Page 20 of King's Heir of Hate

Somehow Esme had managed, quite accidentally, to remain quiet in private this entire night.

And beside her, she was certain that she could feel Tadeo getting more and more tense the closer they got to the palace.

It was as if a light bulb went off in her head with a loudpop.

Esme could have kicked herself. She’d been so busy thinking about how itfeltfor her that she’d forgotten that there was no way that Tadeo would have put all these strictures into place if he wasn’t trying to protecthimselfsomehow too.

And now that she’d finally gotten around to thinking this through, she knew exactly how he was protecting himself with this: He didn’t think she could do it.

He didn’t think that she could ever stay quiet enough to win herself a place in his bed. He might even have thought, and not without reason, that the very idea that she was expected to win her place in his bed would keep her from trying. She was a Wellesley woman, after all.

It made perfect sense. Tadeo could wrap everything in ice when he had his clothes on. He could and he did.

But the moment they touched—and even more so when they were naked—he was as helpless in the face of the wildfire that they became as she was.

How could she have let herself forget this?

The car pulled up to the palace entrance. The courtiers and guards descended upon them as always to guide them inside and relay any pertinent information that could not wait to get the King’s ear. But Tadeo looked over at her as they exited the vehicle.

“I want to see you tomorrow,” he told her sternly. “In my office. I should like to discuss some of the finer points of protocol that I think the last five months might have erased.”

Any other night, or any other time at all, Esme would have responded to that provocation in kind. But tonight she knew exactly what he was doing. And why.

So all she did was smile at him, as demurely as possible. She inclined her head graciously, wordlessly agreeing to his ridiculous demand, as if she had not been raised a princess herself and—unlike him—spent her formative years with her very own comportment instructor as her parents had not wished to send her to any finishing school. Thecheekof the man.

But Esme said not one word.

He was pulled aside to attend to some matter or other, but Esme headed straight to her rooms. She found she was trembling, slightly, but she knew full well it was excitement. Inside her compartments, she took specific care as she went through her nightly routine. She brushed out her hair and left it to flow like ink down her back. Instead of comfortable pajamas she liked to sleep in these days, she went and dug out a chemise she’d bought before her wedding in excess of hope.

She let the silky fabric shimmer over her body and then laughed when she looked in the mirror and saw the way that her baby belly made the whole thing…shorter. And far more provocative, really.

Perfect for tonight, then.

Esme dabbed a hint of perfume at her wrists and then pressed her wrists behind her ears, because long ago, in Boston, he had once groaned about how wild that scent made him with the proof of his admiration pressed hard against her thigh.

She took a deep breath, and laughed at that too, for she felt as shaky as an untouched virgin on her wedding night. Though shehad been nothing of the kind, thanks to him. And this was no wedding night anyway.

Though in a way, she thought as she walked back into her bedroom from the dressing room here that rivaled the one she’d had in the manor house, it was. This was a new beginning for them whether he liked it or not.

Because Esme was quite certain she’d finally cracked the code. Like it or not—and she was quite certain he would not like it at all, at least in theory—she’d figured him out.

She went to the door that joined their bedrooms, took a deep breath, and then pulled it open. But when she walked through, instead of finding herself in his bedchamber she discovered that she was in a small antechamber instead. It was little more than a closet, with a chair and a small table beneath a portrait of a bucolic scene that could have been any mountain slope in the Pyrenees. A door to what was obviously Tadeo’s bedroom and also a door to what she assumed was the hall.

Esme knew immediately what this room was. A little waiting area for the ladies, in case the king was otherwise occupied—as she imagined many a king had been over the course of the kingdom’s long history. This room allowed His Royal and Rutting Majesty to cycle wives and mistresses in and out as he pleased without any unpleasantness that might put him off his stroke.

It was one of the things she loved about these old buildings. They always told on themselves.

But she did not intend to wait about for the King’s pleasure tonight. She knew Tadeo’s essential character too well, despite all these years of chilly discord shoved deep beneath their public personas. She not only knew he wouldn’t be with another woman, she knew he was regretting the bargain he’d made with her, too.

Yet she also knew he kept his promises, even if that was to what he believed was his detriment.

She went to the other door, half expecting it to be locked against her.

But it opened easily when she turned the knob and she supposed that wasn’t a surprise, no matter that it felt like one. Tadeo was a man of his word, good or ill.

Inside, she found herself in the King’s bedchamber. It was an imposing, august sort of room. There was a grand four-poster bed on one wall and a capacious hearth with a seating area arranged around it. The rugs on the stone floor were thick and fine.

Over by the windows, bathing in the starlight, stood Tadeo himself.