Chapter Six #2
She sat up, looking around, but she could tell immediately that he was nowhere nearby. That wasn’t surprising either.
And when the immediate hurt subsided, she decided that she was perfectly satisfied. She had seen his face. She had held his body close to hers, and held him inside her. And yes, all of those things were true about the night of his father’s funeral, too.
She remembered that night entirely too well, despite the alcohol. She had found him in his father’s study, down near the offices in one of the more public areas of the palace. He had disappeared after the funeral and she hadn’t wanted to just…leave him to his grief.
Maybe it was silly, after all they’d been through over the years, but she couldn’t bear to think of him hurting. She’d instinctively headed for the study, not sure if she knew or simply remembered that his father had spent the bulk of his time with his books in his last years.
Sure enough, she’d found Tadeo there. Systematically working himself through a very large bottle of something amber-colored and pungent.
I don’t want you here, he’d growled at her when she’d come in, dressed in her fine black clothes.
But he’d gestured to the couch beside him, inviting her to take a seat.
Esme hadn’t intended for things to go the way they had. Or she didn’t think that was what she’d intended. They hadn’t spoken much. He’d passed the bottle to her and they’d traded back and forth like that for far longer than they should have.
When he’d buried his head in his hands, she’d rubbed his back—and then it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world when he’d pulled her close and kissed her.
It had been a savage kind of grief, she thought. She had offered him comfort, because she knew he needed it. Because she’d known and cared about his father. Because despite everything, she cared about him, too.
Maybe that was when she’d understood that she always would.
But it had been followed by that slow-dawning understanding that, once again, he was going to pretend none of it had happened. He was going to pretend it had been a forgettable drunken night.
He was going to carry on exactly as he always had.
Esme had been forced to go through the painful process of finally—finally—accepting that her life with him was over.
That there was no future. That no matter how many times he’d once told her he loved her, safe across an ocean from here, or how often she thought that really, he still did, it didn’t matter.
He didn’t want to. And he would act as if he didn’t into the grave.
She’d finally accepted that she really and truly couldn’t change him. That this was a doomed enterprise, it was time to cut her losses, and she’d be better off out there without him.
Esme had started imagining what that might look like. She’d been, if not excited, ready.
But now, sitting in his bedchamber all alone, Esme understood that she’d been lying to herself.
She didn’t simply care about Tadeo. She hadn’t really accepted that he didn’t love her the way she wanted him to—she’d simply accepted the fact that it was going to end and there was nothing she could do about it.
She had been head over heels in love with him since the moment she’d laid eyes on him in that Boston restaurant ten years ago.
Nothing had ever changed that love. Not the way he’d ripped her heart out of her chest a year after that first meeting.
Not the way he stomped on what was left of it repeatedly during their agonizingly public—and so deeply fake—courtship.
Not the way he’d broken the remaining pieces beyond repair at their cold, heartless wedding.
Not the past seven years of cold duty and quiet exile.
Not even her own acceptance that it was far past time to stop pretending that it could ever be something he wouldn’t allow it to become.
Not even now, pregnant with his child, naked in his bed, alone.
Esme had loved him all along. She loved him still.
A big breath seemed to come from deep inside her then, not sure if it was a sigh or a sob. She took that as a sign to go. She got up from the bed and looked around for her chemise, but couldn’t find it anywhere.
The palace was not the place to be wandering around naked—that was surely against protocol—so she pulled the coverlet from his bed, wrapped it around herself, then made her way back through the antechamber that happily did not contain a mistress and into her own bedroom.
It was set up very much like his was, though her four-poster had a canopy and her fireplace had a mantel festooned with lovely objects that she could tell at a glance were priceless.
She went and sat in front of the fire, though it wasn’t lit. She stared into the cold hearth.
“I love him,” she whispered into the uncaring bedchamber around her that must have heard too many confessions to count.
Maybe she’d accepted that she always would, but she wasn’t sure if she’d really understood, until this moment, that she had never really intended to divorce him no matter what daydreams she’d let herself have about other lives without him.
Because surely she could have divorced him herself at any time if she’d truly been ready to leave him. In fact, she could have changed the course of their relationship at any time, but she never had.
She could have declined his courtship. Her parents would not have forced her. Esme liked to bang on about responsibility, pandering to her people, and giving them what they wanted. But was that really what she’d done?
Or was this what she’d wanted all along—to be near him, no matter how?
Because she might not have him the way she wanted him, but she had him just the same.
Esme knew he hadn’t touched another woman in the time they’d been married. He’d told her that much, drunkenly, the night of his father’s funeral.
Now, all she could think was that it was a shame. All those years of celibacy for both of them, and for what?
When they could have been doing this the whole time. Though he wouldn’t want that, she knew. Because Tadeo liked to play his games, but he couldn’t keep his distance from her when sex was involved.
He’d proved that back in Boston in that house of his in Beacon Hill.
The truth was that it had never been sex between them.
It had never been as simple as a release, or a little bit of fun, or whatever people liked to claim sex was—or should be—these days.
These were conversations that made Esme think the people having them had never had the kind of sex that she and Tadeo did.
Life-altering. Earth-shattering. Absolutely catastrophic in all the best ways, and maybe in some not-so-great ways, too.
But there was no pretending that the things they did to each other didn’t change them both.
Even Tadeo had never denied that. I love you, he would whisper while he was deep inside her, his hands in her hair and his mouth against her cheek, her neck, her mouth.
I love you, Esme, he would murmur as they drifted off to sleep, fused together like some kind of Gordian knot.
He had denied he’d said those things, but never the passion that had prompted him to say them.
His contention was always that the kind of passion that ignited between them was a liability and he could not allow it to derail his monarchy.
She blew out a breath and pulled that coverlet tight around her. As she did, she accepted another truth she wasn’t sure she wanted to sit with.
Esme didn’t want to divorce him. She didn’t want to raise their baby in this environment of cold distance and responsibility and no love.
She wanted everything. The mess, the passion, the hurt of it all. The love that had changed them both so profoundly. The love that they both deserved.
A husband, not an officemate.
Her man, not just a king.
And it was also true that she had no idea how she was going to go about getting it, but Esme knew one thing.
Last night had been an excellent start.