AllFreeNovel
Share Us
His patience with her was wearing very thin. She could see.
“I suppose I must learn to be less forthright.”
“Probably.”
“It’s just I’m very tired of this.”
“I’m sorry, but a life in the public eye is to an extent signing up for a life of subterfuge. This is something I know a lot about. And you did not answer me.”
“This is not fair. I want to be me, and I want to be free, but that is not... It is not possible, is it?”
“No. For a life of public service means always carrying yourself with a certain amount of diplomacy.”
“Yes. Though...”
“There is no though,” he said. “If you wish to be taken seriously as a leader, if you wish to be seen as something other than a child, caught in the center of all this, if you wish to be a Queen, to escape the tragedy that has happened to you, then you have to behave like any leader would be expected to behave.”
“I have done,” she said, feeling irritated now. And exceptionally hard done by. “I went and kidnapped you, did I not? I behaved as a leader would. I refused to subject my country to further unrest by keeping us at risk. I am strong.”
“Then you will learn to show it in a way that the world recognizes. You asked me to come and help you. I have offered marriage. Now, don’t resist me.”
She let out a particularly delicious French curse and then took another bite of delicious pastry. At least her fury paired well with butter.
“Don’t take it personally.”
“I’m tired,” she said. “That is all.”
“Go to bed.”
“No. I’m tired of my life. For a moment, I looked at all this food and I thought, why should I not have everything I want? But then you reminded me. You reminded me that I must be, in some way, still not me.”
“You can be you. With the friends that you have here in the palace. It’s just that with diplomats you are going to have to en
deavor to behave in a certain fashion.”
“All right. I endured prison these many years. Why not more?”
“It is prison?” he asked. “To be married to me?”
“I do not know.” She looked at the table laid out before her. She would have had to choose a husband someday. And he was a good choice. The idea made her skin feel oversensitive. “No. I suppose it’s not.”
“And a gentle reminder, that you have taken me prisoner.”
“You have agreed,” she said.
“In the way that you agreed?”
She waved a hand at him. “Don’t do that. Don’t try to paint yourself as some sort of victim, when we both know you’re not. You would not stand for it. You have agreed to help me, and I cannot say that I know why, but I do know this—you have chosen to. I was prepared to fight to bring you over to my side, but I did know that I needed to bring you to my side. I knew that I was not going to be able to hold you as a prisoner.”
“Indeed, Annick.”
“Don’t you ever feel tired? Two lives. It’s too many lives. I did not even do it so successfully, and it was too many for me.”
“It is not,” he said. “Because I am living one of them for someone who cannot live at all. Perhaps if you thought of it that way, it would help.”
Her heart twisted, the sympathy that she felt surprising her. She had lost so much it was rare that anyone else’s loss touched her. Then again, she didn’t often sit and speak to another person. Not like this.
“Who did you lose?”
