Her green eyes were stormy, her lips tight, her skin pale. Standing as close as they were, at the front of the cathedrali, he could detect faint silver patches beneath her eyes, showing that she’d tossed and turned all night. Though she was smiling, it was unnatural and forced and there was a faint tremor in her hands as she held them clasped in front of her.
Perhaps he was the only one in the cathedral who would detect these insignificant changes but, knowing what was in her heart, hearing how she felt, knowing that this marriage was the diametric opposite of everything she’d ever wanted and that she was going through with it regardless, something pulled in the region of his heart.
He looked around the beautiful ancient building—the place he’d come to bury his parents and brother, when he’d stood in this exact spot and spoken to reassure a panicked nation, and he channelled that same ability to quell his feelings, to silence his personal needs.
Today, as on that day, he was guided by what his people needed of him, but he was also led by what Frankie deserved, by how he could go some part of the way towards fixing this for her.
Frankie would become his Queen, and then he would let her go, allow her to live as private a life as she wished. In that one small way, he could give her what she needed.
* * *
‘I, Frances Preston...’ she spoke loudly, as clear as a bell, just as she’d been taught ‘...take you, Matthias Albert Andreas Vasilliás, to be my husband.’ She was glad to be saying her vows because they were generally seen to be emotional and the fact that tears danced on her eyelashes would be regarded as natural and normal. ‘I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I promise to love you and honour you, for as long as we both shall live.’
Relieved to have said her piece, she met his eyes and flinched almost instantly. A noise sounded: Leo. She looked towards him unconsciously and her skin goosebumped at the sight of their son, the boy who would be King one day, watching on with such joy. Please let this be okay, she prayed, sweeping her eyes shut.
‘I, Matthias Vasilliás, take you, Frances Preston, to be my wife and Queen. I promise to be true to you at all times, when you are well, and when you are not.’ Frankie held her breath, knowing what was to follow, bracing herself for how it would feel to have him say the words she desperately wanted to hear and know them to be false. ‘I promise to love you and cherish you, for all the days of my life.’
She couldn’t help it.
She lifted her eyes to his face and saw there that he was simply performing a part, and that he was as loath to say those words as she was to hear them. Her heart didn’t break. It had broken already—how could it break further?
But it disintegrated within her, being swallowed into her bloodstream, leaving only cold acceptance in its wake.
This marriage was a fraud in every way. The fact their chemistry was off the charts was just as Matthias had always said. Sex was just sex.
And finally the last vestiges of her childish hopes and naïve dreams burst about her.
Somehow, seeing the reality, made it easier for her to get through the rest of the ceremony. And, thankfully, the wedding reception was so full of dignitaries that there was always someone to talk to. Someone to dance with. Frankie took every opportunity she could to put some distance between herself and Matthias, doing whatever she could simply to pass the time, all the while knowing that she would soon be able to leave this damned palace, and her new husband, far behind.
She avoided him as best she could and she kept her heart closed off, but finally, at the end of the night, came the moment to dance with her husband. Every single guest and many of the palace servants stood at the edges of the enormous ballroom, and Frankie could fight it no longer.
For the next few minutes she had to pretend to be happy, and then they would leave and this would all be behind her.
Matthias walked to her with slow intent, his eyes holding hers in a way that made her blood gush and her chest hurt. He held a hand out and she placed hers in it, her stomach doing loops. She ignored those feelings and breathed out in an attempt to steady herself.
He led her to the middle of the dance floor and then the priest approached, a smile on his face showing they’d fooled him, at least. He held in his hands a small spool of silver thread. Once he was close enough he spoke soft words in Tolmirón, then began to loop the thread from her hand to Matthias’s and back again. She remembered being told about this, but it had been so long ago she forgot the significance of it.
Some kind of tradition, though.
When their hands were bound tightly, the priest nodded and stepped away. Music began to play, soft and beautiful, and Matthias brought her closer to his chest, holding her there so she could hear the beating of his untouchable heart.
‘This thread is from the Mediterranean silk crab,’ he said. ‘It is native to the caves of Tolmirós. Their silk grows deep beneath the ocean’s surface. For as long as there are records, royal marriages have been blessed by this binding. It is said that dancing with the threads like this promises a long and happy marriage.’
Her fingers were aching beneath the beautiful silk. She inherently rejected everything he said.
‘I see.’
She felt rather than heard his sigh. He didn’t speak for the rest of the dance, but afterwards they stood with their hands bound, smiling at their guests.
‘Is it over?’ she asked quietly, her heart stammering inside her.
He tilted a glance at her, his face hiding whatever he was feeling, and then he nodded. ‘We may leave.’
She kept her expression bland, her back straight, as they slipped out of the crowded ballroom to cheers and applause from all assembled. She walked beside him through the ancient corridors of the palace but as soon as they rounded the corner and were in the privacy of their residence at last, she pulled at her hand.
It wouldn’t come loose. She pulled again, lifting her other hand to rip the threads free. Only they wouldn’t disentangle, and it was suddenly almost impossible for Frankie to breathe.
‘Please get this off,’ she said, looking up at him with panic, pulling on it.
His alarm was obvious. ‘Calm down, deliciae—’
‘Don’t call me that. Please. Get it off. I can’t... I can’t... I can’t breathe.’ She bit down on her lip, pulling on her hand until he held her still.
‘You’re only making it tighter. Just be still.’
But she couldn’t. She kept pulling and he swore, reaching out and curling his fingers around her chin. ‘You must be still.’ He spoke loudly and firmly so that she stopped struggling and stood, her teeth chattering and her stomach in knots. Watching her the whole time, he eased a finger beneath the threads and found the loose end. He unthreaded them as quickly as he was able, but it still took longer than a minute and in that time Frankie’s panic only rose, her huge eyes darkening, her face draining of colour. Finally, when he was almost done, she pulled at her hand and rubbed it in front of her.
‘It’s just threads,’ he said in an apparent attempt to reassure her.
Only it wasn’t just threads. They were married now, bound in all the ways a man and a woman could be united: tied together for life by law and by a child and, for Frankie, by love. But her love wasn’t enough. It never had been—it never would be.
She needed to get away from him as soon as possible.
* * *
He glared at the painting and, for the hundredth time in the four weeks since Leo and Frankie had left the palace, contemplated moving it. He knew he should. He knew it had no place in his life, let alone here in the place he undertook important government work.
The painting had always been a distraction, from the day it had arrived, but at least before it had been a pleasant distraction. Now it served only to plunge him into a black hole of anger, a deep place of desolate realism.
It had been four weeks.
He turned his attention to the documents in front of him and read them again, then, with an impatient thrust of his hand, pushed them away. It was barely afternoon, but he stood and crossed to the bar on the other side of the room and poured himself a stiff measure of whisky. He inhaled it, then threw it back, his hand slightly unsteady when he refilled the glass.
What time had he gone to bed the night before? Three? Four?
He couldn’t recall.
He glared at the painting from up close, seeing the brushstrokes and imagining the way her hand would have moved as she painted it. He hated the painting in that moment with a visceral rage because it embodied so much of who Frankie was, what she was, and he’d never felt more distant from her—nor that she was more out of his reach.
A knock sounded on his door. He ignored it; the knock came again.
‘What?’
His valet Niko entered, holding a brown envelope. ‘Today’s security memo.’ Niko placed the envelope on the desk and turned to leave.
Matthias grunted by way of acknowledgement, turning his gaze to the large envelope.
They’d been gone four weeks and in that time he hadn’t called her once. He’d resisted every single urge to pick up the phone and speak to her. Any time he’d thought of so much as dialling Mare Visum palace to see how she was, to speak to Leo, he’d recalled the sight of Frankie trying to pull her hand free from their ceremonial wedding bind; he’d sensed her panic and despair and he’d known that to call her would be selfish. To speak to her might improve his spirits, might reassure him that she was making sense of their new lives, but it would hurt her, he was sure of that.
And so he’d ordered security packets. Daily. It was a way to stay informed of her movements. To see her life unfurl.
He crossed to the desk now, his stride long, his fingers moving deftly as they tore the top off the envelope.
Usually the envelope included a single A4 piece of paper with a typewritten, lacklustre report of Frankie and Leo’s movements. But when he reached into the envelope for the memo, he pulled out a newspaper article as well. With a frown, his eyes ran over the words, a sense of disbelief scrambling through him.
Eggs for the Prince! the headline screamed.
Matthias read the short article, describing the delight of a local café operator who’d discovered that the beautiful blonde woman and adorable dark-haired boy who’d wandered in for breakfast the day before were, in fact, Her Majesty the Queen and the young Crown Prince.
The photos, snapped on cell phones by nearby diners, obviously, showed Frankie and Leo doing nothing more exciting than eating breakfast. Nor did it show a single security guard anywhere nearby. She wore a baseball cap low on her brow, her ponytail pulled through the back, and Leo was wearing sunglasses.
So far as disguises went, it was pretty simple.
Matthias could tell it was his wife and son.
His wife.
He glared at the picture and his chest ached as though it were being scraped out and emptied completely of contents.
She’d wanted to be left alone, but he’d believed she would act in their child’s best interests. To take him out without any protection detail... What the hell was she playing at?
Anything could have happened! Kidnap! Murder! An accident! And she’d accused him of not caring about Leo?
He ground his teeth together and, before he could realise what he was doing, he pulled Frankie’s painting off the wall and hurled it across the room, satisfied when the frame cracked upon landing. He stared at it, broken and damaged, something that had once been so beautiful and pleasing, and tried not to draw a comparison to Frankie. He told himself he was glad. The painting was nothing but a damned distraction and he was done being distracted by this.
But the longer he stared at it, the more his gut twisted, until he felt only shame.
Shame, and a deep, profound sense of grief.
He swore in his native tongue and scooped down, picking the pieces up, trying to shape it back together, almost as though a madness of sorts had descended upon him. ‘Damn it,’ he cursed again, when it wouldn’t comply. He’d broken something beautiful. He’d broken it beyond repair.
Carefully, slowly, he placed the painting down on the desk, his powerful hands reverent with the frame where only a minute ago he’d lashed out, acting in anger.
Without thought, purely on instinct, he reached out, pressing a button on his phone; Niko answered almost immediately.
‘Have the helicopter readied.’
‘Yes, sir. What is your destination?’
He pressed a finger to the painting, feeling the ridges made by the layers she’d added, each with care, each with love, and his eyes closed of their own accord. He tilted his dark head back, his expression held tight.
‘Mare Visum.’
* * *
The colours weren’t right. She ran her brush over the top of the canvas, streaking a fine line of grey over the black, so fine it was almost translucent, giving it a pearlescent sheen. Better. But still not quite right.
She took a step back to study the painting, her frown deepening. There was a kind of magic about the moonlit nights here, on the southern tip of Tolmirós. She’d watched the moon coming over the ocean each night since coming to live in Mare Visum, and she’d tried to capture the ethereal quality on her canvas but, again and again, she’d failed.
With a grunt, she grabbed her cloth and swiped it over the bottom of the canvas, smearing the ocean she’d painted only the day before so it looked like a murky swamp, then dropping her head into her hands.
She was tired, that was all. She wasn’t sleeping well.
Her stomach rolled as her mind immediately supplied the answer as to why that was.
Matthias.
Her fingers dug into her hair, pulling it loose from the braid, and she made a guttural, groaning sound of impatience. For God’s sake, as if it wasn’t bad enough that her dreams were tormented by memories of her husband; now he was invading her waking world?
She’d tried so hard to banish him from her thoughts.
But every time she thought she’d done it—gone an hour or two without her mind wandering to damned Matthias—he was there, his handsome face in full Technicolor in her mind’s eye.
With another sound of impatience, she pulled her hands away from her face and stared at the painting, then grabbed her paintbrush, dipped it in the red oil paint and lifted it, striking a single angry line through the painting’s middle.
Maybe her gift was now destroying art, rather than creating it?
She lifted her hand to mark the canvas again.
‘Stop.’
His voice held her still instantly and she spun around, her eyes finding his in the doorframe. He was watching her with a stillness that made her heart do the exact opposite—it was pounding hard and fast inside her, so fast it made her knees shake. She hadn’t seen him since their wedding; she had no time to prepare for seeing him now.
‘Stop,’ he said again, and she realised she was still holding the paintbrush in her fingertips like a sword, with blood at its tip. She dropped her gaze to it, her heart pounding, her mind racing. She sucked in a breath and looked at him once more, her expression giving little away.
‘I wasn’t aware you were coming to the palace,’ she said, the words slightly stilted. ‘I presume you’ve come to see Leo. He’s asleep. But he’ll be...’
Matthias began to walk into the room and she held her breath then, watching him as he came right in front of her and slowly took the brush from her hand.
‘Stop,’ he said quietly, for the third time, his eyes roaming her face, his features symmetrical, both familiar and unfamiliar to her. He stood so close she could feel warmth emanating from his powerful, broad frame, so close she co
uld lean forward and touch him, so close she could inhale his intoxicating scent.
So close.
She shook her head slightly, taking a step backwards, and his hand shot out, steadying her before she could connect with the still-wet canvas.
His touch on her skin was like a thousand volts of electricity; it ripped through her and she clamped her mouth together to stop from letting out a groan.
Because she’d dreamed of his touch; she’d craved it to the point of insanity and despair. ‘Don’t,’ she whispered, pulling away from him, turning her back on him and staring at the wasteland of the painting.
He was no longer touching her, but her arm felt warm where his fingers had connected with her. She swallowed in an attempt to bring moisture back to her mouth.
‘Leo will be awake soon, if you want to wait in the lounge.’ The words were brittle, like a porous old seashell left out in the sun.
‘I came to see you.’
Her eyes swept shut at the declaration and she braced for whatever was going to come next. She had wondered how long she would be allowed to hide out like this, before being asked to return to some kind of normality, to the royal duties that accompanied her role. Only she’d expected it would be a lowly servant who would summon her back to the palace, back to her King’s side.
She hadn’t expected it to be Matthias.
She wasn’t prepared for this.
‘Why?’ A hollow whisper.
He didn’t speak. He said nothing and for so long that eventually she turned to face him, and now a spark of anger was igniting inside her. ‘Why?’ Louder. More demanding.
Because he’d invaded her sanctuary, and without any warning; he hadn’t given her any chance to raise her defences and it wasn’t fair.
She held onto that anger, using it, knowing how well it served her in that moment.
He opened his mouth to say something and then appeared to change his mind.
He moved closer, but not to her, towards the painting, and he frowned as he looked at it. Self-conscious—she never liked it when people looked upon her art as it was forming on the canvas—she felt almost as if she’d been walked in on while naked. A work in progress was raw, messy, chaotic.
Shock Heir For The King (Mills & Boon Modern) (Secret Heirs of Billionaires, Book 25) Page 16