by Kim Lawrence
‘They think I don’t know they use this suite as a shortcut when we’re away,’ he said, sounding amused. ‘Don’t worry, word will get around we are back.’
‘My ears are already burning.’
‘They’d be burning some more if we slept at opposite ends of the building,’ he predicted drily.
‘Was that ever an option?’ she asked, with a catch in her voice.
He held her eyes and her insides tightened as he didn’t say a word. The look, even without the shake of his head, was enough.
‘But relax,’ he added as she swung away from him. ‘There’s still the bed in my dressing room if that is what you want.’
Walking behind her, he watched as she almost missed the next step but after a pause carried on walking.
He caught up with her, pulling level as he added in a low voice that dragged like rough velvet across her nerve endings, ‘Remember?’
Her hand tightened on the banister as she stopped and flung him an anguished look. ‘Why are you doing this, Dante?’
Remember? Of course she remembered…
She’d made her complaint after Dante had not slipped into their bed before three in the morning and had then been up before six for two weeks straight. It had been intended to ignite a discussion about his unhealthy work-life balance.
That had always been optimistic. Dante took the entire caveman-of-few-words thing to extremes, missing the point entirely and, working under the assumption she was concerned about her own disturbed beauty sleep, he’d had a bed put up in the adjoining dressing room so that he would not disturb her.
The one occasion he had used it she had lasted five minutes before she had left the massive bed they’d shared and joined him, sliding in beside him in the narrow bed. Images floated into her head, warm bodies entwined, his need to lose himself in her, her need to give. The cumulative effect had always generated heat.
She felt heat now ripple through her body and, resisting the temptation to feed it, lowered her eyes, her glance snagging on his strong brown fingers that were curled lightly around the cool metal of the banister a bare inch away from her own.
Conscious of the tingling and the tug, she pulled her own hand away and pressed it against her stomach.
‘I really don’t think our sleeping arrangements are anyone else’s business,’ she said, even though she knew this view would not be shared. The palace was filled with spies loyal to differing factions, the King’s spies, the Queen’s spies… Everyone took sides, at least that was how it had felt to her, or maybe she had been infected by the paranoia of the claustrophobic life inside the palace walls?
Her eyes went to Dante’s face. Presumably he now had his own army of spies reporting to him. ‘And now you’re making the rules.’
She hitched her bag onto her shoulder, not anticipating that her remark would evoke much reaction, certainly not the ripple of complex emotions she saw flicker across his face.
Had she inadvertently hit a nerve?
‘Well, don’t you?’
‘So is that how you think of me? A dictator?’ He vented a wry laugh as they began to climb the sweep of stairs together. ‘I sometimes think it would make life easier.’
He felt he was not just combating his own perceived inexperience but a father who, while he was reluctant to relinquish any power, was equally reluctant to leave the golf course for a long boring meeting, and senior courtiers who, accustomed to winding their King round their collective fingers, thought modernity a dirty word and equated stability with immobility.
She realised they were standing outside the open door to Dante’s study. Opposite was a small salon, where her Italian tutor used to try and be polite about her progress. They were a few doors down from the bedroom suite they had shared, but he went directly to the first door and opened it.
‘This is me. I’ve had the doors to both the adjoining suites opened up, so if you hear any noise you’ll know…’
Beatrice immediately felt foolish for making such an unnecessary issue out of the room situation. ‘Not very likely, the walls are about ten feet thick.’
‘And there are locks on all the interconnecting doors, should you be concerned I might ravish you.’
‘Maybe I’m worried that I might ravish you. It wouldn’t be the first time,’ she flung back recklessly.
He stood there, his eyes burning into her… Very slowly he raised his hand and, with one finger, tilted her face up to him.
‘What are you trying to do, Beatrice?’ he said, turning her own words back on her.
His hand dropped and she gave a shuddering sigh of shame, tears standing out in her eyes as she passed a shaky hand across her mouth.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered, before turning and running down the corridor to her own bedroom door. She felt his eyes burning into her back but she didn’t turn around, she didn’t breathe, until she was safe behind the closed door.
CHAPTER TEN
SHE STOOD THERE, back against the door, her eyes squeezed tight shut until she heard the faint sound of a door closing.
Up to this point the necessity of maintaining rigid defences had kept the exhaustion of the day, as much emotional as physical, at bay. Now as her shoulders slumped a wave of deep weariness swept over her.
Struggling against the memories being in this room evoked, images that were buzzing in her head like a swarm of wasps, she headed for the bed and sank down.
She felt her eyes fill but she was too tired for tears. How had she allowed herself to get into this position?
By saying yes to Dante—so no change there!
She was here and this was not the time for a post-mortem as to how she had put herself in this position. She just had to deal and get on with it.
This was about the baby. A soft smile curved her lips as she rested her hand on the non-existent swell of her belly.
‘Your daddy loves you,’ she whispered, hoping that it were true.
Dashing the hint of moisture that had seeped from the corners of her eyes, she gave a loud sniff. Puffy eyes were not a good look for a formal dinner. She pulled herself up off the bed and stood there, ignoring the heaviness in her legs and the ache in her chest. She didn’t examine her immediate surroundings; instead she opened the wide interconnecting doors into the adjoining room. Outside the bedroom she was able to breathe a little easier.
Wandering through the rooms where she had lived, it was all the same, but not really.
It took her a few moments to realise that though the antique furniture was still the same, some of the heavier items that she had requested to be stowed away, like the priceless, but to her mind ugly, set of cabriole-legged chairs, had been returned. The walls were covered in the paintings that had been in situ when she had arrived; the ones that were more to her taste had presumably been put back in some vault labelled not cultured enough.
As she wandered from room to room it dawned on her that actually all the personal touches she had introduced had vanished from these rooms.
She had been wiped from the rooms and probably Velazquez family history.
In the west-facing sitting room where she liked to spend her morning, the light was so beautiful, she glanced wistfully at the carved stone mantle where the natural sculpted driftwood she had collected during walks on the beach was no longer evident. In its place there were pieces of delicate porcelain, which were beautiful but had none of the tactile quality she had loved.
Likewise, the church candles she had lit in the evening when it was too warm for a fire no longer filled the elaborate grate and the vases she had filled with bare branches now held rigid formal floral displays.
Without the bright splashes of colour from the cushions and throws she had scattered throughout, the rooms looked very different from how they had in her mind. Even the bookshelves had become colour-coordinated and stripped of her piles of paper
backs. There was not a single thing that could have been termed eclectic in any part of the apartment.
Leaving the places where her presence had been clinically expunged, she reopened the door to the bedroom and, with a deep sustaining breath, walked inside.
It was just a room.
No, she realised, it was the same room.
The same room she had walked out of eight months earlier. After the complete removal of anything that was remotely her in the other rooms, the contrast was dramatic. The room was like some sort of time capsule where her presence had been preserved.
It really was almost as though she had just walked out of the room. Stunned, she stood poised in the doorway, her wide blue eyes transmitting shock before she stepped inside.
She ran her fingers across the paperback on the bedside table, the spine still stretched open at the page she had been reading, before walking over to the dressing table where the messy pile of earrings, bracelets and make-up she had left behind still seemed to be in exactly the same place she had left them.
Every item she touched carried distracting memories, which she struggled to push away. Instead, aiming for a practical focus, she pressed the hidden button and the massive walk-in wardrobe slid silently open while the overhead recessed lights burst into life, along with those over the mirrored wall ahead, reflecting her image back at her.
She blinked, and saw her sister’s face appear, her dark eyes laughing as she walked inside the wardrobe she declared to be bigger than the entire flat they had once shared. She was laughing as she spun gracefully around, her arms spread wide as she took in the space.
The image was so real that Beatrice found the corners of her mouth lifting as she remembered Maya’s reaction, then wobbling as the memory of her sister’s assessment swam to the surface of the recollections.
‘Oh, my God. Perfect for people who love looking at themselves.’ Her husky laughter had rung out as she’d stepped inside and begun to open myriad doors to reveal racks and shelves; her laughter had turned to silent awe.
‘When you said you’d stopped off in Paris to shop…’ She’d rubbed her fingers across a silk catsuit that they had both last seen and admired in a high-end magazine spread. ‘When will you ever wear all this?’
Beatrice had shrugged. ‘I know. It’s crazy.’ How was she to have known that the personal shopper thought her trying something on and saying she liked it equated to I’ll take it—in several colours?
Dante had laughed at her horror and overruled her when she’d announced her intention to send back the stacks of clothes that had come draped over hangers inside cellophane wrappers and in layers of tissue paper in ribbon-tied boxes.
‘You want me to charter a plane for your clothes? Imagine the carbon footprint,’ he had taunted.
Beatrice pushed away the lingering memory and replaced his voice in her head with an amused Maya saying that she might work her way through this lot in ten years or so, if she changed outfit three times a day and four on a weekend.
She never had because she hadn’t stayed for ten years; she had barely stuck it out for ten months, and now she was back and all the suppressed emotions had surfaced, combining with her baby hormones to make her feel raw and vulnerable.
She dashed a hand across her eyes; she was just too tired of soul-searching. Today had gone as well as she could have expected.
Dante seemed to be making a genuine effort for the baby’s sake, and that was the problem. It was for the baby. She wanted him to want her, to need her as much as she needed him.
Giving her head a tiny brisk shake, she pushed away the thoughts and turned to a section that was devoted to evening wear.
After pulling out a few dresses she finally settled on a full-length white silk gown, the style a modern take on classic Grecian. The heavy fabric swirled on the hanger as she held it up. It left one shoulder bare, the hand-embroidered sections on the skirt alleviating the stark purity of the design.
It took her half an hour from choosing suitable shoes to complement her choice—the plain court style was secondary to the fact they were made of a silver jewelled glittering fabric and the spiky heels elongated her long legs even more—to putting the finishing touches to her hair. The fact the ends were still damp made it easier to pin it into a simple topknot and at the last minute she pulled out some loose shiny strands and let the shiny wisps fall, creating a softening effect against her cheeks and long neck.
She added a light spritz of her favourite perfume, ignoring the voice in her head that said it had only become her favourite since Dante had said it was his, when there was a tap on the door that connected the adjoining suite.
She had time to suck in a hurried restorative breath, take in the flush on her cheeks and the sparkle that was part excitement, part fear in her wide-spaced eyes, before the door opened and Dante stepped into the room, his dark head slightly bent as he adjusted the cufflinks at his right wrist.
It gave Beatrice time to close her mouth and paste in place an expression that fell disastrously short of neutral, but at least she wasn’t licking her lips or drooling too obviously.
A lot of men looked good in formal evening wear, the tailoring could hide a multitude of sins, but Dante had nothing to hide and the perfect tailoring emphasised the breadth of his shoulders, the length of his legs and…well, his perfect everything. One day she might be able to view his earthly male beauty with objectivity, but that day was a long way off.
She felt the heat unfurl low in her belly and ignored it as she opened her mouth to offer to straighten his tie and changed her mind. Less wisdom and more self-preservation as she remembered more than one occasion when a tie-straightening offer had made them late for an official engagement.
Dante took his time over the cuff adjustment to give the heat in his blood time to cool and recover from the razor-sharp spasm of mind-numbing desire that had spiked through him in that brief moment before he’d lowered his gaze, the electricity thrumming in a steady stream through his body.
She always had been the chink in his armour, the beautiful downfall for a man who, over the years, had become smugly confident in his ability to control his carnal appetites, not have them control him.
And once again she was carrying his child. He had never expected that they would be here again, but the knowledge she was carrying his child only increased the carnal attraction.
He performed another necessary adjustment and lifted his head. He had regained some level of control, but there were limits. He didn’t even attempt to prevent his eyes drifting up from her feet to the top of her shining head, knowing the effort would be useless. He recognised it was a dangerous indulgence, but things could be contained so long as he didn’t touch her. Experience had taught him that the explosion would be madness.
Everywhere his eyes touched shivers zigzagged over the surface of her skin, awakening nerve pathways, making her ache. The smoky heat in his stare and the clenched tension in his jaw were some sop to her frustration. At least she wasn’t the only one suffering.
‘I’m ready,’ she said, her voice brighter than the occasion justified. She could hear the tinge of desperation, she just hoped he couldn’t.
The intensity of his hungry stare did not diminish and the longer it lasted, the harder it was for her to resist the impulse to fling herself at him. Then when he did break the silence his voice sounded so cool that she was relieved she had not reacted to it when it was quite possible that the heat she had felt pounding the air between them had been a product of her febrile imagination.
‘So I see, punctual as always and, I imagine, just as impatient about being kept waiting, so you see… I didn’t.’ He extended a crooked arm and after a moment she moved forward to rest her hand lightly on it, aware as she did of the muscled strength of his forearm.
‘You look perfect,’ he said, without looking at her.
‘Thank you.’
As they approached the shallow steps that led from the private apartment into the corridor that linked to what she thought of as the palace proper, Beatrice raised her gown slightly with her free hand, exposing her sparkling shoes.
The glitter caught Dante’s attention; he arched a brow. ‘What all the princesses are wearing these days?’ he teased, not looking at her ankles any longer. His gaze had progressed to the long, lovely lines of her thighs outlined against the heavy silk fabric of her dress.
Though her heart was trying to climb its way out of her chest, she tried to replicate the blank look on the impassive faces of the two uniformed figures they were walking past.
‘Do I look different?’ She flashed him a worried look. She felt different. ‘Do you think anyone will guess?’
He paused and, capturing her wrists, pulled her towards him. ‘Would it matter if they did?’
‘I know you think I’m being stupid about this.’
‘It’s your call.’
‘Well, if anyone did guess,’ she added on a philosophical note, ‘it couldn’t be any more excruciatingly awful than the last time the subject of babies came up at the dinner table.’
His blank expression made it obvious that he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
Beatrice envied his amnesia. She would never, could never, forget the silence around the table that night, when she had responded to a thinly veiled hint when she had refused a glass of wine.
Suddenly everyone had been exchanging knowing glances and saying how very well she looked…positively glowing.
There had been any number of similar moments after the early loss of that first pregnancy where it had been made clear that should she prove to have good childbearing hips all her other shortcomings might be overlooked.
Dante didn’t seem to realise how agonisingly embarrassing she’d found the entire situation. Previous to that night she had risen above the comments, had damped down her hurt over their insensitivity, but on that occasion something inside her had snapped. She had tried to do it Dante’s way, it had been time for hers, and she had always found that the best way to deal with most situations was by being upfront, despite the fact that she’d agreed with Dante up to a point. It hadn’t been anybody’s business, but then no one had been staring at his belly waiting to see a royal bump!