Chapter Fifteen
‘You look beautiful, Your Highness.’
‘Thank you, Ella,’ Freya murmured to the dress designer as she stared at her reflection in the floor-length mirror in her parlour. The stunning cream silk creation managed to look both demure and yet also provocative, accentuating her curves while showing a limited amount of cleavage.
Unfortunately, it didn’t ease the nerves that had been rioting in her stomach for forty-eight hours now… Ever since she’d received that curt text from Theo.
Engagement wouldn’t get us what we wanted. Wedding only option. See you at the altar on NYE. T
He’d sent her a few texts since—including a smiling emoji when she’d sent him a message thanking him for arranging the guardianship agreement for her brothers. But every time she’d tried to ring him, the call had gone to voicemail.
He was avoiding her, that much was obvious. But why?
The fear of betrayal had grown exponentially since their arrival.
Her father had called her into his study to ‘inform’ her of the arrangements that had already been made for the wedding, which was to be a low-key affair, thanks to her decision to disgrace the monarchy by running off with Theo in the first place.
She didn’t care about her father’s disapproval. Not any more. She didn’t even care that the marriage would give him what he wanted—it had never been her intention to risk bankrupting Galicos because of her father’s financial ineptitude. But Theo’s silence was starting to terrify her.
She understood the marriage was a necessity.
She’d even told him she didn’t blame him for having to agree to it on their behalf.
But why wouldn’t he talk to her in person?
They’d had no opportunity to discuss the plans for their life together ‘after the wedding’.
She’d been told by his advisers they would be travelling to his luxury villa in Kefalonia for the honeymoon—and seen lots of speculation in the press that their ‘shotgun wedding’ was necessary because she was already pregnant. But nothing else.
Had someone planted those pregnancy stories?
Or was that just the celebrity press hunting for a good headline?
She didn’t even know what his thoughts on children were.
She’d received no guarantees about her future—would he let her enrol in college, do a degree?
Where would they live? She’d told herself she didn’t need guarantees. But now she wasn’t so sure…
‘I will have the seamstresses finish the final adjustments and send in Helena and her team.’ Ella beamed behind her, jolting Freya out of her thoughts as she mentioned the stylist and her team of beauticians.
‘Thank you, Ella,’ Freya murmured, as the designer unzipped the pinned dress carefully so Freya could take it off. ‘You’ve done an amazing job getting this ready so quickly,’ she added.
Ella sent her an easy smile. ‘Yes, especially as we only had three days to create a new design. Monsieur Caras was adamant we could not use the design created for your rumoured marriage to the first Monsieur Caras, and later Monsieur Faron.’
Freya’s heart somersaulted in her chest at the reminder of her ill-fated engagement to Alexander Caras, which had never even been announced in the end, and the planned wedding to Faron, which she had run from.
But then her brain snagged on something else Ella had said.
‘When did you receive word to make up the new design?’ she asked.
‘Three days ago, Your Highness,’ the woman replied as she folded the garment into a large box.
Three days ago… But how was that possible, when she had only agreed to an engagement three days ago? And the wedding date had been finalised with her father when they had arrived back in Galicos two days ago?
It didn’t make any sense.
The designer closed the box, ready to transport the dress to the seamstresses who had been working around the clock.
‘Are you sure it was three days ago, Ella? Not two?’ Freya asked. Surely the designer must be mistaken on the timing.
‘Yes, Your Highness,’ the designer confirmed.
‘I was contacted by Monsieur Caras’ assistant on Friday afternoon, as soon as the wedding date had been agreed with the prince’s office.
’ The older woman smiled as a lead weight plummeted into Freya’s stomach, making the tangle of nerves sink into a chasm.
‘Your fiancé is so forceful but also superstitious. His assistant explained he did not want you married to him in a dress designed for another man. Even his own brother.’
But how had Theo known they would marry? And how could the date for tonight’s wedding have been set three days ago?
The fear tightened around Freya’s ribs like a vice, reminding her of the morning she had woken to find her mother gone.
Had he known she was hopelessly in love with him? That she would have gone along with anything he suggested? Because she trusted him, implicitly. The same way she had once trusted her mother.
The fear knifed through her insides. She gazed at the horizon through the mullioned window of her parlour, the port lights twinkling in the darkness beyond the palace walls.
The walls that had held her prisoner for so long.
The walls she had scaled, figuratively at least, ten days ago, with Theo’s help… But which now held her captive again.
She was due to be married in less than two hours’ time. Due to take a wild leap of faith, with a man she had known for less than ten days. A man who had refused to talk to her since making a deal with her father—which could anchor her to him for the rest of her life.
A man who had lied to her more than once. And had also lied to her about when the wedding date had been set.
‘Could you ask Helena to give me half an hour to myself?’ she asked the designer.
She needed time to think, time to contact Theo again.
The designer looked surprised. ‘Will that give you long enough to prepare, Your Highness?’ she asked, sounding doubtful.
‘I would like to take a bath to relax my pre-wedding jitters,’ she murmured, which had to be the understatement of the century. ‘And it is the bride’s prerogative to be late, I believe,’ she finished with a calm confidence she didn’t remotely feel.
The designer smiled. ‘Of course, I will inform Helena not to disturb you for the next thirty minutes.’
As soon as the woman left the parlour, Freya’s confident smile dropped into the huge hole forming in her stomach.
She folded her arms around her waist, to hold herself together and stop the shaking. Had she been foolish to go with her heart? Hadn’t she once trusted her mother, only to have that trust destroyed?
Her mother… Was that where her fears really came from? Was she overreacting? Perhaps it was that feeling of betrayal from her mother’s disappearance, which she had never been able to shake, that was making her doubt Theo now?
The letter!
It might contain answers. She’d realised in Finland those answers might be more complex than she had once believed.
Her mother had fallen in love with Danny Charbonnet that Christmas.
Freya knew that now from the memories she had recalled in Lapland.
But also, from her own experience there with Theo.
Her mother hadn’t run away on a whim. And Freya would understand the choices her mother had been forced to make so much better now. Because she now knew how visceral and volatile and instant and intense love could be.
Her mother’s letter could explain so much. But even if it didn’t, she needed to confront her past, so it would not continue to taint her future.
She dashed into her bedroom, yanked open the dresser drawer and rummaged around until she located the letter she had buried there five years ago. She lifted out the bulging envelope addressed to her in her mother’s looping scrawl, postmarked with the address of a clinic in the French Alps.
She ripped the letter open, and pulled out five sheets of paper, yellowing and fragile, filled with her mother’s increasingly shaky handwriting.
Her hands began to tremble as she read the words, written as her mother lay dying. She pressed her fingers to her lips, the rush of love like a riptide threatening to pull her under as she recalled the woman she had refused to forgive for so long.
How could she have been so wrong? About everything.
Anjelica Galicois had never stopped loving her children. She had tried everything to gain visitation rights, but her father had used all his wealth and privilege to prevent her from ever seeing them again, out of bitterness…
But as Freya absorbed the truth, she began to see some terrifying parallels between her parents’ marriage and the deal she had struck with Theo…
And a warning.
A tear slipped down Freya’s cheek as she came to terms with the extent of her father’s lies, and the impossible situation her mother had found herself in once she had escaped her desperately unhappy marriage, not realising she was making a choice between the children she loved and her future happiness with Danny—the man who had supported her always—until it was too late…
As Freya folded the letter carefully and tucked it back into the envelope, she knew what she had to do. She had to escape. Again.
But as she secured the rope to the balcony balustrades, the rush of exhilaration and purpose—which had spurred her on the last time—didn’t come. Because all she felt now was the dragging weight of hopelessness and broken dreams.
All she could see was the man she still loved unconditionally—and those pure blue eyes, which held so much trauma. And secrets she was finally beginning to see he had never been willing to share, not even with her.