I'd heard enough.
I retreated the way I'd come, abandoning any thought of warm milk or midnight snacks.By the time I reached my rooms, my hands were shaking with a combination of humiliation and fury.
Inadequate partner.Deserves better.
I climbed back into bed and lay there in the darkness, listening to my own breathing.
Six months.I just had to survive six months.And then I could go back to my life, back to people who didn't look at me like I was a stain on their precious royal carpet.
The worst part was that a small, treacherous voice in my head wondered if Queen Isabelle was right.
CHAPTER 12
Archie
The morning after ourdinner, I woke up thinking about Betty's laugh.
Not the polite, practiced laugh she deployed at formal functions, but the real one that had slipped out when I told her about Chef Marcello throwing a diplomat out of the kitchen.It had been surprised out of her, genuine and unguarded, and I'd spent entirely too much of the night replaying it in my head like some kind of lovesick teenager.
This was problematic on multiple levels.
I was supposed to be maintaining appropriate emotional distance from my wife.I was supposed to be focused on the political realities of our situation, not on the way her eyes crinkled when she found something genuinely funny.And I was definitely not supposed to be lying in bed at seven in the morning, wondering what she was doing right now and whether she'd slept well in her new rooms.
"Get it together," I muttered to myself, throwing off the covers."She's still angry at you.She thinks this marriage is temporary.And you're acting like you've never seen a woman laugh before."
Azzurra provided a convenient excuse to escape my own head.My pregnant mare had been restless for days, and checking on her gave me something productive to do that didn't involve thinking about my wife's smile.
The stable was quiet this early, just the soft sounds of horses shifting in their stalls and the distant call of seabirds from the harbor.I let myself into Azzurra's stall and found her standing in the corner, her sides heaving with the kind of labored breathing that made my stomach clench.
"Easy, beautiful."I ran my hands along her neck, feeling the tension in her muscles."Still not feeling well?"
She turned her head toward me, and I caught the dullness in her usually bright eyes.The palace veterinarian kept insisting everything was progressing normally, but nothing about Azzurra's behavior suggested normal to me.
"You and me both," I told her."Trapped in situations we didn't choose, trying to make the best of it."
She snorted, which I chose to interpret as solidarity.
