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It took three attempts to clear his throat enough to call her name. ‘Elsbeth.’
Her eyes snapped open. Met his.
He opened his hand for her. She leaned forward and took it, threading her fingers into his.
He found the strength to raise his other hand and stroke her cheek. ‘I love you.’ And then his hand dropped and he fell back asleep.
The last of the wounded gap around Elsbeth’s heart closed seamlessly, and as she watched the man she loved sleep a dizzying wave of happiness crashed and tumbled through her.
It was a happiness that was to be hers—theirs—for the rest of their lives.
EPILOGUE
AMADEOPUSHEDHISwife’s dressing room door open. The hairdresser had plaited Elsbeth’s hair and wound it into a coil at the base of her neck and was sliding diamond grips into it.
‘Nearly done?’ he asked, smiling indulgently at Elsbeth through her reflection at the dressing table mirror. She was still in her silk robe.
‘Nearly,’ she agreed with an answering smile.
He leaned against the door and watched. To his eyes, his wife needed no beauty tricks but tonight was a state banquet for Elsbeth’s cousin, Queen Catalina of Monte Cleure, so all the Berruti women had had their beauty teams dispatched to them.
He still found it strange to remember how this dressing room had once been one of his guest rooms. When he’d been released from hospital and faced months of recovery before he could start undertaking engagements again, he and Elsbeth had sat together with an architect. Within months, their separate quarters had been transformed into a sprawling home with enough bedrooms to fill with half a dozen children. He’d given Elsbeth free rein on the design side. Often he walked through their sunny yellow day room with its bold furniture and quirky artwork and shook his head at the sheer pleasure the sight gave him.
The hairdresser slid another grip into the coil and stepped back. ‘That was the last one. Shall I get Jenna for you?’
‘I can help the princess into her dress,’ Amadeo cut in smoothly. ‘Tell Jenna she isn’t needed.’
‘Yes, sir.’
He waited until they were quite alone before putting his hands on his wife’s shoulders.
She arched a brow. ‘You’re going to help me dress?’
‘I’m going to help you undress first,’ he murmured, then dropped a kiss into her neck. ‘You look beautiful.’
She shivered as she always did when he kissed her there.
He dragged his hands down her arms and slid them over the swelling of her belly and down to her pubis. ‘Good enough to eat.’
Her mirrored eyes glowed. ‘We haven’t got time.’ But she did nothing to stop his hands pulling her robe apart and cupping her swollen breasts.
Five years of marriage and still the fever hadn’t broken.
He twisted the swivel chair around so she faced him and dropped to his knees.
Dio, she was ravishing. How he loved to see her pregnant. Loved her. Worshipped the ground she walked on.
He took a breast into his mouth.
She moaned softly and clasped the back of his head. ‘We’ll be late.’
‘So we’ll be late. The world will still turn.’
‘The children?’ she whispered.
His attention went to the other breast. ‘Gio’s still sleeping, Bella’s reading stories with the nanny.’
Then he dragged his mouth down lower and she stopped asking questions.
The stateroom was pulsing with life and music. Elsbeth, heavily pregnant and needing a short breather, had managed to find a place to sit unobserved so she could people-watch. She loved state banquets, especially when a party broke out from them, and tonight’s was extra special. It filled her with joy to see so many of the people she loved together, and she gazed at her mother talking animatedly with her stepfather with a happy heart. As soon as her cousin Catalina had taken the Monte Cleure throne, she’d repealed all the cruel and misogynistic laws pertaining to the royal family. Days later, Elsbeth’s mother, along with two aunts and three female cousins, had applied for divorce.
Rubbing her belly, she scanned the room for her husband and found him deep in conversation with his brother and brother-in-law. Alessia and Clara were on the dance floor with Bella, Elsbeth’s four-year-old treasure, and their children of the same age, Alessia’s son Diego and Clara’s daughter Sophie, plus Clara’s middle daughter, three-year-old Anna. The four children, along with everyone watching, were squealing with laughter as the two princesses taught them the funky chicken dance. From the corner of her eye, Elsbeth spotted her father-in-law mimicking their movements too, and giggled.
Amadeo broke away from the other two men and headed over to her, only the slight limp in his gait evidence of the accident that had almost cost him his life.
Her heart swelled, as it always did when he locked eyes with her. How she loved this man, the father of her children, her lover, her best friend.
‘You look happy,’ he murmured, sliding into the chair next to her and taking hold of her hand.
Leaning into him, she sighed contentedly. ‘Happier than I ever dreamed I could be.’
