Chapter Thirteen
THINGS MOVED QUICKLY THEN. Ines might have sunk into a depressed grief, but the threat of danger had her heart beating heavily in her throat as Gabriel packed up the car and gave instructions to a driver Ines didn’t recognize.
Because the man was some kind of security guard who worked for Gabriel and not the crown, so he could be trusted not to fall into any traps of revolution.
Gabriel then said his good-byes to wife and son. Ines knew it was a private moment, but she watched the embrace, the soft whispered words, the lingering kiss from Evelyne, the last tight squeeze of Gabri, and ached.
Where was her husband? What was he doing? Off somewhere believing that this was a weapon. Believing he could only be a king—not a man. Save his country while sweeping his wife and unborn daughter out of the way.
She wanted to be angrier than she was, but how could she be angry at a boy who’d seen and felt and endured such terrible, terrible things? Life had never taken him by the hand and taught him different.
Of course he was afraid of love.
But understanding him now solved nothing, because there were no magic answers in his trauma. She had no answers, no ideas, only a terrible kind of grief welling up inside her.
The women piled into the car, Jonet helping Evelyne strap Gabri into his car seat.
Ines sat in the back of the car, pressed in between Jonet and Evelyne, as it pulled away.
Evelyne was silently crying. Ines felt too much fear to cry, but she pulled the handkerchief she kept in her purse out and handed it to Evelyne, who wiped her eyes.
“Are we doing the right thing?” Ines managed to ask. Because it didn’t feel right. It felt awful.
Evelyne’s gaze was down at the sleeping Gabri in his carrier. “Yes.” It was clear that yes was for her son, not for herself.
Ines put her hand over her stomach. Yes, for you. Everything is for you. No weapons. No bludgeons. Only love. The good, soft kind. The real kind.
They drove to the airport and got on one of Gabriel’s private planes that would fly them to Italy and his parents’ estate.
The truth was, Ines didn’t know how to fight what Alexandre had said. He was wrong, but he wasn’t. He was living based on an experience that had shaped him, and he didn’t know how to believe there could be a different one.
Perhaps there was only time and dedication to the task of proving something to him, but when their daughter came into the world, would time and dedication only hurt her?
Ines would love Alexandre no matter what. It was not something that seemed to shrivel up and go away. It was like some necessary organ inside of her. There was no deciding it didn’t exist, didn’t serve some necessary function to life.
So she would try very hard to give him the life he wanted just as she’d told him. She wouldn’t pressure him for more. She would try to abide by his policies and decisions.
But not at the cost of their child’s happiness. That would be where she had to draw the line.
Ines worried that there was no way to make everyone happy or even content in this situation. She worried, as she’d told Alexandre, that they would all just spend their lives in misery if he didn’t come around.
She rested her hand on her ever-expanding bump. I will not let that be the case for you.
She had to find some way…some way for that not to be her child’s fate. She could live with her own misery, as long as this baby was happy, loved, satisfied.
Once in the air, Gabri awoke, and Evelyne had him cradled in the crook of her arm as she fed him a bottle. She gazed lovingly down at her son, and Ines could picture it, more and more every day. This life inside of her being a child in her arms. A child to care for.
It would change everything. She wanted to believe it would even change Alexandre, but she worried he was ruled by such fear it would only drive him further into this determination to protect.
Not anyone else. He thought he was protecting those he loved, but Ines could see it for what it really was now.
Protecting himself, from the pain he suffered as a child. Protecting himself from confusion and control and cruelty disguised as love.
She ached for him because she too had suffered, but not in the same way. Not with such a mantle of responsibilities on his shoulders. She had been a pawn in her father’s plans—but he’d never pretended it was about love. He’d never pretended much of anything. A child was to be the parents’ tool.
She had learned love from her friendship with Jonet, seeing her aunt and uncle together, reading books where hope had more power than cruelty.
She rubbed her stomach. You will never be my tool. You will be your own. Love will never be a weapon.
“What did Alexandre say to make you amenable to coming?” Evelyne asked softly, interrupting Ines’s distressing thoughts.
“Nothing.” Ines laughed, and it wasn’t bitter exactly, but it wasn’t cheerful either. “I didn’t want convincing so much as an opportunity to say good-bye face-to-face. So I told him I loved him and would miss him, and I wished he would tell me why that hurt him.”
“Let me guess. He got very quiet and commanding.”
Ines almost smiled at Evelyne’s very correct guess.
“For a time, but I must have worn him out. Or worry over this revolution did. He got a little angry and began telling me things…” Ines shook her head.
“Heartbreaking things. About how he sees love. A weapon, he said. Because that is how your parents used it.”
Evelyne frowned. “My father never loved anything but himself.”
“Alexandre claims Enzo loved your mother. That it became a bone of contention between them. I do not think it was love, but they called it that, so Alexandre thinks it was that.”
Evelyne was quiet contemplating that.
Ines realized Alex had not discussed what he felt for his sister, how she fit into his views of love. Someone to protect, yes, but he also loved Evelyne. How did he view that if not as a bludgeon?
“But…he loves me. And Gabriel,” Evelyne said softly, coming to perhaps the same conclusions Ines was. “They are like true brothers. They know each other better than anyone.”
Ines wondered if Gabriel knew what Alex had told her this afternoon. She very much doubted it. “I don’t know. I don’t know how he justifies it. I only know he told me love is a weapon.”
“He said that to Gabriel too,” Evelyne murmured. “Gabriel told him he was doing it wrong then.”
Ines almost managed a smile. “Do you think he believed Gabriel?”
Evelyne sighed, looking down at Gabri again. “No.”
No. There was just something too complicated and complex, and at least some of the change or healing or whatever it was had to come from Alex wanting those things.
Maybe she understood that his awful childhood had marked him, but she could hardly make sense of all the different ways. Besides, he was an expert compartmentalizer. Evelyne probably had her own little compartment in his mind, more about protection than love.
“How do I get through to him when he’s spent over thirty years believing that love is a weapon? I just worry that I cannot.”
Evelyne sighed, leaning back in her seat.
Gabri finished his bottle, and Evelyne shifted him onto her chest, where she began to rub circles on his back until he burped.
She made it look easy, but Ines knew she had been gone for those months of the adjustment to motherhood, so she could hardly assume Evelyne had easily and perfectly adjusted to her new role.
“I cannot speak for everyone, but I do know something about deep-seated issues. They are possible to overcome, and I think love is one of the best things to help accomplish that,” Evelyne said. “But sometimes so is giving them what they deserve.”
Ines knew that when Gabriel and Evelyne had been having their problems, Gabriel had determined he was a threat. Instead of fighting him on that, Evelyne had agreed with him and let him go—not because she actually agreed or wanted him to go, but because he had to come to terms with himself…himself.
Gabriel had come crawling back, though it had required a little interference from Ines and Alexandre. Not that Alex had wanted to interfere. But Ines had made her case, that it was Alex’s duty to get through to his friend.
Alex had done an excellent job of setting up a situation in which Gabriel would have to face the truth about himself. Ines had looked back on that moment as a bit of a triumph. Moving in the right direction. He’d listened to her. Interfered in his friend’s personal matters that involved love.
She’d thought change was in the offing, so how had they ended up here instead?
“I don’t suppose Gabriel could create a ruse in order to prove to Alexandre that love is no weapon?” Ines asked, somewhat miserably. Because she did not know how to fix childhood trauma.
Evelyne smiled wryly. “If he could think of one, I would have made him do it months ago. But this is…”
Different. Complicated. Alexandre—the king of Alis and being stubborn.
“I’ve done exactly what he wanted. I’ve run away. I’ve demanded he be a husband. I’ve given up. I feel like I’ve done it all. And he’s still…” Well, he wasn’t the same, was he? He’d broken down and told her the things that held him back. That was new. Maybe it was even progress?
But it was hard to see what the end result of progress would be when there was the ticking clock of this child, of the love she would need from her father.
Evelyne reached over with a free hand and squeezed Ines’s arm. “He does love you, you know.”
Ines let that settle inside her. Did he? Did she know that? “I think I do know that, but sometimes I worry I’m kidding myself. How do you know?”