“Beautiful.” Bianca beamed, her own eyes a little wet. “You’re such a beauty, it’s no wonder you caught Gabriel’s eye, but you have your mother’s kindness. It shines through you.”
Evelyne didn’t know what to say to that. It put a lump in her throat she couldn’t speak around. She had this angelic idea of her mother, thanks to Alexandre, and even though Bianca did not consider herperfect, to hear a nice account, and that Evelyne might take after the woman she’d never met… It was just too much.
“I have worried about my Gabriel, you know. He used to be so driven as a young man. He and the prince so…full of determination and plans. Something happened when Gabriel was younger, I do not know what. I have never been able to understand, but he changed. Not at his heart, thank goodness, but just in how he moved through the world. Such a…lack of direction. Oh, he was successful, that business of his. Good at it, for certain.”
Evelyne wondered if whatever happened was what Gabriel had referred to Alexandre saving him from. Whatever darkness might have ended him. What might have happened to Gabriel that even his mother did not know about? That would have changed him so deeply?
Would he ever tell her? It was hard to imagine a situation where he let her in that intimately. He was always holding himself just a little bit back. Claiming obsession and acting… She didn’t know.
“But he lacked an…anchor, I suppose,” Bianca continued. “He does a wonderful impression of a man who knows what he’s after, but I’m his mother. I can see it. All I’ve watched him do for over ten years isrun.” She beamed at Evelyne. “And now he has you. The both of you. Do you mind?” She held her hand over Evelyne’s stomach.
Evelyne shook her head, and Bianca put a hand on the swell of baby.
“I would so like to be his anchor. I’m not sure…” Evelyne struggled against the need to lay all her fears out on this woman she barely knew. This woman who would always be just a little bit more dedicated to her actual son than to Evelyne. She forced herself to smile. “He’s been very good to me. I hope I’m as good to him.”
“Let me tell you, Evelyne.Thatis a good first step to a loving, successful marriage.” She said it so approvingly, Evelyne felt buoyed, even knowing the marriage wasn’t real and likely would never be.
Even knowing Gabriel didn’t love her so there was nolovingmarriage on the horizon.
But she was beginning to realize that she didn’t just like him or enjoy him. Shelovedhim. The man he was, even when he was trying to hold himself apart. His strength, his desire to protect. His intelligence and irreverence when he wasn’t so worried about protection. He was just…exactly what she wanted.
Oh, he would not like her being in love with him. Not at all.
But there was nothing to be done about it now. Except decide how to deal with it. But first, dinner.
Evelyne swallowed at the lump in her throat, blinked away the moisture that threatened to fall. She straightened her shoulders. “Shall we walk down to dinner together?”
“I would like that.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I like your wife.”
Gabriel tried to smile instead of tense at his father’s warm approval. “She is…” He watched her move around the room, talking to people at this interminable coronation where people wanted to congratulate him on his earldom and he wanted to jump out a window.
But Evelyne positively glowed. She spoke to anyone and everyone. Despite the baby bump, she seemed to simply glide through the room. People responded to her. They lit up right back. She had a warmth about her that Alexandre and Ines could not quite pull off.
Father chuckled, reminding Gabriel he was standing there, then patted him on the back.
“Your mother was worried this was some sort of…ploy to help Alexandre out, but it’s clear you quite enjoy her.”
Enjoy. Obsess. Was there a difference? “She is having my child.”
Father made a noncommittal kind of sound Gabriel did not know what to do with. “Well, with all these changes to Alis thanks to Alexandre’s rule, and a child on the way, your mother and I are pleased we will be able to spend more time with you and your new family here.”
Family. Gabriel tried not to grimace at the word. At the idea that he would never be able to create the kind of family his parents had. That nothing would ever be safe if he let himself fall too deep into it all.
Still…
“I am glad you two will be able to make the trip more often. Evelyne is quite excited by the idea of our son having such good grandparents.”
“I’m not sure how you spoil a prince rotten when you aren’t royalty, but we’ll figure it out.”
Gabriel smiled in spite of himself. Though he tried not to look forward, to imagine what it would be like to have a son, to watch his parents be grandparents, he could not deny that making his parents happy always eased something inside of him.
But more, theeasingcame from the fact that Evelyne was now making her way toward them. Dangerous, dangerous woman.
“It is a good thing, son,” his father said, somewhat cryptically by Gabriel’s estimation. “Not always easy. Certainly not something you can skate through, but it is good.”
