Page 46 of Pregnant In The King's Palace

She was practically selling her horses to family.

This was what she told herself as she shook hands on a deal that would put more money in her pocket than she’d ever earned before, and then she had to go and spoil her professional persona by choking on hot tears. He saw her struggle, he was standing right in front of her, and wrapped her in his arms in an instant. He was a confident, compassionate married man giving comfort without thought.

It didn’t look that way the following morning with a full colour picture of her and Enrique embracing and a headline to go with it that made a mockery of the truth, of her values, and of Valentine, King of Thallasia.

The Real Father Revealed!

A headline for the ages, and the words beneath it weren’t much better. Never mind Enrique’s loving family. Never mind her upcoming wedding at the weekend. She was the worst kind of soulless schemer and Valentine was the worst kind of fool. She tried to set the paper aside and get on with her day, but Valentine had been staying at the palace these past two days on account of a water management convention being held in the capital that he’d attended, and she hadn’t been able to get hold of him this morning.

He’d know it was a lie, wouldn’t he? Berate her for letting another man hug her in public, maybe, and for feeding the negative-publicity machine, but it hadn’t been deliberate. The photo had to have been taken by one of the grooms or the security staff. An opportunist looking to make a quick killing, nothing more. Or maybe she should read significantly more into it—a last-ditch attempt by palace courtiers to derail her marriage to their King. The thought made her want to throw up, or maybe morning sickness was the reason. Nothing she could do to stop her twenty-minute visit to the bathroom.

She was sitting on the restroom tiles, her back against the wall and a porcelain toilet bowl her closest companion, when her phone rang in the other room and she almost let it ring out but it might be Valentine, so she got to her feet and made a dash for it, hoping her stomach wouldn’t choose this moment to revolt. Nothing left in it anyway.

It wasn’t Valentine. It was Carlos. She could picture him reading the same paper she’d just read, Benedict seated opposite, both of them baffled by her naiveté. They’d taught her better than this.

She hadn’t expected her brother’s anger, but it spat down the phone line. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ he asked icily, and she closed her eyes and took herself back to the bathroom and sat back down against the wall.

‘This is about the article in the paper?’

‘Enrique? Seriously? I know you’ve always had time for him, but what the hell was he doing anywhere near you? Why? Why would you let yourself be photographed with him like that just days before your wedding to a king who’s fighting for the right to be with you with every breath he takes?’

‘I know. I know. I didn’t mean to, it was just a mistake.’ She took a deep breath and hoped he would understand. ‘I sold my horses. All of them.’ Eyes closed, with her head in her hand, the phone to her ear and her voice small. ‘I figured I needed to commit to being Queen Consort completely, so I sold all my horses to a brilliant polo player and an honourable man, and then I cried like a baby at the loss of an identity I’ve worked my whole life for.’

Silence greeted her words, and then Carlos swore, and she cut the call and threw the phone across the floor. It came to rest on white tile, the screen now shattered, just one more visual reminder of how thoroughly unsuitable she was to be anyone’s queen. Too fiery and emotional. Too stupid to keep her head down and not bring shame upon the people who loved her.

So many rules, and she didn’t know them all and might never know them all and it mattered now more than ever because she wasn’t just representing herself any more. She knew that.

Valentine would have every right to be furious with her.

Carlos was. The brother she’d driven her tattered reputation into the ground for hadn’t even thought enough of her to listen when faced with a picture of her in his old lover’s arms.

She spent forty more minutes in the bathroom, alternating bouts of tearful self-pity with the dry heaves of morning sickness. Her stomach settled eventually, and she stripped off to take her second shower of the morning and start the day afresh. She couldn’t face heading down to the stables today and the work would be all but finished anyway. She’d say goodbye to her horses tomorrow night when everyone had left for the day so there’d be no one around to witness her tears.

But if not jodhpurs, what would she wear? She stared into the closet full of demure new clothes carefully selected with her new role in mind and couldn’t even choose one that wouldn’t make her feel like a fraud. In the end she reached out and randomly plucked a dusky pink dress from the hanger—its feminine colour muted by simple lines, a modest crossover neckline, a fitted waist and a flared skirt that ended just below her knees.

She plaited her hair and rolled it into a bun and added the moonstone and white gold earrings her parents had given her for her twenty-first birthday and a matching bracelet that had come from Luciana. A pendant necklace from Carlos completed the set and she put that on too, with shaking hands. He had to be looking at that photo with different eyes now, surely? He had to know how much the sale of her horses had cost her. He’d come round.

She tried not to dwell on how badly his criticism had shaken her. The rest of the world could go hang, but her people, the ones who knew her inside out, when they acted up she trembled.

As for what Valentine might think...

She reached for the engagement ring he insisted she wear whenever they were in public. A priceless diamond from the bowels of the royal vaults, to be sure. An enormous glittering bauble and a total pain to wear and maybe once she was married and had a perfectly plain wedding ring to wear, she could set it aside and only wear it on special occasions.

If she got married.

The news article she refused to glance at again had truly done a number on her. Gold-digger, schemer, conscienceless liar, foreign filth. The King’s Downfall.

Maybe she wouldn’t be getting married after all.

Valentine knew something was afoot when his head of palace affairs swept into his quarters at a quarter past seven with Vala hot on his heels. Neither looked pleased to be there.

‘Problems?’ he asked. ‘Because I’m due at the conference at nine to introduce the British delegation.’ He’d planned to spend most of the day there—hopefully soaking up information like a sponge. One swift glance at the newspaper on the tray his secretary held out towards him made a mockery of that plan.

The headline was hard enough to swallow, but the accompanying picture landed like a blow to his heart. Angelique enfolded in the arms of another man, clinging to him as if he was her everything. ‘Who is he?’

‘A polo player,’ his sister said.

He recognised the background. They were on the grounds of the duchy Angelique rented from him. She’d brought another man inside the manor. ‘When was he there?’

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