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“Are you all right?” her mother asked.
“I’m fine,” Marissa responded. “If not blissfully happy.”
It was all quite a bit much in the way of family connection for me. Given that I had been raised by wolves essentially. Blue blood notwithstanding.
“We must go,” I said.
“Now?”
Marissa suddenly looked terrified.
“Is that a problem?”
“I’ve never left Lily.”
Lily patted her mother’s arm pragmatically. “You’ll be back,” she said.
Marissa looked stunned.
“Yes,” she responded, looking down at her daughter with wide eyes.
“And I’ll be with Nana,” Lily said.
“Yes again,” came Marissa’s reply.
“Then it’s settled,” I said.
“Do I have to go in this dress?”
“No, don’t be silly. I’ve had your going-away outfit selected for you.”
“What is it?”
“Something befitting a honeymoon on a private island.”
CHAPTER NINE
Marissa
I WAS MARRIED, and I was a queen.
And still, my predominant concern was the fact that I was going to a private island dressed in a very brief gold dress that left little to the imagination with a man who I was going to have a very hard time resisting if he put his mind to doing any sort of seducing.
I felt the strangest things in that moment, and I had no idea what to do with them. I was...sad and terrified and filled with guilt at leaving Lily, but there was also a strange sense of exhilaration inside of me.
I hadn’t spent even one night apart from Lily since I’d given birth four years earlier. I didn’t know what it meant to be away from her. And now I was going to a private island for a week with only this man for company. No responsibilities. Nothing.
It was an invitation to the kind of sin that I had only gotten a taste of all that time ago. If only things weren’t so complicated.
Being pampered the last couple of weeks had reminded me...that I was a woman.
Kissing Hercules twice in the last couple of weeks had reminded me that I was a woman.
Not just a mother. Not just a caregiver. But a woman. One who was sensual, and who had...needs, whether or not I had tried to suppress them. And I had tried.
Lily was well cared for, and the island was certain to be beautiful, and if it wasn’t for the fact that I didn’t trust myself, everything would be fine.
But Hercules was so big, so hot and hard and beautiful, and I had been reminded yet again today when he had kissed me at the wedding. But at least then I’d had layers of wedding gown in between our bodies, and now I had been reduced to the flimsy article made of netting and gems, and it felt like his heat, his body, was that much closer to mine.
“How come you stayed in a tux?” I asked as our plane touched the ground.
“Because you didn’t choose anything for me.”
The grin that he treated me to was wicked, almost light, and it made my heart lift, because I had not seen him look like that in...
A long time.
“Can you really leave for a week after being crowned King?”
“Yes. Everything necessary to create a smooth transition was put into place some time ago. And I knew that I would be away. Everything is set in motion. And we are a twenty-minute plane ride away. It’s not as if we can’t return home quickly if need be.”
Considering that Lily was on another island, it was a comforting thought. “There was no one else here,” he said, as the door to the plane opened.
“Well,” I said, “the pilot is here for now.”
“He will be leaving with the plane.”
He stepped out of the door and held his hand out toward me, his right foot on the second stair. “Come with me.”
I had taken his hand once before, and I had followed him wherever it led. I would be foolish to do it again, and yet I found myself grasping on to him, allowing him to usher me down the steps.
The surroundings were beautiful. Breathlessly so. This island was a rough-cut gem in the middle of the Mediterranean, without another soul or another building in sight. I hadn’t realized that a place like this might exist. Or that it would be part of Hercules’s legacy. He was so urbane, so very smooth, that I had imagined him out of place on the small island of Medland. Even though it was a sophisticated old-world form of rural living, he had seemed like a fish out of water there. But now I wondered.
There was a car parked partway across the runway, and he led us toward it.
“We will take this,” he said. “The house is across the island.”
“On a mountain?”
“Naturally,” he responded.
“Do rich people live on mountains just for the views?”
“Well, yes, and to remind others of their place in the world. How will people get the full sense of how above them we are if we don’t place our houses up off the ground?”
“Good point,” I said. “But there are other ways to lord superiority over people. To make them feel small. My father was an expert at doing it through religion.”
“Your father threw you out,” he said.
“Yes. When he found out about Lily.”
We got into the car and he began to drive.
The scenery outside the window was stunning, lush trees and bright pink flowers with the clear breathtaking sea beyond.
“Your father died,” he said, clearly intent on pushing this line of personal conversation.
“Yes,” I responded.
“And that’s why you were able to reconnect with your mother.”
“Yes. She sneaked away to see us sometimes. She lied to him. He controlled her, but...not in the way he thought he did. He...he was terrible. He was a man who liked power more than he loved God. Believe me when I tell you that. And people trusted him... They... I did too. I trusted what he had to say because I didn’t know any better. I believed that I had no other choice but to feel guilty all of my life because there was something wrong with me. You don’t need money to make people feel small. But in the end... In the end, when you live a life like my father did, I don’t know that you leave a lot of people behind to mourn you. More than anything, I mourn what could have been.”
“Do you?”
“I mean, I try not to. But sometimes I wonder what it might have been like if we had a different relationship. But then I realize he would’ve had to be a different man altogether. And that’s impossible. I had the relationship with my father he was capable of having. It’s sad, but it’s true. And there’s ultimately nothing that can be done.”
“As long as my father is in the history books in the way that he wants to be, he will be happy.” He laughed. “I’m not sure how he’ll know, but...maybe the view from hell is clear.”
I rubbed my chest, but didn’t say anything more. After that I didn’t need to anyway, because the house came into view. I had thought I was quite past having my breath taken away, but apparently I wasn’t.
Apparently, there were still levels of luxury that could shock me.
This house seemed to be made entirely of glass, set into the mountain, facing the sea. If his home in Pelion was beautiful, then this was otherworldly.
The inside was even more amazing, the pale coastal light bathing everything in a glow. Everything was white, as it was in his home.
“You know, this really is an impractical color scheme for children.”
“Children?” He arched a dark brow and looked at me.
And for the first time, I saw the future. A possible future, anyway, one that wounded me and lifted me in ways that I could not begin to describe.
Children. Plural. I had not meant to say that, but it was all too easy to imagine.
The two of us having more children, together. Having him with me while I felt sick, while I grew round and while the baby stayed up all night. Seeing him hold a tiny new life that we had created together.
My heart stuttered. “I misspoke. Or rather, I meant children in general.”
“Of course,” he said.
“Lily could easily turn this room into a Pollock painting in ten minutes.”
“I have no doubt. Although, I must tell you, this hideaway was not designed for children.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“It has always been the place where the Royals could escape to engage in fun. Obviously the house has been updated.”
