Chapter Eight
THE WEDDING OF King Gervais and his young and starry-eyed heiress took place in the former’s kingdom in its iconic cathedral that was mostly famous for having not been bombed in any of the twentieth century’s wars.
Esme and Tadeo entered the cathedral with all the rest of Europe’s royals and nobles, all of them walking across the grand forecourt in their finery while looking pleasantly sophisticated for the cameras and the crowd.
In many ways, Esme thought as they walked in the sedate procession, this was something of an extended family reunion.
The grand crowns of Europe had been intermingling for so many centuries that it was likely more difficult to find two royal families that weren’t related to some degree. Somewhere in their gilded family trees.
They were directed to their seats, where there was a great deal of nodding and smiling, even between heads of state who would normally consider themselves enemies. Weddings called for better manners. Or at least a competition to see who could pretend better.
Esme knew her ability to seem delighted in her surroundings, no matter what, was top-tier. And despite his penchant for chilliness, Tadeo could do the same.
Still, it was a relief when the ceremony started in all its high pageantry, and the graciousness no longer had to be directed at each other. Everyone could relax and watch an old king marry a young woman as if it was still medieval times.
A sentiment Esme rather thought she could see on almost every face in the cathedral. Especially the faces of Gervais’s heirs.
Esme had been to a friend’s wedding some while ago on a beach somewhere along the rugged Maine coast. The officiant had gotten certified online. The bride and groom had made up their own vows and the whole thing had been interrupted by some chattering seagulls.
It was amusing to sit in the middle of a spectacle like this one and think about ceremonies like that. So unpretentious. So easily accessible. The entire wedding party and all the guests had fit into one small dining area in a nearby pub. It had been lovely.
This was not that kind of wedding.
After the ceremony, there was another procession out of the cathedral. It was another opportunity for Europe’s aristocracy to wave at the cameras and the gathered crowds as they slipped into a sea of waiting Rolls-Royces and were borne back to the palace.
“These weddings are all the same,” Esme said when they were settled in their car, her mouth fixed in a cheerful smile as she waved to the crowds outside the window. “It could have been our wedding. The only thing that changes are the coats of arms and the languages.”
“It is yet one more way that monarchies remain eternal.” From beside her, Tadeo was offering a wave of his own out the opposite window. “How else would anyone know to support us?”
Esme looked over at him. “That sounded suspiciously like republican sentiment dressed up in sardonic inflection.”
“Perish the thought.” But he glanced over at her.
“Though I will say that it is…different to know that I am bringing a child into this world. Into this pressure. I would not change my life in any regard.” Esme thought he put a little too much emphasis on the word any.
Then was surprised when he kept going. “But I can’t deny it had its challenges. ”
Esme rested her hands on the convenient shelf of her baby bump, no longer hidden at all today.
It had been decided that they might as well use this opportunity to launch her pregnancy to the world in one go.
Not a moment too soon, Esme had thought when the team had informed her of this decision, because she couldn’t imagine that very many people had been fooled this whole time no matter what games she’d played with shapes and fabric and flow.
Still, back home in their own kingdom, the people would only whisper their suspicions. They would not print them, out of respect.
There was nothing respectful about the broader European tabloid press, and so Tadeo’s team had decided that they would use the expected feeding frenzy to their advantage.
The thinking was that the tabloids could and would shriek about Esme’s Royal Bump or some such thing and then cooler heads from the palace would put out a far more restrained announcement.
The kingdom would tut at the intrusiveness of the press and would in fact argue that were it up to them, they would not wish to know if the Queen was pregnant until the day she gave birth.
Even now, pictures of her in her wedding finery that had been altered to showcase her belly should likely be appearing on all the usual websites. It was all part of the game, and few people played the game better than Tadeo and his message-obsessed public relations team.
But it also felt like a good thing, Esme thought as the car inched along the ancient streets of this old, storied European city.
She might not have wanted her marriage to have been the way it was for those first seven years.
She might not have wanted the divorce she knew that Tadeo had been so bent upon, either, though she’d been prepared for it.
She was well aware that this baby was the reason everything had changed. It was possible that there was a part of her that resented it, but it was a vanishingly small part of her. If that. Because she had always wanted Tadeo more than she’d ever wanted to be free.
The reveal of her pregnancy meant that he was accepting their future too. She couldn’t hate that.
Esme knew that Tadeo believed that he decided whether he got to feel emotion, and hated that she had always forced him to do exactly that and not on his schedule.
She didn’t know how to tell him that a baby was likely to do the same—babies being babies—but that didn’t matter.
He would find out soon enough, and anyway, the great thing about their marriage was that there were dynastic implications to the children they had.
The only option he’d had to get rid of her was to make sure there was no issue.
That was the only way he might have managed to pull off the supposedly amicable split she assumed he’d wanted to sell to his people.
The whole world would have assumed—no matter what they said—that the marriage had ended because she couldn’t have children. Whether they thought that was sad or not, they would have accepted that as a fair reason for a king to find a new wife.
Just in case Esme liked to pretend that the world had moved on from the Dark Ages.
Oh well, she thought now. That won’t be happening now.
But these were not the challenges Tadeo was talking about.
“I think that we are uniquely qualified to mitigate the challenges of this life,” she said, her belly warm beneath her palms. “My parents very much wanted me to have more real-world experiences than some other heirs to thrones. I went to grammar school with the public. That was very important to them. I did go to a private school after that, but they insisted that I leave the country for college, so I could see something of the world outside of Clarebonne. They were deeply opposed to those finishing schools so many queens are polished up in. I think they always felt strongly that education was by far the better thing to concentrate on when manners can always be learned.”
“I’m not sure that schooling is the issue,” Tadeo said.
Esme smiled. “Is it not? Where else will you interact with others who are not of your rank? Who do not share your history? I think schooling is very important. Not just for the education you might receive, but for the social interaction. How else can you get to know your subjects?”
Tadeo looked as close to bewildered as she’d ever seen him.
“My father had a different view of the situation,” he said after a moment.
Then he cleared his throat. “He spoke to me of duty, of course. And the responsibilities that would always trump any of my personal concerns, naturally. But when it came to education, he was very traditional.” He named the famous boarding school he’d attended that was known to handle the schooling of a great many royal children, not to mention the offspring of celebrities and billionaires of all stripes.
“Then Cambridge, of course. Followed by Harvard, as you know. My father considered this a sort of hat trick of an educational pedigree.”
“But you already had a pedigree,” Esme pointed out softly. “The child I’m carrying does too.”
She thought that he looked taken back. Or, again, something like bewildered—though he hid it quickly beneath his more typical neutral expression. He aimed his attention out the window again, to continue the smiling and waving that was expected in situations like this.
“These are things I’m sure we can argue about once a child is here,” he said, dismissively.
But it was like those nights when she was obediently silent and he started poking at her.
She had the distinct impression that he was trying to get her temper to flare.
He wanted her to fight with him, clearly.
Esme looked out the window again, but she didn’t see the crowds pressing in at the barricades.
She had a little prickle of awareness that told her that this was an important moment, so she couldn’t quite see why.
Aside from her inkling that he wanted her to poke back at him, he was perfectly right.
They had years to worry about the schooling of their unborn child, not to mention what sort of society the next king might keep.
But somehow it felt as if this was a bruise that she’d unknowingly pressed against.