by Jane Porter
“I imagine there are.” He hesitated. “I know it sounds cruel, what my parents did, sending Jacqueline away to give birth. But they were old-fashioned, and they’d been raised in a time where unplanned pregnancies were hushed. Covered up. They thought they were doing the right thing. They truly believed they were protecting Jacqueline. They had no idea it would turn out the way it did.”
“I don’t remember my grandparents as cruel,” she said, sitting down on the bed next to the garment bag.
“They weren’t,” he agreed. “And losing Jacqueline destroyed them. She was their baby. They never recovered from her death. After the funeral, Father moved to the dowager’s château on the edge of the city, and Mother remained here to be close to you.”
“Did Grandmother spend time with me?” Emmeline asked.
“She did. In the beginning. She was with you almost every day. Claire had to fight her for you. They had terrible rows—” He broke off, laughed as he sat down heavily, but the laugh sounded like pain. “I’m so sorry. Emmeline, we got it all wrong. We just tried to protect Jacquie, and then you, and it didn’t work. The truth is so much better. Remember that.”
She nodded, thinking that this was the time to tell him. He’d opened the door for her, created trust. Now all she had to do was tell the truth and confess that Makin wasn’t her baby’s father, that Alejandro Ibanez was, tell him that with Alejandro gone, Makin had offered for her out of some misguided sense of duty.
She knew her father would free her of the engagement. He couldn’t possibly insist on her marrying Makin once he knew the truth.
But before she could find the right words to break the news, William reached for her hand and he carried it to his cheek. “You don’t know how happy I am for you.” He squeezed her fingers, overcome by gratitude. “It means so much to me that you have what your mother never had. The opportunity to marry the man you love, to have a normal life … or as normal as you can as a princess.”
Emmeline’s throat sealed closed as she watched the emotions—pain, relief, hope—pass one by one over his lined face. He’d had a far harder life than she’d ever imagined. “It’s difficult to have a normal life when you’re a royal, isn’t it?” she said to him.
“It is. Especially when you’re as beautiful as you are.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m glad you have Makin. He’s not the sort to indulge in make-believe. You can rest assured he’s marrying you for all the right reasons. Now get some sleep, my dear. Good night.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
MAKIN watched Emmeline walk down the palace chapel on her father’s arm. King William wore his black royal uniform, a military dress coat from when he’d served in the Brabant Air Force as a twenty-year-old. His posture was as erect and proud as if he were still a military man.
But it was Emmeline who held Makin’s attention, Emmeline who took his breath away in her mother’s white debutante gown with a tiara on top of her golden head.
More ivory than ice-white, the strapless, heart-shaped bodice hugged her breasts and rib cage before nipping in dramatically at Emmeline’s small waist. The very full silk skirt was covered in a pleated swirling pattern made to look like overblown roses, with the beaded ivory silk flowers growing larger as they moved toward the hem. The skirt’s pleated silk caught the light and created shadows. Makin didn’t think she could have picked a more beautiful gown to be married in.
For Emmeline, the brief wedding ceremony passed in a blur of sound and motion. There was the sound of the organ playing something too loud and bright. She and her father walked down the chapel aisle, the pews empty except for her mother in the front and the bishop waiting at the altar with Makin.
She felt her father kiss her and then give her hand to Makin. She heard the bishop’s voice, and then heard Makin saying words, repeating the vows. She repeated the same vows. The bishop spoke again and then there was the exchange of rings. Makin lifted her veil and kissed her on the lips.
And it was done.
They were married.
There was an even briefer gathering after, consisting of wedding cake and champagne. Emmeline had a sip of champagne and a couple of bites of cake but couldn’t eat or drink more than that.
She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the Gold Drawing Room mirror, seeing the swish of her full silk skirt from the back and the small, corseted waist. The dress hadn’t needed to be altered a bit. It fitted Emmeline perfectly, which meant she and her mother had been the same size. Small. Slender. Elegant.
Emmeline suddenly wanted out of the dress, away from Brabant. This was the old life. She was ready for the next.
“Have you had enough cake and champagne?” she asked Makin.
His gaze held hers a moment, the silver depths warm. “Yes.”
“I have, too. I’m going to go change.”
“I’ll call my flight crew, let them know we’ll soon be on the way.”
Upstairs, Emmeline had nearly finished changing into traveling clothes—a trim designer suit in taupe and pink. She’d just slid her heels on and was putting in the first of her pearl earrings when her bedroom door opened and closed.
Emmeline turned around to find her mother standing awkwardly by the door. “I came to offer my help, but you’ve already changed,” Claire said crisply.
“Yes,” Emmeline agreed, attaching the other earring. “Everything’s packed. Just need to switch out my purse and I’m ready to go.”
“Have you rung for someone to take your bags?”
“The maid did.”
“Do you need … any money, or anything … before you go?” Emmeline’s lips curved but the rest of her face felt hard. “No. Makin’s loaded. He’ll take care of everything.”
“Emmeline!”
Emmeline’s eyes burned, and she swallowed with effort, her throat aching with suppressed emotion. “What do you expect me to say, Mother? Two days ago you made it perfectly clear how you felt about me. That I was an embarrassment, a problem, nothing short of a failure—”
“I never called you a failure!”
“But an embarrassment and a problem.”
The queen took a slow breath. “You haven’t been an easy child.”
“But I’m not a child, Mother. I’m twenty-five. a woman who is going to have a child, and I can promise you this, I will never tell my child that he or she is a problem or an embarrassment. What a horrible thing for a mother to say to her daughter.”
“I was caught off guard.”
“Apparently you’re always caught off guard.”
Silence descended in the room, twilight casting long shadows across the bedroom floor, turning the rose-patterned carpet into shades of lavender and gray.
Claire cleared her throat, and again. “Perhaps I haven’t been the best mother,” she said after a moment. “But I tried. I did. I realize now it wasn’t enough. You were always so emotional, so needy—”
“Not again.” Emmeline closed her eyes at the familiar refrain.
“Hear me out. I don’t express things well, Emmeline. I’m not good with words like you are. I’m not comfortable sharing my feelings. I never have been. But that doesn’t mean I don’t. love … you.”
“Hard word for you to say, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never heard you say love before.” Emmeline locked her knees, lifted her chin. Today she would not fall apart. She would not leave in pieces. “You’ve never once told me you loved me.”
“Because it wasn’t necessary. I was your mother. You were my daughter—”
“And children like tenderness. They like affection. I craved it, Mother. Morning, noon and night.”
“I know. You have such strong emotions, you feel everything so intensely. Just like your mother.” Her voice quavered. “Everybody loved your mother. Her death devastated your grandparents. It broke William’s heart, too, because he was Jacqueline’s big brother. He adored her. That’s why he wanted you.”
“And you didn’t.”
“No, Emmie, I did. I wanted you and I tried my best with you, but you were inconsolable as an infant. You cried for the first six months of your life, day and night. Your grandmother was always reaching for you, wanting to comfort you, and I’d tell her no, that you were my daughter and I wanted to hold you. And I did. I used to walk with you in the nursery, back and forth, for hours. William would come up at two in the morning and he’d see me with you, and he’d tell me to come to bed. But I wouldn’t. I was so determined to be a good mother. I was so determined to find a way to make you love me.” She broke off, tears filling her eyes. “You never did.”
“But I have always loved you. As a child I wanted nothing more than your approval. But you couldn’t give me that.”
“You were just so like her.”
“Like Jacqueline.”
Claire nodded.
“And you resented me for that,” Emmeline concluded.
“I think I did.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted you to be like me.”
Seated in the limousine next to Makin, Emmeline stared out the window, overwhelmed. So much had happened in just a handful of days. Alejandro’s death. The revelation that Princess Jacqueline was the birth mother she’d never known. Her marriage to Makin. And then the scene with Claire in her bedroom. It was a lot to take in.
“Are you all right?” Makin asked, his voice a deep rumble in the darkness of the car.
“Yes,” she answered faintly, her face averted, her gaze fixed on a point far away. Her heart felt battered. Bruised.
“Did something happen when you went upstairs after the ceremony?”
“How do you know?”
“I can see the change in you. I hear it in your voice.”
It amazed her that he could already read her so well. “My mother came to see me.”
“What did she have to say?”
Emmeline felt a hot rush of emotion and she closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see. “She wanted me to know that despite appearances, she loved me. And I told her that I’d always loved her.”
He was silent a moment. “But it wasn’t exactly warm and satisfying?”
“No.” She laughed, a quick, sharp laugh even as she blinked back tears. “But then, nothing with my mother ever is.”
On board the plane, Emmeline curled into her chair and gave in to sleep.
While she slept, Makin called his close friend, Sultan Malek Nuri, to see how the Raha conference was going. Malek relayed that everything was going well, but, of course, everyone wished Makin was there.
“When do you return?” Malek asked. “I’d thought it was today, but maybe it’s later tonight?”
“No. I’m actually en route to Marquette.”
“Your Caribbean island?”
“Yes.” Makin hesitated, wondering how to share his news, as Malek’s wife Nicolette and her sisters were quite friendly, as well as distantly related, to Emmeline. Malek and Nicolette were also aware that Makin had never been a fan of Emmeline’s. “I just got married,” he said, believing the best way through something was directly.
“You … what?”
“I married Emmeline d’Arcy.”
Malek Nuri was successful because he knew when to speak and when to hold his peace. But he did neither now. He laughed, a great rich laugh of pure amusement. “Makin, my friend, I thought you were just seeing her safely home.”
“I was.”
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t let her go.”
Emmeline didn’t wake until they were in their final approach and close to landing.
“Where are we?” Emmeline asked, looking out the window. She’d expected a sea of sand, but instead it was blue underneath. Water.
“The Caribbean. We’ll be landing on my island Marquette in the next few minutes, but look out the window, we’re about to be treated to an incredible sunset now.”
He was right. The sun was low in the sky, a great red ball of fire moments away from dropping into the ocean. The horizon was already turning orange and purple and Emmeline felt a thrill of pleasure. “It’s gorgeous,” she said.
“Dramatic, isn’t it?”
She smiled, amused by his word choice. “So sometimes dramatic is good?”
His gaze met hers and held. “Yes. Sometimes dramatic is perfect.”
On the ground a driver in a white open Jeep met them at the airstrip and drove them across the estate to a sprawling plantation house. The two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old house had been built in the colonial style, with a steep thatched roof, high ceilings and thick stone walls to keep the interior cool.
On entering the house, Emmeline discovered she could see the ocean from virtually every room, with the last lingering rays of light turning the sea into a parfait of purple, lavender and red.
The house itself was furnished in the dark woods of the colonial style, with a mix of Spanish, French and English antiques, furniture brought over from Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The fabrics, though, were all soft and light—white linens, red, green and blue cheerful tropical cotton prints.
It was a happy house, she thought, following Makin on the tour that ended in the spacious master bedroom with windows everywhere.
By the time they finished the tour, her luggage had already been brought in and a maid had unpacked her clothes into the large mahogany dresser and closet.
Makin left her so she could bathe and change for dinner. With the door closed, Emmeline did a little twirl, her nerves almost getting the best of her.
So this was it. No more solo rooms. They were married. They’d share the master bedroom from now on.
She battled her panic by walking slowly around the bedroom, trying to get comfortable even as her gaze avoided the bed. It looked as though it was custom made, with a massive king-size frame, and it was draped with sheer white linens. She knew that it was in this bed that Makin would want to consummate the marriage tonight—
She broke off, shook her head, unable to finish the thought.
Take it one step at a time, she told herself. Bathe, dress, meet Makin for dinner, and then worry about the rest later.
It was a good plan, she thought thirty minutes later, but it wasn’t going to work.
She couldn’t do this. Couldn’t meet him for dinner and then go to bed with him as if it was the normal thing to do. She barely knew him. Had kissed him a few times, but that wasn’t a relationship.
She was still panicking when the maid knocked on the door and asked if Her Highness needed assistance. The maid, like the rest of the staff, spoke French.
“Yes,” Emmeline answered. “Can you please let Sheikh Al-Koury know I’m not feeling well and won’t be able to join him?”
“You won’t be joining him for dinner, Your Highness?”
“That’s correct. Please tell him I don’t feel well and I’m going to bed.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
HE didn’t even knock. He just barged through the bedroom and into the bath where she was still chin-deep in now-tepid water.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded, his gaze sweeping from the top of her head, where her blond hair was piled high in a knot, to the tips of her toes peeping from the water at the foot of the tub. “What’s happened? Do you need to see a doctor?”
“No.”
“You’re not well?”
“No.”
“Are you cramping? Are you queasy?”
“No!” She swallowed guiltily and slid a little deeper into the hot water. “I’m just … tired.”
“Tired?”
“Yes. And I think I should just go to bed … you know … right now instead of after dinner.”
“So you’re not sick?”
“No. Not sick.”
He swore beneath his breath and pushed a hand through his black hair, ruffling it on end. “So you’re perfectly fine?”
“Other than feeling tired, yes.”
He straightened, jaw tightening as hi
s hands fisted at his side. “Do you have any idea how scared I was for you? I thought you were in pain. I thought you were miscarrying—”
“I’m not. And nothing’s wrong. Okay? I was just.” She shook her head, looked away before glancing back at him. “Avoiding you.”
“That’s what this is all about?”
“Yes. I was nervous about consummating the marriage so I decided to stay in the bath and hide. Feel better?”
“No.”
Now she felt foolish, embarrassed and angry with herself. Why did she think she could be the hero in a story if she wasn’t even brave enough to face her husband? “I’m a coward, Makin. You know that. I’m shriveling to nothing in this cold bath because I’m hiding from you. Does that make you feel better?”
“No. But this will.” And he leaned over the tub and scooped Emmeline from the bath, carried her soaking wet into the bedroom where he dropped her on the bed.
Before she could scramble backward, Makin moved over her, catching her wrists in his hands, pressing them down onto the bed, and straddled her hips with his thighs. “Stop hiding,” he gritted through clenched teeth. “Stop running away and start living.”
“Get off!” she choked, furious.
“I will when I feel like it,” he answered, his gaze slowly sweeping over her wet puckered breasts. “Because isn’t that what you do? You leave me outside, sitting by myself, waiting for my bride to join me when my bride in reality has no intention of joining me.”
“I wanted to.”
“If you wanted to, you would have come. Instead you send a maid to tell me you’re going to bed.”
“I was afraid!” she cried, trying desperately hard to twist free.
“Of what?”
“Of you. Of this.” She was panting from exertion and frustration.
“And what’s so scary about this?”
“All of it. Being naked. Being touched. Being known.”
“Get over it. Because I’m going to touch you and know you and make you feel good if it’s the last thing I do.”
The heat in his eyes made her heart lurch. Emmeline drew a panicked breath which only emphasized the rise and fall of her bare, gleaming breasts. “Even if I say I don’t want to?”
