The seclusion in the bedroom was heavenly after the boisterous gathering downstairs. Siobhan wasn’t used to such large crowds, and she reclined contentedly on the bed, sipping her tea, wishing she could sink down into the coverlet and sleep for a month.
Angus could see Siobhan’s mind returning to her troubles, as if Fiona’s departure deflated her spirits. He kicked his shoes off and climbed in bed with her. “I drink it because Catriona finds it uncouth.”
She tilted her head at him. “Pardon?”
“A few days ago, you asked why I drink coffee.” Lifting his cup, he elucidated, “Long ago, I dedicated my life to earning my mother’s disapproval whenever and wherever I could.”
What prompted that vow? A thousand questions whirred in Siobhan’s mind as Angus spoke of a conscious decision to agitate the Dowager Princess.
Again, he lifted his half-empty cup. “And she quite disapproves of coffee. She claims it’s a ‘heathens’ drink.”
Her lips twitched, and twitched again before she burst into laughter.
Angus grinned at her, happy he had made her laugh, even if it was partly at him, and even if the background surrounding the story was not so funny.
At the unexpected tap on the door, Siobhan’s heart jumped.
“Come in,” Angus called out.
The door swung open and Jaxon, with a huge smile and bright clear eyes said, “I told you I’d see you soon!”
“Jax!” Silently chastising her skittish behavior, Siobhan jumped down from the bed and rushed over to give him a hug. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“I’m glad to see you too, but geez, you make it sound like you’re someplace awful.” He cast a questioning glance at Angus, who with his shoes back on, was already by their sides. Jaxon shook hands with him and asked, “Is everything okay?”
“She met my mother,” was Angus’s cryptic answer. “I have to oversee a few things but I will be back soon.”
When the door closed behind Angus, Jaxon turned worried eyes toward Siobhan.
“Everything is fine—it’s just…” She sighed, running a ran through her hair. “I don’t know—strange. It’s not home. You know?”
“Well, I’m prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice and give up my flat and move in so you feel more at home here,” he said, with mock gravity.
Grabbing his hand, Siobhan lead him to the armchair, sitting herself beside him. “That’s exactly what this place needs. More of my things, and my people. Have you spoken to anyone? They’re unbelievably stuffy.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, popping a sweetened biscuit in his mouth and pouring tea for himself. “They live in a different world here, honey.”
“I think you really should move in with me. Seriously. Would you? I feel so much better when you’re here. I mean, I lo—Angus is great. Don’t get me wrong. But you’re my best friend. My brother. I need you here with me. At least until the baby is born. It would really help me feel calmer.”
“Do you think they could make room for me?” he asked, raising his blond eyebrows.
“I’ll talk to Ang—” she started, then realized he was joking.
The palace was enormous. They could surely squeeze in twenty or thirty Jaxons and a few families.
“Of course, we have room for Jaxon,” Angus said, re-entering the room.
Because he would do whatever it took to make Siobhan happy in his home.
Angus arranged for a light late repast to be served in their sitting room and invited Jaxon to dine with them.
After Jaxon left, with the invite to return and stay with them for a lengthier period, Angus made love to her and snuggled in bed, talking about nothings.
Siobhan propped herself over his long body. “Angus, I know I laughed about you drinking coffee to make your mother mad…”
“It’s a funny story,” he interrupted her, with a smile.
She looked at him dubiously. “Is it?”
“My parents were never…in love…I think. Their marriage was arranged by their parents: my grandfather wanted to secure the line through my father, my mother’s parents wanted the prestige that would come from having a princess as a daughter.” He scratched his chin and put his arm behind his head, staring at her. “But things didn’t turn out as planned. My father disliked my mother on sight—although he never told me this. I learned from boarding school gossipers that after the wedding, instead of going on a honeymoon, he took her to a clinic in US and impregnated her through artificial methods.”
“Wait a second. Your father didn’t know your mother before they married?”
“Correct.”
“And…instead of…trying to…make a child with her, he took her to clinic? Like a walking womb?”
He frowned at the way she put things, but nodded. “Correct again.”
God. “And she didn’t oppose to any of it?” Although it was not a question, he shook his head. Siobhan added. “Well…that’s the most weird and sad story I have heard in a while.”
“She was young.” And stupid. He shrugged. “And she received a lot of money for doing it, so did he.”
Siobhan’s mouth opened in shock. “What?”
“My father didn’t have any control over his own money under the terms of the Braxton-Lenox trust, which stated he had to produce an heir before he could start spending it. So…both my grandfathers worked out an agreement, with the compliance of my parents. My mother received quite a fortune for…lending her womb to house the next Braxton-Lenox heir and my father got his hands on his money for a bit of sperm.”
And what did you get, Angus?
Angus simply continued talking as if he was telling the most normal story, “Although what I remember from my father was an affectionate and doting parent, my mother probably never got the love she was looking for, she was always a bitter woman. When he died, she decided to…enjoy her youth. Though I can say she was anything, but discreet. When I was in Lekten, her lovers were never around her.” He smiled, as if this were perfectly normal. “One can’t blame my mother for hating my father—and me—in retribution.”
Oh, Dragon, one couldn’t? I can. She cleared her throat, which suddenly seemed strangely too tight. “But you too didn’t have an heir.”
“Oh, but the children in the boarding school told me everything about my parents’ marriage and I decided I wouldn’t wait for an heir to have funds of my own. I made my way through school and university studying hard so I was never dependent on any of the money in the Braxton-Lenox trust.” He gave her a nonchalant shrug and grinned at her.
How he could smile when her heart was breaking she had no idea.
He shook his head at her in what seemed quiet amusement. “I quadrupled the size of Lekten Royal Bank and I have very rentable asset management of my own.”
Siobhan didn’t know what to say, he was lying there beside her, smiling, as if he had just related an anecdote and she was supposed to laugh at it. “Well, it’s not a very funny story.”
“No?” For one second, there wasn’t the slightest hint of amusement in his eyes. He looked so old, the tiny lines at the corner of his mouth gathering as his lips pinched together. And yet he also looked young—impossibly young, as if his five-year-old self were still looking out from behind his eyes, watching his mother send him away.
He looked away from her, and then back. That urbane amusement was back on his face now, but it looked lopsided on him—as if he were trying to wear a hat that didn’t quite fit. “Maybe because you don’t know what freedom I had in the boarding school. The pranks I played.”
“Yes, sure. That might be it,” she agreed because she didn’t have the heart to say otherwise. It has to be a funny story to him. She realized how much it meant to him that this little tale of adults selling themselves for a child be funny. “You must tell me all about boarding school time.”
“Tomorrow, maybe.” He yawned and moved her from his body, just to turn on his side and pull her to his front. That feeling of rightness at having h
er there intensified. He wanted to put a name on it; identify it. Is it happiness? “Goodnight, Angel.”
“Goodnight, Dragon.” She kissed his bicep and he cinched it tighter around her waist.
Siobhan had noticed two things when she slept with him. He wrapped his arms around her, clasping her as tightly as he would his most treasured prize.
This was the man who had seen marriage through distorted lenses, not once, but twice. He knew in his bones what it meant to have a woman—his own mother—walk away from him, and he’d married a friend, negating the possibility of finding love, because he was afraid of being rejected.
And now he was trying to do the same thing, keep love out of the equation.
Perhaps she could show him there were other ways, that in life and love, two plus two could make five.
Perhaps.
24
Monday, March 14, 2016
8:30 a.m.
Angus started the day by confronting his mother’s total dissatisfaction with him—not that this came as a surprise—which was expressed by her total silence when she entered the breakfast room and was maintained as they ate. A great stretch of unending silence along with dark glares at him which he knew would soon become annoying questions, complaints, and demands.
As always, her hair was combed in a striking, fashionable stormy way around her face and she was dressed in what he supposed was the height of fashion—if he bothered to follow it. Her black leather suit emphasized her slim waist and fit body.
When he was a child, she had seemed imposing, like some faraway forbidden castle, looming over the horizon. When he came home for holidays, she had kept her distance and coldness. Every word they exchanged since Angus had been crowned king, had been polite, affable, and so unexceptionable. She might have read his school reports; he might have read about her in the tabloids.
When he was a child, all he wanted was for her to notice him.
Now, he had no more expectations of her. She could no longer disappoint him.
He closed his newspaper and signaled for the footman to replenish his cup with more coffee.
His mother sharpened her gaze on him and, if looks could burn, the thick snow lining the Lektenstaten mountains would have been reduced to nothing more than a melted puddle.
“So, you are betrothed,” she said, after the footman had filled Angus’s cup and retreated to the far corner of the room.
Angus set down his cup and inclined his head at her. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“So, this is your plan, is it?” She pierced the sausage with such ferocity, there could be no doubt that Angus had gotten under his mother’s skin—as he’d always invariably managed to do. “To return home with a common laborer in tow? After all of the time and effort I’ve gone to find you a suitable bride befitting your status and position. You shun them all in favor of a shit shoveling, working-class peasant from London?”
He should not have been surprised by the words, by the condescending moniker, and yet, he was. And despite loathing his mother’s words—and the woman herself—he had to admit there was something rather refreshing—and thoroughly satisfying—about having his mother speak them aloud. She made no effort to disguise her arrogance and contempt for regular people for a change. “Mind your words, Ma’am. You’re referring to my fiancée.”
“She is uncouth, unwashed. A dog, lapping milk from the king’s bowl.”
He slammed one hand onto the table, the force of it sending the plates rattling.
His mother’s attention flew to him.
“Call her that again and I will not be responsible for what I do.”
She certainly had not been prepared for that.
“You have responsibilities to this family, to your country.” She took a deep breath, maintaining eye contact with him to impart how serious she was. “As such, I’m not begging, Angus Augustus. Why, I am not even politely asking, because, frankly, that is too far beneath me. I am—”
“Oh, yes,” he drawled, interrupting her. “Politely asking is the stuff of the masses and it hardly befits the distinguished position of a Dowager Princess.”
She gave a pleased nod. “Precisely.”
God! Could a person be born this blindly self-absorbed? Or is it something learned? Fortunately, where the Braxton-Lenox’s were concerned, it was not a trait that traveled through their blood.
“As such,”—she patted her white hair—“I am telling you to get rid of her.”
“You are telling me? To…get rid of Siobhan?” he asked dryly. “How positively medieval of you, Ma’am.”
“Medieval,” she snapped, surging forward in a shocking break from her usual composure. “And what would you call it when nearly a millennia of history and legacy is threatened by your failure to produce an heir?”
“All things in due time, Mother.”
“If you die without an heir, or worse, if you get that…that woman pregnant—” Little blooms of pink touched her cheeks and she drew herself up straighter. “It’ll be a disaster.”
A more honorable son would have taken mercy. But he’d long been without it where his mother was concerned. For all that the woman sitting before him was his mother, she was a stranger. “Well, it’s unfortunate for you then that she is already carrying.”
A shriek strangled itself in Catriona’s throat. “You become more like your father every day.”
His temper rose and he nearly sprang to his feet at that, but Angus would not give her the pleasure of seeing the effect her words had on him. Calmly, he folded his napkin and rose to his feet, etching a purposely small, mocking bow. “You’ll have to excuse me, Ma’am, but as you yourself stated, I have duties to my country. And as far as the one duty you’re most concerned with, I took care of that by not bothering to use a condom with Siobhan. I thought you’d be pleased.”
There had been a time when he’d wanted her to care for him. He’d wanted it desperately and had made excuse after excuse for her sending him away.
But she had made painfully clear his excuses were just that: excuses.
Now he couldn’t care less if she moved to London—or to Hell—and never spoke a single word to him again.
8:45 a.m.
Siobhan was awake before Kerr and a maid came in to settle breakfast in her sitting room before her first lesson with Ewan.
It was only while she was getting dressed and chose to investigate further that the truth finally sank in on her: the dressing-room closets contained only her clothes and a door in her vast bedroom connected with his.
She knocked on the communicating door in her bedroom and waited, shifting from one foot to the other.
When there was no answer she opened it, and saw yet another terrifyingly large and imposing bedroom containing huge ornate furniture that looked as if it had been designed a good few centuries ago.
It seemed all the more intimidating when set against its backdrop of gilded, paneled walls.
Maybe I should have been prepared for Angus’s absence. She breathed in deep and looked around wondering what she should do now, when a knock sounded on her bedroom door and Fiona walked in. “Oh, good, you’re up. Angus has asked me to take you shopping—”
“Where is he?” Siobhan asked.
His cousin looked surprised by the question. “At the bank, of course.”
“Of course.” Her soft mouth tightened because she refused to give way to the feeling he had abandoned her. After all, she wasn’t a child and she might be in a strange environment, but she would soon get used to it. She would manage fine without him. By the looks of it, she didn’t have much choice. “I don’t need to buy any more clothes.”
“He told me to tell you to buy a dress for the party tonight.”
Siobhan’s head was already spinning. “What party?”
Fiona went to the high-tech computer on the desk and after a few clicks, showed her a timetable filled with lunches, dinners, parties, charities visits, and who knew what else. “You’ll need clothes for all those.”
“But I can’t go now.” Siobhan groaned. “Ewan is coming for his lesson.”
“Ewan?” Fiona opened her eyes. “I will meet you at one o’clock here then.”
Stunned Siobhan watched as the younger girl made a hasty retreat as if the devil was in her heels. God. What now?
Siobhan’s spirits had taken quite a beating after one hour with Ewan Courtland and his lessons on table manners. And according to him, they had only begun.
Ewan had given her a list of frowned-upon words and she had learned she could say loo or lavatory but never toilet, napkin, nor serviette. Lounge room or front room was a sitting room or drawing room. And it would be drawing room only if the house also had a sitting room.
Never in her life had she ever worried about what she could—and more important, could not—converse with others. Allergies should be alerted to her hosts but topics on illness were prohibited. And, God forbid, bodily functions should never—ever! —be mentioned or discussed.
On a happy note, she would not have to worry about answering unwanted questions or going to parties if she was feeling ill.
“A proper lady of our fair country knows all the titles and names of the prominent families. After all, one must know who to turn to in a time of need.”
Siobhan frowned as she watched Ewan pace the length of the study, his back ramrod straight. It was a bit after five in the afternoon and her stomach was already rumbling with the promise of dinner soon. “Did you say titles and names?”
He stopped to look at her, his stern expression giving nothing to his true nature. “Ja. Titles, names. As the king’s fiancée and a…well, an outsider, you could do to learn who is in your realm of influence.”
Names and titles. How difficult can this be? “Alright,” she said, not wishing to argue about it. “What and who are they?”
“First and foremost, the Duchess of Eichhörnchen. If Her Grace takes you under her wing, not even the Dowager Princess would dare shun you,” Ewan told her in a somewhat conspiratorial whisper. “Now say it: Eichhörnchen.”
Royal Love Page 21
