Chapter Fourteen
The rest of the conversations went by a haze. The looks her father threw her way, everything from accusation to confusion, barely registered. The only time she spoke up was when her father pressed the king about the PR mess of the last few days.
“I want that fixed,” she said to the king. “If I see the words Bastard Spare in the news again, I will assume it is your work.”
Less than a week ago, Livia had found the king intimidating. Now she saw only entitlement. Maybe it was simply that the past few days had cut through the maneuverings and pretenses, leaving bare what was most important. Or maybe all she could focus on was the hope she had seen in Gustav’s eyes.
They walked out of the room and through the long, gilded halls of the castle, the way they had just a few days before, when he had cornered her into marrying him. Livia glanced up at Gustav, but his expression was unreadable. He was the same man, she thought, and yet everything felt different.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Somewhere far away to talk.”
They exited to an interior courtyard of the castle, and she followed him across the cobblestone under the cloud-heavy sky and into the sleek, black SUV that was waiting for them. It was only when the door closed and the car pulled away that he turned to her.
“Livia,” he whispered, his eyes soft. “You’re here.”
He rested his hand on her cheek, the way he had in the hallway of her apartment.
And in that moment, she believed it was possible that everything that had once been broken and lost could be whole again.
The fractures were still there, but she believed there was a chance they could fit together, stronger than before.
She was trying so hard not to hope for too much, trying to tell herself that they still needed to figure out how to be together.
But as they drove across the strip of land toward the city, Livia closed her eyes, suddenly overwhelmed by the mess they had made of their relationship.
“I don’t know where to start,” she quietly.
“I’ll start by saying how sorry I am that I made you choose between your sister and me,” he said.
His voice was rough with emotion in a way that made her open her eyes and look at him.
“I’m so sorry I was so caught up in what I wanted that I didn’t listen.
All my life, I’ve railed against my father’s self-involvement, the way he thinks that his wants and needs take precedence because he is the king.
And yet at the moment it mattered the most, I did the same. ”
She blinked up at him as the hope inside her grew, blossoming into something bigger.
“I am in love with you, Livia Jacard,” he said. “You know me, so you must know this is true.”
“I love you, too. Enough that it hurts.” She drew in a shaky breath. “But we need more than just love. I heard what you said to you father about giving up your revenge. About deciding together. But that means both of us compromising.”
“I want to build something together.” His lips lifted into the tiniest hint at a smile. “Though you might have noticed I need some help in the area of compromise.”
The corners of her mouth tugged up. “Maybe I do, too.”
He tilted his head, and his gray eyes searched hers. “What about your sister?”
“She didn’t need me,” she said quietly. She was still trying to process the strangeness of this new idea. “She was ready to stand up to my parents, and I was too busy going at it alone to hear her saying that.”
His wisp of a smile widened. “Maybe we’re more alike than we thought.”
He smoothed her hair and traced her shoulder, as if he was reassuring himself that she was really there. “I should not have given you an ultimatum. Can you give me another chance? I want to get this right, and it hurt so much when you left.”
She closed her eyes. “It hurt me, too.”
“I love you, Livia,” he repeated. “I’m so afraid that I will lose you again.”
It was as if something inside her was suddenly free. That cage of solitude had opened, and she stepped out, into his arms.
“We will figure this out together,” she said.
And then, though they were in the back seat of the car, he somehow managed to get down on one knee.
“Livia Jacard, will you marry me? Will you accept my support and my love as well as all my faults? I promise to stand by you. I promise to consider us first. And I promise that when I make mistakes, which I most certainly will, I will try to make amends for them.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I, Livia Jacard, promise to love and cherish you. I promise to live by your side in honesty and in love, in times of joy and times of struggle. I promise to support you, and I commit myself to building a future that both of us want together.”
She slipped her hands through his hair and closed the last distance between them, meeting his lips as they crashed down on hers.
He kissed her as if she was his lifesaving breath.
And with the castle behind them, that temple of his suffocating past, she wondered if maybe she was.
Once upon a time, that had been the stuff of her teenage dreams, back when she thought he was another rebellious teenage boy, shunted away to this private school and ready to leave it all behind.
And in a way, he was. How could she have thought that she didn’t want him in her life?
His kiss made her feel as if they were somehow living in two separate moments in time.
He was at once that tall, lanky boy of seventeen, so raw and angry and full of want, and he was also a man, strong, determined and so very much grown.
She wanted both. Maybe he understood that, or maybe she would need to tell him, again and again.
Trust took time, but there was nothing more that she wanted than to help the trust between them grow stronger.
He pulled back a little, his lips still temptingly parted, his eyes full of promises.
“So what happens next?” he asked with a teasing smile.
She rested a hand on his leg. “We’ll figure it out, preferably as we finish our honeymoon.”
Two days later, they set sail on Gustav’s fifty-foot sailboat.
They headed out into the Baltic, where the only sounds were the wind on the sails and the hum of the hull as it skimmed through the water.
They tacked between islands all day, and as the afternoon turned to evening, they anchored in the small cove where they had spent the night a few days before, with a narrow rocky peninsula on one side and a sandy beach on the other that held very good memories for both of them.
Billowy clouds hung in the sky, but the sun found its way around them, shining on the white deck of the sailboat as Livia helped Gustav pull in the sails for the night.
He fitted the wooden table into a slot on the floor, then he disappeared into the cabin, returning with one of a few baskets the chef had prepared for them.
He placed the basket on the table and disappeared again.
“Can I help with anything?” Livia called.
He climbed up the cabin steps with a stack of blue-and-white-striped cushions in his hand. “You can arrange a place for us to eat dinner.”
She lay a few cushions along both sides of the bench, then opened the large picnic basket and peeked inside.
On top was a blue-and-white-striped tablecloth, which she spread out over the wooden table.
Next, she unpacked a set of plates, champagne flutes, water glasses and silverware for two.
Underneath she found small ceramic bowls with lids of food.
She laid them in the center of the table and uncovered them, revealing salads and vegetables, some raw and some cooked in sauces that smell of warm herbs.
In another bowl was a caprese salad, and another held a white-bean tapenade that wafted garlic and olive oil, the scent mingling with the salty sea air.
Gustav emerged from the cabin, and this time he held a bottle of champagne in one hand and a crispy baguette in the other.
Livia pulled out the cutting board from the bottom of the basket for the bread, and Gustav peeled the foil off the champagne bottle.
The cork came off with a pop, and he poured them each a glass.
Birds twittered around them, frogs croaked their evening songs and the boat rocked its gentle rhythm.
Gustav sat down on the bench across from her and raised his class. “To the first day of our second honeymoon.”
She clinked her glass against his. “May it fill us and strengthen us in difficult times.”
Then he set a small velvet box in front of her. She glanced up at him, then back at the box. Slowly, she opened the top and revealed a ring with one prominent diamond, surrounded by a ring of smaller emeralds.
“You received your engagement ring under different circumstances. I don’t want to take that away, as that is a part of our story, but I want to give you one that I chose, just for you.”
“It’s lovely,” she whispered. She slipped the original ring onto her right hand, then slid the new one onto her wedding finger.
“Every day with you is a honeymoon, Livia,” he said, flashing her his most charming smile.
“Except the day you had to kidnap me so that I didn’t marry your brother.”
“Technically, that was coercion, not kidnapping.”
“Hmm… Definitely much better.” She touched the ring he’d just given her and smiled. Livia took a sip of the champagne and then surveyed the spread in front of them. “The food looks incredible.”
“From what I can tell, it will last about three days, and then either we have to start fishing for supper or return these baskets for refills.”
Returning to land meant returning to their phones, which she wasn’t especially eager to do.
After she had sent Adele a message detailing their plans, Livia was ready for a long break from hers.
Right now, she was nowhere near ready to return to civilization, and she was pretty sure Gustav felt the same.