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“All of this so you could come back around tonight and drop this absurd story on me. Did you really think I would credit such an outlandish tale? Youhappento resemble one of the wealthiest and most famous women in the world, yet no one remarked on this at any point during your other life. Until, by chance, you stumbled upon each other. How convenient. And that day in the palace, when you came back from London—am I meant to believe that you had never met me before?”
She pressed her lips together as if aware that they trembled. “I hadn’t.”
“What complete and utter rubbish.” He stood then, smoothing his shirt down as he rose to make sure he kept his damned twitchy hands to himself, but there wasn’t much he could do about the fury in his voice. “I am not entirely certain which part offends me more. That you would go to the trouble to concoct such a childish, ridiculous story in the first place, or that you imagined for one second that I would believe it.”
“You said yourself that I was switching personalities. That I was two women. This is why. I think—I mean, the only possible explanation is that Valentina and I are twins.” There was an odd emphasis on that last word, as if she’d never said it out loud before. She squared her shoulders. “Twin sisters.”
Rodolfo fought to keep himself under control, despite the ugly things that crawled through him then, each worse than the last. The truth was, he should have known better than to be hopeful. About anything. He should have known better than to allow himself to think that anything in his life might work out. He could jump out of a thousand planes and land safely. There had never been so much as a hiccup on any of his adventures, unless he counted the odd shark bite or scar. But when it came to his actual life as a prince of Tissely? The things he was bound by blood and his birthright to do whether he wanted to or not? It was nothing but disaster, every time.
He should have known this would be, too.
“Twin sisters,” he echoed when he trusted himself to speak in both English and a marginally reasonable tone. “But I think you must meansecrettwin sisters, to give it the proper soap opera flourish. And how do you imagine such a thing could happen? Do you suppose the king happily looked the other way while Queen Frederica swanned off with a stolen baby?”
“No one talks about where she went. Much less who she went with.”
“You are talking about matters of state, not idle gossip.” His hands were in fists, and he forced them to open, then shoved them in his pockets. “The queen’s mental state was precarious. Everyone knows this. She would hardly have been allowed to retreat so completely from public life with a perfectly healthy child who also happened to be one of the king’s direct heirs.”
Valentina frowned. “Precarious? What do you mean?”
“Do not play these games with me,” he gritted out, aware that his heart was kicking at him. Temper or that same, frustrated hunger, he couldn’t tell. “You know as well as I do that she was not assassinated, no matter how many breathless accounts are published in the dark and dingy corners of the internet by every conspiracy theorist who can type. That means, for your story to make any kind of sense, a king with no other heirs in line for his throne would have to release one of the two he did have into the care of a woman who was incapable of fulfilling a single one of her duties as his queen. Or at the very least, somehow fail to hunt the world over for the child once this same woman stole her.”
“I didn’t really think about that part,” she said tightly. “I was more focused on the fact I was in a palace and the man with the crown was acting as if he was my father. Which it turns out, he probably is.”
“Enough.” He belted it out at her, with enough force that her head jerked back a little. “The only thing this astonishing conversation is doing is making me question your sanity. You must know that.” He let out a small laugh at that, though it scraped at him. “Perhaps that is your endgame. A mental breakdown or two, like mother, like daughter. If you cannot get out of the marriage before the wedding, best to start working on how to exit it afterward, I suppose.”
Her face was pale. “That’s not what this is. I’m trying to be honest with you.”
He moved toward her then, feeling his lips thin as he watched her fight to stand her ground when she so clearly wanted to put more furniture between them—if not whole rooms.
“Have I earned this, Valentina?” he demanded, all that numbness inside him burning away with the force of his rage. His sense of betrayal—which he didn’t care to examine too closely. It was enough that she’d led him to hope, then kicked it out of his reach. It was more than enough. “That you should go to these lengths to be free of me?”
He stopped when he was directly in front of her, and he hated the fact that even now, all he wanted to do was pull her into his arms and kiss her until the only thing between them was that heat. Her eyes were glassy and she looked pale with distress, and he fell for it. Even knowing what she was willing to do and say, his first instinct was to believe her. What did that say about his judgment?
Maybe his father had been right about him all along.
That rang in him like a terrible bell.
“Here is the sad truth, princess,” he told her, standing above her so she was forced to tilt her head back to keep her eyes on him. And his body didn’t know that everything had changed, of course. It was far more straightforward. It wanted her, no matter what stories she told. “There is no escape. There is no sneaking away into some fantasy life where you will live out your days without the weight of a country or two squarely on your shoulders. There is no switching places with a convenient twin and hiding from who you are. And I am terribly afraid that part of what you must suffer is our marriage. You are stuck with me. Forever.”
“Rodolfo.” And her voice was scratchy, as if she had too many sobs in her throat. As if she was fighting to hold them back. “I know it all sounds insane, but you have to listen to me—”
“No,” he said with quiet ferocity. “I do not.”
“Rodolfo—”
And now even his name in her mouth felt like an insult. Another damned lie. He couldn’t bear it.
He silenced her the only way he knew how. He reached out and hooked a hand around her neck, dragging her to him. And then he claimed her mouth with his.
Rodolfo poured all of the dark things swirling around inside of him into the way he angled his jaw to make everything bright hot and slick. Into the way he took her. Tasted her. As if she was the woman he’d imagined she was, so proper and bright. As if he could still taste that fantasy version of her now despite the games she was trying to play. He gave her his grief over Felipe, his father’s endless shame and fury that the wrong son had died—all of it. If she’d taken away his hope, he could give her the rest of it. He kissed her again and again, as much a penance for him as any kind of punishment for her.
And when he was done, because it was that or he would take her again right there on the hotel floor and he wasn’t certain either one of them would survive that, he set her away from him.
It should have mattered to him that she was breathing too hard. That her green eyes were wide and there were tears marking her cheeks. It should have meant something.
Somewhere, down below the tumult of that black fury that roared in him, inconsolable and much too wounded, it did. But he ignored it.
“I only wanted you to know who I am,” she whispered.
