Chapter Eight #3
‘Surely she didn’t hate you,’ Astrid murmured, obviously appalled.
She hung her ornament quickly, but instead of retrieving two more, she came around the tree and stood right in front of him.
‘Javier, that was your father’s misstep.
He mismanaged the situation and your stepmother took that out on you.
Their issues were theirs alone. You should never have felt to blame. ’
‘Spoken by someone with actual emotional intelligence,’ he said, keeping his tone light rather than admit how much her words were threatening to leak into parts of him that had been broken for a long time. Parts that he knew would always be broken.
‘So you just left?’
‘Of course.’
‘No, not of course,’ she said, angrily. ‘No one stood up for you? There was no one who made her see sense?’
‘Querida, do you truly think I would have stayed somewhere I wasn’t wanted? Do you think I would have forced myself on them, once I had been asked to leave?’
Her lips parted. She lifted a hand to his chest. ‘Your father had just died. Carlotta was grieving. Otto, too. They acted—’
‘In a way they stand by, even now. At no point has she acknowledged that she erred, or apologised for her behaviour. I do not need an apology, anyway. I left, I rebuilt my life, without them in it.’ He tilted his chin, defiance in his gut making him clench his jaw.
‘I have zero regrets. Except, perhaps, not leaving sooner.’
‘Where did you go?’ Her tone was careful once more, modulated and unemotional, but he saw the torment in her eyes, and the sympathy. Strangely, it didn’t even bother him.
‘Home to Spain.’
Something briefly flashed in his expression that he didn’t comprehend.
‘To your mother?’
‘My mother had died by then. I didn’t know.’
She gasped. ‘What?’
He cleared his throat. ‘My father chose not to tell me.’
Her expression showed even more confusion. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘I was eleven. I suppose he thought it would be bad for me.’
‘It doesn’t sound like your life here was a walk in the park,’ she murmured gently.
He moved to the ornaments, simply as a distraction.
He’d never admitted the truth to anyone.
Not his father, not Juanita. In a weird way, to speak of Carlotta was to give her renewed power to hurt him.
He wasn’t the same little boy he’d been then.
He’d grown and shed her from his life, from his mind.
Once he had inflicted the ultimate revenge, of reclaiming the company he should always have owned a share in, he would be set free, once and for all. Then, he could let the last vestiges of his anger go.
‘Other people have it worse.’
That was true. For all Carlotta had taken delight in doing whatever she could to make Javier miserable, she’d never physically hurt him. She hadn’t touched him at all. Not a hug, not an arm around his shoulders. Not a single goodnight kiss, when he’d been scared of the dark as a little boy.
He squared his shoulders, mentally distancing himself from that time in his life.
‘So, no, Your Majesty. This—’ he gestured to the tree, ‘—is quite new to me.’
They worked in silence for a little while, hanging the decorations bit by bit until the tree was half covered. Astrid paused then, moving to her champagne glass and holding it as she sat elegantly on the sofa. ‘I’ll watch you for a while,’ she said, taking a sip.
The music swirled in the background and he surprisingly found himself enjoying the simple act of hanging decorations on the tree, perhaps because Astrid seemed so invested in it.
There had only been a dozen or so of the handmade children’s decorations.
The rest were delicate glass stars and fine silver shapes, with soft velvet ribbons.
All new, all obviously very special. As he hung each one, she spoke of the national significance—the symbolism of that particular flower, or the story behind the star, the artist who’d created one of the ceramic pieces.
He listened, finding it hard not to be swept up in the magic she created, knowing this was part and parcel of what made her such a compelling figure.
It went beyond her stoicism and the sadness of her family’s deaths.
Astrid was her own uniquely interesting person and the whole world saw that.
‘It’s perfect,’ she said, as he hung the last decoration.
He knew he wasn’t imagining the catch in her voice.
She stood, placing her empty glass down and walking across to him, surprising him by reaching down and linking their fingers together.
Just standing there, holding his hand as she stared at the tree.
He could only stare at her. It was the strangest thing to have this moment—looking at Astrid and seeing not just a woman, but all the fragments that made that woman who she was.
Understanding her in a way he wasn’t sure anyone else did.
‘Yes, Your Majesty,’ he muttered, dragging his gaze away because something strange was rushing through his chest, making it hard to think straight. With a sinking sensation, he realised that was exactly how he’d describe it.