Crowns & Courtships Compilation Volume 1

by Carol Moncado

  “Yes, we do. Our apartment. Now.” She could hear the father in his voice as well as the king. Concern and compassion warring with his royal gravitas.

  With her mother’s arm around her waist, they made their way to the monarch’s quarters on the top floor of the palace.

  “Let’s start with where’s Darius?” her father asked as soon as she sat down.

  “In Serenity Landing as far as I know. He was asleep when I left.”

  He studied her in a way that made her uneasy. “I know you have separate rooms, so how do you know that?”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her that he knew. How much more was he already aware of? “He slept in my room,” she replied evasively. “More than once.” If you counted the nap the afternoon before. “He was asleep there when I left.”

  “Then why don’t you tell us the rest of the story.” Her mother took her hand and held it loosely.

  Esther shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.”

  “The baby?” her father prompted.

  That knife twisted again. “Had already stopped developing when I told you about it. It was a matter of time before my body decided to flush it out. I have the paperwork from the doctor in my email and can show you later.”

  “Forward it to me this evening. How did Darius take the news?” The concern in his voice wasn’t just for his youngest daughter, but also as a king who had used the baby as leverage against a country who wasn’t dealing well with them.

  Esther stared at her hands where her mother held on. “I never told him. I don’t know what he thinks.”

  “He sleeps in your room, but you’ve never talked to him about the loss of his child?”

  And there came the tone Esther had always hated. Disappointment.

  “Something like that. We are married, you know.” Her defensive tone wouldn’t help any, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I performed the ceremony.” Her father reached over and covered her hands, and those of her mother, with his own. “Esther, did you mourn the loss of your child, no matter what the circumstances were?”

  Tears blurred her vision as she nodded.

  “Don’t you think Darius deserved the same opportunity?”

  Could she tell the truth? “Not particularly,” she blurted out. “If I never saw him again, it would be too soon.”

  “Are things really that bad? Has he hurt you?” She didn’t want to see the concern on her father’s face.

  “Not in that sense. When we left Benjamin’s office, we had a fight. That was the last time we really talked to each other until yesterday. Kind of.”

  “That was nearly six months ago.”

  “I know.” She swiped at the tears. “We had one other little fight a couple weeks ago. He said our marriage wasn’t legal, even in Eyjania, and he could do whatever he wished.”

  Her father’s grip on her hands tightened, before he released them. “What did he mean by that?”

  She closed her eyes. “Benjamin said Darius had to kiss me at the wedding and the marriage had to be consummated. It hadn’t been. He didn’t specify what he meant by doing whatever he wished, but I’m pretty sure there’s been several other women.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  They all twisted to see Darius walking through the door.

  “Explain yourself,” her father ordered.

  Darius stood tall and met her father eye-to-eye. “There hasn’t been any other women. Not before February, and definitely not after the wedding.”

  “I saw you flirting with them, and you’re never home,” Esther told him. “Remember the redhead last week? You were sharing the same square on the floor, and her hand was on your chest.”

  He shook his head. “She was flirting with me. If you’d watched much longer, you would have seen me take a step back. I’ve been spending a lot of time at the library because you told me to leave you alone.” His eyes bored straight into hers. “What I’d really like to know is why you never told me about our baby.”

  As Esther’s silky brown hair fell forward around her face, Darius felt conflicted. She’d kept this from him, been rude and obnoxious, and completely cut him out of her life after taking sacred vows.

  But he still wished things could be like they had been the night before when she’d let him be there for her.

  “Why didn’t you tell him?” Queen Miriam asked.

  “I’d really prefer not to get into this right now,” she said.

  The king reached for his wife’s hand. “Why don’t we give the two of them some space?”

  Esther finally looked up. “Wait. Is it a boy or a girl? How’s Astrid?”

  “She wants to talk to you herself.” The king glanced at Darius then back to his daughter. “Why don’t you call her, talk for a few minutes, then you and Darius need to work this out.”

  The authority in his voice was something no one in Darius’s family could duplicate. Isaiah tried to, but he didn’t actually have any power except what Benjamin gave him. But Benjamin still seemed like a kid wearing his father’s shoes and suit coat. He was an adult and the king, but still seemed so uncertain of himself and his role.

  Esther stood near a window in the monarch’s sitting room and talked to her sister on the phone. A few of her words drifted back to Darius. He could tell she was trying to put a positive spin on the conversation, a happy sound to her voice. He also knew she was devastated.

  She took the phone from her ear and pressed on the screen, clasping it to her chest with both hands as she tried to compose herself.

  Without looking at him, she started for the main door he’d entered through. “Are you coming?” she called over her shoulder.

  Darius followed her down the wide stairs to the floor below. The hallway was broken by occasional doors. Esther stopped and stared at the painting on the door before going in.

  He closed the door as he walked into a sitting room. “Your apartment?”

  “I moved in here when I turned eighteen and graduated from school. Harrison is the only one who moved out of the apartment upstairs before graduation. He moved out over a year ago.” She hesitated. “What’s the living situation like in Eyjania? Do you all have your own apartments?”

  “All of us out of school do now.” He slouched down on a couch. “Benjamin lives in the monarch’s quarters. It’s attached to the consort’s quarters, but my parents never lived apart. They both lived in the monarch’s apartment with the younger children. The older kids moved to the consort’s apartment as we grew up. After my father died, things didn’t really change until Benjamin turned eighteen. He moved into the monarch’s quarters and the rest of us moved out of the larger suite to a set of three suites that could have doors put in to connect them and make one larger suite. There’s a whole hallway, at least twice this long, of smaller apartments that we pick from when we turn eighteen.”

  He looked around. “Mine’s smaller than this. Two bedrooms with a living area and kitchenette consisting of a refrigerator, a microwave, and a small stove I’ve never used.”

  “It’s interesting how different things are, even though we both live in palaces.” She pulled a bottle of juice out of a refrigerator hidden in a cabinet. “There’s no kitchenette in here. Just a refrigerator and microwave, but I had to ask for those. There’s a full kitchen down the hallway. We all share it.”

  “Technically, neither one of us live in a palace right now.” They needed to get this conversation on track and deal with some of this.

  She twisted the cap off the juice. “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Darius asked the question as softly and gently as he could.

  Her hair hung around her face as she sat on the edge of a chair. “Why would I have thought you cared?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? It was my baby, too.”

  “You didn’t believe me when I told you I was having your baby. You told my father and your brother as much. I hadn’t seen you in weeks. Why would I think you cared?”

  He
could see her point, though it wasn’t entirely accurate. “I believed you.”

  Esther’s head snapped up. “You did?”

  “Of course I did.” He couldn’t explain why he’d questioned it in front of the others. “Look, this isn’t what either one of us would have picked, but it is what it is, isn’t that what you said? You’re my wife, completely legal now, and I would have honored the commitment for life even if last night hadn’t happened.”

  “You really mean that?”

  “I do.” He ran a hand down his face. “Look, I’ll admit to flirting a little bit when I knew you were around, mostly because I wanted to see if you noticed or cared, maybe to make you jealous.”

  “It made me mad.”

  “At least I was getting some emotion out of you. The rest of the time you just ignored me.”

  She sat back and pulled her legs up to wrap her arms around them. “That probably wasn’t the best way to go about getting my attention.”

  “Probably not,” he admitted. “But you wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “Why would I? You only wanted one thing.”

  A bark of laughter shot out of Darius. “That’s what you think?”

  She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Do you not remember Sargasso? And what was the first thing you wanted after the wedding?”

  He remembered every minute of their time on Sargasso. “It was a wedding. What’s supposed to happen after a wedding? Plus what my brother said about the legalities, and I assumed.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have, but I did. I should have talked to you before kissing you like that.” With his eyes closed, he remembered the feel of her kiss, of the softness of her skin at the small of her back as he rubbed his thumb across it. “But after Sargasso, I just figured...”

  “You figured wrong.”

  “I know that now. We have to figure out where to go from here. Together.”

  She heaved a sigh. “I don’t know that together is a thing we’ll ever have.”

  4

  After another sip of her juice, Esther set it on the side table and looked for a blanket. Not because she was cold, but because she needed something, anything, as a barrier between herself and Darius. Some kind of protection against blue eyes that saw far too much.

  “How’s your sister?”

  Grateful at the change of subject, she took great care not to wonder about it. “She’s good. The baby is good. A boy. That’s all she really said. Now that she’s talked to me, they’re making the official announcement and will come back here for a few days before going to San Minoria where they actually live.”

  “How are you feeling about all of it?”

  And there it was. Not so much a change of subject as a skirting around it. Did she dare be honest and vulnerable? Would it come back to haunt her? Would it be worse if she didn’t? “It’s not the baby that bothers me,” she finally told him, remembering the blanket stashed in a drawer under the side table.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Astrid was pregnant before we met.” A tear leaked out before she could blink it away as she pulled the blanket around her like a shield. “Kensington and Anabelle are making an announcement of their own this week. She’s expecting a baby, but I’m not sure when. February or March maybe.”

  “And it just reminds you that you’re not.” Compassion in his voice, understanding even, was something she hadn’t expected. “I’m the only one in my family who could even possibly make one of those announcements. I’m glad for that. Otherwise, I’d probably feel the same way. I don’t know your brother, or it could be worse.”

  “Exactly.” As much as she’d wanted to come home, maybe her father had been right to encourage her to stay away. “I know I told my father I wanted to attend University in the States instead of finishing here, and I picked the same one Queen Adeline of Montevaro attended, but I don’t know if that’s really the case.”

  “You already had two years finished, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. “It would have been three if I hadn’t dropped my classes last spring. It will be three when I finish this semester.”

  “So finish. Then finish your last year, then we’ll figure out where to go. I’m the same way. I’ll be done with my degree next year.”

  “But I don’t know if I want to go back to SLU.” More tears worked their way down her cheeks.

  “What do you want?”

  She looked up to see his blue eyes staring directly into her own. “Honestly? I want to go back to Sargasso and hide away in that hut with Dare.”

  “I’m right here.”

  But he wasn’t. “You’re not Dare anymore. You’re Darius of Eyjania, first in line for his brother’s throne.”

  “No, I’m not.” The confusion in his voice made her look up. “Genevieve is.”

  “I thought Eyjania still had male primogeniture? That it didn’t matter that your sisters are older than you.”

  He shook his head. “My father made sure succession was changed to absolute primogeniture. My sisters, and their children eventually, all have precedence to me. Don’t worry. You’ll never be queen of Eyjania.”

  That thought had never occurred to her. “That’s good, because I’d be exiled from San Majoria if I was, and I’d really rather not go that route.”

  “I still don’t understand.” Darius moved across the room until he could sit on the table in front of her. “Why would you rather be in that hut with me instead of Serenity Landing with me?”

  She wasn’t even sure she could explain it to herself. “Because Star and Dare were just Star and Dare. A couple who met under these amazing circumstances and had nothing to worry about but each other. Esther and Darius have things like bodyguards and international relations and miscarriages and siblings having children and even more, like crazy, power-hungry uncles, to worry about.”

  “Isaiah may wish he’d been king, but he would never hurt either of us or the baby.”

  Esther wasn’t so sure. “If you say so.” Her phone buzzed. “Astrid and the baby will be home in a few minutes. My father wants us there to meet her.”

  “Are you sure he wants us or just you?”

  She reread the message. “I guess it doesn’t actually say us. You can wait here. I’ll make sure someone finds guest quarters for you.”

  “No.” She hadn’t really expected him to go along with it, but his vehemence surprised her. “I’m your husband. I’ll stay here with you, even if you want me to sleep in the other room.”

  “Fine.” Esther stood and folded the blanket before putting it away. She stopped in the bathroom to do a quick touch up to her face. Nothing would hide the tired behind her eyes. She didn’t really bother trying. There wouldn’t be any pictures for the public anyway.

  Halfway to the Reception Room near the portico, she ran into Kensington and Anabelle.

  “Esther!” He picked her up and swung her around. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I’ve missed you, too.” He’d tried to be there for her in Eyjania. It wasn’t his fault she hadn’t opened up to him. “I hear you two have some good news of your own.” She put on the happy face because that’s what you did when your older brother and his wife were having a baby.

  Kensington set her back on her feet then wrapped an arm around Anabelle. “March,” he confirmed. “Almost exactly a year after we first met.”

  “That’s fantastic. I’m really happy for you.” She tried desperately to mean the words as they started walking again.

  But the ache in her heart compelled her to stay half a step back so she wouldn’t have to see the smiles on their faces. Or the love in their eyes.

  Darius seemed to like her but would he ever feel that way about her? Would she for him?

  Given the circumstances of their marriage it seemed exceedingly unlikely.

  But a girl could dream.

  And while she dreamed, Esther would put on a happy face and be the good girl everyone thought she always had been.

  Because she was.

/>   Except for those days in Sargasso, she’d always done what was expected of her. She wouldn’t stop now.

  Darius paced around Esther’s apartment. Astrid would be home soon with the baby and then, after a few baby snuggles, Esther would be back.

  Baby snuggles. Wasn’t that what women did when they were around a newborn? Sniff the kid’s head and groan about how good babies smelled?

  He’d been a big brother enough times to remember his aunts doing that with each one.

  Would Esther?

  When she clearly still mourned the loss of a child no one else knew about. Trying to hold her head up and keep her smile bright so no one would know her heart was breaking.

  Darius knew what that was like.

  Isaiah found him crying a few hours after his father died and made sure Darius knew that wasn’t what a good prince did.

  Isaiah had never actually laid a hand on any of them, as far as Darius knew, but he knew how to get his way, to get the family to acquiesce to what he wanted.

  In the years since, Darius had learned Isaiah probably wasn’t the best example of what a prince, or a man - or even a human - should be, but he hadn’t really had anyone else to observe. Benjamin didn’t know what he was doing but knew enough to keep a stiff upper lip. Aunt Louise spent much of her time with Benjamin, while her husband spent most of his time at their home a few miles away in Akushla. He finished raising their four children, all older than Darius. A couple of them had been married for years and already had children of their own.

  But he, along with the others, learned that you weren’t ever allowed to let the public see any emotion. In fact, it was best if no one ever saw emotion.

  That was why Darius loved his time with Star.

  He could be himself.

  “What’s your biggest fear?” Star sat in a chair on her balcony.

  Darius thought about saying something flippant. Turtles or fireflies or water sports. But he couldn’t. He had to be honest with her. “That no one will ever know the real me.” He stared at the ocean. “That I’ll never find that one person who knows everything about me - all the good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between - and loves me anyway.”