Prince's Son of Scandal

by Dani Collins

  Tyrol was showing off the growing strength of his lungs, recognizing the feeling of the soft flannel against his cheek as she draped it over him and growing frantic for her to open her buttons.

  “It was understood the Prince was taking a bottle,” Mario said, mouth pinched, gaze averting self-consciously while his whole face went red.

  Oh, was he uncomfortable with her breastfeeding? What a shame.

  “He’ll need a bottle, won’t he? Or he’ll starve to death before we get to each other. Am I even allowed into the palace without an escort? He’s six weeks old. Still a few days shy of his due date. He’s not weaned and won’t be for a year.”

  “As I see.” Mario cleared his throat and turned to the door. “I’ll leave you to it.”

  “Do.”

  This doesn’t change what has to happen. Xavier should have told her this was going to happen. How dare he use her up last night, thinking this would be okay.

  * * *

  Trella woke thick-headed from a heavy nap to hear Xavier’s hushed voice, “Give him a bottle if he needs it.” A door closed.

  She jackknifed to sit up and shot a look to the travel cot she’d had Gerta bring down from the nursery. It was empty.

  Sucking in enough breath for a scream, she leapt from the bed and stumbled into the lounge, wearing only the oversized T-shirt she’d thrown on for sleep. Xavier was there, but no one else. No Gerta, no Adona, no Tyrol.

  “Oh, hell no,” she informed and rushed after her son.

  “Trella.” He caught her arm and reaction kicked in. She used the momentum to round on him, heel of her hand aimed straight for his nose.

  He deflected, tried to catch her into a hold, but she expertly twirled out and broke his grip, the movements ingrained in her muscles from years of practice. Knocking a lamp in his direction to force him to leap back, she backed up too, out of his reach, neatly balancing on the balls of her feet, breathing in hisses as she gauged the distance between him and the door and how she would take him out in order to get there.

  “I didn’t know,” he growled, holding himself in ready stance. “Calm down.”

  “Bring him back.” She reached for a slender vase and flicked its three tall irises at his feet, spattering water on the bottoms of his pant legs, then tested the heft of the blown glass as a weapon.

  “You’re going back to the room you were in, next to mine. I sent him up because he needs a bath. I stayed to tell you that and keep you from throwing a righteous fit when you woke and saw he was gone. Calm the hell down.”

  “You should have told me last night this could happen. This, by the way, is how you put up a fight.” She shook the vase at him, mocking his lame attempt to turn her away last night.

  “This was always going to happen!” He pointed at the door. “If not today, soon enough. In a few weeks, you’ll move out of the palace and he’ll come and go between us. That is reality, Trella. I have damned well made that clear to you. More than once. You came to my room, last night, knowing that. Don’t pretend this is news.”

  She threw the vase at the fireplace so it shattered and droplets of water made the dancing flames sputter and crackle. Then she stared at the destruction, chest heaving.

  “Is this bringing on an attack?”

  “Don’t pretend you care if it does.”

  “I care,” he bit out. “Why the hell do you think I’m here?” He looked positively tortured as the words escaped him. He wiped his expression away with a stroke of his hand, releasing a heavy sigh.

  “I’ve just been raked over the coals for one photo.” He held up his finger. “And because a debate has sprung up online. Team Trella or Team Patrizia. My fault.” He turned his hand to tattoo his chest with his finger. “I promised to undo all of that, as if it’s even possible, and walked back to my room to learn you’d been sent here. Do you know how much furniture I wanted to break? Do you understand what I’m doing, taking you back there? It’s pure weakness!”

  No, it wasn’t. That’s not what caring was. He wasn’t ready to hear or believe it, though, and she was too angry and hurt to explain it.

  “Why does she hate me so much? Why—?”

  He closed his eyes. “I keep trying to tell you. Emotion has nothing to do with it. It can’t. That’s the point.”

  “The crown is all that matters.”

  “Yes.”

  “I hate your crown! I hate that our son will be raised with this same hard-hearted attitude.”

  “Hate away. It changes nothing.”

  “And you want me to come to your rooms again, anyway.”

  “Yes.”

  “Even though it won’t change anything, either.”

  “Yes.”

  Mouth trembling, she knew that, like him, she didn’t have a choice. She would go with him and believe what she believed, that he would change, and one of them was going to lose.

  She nodded jerkily, but before she could step forward, he leapt to meet her, not letting her walk through broken glass to get to him. Then he was cupping her cheek, tilting her lips up to the hungry weight of his own. She moaned, knowing what that taste was now. That narcotic that filled her with hope when he kissed her. Love. She was madly, deeply, hopelessly in love with him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “YOU’RE NEGLECTING YOUR DUTIES. The Australian agreements have completely fallen apart.” His grandmother had called him on the carpet before he’d even digested his breakfast.

  “Both parliaments have risen for the year. The committees adjourned,” he said.

  “Yet I am informed the deadline is the end of the year. If it’s not finalized, we start over in the new year.” She held out a missive.

  He took it and quickly gathered how certain opportunistic corporations were manipulating the fine print, trying to push Elazar into a stress position and a renegotiation that would be advantageous to their own interests. She was right. He should have caught on when the meetings had begun experiencing delays two weeks ago.

  “This is the first I’m hearing of this,” he muttered.

  “Because you’ve been distracted. Dating. Shopping.”

  He gritted his teeth. Trella was preparing to move her design house’s head office to Lirona. The fashion industry was waiting with baited breath for her to purchase her property. Real estate and tourism would boom the minute the new fashion district was born. Squiring her to potential locations, ensuring the choice worked as well for Elazar as it did for her, fell right into Xavier’s trade negotiation bailiwick.

  His grandmother ought to be thanking Trella, but she only said, “Mario has set up an emergency meeting of the council. You’re expected at ten o’clock. We cannot afford to lose this, Xavier.”

  Duty. It was killing him. Quite literally chipping away at his flesh. His belt had had to go in an extra notch and the scale had him four pounds under his usual weight. He had no appetite. Of course, he was on his wife like a stallion with a mare every chance he got. No wonder he was skin and bones.

  Bristling with culpability, he returned to his apartment. He would have to hurry to make the meeting, but he was more aware of the clock ticking down on his marriage.

  In a few days it would be Christmas, his one and only with his son’s mother. Then their marriage would melt away like snow under rain. Gone, gone, gone.

  He nodded at Vincente to leave his jacket on the bed and dismissed him, then he went through to Trella’s room, where he slept every night with her naked body resting against his. They tried to keep a low profile but were fooling no one, except possibly themselves. Despite the intensity and excruciating pleasure and profound satisfaction they gave each other, they had to keep rising and moving apart.

  Soon that would be permanent.

  Not yet. His hand closed in a tense fist. He wasn’t ready.
>
  “I have to run to a meeting—” he began as he entered.

  She sniffed and turned with surprise. She had showered while he’d been to see the Queen and wore only a slip. She was on the phone.

  “Esta bien, Mama. Te amo,” she finished and signed off, then swiped her cheek.

  His heart lurched. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” She turned away for a tissue. “Ramon and Isidora arrived safely at Sus Brazos. Gili and Kasim will be there tomorrow.”

  And this was her first year apart from them. She was homesick. She didn’t have to say it. He watched her wither daily, saying nothing because they both left many things unsaid, aware their days with each other were numbered. They didn’t want to waste them with animosity and problems they couldn’t solve.

  Guilt assailed him, though. He was stealing time with her. Neglecting his duties while he neglected her needs. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “If you want to spend Christmas with them, you should.”

  “With Tyrol?” She brightened.

  “Bella.” He hated saying no to her, but it echoed in his voice. “You’re upset. You miss them.” She was going to need them more than ever soon.

  “I can’t leave him! He’s still feeding in the night. I would miss him.” She waved in the direction of the nursery, where a nanny took him for a bath every morning while they ate breakfast and started their day. She softened her tone, her expression so vulnerable she put an ache in his chest. “You could come.”

  You’re neglecting your duties.

  “No, I can’t.” This was it, he realized. The fracture that had begun working its way through him on their wedding day began to cleave open, tearing him apart. But he had no choice. “The Deunoros spend Christmas here.”

  “And I’m not a Deunoro. Why should he spend Christmas with her? She hasn’t even looked at him since—”

  “Leave it.”

  She buttoned her lip, but the glare she sent dropped the room temperature lower than it had been on the sleeting day of Tyrol’s christening.

  He couldn’t let her bring it up because he was ashamed of his grandmother’s behavior. Rather than the traditional pomp of open-topped carriages and a public stroll with the future monarch back to the palace, they’d all traveled by car. His grandmother had come in her own, arriving last and leaving first. Exactly one photo had been taken of Queen Julia standing with her grandson at her side and her great-grandson in his bassinet. Trella had been left out of the picture.

  He closed his eyes, afraid he couldn’t do this if he looked at her. His voice was hoarse with strain. “You should go see your family and come back to the new house.”

  He heard her breath suck in, sharp and mortal. “No, Xavier. Not yet.”

  “I was hoping we could get through Christmas, but we’re only putting off the inevitable.”

  “What about...” Her voice faded. “What about a surrogate?” He had seen her afraid before, but not like this, with her throat exposed while she offered a knife.

  He had to consciously remember to breathe. “It’s not about another baby, bella.”

  His own composure threatened to crumble as her chin crinkled and her eyes filled. She caught her mouth into a line to hide its tremble, then that glorious Valkyrie in her came forward, steeling her spine and refusing to be cowed.

  “I’m not leaving Tyrol. I’ll move into your stupid ugly house if you make me, but I’m taking him with me.”

  That stung more than it should. He hadn’t been able to design a home from greenfield for her, which felt like a breach of duty in itself, but he’d personally overseen all the renovations and security upgrades to the one he’d bought. He’d taken the utmost care with every detail.

  “Don’t make this ugly. The agreement is three and a half days each.” That was not renegotiable.

  “You’re busy. Why should someone else feed him a bottle when he could be with me?” Oh, she was fierce when she wanted to be. Flushed, with her eyes glimmering, she threw the forces of nature at him. “At least I love him.”

  “So do I!” It exploded out of him. Within him. Nothing would come between him and his son.

  She threw her head back, fury fading into sorrow. “But you don’t love me. I can live somewhere else.”

  He jerked his head to the side, slapped by the torment in her voice.

  “Say it,” she choked. “Tell me these last weeks of...” She waved at the bed where they had writhed with passion. “I have tried so hard to show you we could make this work. Every breath I take is carefully measured to make sure I don’t impinge on your role in any way. I should bite my tongue right now. You have a meeting to get to, right? I give and give and you can’t offer me a crumb? A maybe? A chance?”

  “You think I like seeing you holding back, afraid to laugh too loud, keeping to these rooms when you should be able to say and do whatever the hell you please? I hate what I’m doing to you. You never wanted this.”

  “But if you loved me—”

  “I can’t love you! I’ve upended my world as far as I can. Things are tipping off. This has to end.”

  She rocked as if buffeted by a hurricane wind. He watched her lips go white with the rest of her. Her fingers twitched at her sides and she swayed again then locked her knees.

  “Bella.” He reached out, feeling the chasm in him widen to a canyon, pushing her further and further beyond him.

  She drew a jagged breath and leveled her shoulders. “You should go. I don’t want to be blamed for you missing your meeting.”

  * * *

  Had that really happened?

  One minute she had been feeling sorry for herself over her siblings getting together without her, the next her tiny nascent family of three had been torn down to one and a half.

  How had she not fought hard enough? Aside from viewing a few buildings for Maison des Jumeaux, she had lived as a shut-in again, not wanting to make headlines. As painful as she’d found it when he disappeared for a few days on palace business, she had never once complained. Even his grandmother’s frosty behavior at the christening had gone unremarked until today.

  All the while, she’d been aware of the days lifting off the calendar like ravens, one by one, swooping away and forming a black, jeering cloud on the horizon. They’d mocked her for loving him despite his lack of commitment. For waiting so patiently for words of love that were never going to come.

  Did she regret trying to make their marriage work? No. But failing despite leaving her heart wide open was liable to kill her.

  Shaking, she pressed a fresh tissue to her closed eyes, soaking up the leak through her lashes, taking a slow breath and consciously softening her shoulders.

  Uno naranjo, dos naranjos...

  It struck her what she was doing. Oh, no.

  She pressed the tissue harder into her eyes, becoming aware of the sensations pinging to life in her. A roiling stomach, a creep of foreboding down her spine. Cold specters began to float in her periphery, voicing the ugliest of thoughts. Why would he want you? You’re the broken one. You’re soiled.

  “No,” she whispered, certain that being susceptible to these attacks proved how unworthy she was of love. Was that the ghouls talking? Or the unvarnished truth?

  “Dama?” Her maid knocked, making her heart leap. Adona entered. “The Private Secretary is here. Her Majesty wishes to see you.”

  Not now. She couldn’t. Not with a spell coming on. All of her went rigid while her blood moved like acid in her arteries.

  Why did the Queen even want to see her? Her mind raced, trying to think of an excuse, but what could she say?

  “Please give me a moment to dress.” Uno naranjo, dos naranjos...

  She chose the dress she’d worn to the christening, since its red and gold were Elazar’s national colors and quietly procl
aimed her station as the mother of a future monarch. Adona gave her hair a twist while Trella dabbed on light makeup, even though it didn’t matter if she put on clown pants or a G-string with water wings. She was going to the guillotine.

  As if that were true, the flutters deep in the pit of her belly grew worse. Mario’s dour face made his silent escort that much more ominous. Her feet felt like they didn’t belong to her. She couldn’t make her throat swallow.

  The ghouls chuckled as they stuck to her clammy skin, following her into a stately room of powder blue and white striped wallpaper.

  The Queen wore a dark green sweater set and a severe expression. She was seated and Trella was not invited to do so.

  Trella ordered her fists to loosen and clasped them in front of her. She took measured breaths, nodded in greeting as the door behind her closed, shutting her in with what she had long suspected was an enemy.

  “I’m a woman of well-cultivated patience, but mine has run out,” Queen Julia stated. “It would benefit all if you went to Spain for Christmas and did not come back.”

  Her nails dug into her palm beneath the cover of her other hand. “Xavier suggested the same thing.”

  Surprise flickered in the Queen’s face before she blinked it away. She nodded. “Good. He’s finally showing sense.”

  “I said I’d go if Tyrol came with me.” She wanted that so badly, she would buckle into the carpet if the Queen agreed.

  The older woman hardened before Trella’s eyes. “No. But allow me to lend my voice to my grandson’s. You do more damage than good by lingering.”

  The words hit so hard, Trella had to press into her toes to stay on her feet. Still, her inherent streak of bellicosity reared its head. Another woman would have taken this chance to make a good impression and reason with the woman. She wouldn’t pour gasoline over the one bridge open to her and light a match.