The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит
‘Yes.’
His voice was toneless, yet to Alyse he still sounded so bleak. She knew this man, knew when he was angry or happy or hurt. And right now she wanted to help him...if only she knew how. ‘Leo, talk to me. Turn around and look at me, please. What’s happened? Why are you so...?’
‘I’m not anything,’ he answered, and he turned around to look at her, his face as blank as his voice. ‘I told you, Alyse, we’re both off the hook.’
‘I don’t understand why you’re saying that. What it means.’
‘I’m off the hook for becoming king,’ Leo explained slowly, as if she were a dim-witted child. ‘And you’re off the hook for being married to me.’
As if her wits were truly affected, it took her a few seconds to realise what he meant. ‘What does your brother have to do with our marriage?’ she whispered.
‘Everything and nothing. Admittedly, I doubt he even knew I was married, but since he’s accepted his birthright once more I’m no longer heir to the throne. Our marriage was a royal alliance, admittedly a forced one due to all the media attention. But there are no more reasons, Alyse.’ He spread his hands wide, eyebrows raised in expectation. ‘The media has sussed us out, and I’m not even going to be king in the first place. So it doesn’t matter what either of us do.’
‘And just what is it,’ Alyse asked, her voice shaking, ‘that you want to do?’
He lowered his brows, his expression flattening out. ‘I see no reason for either of us to stay in a sham of a marriage.’
A sham of a marriage. She thought of what he’d said on air, how it had filled her for a few moments with a wary hope. A hope she hadn’t quite been able to let go of, even now. I’ve fallen in love with my wife. Obviously he’d been spinning more lies to Larissa Pozzi, just as everything had been lies, perhaps even this last week or so.
‘So you’re suggesting a divorce,’ she said flatly and for a moment Leo didn’t respond.
‘It seems sensible,’ he finally said and a sudden, choking rage filled her, made her unable to speak.
‘You bastard,’ she finally managed, her voice thick with tears. ‘Have you meant anything you’ve ever said? Do you even know how to be real or honest or anything?’
‘Probably not.’
Alyse pressed her fists to her eyes and drew a shuddering breath. Now was not the time for tears. She’d have plenty of time, endless amounts, later to weep, to mourn. ‘Leo.’ She dropped her hands and forced herself to meet his cold, blank gaze. ‘What about these last few weeks? What about how things changed between us, about how you said—’
‘How I didn’t know how much I had to give?’ he filled in, a mocking edge to his voice. ‘Well, now I do, and it turns out it’s not all that much.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she whispered. ‘When just last night—’
‘That was last night.’ He swung around sharply, his hands jammed in his pockets as he stared out the window once more.
‘And the fact that you won’t be king changes your feelings towards me?’ Alyse asked helplessly. ‘I don’t understand how that happens—’
‘It was a week, Alyse. Ten days at most.’ His voice echoed through the room with the sharp report of a rifle as he turned back to face her. ‘A single bloody week. And yes, there were very nice parts, and the intensity made both of us think it could turn into more, which is understandable. We were looking at a marriage, after all, and trying to find a way to make it work.’
‘We’re still looking at a marriage—’
‘No,’ he answered flatly, ‘we’re not.’
It was like hammering on an iron door, she thought hopelessly, battering her fists and her heart against a stone wall. There was simply no way inside him, no way to understand what was going on behind that cold mask.
‘Don’t do this, Leo,’ she whispered, her voice breaking. ‘Please.’ He gave no answer, not even a flicker of emotion in his eyes or a grimacing twist of his mouth. ‘So what is meant to happen now?’ she asked, her voice turning to raw demand. ‘Am I just meant to...leave? Are you kicking me out?’
‘Of course not. You may stay in the palace as long as you like. I’ll leave.’
‘Where will you—’
‘It hardly signifies. I’ll send you the paperwork.’
Alyse stared at him, those stern, hard features she’d come to know so well. Those mobile lips she’d kissed, the body she’d touched...the heart she loved.
She loved him, she knew that now, felt it inside her like a shining gold light, and Leo was doing his damnedest to extinguish it. They’d been married for ten days.
‘Please,’ she said one last time, and he didn’t reply. Didn’t move, didn’t even blink. Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Alyse slowly turned and walked out of the room.
She walked down the corridor with its crystal chandeliers and sumptuous carpet, barely aware of her surroundings, or the liveried footmen standing to attention as she came to the top of the double staircase that led down into the palace’s entrance hall. Her mind was spinning and she tasted acid in her mouth. Swallowing hard, she sank onto a spindly little gilt bench, her head in her hands.
‘Your Highness—’ One of the footmen started forward in concern.
‘Just leave me,’ she whispered, her head still in her hands. ‘Please.’ The footman stepped back. Alyse tried to marshal her thoughts. What would she do now? Where would she go? Her entire life, since she was eighteen years old and little more than a naïve child, had been oriented towards being Leo’s wife, Maldinia’s queen, and now that was taken away from her she was left spinning in a void of uncertainty.
Why was he doing this? Why didn’t he believe their marriage was worth saving, that she loved him?
Just like you loved him when you were eighteen? When you told him you loved him, and then took it back? And haven’t told him since, haven’t trusted that any of this is real?
Could she really blame Leo for doubting not just his feelings, but her own? She’d doubted them. She’d insisted she was in love with him once, only for him to prove her disastrously wrong. Was it any wonder he doubted? His whole life people had been telling him they loved him—his parents, his brother, and they’d all, in their own way, been liars.
Why should he think she was any different?
She straightened, her gaze unseeing as thoughts tumbled through her mind. Did she love him now, a real, strong love, not the girlish fancy of before? She felt the answer in her heart, beating with strong, sure certainty.
Yes.
And she’d never told him. She’d begged him to change his mind, had acted as if it was all up to him, when she was the one who needed to take control. Who could be strong.
Her legs felt shaky as she stood up and walked slowly back to the apartment where she knew Leo waited. Where her heart, her whole life, waited.
Taking a deep breath, letting the air buoy her lungs, she opened the door and stepped into the room.
Leo sat on the bed, his elbows braced on his knees, his head lowered. Alyse’s heart ached at the sight of his wretchedness even as new hope flickered to life within her heart. This wasn’t a man unaffected by what just happened, the man who had coldly stared her down and almost—almost—won.
‘Leo.’
He looked up, blinking as if she were an apparition. Alyse saw grief etched in the lines of his face before he deliberately blanked his expression. She knew how he did that now. She was starting to understand why. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I