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Heat crept up her neck.
You should go to jail. You must answer for your crimes.
A strange, almost despairing feeling wound through her. Did admitting to not wanting to go to jail amount to selfishness? Did that mean she was really like her mother deep down?
Cassie-Lynn had never wanted kids, or so she’d often told Winifred. She’d only had Winifred and her two sisters because their fathers had wanted them. But then the fathers had left, leaving Cassie-Lynn to look after the kids, which was a usual bitter complaint.
Though really, it was Winifred who looked after the children, so Cassie-Lynn could lie around on the sofa all day watching TV or having parties in her yard, or doing the few little drug deals that paid for her expenses. She’d been a disinterested mother, and when Aaron had come along, she’d been even more disinterested, especially when he started paying her bills for her.
‘I should,’ she said, looking down at her plate. ‘I have to answer for my crime.’
‘For the crime of defending yourself? And defending your sister?’
Winifred knew she should eat, but abruptly she wasn’t hungry. ‘My mother never took responsibility for anything,’ she said after a moment. ‘It was all about her and what she wanted, and if things didn’t go her way, it wasn’t her fault. It was someone else’s.’ She swallowed and looked at him. ‘She didn’t believe me about Aaron when I told her he made me and my sisters uncomfortable. She said I was making things up, that I was a liar. And I was so...angry with her.’ Winifred could still remember the hot boil of rage that had gripped her with Aaron looming over her as he held little Annie’s wrist. And along with it, a terrible sense of betrayal, that the one person who should have protected her, who should have believed her, hadn’t. ‘I can’t blame her for this, though. She didn’t pull the trigger. I did. Then I had to take my sisters away. I couldn’t leave them with her, not after that. I thought I could take care of them, but I couldn’t.’ There was another lump in her throat, but she wasn’t going to weep again so she forced it away. ‘They cried when the social workers came to get them.’
There was a long silence and when she looked at him again, she found something hot burning in his eyes that stole her breath. ‘She should have been there for you,’ he said flatly. ‘She was your mother. It was her job to protect you, you do understand that, don’t you? You might have pulled the trigger, but you shouldn’t have been in that position in the first place.’
‘Yes,’ she said, her voice hoarse. ‘It’s just...sometimes it feels as if I’m doing the same thing, running away from something I should have taken responsibility for. And maybe I gave my sisters up just because I didn’t want to take care of them.’
‘If you hadn’t wanted to take care of them, you could have left them with your mother and you didn’t. You wanted to make sure they were safe.’ His gaze was relentless. ‘And if you hadn’t run away, you might have been put in jail and that wouldn’t have helped anything, Freddie.’ All the amusement had died out of his eyes now, leaving behind a fierce intensity she didn’t quite understand. ‘You also might have been acquitted, but it really doesn’t matter, because either way you wouldn’t have been here, helping me. You’ve been basically running this country for five years... You do understand that, don’t you?’
A little shock went through her. ‘No, I haven’t. I’m just your PA. I help you do the things you need to do, that’s all.’
‘Are we just going to ignore the fact that without you, all I could do is make nice at balls and be charming to the media?’
It was another light, casual comment, but there was an undercurrent to the words that was not light or casual.
He was a man of such opposites sometimes. He seemed so easygoing and relaxed on the outside, so charming and approachable. And yet...while that charm wasn’t practised or pretend, he used it to hide another part of himself. A deeper part, that she’d glimpse when he was tired or frustrated, or there was something difficult he had to deal with.
He’d get dark and brooding and angry, and it made her ache to see that part of him. It made her want to know what he was so angry about and what he brooded on, and to tell him that he didn’t have to pretend he didn’t feel those things with her, that she knew all his frustrations, and his angers. He could be himself with her, he didn’t need to hide all the time.
But she could see that part of him now, the deep, emotional part of him, the empathic protector she knew he was.
He is going to make the best father for your child.
A part of her shifted and settled at the thought. He would. Her child could not be in better hands than his when they eventually made it into the world.
‘You are the king,’ she corrected him gently. ‘It’s more than parties and being a media sensation, and you know it. Your people love you... Augustine.’ It was such a thrill to say his name like that, so casually.
‘They don’t know me.’ The words were almost dismissive. ‘Don’t forget I have as many secrets as you.’
He did. The fact that he couldn’t read or write being the main one. He treated it so casually that she knew without a doubt that it bothered him, frustrated him. That sometimes it made him send her away when he was in one of his darker moods.
A traumatic brain injury, that’s what he’d told her when she first came to work for him. Since then she’d done a lot of her own research about it, reading about personality changes, fatigue, clouded thinking, aphasia, and other symptoms.
She’d asked him once why he had to keep his symptoms secret, and he’d said that no one wanted an incompetent king. She’d told him that he wasn’t incompetent, that there were some things he couldn’t do, but his brain was working just as well as hers and why would his people care anyway?
He hadn’t answered her and she hadn’t brought up the subject since. What was the point? Besides, she was just his PA. Who was she to question him?
You’re not just his PA now.
It was true. She would be his wife.
She had no idea what actually being a wife entailed, but she’d read widely from the books in the palace library and she’d watched a lot of movies.
Love was the reason you married someone, but obviously that wouldn’t apply here. She loved him, but he didn’t love her back, and she’d been fine with that for years.
Are you still fine with it now?
