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‘Who would you be married to, if you were born into a different family and hadn’t married me to escape Dominic?’ he asked into the peaceful silence.
Only the silence was peaceful. A week ago, Elsbeth had told him she loved him. The churning in his guts had got even stronger as the week had gone on. Knots had formed too, little tendrils in his chest knitting together and slowly tightening.
She tilted her head to look at him. ‘I don’t know. Why do you ask?’
‘It’s a question you once asked me.’
‘Yes, but you never answered.’
‘You answer me and I’ll answer you.’
‘You told me a woman shouldn’t ask about a man’s fantasies unless she was prepared for the answer. Or something like that.’
‘That was then.’ And this was now. Love had been mentioned when she should have known it was a forbidden word. She couldn’t love him. She mustn’t love him. He didn’t want her heart. He’d never wanted it.
Lust was the most he could give Elsbeth. Lust would burn itself out and, when it did, Elsbeth would be his princess and then, one day, his queen consort. Together they would be the figureheads of his great nation, dignified assets his countrymen could look up to with pride, leading his family and the children he hoped to have by example. Messy emotions such as love, the kind his siblings enjoyed, were just that. Messy. They infected thinking. They turned perfectly reasonable people into hormonal adolescent-like creatures.
Just look at his sister. He couldn’t use Marcelo as an example as he’d always had problems with his impulse control, but Alessia had never been afflicted, not until she’d stupidly let her hormones get the better of her and had an unprotected one-night stand. His dutiful sister hadn’t been the same since, falling in love with her husband and often prioritising him and their growing child over her duties, recently announcing that from now on she’d only be undertaking one weekend evening engagement a month. He couldn’t even begrudge her for it, though he wanted to. Love and emotions became so deeply entangled in people that their priorities changed and clear thinking went out of the window. It was beyond the realms of credulity that Amadeo would ever succumb to such nonsense. Elsbeth should know that.
It had been lust, and only lust, that had driven him to tweak the rules of his marriage, tweaks he now strongly suspected had made Elsbeth believe would lead to further tweaks until, bit by bit, everything agreed was dismantled and they became the couple they could never be.
He hoped his suspicions were wrong and that he was putting thoughts in her head that weren’t there but, right or wrong, he needed to take them a step back and disabuse her of this thinking. He didn’t really think she was in love with him...did he?...but, whether she was or wasn’t, he didn’t want to hurt her. Not his sweet Elsbeth. She’d suffered enough hurt in her life. Better lead her away from thoughts of a romantic love subtly and then, by the time their fever was finally spent, she would be as content as him to live separate lives as originally agreed, and everything would work out perfectly for both of them.
‘Go on, tell me,’ he coaxed. ‘Given free choice, what kind of man would you have married? Who would have been your ideal husband?’
Dragging herself so her breasts were crushed against his chest and she could look at him properly, she said, ‘I never had a specific fantasy man in my head. My dreams were always of an English cottage with a colourful, rambling garden and someone kind to live in it with me.’
For some reason, this answer made his sharp, knotted chest tighten into a point. ‘You would have had to learn the language to live in England,’ he pointed out, running his fingers up and down the soft skin of her back.
‘I’d have used the translation app Clara made me download.’
‘I’m sure your faceless husband would have helped you learn.’
She brushed her thumb over his mouth and smiled. ‘He might not have had your patience.’
‘Your improvement in my language has nothing to do with me.’
‘Of course it does. You always translate for me when I need it, and you get people to speak slowly to make it easier for me to understand.’
‘A husband who married you for love would have helped you far more, but that is the nature of ordinary people’s marriages; they become couples in a way you and I can never be. But I don’t suppose it is worth comparing the marriage we have with the ones we could have had if we’d been free to choose. All we had were pipe dreams we both knew could never come true. Take me, if I’d had free choice, if I’d been born plain Amadeo and not Prince Amadeo, I would have been a racing driver.’
Elsbeth’s heart thudded heavily, the euphoria of their lovemaking dissolving. She didn’t know if she was making another mountain out of a molehill but this all sounded like a veiled warning to her sensitive ears. If she was prone to paranoia, she could believe Amadeo had started the whole conversation just to compare their marriage to a marriage built on love.
She hesitated before asking, ‘And your wife? Who would she be?’
‘I’ve never had a particular physical type but, given the choice, I would have chosen someone fun and outgoing with a zest for life, but I don’t know if that’s in response to the discreet women I’ve always been obliged to date, the allure of forbidden fruit. An ordinary man isn’t bound to discretion like a prince. But then, I don’t think I would have married at all had I been an ordinary man. I’ve never been susceptible to the kinds of emotion that leads an ordinary man into committing his life to someone.’
‘Fun and outgoing.’ Three words that pierced like an icy knife in Elsbeth’s chest. As casually as Amadeo had explained it, they sounded pointed to her, a reiteration of the time he’d baldly stated he would never have chosen her for his wife. No one had ever used ‘fun and outgoing’ to describe Elsbeth. Shy and sweet were the usual descriptors.
And as for him not being susceptible to emotions like an ordinary man... How could that be interpreted as anything but a warning?
Before she could make proper sense of any of this, he rolled her onto her back and gazed into her eyes with that hooded, lascivious stare that always made her pelvis melt.
‘Whoever I would or would not have married given a choice, I guarantee that woman wouldn’t be as sexy as you.’ And then his mouth closed on hers, and all her thoughts and fears dissolved under the heat consuming her.
Elsbeth’s sense of paranoia grew the next Wednesday when Amadeo joined her in her quarters. They shared a meal. They spent the night making love. He was as worshipful of her body and as adventurous a lover as the one she’d come to adore. They slept wrapped in each other’s arms. He left when the sun rose.
But there had been something missing. It was in the way he’d held her after making love. A subtle mental detachment, as if his mind was far away from her. She sensed it was deliberate.
