Page 40 of King's Heir of Hate

But either way, if they did have a second child, she imagined he would take that child, too, and teach them to be little versions of him. Snow and ice and nothing nice, that was what her children would be made of, and the very idea made her feel sick.

She would be left here. To paint the walls or perhaps creep around them, peeling off the wallpaper, like the book she’d read again and again in college.

A book about a woman driven mad by a world—and a husband—that wanted her to conform, notlive.

And all the while Esme would know that if she’d just done as he’d asked and had never gone looking for him after his father’s funeral, she would have been free of all this by now.

But even as she thought that, everything in her revolted at the idea. She cried a bit more, and then wiped at her eyes, because she couldn’t quite countenance this level of self-pity. Despite what Tadeo thought, there was a fine line between feeling her own feelings and theatrical productions of them.

She wiped at her face again, then smoothed her hands over her belly.

“I would rather have you than be done with all this,” she told her baby, fiercely. “I would pick you, over and over again.”

She felt a quick series of kicks at that and it made her smile right there on that empty terrace, with her destroyed garden in front of her.

And she knew, with a deep down, bedrock certainty, that she was going to be okay.

That no matter what happened and no matter what Tadeo thought he was going to do, Esme was going to be just fine. She would make certain that her baby was too.

This meant that she had no intention whatsoever of allowing Tadeo to raise their child to follow in his chilly footsteps. Dutyand responsibility were all very well, and even necessary given the family business, but they weren’t everything.

Her child was not going to grow up frozen solid from the inside out.

She took a deep breath and blew it out again. Then she turned and walked back into the manor house, now fully restored to its historic glory, and pale because of it.

Esme had no intention of becoming a series of elegant, empty rooms that were pretty enough to walk through yet left nothing of themselves behind.

She would not stop fighting. She would not succumb to despair.

Not this time.

He could only toss her aside if she let him. Because despite everything, she still knew the truth. She still knew not only who she was, but whohewas, too. She had always known. She hadn’t fallen in love with herself in Boston. She hadn’t made up what happened between them.

There was no possibility that she could have loved him this long if he was truly as inaccessible as he wished he was.

The only way for love to fail, she thought, was for it to be given up on.

Until then, it was simply a matter of time.

Esme had a lifetime.

And she intended to start using it.

Chapter Eleven

THE MATTER OFEsme was finally settled, Tadeo thought. There had been too many years of turmoil, but that was finished now. He had outlined the future for her, he had accepted that no other future was possible, and that was that.

He expected to settle down into the day’s work without sparing so much as a thought for errant wives or replaying unpleasant conversations. After all, there were ministers to meet with, dignitaries to soothe and flatter, and the business of the kingdom to occupy him.

Tadeo was sure that the stranglehold Esme had held him with for all this time was gone, now. He was certain that she would simply be another obligation he thought about only when necessary, and—once she was no longer necessary—not at all.

Starting today,he thought with satisfaction,I am a new man.

But that was not quite how it went.

He couldn’t seem to sit still at his own desk. His mind kept wandering. He kept running over and over all the things that Esme had said to him, and it was as if she was saying them to him all over again. He was having the same reaction. He could hardly catch a damned breath.

After a while, he realized he was wearing a groove into the rugs in his office, he was pacing so much. He sat in meetings and could not have been asked to repeat what was said to him. He could not concentrate onmessagingor social media campaigns or the various reactions of the press to the news of Esme’s pregnancy when all he could think of was Esme herself.