* * *
The stunned look on his face told her everything she needed to know about how he felt. There was no joy, no happiness. Only shock.
She’d known it would be a difficult thing to tell him, but she hadn’t been able to mask her feelings about his coronation offer well enough. His offer to do something for her, that she’d hoped would be about spending more time with her, only for it to be about a coronation had been too sharp a disappointment.
It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate it, it was that the thing he’d chosen wasn’t really about her at all. It was about what she represented as his wife, his queen, and their marriage as a symbolic union for all of Kasimir.
It wasn’t about her.
It wasn’t about Guinevere, who was in love with her husband and who only wanted to spend time with him.
But of course time was his most precious commodity, and he didn’t have enough of it to spare for her and her alone.
She shouldn’t have told him the real reason for her disappointment, but not telling him the truth would only cause more trouble between them, especially when she wasn’t good at hiding her feelings.
But she’d said it now, the the truth that had been sitting there all this time since that moment under the stars in the orchard.
She loved him, and over the past two weeks spending more time with him, and now coming to Switzerland, had only made it more clear to her. She loved being with him, talking to him, arguing with him, having him at her side whenever they were in public and then being held in his arms at night in their bed.
She loved him and she didn’t know what to do. Because while she’d realised she was in love with him that night, he’d made it very clear that love would not be a part of this marriage. That Kasimir would always come first and there was no room in his heart for anything else.
There was no room in his heart for her.
He was a king, and his first responsibility was to his country. Not her.
She could give him an ultimatum—tell him she was leaving him if he didn’t put her first, but that was something she’d never do. It would force him into an impossible position and that felt terribly unfair.
‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured, pulling her hands from his. ‘I know that’s not what you want to hear. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said it.’
Slowly the shock ebbed from his expression, leaving his eyes hard, cold chips of diamond. ‘Guinevere. That is not what our marriage is about—you know that.’
Her throat felt tight. ‘Yes, I know,’ she forced out. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not going to ask you for anything. I only wanted you to know that that’s how I feel.’
‘It’s not something I’ll ever be able to reciprocate.’ Now his voice sounded hard too. ‘You know why.’
‘Yes.’ She couldn’t quite mask her bitterness. ‘You have to sacrifice yourself on Kasimir’s altar and that of your parents’ deaths.’
Anger leaped in his eyes, as she had known it would since it had been a terrible thing for her to say.
‘Their deaths have nothing to do with this.’
She shouldn’t argue. They were in a public ballroom, for God’s sake. And yet she couldn’t stop the words that spilled from her. ‘Don’t they, though? Isn’t that why you can’t afford to take your eye off the crown? Not even for a moment? You’re so desperate to prove you’re worth your mother’s sacrifice—and your father’s too.’
His expression became forbidding. ‘How is that wrong?’ he demanded. ‘She died protecting me and my father sacrificed his wife for me. Shouldn’t I prove to them that they didn’t die for nothing?’
At that, her eyes filled with tears. ‘You’ve already proved that, Tiberius. You’ve reclaimed the crown and you’re getting Kasimir back on track. You have some wonderful plans for the future. And they’re gone now. What more do you need to prove?’
Tension had begun to roll off him like a wave. ‘Everything,’ he said harshly. ‘My father was clear that a king couldn’t have anything else in his life but his country…that anything else was a distraction. And that doesn’t end simply because I have a wife and a family.’
She blinked, her throat getting tight. ‘There should be room in your life for happiness as well, Tiberius. There should be room in your life for love. Don’t you think that’s what your mother would have wanted?’
‘You know nothing about what my mother would have wanted.’
‘No,’ she said softly. ‘But neither do you. I’m sure she would want what’s best for you, and running yourself into the ground for a country that doesn’t care about you isn’t it.’
‘So what are you saying? That I give up everything? Give up the crown I worked for so long to claim just for you?’
That hurt, as he must know it would.
