In Defiance of Duty

by Caitlin Crews

Not that it comforted Kiara today. She smiled a polite good morning at her mother and then went to fix herself a large cup of coffee.

  “You have a visitor,” Diana said when she’d finished, and Kiara’s heart stopped. It simply stopped. Then pounded so hard she felt light-headed.

  He had come. He was here.

  She whirled around, her pulse a wild staccato in her throat, to see the speculative way Diana looked at her.

  And then she would have given anything to take her reaction back, to hide it away, because her mother saw far too much and was always looking for more—but it was too late.

  “It’s only Harry,” Diana said. Her brows arched. “I hope that’s not a disappointment.”

  “Of course not,” Kiara said with as much equanimity as she could muster. She couldn’t quite smile. “Why would it be?” Diana let her paper drop to the scarred surface of the old oak table, focusing in on her daughter with all of her sharp, incisive attention. Kiara steeled herself.

  “I’m really not in the mood for an inquisition,” she began, but sighed when she saw the look on her mother’s face.

  “Perhaps it’s time to stop wandering about the chateau like a ghost,” Diana suggested. Calmly. She was always so calm. It had the immediate effect of making Kiara feel wild and out of control. “Perhaps it’s time to reclaim your career. Do more than simply mark time in your life.”

  “I’m fine,” Kiara said. Insisted.

  “Clearly,” Diana said drily. She shook her head. “You claim there’s nothing to discuss, that your marriage is in perfect health though here you sit, with no sign of your royal husband and as far as I know, no plans afoot to see him.” She let that sit there for a moment. “Perfectly fine, as you say.”

  “I am not marking time,” Kiara said, ignoring the rest of what Diana had said. “If you don’t want me to stay here, I’m sure I can find a hotel nearby.”

  “If you want to stay in a hotel rather than in your family’s home,” Diana replied in the same dry way, which somehow made it worse, “I won’t stop you. Though I will, naturally, wonder why it is you would rather hide out in a hotel than face a few innocent and well-meaning questions about a marriage you claim is doing so well.”

  Kiara took a deep, hard pull of her coffee and wished, not for the first time, that she didn’t always feel like this when Diana spoke to her—so torn between that sense of duty mixed with guilt, and that powerful yearning to feel neither.

  “My marriage is fine,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. She wished she felt less shaky, the aftermath of that hard kick of misplaced adrenaline making her feel a bit sick to her stomach. “And still off-limits as a discussion topic.”

  She didn’t know what her plan was, she realized as she heard her own voice, her own denials, flying around the kitchen as if she believed them herself. She’d asked Azrin for a separation and he’d, if not precisely agreed, let her go. It had been nearly a month so far, when they’d never gone longer than two weeks without seeing each other. Of course Diana had noticed. Was she simply going to brazen it out? Act as if nothing was wrong when another month slipped by, and then another? How long could she expect that to last realistically?

  Why couldn’t she admit what had happened? That she and Azrin had separated? Why couldn’t she just say it?

  “Here’s what I can’t help but notice,” Diana said, far too calmly, instead of answering the question. “This is the most animated I’ve seen you since you arrived back home. Apparently being argumentative suits you. There’s a bit of life in your eyes and color in your cheeks.”

  “This is not animation.” Kiara felt something hot slide behind her eyes, and was appalled to think she might crack, might actually cry, right here in the kitchen.

  And she knew if she did, there would be no hiding the truth from Diana. She would have to tell her mother that the marriage she’d always opposed had failed. And she knew she simply couldn’t do it. “This is a desperate bid for you to please, please stop poking at my marriage. I’ve been begging you to stop for five years!” Diana gazed at her for a long, simmering sort of moment and Kiara felt something turn over inside her. Hard. She just knew, somehow, that whatever her mother was about to say would take recovering from, and she wasn’t sure she could recover from anything else just at the moment. She didn’t think she could survive Diana’s version of home truths. Not now. Not when she was terrified that she was, in fact, the very ghost Diana accused her of being.

  “Listen—” she began, but then was saved when Harry Thompson walked in the door from the outside, keen to talk about the conversation he’d just had with the Frederick Winery chief winemaker.

  Frederick Winery chief winemaker.

  Dear, friendly Harry, Kiara thought, studying him after they’d exchanged greetings.

  She supposed he was a good-looking man, though it had been a long time since she’d thought of him in that way. He was simply Harry. He would one day run his family’s wine business. He would raise a few children to follow in his footsteps. He would have good years and bad, as dependent as everyone else was on the vagaries of the Australian weather, the moisture in the soil, the odd heat wave or downpour that could change the year’s grape yield. Safe, sweet, dependable Harry.

  As Harry and Diana engaged in a friendly debate about their different winemakers’ approaches to the Riesling this season, Kiara gripped her coffee and watched them over the brim of the mug.

  The truth was, she could understand why Diana still thought Harry was the right choice for Kiara. He’d grown up steeped in wine and the wine business, and for a woman like Diana, who had lost her partner so early and had had to learn the wine business on the run with a small daughter and so many naysayers, he must look like the safest of safe bets. He must look a lot like Kiara imagined her own father must have looked to Diana all those years ago—a kind, loyal family man with deep roots in this valley.

  It made Kiara wonder why she had let her romantic relationship with him fizzle, without even a harsh word spoken if she recalled it right, when she’d set off for university. Had she never really wanted safe, after all? Despite what she’d told herself before meeting Azrin?

  “Are you expecting a big tour group?” Harry asked, stopping in the middle of his lively, friendly argument with Diana to peer out the big kitchen windows that looked out over a portion of the long entry lane leading up to the chateau and the grounds. It wound its way through the vineyards and beneath the small hill where the chateau sat, making the most of the view. “That’s quite a convoy.”

  Kiara followed his gaze with mild interest, but saw nothing but dust kicked up in the air, as whatever vehicles Harry had seen had already disappeared around one of the bends, presumably circling around the final curves toward the front of the chateau.

  “No tour group that I’m aware of,” Diana said. “But I would be the last to know.”

  Kiara realized they were both looking at her. “I’ve no idea,” she said. “I haven’t given a tour of the winery since I was on my summer holidays from university.” Harry’s face cracked into a big smile then, so warm and happy that Kiara found she was unable to do anything but smile back. There was some part of her that mourned the fact that he could never, would never, be the man for her. Surely, she thought, that spoke to defects in her character. Surely she should have wanted him—for all the reasons her mother wanted him for her.

  Because if she married Harry or someone like him and lived her life out making wine here, she would be living out the very dream that Diana had wanted for herself—the dream that had been cut short and altered so terribly when Kiara’s father died.

  And Kiara couldn’t help feeling that helpless guilt roll through her again, because she knew it would never happen. Not even if she never laid eyes on Azrin again. Not ever.

  “Do you remember that summer right before you started university?” Harry was asking. He turned to Diana. “I don’t know how you let us get away with it, to be honest.” He launched into a tale
of some childhood adventure Kiara had half forgotten.

  She was laughing when the door to the outside opened again, as Harry reenacted his own teenage response to the trouble they’d got in. Assuming it was one of the many staff members, Kiara didn’t even turn to look.

  “That sounds like a delightful story,” Azrin said in his coldest voice, the chill of it slicing through Kiara’s laughter, straight into her heart, making her freeze solid and then whip around to take in the impossibility of him standing there, so fierce and hard and with that frigid gleam in his not quite blue eyes. Even so cold, so forbidding, he burned into her, making her momentarily blind. “I’m sorry to interrupt.” He was dressed entirely in black, which only served to make him that much more intimidating, something she would have thought impossible. A black T-shirt hugged his powerful torso and the black trousers he wore beneath did the same, and yet, despite the casual clothes, he was obviously and overpoweringly a king.

  He looked as regal as he did lethal, like some kind of dangerous angel, conjured up from who knew what kind of erotic dream to loom here, all smooth muscles, hard aristocratic stance, and implied danger. There was no mistaking that masculine threat, that ingrained assumption of dominance. It was written on every hard-packed inch of him.

  He never took his gaze from Kiara. And yet that banked sensual menace, that unmistakable air of command, seemed to come off him in waves to blanket the whole of the room.

  She could feel him in her bones, as if he had worked his way into the very marrow of her. And she could not seem to tell if what she felt so deep inside, that sweeping, twisting wave of sensation, was jubilation or despair.

  Or both.

  “Hello, Kiara,” Azrin said in that dark, seductive way of his that set off fires inside of her, whole bright blazes she hadn’t felt since she’d walked away from him in Washington and couldn’t seem to breathe through now. There was only the lick of flames and that mad urge to throw herself directly into them. Into him. His mouth pulled into a crook that was not quite mocking, and yet was entirely too knowing. “My queen.”

  “Poor Harry,” she said, her voice chiding.

  It was the first thing she said to him, directly to him, and she didn’t stop walking as she said it, she only ushered him into the sitting room on the family side of the chateau as if he was nothing but a guest. One she hardly knew, come to that. Azrin wasn’t particularly impressed by that kind of reception from the woman whose absence had tortured him, flayed him alive, and in point of fact still did—but he shoved his own reaction aside.

  This was all a means to an end, he told himself as he followed her. His desired end, whatever he had to do to achieve it. Whatever it took.

  She turned back toward him once she’d walked all the way into the room, and it hit him then, the weight of the strain between them. It seemed to echo in the air between them, making its own noise. He couldn’t help but drink her in, as if he’d been thirsty for her all this time.

  He knew it was no more that the truth—he had been. He was.

  She was dressed very casually in sand-colored trousers and a top that clung to her mouthwatering curves and was the precise shade of ripe cherries. Her light brown hair was pinned back from her face, but still fell to her shoulders in waves, and it caused him physical pain not to reach over and touch it. Her. He could not have said why he wanted her so terribly, so completely—but it had always been this way. She had always defied reason.

  He had to order himself to keep from touching her, little as his own body wanted to obey him. He wanted to drag her mouth to his and end this absurd distance between them. He wanted to take her down to the floor and remind her exactly how good it was between them—but too well did he remember what she’d said in between them. He wanted to take her down to the floor and remind her exactly how good it was between them—but too well did he remember what she’d said in Washington. Her accusations echoed in his ears even now, every bitter word like a separate knife into his gut. That all they had between them was that chemistry, that need.

  “Harry who?” he asked, bored by what was obviously a stalling tactic.

  “You know exactly who he is.” She rolled her eyes. “And he didn’t deserve the look you gave him.” Azrin smiled with a benevolence he did not feel, and somehow managed to keep his hands off of her as he lowered himself to lounge on one of the sofas. He barely glanced at the rest of the room, done with that brisk, efficient elegance that so categorized this place. These people. He propped his chin on one hand and eyed Kiara instead as she perched on a nearby chair, clearly determined to keep a safe distance between them. It irritated him beyond measure.

  This was his wife. His queen. And she was afraid—or unwilling—to be too near him. He had to lock down the great surge of fury and something else far deeper, far darker, that moved in him then, threatening to take him over.

  “I can assure you, Kiara,” he said in a voice he could not quite control, “I saw only you.” Her gaze snapped to his for a moment before she looked away again. She moved her shoulders—as if she was bracing herself. As if she had to prepare herself to speak with him, as if she could no longer simply do it. He hated all of it.

  “Looming about all menacingly in the kitchen and trying to intimidate everyone around you is not how we do things here,” she said in some version of her usual teasing tone. This one, however, was laced through with something far sharper. “Though we certainly have names for it.”

  “I was not trying to intimidate anyone,” he said mildly enough. Which was perhaps not in the least bit mild. “You would know it if I had been, I am certain.” She shook her head as if she despaired of him. He let his gaze travel all over her, and enjoyed it when she flushed. There was so much to say, to work through, and yet all he could seem to concentrate on was the simple satisfaction of being with her again. Of affecting her. Of making her react to him instead of simply walking away from him. He was sure that made him a fool, and he couldn’t even bring himself to care.

  “You look tired,” he pointed out because he knew it would make her eyes narrow in outrage, and it did. “Sleepless nights? An unquiet mind, perhaps, interfering with your rest?”

  “Not at all.” She met his gaze then with the full force of hers, brown and deep and, he couldn’t help but notice, shadowed. She angled her chin up in some kind of defiance. “I’ve never slept better.”

  Azrin didn’t bother to call her a liar. He didn’t have to. He could see the smudges of sleeplessness below her beautiful eyes, like twin bruises. He could see how pale she still was, though that did not seem to diminish either her prettiness or his automatic response to it. He found her as bewitching as ever—more, he acknowledged, because she seemed so unusually vulnerable.

  And he was not above feeling it as a kind of victory that her return home had not resulted in an immediate return to her former vitality. That this separation was as terrible for her as it was for him. That she was not blooming into health and happiness without him. What would he have done if she was?

  The air between them seemed to stretch, then tighten. Finally, she shifted in her seat, as if the tension was getting to her as much as it was to him. He had the impression it was hard for her to look at him again. Or perhaps he only wanted it to be. As if that might be telling.

  “Why are you here?” she asked quietly, staring down at her hands as if they fascinated her suddenly.

  “To discuss the terms of our separation, of course.” Which was true, in its way. She flinched, then looked toward the open door. He watched her, his eyes narrowing in speculation. Was that guilt? His body thrummed with a kind of anticipation. “Is it a secret?”

  “Not a secret, of course. But I haven’t got around to telling anyone.”

  “Meaning it’s a secret.”

  “Meaning I haven’t got around to telling anyone,” she repeated, frowning at him. “It doesn’t mean anything more than that.” He studied her for a moment. “Why not?” When she frowned again, as if she didn’t underst
and him, he sighed. “Why haven’t you told anyone? I can understand not wishing to call a press conference, but surely this is precisely the news your mother has waited all these years to hear. Why would you deny her?” She shook her head, her frown deepening. She pulled in a breath.

  “I thought I knew who I was marrying,” she said in a small voice. “What I was getting myself into. I thought I knew what I was doing.” Her shoulders rose and then fell. “I was wrong.”

  He let that sit for a moment, ignoring the wild pounding inside of him that wanted only to reject her attempts to distance herself. Even in words.

  “Let me understand you,” he said coolly, when he could speak without any hint of temper. Or, worse, that shameful desperation. “Your intention is to simply slip back into your old life? Pretend none of this ever happened?”

  The look in her eyes then hurt him.

  “I doubt it would work,” she said almost ruefully. “But what else can we do?”

  “This is the solution you have come up with.” It was not exactly a question, and her gaze became wary as she watched him. He leaned back against the sofa, the better to keep himself from reaching out to her. “This is the best you can do, after all of these weeks apart.”

  “I didn’t say I was ready to discuss anything today,” she pointed out crisply. “You chose to simply appear here without any warning. You can’t possibly expect me to be anything but thrown off balance.”

  “You have not bothered to keep in touch, Kiara,” he said, his hold on his control slipping again, and his temper bleeding through despite his best efforts. “What was I meant to do?”

  “You were meant to give me space,” she retorted. She shook her head, as if cataloguing all of his shortcomings, all of her complaints. “You seem to have a very hard time listening to the things I want and need, Azrin. It’s difficult not to assume that speaks to deep and abiding flaws in our relationship.”

  “If I recall your comments in Washington correctly,” he bit out, “and I am certain I do, there is not a single aspect of our relationship that you don’t find flawed.