Page 35 of Pregnant In The King's Palace

‘And you believe her?’

God help him, he wanted to. ‘She says she’ll take any test I want her to have.’

His sister began to smile. ‘But what marvellous news.’

‘Really? Really? Angelique Cordova—a woman Thallasia loves to hate—is having my baby and you call that a good thing?’

‘Don’t you?’

‘Yes. God forsake me, I want this so much it hurts.’ He closed his eyes and stuck his head beneath the fall of water again. Fear and anger and hope and tears and pain, and this time he let it all come out with an animal roar.

Then he felt a slender hand wrap around his biceps and pull, hard, and he opened his eyes to find his sister, fully dressed and soaking wet, tugging him towards the edge of the pool.

‘I swear, people who say you got all the brains and I got all the beauty got it wrong,’ she muttered. ‘I’ve always been of the opinion that we’re both too stupid for words. Hoist me up.’

He hoisted her up.

‘It’s simple,’ she said from the edge of the pool as she reached down to haul him up beside her, and he tried to help himself out, he really did, but he barely had the strength for it. Maybe she’d been right to urge him out of the water, not that he’d ever tell her that. Not that he needed to say it, given the way he was gasping and shivering, and, yes, slightly blue.

‘What’s s-simple?’ he chattered.

‘The solution. Marry the woman you’ve never stopped loving, cherish the child you’ve created together, and close ranks in such a way as to protect them both until there comes a time when our misguided public value Angelique as much as you do. It’ll happen eventually, and probably sooner than you think if she gives you an heir.’

‘If they believe it’s mine.’

‘Like you said, there are tests for that. They’ll believe once they’re forced to. Look at what our beloved public think of me. At the beginning of the year I was nothing more than a faded socialite birdbrain. Don’t look at me like that, you know that’s what they thought. And I have changed not one hair on my faded socialite head, yet all of a sudden I’m a fount of wisdom, fortitude and ageless beauty. The point is, you want this, don’t you? If you could have any woman at your side, mother to your children, who would it be but her?’

‘And what will I woo her with exactly? A public who is going to crucify her for her wild reputation—'

‘Augustus of Arun married a concubine. How, exactly, is this any worse?’

‘And she’s a foreigner.’

‘Cas’s foreign Queen can guide her through the worst of it. And I can... I don’t know...teach her how to handle your moods.’

‘I’m not moody.’

‘Please.’ She made the most dismissive noise she could. ‘You put me to shame.’ His sister reached for his hand. ‘Here you are with the gift of family right in front of you—and all you need to claim it is a willing heart, an open heart, and a thimbleful of understanding and instead you choose punishing rage?’

‘I’m not choosing it. I came down here to get rid of it! Don’t you understand? All those bits of him that are in me, this is where I come to drown them, so that I can go back up those stairs and offer a terrified mother-to-be my support with an open heart!’

Rage at his sister. Rage at the hand life had dealt him and the pressure to perform to standards he could never quite reach. Just rage. ‘I don’t even know if Angelique wants this child. It wasn’t exactly planned. What if she says no to everything? To me.’

Now his sister was turning away from him, standing and walking over to the nearby pile of towels, and then she was back with a towel that she wrapped around his shivering frame and holding him tight and he closed his eyes and took comfort from the only person who’d always had his back—even when he sometimes hadn’t been able to see it.

‘How can I help?’ she murmured gently. ‘What do you need me to do?’

‘Just...’ He had no idea. ‘If it doesn’t go smoothly. If Angelique says no, and I start to turn into someone you don’t like... If I start behaving like him...our father. Protect her.’

‘I can,’ she murmured. ‘I will.’

CHAPTER TEN

IF ANYONE HAD asked Angelique how she’d thought her meeting with Valentine would go and they’d said, he’s going to lock you in his quarters and walk away, she’d have dismissed it as crazy talk, and yet here she was. All locked in, with guards at all the entrances, and quite decidedly alone.

Valentine’s suite consisted of a bedroom decked out in dark blues and deep brown mahogany, a white marble bathroom, a dressing room the size of an average home and a sitting room full of books, several deep-seated library chairs and a sideboard laden with sliced fruits, nuts, pastries, water and juice. The food had arrived ten minutes ago, when she’d also been told that His Majesty would be with her soon. Trying to brush past the guard had resulted in him crowding her deftly back inside the room and closing the door. Yelling and banging on the door had brought a staff member with more food and a calming tea—none of which she’d touched.

The huge arched windows did not open. If there was another secret passageway—and what respectable king’s bedroom didn’t have more than one secret exit?—she had yet to find it. Valentine showed up five minutes later, his hair damp and his dark eyes raking her from head to toe. ‘You left me locked in here to go for a swim?’ she asked incredulously. He’d barely stepped inside the door, but she couldn’t help but lash out. Fear and anxiety were riding her too hard.

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