Chapter Three
THE SUMMONS FROM the palace came the next morning, bright and early.
The housekeeper brought it in with Esme’s breakfast, which was happily no longer a few dry crackers and a ginger drink.
Her appetite had come roaring back with a vengeance once she made it into the second trimester, and having sorely missed it, she liked to indulge it.
Her cook liked to tempt her with various breakfast dishes and today it was some kind of frittata, fluffy and cheesy, and she tucked in with pleasure.
But the heavy envelope from the palace was there the whole time, a baleful presence in her otherwise happy, lovely room. She stared at it, sitting there on its own silver platter, and ignored it while she ate.
It was still a habit to wait to see if her stomach would behave, even though she hadn’t had a morning sickness episode in weeks.
When she’d first experienced it, she’d thought she had some sort of flu or cold that wouldn’t go away.
Not unusual during the cold months of the year, and she’d assumed that she was simply run-down.
Or that it was her body’s reaction to seven years of royal appointments and public engagements, forever playing the part of the perfect queen for an adoring public and having to act like the frozen iceberg beside her when in private with him.
Esme had been fond of the excruciatingly formal and distinctly chilly King Hugo, despite his best attempts to cut her down to size.
She would not say that she’d managed to charm the man, but she thought he’d come to accept her—and clearly approved of the separate lives she and Tadeo led on the palace grounds, which only palace denizens knew.
She had even come to see that the old man had a certain charm that she’d seen in his son, too, if long ago.
She had genuinely mourned his death, but it had still taken her much too long to realize what she was feeling was not simply illness or grief.
Then there had been coming to terms with what it meant that she was pregnant. That had taken longer.
Especially because she had finally been at peace with leaving this place, and Tadeo, and starting over.
When her stomach indicated that it intended to stay in place again today, Esme rose from her bed.
Still not touching that envelope, she puttered around through her usual morning routine, but when it came time to choose something to wear, she stopped.
Blew out a breath. Then accepted the inevitable and picked up the small, square envelope that felt as if it was lined with metal and was actually sealed with wax.
Because here in Bellaza there was a right way and a wrong way to do things, and the right way very often involved archaic rituals.
She cracked open the seal and pulled out the card. And then accepted that she was disappointed when she saw that the message inside was typed. More importantly, it was not in Tadeo’s bold, dark hand.
The Queen’s presence is requested at the palace, it said. Baldly.
No time. No date. Just a request that was not a request at all. It was an order.
Esme did not pretend that she didn’t understand that.
She walked into her dressing room, a large, expansive room with alcove offshoots that featured accessories of all descriptions. Many of the clothes no longer fit. She slid her hand over her belly and found herself feeling sentimental about the press of it into her palm.
Esme had rather given up on the idea of children. Or maybe it was more accurate to say that it was one of the many things she’d put into a deep freeze, because it was that or spend more time sobbing about futures that could never be hers.
She had decided on her chilly—so beautiful, but so personally cold—wedding day that she had a choice to make.
It was clear to her that nothing would change between her and this brand-new husband of hers who had already smashed her heart into smithereens more times than she could count.
It was true that she’d held out hope that he might have had ulterior motives for going through with all this, but that day, she’d known better.
His kingdom had been promised Princess Esme of Clarebonne and Tadeo, by God, would give her to them.
Without regard for her feelings or his own, assuming he had any left in there somewhere.
For on their wedding day, he had informed her that he planned to shunt her off to a separate house so it would not be necessary for them to lay eyes on each other for any reason but work.
The choice she’d had to make was all too obvious.
She could let him hurt her over and over again by simple dint of his insensitivity and coldness and absolute refusal to admit what she knew to be true about the things that had happened between them in Boston.
Esme had been all too able to envision that future.
Forever smashing her head against the brick wall of him.
Over and over again, hurting only herself, and to what end?
The other option was the one she’d chosen.
She prided herself on playing the perfect princess, now queen.
She was kind, warm, unfailingly polite and courteous at all times.
The kingdom loved her. Her own kingdom was deeply proud of her.
The papers fell all over themselves to praise her quiet elegance and her endless charity.
Everyone was in awe of her ability to remember the name of every person she’d ever met, make every person she interacted with feel special, and to always support her husband as well as King Hugo.
She did these things not only because she was good at them, though she was, but because she rather thought that Tadeo expected her to descend into a tantrum and never emerge from it again.
Esme kept her emotions at the manor house.
That was the place where she allowed herself any outlets that she liked for the things she couldn’t let herself feel anywhere else.
Whether it was tantrums on the floor, screaming into her pillows, or experimenting with paint.
Or all of the above, on particularly bad days.
It wasn’t the life she’d imagined they’d have, all those years ago in Boston when it had seemed miraculous that they were so well-suited when they’d been promised to each other sight unseen, but it worked.
Now all of the rules she’d lived by for seven years seemed out the window. They’d gone straight up in smoke the night of the funeral, when she’d finally touched him again the way she had only when they’d been across an ocean and everything had been different—
She’d had time to regret that. And to…not regret it at all, to an epic degree.
But the trouble was, she knew Tadeo. She knew him better than she wanted to, most of the time. His response to this would not be to finally open up, meet her halfway, and pledge himself to working on making himself a better man, husband, and soon-to-be father. Open, giving, emotionally available.
Esme laughed out loud in her dressing room. “Whatever he has planned is far more likely to involve the palace’s medieval dungeons,” she said to herself.
Then laughed again, because how would dungeons play in the press Tadeo cared so much about? She couldn’t wait to find out. How would his team handle that messaging?
She turned around in a circle, her eyes narrow as she looked at her image in the mirror, deciding how best to approach a meeting that she assumed would be more of a chess match.
She settled on a very simple and casual dress in royal blue that hugged all of her curves—so that there could be no mistake about the state of her body.
Then, to forestall any commentary that she might have dressed down in a jersey midi dress in defiance of his beloved protocol, she accessorized with a full face of makeup and chunky jewelry.
The better to send conflicting messages. The Queen was off-duty today, yes—but she was still the Queen.
Esme considered walking to the palace but rejected it, as she didn’t wish to appear before Tadeo flushed from exertion.
That it would irritate him made it tempting, but she was afraid she would end up feeling too flustered.
That wouldn’t do. She called to have a car brought around and drove herself over, trying her best to settle her nerves and her mind.
Both were racing, because whatever else might be happening, she was still excited to see him.
It had always been this way. Since the moment she’d met him—and if she was honest, before that, too.
She had never minded that she was promised to someone.
She had always thought it was romantic, though she doubted she would have felt that way if the man she’d been promised to had been something other than outrageously handsome, with those impossible blue eyes, a jawline to write poetry about, and that body of his that he kept in such peak physical condition—
But that was not a good way to keep herself from coming over all flushed.
At the palace, the guards directed her to drive back around to one of the family entrances, which was what they called the secret passageways with covered entries that allowed members of the royal family and any guests or companions they wished to keep secret to come and go as they liked.
No photographic evidence. No crowds or watchful eyes.
She pulled up in her car and the King’s personal secretary was there to greet her, stiffly. Always stiffly. The proper older man could fade into the wallpaper if he chose, disappearing in plain sight. He had been here forever. He knew everything about everyone, and more.
Esme was even happier that she was wearing a dress that made her condition so clear.
If the old man noticed Esme’s pregnancy, she would never know from his demeanor—but she knew that he did. He noticed everything. It was his job.