Chapter Seven
ALEXANDRE IMMEDIATELY WENT back to work once he’d ordered Ines a tray of her preferred morning snack.
He had wanted to track down the doctor who’d checked out Ines and demand to know every detail. It seemed a better action item than standing there cataloging all the ways her body had slightly changed in all these months.
Better than wondering how he’d lost control of all this and wanting to beg her forgiveness for wrongs he hadn’t committed.
Because he was a king, and he was right. She was in the wrong. No matter how at ease she seemed with everything, down to growing a child.
A child. Their child. His child.
He was to be a father, and he knew what that meant: be the opposite his father in every way. But he didn’t know what that meant in terms of being a king—his most important role. His only role.
Except Ines had upended all of that. Pregnant. Growing a child. So many dangers in that simple, age-old cycle.
But she’d said she was well. The baby was well. And Ines was not like his mother. She had no reasons to hide the truth of her health from him like his mother had hidden the truth from his father. Leading directly to her death during labor.
Sometimes Alexandre thought of that and wondered if she’d signed her own death sentence on purpose. Just to escape. Just to leave it all to him.
And since he was thinking about that awful time, and apparently blaming his poor victimized mother for anything, he kept his afternoon appointments, conferred with his assistant over a few requests and approved various action items. He skipped lunch and got out of his head, out of his past and his future, and into the present.
Until it was time for dinner. Something he might have skipped too, but he was not a coward. Ines was back, and everything would go back to the way it was. If it did, he would know how to handle this new role she’d thrust upon him.
Which meant he would not hide.
If he could get through to Ines to stop kissing him and such, everything would be fine.
Besides, he’d stopped that, hadn’t he? Perhaps it had been difficult to set her away instead of sink into her, hold on tight and assure himself she was real and back and here and that meant all was well.
All would be well. Without kissing. Without any changes. They would go back to the way things had been. She’d had her time to run away, and she’d gotten the child she’d wanted. There was no reason for anything to change. She would be a mother. He would be a king. Easy.
So why did his heart beat in odd, anxious flutters in his chest as he walked to the dining room this evening?
Ines sat at the table—not in her usual seat, but everything else about the scene was usual.
Her hair was sleekly pulled back instead of haphazard.
She wore a dress more befitting her station.
She did not wear the earrings he’d given her as a wedding present, or the necklace she usually wore on casual days without appointments, but she was wearing his ring.
Because everything was back the way it should be, or so he kept assuring himself. But Alexandre did not know how to get rid of this unease sitting on his chest. She was giving him exactly what he wanted. Returning everything back to normal, just as it should be.
He couldn’t seem to relax and trust that this was true. Which was when he started to pick up on that which was not normal. Like the fact that table was only set for two—right next to each other.
“Where are Evelyne and Gabriel?”
Ines studied him for a moment before answering. “They are eating in their rooms this evening.”
“That is highly unusual.” He studied the table arrangement. He did not want to sit right next to her. They usually sat across from each other. But she was next to his seat, and it was set for him, and…
“I asked for some privacy as we discuss what’s next.”
His gaze went from the table setting to her. “What do you mean, what’s next?”
“How things will go on now that I am pregnant.”
“Nothing will change. Everything will go back to the way it was, except we will now follow the plans we’d previously made for a child. You will scale back your old responsibilities of course, but for the most part, everything goes on as it was.”
She sighed. “Yes, I had a feeling you’d say that.” She shook her head. “This does not work for me.”
“I beg your pardon?”
She sighed. “Sit, Alexandre.”
He balked at being told what to do, but a staff member appeared with the first course, and Alexandre had no choice, he felt, but to take the seat next to Ines. To continue on as normal for him, even if she was determined to make things difficult.
She gave his hand a little pat as the course was served, like she was placating him.
“I have missed the palace food,” she said, smiling as the bowl of soup was put in front of her. “Jonet has kitchen skills I do not possess, but nothing like this.”
Just normal conversation after saying their plans did not work for her—even though she’d been a part of making them. Or, at least, agreeing to them.
Once the staff had left them to the first course, Ines spoke again.
“We have only a few months between now and when the baby is born. For those next months, we will do the following.” She picked up one of the portfolio-notebook combinations she was always using for business. He hadn’t noticed it there on the other side of her, but now she handed it to him.
He took it.
She began to eat, so he opened it and saw a list in Ines’s beautifully perfect handwriting. Neat. Organized.
Alarming.
Because as he read everything in her neatly printed list, his unease grew.
On weekends, we will eat meals together privately, in our own quarters, unless there is an event. They had never eaten meals together privately. They always ate here—with or without guests or his sister.
We will walk the gardens once a day together—you may have your assistant schedule a time or choose spontaneously. Spontaneously? He was trying to rebuild a country, and she wanted him to accompany her on walks.
We will return to our appointment schedule—with the additional requirement you spend the night in my bed on such evenings.
“What is this?” he demanded, frustrated that even reading the word appointment seemed to elicit a physical response in his body.
“Well, this is what normal married people do, Alexandre. They have private time together. They are intimate. They build a relationship outside of their roles in public. I realize we are not normal, and it occurred to me that you might need spelled out for you what I require to remain in this marriage.”
Remain? “You are pregnant. You are the queen. There is no getting out of this marriage, Ines.” He closed the portfolio and handed it back to her, but she did not take it. “You made certain of that whether you wanted to or not.”
She held his gaze calmly, even as he felt the scalding heat of frustration poke at him.
“These are my terms, Alex. This is what the next few months will entail if you’d like me to stay put.”
Alex. Alex. Why did it matter if she shortened his name? Why did it feel like she was talking to some version of himself he wished existed but didn’t?
He cleared his throat, forced himself to focus. “And if I do not agree to this plan?”
“I will continue to run away,” she said evenly, her gaze direct. “Every chance I get. You will have to lock me in a dungeon to stop me.”
“And you think I won’t?”
“No. I don’t. You’ll want to, God knows.” She put down her spoon, took a sip of water. “But it will remind you of your father. And you won’t be able to go through with it.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“No, Alex, I wouldn’t be,” she said, with absolutely no hesitation. “You have too much nobility in you to ever sink to your father’s levels in anything more than thought.”
“Perhaps I just haven’t been pushed far enough yet.”
She watched him, that blue gaze of hers as steady as ever. When she spoke, each word somehow felt like a curse. “If you haven’t yet, you never will be.”
The staff of course chose that moment to clear the first course and replace it with the second. Alexandre sat there in a seething silence, trying to get ahold of his temper.
If you haven’t yet, you never will be.
He did not know how to believe that was true, but she said it so matter-of-factly, as if there was no doubt.
Once they were alone again, she kept prattling on in between greedy bites.
“Nevertheless, I will take that chance. If you refuse to abide by my rules, I will involve the press. I will embarrass you, if I must. But if you agree to my terms, and the baby comes and nothing has changed—you have no feelings for me, want nothing from me except to be some excellent queen mannequin—I will release you from my horrible attempts to give us a real marriage. I will go back to the way things were, remain as your wife, your queen, the mother of your child in this detached, joyless, loveless abyss.”
He could only stare at her. Detached, joyless, loveless abyss? Is that how she saw her life? It felt like something banded around his lungs and squeezed. It felt like guilt—when he’d never promised her anything but just what she laid out.
“But you must give me a chance first.”
“A chance for what?” he asked, truly baffled by this woman who had been perfect for nearly a year and over the past few months had taken all that perfection and ease away.
She cocked her head, studying him. “To show you what living feels like.”
Living. What else did he do every day but live? Meet all his lofty goals, turn this country back into what it could be? “I breathe. I live.”
“You breathe. You exist. You deserve more. I deserve more. Our baby deserves more.”
He could not even grasp these words.
“So do you agree?” she asked. She had cleared her plate. He had not touched his food.
Agree? He could not agree to this. It was pointless. A waste of time. It was…a ransom of sorts, and he did not deal with terrorists anymore, now that his father was dead.