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‘A bicycle helmet?’
‘Well, I was thinking something more dramatic like a knight’s armour, but I suppose your suggestion would do just as well and be a hell of a lot easier to get my hands on. How have you been?’ Sebastian demanded, an assessing gaze raking over Theo’s features. ‘You look...different.’
Theo shook off the question with a shake of his head. Sebastian was almost as close to him as his own mother, but he was not ready to open the can of worms that he’d been brooding on. Though he knew he could do with his friend’s counsel. ‘Honestly? I’m not so sure. Things are...different to what I had thought them to be. Sofia had her own reasons for doing what she did that night, and I...I think I understand them now.’ And as he spoke the words he realised the truth of them. Theo refused to betray her confidence, even to Sebastian. But he did understand her choices, did believe her when she had said that she was sorry, and fully believed that she really did understand the consequences of her actions. And he couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps it was those very choices that had brought them to this point. This moment, where he finally had everything he’d ever wanted within his grasp.
But throughout it all was this rising sense of guilt. Guilt at what he would have done to her. Guilt for having preached all this time about the consequences of actions, when he had given little thought to anything of the consequences of his revenge. A guilt that was at once so familiar and terrible that it threatened to overwhelm him. But he could change his path. He could avoid those consequences. He would. This time, he could only hope that he would be good enough.
‘I am going to marry her,’ he said with a finality that did little to ease the feelings in his chest.
‘Really?’ Sebastian asked, shocked. ‘I thought you might change your mind, but I didn’t think you would actually get married.’
Theo shrugged off the weight on his shoulders, and Sebastian could have been forgiven for thinking that it was in response to his question.
‘But I suppose it is still good business,’ Sebastian said into the quiet room.
‘That it may be, but no. It’s more than that. It’s... All these years I have thought her cold and calculating, but that’s not the truth of her.’
‘You love her?’ Sebastian queried.
Did he? He might have been able to forgive the transgressions he thought she’d been guilty of, but love? Was he even capable of such a thing? When he thought of how he’d felt, seeing her struck by the boat’s boom, when he’d paced the hospital hallways, devastated by the mere thought of her hurt, when he’d seen her share the laughter with his mother only the night before...the way it had eased a years-long ache in his chest... When he’d finally seen Sofia and how she had grown into a woman far greater than he had ever imagined possible...his lips curved into a smile, and something almost impossible to contain bloomed in his chest.
It was a strange thing, filling him from the inside out, covering and swelling to fit the empty places of his heart... Wondrous was the only word he could use to describe how it felt. And if there were edges of darkness, of a deeper hurt, of a twisted guilt in his chest, he pushed them aside with the same ruthlessness that had driven him to Sofia’s doorstep.
‘Yes. I do.’
‘That is a wonderful thing, my friend,’ Seb replied genuinely. ‘Now, though, you just have to break it to my sister,’ he said. ‘For I believe she had pinned her hopes on the fact that you were going to abandon your princess at the altar.’
* * *
La Sereine was one of Sofia’s most favourite places in Iondorra—and she had often wanted to come with Antoine, but they had never managed to find the time. She knew that being here with Theo should make her feel guilty, but she couldn’t manage it. She hoped, believed, that Antoine would understand. They might not have shared everything, but they had understood each other and the pressures of duty.
Though could Sofia still claim that this wedding, this marriage, was solely for duty? She expected to feel unease as she questioned herself, but instead, she felt the thrum of excitement, of...happiness. Theo had said that he chose to do this, that he wanted it. And she was desperate to take him at his word, because somehow in the last few weeks she had begun to fall deeply for the passionate man who had woken her from a slumber of duty and grief. Her heart ached for the man she knew still hurt deep within himself. The man who had yet to resolve the real hurt that beat in his heart.
But since that night in Paris he had coaxed out some inner sense of herself—the one she had left behind with Theo that night at the boarding school—and she felt strange and new, and mysteriously whole. She felt strong...in her love for him. Because wasn’t that what had really changed? That finally after all these years she had allowed herself to feel that love for him? The love that had always been there, waiting for a chance to escape, to be given to him?
With only a week before the wedding, Sofia didn’t think she had enough time to undo the pain of the past, but after the wedding? Would they not have a lifetime together? For her to show him how much he meant to her, and just what he had done for her. Was it enough, perhaps, for her to do the same for him?
A knock at the door to her suite pulled Sofia’s gaze from the lake and mountains beyond.
‘Enter,’ she commanded, her voice soft in expectation of what was about to happen. A small woman with dark hair pushed in a clothing rack with three heavy garment bags hanging from the rail.
‘Your Highness,’ said Alexa—her dress designer—the address slightly unfamiliar to Sofia after just a few days away from Iondorra and the formal etiquette required by her status. ‘From our conversation on the phone, and the description of what you require, I have brought the original design along with some alteration options, but also two other suggestions in case they become preferable.’
‘Thank you, Alexa, and thank you again for making the trip out here.’
Alexa smiled. ‘It is my pleasure, Your Highness. Lac du Peridot is always a welcome sight, and La Sereine is just as beautiful as I’ve always heard.’ Sofia couldn’t help but smile at the older woman’s enthusiasm. ‘Now, let’s see what we’re dealing with.’
Sofia untied the silk robe and slipped the sleeves from her shoulders to reveal the bruise that was still quite evident from where the yacht’s boom had caught her. Alexa might not have winced, but Sofia didn’t miss the concern in her eyes. Alexa had been dressing and designing for her ever since she left the boarding school. She tutted as she circled Sofia with an assessing gaze. Hmmed and humphed a few times, before nodding to herself.
‘You are okay?’
Sofia nodded quickly, feeling like the little seventeen-year-old Alexa had first met before her debut ball. Unaccountably she was blinking back tears and struggled to find the cause of them. She felt as if she were in a sea of emotions, her love for Theo, her hopes for the future, her ache for the past. She wanted to look beautiful on her wedding day, and the thought that had begun to wind around her heart, the possibility that the Widow Princess had finally found her Prince Charming...was one she wanted to hold on to so desperately.
‘I have just the thing,’ Alexa said, and Sofia lost herself in the bustling actions of the last-minute alterations to the dress she had always wanted to wear.
..for him.
* * *
