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Suspecting his fiancée needed no help standing up to the queen, he realized she was chiding him for his neglect during her first week in Sherdana. “I’ll handle my mother.”
“A walk sounds lovely.”
“Go see pony,” Bethany declared, shattering the rapport developing between the adults.
“Pony?” Gabriel echoed, looking to Olivia for an explanation.
“Apparently Bethany wants a pony for her birthday. I told her she was too young, but I thought maybe there was a pony in the stables they could visit.”
“None that I know of.” He saw the bright expectation in their faces vanish and couldn’t believe how much he wanted to see them smile again. “But I could be wrong.”
He made a mental note to have Stewart see about getting a pair of ponies for the girls. He and all his siblings had all started riding as soon as they could sit up. Ariana was the only one who still rode consistently, but Gabriel enjoyed an occasional gallop to clear his mind after a particularly taxing session of cabinet.
“Do you ride?” he asked Olivia.
“When I visit our country house.”
A knock sounded on the door. Olivia’s private secretary appeared, Stewart following on her heels. They wore duplicate expressions of concern and Gabriel knew the morning’s tranquillity was about to end.
“Excuse me a moment.” He crossed the room and pulled Stewart into the hall. “Well?”
“The king and queen are on their
way here.”
He’d hoped to be the one to break the news to his parents. “How did they find out?”
“The arrival of two little girls in the middle of the night didn’t go unnoticed,” Stewart told him. “When your mother couldn’t find you she summoned me.”
“So, you felt the need to spill the whole story.”
“The king asked me a direct question,” Stewart explained, not the least bit intimidated by Gabriel’s low growl. “And he outranks you.”
“Gabriel, there you are. I demand to see my granddaughters at once.” The queen sailed down the hallway in his direction, her husband at her side. Lines of tension bracketed the king’s mouth. After nearly forty years as a queen, nothing disturbed her outward calm. But discovering her son had fathered two illegitimate girls was more stress than even she could graciously handle.
“They’ve been through a lot in the last few days,” Gabriel told her, thinking she would upset the twins in her current state of agitation.
“Have you told Olivia?”
“Last night.” He held up a hand when his mother’s eyes widened in outrage. “They spent the night with her after she stumbled upon them fleeing their nanny.”
The king’s light brown eyes had a hard look as they settled on his son. “And how does your future bride feel about it?”
As diplomatic as his parents were with the outside world, when it came to family, they were blunt. It wasn’t like them to dance around a question. Of course, they’d never come up against something this enormous before.
“What you want to know is if she intends to marry me despite my having fathered two children I knew nothing about.”
“Does she?”
The king’s deep frown made Gabriel rein in his frustration. As much as he disliked having his carelessness pointed out, he had let passion overwhelm him to the exclusion of common sense. Marissa had made him wild. She was like no other woman he’d ever met. And because of that their relationship had made his parents unhappy.
Gabriel exhaled harshly. “So far it appears that way.”
“Does her father know?” the king asked.
“Not yet. But the girls are living in the house. It won’t be long before the truth comes out.”
His mother looked grim. “Will Lord Darcy back out on the deal?”
