The Prince She Had to Marry

by Christine Rimmer

  “No, but I’m going anyway.”

  “We will miss you.”

  “And I will miss you. I always do. When my husband returns—if he returns—you can tell him that I’ve had enough. I’m through. Finished. I’ve...surrendered the field.”

  “Lili, darling, you don’t mean that.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m afraid I do.”

  “It’s something you really ought to tell him yourself, don’t you think?”

  “I do, yes. But I haven’t seen him in over a month—or heard his voice, or received one single line of correspondence—also, I have no idea where in the world he might be so that I can tell him myself.”

  “Perhaps a phone call?”

  “He’s the one who should call.”

  Adrienne suggested gently, “A letter, then?” And Lili thought of Marina’s letter, left on the rough table in the little stone house. “Of course. I will leave him a letter. He might even come back and read it someday.”

  “He loves you. You know that?”

  Lili tried a smile but failed to produce one. “He’s never said so.”

  “He hasn’t had an easy time of it.”

  “I know. I understand. I sincerely do. But there comes a point when a woman has to draw the line and stick by it.”

  “Yes. You’ve been a saint, darling Lili. You truly have.” Her Sovereign Highness held out her arms for a goodbye hug.

  * * *

  Lili called her father. When she told him her husband had disappeared and she was ready to come home, she expected blustering, and at least a few vividly brutal threats against Alex’s life and manly parts.

  But her dear papa only said, “I will be so pleased to have you here.”

  He sent a jet to collect her.

  She arrived at San Ferdinand Airport not far from her country’s capital city of Salvia in the late afternoon. A car, with escort, was waiting to whisk her off to D’Alagon. By some miracle of good fortune, the press had not been alerted that she was returning to Alagonia. She got off the jet and into the car without anyone firing questions at her or sticking a camera in her face.

  They set out. D’Alagon was considered the royal palace of Alagonia and it was by far the largest of her father’s residences. It was very old, the Gothic core of it having been built in the twelfth century, when the Castilians came to power in Alagonia. Over the endless ensuing generations, D’Alagon had been updated, enlarged and improved. It stood above the city, proud, massive, rambling, golden. D’Alagon was a fantasy blending of Gothic towers and flying buttresses, of Renaissance domes and semicircular arches, of stern, stately Baroque colonnades and the fanciful asymmetric curves and flourishes of the later Rococo style.

  Lili loved D’Alagon and had always considered it her home. The first sight of it, appearing miraculously above her as the car wound its way upward, tugged at her heartstrings. It was good to be home.

  If only Alex...

  Lili shut her eyes. I will not think of him.

  When she looked again, they were approaching the wide circular drive and the enormous fountain at the main entrance.

  Inside, the staff was lined up and waiting. She greeted them all and then went up the right side of the wide, curving double staircase to her father’s private rooms.

  He was waiting in his sitting room, which was elegant and ornate, the walls covered in rich tapestries and paintings of gamboling nymphs and eighteenth-century courtiers, heavily decorated with plasterwork molded to resemble thick, twining foliage and mythical beasts. At the sight of her, he rose from a gilt-accented red velvet chair.

  “My little love...”

  She ran to him. “Papa!”

  He wrapped his arms around her and held her close and she felt safe and cherished and surrounded by pure love. Then, of course, he had to mutter, “I will have his head on a pike....”

  And she pulled away and told him gently, “Oh, stop it, Papa. You will do no such thing and we both know that you won’t.”

  “A pity.” He gazed down at her adoringly. “You look a bit sad, but healthy at least. And my grandson?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him. “Your granddaughter is very well, thank you.”

  “Wonderful. And when is that wandering husband of yours coming home to you?”

  “I don’t know. But if he ever does, I won’t be waiting.”

  “Delightful. I shall have him barred from D’Alagon.”

  She smiled sweetly up at him. “Yes, Papa. Please do.”

  * * *

  Lili’s cell phone rang at a little after ten that night as she was sitting in bed in her own bedroom at D’Alagon, reading an historical romance in which the heroine was a French spy and the hero an English-born pirate. It was a great book, exciting, with lots of clever dialogue and derring-do. She was totally absorbed in it.

  Still, she jumped and dropped her e-reader to the coverlet when “Dancing Queen” had her cell jittering in a circle on the bedside table. She even cried out absurdly “Alex!” at the sound.

  Of course, she knew it couldn’t actually be Alex. It never had been before. Still, when she grabbed up the phone, she did take a moment to check the display before she answered.

  She gasped and dropped the phone as if it burned her.

  It was him!

  Impossible. But it was. It was really, really him. Alex.

  Calling her. At long last...

  With a cry, she grabbed up the phone again and started to answer—and stopped herself just in time.

  No, she would not answer. She had left him. She was no longer sitting there, twiddling her thumbs at the Prince’s Palace, waiting for him to return. There was nothing to talk about.

  Or if there was, he would have to do a lot more than finally pick up the phone to make it happen.

  She dropped the phone again and put her hands over her ears and waited for “Dancing Queen” to stop. When it did, she carefully set the phone back on the nightstand and picked up her book again.

  A few seconds later, her voice mail chimed.

  She tried, oh, she really did, to ignore it. To simply continue reading her very excellent romance and forget all about whatever message he might have condescended to leave her.

  But it was impossible. In the end, she tossed the e-reader down and grabbed the phone again.

  The phone shook in her hands as she dialed voice mail. And then, there it was.

  His voice in her ear after all these endless, awful weeks....

  “Lili, it’s done.” He sounded tired, but somehow good. Somehow...satisfied. “I’ll be home to you tomorrow. I’ve missed you.” Her throat clutched. He seemed to mean it. He truly did. “I’ve missed you so much. I didn’t call. I know it. I should have called. Should have written. Should have...something. But I couldn’t. I...” The word trailed off. She held her breath. A tear dribbled down her cheek. She swiped it away. But then he only said, “Tomorrow. I’ll be with you. Really with you. Tomorrow...”

  And that was it. The voice mail robot came on with options. She hung up without choosing one.

  And then she sat there, staring blindly at the far wall, the tears falling freely now, dripping off her chin, plopping on the coverlet until she couldn’t stand it anymore and she dialed voice mail again, just to hear his voice a second time. She listened to his message all the way through. And then she listened to it again. And then another time after that.

  What she somehow managed not to do was to call him back.

  * * *

  Alex called again in the morning and left another message. “It’s midnight here. I fly out first thing in the morning before dawn. What’s going on, Lili? I called our apartment. Rufus answered. He said that you’d gone back to Alagonia. He said you left a letter for me. A letter? Lili, are you all right? Why didn’t you return my call?”

  An hour later, he called again. “I called my father.” His voice was flat. “He says you are well. He says... Lili, have you left me? Lili, what in hell is going on?” That was the end of
that message.

  After that, he didn’t call again.

  Lili ached with the need to call him back.

  But she didn’t. She ate her breakfast. She took a long stroll on the palace grounds. She dealt with correspondence. She painted and she read. She had dinner in the state dining room with her father and some of his ministers and their wives. Everyone said how glad they were to have her home again. She smiled and she chatted. When the meal was over, she joined the others in the music room where a famous pianist played compositions by Liszt and Chopin.

  She retired at a little after ten, had a long bath and then went to bed.

  She did not call her husband.

  The next move was his. She was not making that move for him. Calling was not enough. Coming home to Montedoro was not enough.

  He would have to come to Alagonia to get her.

  And he would have to convince her beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wanted—that he chose—to be her true husband and a real father to their child.

  * * *

  Alone in the master bedroom of their apartment in the Prince’s Palace, Alex read again the letter that Lili had left for him:

  Alexander,

  I’ve been waiting. Thirty-six days since you left me. Eight hundred and sixty-four hours. Fifty-one thousand eight hundred and forty minutes. Three million, one hundred and ten thousand, four hundred seconds.

  Yes, I did the math. After all, I’ve had plenty of time.

  Thirty-six days—and not one phone call from you. Not a single letter. Not a postcard. Not an email or a text.

  I was angry when you left. Angry and hurt. I understood that you had to go, understood the necessity to make recompense to the family of your lost friend. What I did not understand was why you had to go alone.

  But I was willing to accept that you had to do it your way, willing to put aside my anger and my hurt. Willing to wait for you.

  Up to a point.

  But I have waited too long. I refuse to wait any longer. It has become clear to me that I have waited more than long enough. I have finally come to realize that in this sad little necessary marriage of ours, I have been the one who has constantly put forth the effort, swallowed her pride, reached out her hand, been willing to try and try again.

  From all this constant striving to make things work with you, I have learned a hard and painful lesson. A marriage is not made by one but by two. Without your love, without your honest determination to be with me, to be my husband, without your joy in the journey at my side, we have nothing.

  I fear that we have nothing, Alex.

  I am going home.

  Yours,

  Liliana

  * * *

  Nothing.

  Alex stared at the words. I fear we have nothing.

  How could she think that? After the island. After...everything.

  Didn’t she know that she was his heart? His soul? His future? His rock and his solace?

  Didn’t she understand that he’d left her only so that he could return to her a free man at last?

  Apparently, she did not.

  He thought about that. For a very long time.

  He also thought about how he really should have called her, even though to call her would only have reminded him that he was far away from her and he wasn’t going to allow himself to return to her until he’d finished the task he’d set himself.

  Yes, all right. He had been wrong, not to call.

  And yes, now he thought back, he had to admit that she was the brave one, the strong one, the one who kept trying over and over, while he constantly hurt her and pushed her away and crawled back into the hole of mourning and self-recrimination he had dug for himself.

  He supposed he’d become accustomed to her surprising strength, her impressively steadfast determination to make a husband out of him against all odds. He’d come to count on her putting up with him, being patient with him, always giving him another chance.

  Had he run out of chances with her?

  His heart seemed to shrink in his chest as he realized that he actually might have managed to accomplish what he’d set out to do when he tricked her into marrying him.

  She was giving him what he used to think he wanted: a marriage in name only, the two of them leading separate lives.

  * * *

  The next morning, he met with his father privately in his father’s palace office. His Serene Highness Evan had once been a successful film actor in America. He was quite handsome, with gray-streaked dark hair and piercing green eyes that missed nothing.

  He pulled no punches. He offered Alex a chair and said frankly, “You’ve hurt your wife. Deeply.”

  As if he didn’t realize that now. “I just need to see her. She won’t take my calls.”

  “None of us blames her for leaving, Alex. For...cutting off communication with you.”

  Alex wanted to hit something. Instead, he hung his head. “All right. I’ve been a blind idiot. I understand that now. What do I do...to make things right? To get my wife back?”

  “You do love her?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. Of course.”

  “As a man loves the woman to whom he binds his life?”

  “Yes. Like that. Just like that.”

  His father was silent for a moment. Then he drily advised, “You actually have to learn to say the words, Alex.”

  “Do you think I’m an idiot?” he demanded. His father only regarded him patiently across the inlaid expanse of his mahogany desk. “All right.” He couldn’t sit still. He rose, paced to the door and then back again. “I’m a bloody idiot. Didn’t I already say that? I see that. I fully understand that now.”

  “So, then. You have yet to tell your wife that you love her.”

  He dropped to the chair again, braced his hands on the chair arms, glanced left and then right. Finally, he muttered, “At first, I didn’t realize what she meant to me. How important she is. And then, after we were stranded on the island, I knew she meant everything. I knew my true feelings. But I felt that I...didn’t have the right to speak of love to her until I had made recompense for the past.”

  “In other words, no, you haven’t told her.”

  “I was going to. As soon as I got home. I swear I was.” The words sounded weak, even to him. They sounded like poor excuses.

  “It appears you are a little late,” his father observed.

  “Damn it. I see that. I understand that. But what do I do?”

  “Well, you must go after her, of course. My guess would be that she’s not going to make it easy for you. And then there will be Leo to get through. That should be interesting.”

  “Leo. My God.”

  “Yes. Leo will want his chance to toy with you a bit. The way I see it, Alex, you must not only go after her, but you must also not, under any circumstances, give up and go away.”

  * * *

  Alex arrived in Alagonia by helicopter at four that afternoon. With him were two of his most capable, skilled men of the CCU.

  Apparently, he had been expected. And not in a good way.

  His men were detained at the airport.

  Alex was taken under armed guard to D’Alagon. He asked to see his wife. He was ignored.

  At the palace, he was led in at a side entrance and down stone stairs, two levels belowground to the world-famous dungeon of D’Alagon, built when the palace was first constructed as a fortified castle back in the thirteenth century. Like most dungeons, it was dank and dim with walls of stone.

  He was led to a cell, at which point he asked to see King Leo.

  The guards only pushed him into the cell and locked the door.

  He surveyed the accommodations. Four windowless stone walls, a ledge for a bed, an open hole in the corner—his toilet, he assumed. It was far from luxurious. But as prisons went, it could have been worse. He knew that from personal experience.

  What next?

  He knew what: waiting. Probably for a very long while. He could do that. He went and sat
on the ledge and told himself to be patient.

  Sometime later, he was given a bowl of lamb stew and a cup of water, both pushed through a compartment in the cell door. He ate the stew and drank the water.

  And he waited some more. In time, he slept. They’d left him his watch, so he knew it was after four in the morning when he woke.

  Eventually, there was breakfast—lukewarm cooked cereal and watery tea. He pondered his thoroughly annoying father-in-law for a time. And he thought of how very much he loved his wife.

  Finally, at a little after ten in the morning, they came for him. They hauled him back upstairs to the throne room, where Leo sat alone wearing an Armani suit, his crown and an excessively gleeful expression.

  “Your Majesty.” Alex bowed as best he could, with a guard holding either arm.

  “You need a shave.” Leo’s smug smile widened.

  “And a bath,” Alex agreed.

  A frown formed between the king’s well-trimmed brows. “I told her I would have your head on a pike. But she told me no, that wouldn’t do.” Leo sighed heavily. “So I suppose I shall have to allow you to keep that thick head of yours.”

  “Thank you, sir. May I see my wife now?”

  Leo waved in a bored and leisurely manner. “I’m afraid not. She doesn’t want to see you.”

  He held his temper. And tried again. “Take me to her. Please.”

  Leo only shrugged. “You don’t seem bothered at all by a night in my dungeon.”

  “Sir, I only want to speak with my wife.”

  Leo studied his manicure. “Seriously, Alexander, you are no fun at all.”

  “Sir, I—”

  “She refuses to see you.”

  “If you would only—”

  “No, my boy. It’s no good. She will not see you. My men will return you to the airport, after which you and your men will depart Alagonia, never to return. Am I clear?”