AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Beatrice shrugged. ‘Why not?’
The watery spring sun had come out from behind the clouds as they trudged beneath the skeletal branches of a row of poplars and past the snowdrops that were pushing up through the cold ground.
It was Maya who broke the silence.
‘I love the smell of spring, all that promise of new life…’ She pulled her wandering gaze, which had drifted to her sister’s flat stomach, upwards. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be profound or anything.’
Beatrice turned her head, then, as her eyes connected with the concern clouding Maya’s eyes that her sister was unable to hide, she quickly looked away. ‘You knew?’ she asked, digging her hands into the deep pockets of her coat.
‘It seemed…a…possibility…’
‘You must think I’m a total idiot!’ So must the doctor, not that she could remember the things she had said or any details of her own responses.
‘I will think you’re an idiot if you carry on saying daft things like that.’
Beatrice produced a pale, lacklustre smile in response. ‘I suppose I must have known,’ she admitted, thinking of all the signs that had been there. ‘But I didn’t think it would happen again…after…’ Her voice trailed away, a faint ironic smile tugging at the corners of her lips as her thoughts drifted to the words of unbidden advice Dante’s grandfather, still autocratically regal despite the fact he had passed on his official title to his son after a stroke, had offered. ‘Relax, woman.’
His words had stuck in her mind, mainly because at the time everyone else had been telling her to panic, if not in so many words—it had not been hard to read between the lines or the glances and conversations that halted abruptly when she appeared.
Well, it turned out that old Reynard was right all along. All she had needed to do was relax…
Oh, God, no one had ever accused her of having good timing.
Beatrice turned her head. The worried expression on her sister’s face pushed her into speech. ‘It’s just everyone was waiting, every month…and letting myself hope, and then having to tell Dante when it didn’t happen.’ He had acted as though it didn’t matter, but she knew it did; she knew that as far as the palace was concerned her fertility had stopped being a private matter the moment Dante became Crown Prince.
She looked down at her flat belly and tried to separate the confusing mess of conflicting emotions fighting for supremacy in her head. ‘A year ago, this would have made him so happy.’ Frowning, she worried her full lower lip and wondered about his reaction now. Who was she kidding? She knew exactly what his reaction would be when he discovered that she was carrying the heir to the throne.
This was the end of her new life; there was no way he would allow her to bring up his child outside San Macizo.
‘Is that why you left…?’
‘Left?’ Beatrice gave a vague shake of her head.
Maya studied her sister’s face and glanced around for a convenient park bench, hoping they would make it there before Beatrice folded.
‘You never said why, just that it was over, when you got home.’
Beatrice gave a sad smile. ‘I’m pretty sure that it was why Dante made it easy for me to go.’
Maya caught her hand as Beatrice’s voice became suspended by tears.
‘You never asked me before,’ Beatrice said.
‘I thought you’d tell me when you were ready.’
‘It’s hard to explain my life. I felt like I’d stepped into a trickling stream and ended up trying to keep my head above raging white water. Things happened so fast—one minute I was me and the next I was pregnant and married.’
‘Then you were a princess.’
Beatrice forced a laugh. ‘A very bad one…then I lost the baby and there was no time to grieve.’ She compressed her quivering lips. ‘I was expected to do my duty and provide an heir. People acted as though our first baby had never existed. I hate now that I kept apologising, when I wanted—’ She had wanted to hear Dante say that she didn’t have anything to apologise for, that a baby shouldn’t be about duty, it should be about love.
But he hadn’t.
But then love had not been a word her husband had ever used. Did he even believe it existed?
He had been happy to tell her how much he wanted her, his throaty voice making her insides dissolve. But even then, sometimes she’d got the impression that he’d given in to the desire she awoke in him reluctantly.
She had told herself that discussing feelings was hard for some men, but beneath the rationalising she had known it was more than that.
