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CHAPTER THREE
BACKTURNEDTOHIM, Beatrice tightened the sash before she turned, doing her best to not notice the molten gleam in his eyes as he watched her cinch the belt a little tighter.
She tilted her chin to a defiant angle and tossed her hair back from her face before tucking it behind her ears as she stomped over the sheet, her pearly painted toenails looking bright against the pale painted boards scattered with rustic rugs.
Despite the snow that had begun to fall again outside, the temperature was if anything too warm, thanks no doubt to the massive cast-iron radiator that didn’t seem to respond to the thermostat.
Pretty much the way her internal thermostat ignored instructions when Dante was in the vicinity.
‘You were the one who was hung up on that.’
The claim made her want to throw something at him.
‘You were never irrelevant. A pain in the…but never irrelevant,’ he drawled, unable to stop his eyes drifting over the long sensual flow of her body outlined under the silk. ‘Have I seen that before? It brings out the colour of your eyes.’ Which were so blue he’d initially assumed that she wore contact lenses.
She sketched a tight smile. ‘It’s been six months. I’ve added a few things to my wardrobe. You probably have a list somewhere.’
‘Six months since you left, Beatrice. I didn’t ask you to go.’
She’d left. It was not an option for him; he could never walk. He was trapped, playing a part. He would be for the rest of his life. Typecast for perpetuity as a person he would never be.
Beatrice felt her anger spark, the old resentments stir. He made it sound so simple, and leaving had been the hardest thing she had ever done. How much simpler it would have been if she had stopped loving him, how much simpler it was for him because he never had loved her, not really.
It was a truth she had always known, a truth she had buried deep.
‘You didn’t try and stop me.’
‘Did you want me to?’
‘Even if I had got pregnant, a baby shouldn’t be used to paper over the cracks in a relationship, which is why this can’t happen again.’
‘This…?’
‘This, as in you turning up and…’ She caught her eyes drifting to his mouth and despaired as she felt the flush of desire whoosh through her body. This need inside her frightened her; she didn’t want to feel this way. ‘I think in the future any communications should be through our solicitors,’ she concluded, struggling to keep her voice clear of her inner desperation, making it as cold as she could.
Dante felt something tighten in his chest that he refused to recognise as loneliness, as he pushed back fragments of memories that flashed in quick succession through his head. The tears in his brother’s eyes as he said sorry, the coldness in his parents’ eyes as they informed him that the future of the royal family rested on his shoulders.
‘So, you don’t think that exes can be friends.’
Her hard little laugh sounded unlike the full, throatier, uninhibited laugh he remembered. A few weeks into their marriage and she hadn’t laughed at all.
‘This isn’t friendship, Dante. Friends share.’
Share, she said. He almost laughed. The last thing he had wanted to do was share when he was with Beatrice. He had wanted to forget. He didn’t want to prove himself to his wife; he was proving himself to everyone else.
For the first time in his life Dante had been experiencing fear of failure, something so alien to him that it had taken him some time to identify it. Worse than the weakness was the idea of Beatrice seeing those fears, looking at him differently… He knew the look. He had seen it every day and he couldn’t have borne it.
He had seen that look in the eyes of the team who had been put in place to coordinate his own repackaging, even while they told him they had total confidence in him, before asking him to embrace values that he had long ago rejected. They appealed to his sense of duty.
The real shock, at least to him, was that he possessed one. He’d spent his life trying to forget the early lessons on duty and service, but it seemed that they had made a lasting impression.
He didn’t share this insight, unwilling to give anyone the leverage this weakness would have afforded them. Instead he listened and then worked towards cutting the team down to three people he could work with.
He would have liked to get rid of the lot, but he was a realist. It had taken his brother a lifetime to recognise what he had grasped in weeks wearing the mantle of Crown Prince. You really couldn’t have it all, you had to make sacrifices.
His glance narrowed in on Beatrice’s lovely face. What you were prepared to sacrifice was the question.
‘I can’t be half in, half out, Dante, it’s not…fair. It’s cruel…’ she quivered out.
