‘Your place is with me,’ he rebuffed gently, his eyes sweeping closed for a moment. ‘And Liana is there for Leo.’
‘You created this law,’ she prompted softly, gently. ‘So there wasn’t one before this?’
His eyes fired. ‘No. If there had been...’ The words trailed off into nothing and now she was moving closer to him, needing him to hear her.
‘If there had been,’ she insisted, ‘that boulder would have still been there. The car with your parents in would have crashed.’
‘But Spiro would have lived.’ His eyes glittered with hurt and pain and her heart twisted achingly.
‘You don’t know that,’ she whispered softly. ‘You don’t know that your car wouldn’t have crashed as well. You don’t know that something else awful might not have happened later. There are no guarantees in life,’ she said simply.
‘You think I don’t know that?’ He turned to face her, his expression tortured, his features drawn. ‘You think I don’t understand how completely beholden we are to fate and sheer damned luck?’
His hurt was like a rock, pressing against her chest. ‘So stop trying to control everything,’ she murmured, lifting a hand to his cheek. ‘I don’t want our son growing up afraid of his own shadow. I don’t want him being governed by protocols and edicts that overturn natural instinct. He’s our son. He belongs with us.’
She pressed her head forward, so their foreheads connected, and she breathed in deeply, this connection somehow every bit as intimate as what they’d shared by the pool.
‘It’s my responsibility to protect you both, and I will do so with my dying breath.’ The words shook with the force of his determination, and Frankie was momentarily speechless.
Then, with a surge of understanding, she cupped his cheek, holding him still. ‘Is that what this is about? You think you couldn’t save Spiro and now you’re trying to guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to us?’ Her insight was blinding in its strength and accuracy. She knew she was right when he recoiled for a moment. But she moved with him, staying close, holding him to her. ‘You were just a boy, Matthias. You couldn’t do any more than you did.’
‘How do you know?’ he asked, uncharacteristically weary. ‘You weren’t there. You don’t know anything about the accident...’
‘I know that if you could have saved your brother or your parents, you would have. I know that if there’s anyone on earth with the strength to almost make the impossible possible, it’s you, Matt. You have to forgive yourself. Free yourself from this guilt.’
‘Easier said than done.’ He expelled a sigh and shook his head. ‘I will not change my mind about Leo’s safety. You’ll have to respect that I know what I’m talking about.’ He was himself again. Matthias Vassiliás—a king amongst men, intractable, unchangeable, determined. The emotionally charged air was gone and he sat back in his seat as if to say, conversation closed.
Frankie was about to argue with him, she wanted, desperately, to alleviate this guilt of his, but the windows began to move down slowly and she had only seconds to sit back in her seat and compose her features into an expression of assumed happiness, lift her hand and begin to wave slowly at the assembled crowds. The noise was deafening! People began to scream when the window went down, loud and shrill, but oh, so excited. The crowd applauded and children threw flowers at the car.
The conversation with Matthias pushed deeper into her mind, for later analysis, in the face of such a rapturous welcome. Matthias, beside her, seemed unaffected. He didn’t smile nor wave, but simply watched Frankie and allowed her to have all the adoration of the people who’d come to see the woman who would be Queen.
She was so captivated by the crowds that she didn’t notice the castle until they were almost on top of it but, as the car slowed to a stop, she glanced up and an involuntary rush of breath escaped her. ‘Oh, Matt, look!’
His smile was just a flicker. ‘I know.’
It was an ancient-looking castle, with enormous turrets that were topped with pointed roofs. As a child she’d read a book about Sir Gawain and she’d always imagined the castle to be something like this.
‘It was the palace of a prominent family in the twelfth century. As civil wars gradually broke down the ranks of nobility, the palace reverted to the Crown. It serves as our parliament, and the west wing is used as a gallery for children to come and learn about the country’s politics.
‘I’ve never seen anything like it.’ Windows had been set in ancient brick, the glass rippled and uneven, showing its age.
‘You should see it from the other side,’ he teased but, before she could ask him what he meant, the doors were opened by a guard in a full liveried uniform and white gloves. The crowd reached a deafening pitch. Frankie moved towards the door but Matthias stilled her, holding her back in the limousine, safe from prying eyes for one more moment.
‘Do you feel okay?’
She frowned. ‘I feel...fine. Why?’
‘This could be overwhelming. Do you need anything?’
His thoughtfulness, so unexpected, made her stomach swoop as though she’d fallen from an aeroplane. ‘I’m honestly fine,’ she promised. ‘Really, I am.’
He nodded, a glint of admiration in his eyes as he released her hand. Remembering all that she’d been taught, she stepped from the car, concentrating on keeping her long skirt down for modesty, her head up, her eyes on the crowd, no dramatic facial movements that a camera would snap and a paper would publish for the fact it was unflattering. She also concentrated doubly hard on not falling flat on her face, which was harder than it sounded whilst wearing stiletto heels and what felt like miles of tulle and silk.
She’d been told they weren’t to hold hands, nor to show any sign of affection. It was a protocol thing and, given their strange and somewhat dysfunctional relationship, she hadn’t blinked at the instruction. So when he stepped from the car and put an arm around her waist, holding her to his side, she glanced up at him.
He smiled brightly, his even white teeth set in curving lips, a chiselled square jawline and every feature a stand-out, his dark eyes casting a spell over her, and she smiled back at him. Then he bent down and pressed a small kiss to the tip of her nose. The crowd went wild.
He lifted his head up but kept an arm wrapped around her waist in a way that she would have called protective, except the flames of desire that licked at her side were so much more dangerous than any other threat or fear she might feel.
He guided her to the crowds and she received gifts from the children who were lined up at the front. Dozens and dozens of cards, flowers, bears, and each one she admired and appreciated, before handing it to a protocol officer, hovering in the background. At the steps of the palace, Leo and Liana met them, having pulled up and made their way straight to the entrance.
Liana straightened Leo’s shirt and then passed him to Matthias. With their son held in one handsome arm and the other around the waist of the woman he would marry, they stood there, smiling at the assembled crowd.
The smile on Frankie’s face was dazzling, but it was a forgery.
Sadness for this man swarmed her chest, making her heart split and her mind heavy. She didn’t want him to have suffered as he had. She saw now the depth of his grief—it was as much a part of him as his bones and blood. It had redefined his outlook on life. And love?
Matthias tilted his head towards her and it felt as though an elastic band was snapping inside her chest, her heart exploding out of its bracket.
He might not love her—he might not even be capable of love.
But if her sense of compassion for him taught Frankie anything it was that somewhere, somehow, without her permission, she’d done something really stupid.
She’d fallen in love with her future husband.
* * *
If the outside of the palace was mesmerising, then inside was just as much so. E
normous marble tiles lay in the entranceway, white and imposing, and a marble staircase rose from the centre. A harpist was playing as they strode inside, and more noise sounded, this time from within the palace. ‘The party is on the rooftop terrace,’ he said.
‘Okay.’ She nodded, but her mind was still exploding from the realisation she’d just had. She couldn’t love him. No way. She was, surely, just getting lust and love mixed up, as she had back in New York. She barely knew him.
Yet somewhere along the way she’d fallen in love with a man who’d proudly proclaimed his disdain for the whole notion of love. He saw it as a useless impediment to life in general.
What a fool she was!
‘You are okay?’ he queried again, carrying Leo on his hip as though he’d been doing it all Leo’s life.
‘Uh huh.’ She nodded unevenly, not daring to look at him again.
‘Please, Frankie, do not be worried about Leo’s safety. I will protect him, and you.’
She jolted her gaze to his, nodding. If only he knew what the real cause for her silence was!
They walked up the sweeping staircase in silence. She realised as they neared the top that Matthias had been right about something—she now barely noticed the servants that were standing on every second step, all dressed in formal military uniforms.
At the top landing, four guards stood, two on either side of enormous wide wooden doors, each carved with striking scenes that she’d have loved to have stood and studied. The doors themselves looked ancient.
As the family approached, the guards bowed low then saluted, all in perfect time with one another.
‘Police!’ Leo squealed, and one of the four guards lost control of his stern expression for the briefest of seconds, relaxing his lips into a spontaneous smile before focusing himself.
The tallest of the men took a large gold sceptre and banged it slowly three times against the wooden doors; they then swept inwards as if by magic.
The terrace, though filled with hundreds of people, was absolutely silent, and space had been left in the middle of the assembly—a corridor of sorts.
With his arm around her waist once more, Matthias guided Frankie forward. The group of people was silent. Frankie and Matthias were silent.
Leo was not.
‘People!’ he exclaimed gleefully, clapping his hand together. ‘Lots and lots of people, Mama!’ And everyone laughed, so Leo laughed, and then lifted his chubby little hands to cover his eyes for a moment before pulling them away and saying, ‘Boo!’
More laughter, from Frankie too, who looked up helplessly at Matthias.
‘And I worried he might feel nervous,’ Matthias murmured from the side of his mouth.
‘Apparently we have a showman on our hands,’ she agreed, as Leo played peek-a-boo once more with the delighted crowd.
Conversation began to return to normal and, without the eyes of the world on them, Frankie looked around the terrace more thoroughly. It was then that she noticed something at first familiar and at second glance jarring.
‘My paintings are here.’ She was dumbfounded. For, hanging on the far wall of the palace, were some of her paintings. The sun was setting and it bathed them in the most beautiful natural light. She stared at the artworks with a growing sense of confusion. ‘How in the world...?’
His look gave nothing away. ‘You can no longer sell your paintings, Frankie. It wouldn’t be appropriate. But that doesn’t mean the world should be deprived of your talent.’
‘I...but you...these were supposed to be showing in New York.’
He nodded. ‘I bought the whole lot.’
‘You bought...’
‘It wouldn’t have been appropriate for the show to go ahead, with news of our engagement.’
‘But why buy them? If you’d said that, I would have called Charles and explained...’
‘And deprived him of his commission?’ He shook his head. ‘He picked you to show your work; he is obviously very good at what he does. Why shouldn’t he earn a reward for that?’
His perceptiveness and flattery pinballed inside her. ‘I had no idea...’
‘This was my intention.’
Hope flew in her chest, because the gesture was so sweet, so kind, so utterly out of left field. ‘Thank you,’ she said after several long seconds, as Liana approached. ‘I’m truly touched.’
And, as if sensing that she might be at risk of reading too much into it, he straightened. ‘It was simply the right thing to do, Frankie. Your art deserves to be seen, you cannot sell it any longer, or it would be seen that you are profiteering from your position as Queen. And this is now your country—of course the works should hang here, in Tolmirós.’
It was all so businesslike and sensible, but that didn’t completely take the shine off the gesture. Because she found it almost impossible to believe that only pragmatism and common sense had motivated it. Surely, there was a thread of something else, something more?
He praised her artwork, but her artwork was her. Every painting was a construct of her soul, a creation of her being. To like it, to appreciate it, was to appreciate her.
‘Come, deliciae, everybody here is eager to meet you. I hope you’re not tired.’
He led her towards the Prime Minister first and for the next three hours Frankie met and spoke to more people than she could ever remember.
Matthias stayed by her side the whole time, intensely watchful, an arm around her waist at all times, shooting arrows of desire deep within her, his body warm, his eyes never leaving her.
When it came time for them to exit she was exhausted, but the fluttering of hope inside her heart refused to die down.
In a week she would marry the man she’d fallen in love with, and she refused to believe there was no hope that he would, one day, love her right back. He’d put his heart on ice, and who could blame him? He’d suffered an intense loss, a total tragedy, so he’d put his heart on ice...and Frankie was determined that she would thaw it.
CHAPTER TEN
‘YOU DID WELL TONIGHT.’ He watched as she strolled into their bedroom wearing a silk negligee that fell to the floor. All night he’d watched her, and he’d ignored every damned royal protocol, keeping an arm clamped vice-like around her waist because he couldn’t not touch her. The urge had surprised the hell out of him.
At first, he’d wanted to reassure her, to protect her, just as he’d said in the car. Though she’d promised him she was fine with the event, the crowds and the attention, he’d felt she was nervous. He’d felt her energy and he’d wanted to soothe her worries. Then, when they’d stepped onto the terrace and she’d begun to charm her way around his parliament, speaking in halting Tolmirón that she’d been learning since arriving in the country, he’d felt something else. Something dark and sinister and distinctly unwelcome.
Jealousy.
He hadn’t wished to share Frankie.
Every single person had wanted some of her time and attention and Frankie was so generous and giving that she would have obliged for another three hours, if he hadn’t called an end to the evening with his speech. Even as he’d given the closing words he’d watched her—watched the way she stood, the way the evening wind rustled past her hair, catching it and pulling it out towards the sea, as though the wind and the ocean knew that she really did belong here in Tolmirós.
His eyes narrowed at the intensity of his thoughts, the depth of his feelings, and he suppressed them with determination.
‘I had fun,’ she said simply. ‘It turns out I’m quite the attention-seeker.’
He lifted a brow but whatever response he’d been about to make fell out of his brain as she lifted her arms and began to style her hair. Long and waved, she lifted it onto her head into a messy bun, and the movement thrust her breasts forward, her nipples erect beneath the pale silk of the nightgown.
Oblivious to
his heated inspection, she continued, ‘You might have created a monster.’
He recognised that he had—but it was not the monster of which Frankie spoke. Matthias was in very real danger of becoming obsessed with Frankie.
Again.
But so much worse this time. He wanted her. All day and all night, his body craved her with a single-mindedness that he hadn’t felt since he was a teenager and first learning the ways of his body’s sensual needs. But tonight had shown him it was more than that. He didn’t want anyone else to claim her attention. He didn’t want her to talk and laugh and commiserate with anyone.
She’d spoken of her childhood and he’d listened, resenting the fact that she was sharing details he didn’t know with a stranger.
There was danger in all those feelings and he rejected them, knowing they were not a part of his life, knowing he didn’t welcome them.
‘I’m kidding,’ she said, and now she was looking at him, a quizzical expression on her brow. ‘I just meant it wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.’
He nodded, eyes watchful. ‘You’re a natural.’
‘Do you really think so?’
Her doubts opened vulnerability inside his chest like a chasm—a desire to shield her from ever feeling uncertain. He ignored the need to reassure her, to pepper her with praise and compliments and fill her with confidence in herself. For promises were inherent in that and he didn’t want to make promises to Frankie when he had no idea of how to keep them.
‘Yes.’ He spoke the word like a whip cracking into the room. ‘And you will have a busy week of such engagements.’
‘Oh?’
‘In the days before the wedding, diplomats and dignitaries will arrive to pay their respects to the woman who will be Queen. You will have many appointments.’
‘I see.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘I remember.’
‘You are not worried about it?’
‘Well, I wish I had a better grasp on Tolmirón,’ she said pragmatically, ‘but, other than that, no. I’m not shy, Matthias. I have no issue talking to strangers.’
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