“Because it matters,” I say.
“And you want to matter.”
I look at him. “How? The idea that I could do something significant for the world, even being a person who is often so insignificant in every way. I suppose that’s why my mother and sister look for love. Romantic love, I mean. That’s where they get that feeling from. That they matter.”
“But you don’t.”
I shake my head. “That’s depending on another person a bit too much for me.”
Ironic. Especially considering the image that he left me with before we arrived here. That he’s carrying my cage.
But at least he’s carried it somewhere nice.
We’re sharing a room in the estate, and practically we often do, but we have our own separate quarters that we can go to otherwise, so this is interesting. A shared space for several days. He has diplomacy during the day, and I am allowed to see the city with security detail. I go to the Louvre, and I find peace in art in a way that I never thought I would.
It makes me think about what he said about me. About how I am a dreamer. How I wanteverything.
But I don’t have everything. He’s not even here with me in the museum and I find that sad. But that night we dress up and go to a dinner with the diplomat, his wife and a few other key political people. The person I’m most interested in is Dr. Isabel Swift, who I’m starstruck to meet, honestly. She’s a pioneer in the field of infectious disease research and even though that isn’t my focus, I’ve read a lot of her work.
“I just finished reviewing the Stanford Study,” I tell her as I take a sip of the finest wine I’ve ever had in my life. For a moment I feel like I do have everything.
She looks surprised. “You read medical studies for fun? I didn’t expect to meet anyone here who knew what I did at all.”
“Oh, I’m… Well, I was studying to go to school to do medical research but obviously I…can’t do that now. I can still have an education just not the way I wanted.”
“Why can’t you?” she asks.
“I married a king,” I say. “Which as far as furthering career goals goes is a bad move.”
“What did you want to do?”
I download all of my aspirations onto her, but I’m careful about what I say in regards to my marriage because even if it’s strange, I feel protective of Lucian, and what we have.
“Do you want a university tour? Because I can arrange for you to have one—not that your husband can’t, given that he’s a king, but I have contacts in the research department—”
“Yes!” The very idea of getting a tour at Oxford has me so excited I don’t even try to play it cool.
I’m so excited about my conversation with Dr. Swift that my enthusiasm carries over to dinner, and I fear I’m much more talkative than I would normally be. I’m not suffering from the comparison terror, or any of the awkwardness I felt back at the wedding. I’m not really sure why. But there’s something about sitting next to Lucian, who looks at me with approval, that adds to my confidence.
“Your wife is a gem,” says the diplomat. It is a sincerely given compliment, and though he’s speaking to my husband and not to me, I receive it. “You should do everything you can to hang onto this one.”
I’m reminded that if Lucian has been here before, then these men have met his previous wives. They’ve seen a side of him not even his own country ever sees. They’re all even older than he is, and they would have known…
That dims some of my light. After dessert, we’re mingling about in the study, and Isabel comes to sit beside me. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say.
“What did he mean by that? ‘Hang onto this one.’”
“I’m rather famously Lucian’s third wife,” I say. I look down at my hands. “It seems foolish, doesn’t it? His third wife, in her twenties, with the others long gone. We must actually look quite like a joke.”
Isabel frowns. “No. You don’t at all. He seems like he cares about you very much.”
On his own terms, I suppose he does. Maybe. But what is care to Lucian? I think back on his childhood. On how desolate it was. Has he really ever had any kind of care? And if so, does he really know how to give it? He tries. But I’m like a pet to him, really. I get some nice little things, and he gets everything he wants.
I’ve been letting my feelings get too intense. In the palace it’s easy to do. It’s only us. Out here, I feel so much more tender. I feel young, I don’t feel like his equal. I feel like a silly girl for believing he might feel deeply for me.
“He’s kind,” I say.
