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“No trouble,” he assured her.
The wood was already laid in the grate, and once Trace kindled the fire it didn’t take long for the blazing logs to begin warming the small room. Mara curled up on the lambskin rug in front of the fireplace, her knees tucked beneath her. She stared into the fire, smiling, enjoying the crackling sounds, the dancing flames, the way the heat came and went in waves. Then a memory surfaced, and her smile faded.
“Penny for them.”
Mara came back to herself with a start, realizing she wasn’t with her father in the palace in Drago; she was in Trace’s cabin in Keystone...with Trace. “Excuse me?” she asked, not sure she’d heard him properly.
“I offered you a penny for your thoughts,” Trace said. “It’s an expression. It just means I was wondering what you were thinking.” He came over to the fireplace, picked up the tongs and shifted a log into a better position, then stood the tongs back up in the holder. He hesitated, as if of two minds about continuing, then explained, “You looked...sad all of a sudden.”
Mara turned back to the flames. “I was remembering.”
“It didn’t look like a happy memory.”
“No.”
There was a long silence before Trace sat himself cross-legged next to her in front of the fire and said huskily, “You seem to have a lot of those.” Mara raised her eyebrows in a silent question, and he added, “Unhappy memories.”
There was a little catch in her voice when she asked, “Why do you say that?”
“Little hints you throw out without realizing it,” he said simply. “Except for when you talk about your brother, I get the impression you didn’t have a very happy childhood.”
“You misunderstand,” she said quickly.
“I don’t think so. I can spot the signs a mile away.”
Mara was surprised and perturbed. She hadn’t realized she’d betrayed so much of her unhappy past to the man she loved. “It...it is complicated” was all she said. A long silence followed, the only sound the crackling of the fire. Then a log broke with a hissing sound, sending sparks flying, and Mara asked quietly, “Would you tell me something?”
Chapter 9
Trace was instantly on the alert. “If I can,” he temporized.
“Why were you raised by your grandparents? What happened to your parents?”
Whatever Trace thought she might ask him, he’d never imagined this, and he laughed humorlessly. “Good question. If I ever run across them, I’ll be sure to ask.”
“I do not understand.”
“Hell, Princess, I didn’t know my father,” he said roughly. “I don’t even know if my mother knew who he was, and she didn’t hang around long enough to tell me one way or the other.”
“I would give anything not to have known mine.” The words were torn from her throat, a harsh sound that ripped through his emotions, shattering what he thought he knew about her. They stared at each other for a minute as the realization of what she’d admitted was reflected in her face, and Trace tried to comprehend the enormity of what she was saying.
“My father was...” She hesitated. “In my country only men can sit on the throne. My father already had an heir—my brother, Andre. My mother’s doctor had warned her against a second pregnancy, but my father wanted another son, just in case. What he got instead was me.”
She smiled, a tight little smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “And my mother, whom my father loved until the day she died, died giving birth to me. He hated me for that, and for not being the son he expected. The son he sacrificed my mother for—needlessly. That is why he named me Mara Theodora.” In her voice were all the things she would not say, the devastating pain of growing up knowing herself unwanted. Unloved. A pain Trace understood all too well. “Mara Theodora,” she repeated, barely above a whisper. “Bitter divine gift. God’s joke on my father. My father’s revenge on God...and on me.”
Trace’s throat ached. “I’m sorry, Princess,” he said gently as her words sank in. And he saw much more than those few words revealed. “I didn’t understand before.”
“Do not feel sorry for me,” she said swiftly. “I had my brother. He tried to explain to me about my father. He even tried to make it up to me...when he was around. But he was so much older—five years is a large gap in children’s ages. Also, my father was grooming him to ascend the throne someday, and Andre was often away for long periods of time. And since there was no way I—or even any of my children—could ever take the throne, I was useless to my father. But I had my studies and my horses, and a few friends. They sufficed.”
