by Maisey Yates
“What happened when your mother left?”
“I saw her. I saw her walking out and I knew. I knew because I always felt I was more like her than I was like my father. She felt things so deeply. At first, it was one of the very beautiful things about her. But I... Talking to her, I understand. My father took that softness and twisted it. He made her feel like there was something wrong with her. Like her feelings were going to bring down the kingdom. I understand, because he did the same with me. He saw me crying after she left. I started the moment I fell to my knees and begged her to stay, and she walked out anyway. And I didn’t stop. He saw me, twelve years old and weeping like a baby for my mama, and he told me that I could not afford such emotion. Such weakness. But you see, it is this false strength that has become my greatest enemy. It has kept me safe from heartbreak, but it has destroyed any chance I might have had at a normal life. At love. And when you told me you loved me...I didn’t know how to respond. Or, rather, I didn’t know how to be brave enough to respond.”
“Kairos, of course you’re brave. You’re the strongest man I’ve ever known.”
“Who was reduced to trembling by your declaration.”
“Love is terrifying. It’s certainly the most terrifying thing I’ve ever confronted.”
“But everything of value comes at a price, does it not? Otherwise it would have no value. And so, I think the price for love is that you must lay down your fear. Your anger. Your resentment. Because you cannot carry them and carry love along with them. But no one can put them down for you. And very often, time is not enough to reduce the burden. So you must set them down. As you said, for you, trust had to be a choice. You chose to trust me, and I used it badly. For that, I am sorry.”
“I was going to say that’s okay. But it really isn’t. You hurt me. So badly.”
“I know.” He reached up, cupping her cheek. “I know. Tabitha, my arms are empty now. I set everything down. Everything that will get in the way of you. Of the love that I want to give you.” He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his embrace. “I put it all away so that I could carry my love for you. It’s all I want. It’s all I need.”
Her heart was thundering hard, her throat tight, aching. She could hardly believe the words she was hearing. She was afraid for a moment that she might be dreaming. “You love me?”
“I have. From the beginning. But there was too much in the way. Too many things I didn’t need. All I need, all I have ever needed, is you. You make me a stronger man. My love for you is what makes me think that I should be.”
“We don’t even know... Kairos, if I lose this baby, I don’t know if there will ever be another one.” She swallowed hard. “Five years, it took five years for us to conceive this one and now...”
“It doesn’t matter. It...it matters, because of course I want to have children with you. But as far as whether or not I stay with you, there is no condition placed upon your ability to bear children. The country will do just fine with Andres’s children if need be. Or with the children of the distant cousin if we must. The country will survive, that much I know. But I will not survive without you.”
She tilted her head up, pressed a kiss to his lips. “I love you,” she said, her heart so full it could burst.
“I love you too. Whatever lies ahead, we will face it together.” He took hold of her hand, curled his fingers around it and pulled it against his chest, placing it right over his beating heart. “I am stronger because of you,” he repeated. “Never forget that. You’re the one who showed me that we always have a choice. That you can choose to let go of the painful things in the past, so that you can have a future.”
“I’m so busy being happy, I realized that for myself,” she said. “Because I’m so glad that now, no matter what our pasts, we’re going to have a future together.”
“Yes, my love, we will.”
“I’m so glad, agape,” she said, smiling up at him.
“I imagine I’m allowed to call you that again.”
“Yes, because now I know you mean it.”
* * *
“Do you see it?”
“What?” Tabitha asked, holding on to Kairos’s hand so tightly it hurt.
“That little flicker there.” Kairos pointed that out on the sonogram monitor, and they both looked at the doctor.
“You have a heartbeat,” she said, smiling at Tabitha. She moved the wanderer over Tabitha’s stomach, and a slight frown creased her brow. “Actually, I see another one.”
All of the breath left Tabitha’s lungs in a gust. “Two?”
“Yes.” The doctor paused, highlighting two different places on the screen. “There,” she said, pointing, “and there.”
“What does that mean?” Tabitha asked, knowing that she was feeling sick. But for the past week she had been certain they would find a living baby inside of her. She could hardly process what they were seeing now.
“Twins,” the doctor said.
Tabitha looked up at Kairos, who was looking a bit pale and shell-shocked. “It looks like you’ll be getting your heir and spare all in one shot,” Tabitha said.
“Neither of them will be a spare,” Kairos said, his tone fierce.
“Of course not. But that is what they call it. And it’s what you call your brother.”
“I’m going to outlaw the term,” he said, his eyes glued to the screen. “Twins. You’re absolutely certain?”
“Completely,” the doctor said. “It’s very likely the bleeding was nothing, and she was simply too early in her pregnancy last week to see a heartbeat.”
“Well,” Kairos said, bending down and kissing her cheek. “You are certainly full of surprises, my queen.”
“Quite literally, at the moment.”
Kairos laughed. “Yes. Very much.”
Tabitha sighed happily, her eyes on the screen, on the evidence of life in front of her. “I’m glad you put all your burdens down, Kairos.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes. Because for the next eighteen years we’re definitely going to have our hands full.”
EPILOGUE
NEW YEAR’S EVE was officially Kairos’s favorite holiday. It had been for the past five years. Ever since that New Year’s Eve when his wife had been waiting in his office at midnight, ready to demand a divorce.
Because since then, everything had changed. Most importantly, he had changed.
He looked around the large family area in the palace. Everything was still decorated for Christmas, the massive tree in the corner glittering. This was the last night they would have it. The last night before all of the holiday magic was removed and everything returned back to normal.
The children were already protesting. The twins, along with Zara and Andres’s brood—which was in Kairos’s estimation a bit much at three, with one on the way—were not ready for the holidays to be over.
“I don’t want to go to bed,” Christiana said, pouting in that way of hers that was both aggravating and irresistibly charming. At four, she had discovered that she could use her cuteness against her parents to great effect.
“I don’t either,” said Cyrena, turning an identical pout his direction.
“It is nearly midnight,” he said.
“It is not,” Christiana said.
“Well,” Tabitha responded, “it is somewhere in the world.”
Andres laughed. “That isn’t good enough,” he said, “not for my niece. She’s far too clever for that.”
“Worry about your own children, Andres,” Kairos said.
“Mine do not know their numbers yet. I live in fear of that day.”
“And when they learn to spell,” Zara said, placing her hand over her rounded stomach.
“The horror,” Kairos said. “Okay, girls. It is truly bedtime. Bu
t I am certain if you ask her very nicely, Grandma Maria would love to come and read to you.”
His mother smiled at all of them from her position on the couch. Reconciliation was never easy. It had been particularly difficult for Andres. And as far as Kairos went, it came and went like the tide for the first year or so, as he dealt with anger, sadness at all the missed years and then determination not to miss any more because of mistakes that were long past the point of correcting.
All they could do was move forward now. And now, when he saw his mother with his children, with Andres and Zara’s children, he knew that none of them regretted their decision to release their hold on the past.
“Of course I will,” she said. “I never tire of reading to them.”
She ushered the children out of the room, and then Andres looked at Zara. “Are you exhausted yet, princess?”
“Very,” she said, “and my feet hurt.”
“Well, we can go back up to my bedroom, and I will rub your feet. And possibly some other things.”
Zara smacked him on the shoulder, then followed him out of the room anyway, leaving Kairos and Tabitha alone.
It was then that Tabitha turned to him, smiling at him, unreserved, unrestrained. Perfection. “Do you think we’ll make it until midnight tonight?”
“I do always try to stay awake until midnight on New Year’s Eve. Just in case you decide to ask for a divorce. I would hate to sleep through it.”
She laughed. “Not a chance.” She looked around the room. “Can you imagine if we had given up then? Can you imagine what we would have missed?”
“I don’t like to. I’m so grateful that you gave me a second chance.”
“So am I.” She leaned against him, wrapping her arm around his waist. “Do you remember when I told you how hard it was for me to be happy in the present? How difficult it is for me to simply be in the moment?”
“Yes,” he said.
“It isn’t now. I have lived in a million perfect moments since you said you loved me. And this is one of them.”
Kairos looked around at the Christmas decorations, the evergreen twisted around the pillars, the large tree and the clear lights that glittered in the midst of the dark branches. And he had to agree. The perfect moment, the perfect woman.
The perfect life.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story, don’t miss the first installment of the thrilling PRINCES OF PETRAS duet:
A CHRISTMAS VOW OF SEDUCTION
Keep reading for an excerpt from MISTRESS OF HIS REVENGE by Chantelle Shaw.
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Mistress of His Revenge
by Chantelle Shaw
CHAPTER ONE
THE HONOURABLE HUGO FFAULKS—with two Fs—was drunk and being sick into a vase. Not just any vase, Sabrina noted, her lips tightening with annoyance. The vase was a fine example of early eighteenth-century English porcelain and had been valued at fifteen hundred pounds by an auction house that had recently catalogued the antiques at Eversleigh Hall.
Compared to the value of the hall’s art collection, which included two Gainsboroughs and a portrait by Joshua Reynolds, fifteen hundred pounds was not a vast sum, but in Sabrina’s current financial crisis she needed every penny she could lay her hands on and selling the vase would at least allow her to pay the staff’s wages and the farrier’s bill.
A frown crossed her smooth brow. If only horses did not need shoeing every six weeks. The cost of the farrier, plus vet’s bills, feed and hay meant that Monty was becoming an expense she simply could not justify. She had spoken to a reputable horse dealer who had assured her that she should get a good price for a seven-year-old thoroughbred, but the thought of selling Monty was unbearable.
She turned her attention to Hugo, who was now leaning on one of the other party guests and trying to stagger in the direction of the bar.
‘Take him to the kitchen and get some black coffee into him,’ Sabrina instructed Hugo’s friend. She wished she could phone Brigadier Ffaulks and ask him to come and collect his son, but Hugo’s parents had paid her a sizeable fee to organise a twenty-first birthday party at Eversleigh Hall. Hugo and fifty of his friends had arrived the previous evening and would be staying at the hall for the weekend. Tomorrow after breakfast—if any of them could face a full English breakfast—they would be able to enjoy clay-pigeon shooting on the estate and fishing in the private lake.
Opening up Eversleigh Hall for weddings and parties was the only way that Sabrina could afford the huge running costs of the estate until her father returned. If he ever returned. She quickly pushed her fears about the earl to the back of her mind with the rest of her worries and smiled at the elderly butler who was walking stiffly across the drawing room.
‘I’d better fetch a mop and clear up the mess, Miss Sabrina.’
‘I’ll do it, John. I don’t expect you to clear up after my guests.’ She could not disguise the rueful note in her voice. The butler was well aware that she hated seeing Eversleigh Hall being treated carelessly by the likes of Hugo and his friends, who seemed to think that having money, and in some cases aristocratic titles, gave them the right to behave like animals. And that was an insult to animals, Sabrina thought when she caught sight of a female guest lighting up a cigarette.
‘How many times must I repeat the “no smoking in the house” rule?’ she muttered.
‘I’ll escort the young lady out to the garden,’ John murmured. ‘You have a visitor, Miss Sabrina. A Mr Delgado arrived a few minutes ago.’
She stiffened. ‘Delgado—are you sure that was the name he gave?’
The butler looked affronted. ‘Quite sure. I would hazard that he is a foreign gentleman. He said he wishes to discuss Earl Bancroft.’
‘My father!’ Sabrina’s heart missed another beat. She took a deep breath and groped for her common sense. Just because the unexpected visitor’s name was Delgado did not automatically mean that it was Cruz. In fact the likelihood was zero, she reassured herself. It was ten years since she had last seen him. The date their relationship had ended and the date a week earlier when she had suffered a miscarriage and lost their baby were ingrained on her memory. Every year, she found April a poignant month, with lambs in the fields and birds busy building nests, the countryside bursting with new life while she quietly mourned her child who had never lived in the world.
‘I asked Mr Delgado to wait in the library.’
‘Thank you, John.’ Sabrina forced her mind away from painful memories. As she walked across the entrance hall, past the portraits of her illustrious ancestors, she tried to mentally compose herself. It was likely that the mystery visitor was a journalist sniffing around for information about Earl Bancroft. Or perhaps Delgado was one of her father’s creditors—heaven knew there were enough of them. But in either case she was unable to help.
She had no idea where her father was, and since he had been officially declared a missing person his bank accounts had been frozen. Sabrina thought of the mounting pile of bills that arrived at Eversleigh Hall daily. Since the earl’s disappearance she had used all of her savings to pay for the upkeep of the house, but if her father did not return soon there was a strong possibil
ity that she would be forced to sell her family’s ancestral home.
A week earlier in Brazil
‘We have to face the facts, Cruz. Old Betsy is finished. She’s given us the last of her diamonds and there’s no point wasting any more of our time and money on her.’
Cruz Delgado fixed his olive-green eyes on his friend and business partner, Diego Cazorra. ‘I’m convinced that Old Betsy hasn’t revealed all her secrets,’ he said with amusement in his voice. He could not remember now if it had been him or Diego who had christened the diamond mine they had bought as a joint venture six years ago Old Betsy, but the name had stuck.
‘Your belief that there could be deposits of diamonds deeper underground is founded purely on speculation fuelled by rumour and the drunken ramblings of an old miner.’ Diego lifted a hand to shield his eyes from the blazing Brazilian sun and glanced around the two-thousand-acre mine site.
The ochre-coloured earth was baked as hard as clay and lorry tyre marks criss-crossed the dusty ground. Directly above the mineshaft stood the tall metal structure of the head frame, looking like a bizarre piece of modern art, and next to it were the huge winding drums used to operate the hoist that transported men and machinery down into the mine. In the distance, the glint of silver denoted the river, and beyond it was the dense green rainforest. An alluvial processing plant stretched along one river bank, its purpose to recover diamonds found in sediment sifted from the river bed. But the best diamonds, those of gem quality and high carat weight, were hidden beneath the earth’s surface and could only be retrieved by men and machinery tunnelling deep underground.
‘I believe Jose’s story of the existence of another mine, or at least an extension of the original mine,’ Cruz said. ‘It confirms what my father told me before he died, that Earl Bancroft had discovered some historic drawings of tunnels that run far deeper than we currently operate.’