To him, however, she’d only be pawn.
I almost felt sorry for her.
Still it weighed on my mind the entire party, which proved they didn’t even have to attend a function to affect it. No Byrnes were present, but they were in my brain just the same.
That night when Auggie reached for me to ring in the new year properly, Cillian was right there in my brain where he threatened that he’d be.
Knowing that Hannah was likely in bed with him, spilling her guts to him as pillow talk, made me feel more vulnerable and exposed than I thought possible. He’d know about everything, even my family.
It sparked a sense of foreboding I just couldn’t shake, even as we headed for Ademar the next day. The entire McPhee family, except for Archer and my grandparents, headed to the tropical paradise for a few days, the last part of our vacation before we returned to Aldayne and began ‘normal life’ for real.
Auntie Edwinna welcomed us with a private party in her home, White Sands Manor, the official residence of the president. She was immediately enthralled by Jack, as most were. She kept him in her arms for as long as we could allow.
In between, she chatted with Auggie about leadership and his future duties as king. Like so many, she was stunned regarding his about-face. “Are you sure that is what you want to do, Auggie?”
“I’ve done what I wanted to do, Auntie Edwinna. For years longer than most ever get a chance to. This is about duty. And doing what is right.”
I knew she was concerned, particularly after what had happened with Roan. I knew also that she noticed how much more he was drinking, particularly when the topic turned to the massive obligation that he was now under to lead a nation.
By our third day, she took me aside to speak to me about it. “Is the drinking new?” she asked me, frankly.
“Relatively,” I admitted with a sigh. “The transition into his royal role hasn’t been easy.”
She sighed as well. “It wasn’t easy for Roan either. Particularly the conflict with the Byrnes.”
“So, you know about them?”
She shrugged. “He told me what he could. His silence filled in the rest. I mean, I know them by reputation, of course. I have had the distinct displeasure of meeting a few here and there over the years. Fortunately, they’ve written off Ademar since we are no longer under the crown. No power to be had, no Byrne to be found,” she added with a wry grin.
I nodded. “I wish his parents were here to help him through it. I know it was a Byrne that drove them apart.”
Her eyes met mine. “What makes you say that?”
“Let’s just say I’m familiar with their work. I know how they try to manipulate things to their benefit. And how they get into people’s heads.”
She nodded. “Do you play chess, Pea?”
I shook my head. “Auggie has tried to teach me. All the little variations confound me. It’s above my head, apparently,” I chuckled.
She smiled. “The variations you learn by repetition. It’s the strategy that can take years to master. The Byrnes have been playing it for a lifetime,” she stated simply.
I sighed. I didn’t need her to tell me I was out of my depth. I felt that every single day in Aldayne. “So, what do I do?”
“Well, you have two choices. You can learn to play the game. You can watch them. You can mirror them. You can outsmart them and even thwart them. But there will be losses along the way. For Roan and Sofie, these were substantial.”
My stomach dropped when I thought about it. Those were indeed the stakes. “And the other choice?”
“You could choose not to play the game at all.”
She made it sound so simple. “Is that really a choice, Auntie Edwinna?”
“You tell me,” she countered. “What’s important to you, Pea?”
“My family,” I said without hesitation. This included everyone, from Auggie and Jack to the rest of the McPhee/Quinn clan to Edwinna and even Ree and Viv, who were technically family despite their affiliation with enemy camp.
“Much like the queen on the chessboard, you can move whichever way you choose. The king is more limited,” she added.
“Auggie doesn’t do well with limitations,” I commented, knowing full well that was who she meant.
“No, he doesn’t,” she agreed. “Maybe it’s time to get rid of those limitations.”
God, she saw it so clearly. That was the benefit of not being in Aldayne. To Ademar, royalty was incidental.
To a sovereign country, it was everything.
“If only that were possible,” I muttered. “If we leave Aldayne without a king, the House of Byrne will take his place. You already know how awful that could be for the country and everybody in it.”
She covered my hand with hers. “Then I guess you have one option left.” My eyes met hers. “You must learn how to win their game.”
The trip to Ademar only served to confuse me more. It just felt different there. More ‘normal,’ for lack of a better word. We were famous and beloved, but they really didn’t expect anything from us. Auggie performed in some ritual tasks, but the country kept on humming along with or without him.
There we could play with Jack and hang out with my family.
We could even travel unobscured, thanks to their strict laws against paparazzi and stalking. Ademareans treated us with similar respect, giving us space to ‘be.’
For the first time in a long time we went out shopping and sightseeing. I got to hang out with my sister in what felt like forever. She fell in love with the island paradise and everything about it. It was quieter and more slow-paced, with an easygoing beach vibe that fit Fern like a glove.
We spent that afternoon scaling Mount Belvedere and spent the sunset exploring the 100-year-old chapel nestled in the foothills, with one whole glass wall overlooking the falls.
“I want to do it here,” she told us all. She reached for Gav’s hand. “I want the wedding here.”
It took her an hour to plan what had taken weeks and months in Aldayne, with no one from either the McPhees or the Tremwells completely satisfied.
Here in Ademar, they could have it their way.
We finalized the plans to return in the spring for the next big McPhee wedding, after the craziness of Aldays culminated on February 28th.
I envied her the freedom to pivot on a dime and do things her way. I stood at that altar, staring up at the falls, thinking about Auggie’s parents who had married there. It was a sacred place.
And it should have been ours, had our lives been ours to control anymore. It was one of the many sacrifices we had to make because of duty. That was part of the baggage Auggie brought to the table. I had a pregnancy. He had a country.
We could walk away from neither.
That night it was Auggie who found me on the throne in the throne room, thinking about the journey I had been on since he had proposed there so many months before. “What are you doing?” he asked.
“Trying it on for size,” I responded.
He walked to the other throne and plopped down. “The view is different from up here, isn’t it?”
I glanced around the throne room, which I could envision full of people who had come to make their request before the king or queen. I nodded. “It does.”
He glanced at me. “Have you changed your mind?” he asked softly, as if he knew. He always knew.
I turned to him. “Have you?”
He sighed, resting his head against the metal behind him. “I suppose it doesn’t make a difference now. We’re locked in for the ride.”
I rose to my feet and walked over to him. Boldly, I straddled his hips to sit on his lap, wrapping my arms around his neck. “We’re locked in together. If that helps.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me closer. “Helps? You’re my salvation, Pea. I couldn’t do any of this without you.”
He reached for a kiss. I tasted the bourbon on his tongue. I wrapped him in a hug.
“I wish you wou
ld stop drinking so much, Auggie. It scares me.”
He lifted my face to look at him. “It’s not the same, Pea. You don’t have to be scared. You’re so much stronger than she was. You would never leave me.”
And I thought the crown was pressure. “You have to be able to do this for yourself, Auggie. And you can. You’re not like him.”
“Yeah, I am,” he said. He caressed my face. “Because I can’t imagine even one day without you.”
He kissed me then, deep and beseeching. I allowed it for a moment before I pulled away.
“You have to be stronger than your father, Auggie. It’s not just about us. It never has been. It’s about Jack. And our families. About all the people who love us. Who need us.”
“Aldayne,” he said softly.
“Aldayne,” I agreed. I caressed the curve of his bearded cheek with my palm. “You’re strong enough to lead them.”
“As are you, my queen,” he murmured before he kissed me again, harder this time, more passionate and demanding. This time I didn’t pull away.
We made love on that throne just like he promised so many months before. Unlike then, there was nothing holding back our ardor. Desire swept over us so hot it threatened to melt the golden frame holding us up.
Had I not been on birth control, I would have believed we had conceived another child in that holy, powerful place.
But there were many surprises coming. One, in fact, I never could foresee.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
We arrived back at Castlewick on January 6th, ready to face the new year and all the many obligations that came with it. Since I was part of the committee that was overseeing Aldays, I had to return to work that Monday, just like Auggie had to return to the Academy. Mom stepped in with Nanny duty for Jack until I could sort out a proper caregiver, likely after the hectic couple of months died down after Aldays. In the meantime, there was nobody on the planet I trusted more with my child.
Sean drove me to Wandermere, giving me plenty of time to peruse my socials on my phone during the two-hour commute from our country palace. Against my better judgment, I went searching for Hannah. Her feed was full of her adventures with Cillian, which included christening the New Year in Paris. The picture of the two of them kissing on the top of the Eiffel Tower turned my stomach a little. Outwardly they looked like two young, beautiful people in love. But I knew what the picture couldn’t possibly show.
She was preoccupied from slandering my name to kingdom come, but Cillian had an ulterior motive for throwing himself on that grenade. I knew he was storing information like weapons in his arsenal to use against us later, when it proved most advantageous.
I got the feeling she thought she might be a part of his overall plan for the long haul by the passive aggressive captions she wrote, regarding how lucky she felt to find a real royal.
Despite how he looked in the photos, I suspected Cillian was full of shit, using Hannah’s ambition against her.
But it kept her from talking to Christopher for a minute, so I was begrudgingly grateful for the one silver lining of that dark cloud.
In fact, Christopher hadn’t posted much about me since he lost his inside source, unless you counted passive aggressive headlines of his own that there was a “new” fairytale romance in the works with Cillian and Hannah.
He was all up in that story, as it appeared that he was in London covering the NYE party they attended.
It made me feel vulnerable that he could still get that close. I put my phone away so I wouldn’t have to think about it.
I was glad to get to the office. I couldn’t wait to ask Ree about her holiday spent with Charles the Internet Poet. I hoped that her father hadn’t made a mess of things, but it didn’t seem likely… at least until I got to the office and found that Ree wasn’t there at all.
“She’s taken an extended holiday,” Viv explained. “Apparently things went very well in London.”
I was happy for her. Surprised, but happy, nonetheless.
It did remove one of my buffers between Eloise and Katherine, both of whom felt they were much more qualified to run the show than someone like me. They kept assigning me the tasks that Ree likely would have undertaken, the grunt work with little glory. I decided to be a team player, anyway.
In honor, we serve.
By the end of the second week, I was exhausted, frustrated, and tired of the mask I was forced to wear. But given we were still shorthanded, with Ree enjoying her newfound romance in the UK, I had to soldier on.
“Do you know anything about this new man?” I asked Viv one afternoon, when we were working together to organize the food festival.
She shrugged. “All I know is that Allan was absolutely unhinged at first. The trip was supposedly business, but she had set up a secret meeting with this poet guy at the hotel.”
I groaned. What Cillian had said about Ree being naïve rang in my ears.
“He got there in the nick of time. Since then he’s been chaperoning the romance, hence why it’s taking them such a bloody long time to return,” she added, clearly as exhausted as I was by the planning that fell to our shoulders in Ree’s absence.
“I’m surprised he hasn’t dragged her back to Aldayne,” I said. “Let the romance play out here in full view.”
“He would never,” Viv assured me. “He’s pissed enough that Cillian is getting so much press romancing that utter climber you had the good sense to fire before she wound up in bed with your man.”
“I’m glad it pisses someone else off but me,” I muttered.
Her eyes met mine. “Problems, love?”
“You know the competitive dynamic between Auggie and Cillian. His dating someone who had such intimate access to us makes me feel way more vulnerable than I’d like.”
She nodded. “You’re right to be concerned. That girl clearly has her eye on getting the throne one way or the other.”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if she wound up pregnant with her own heir.”
Another stretch of silence. Finally, “Cillian’s way too careful about that. Especially after Benji.”
I suppose she had a point.
As it turned out, Auggie was having an even harder January. By the end of the second week, General Meriwether decided that he needed practical experience and was campaigning for Auggie to do an active tour of duty with the Queen’s Royal Navy, which would put him on a ship for four months immediately following Aldays. He was on the phone for an hour with the queen trying to get out of it.
I knew from his full tumbler of bourbon that she had agreed with the general. She went so far use an earlier discharge date as incentive to accept the assignment. Serve four months active duty, graduate six months earlier than planned.
The ‘yes’ was a no-brainer. It just hurt like hell.
He practically wouldn’t put Jack down the entire evening, finding any and all reasons to hold him even when he was asleep. Auggie couldn’t stop staring at him as if trying to memorize every detail. “Look at how much he’s changed already,” he said softly. “How can I leave him for four months?”
I also didn’t know what I’d do without my husband for four months, though I suspected that Maeve would find many things to fill my time. I brushed his hair from his face. “Look at the bright side. It’s not wartime. You’ll be back in months, not years. And you have the guarantee of coming back, which a lot of folks don’t have when they enter the military. A military you’ll be leading one day.”
He sighed as he glanced up at me. “You always know what to say.” We kissed. “I’m going to miss you so fucking much, Pea.”
I curled up to him and Jack. “We’ll be right here waiting for you, Daddy,” I promised.
That night our lovemaking was almost desperate.
The rest of the week followed the same frustrating pattern. With Ree out of pocket, I was working hard at the committee as we organized the month-long event that celebrated Aldaynean history. When Giz fell sick with the flu, it double
d the workload. Eloise and Katherine made damn sure I did most of it.
They could get away with it still. We weren’t in charge yet.
They also made damn sure they knew which side they were on regarding Cillian’s new girlfriend. Hannah met them regularly for lunch in Wandermere, dressed to the nines now that she had a super-rich boyfriend to spoil her. She wore a self-satisfied smirk when she addressed me. “You shouldn’t work her so hard,” she told Eloise. “Peaches bruise so easily.”
The American in me wanted to rip off my earrings and start swinging. The future queen of Aldayne lifted her chin and glared coolly at the disrespect as if it were beneath her.
It was part of the training that came from Princess Fiona, which took place at Shimmering Falls twice a week. She was the one who taught me manners and conduct befitting a royal. “Stand up straight. Eyes forward. Chin lifted,” she’d repeat again and again as she taught me to stand, sit, lie down and beg just like little Winston.
These sessions included meetings with the royal stylist, who modeled new, acceptable looks for me as I prepared to take over as queen. They stripped my hair of any wild colors, restoring it back to its natural strawberry blond. Maeve must have taken pity on how sad I looked. She gave them permission to tweak the color to a more vibrant peach.
“It is part of her brand, after all,” Maeve conceded, using the new trend of peach-colored hair in Aldayne as her reasoning. The more popular I was, the more emulated I was, the better.
I was given a thorough training in makeup, clothes, manners, hosting. Maeve likewise added a course at Girbridge in Aldaynean history and world politics, so I could learn how to represent my country properly.
The rest of January went by in a blur, I barely had time to scratch my ass much less find a new nanny for Jack. It was hardly my most pressing concern, given my mom could oversee his care.
Maeve was quick to cut that tie as well, insisting that Mom and Dad begin their new job as caretakers to Kings Watch. “The Byrnes have requested to regain ownership,” she told us. “It appears the romance with Riona and her new suitor has become more serious. This would put a Byrne practically at your back door,” she added, to show how dire the situation could prove to be.
The Duke Takes a Bride (The Rocking Royal Trilogy Book 2) Page 27