AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I was embarrassed to tell you in front of other people.’ She breathed in deeply again. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry for what?’ he asked, faintly bemused.
‘That I’ve failed to conceive.’
What onearth...?
‘Elsbeth, look at me.’
She raised her head slowly. For the first time he saw real human emotion on the usually empty expression. The expression was one of fear.
CHAPTER FOUR
ELSBETHCLASPEDHERtrembling hands tightly around the glass, her mind awhirl. Was this the reason Amadeo had dismissed her maids? Because he’d realised she was feeling unwell? That suggested a degree of empathy, didn’t it? Which was a good thing. Even so, would that empathy extend to her failing at the first attempt to conceive a child? Amidst these thoughts her mother’s voice echoed, stressing the importance of conceiving as soon as possible, stressing that royal men would not take the failure to conceive as their own failure, stressing that menstruation itself disgusted them.
She tried not to flinch when Amadeo leaned forwards and rested his elbows on his lap.
Swirling the amber liquid in his glass, his narrowed eyes didn’t leave her face. And then he tipped his drink down his throat, wiped the residue off his lips with his thumb and said, ‘What are you frightened of?’
Elsbeth took a sip of her port. The almost sweet liquid slid down her throat and injected her with strength. ‘Disappointing you.’
‘And you think I’m disappointed that you’re not pregnant even though we’ve only been married for two weeks?’
‘I would not want to disappoint you in any way.’ She forced herself to ask, ‘Are you disappointed with me?’
He grimaced and closed his eyes. ‘Not in the way you think.’
Her heart sank heavily and she breathed out a sigh. ‘Oh.’
He fixed his stare back on her. ‘My disappointment is not your fault, Elsbeth.’
She could only gaze at him, trying to read the expression in his clear green eyes, grateful that for once she didn’t see irritation in them.
And then he opened his mouth and she wished for the irritation to come back.
‘You’re not the kind of woman I envisaged making my queen.’
Her throat caught at the starkly delivered admission.
‘Given a choice, I would never have married a Fernandez.’ His thumb played on the rim of his glass. ‘I despise your family. But that is not your fault,’ he reiterated, and Elsbeth wondered if he could hear how grudging that reiteration sounded. She realised with a stab of despair that he wanted it to be her fault. Hewantedto hate her.
She summoned all her skills to stop the hurt showing on her face. Amadeo’s attitude to her family shouldn’t come as a surprise; she despised them too, and she had to fight equally hard to smother the urge to shout that she was nothing like the others, that she couldn’t help the blood that ran in her veins and that he should judge her forherand not be influenced by his preconceived notions about her.
She would never say any of it, of course. She wouldn’t argue with him even if she hadn’t spent her life witnessing the consequences for royal women who dared argue with their husbands or fathers: the thickly applied concealer that didn’t quite hide the bruised skin beneath, the stiffness in their stride.
While she still believed Amadeo was not a man to use his hands to instil obedience in his wife, her position as his wife was so precarious that she didn’t need to give him more ammunition with which to hate her.
The simple truth that trumped everything else was that she’d rather be married to a man who hated her than return to Monte Cleure.
And at least she knew. She wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life, or however long her marriage lasted, wondering why she felt such coldness from her husband. Her very existence made him cold.
For as long as she remained childless, her position as his wife would never be safe. But she’d known that already.
‘I want to assure you that my personal feelings towards your family do not mean I will treat you with anything other than respect,’ he said into the silence. ‘I know it will take time but I want us to have a good relationship. It will make life easier for us both.’
She conjured her smile back into place. ‘I feel the same.’
‘Good.’ He drained his scotch. ‘Are you happy with our living arrangements?’
