Royal Pains

by CN Thornton

  Finally, the elevator stopped and the doors opened. Without saying a word to me, Theodore entered an oversized foyer that branched off in three directions. Without really paying attention, I followed after him to a sunken living area, my legs trembling with every step I took.

  "You may sit. Dinner will be ready shortly," he said.

  I inclined my head. "Thank you."

  He sat across from me, his elbows resting on his knees and his fingers steepled, the tips of his index fingers resting against his lips. Those lips.

  I snapped my eyes shut to regain control of my thoughts. You can't think about him like that. He is an asshole. He sees you as nothing but property.

  I opened my eyes and saw he was still watching me.

  "Please tell me what is on your mind," he spoke in his Linacrean accent.

  I bit my lip. "Truthfully, I was wondering what your intentions are. I know this is just a date, but I want to make it clear that I have no—"

  Theodore held up his hand to silence me, looking amused. "Surely you know that this isn't a date."

  My forehead creased. "I don't understand."

  "As of today, you are my wife."

  I shot to my feet so quickly it threw off my balance and I nearly toppled over. "No!" I shouted, catching myself on the couch.

  Theodore sat back deeper into the couch, his legs crossed in a gentlemanly manner.

  "Yes," he said calmly.

  I shook my head, sharply. "I don't want to marry you. I don't want to marry anybody. I just want to live a simple life."

  Theodore swiftly rose to his feet and took a step forward. "Whether or not you want to marry me is irrelevant, Emmaline. You signed the paper; you are mine now." He fixed one of his cuff links and straightened his blazer.

  A tear slipped from my eye that I quickly wiped away. I couldn't let him see me cry. I couldn't give him or my mother the satisfaction of knowing their actions had pushed me over the edge.

  "Paper?" I repeated with a sob.

  He didn't even need to tell me. I already knew. The paper my mother had made me sign at the beginning of the event must have been a marriage contract of some sort. I knew I shouldn't have trusted her, should have read it… But I hadn’t, and now I was married to Theodore.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I wanted to throw myself out the window and be pummeled to my death, but then I wouldn't have a chance to make this right. Maybe I could explain the mix-up and this could all be undone. Surely he would be nice enough to divorce me. Right?

  The longer I thought about it, the less likely it seemed this man would be that kind.

  "Is... is there a bathroom around here?" I asked him.

  He walked me down a long hall and stopped in front of a door. "Just through here. Don't be too long; dinner should be done momentarily."

  Without a second thought, I went into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. Crossing over to the sink, I turned on the water and splashed my face with it. Hopefully my waterproof makeup worked.

  Grabbing a hand towel, I patted my face dry. Just looking at my reflection in the mirror made me sick to my stomach. How could I let my mom do this to me? I should have just cut my losses and dropped out of Ludivine. Surely Sebastian would have still let me work alongside him. Even after graduating without me.

  Part of me felt like I deserved the manipulation from my mother, especially since I was using her for her money.

  No, don't think that. You did nothing wrong. You are the victim, I recited in my head.

  Reaching beneath my gown, I grabbed my cell phone from my thigh holder. I had fifteen texts from Sebastian and twenty missed calls. I quickly called him back.

  "Oh my God, Emmaline, here I am relaxing with a drink in my hand, starting on my finals assignment for Lorre's class, and I get a call from my mother. She told me you were just auctioned off at tonight’s charity.

  "I told her I know and that it was just for a date, but she said it was to be married. Please tell me she’s mistaken."

  I bit my lip, suppressing the urge to cry.

  "Oh no, Emma. Oh no. How bad is it? This can be fixed, right?"

  I shrugged my shoulders out of habit. "It is bad. It's Theodore."

  "Theodore?"

  I nodded my head and began pacing in the bathroom. "Yes, the guy from the other night. The asshole. He’s the one that won the bid."

  "Oh, honey," was all he could say.

  I wiped my eyes again as tears began to sprout. I could hear it in his voice—he had no hope that this could be fixed.

  "I'm…" I sniffed. "I'm going to try talking to him and explain the situation during dinner. I'll tell him I was misinformed to what the event really was and that I didn't know I signed anything consenting because I didn't read the papers. Maybe he’ll let me go or something."

  "Yeah, do that." There was a pause. "Are you... coming home tonight, or is this—" He couldn't even finish his sentence.

  "I'll be home," I said, as confidently as I could in my current situation. "It's against the law for him to force me to stay against my will."

  We talked for a few more minutes until I heard a firm knock on the door. I quickly said goodbye, stowed my phone back in its holder and put on my best smile before opening the door.

  I flinched when I came face to face with Theodore, but quickly recovered. He looked at me with his intense expression and then glanced into the bathroom.

  "Who were you talking to?" he asked me.

  I gave him a confused expression. "No one. I was just giving myself a pep talk. There’s a lot you need to know," I said as I stepped around him to exit the bathroom.

  "Hmmm. Well, dinner is ready."

  In the dining room, four chairs circled around a medium-sized, solid wood table, decorated with a runner and a large vase in the center.

  Theodore sat across from me, his eyes never leaving my face. It made me nervous. From the brief time I’d had the displeasure of being around Theodore, I’d learned he was a bit possessive. I remembered when the waiter had told me Theodore wanted me to sit at his table—I’d denied at first, and the waiter had seemed uneasy at the thought of relaying the message.

  "Well, speak," he said to me as two butlers placed plates of food in front of us.

  "About?"

  "You did say that you had quite a bit to tell me, so go on."

  I took a deep breath and began telling him about my mother and her conniving ways. I explained about my lack of knowledge of tonight’s event and how I hadn’t read the paper before signing it. When I’d finished, he just stared at me, his expression more or less the same as before. He seemed unfazed.

  He took a few bites, taking his time to chew his food in between. A minute or two later, he finally spoke again. "Why is it that you feel the need to tell me this?" He took a drink from his wine glass.

  I began wringing my hands together under the table. "I was, er, hoping that maybe you could—" What was the proper, yet polite word I was looking for? "—divorce me," I finally finished, staring at my hands in my lap.

  I glanced up momentarily to see him patting his mouth with a linen napkin. "First, you need to sit up straight and look at me when you are talking to me. To do otherwise is very rude and I will not tolerate that kind of behavior."

  I snapped up straight and rolled my shoulders back. Then I looked him in the eye, waiting for him to finish. If I had any chance of getting what I wanted, I had to give him what he wanted, and I could only guess that was compliance.

  "Second, I was already made aware of certain parts of the situation."

  "You were part of this? You knew and you still went through with it?"

  He didn't answer, just took another sip from his wine glass.

  "How could you really be this cruel? How long have you been planning this with my mother?" I rushed out angrily.

  "It has been arranged since the day your father took the throne. Your late father, Charles, signed a binding contract that you and I were to be wed after I initiated my
claim to the throne."

  My mouth hung open, something Theodore would definitely consider inappropriate. At this point, I didn't care. I was still trying to wrap my mind around everything he had just said.

  "My father's name is William," I finally managed to say after several moments of silence.

  Theodore snickered, for once he seeming genuinely amused. "I beg to differ. I have learned your family’s history as part of my lessons and know that your father is Charles and your brother is Daniel."

  I shook my head. "No. My father's name is William and I don't have a brother; I have a sister, Camille."

  Sighing, he rose to his feet and disappeared from the room, only to return with a thick, leather-bound book. He turned to a page and set it in front of me. It took me a second to even begin to comprehend what I was looking at. My mind had reached its limit on stress, probably for the rest of my life.

  Across two pages lay a family tree. Little portraits were placed accordingly with names under the faces. But I knew none of these names.

  Theodore pointed to a face and I began to read. The name was Charles Lefevre, and beside him was William Lefevre. The two were connected by a single line between the names George and Fiona. Charles and William were brothers.

  William was connected to a woman named Rose and they had a lone child—a daughter named Camille. That meant that William truly wasn't my father. I quickly looked to Charles and saw he was connected to Eleanore. Below them branched two children, myself and Daniel. I really do have a brother.

  I closed the book and pushed it away. I couldn't read any further. I refused to deal with all these things thrown at me at once.

  "Like I previously stated, our marriage has been planned since before our births. Always, to keep a stronghold in the country of Linacre. Now, it will take some time because there are things that must be done beforehand, but you will be returning to Linacre with me."

  And that was the final straw. I pushed my chair back and rose to my feet. "I will not be going anywhere with you. Let’s get that straight, right now. I am not your wife, nor will I ever be," I shouted at him before turning and making my way to the elevator.

  Heavy footsteps from behind stopped me in my tracks. I felt his strong hand close around my upper arm as he swung me around to face him. In the next half-second, he pressed me up against the wall and held me there. I tried to fight back but he easily overpowered me, using his bodyweight to anchor me against the wall and pinning my hands above my head.

  "GET OFF ME!" I screamed, writhing to try and escape his hold.

  "Silence," he began, in an easy voice. That he didn't raise his voice seemed to frighten me more than it should have. "According to the laws of the United States of America, you and I are husband and wife. In Linacre, you are my wife in practice until we are married there, so you will learn to respect and honor me the way a wife should to her husband."

  "I will do none of those things," I said as confidently as possible.

  "You will or you will have consequences," he replied steely.

  I smirked. "You cannot touch me. There are laws in my country that say so."

  "And that I know." He leaned in to me so his lips were at my ear and lowered his voice. "I have diplomatic immunity; therefore, I can do whatever I think is necessary. Give me a reason," he finished. As he leaned away, he released his hold on me, dropping my hands. The look on his face let me know he knew he had finally won. With his diplomatic immunity, I knew he could do anything to me and get away with it. I didn't want to think about how bad things could get.

  "What do you want from me?" I spoke in a small voice.

  "Obedience." He picked a piece of dust off his jacket and glanced down at his watch on his wrist. "Four hours until nine." He frowned. "You can finish eating your dinner, take a bath and then go to bed."

  I shook my head, making sure not to break eye contact with him. "I would like to go home."

  "No," he said without a second thought. "Absolutely not."

  "Please," I begged. "You already won. You got exactly what you wanted. Please just let me have this one thing. I want to go home until I have to leave."

  He stared at me, his lips pressed into a hard line.

  "Fine. I will allow it," he said. "We should be here no longer than a fortnight, so you have until then. I will drive you home." He turned and stalked from the room.

  The drive home couldn't have been more awkward. The beautiful, bitter, cold-hearted asshole beside me was by law my husband. In two weeks’ time I would be leaving my home and venturing with him to the country of Linacre. Who knew what would happen after that…

  Then it hit me.

  "My father... he was a king," I said to Theodore, breaking the silence.

  Theodore nodded his head. "Of course. My bloodline is the original monarchy, but my father needed more control in places far out from the royal courts, so he had four more built and appointed your father as king of the North under the conditions that brought about our marriage."

  "How did he die?" I asked, curiosity gaining the best of me.

  It was natural to want to know these things, right? I mean, I grew up thinking that William was my father and Camille my sister. To find out that my real father was dead left a lot of questions urging to be answered.

  "A plague. It claimed several lives outside the royal courts and a few inside—your brother and father and your uncle’s wife, Rose. You were sick, too, and there was fear that you would die, but you didn't."

  I frowned. "How did we end up in America?"

  Theodore took in a deep breath and released it just as we pulled into the parking garage of my apartment. He shut off the engine and turned to look at me.

  "After the death of the king and prince of the North, there were riots. The rebels from the North joined with those from the West and charged on the castle to take the throne. You were in danger, and we did the only thing we could think of to protect the girl who was to one day be my wife. We sent you away."

  I nodded my head. "Can I ask you one more question?"

  He gave a barely noticeable nod.

  "Why do you act like this?"

  His face hardened. "Good night, Emmaline," he said, his jaw flexing several times.

  I nodded my head and got out of the car. I waited for him to leave and hurried into the lobby to catch the elevator. A small weight lifted off my chest the second I entered my home. Closing the door, I kicked off my heels and made my way into the living room.

  Bash was unnaturally quiet as he sat in the center of the couch with his legs crossed. As I moved closer I noticed his cheeks were tinged a pink color.

  "Bash?" I said as I moved to sit beside him.

  He looked at me and smiled feebly. "How did things go?" he asked.

  There was nothing I could say, so I looked down at my lap to avoid looking at him as I shook my head. It didn't take long for the tears to begin falling, but it made me feel a little bit better when Bash pulled me into his arms and held me.

  "Everything is going to be alright," he said to me, his voice breaking slightly.

  For the first time since the very beginning of our friendship, I didn't believe him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  For the next two days Bash and I spent as much time as we could together, doing everything we could to keep the inevitable from our minds. On Wednesday we did the underwater photo shoot and celebrated at night with a couple mixed drinks and one of our favorite movies, Vanity Fair.

  It was on the last night that Bash decided to break our only rule—not talking about my marriage or anything that accompanied it.

  "I don't know why I haven't thought of this before. My uncle Johnathan married this weird chick once and suddenly after the marriage she discovered that she was pregnant, only the dates didn't check out for it to be my uncle’s. So after the baby was born, they got a DNA test and it turns out the baby wasn't even his, so he got a declaration of invalidity because of fraud from her hiding the child of another man."

/>   "Well, I am definitely not hiding the child of another man, so—"

  "So, you don't have to be. There are other reasons you can get a declaration of invalidity, and yours would be duress. You were practically coerced into getting married, and technically what your mother did was fraud, so just go to the state and you can get—"

  I cut Bash off in the middle of his sentence. "That's not simple enough. He has diplomatic immunity; he can do anything to me and get off scot-free."

  Bash took my hands into his. "Then we run away. It will work, trust me. I can buy plane tickets to anywhere in the world and we can just move there. You will be safe." He knelt in front of me.

  "Sebastian, if you run away with the next King of Linacre's wife I’m sure they’ll hunt you down. He has money and unlimited access to resources. He will find us."

  "You don't know that." He swiveled my chair around so he could look at me and took a seat. "Please, just think about it. We can pay cash for a house in the middle of nowhere and live there." I gave him a bewildered look.

  "I don't know..." I wanted more than anything to just disappear, but I didn't want to make any more trouble for myself.

  He brought my hands to his lips and kissed them. "Emmaline, you are stubborn." He began smirking a bit, like the normal, cheerful Bash always did. "You need to think about what you are doing. This guy—this Theodore bloke—you can't leave with him. Please, don't leave."

  I couldn't look at Bash anymore. Just seeing the emotion on his face, knowing his heart ached for me and my situation… it killed me inside.

  But the longer I thought about it, the more it made me realize I wanted nothing more than to be happy, and Bash made that happen for me without fail.

  Running away with him was starting to seem like a good idea, the more I thought about it.

  "Fine. What's the plan?"

  Since we both had passports, we decided to go somewhere far away. After much research on not only distance but places that would make excellent backdrops for future photography sessions, we settled on Queensland, Australia. It was beautiful there with its rainforests and beaches, especially the Great Barrier Reef.