Chapter Twelve
GAbrIEL’S MOOD HADN’T improved the next day, and when the invitation came to dine with the queen and king in their quarters that evening for a family meal, he bit back yet another cutting remark and reminded himself that these weren’t just monarchs, they were his in-laws and the grandparents of the child growing in his wife’s belly.
There was a snake alive in his belly, a cobra fighting to rise up his throat and strike.
He would not let it out.
He was conscious from the way Alessia was walking on eggshells around him that she was aware of the darkness. Conscious too that his tone was curter than he would like, he tried hard to moderate it and respond to the affection she continued to show him.
Tomorrow morning he was flying back to Madrid. His departure couldn’t come soon enough. Some time alone, away from this damn castle, would give him his perspective back. He tried to find some perspective now too.
So his mother had sold him out? Hadn’t he been expecting it?
Even his sister, when she’d called to commiserate, had been indulgent in her reaction to their mother’s actions.
But then, Mariella had never hated the media circus that had followed their childhood and adolescence.
She’d hated the fights as much as him and, like him, refused to be drawn into arguments that led to raised voices, but the media didn’t bother her in the slightest.
And so Alessia had attended an engagement with her family she could easily have cancelled to spend an evening with his sister for her birthday?
In Madrid, Alessia was free to be Alessia.
Here, in the ancient castle, she rarely removed her princess skin.
It would be easier for the woman to emerge fully when they were living together full-time, and she wouldn’t need or want him to be anything more than her husband.
Despite his pep talk to himself, it was with a great deal of trepidation that Gabriel set off with Alessia to her parents’ quarters.
He’d dined with the queen and king in their quarters once before, the night his plane was grounded.
Then, the meal had been formal, the food and wine as exquisite as anything he’d been served in a Michelin-starred restaurant.
That night the food, although served with the usual ceremony, was a lot more homely, slow roasted lamb and ratatouille.
The whole atmosphere was much more welcoming and light-hearted, the conversation, too, relaxed.
The only person not relaxing into the atmosphere was Alessia.
Seated across from him, she held herself with a straight-backed deportment that would be fitting if it were a state occasion and not a family meal.
She wasn’t speaking much either, he noted, and every time he caught her eye, her smile seemed forced.
The queen, he noted too, wasn’t engaging her daughter in conversation, and he thought back to Alessia’s comment about her mother still being angry with her over the circumstances of the pregnancy.
It was a comment he’d mulled on a number of times as there was something about that whole conversation nagging at him, a feeling that there was something about it he was missing. Something important.
‘How are the wedding preparations going?’ Clara asked Amadeo.
The heir to the throne pulled a disgruntled face. ‘Very well.’
‘The whole of Ceres has gone wedding mad,’ she said with glee. ‘I can’t wait! It’s a shame I’m not a bridesmaid but I get why I can’t be—best not to antagonise King Pig!’
To Gabriel’s amusement, even the queen looked like she was trying not to laugh.
‘What a shame that despot had to be invited but then it would kind of defeat the purpose of the wedding not to have him there,’ Clara continued before whipping her attention to Gabriel. ‘Is it true you’re not coming?’
‘I’m afraid it is true.’
‘No way? Why’s that?’
‘Because I wish to remain a private person,’ he said tightly, his muscles bunching together. He took a sip of his wine. Why must he continually explain himself?
‘I know that, but this is a wedding. How can anyone not love a good wedding? And this will be the wedding of the century. And Elsbeth seems really sweet,’ Clara added, looking again at Amadeo, who pulled another disgruntled face.
She stuck her tongue out at him, which, to Gabriel’s amazement, made everyone, including the perpetually stiff-necked Amadeo, laugh.
Laughing along with them, Gabriel drank some more wine to drown the poised cobra.
‘You were quiet tonight,’ Gabriel said when they were back in their quarters and finally alone. ‘Want to tell me what’s on your mind?’
Alessia sank onto the nearest sofa and sighed forlornly. ‘Just my mother’s attitude towards me. I keep hoping she’ll forgive me but there’s still no sign of it.’
She kneaded her aching forehead. Alessia’s insides had felt knotted from the moment she’d woken.
For the first time since they’d become lovers, Gabriel had shared a bed with her and not made love to her.
She sensed the demons working their darkness in him and longed for him to open up to her, but she knew what the cause was: his mother’s treachery in selling him out. He’d been open with her about that.
But Gabriel was not a man to spill his guts. He’d told her everything about his childhood but had relayed it matter-of-factly. He freely admitted it had made him the man he was but he never spoke about how it had made him feel or how it still made him feel.
She couldn’t force it. He would tell her if and when he was ready.
But she’d gone to her parents’ quarters feeling knotted in her stomach for her husband, and her mother’s welcoming embrace had been delivered in such a detached manner that the knots had tightened so she could hardly breathe, and suddenly she could hold it back no longer.
A jumble of words came rushing out. ‘Do you know, my mother has never been angry with Marcelo before, not like she’s being with me, and he’s the one who started this whole mess.
He dangled out of a helicopter to rescue Clara from Dominic’s palace, and he was understood and forgiven even before he put things right by marrying her.
I made one mistake...okay, two...and I’ve paid the price for it.
I’ve done everything I can to make amends and even Amadeo’s forgiven me, but I can still feel her anger.
Marcelo has got away with murder—not literally—over the years, whereas I’ve always been the good one.
I’ve always been dutiful, always known my place in the family and in the pecking order, never given a hint of trouble, but there’s no forgiveness from her for me.
She can hardly bring herself to look at me. ’
Gabriel listened to her unloading in silence. When she’d got it all out, he sat next to her and took her hand. ‘Do you want to know what I think?’
A tear fell down her cheek. She wiped it away and nodded.
‘Your mother—all your family—have spent years learning how to temper themselves when Marcelo falls out of line, but you’ve never stepped out of line before.
You’ve never disappointed them. You’ve always done your best to live up to your birthright.
You’ve followed in your mother’s footsteps and put duty first, above your own wants and feelings. ’
‘Not as much as Amadeo has.’
‘We’re not talking about Amadeo, we’re talking about you.
I don’t know if you’re fully aware of the impact you have on people—you, more than anyone else in your family, have carried your monarchy into the twenty-first century.
You’ve navigated being a princess with being a modern woman in the age of social media and all without putting a foot wrong and never with a word of complaint, even when you’re abused by trolls.
Your mother is the queen, Amadeo the heir to the throne, but it is you who captures the public’s imagination, and you who the public sees as a princess to her core.
I think your family, especially your mother, see you like that too, and so when your human side was revealed so publicly, they did what they always do when the monarchy comes under threat and went straight into damage limitation mode. ’
‘I don’t think my mother likes my human side,’ she admitted with a whisper.
‘Only because you’ve never shown it to her before.
When we’re living in the stables and you have breathing space to remove the princess mask you’ve always forced yourself to wear, your mother will learn that Alessia the woman is worth a hundred of Alessia the princess.
For now, though, your mother doesn’t know how to react to you about it on a personal level because. ..’
A strand of thought jumped at him, cutting Gabriel’s words off from his tongue.
He tried to blink the thought away but then the conversation that had been nagging at him interplayed with the stray thought, and his heart began to race.
‘Because?’ she prompted.
Certain he must be making two plus two into five, he stared at Alessia closely.
Her eyebrows drew together. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘You’ve never put a foot wrong,’ he said slowly. ‘Ever. You’ve never been linked to another man... You told me yourself that the only time you’ve ever put your own desires first was the night we conceived our child.’ His stomach roiling, he hardened his stare. ‘Alessia... Was I your first?’
It was the deep crimson that flooded her neck and face that answered Gabriel’s question and sent blood pounding to his head.
Letting go of her hand, he rose unsteadily to his feet. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Her shoulders rose before she gave a deep sigh and shook her head ruefully. ‘I’m sorry. I should have told you, I know that, but at the time I was so wrapped up in the moment and all the things you were making me feel...’
Alessia shook her head again from the sheer relief that it was finally out in the open. She hadn’t realised how heavily it had weighed on her conscience until now it had lifted.