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But others were like the old fortress she’d toured right here on Ile d’Montagne two days ago. Once used by the coastal dwellers to ward off the mountain rebels, it had been impregnable in its day. And now was nothing but a ruin, worn away by sand and sea and beaten down by the sun. It was good for nothing but atmospheric photographs.
Amalia knew too well what kind of fortress housed Joaquin’s heart.
She knew too well what she had lost.
And somehow, that gave her the courage to look Esme in the eye.
“That Delaney is not yours is a good thing,” she told the Queen she would always consider her mother. “I was too much yours. I would have married one of those milksop men you chose for me and obeyed you in all things. And that would suit you well, I’m sure, but only as long as you live.”
“It is my intention to live for some time,” Esme said sharply. “Especially now.”
“Long live you,” Amalia said, with a smile. “But no one lives forever, Your Majesty. Even you. And how would our plans have left the country? A weak king and a new queen too used to taking orders? I think in time you will find that Delaney will be a far better queen than I ever could have been.”
Esme sniffed. “Maybe she could have been, if it weren’t for the warlord.”
“You know that he is right to want to unite the kingdom,” Amalia said softly. “And he might not answer to you, but then, he listens to only one person on this earth. Luckily, she is your daughter. She will do great things.”
The Queen looked over her shoulder, frowned, then shooed away whoever waited in the hall with the tiny flick of one finger. Then she returned her attention to Amalia.
“You did not take such liberties with me when you lived here.”
“I did not dare,” Amalia agreed. “Yet another reason I would have been an uninspired queen.”
“Then you do not miss it?” Esme’s voice was sharper now. “Have you taken this role so that you can relive the glory that was once yours?”
Wasn’t that what that toad of a paparazzo had suggested? He wouldn’t be the first or the last, she knew.
“I will tell you a secret,” Amalia said then. “Because you were my mother and you will always be my Queen.” She waited for Esme to lean toward her, slightly. She did the same in reverse. Then she whispered, so no lurking courtiers could hear, “I don’t miss being the Crown Princess at all. I much prefer telling Delaney exactly what she should do, and then retreating out of the spotlight into civilian life.”
Esme took that in, a canny look in her blue eyes. Blue eyes that Amalia had always thought were like hers. But now, having spent so much time with Delaney, she could see that hers were an entirely different shade. More like the Balearic Sea, less like the calm waters of Ile d’Montagne’s Royal Bay. She didn’t know how to feel about that.
“And your sudden delight in civilian life and all its charms,” the Queen said, as if she was musing. When Esme rarely mused. Commands were her preferred mode of address. “This would not have anything to do with your enthusiastic embrace of one, particular civilian, would it?”
Because, of course, Joaquin was everywhere she turned. Even in this conversation, where Amalia had not expected to find him.
“I suppose I should be horrified and outraged that you’ve had me watched,” Amalia said after a moment. She shook her head. “But I find that instead I’m rather touched. That’s as good as a love letter from you, Mother. Forgive me. I meant,Your Majesty.”
Esme did not exactly unbend. There was a considering gleam in her gaze. “You are the only one I intend to forgive for familiarity of address,” she said, with a slight inclination of her head, as if bestowing a gift. “But Amalia. Joaquin Vargas? He is unmanageable at best.”
“Entirely so,” Amalia agreed. She did not say,And that’s why I’m in love with him.
But then, perhaps she didn’t have to say that out loud.
“You may have been raised to be a princess you are not,” Esme said, and Amalia thought she sounded almost...careful. “But that still means that you have one of the finest educations in the land. You’re poised and graceful. And you’re in possession of a considerable fortune that will, of course, only grow over time. You could have anyone at all, child. Must it truly be an uncivilized Spaniard who has not one respectful bone in his entire body?”
Amalia blew out a breath at that. “I appreciate the warning,” she managed to say. “But this is all a bit embarrassingly after the fact. The choice was not mine to make.”
When Esme only gazed back at her without seeming to understand, she felt her cheeks turn pink, and not in the happy way they did when Joaquin was near. This time it was straight embarrassment. “He doesn’t want me.”
She was proud of herself for saying that the way she did. A statement of fact, not laced through with self-pity, or any kind of whine. Amalia was proud that her voice didn’t crack and that she didn’t split wide open and bawl. That she could state an unpleasant truth like that, and still save her tears for the privacy of her own cottage.
When she was not under the gimlet gaze of a woman who would never approve of Joaquin in the first place—and would certainly not approve of any mourning for him now he was gone.
Esme seemed to study her for a long, long while.
So long that Amalia’s cheeks lost some of their embarrassed pink.
The Queen appeared to come to a decision. She drew herself up. “This is not something I would have told you if things had gone as planned,” Esme said. “I would have had it cleaned up, swept away. I would have made certain you never knew.”
