Page 9 of King's Heir of Hate

“I saw no reason to tell you.” Esme shrugged. “You made your position very clear. You told me to leave the palace and not to return unless and until I was summoned. That you would tell my people when that was and that you did not want to lay eyes on me until that occurred. I listened.”

She had not only listened. She had finally accepted, deep in her poor battered heart, that there would never be the kind of future she wanted with this man.

It had hurt almost as much as losing him the first time, but she’d gotten there. She knew he’d meant it when he’d said he would divorce her. He’d meant it when he’d said it before their wedding and he’d meant it even more when he’d reiterated it the morning after his father’s funeral. Esme had mourned that spark of hope she’d carried inside all this while, truly she had. But shehad finally started to think about what life might be likewithoutthis particular shadow blotting out the sun.

And then she’d discovered she was pregnant.

Esme found that empathy for him in this moment felt scarce on the ground.

His gaze went cold. His jaw clenched. “You know perfectly well that I didn’t mean you should hide the fact that you werepregnant.”

Esme lifted her chin. “I don’t know that. I only know what you said, Tadeo. Isn’t that something that you were at great pains to make me understand years ago? You only wished to discuss what yousaid. Not how your actions might have been received and certainly not how the way you said those things might have made someone elsefeel.”

“I do not wish to discuss Boston,” he said then, in that low, furious voice of his that reminded her—violently—of that hideous day when he’d told her he was done with her. And had meant it then, too.

It still made her whole body flush. It stillhurt, and she hated herself for that, but he didn’t deserve to see that any longer. So she smiled instead.

Because she was so damned good at smiling.

“Here in the house of exile,” she said, with an airiness that actually hurt, “I talk about whatever I wish. If you would like to direct the conversation, decide what words are used, and determine what eras are worthy of discussion, you can go back to the palace and order everyone about to your heart’s content. Your Majesty.”

Something flared on his face at that and Esme caught her breath, because for just a moment she could see the Tadeo that she knew. The Tadeo she missed. The hint of him, right there—

But he pulled it back. He hid it away. And then he stepped back as if she’d thrown herself over the table and tried to touch him.

As if she’d be so foolish after all these years.

She really had learned. At last.

“I am not going to process this information in real time with you,” he told her, with scathing formality. “Certainly not while you clearly wish to make my doing so as painful as possible. You’ll hear from my people soon.”

Then he turned sharply, as if he was back in the military service he’d done after graduate school, and marched away.

Esme watched him go. She took in that straight line of his back and the powerful way he moved until he disappeared into a riot of bright yellow daffodils, happy purple crocuses, and reckless sprays of forsythia.

She watched him until he was gone and then, when she was alone again, all of her masks and coping mechanisms tumbled at her feet like so much more slippery fabric for the nursery of a child who deserved better than all this acrimony.

As she sat down in her chair, cradled her head in her arms, and, despite her best intentions to banish the shadows from her life, sobbed.

Chapter Three

THE SUMMONS FROMthe palace came the next morning, bright and early.

The housekeeper brought it in with Esme’s breakfast, which was happily no longer a few dry crackers and a ginger drink. Her appetite had come roaring back with a vengeance once she made it into the second trimester, and having sorely missed it, she liked to indulge it. Her cook liked to tempt her with various breakfast dishes and today it was some kind of frittata, fluffy and cheesy, and she tucked in with pleasure.

But the heavy envelope from the palace was there the whole time, a baleful presence in her otherwise happy, lovely room. She stared at it, sitting there on its own silver platter, and ignored it while she ate.

It was still a habit to wait to see if her stomach would behave, even though she hadn’t had a morning sickness episode in weeks. When she’d first experienced it, she’d thought she had some sort of flu or cold that wouldn’t go away. Not unusual during the cold months of the year, and she’d assumed that she was simply run-down. Or that it was her body’s reaction to seven years of royal appointments and public engagements, forever playing the part of the perfect queen for an adoring public and having to act like the frozen iceberg beside her when in private with him.

Esme had been fond of the excruciatingly formal and distinctly chilly King Hugo, despite his best attempts to cut her down to size. She would not say that she’d managed to charmthe man, but she thought he’d come to accept her—and clearly approved of the separate lives she and Tadeo led on the palace grounds, which only palace denizens knew. She had even come to see that the old man had a certain charm that she’d seen in his son, too, if long ago. She had genuinely mourned his death, but it had still taken her much too long to realize what she was feeling was not simply illness or grief.

Then there had been coming to terms with what itmeantthat she was pregnant. That had taken longer.

Especially because she had finally been at peace with leaving this place, and Tadeo, and starting over.

When her stomach indicated that it intended to stay in place again today, Esme rose from her bed. Still not touching that envelope, she puttered around through her usual morning routine, but when it came time to choose something to wear, she stopped. Blew out a breath. Then accepted the inevitable and picked up the small, square envelope that felt as if it was lined with metal and was actually sealed with wax.

Because here in Bellaza there was a right way and a wrong way to do things, and the right way very often involved archaic rituals.