around as he kissed her, and dipped them lower into the water, so they were buried to their necks, his touch running over her. Here in the ocean, beneath the surface, there was a weightlessness to the experience and yet somehow, every graze of his skin against hers seemed hyper-charged. Or perhaps it was that she was hypersensitive? When he squeezed her nipples, she cried out in agony and ecstasy, the delirious pleasure-pain almost impossible to bear, but it was quickly overwhelmed by sheer delight as he moved his hand between her legs and found the piece of her that seemed to guarantee, always, pleasure, when he was mastering her.
His name was an incantation, and surrounded by the ocean, bathed in sunlight and watched by the forest of this ancient land, it seemed to take on an almost primeval magic. It was as though every time she said his name, something stirred in the bones of this place, something sacred and special, something that forged a new part of her, a strength, an understanding, a need she accepted now only Sebastian could answer.
It was enough to terrify her, but not then. Then, she simply surrendered to it, but in the back of her mind, she knew she was moving dangerously close to experiencing what her father had invoked in the women he’d used to forget his grief, the women she’d always promised herself she’d never be like.
But Sebastian wasn’t using her. No more than she was using him.
They’d both been honest about what they wanted; there was no harm here. They were getting to know one another, and if doing so resulted in a mutual need, then so what? They’d cross that bridge when they got to it. Maybe they’d even cross it together, she thought, as pleasure wrapped around her and wouldn’t let go, tipping her over the edge of the abyss on a loud cry of release, torn from the very centre of her soul.
The first night on the island there’d been smoke, and now there was fire, putting Rosie in mind of that old idiom. She drew her knees to her chest and rested her cheek against them, watching as Sebastian stoked the bonfire, before stalking back to her. The day had been warm, and the night was sultry, yet there was a breeze that made the fire not completely unpleasant. If anything, this island off the coast of Cavalonia felt almost tropical.
She sighed before she could stop herself, contentment shifting through her. ‘I didn’t realise how badly I needed a holiday,’ she said, as Sebastian sat beside her. ‘I don’t remember the last time I really just let go like this. In fact, I don’t think I’ve looked at my phone since we got here.’ The thought had her sitting up straight, shocked that she could have been so carefree. Her phone was, ordinarily, her lifeline. It tethered her to the palace, the king, her job, her world—her mother, and even her father.
‘Relax,’ he drawled, partially misunderstanding her panic response. ‘I have a phone. If his precious highness needed you for anything, I’m sure one of his minions would have reached out to me.’
She studied him thoughtfully. ‘You hate his minions too?’
His smile was tight-lipped. ‘We were talking about you.’ He lifted a hand and curved her hair behind her ear. ‘Why so long between holidays?’
She let him get away with the change of subject. ‘For a long time, I was studying,’ she said. ‘And in the term breaks, I’d work. I was lucky enough to get an internship at the palace—’
‘Working for the king?’ he interrupted.
‘No, initially I was working for an advisor to Fabrizio,’ she corrected. ‘But someone recognised my interest in policy and shuffled me into the king’s department, as a government liaison at first.’
‘You must have been very young to have such a position?’
‘Yes, I was. I felt it. But at the same time, I had good instincts for it. That probably sounds incredibly immodest—’
‘I don’t have time nor interest in false modesty. I don’t find it hard to believe you were excellent in this role.’
‘Really?’ This kind of pleasure—a reaction to his instant praise—was hard to ignore. ‘Why?’
‘Now who’s fishing for compliments?’
She flushed to the roots of her hair.
‘You’re naturally diplomatic, thoughtful, measured, intelligent and well-informed. But stubborn too. I think you’d have whatever conversation you needed to have, for as long as it took to get your opponent to see things your way.’
She laughed softly at his characterisation. ‘I am stubborn,’ she agreed, ‘but only with things I care about.’
‘And you felt your agenda was in sync with the king’s?’
‘It was never my agenda,’ she corrected gently. ‘But always his.’
‘You haven’t shaped his choices in recent years? I read an article the other day about an uptick in palace-driven philanthropy. Tell me your fingerprints aren’t on those initiatives?’
She bit into her lip. ‘Everything is his decision.’
‘But you influence him.’
‘We talk a lot. Most of the time, he sees my perspective on things.’
‘Or you make him see it,’ Sebastian said, and she wondered at the tone in his voice. Jealousy? Irritation? She didn’t know, but she didn’t like the direction their conversation had taken.
‘Did you know my uncle well?’
Sadness washed over her. ‘I knew him,’ she said, cautious for a reason she couldn’t fathom.
‘What was he like?’
She tilted her face towards Sebastian. ‘When I first started working for the king, he was simply...carefree. Your grandfather has an incredible work ethic. He wakes with the sun, reads briefs, reports, writes his own letters, takes meetings all day, opens his doors to the public every week to hear their matters of concern, and then works into the evening, usually on the phone to foreign diplomats, securing relationships. He’s always working. I know he’d hoped your uncle would start taking some of the load. Fabrizio was thirty-six when he died, and thirty-two when I first met him.’
‘Old enough to take an active role,’ Sebastian agreed.
‘He wasn’t interested in much, beyond the ceremonial events.’
‘He liked to dress up,’ Sebastian responded with disapproval, and Rosie couldn’t entirely disagree.
‘He liked the pomp of his position,’ she said, nodding.
‘But left the real work to others.’
‘I’ve often wondered—’ she said, and then broke off, because she’d been about to admit to this man something she’d never said to another soul, something that smacked of disloyalty to the king. And Sebastian was no fan of the older man. Far be it from Rosie to give him more grist for the mill.
‘What have you wondered, cara ?’
She glanced at him, the word striking something in her chest. She dismissed it; he’d just tossed a term of endearment into conversation as people often did. It meant nothing. But it succeeded in throwing her enough off her game to answer honestly, even when she knew she shouldn’t discuss this.
‘I only saw them together a handful of times, not often enough to judge, I’m sure.’
‘But’ he prompted.
She grimaced. ‘Your grandfather could be very short with Fabrizio. Condescending, at times. I couldn’t understand it. With me, he has always been so patient and considerate. I have never once had him lose his temper towards me. But with Fabrizio, he could be almost cold. And I sometimes wondered if Fabrizio hadn’t simply decided to give up. To give up on being the man the king needed him to be, to give up on trying to impress him. Instead, he settled for doing the bare minimum, coasted through life, and eventually, to his death.’
Sebastian made a grunting noise that was hard to interpret, and they sat together in a heavy silence, with only the flickering of flames chattering in the background.
Eventually, though, Sebastian spoke. ‘And yet, still you defend him.’
‘As I said, to me...’ She sighed. ‘It wasn’t my place to get involved in his relationship with his son. I will say that he loved him very much. When Fabrizio died, it was as though a part of the king had died too.’ A tear rolled down her cheek; she dashed it away. ‘I sat with him all night—I couldn’t bear to leave him. He was bereft, Sebastian. Bereft. And it wasn’t just about Fabrizio, but your mother too, and his wife. He kept saying their names, over and over again. A family of four, reduced to one man—’
‘Except that’s not true,’ Sebastian ground out, standing with obvious frustration and stalking towards the fire. His face and body were cast into shadow and light by the amber glow. ‘He still has a daughter, he has a grandson. We are here, in Cavalonia and even now, he makes no effort at amends. If he was as distraught as you say, then how can he have failed to reach out? Even when Fabrizio died, it was me who approached him with a way to come home. Would he have just left us there, in America, despite this purported grief?’
‘I don’t know,’ she answered honestly, and at the look on Sebastian’s face, she stirred, standing and walking slowly towards him. The sand was cool underfoot, in contrast to the warmth thrown by the fire. ‘I respect the king a great deal, but he’s not perfect. I suppose where his emotions are involved, he might be far from it.’
Sebastian’s nostrils flared and in the light of the fire, he looked quite ferocious. ‘ Basta. Enough. We cannot talk about him. You are like a broken record, no matter what evidence contradicts your feelings on the matter. You refuse to see him as he truly is, and I refuse to accept that. This is not one of those situations in which you will eventually convince me to see things your way.’
She startled at his anger, took a step backwards and Sebastian closed his eyes on another heavy breath.
‘I wasn’t trying to—’ she said, softly.
‘Weren’t you?’
She bit down into her lip and looked across at him. Frustration warred with sadness, and also resignation. ‘Fine.’ She threw her hands in the air. ‘Have it your way. Go on hating him, Sebastian. Go on hating him, even when that hatred is eating you alive. Who knows, maybe you’ll make another ten billion by the time you’re forty. Hate, hate, hate even when it’s destroying you.’
‘Do I look destroyed?’ he demanded and damn it if her eyes didn’t devour him at the invitation he issued. Even when anger was chewing through her, there was also, always, lust.
She ground her teeth. ‘You look...’ But what could she say? ‘I don’t care,’ she muttered. ‘If you don’t want us to talk about him, then stop bringing the king up.’
‘Did I?’
She frowned. She couldn’t remember how the conversation had begun, in truth. ‘That’s the problem,’ she replied with obvious frustration. ‘All roads lead back to him. He’s too much a part of you, your history, your life, and he’s a huge part of me, my life, my work. You ask me about myself, and more likely than not, my answer’s going to involve him in some way. I’m not close to my father. I barely see him. Over the last few years, the king has become—has come to mean—so much more to me than I can explain. I love him, Sebastian. Faults or not, he’s like family to me.’
Sebastian turned away from her, his face angled so she could see the stern set of his features in profile.
‘Then I feel truly sorry for you. If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that the king is the last man on earth who deserves anything like love—from you, or anyone else.’