Chapter Eight #3
‘You said you were fond of me, which is rather impersonal. I’m fond of my dog,’ she pointed out as she eased the gorgeous diamond off her finger again and gently settled it back down on the coffee table.
‘I would prefer a husband who is a little less lukewarm about his feelings for me in the emotional department. From all I’ve heard, read and seen, marriage can be challenging.
It shouldn’t be something you enter without the very strongest reasons.
I would want my marriage to last and, to be honest, you don’t sound sufficiently committed or keen enough on me.
I do appreciate that I’m the convenient choice because of who I am and my positive approval rating with our people.
But I truly believe that I need to mean more than that to you for any marriage between us to succeed. I can’t marry you, Raz.’
And with that measured declaration, Zia set her untouched champagne down beside the ring and walked out of the room, Sausage surging up to run at her heels as she headed for her suite in the Queen’s Tower.
Well, she had been honest with him, she conceded ruefully, without getting down to the embarrassing nitty-gritty details and telling him bluntly that she wanted love, not fondness.
After all, what would be the point in telling him such a thing?
A person didn’t love to order. A person didn’t fall in love with you simply because you loved them.
Either he loved you or he didn’t and not all the wishing in the world could change that fact.
Yet, inside her, her heart had just cracked right down the middle.
She had turned him down even though she loved him, but she needed more from him than fondness, for goodness’ sake.
Yet the thought of losing Orazio bowed her shoulders and twisted her tummy with pain, sending a chill down her rigid spine.
And obviously she would lose him now that she had refused to marry him, she conceded wretchedly.
Before she could settle into her room and the emotional turmoil that was beginning to engulf her, she was informed that she had a visitor. Nobody could have been more surprised than she was to be shown downstairs into one of the formal meeting rooms to find Massimo Caccia waiting for her.
‘Massimo?’ she said uncertainly.
The older man looked tense and somehow aged since their last meeting, his plump features thinned, dark purple bruises below his eyes. ‘Yes, I’m here to make a formal apology,’ he told her tautly.
‘A formal apology?’ Zia repeated uneasily. ‘But what for?’
‘Please sit down, Your Highness,’ he urged anxiously. ‘I have a confession to make. I arranged your supposed theft to ensure your return to Mandovia.’
Unpleasant surprise shivered through Zia and she braced a hand on the meeting table beside her, shaken that Orazio’s cynical suspicions had been proven correct. ‘You arranged it?’
And she sank down in the nearest seat in sheer astonishment as Massimo admitted to bribing Sofia Marone’s maid to plant her diamond brooch in the cleaning trolley. ‘But why?’ she queried in disbelief.
‘For Mandovia,’ he declared uncomfortably.
‘Your Highness, have you no idea even now how important a symbol you are to the people of Upper Mandovia? I’m just one of those people.
I went into the army here in Lower Mandovia but my goal was always to be of use to our country—to bring us all together.
’ His hands moved to illustrate his point while he regarded her with deep expectation and a degree of awe that embarrassed her.
‘And you can do that. In fact, you have done it and though the government does not agree with what I did or my methods…it’s worked out, hasn’t it?
I brought you and His Majesty together…’
Zia was too disconcerted by his admission that the theft in London had been orchestrated to entrap her to immediately respond.
Obviously, Orazio had suspected that, but she had not really processed the suspicion because she had trustingly believed that it was impossible for a government figure to behave in such a manner.
Now she was struggling to accept the reality and Massimo’s confession without attacking him.
Massimo, who had been so supportive and understanding of her situation in London?
Massimo, whom she had innocently trusted because he had seemed to be on her side?
My goodness, she was na?ve, ridiculously na?ve in comparison to Orazio, who had smelt a rat the minute he’d heard her story!
‘And what’s happening now?’ she almost whispered.
‘I’ve been dismissed. The cabinet says my moral outlook is very much wrong and out of step with everyone else’s,’ Massimo admitted heavily.
‘They were very shocked by my actions, none of which were condoned by the government. Even though the end result was exactly what they longed for—our Princess back in Mandovia—my methods were viewed as unacceptable and I’m now the bad guy—’
‘Yes,’ Zia registered with sudden comprehension.
‘But also, in a sense, you rescued me, Massimo. Orazio wouldn’t want me to admit that, but I won’t deny it.
Sandrine Beccari had Alina and me trapped.
The way you went about the rescue was wrong—no denying that—but I can forgive you because, no matter what happens here, it’s still better than my life was in London. ’
‘That is a very generous admission,’ Massimo opined in unashamed wonder.
‘Not at all. I know what it’s like to suffer and get nowhere because people won’t listen to you…or because they have no respect for your opinions,’ she confided. ‘What will you do now?’
‘I have been tasked with setting up our first embassy in Japan,’ Massimo told her in an undertone. ‘I am fortunate indeed to still have employment.’
Ignoring the reality that Massimo was not happy to be exiled to the other side of the world, Zia managed a comforting smile, because if the government could not accept his behaviour, he was better still employed than out of work.
‘And you’ll be in your element,’ she forecast with confidence.
‘You’ll get it moving fast. You’re an action guy. ’
‘Thank you, Your Highness,’ Massimo murmured with deep feeling, his dark brown eyes glistening with appreciation. ‘I don’t deserve your good wishes but I do appreciate them. You’re a forgiving person…perhaps it is good that you are paired with the King, who is not, at all, a forgiving person.’
‘Orazio could surprise you,’ Zia almost whispered.
But that was that. Massimo departed after wishing her all the best for the future, visibly looking forward to the event of a royal wedding.
She would not have dared to admit that she had just turned down the King’s proposal.
And she was still wondering if she had done the right thing. Had she made the right decision?
All or nothing?
She went back upstairs for a belated dinner although goodness knew she had no appetite.
Braced to face Orazio again, she was disconcerted when he failed to join her in the dining room.
Of course, he would scarcely be in the mood to want to share a table with her, she conceded reluctantly.
He had asked her to marry him in the clumsiest way, as if the very reality that they were currently sharing a bed was a sufficient reason for him to assume that she would agree.
But then, if he was speaking the truth in saying that he had always expected to marry her, it meant that from the outset of their affair they had both misunderstood each other’s intentions.
Was that her fault? Or his? Had he genuinely always had the view that they would end up together?
Was she guilty of being blind and cynical?
She had always assumed that he would get bored with her and would want to move on.
But what were they going to do now when everything had fallen apart?
Her heart sank as she got ready for bed.
Well, that was the state of play, only it wasn’t play, she thought heavily.
It was her heart in the balance. Orazio had done what everybody expected him to do.
His people wanted him to marry her, to make her his Queen.
Where was the choice there for him when they were already living together?
He had taken the next step, the anticipated next step.
Could she fault him for that proposal that had not been a proposal at all and had, instead, been more of an assumption?
He was still the guy she loved, she reflected unhappily.
Perhaps she was expecting too much from him?
She had disappointed him. He had wanted to marry her.
It might be that he wanted to marry her for the wrong reasons but that wouldn’t diminish his sense of failure.
He had seemed to believe that she was waiting for his proposal.
In other words, he had believed that she was expecting it and might have acted differently had he known otherwise.
An extraordinary shard of compassion shivered through her then.
Orazio was always so determined to be cool.
It was almost a character trait. He’d seen it all, done it all and he didn’t get down and dirty in the way other people did, she acknowledged.
His true feelings were kept private and he kept them to himself as though his life depended on it.
Maybe that severe reserve had served him well as an unloved child, as a reluctant monarch where personal feelings weren’t welcome.
Her heart squeezed at that realisation as she recalled his mother’s unemotional greeting, an attack on his apparent choices rather than a loving maternal embrace and a family reunion.