Chapter Eleven
THE MATTER OF Esme was finally settled, Tadeo thought. There had been too many years of turmoil, but that was finished now. He had outlined the future for her, he had accepted that no other future was possible, and that was that.
He expected to settle down into the day’s work without sparing so much as a thought for errant wives or replaying unpleasant conversations. After all, there were ministers to meet with, dignitaries to soothe and flatter, and the business of the kingdom to occupy him.
Tadeo was sure that the stranglehold Esme had held him with for all this time was gone, now. He was certain that she would simply be another obligation he thought about only when necessary, and—once she was no longer necessary—not at all.
Starting today, he thought with satisfaction, I am a new man.
But that was not quite how it went.
He couldn’t seem to sit still at his own desk. His mind kept wandering. He kept running over and over all the things that Esme had said to him, and it was as if she was saying them to him all over again. He was having the same reaction. He could hardly catch a damned breath.
After a while, he realized he was wearing a groove into the rugs in his office, he was pacing so much.
He sat in meetings and could not have been asked to repeat what was said to him.
He could not concentrate on messaging or social media campaigns or the various reactions of the press to the news of Esme’s pregnancy when all he could think of was Esme herself.
We can make whatever we want out of our life, she had said, as if that was easy. Or possible. Or permitted. Out of this reign of ours.
As if it had always been theirs, to do with as they pleased. It was laughable.
But he was not laughing. You remember what it was like, she had said. I know you do. When we would lie in bed, drunk on feeling, imagining how beautiful we could make this life we got to share?
He did remember. He remembered too well. That feeling of possibility, of limitless horizons. That scandalous, glorious feeling that the two of them truly could beat all the odds—because they already had. They’d expected to find each other passable at best. Nice enough, even.
Instead, one look and they’d ignited.
It had to mean that they could change their whole worlds—Tadeo remembered how deeply and fully he’d believed that. With Esme at his side, there was nothing he couldn’t accomplish.
But his father had set him straight. He’d always been so grateful for that. He’d spent all the years he’d had left with his father making up for that lapse. He’d gone out of his way to prove to King Hugo that he had a worthy successor.
And Esme had made him question all of that. Have you considered the possibility that your mother wasn’t the Whore of Babylon? she had asked.
When Tadeo knew exactly who his mother was. Exactly who everyone knew his mother was. That hadn’t changed simply because Esme wanted to be difficult.
Still, he couldn’t seem to get her words out of his head. Maybe she was in love with a man who acted like an iceberg, Esme had said, and it had punched straight through him. Maybe she did what she needed to do to keep from freezing to death.
It occurred to Tadeo then that he’d never considered his father cold, only correct.
But if he wasn’t…
Later, he found himself pacing through the palace, and he must have had a fierce enough expression on his face because no one attempted to speak to him. In fact, they stepped out of his way, bowed their heads, and kept their eyes averted.
A lot like he was having the sort of emotional episode he wanted—badly—not to be capable of.
Tadeo found himself in the portrait gallery yet again, looking at the faces of his ancestors as if they could offer him some clues.
Looking at his own wedding portrait that he’d always thought had adequately captured what their marriage was.
Cordial, but appropriately separate. Cold, certainly, but that had been representative of the relationship they’d had then.
The relationship he’d assumed they’d always have.
He’d already realized, since Esme’s pregnancy had been revealed, that he’d been ignoring how sad she looked in the portrait. Somehow he’d always believed that she simply looked like a queen. Appropriately solemn—but no.
She looked like she wanted to cry.
Tonight he was horrified to discover that even looking at the painting now made him…
Something in him balked. He didn’t want to name it. He didn’t want to call this what it was, because that gave it a power—
Sad, something in him whispered, sounding a great deal like Esme herself. That’s the word you’re looking for. Sad.
The last time he could remember using that word to describe his state, he’d been eleven years old.
His mother had died under less-than-ideal circumstances—gallivanting about, quite publicly, with a lover on a boat near Crete—but his father had decided to give her the state funeral her position demanded.
A funeral fit for the queen, nay, the woman she should have been, the self-righteous television anchor had intoned.
It had been a somber affair. Now, looking back, Tadeo found himself wondering if everyone had been aware that it was all for show on his father’s part.
Some believed he was simply that good, certainly.
But surely there had to be others who wondered if, perhaps, King Hugo had been going to a great deal of trouble to prove that he had been the decent spouse.
That he was self-sacrificing even to the end, and even in the face of his wife’s outrageous behavior.
Someone had to have wondered if, perhaps, he’d been protesting too much. If they did, they did it quietly. The papers had already been calling King Hugo a saint.
But eleven-year-old Tadeo hadn’t known anything about messaging, or the manipulation of the press.
What he’d known was that his mother was dead. Moreover, that he was highly discouraged from commenting on that or displaying any of the many emotions he felt about that death in public.
Why are you making that face? his father had asked as they had walked soberly and slowly behind Marisol’s coffin through the streets of the kingdom. You are being watched, Tadeo. A certain decorum is expected from a future king and it is best you exhibit it.
I’m sad, Tadeo had said to his father. Not the King, just…his father. I’m just sad.
But Hugo had not spared him a glance. He had continued his slow and precise pace, his back straight and tall, his eyes forever forward.
Don’t be so maudlin, he’d said, in that cold, dismissive way of his that had settled deep into Tadeo’s bones.
You are the Crown Prince of Bellaza. You are, by definition, never anything so pedestrian as sad.
Over the years, Tadeo had decided that his father had been trying to give him a pep talk. That Hugo had been trying to keep Tadeo’s spirits up while they saw to such a grim task, and more, while they did so under such intense scrutiny.
It had been a great kindness, Tadeo had decided. He would have argued about it, had anyone dared ask. Not all kindnesses feel good, he would have said. There is no law that insists it must feel warm and fuzzy, only that it do what it is meant to do.
But now…
He thought of his child, his son, still nestled deep inside Esme’s belly. He thought of the nights he’d spent smoothing his own hands over her belly, murmuring to the child within.
Tadeo had not met his son yet and yet try as he might, he could not imagine telling that child that he could not be sad at a funeral.
His own mother’s funeral, no less. Even if he and Esme remained as much at odds as they were now forever, he would not expect her child to react stoically to her passing.
Even if Esme behaved in ways Tadeo did not like, how could that possibly dictate the behavior of her own child in the face of her death?
These thoughts tore at him. He felt a kind of fissure open up inside him, yawning wide, and he had the strangest feeling that there would be no closing it again. That there would be no repairing this.
He just didn’t know what that meant.
When he heard footsteps, he schooled his expression to the expected neutrality—but was pleased when he saw that it was Arturo. Possibly even relieved.
“It grows late,” the most loyal of all the servants in the palace said, and whatever expression Tadeo had on his face, Arturo would never appear to notice it. “Would His Majesty care for dinner in his rooms, perhaps?”
Tadeo didn’t move. He couldn’t seem to look away from the portrait of his parents now. It was like it was calling to him. “You remember my parents better than I do. You were here when my father was growing up.”
Arturo did not change his own expression by so much as the faintest twitch. “It has been my great honor to serve three generations of the Santiago family, Your Majesty.”
“All I know are stories.” Tadeo ran his hands over his face. “Stories in the papers, stories from my father.” He looked at the old man. “What do you remember? What really happened?”
He didn’t know, until he said the words out loud, how much seemed to ride on the answer.
For a long moment, he thought the other man wouldn’t reply.
Arturo had been in the palace for so long that he was, in many ways, the finest example of royal protocol there was.
It was possible he would think that he had no business discussing such matters and therefore would not.
It would not matter if the King himself commanded him to do so.
But after a moment he cleared his throat, and when Tadeo looked at him again, he had a curious look on his face.
That fissure inside Tadeo…widened.