Page 35 of King's Heir of Hate

Am I to understand that you have been conducting an affair with Princess Esme?King Hugo had asked. He had been sitting behind the desk, his hands folded in front of him with his usual tall, straight posture. His blue gaze had been glacial.

I suppose you could call it that, Tadeo had replied. Though he would never have called it that.

You sound besotted, his father had said in the same colorless voice.

Tadeo had laughed at that, because he hadn’t been able to help himself.I suppose I am. Isn’t that wonderful?

In retrospect, he couldn’t fathom what he’d been thinking. How had he imagined that his father would have welcomed this news? But he knew the answer to that. It was Esme. It was the way Esme had talked about her parents, their warmth and kindness, their interest in their daughter that never seemed to hinge on her performance as their heir.

He had been seduced by more than simply Esme herself. He had fallen just as hard for all she represented. No doubt he’dimagined that he would come back here and change things, simply because he’d gone and lost his head—but over the princess that had been picked out for him.

Surely that would matter.

His father’s strictures about emotion couldn’t apply when it waslove. There was no possible way, Tadeo had thought.

But,It is not wonderful, it is a disaster, King Hugo had said, his voice frigid.Where do you imagine this will go? Have I not told you, over and over again, that the basis of a proper and useful royal marriage is compatibility, not passion? Never passion, Tadeo.

Yet Tadeo had known better.Surely there is room for both.

And he had not dared use the word that actually fit the situation.

Because even as he said it, he could see his father’s face grow thunderous.Passion becomes scandal. It is inevitable. I will have to speak to King Alain myself. There is no possible way that I can countenance this relationship. I cannot put my country in the hands of a man who allows himself to be swept away by pretty girl at a moment’s notice. I thought I raised you better than this.

Tadeo had felt as if his father had swung out and struck him.I thought you’d be pleased. How often is it that an arranged marriage suits everyone from the start? Much less so well.

This is not the kind of connection you should be pursuing, his father had said darkly.What happens when the passion fades? You already know what route your mother took. Is that what you want for this country?Another sex scandal? More reasons to believe that the royal family is an embarrassment to the nation instead of its spine?

He had gone on like that for days. He had been relentless.

And by the time Tadeo had returned to Boston, he had been resolved to end it, because it was the least he owed the man whohad given him everything. The man who had suffered so nobly for all those years in the face of so much betrayal.

How could he do anything else?

The fact that the moment he had set eyes upon Esme had been like a gut punch, that it had made him waver, only underscored what his father had said.

I don’t understand, she had said then.You said that you loved me. You know that I love you. How could there possibly be a better basis for marriage than that?

The last thing either one of our kingdoms needs is the volatility of a love story, he had told her, parroting his father.My people and your people deserve better.

And he had believed that. He still believed that.

When he had summoned her to Bellaza a couple of years after their breakup, after she had graduated from college and comported herself flawlessly in London, he’d been able to see that she thought that there was a possibility that he regretted the things he’d said to her when they’d broken up.

He had made certain to make it clear that he regretted nothing.

The fact of the matter is that we’re competing against a greater narrative than ourselves, he had said. It was the same thing that he’d told his father, while also making it clear that his childish infatuation with Esme had withered on the vine.

His father had believed him. He’d worked with Tadeo for years by then, and Tadeo had made sure that he never slipped like that again.

Esme had only looked at him for a long moment.I don’t know what that means, she had said. Archly, he’d thought.

She had looked even more beautiful than he remembered, which he had considered more proof she was as dangerous to him as his father had insisted she was. He didn’t want a beautiful wife. A pretty one, certainly—as he was only a man. And thepeople would expect no less. Even a handsome sort of woman would do, as she would be lauded for her practicality from all corners.

Tadeo had been sure that he could do better—for the kingdom, for himself—than a woman who made him feel as if his skin was being peeled off his body every time he looked at her. Who made him feel as if the world would end if he couldn’t touch her. It was an outrage.

But that did not change the myth of the two of them and their betrothal, which too many people in both of their kingdoms had started to callfate.

How Esme had avoided hearing about this, Tadeo could not have said.