“It would’ve been important to me. I am not a man who would ever abuse my position of power to—”
“You would never abuse your position of power to get a woman into bed, and I do believe that, but what is this if not an abuse of power?”
“It wouldn’t matter if I lived in a hovel, and had no title to my name, you are carrying my baby. And I would’ve taken you regardless. Because no child of mine is going to grow up without me.”
“You haven’t exactly covered yourself in glory in all of this.”
“I’m well aware. Thank you.”
“You expect that I’m going to marry you?”
“Yes. You will marry me. Because if you don’t, I will take the necessary steps to take the child from you, and I will find someone else to stand in as that child’s mother, and you will have no power against me.”
It was the most despicable thing he had ever done, the most vile thing he had ever said. But he had no other option. He had power, and he was going to abuse it in this moment. Because the stakes were too high. He didn’t think that he would ever have to do that, because he knew that she would respond to the threat. He was everything he had ever despised. Everything his father had never been. A bully of the highest order.
All because he had created a situation that he had no other way to get out of. He had allowed his emotions to cloud everything. And that was the truth of it. He had been too afraid to believe in the connection between the two of them. Too afraid to believe that there was any sort of good intent behind her hiding herself and the pregnancy all this time.
And so, he had begun this as a monster, and he would have to finish it that way too.
The disdain in her gaze scorched him. “I’ll marry you. But God, I wish you hadn’t done this. Do you have any idea how it could have been?” Her lower lip trembled, and she looked away from him. “But no. I guess it couldn’t have been. Because this is who you really are.Thisis who you really are. You are a man who gives no quarter. You have no faith in the people around you, and you definitely don’t trust yourself. Not what you feel, not what you want. And so, maybe it is a good thing that you handled it this way, because I got to see the very worst of you from the outset.”
“It remains to be seen if it was the worst of me,” he said. “But I do suppose we’ll find out.”
“And when will the wedding be?”
“As soon as possible. You’re visibly pregnant, there is going to be no hiding any of this. Everyone’s going to know when we slept together.”
“I can see that that is a concern for you.”
“Of course it is. It’s not so much a concern for me as it is…my wife’s memory.”
He didn’t think that he imagined her face softened just slightly. “I didn’t know your wife well. But what happened that night, on my end, had nothing to do with disparaging her memory.”
“No. It didn’t for me either.”
He didn’t like sharing his feelings with her, and he could see that she wasn’t going to share hers with him either. She was guarded now. It was his fault.
But it also worked, because he had no desire to give anything of himself.
He didn’t even know what he had to give.
The only thing he could feel right now was anger. Nothing emotionally had caught up with itself. There was just that burning outrage. Though he had a feeling now it was mainly directed at himself.
“The wedding will be announced tomorrow,” he said. “And will take place at the weekend.”
“That’s outrageous. There’s no way that it can all come together in time.”
“It can, and it will. Because I’m the king, and I will it.”
“I hope that you know, we will never have a relationship. Not again.”
“We don’t need one. We already have a child coming. And so, you will be free.”
And he would be trapped again. In the same sort of marriage. In the same sort of life. He’d experienced one brilliant moment of passion, and he had extinguished it. So he could take the punishment. He would have to. He would have to spend the rest of his life working toward being the figurehead that his father was. Working toward building a legacy that spoke well of his parents. They had been dead in their mid-thirties. There was very little space now between his current age and the age his father was when he died.
There was no guarantee that he had years and years to create a legacy. To do his father’s legacy proud.
“Tomorrow the announcement will go out.”
