She reached out to touch him, and he sidestepped away from her hand. He bent over, picked up her discarded clothes and handed them to her.
She didn’t take them at first.
“We didn’t even lock the door, Ines.”
He sounded so disgusted. She thought she should feel some kind of shame as he did, but she could not find any inside of her. Perhaps when the aftershocks of it all wore off, but she rather thought it was hardly the end of the world to get caught up with one’sspouse.
She took the clothes. “I do not know that anyone would be all that shocked that a man and his wife might share a morningappointment.” She slid off the desk and began to pull her clothes back on—because the doorwasstill unlocked.
“Perhaps they would not be shocked, but people havephones, Ines. Would you be quite so casual if pictures of your naked body were sold to tabloids around the world?”
Ines blinked, his words like a bucket of cold water. She shivered against them. “Perhaps not,” she managed to say. “But it seems you are reaching for the worst-possible scenario.”
“Yes, that is myjob. My duty.”
She sighed. She knew he felt that way, but she did not know how he lived under the weight of that. She kept trying to save him from the weight of that, but he never listened to her. Never considered her. Not when it came tothemas people. “It does not always have to be about duty. Notalways.” She stepped forward, wanting to reach out and touch him, knowing he would only avoid it again. “Sometimes it could be aboutus, if you’d let it.”
He made a dismissive sort of noise. “I am going to be late for my meeting with the French diplomat. A meeting I cannot afford to be late for. You must leave at once.”
He did not look at her. A million feelings crashed around in her chest. She even gave half a thought to causing another scene. Be the storm. Be in charge.
But for the moment she was a bit too bruised. She wanted to retreat, and wasn’t this whole thing about getting what she wanted?
So she followed the impulse. She left his office saying nothing else. She tidied herself up and met with all her appointments that day, but neither her heart nor her head were truly in it.
They were both back in his office, reliving that moment over and over in her head.
She wanted it to mean something. She wanted it to meaneverything. She even fantasized about it.
If she pressed for the annulment, would there be a repeat performance?
Or would he relent and give her what she didn’t want but thought she probably needed?
She was too terrified of the second option, but she did not know how to continue like this. She wanted to be aperson, notonlya queen. Ahuman being, not only a statue.
He wanted the opposite. Whether heshouldor not did not matter, because it was what he wanted.
Almost a year of being his dutiful wife had not changed anything for him. Hergoodnesshad not suddenly made him any different. Even that unexpected loss of control and blazing passion had not changed anything for him.
She had realized sometime in the past few weeks it never would, and today only confirmed that. So how should she proceed? How could she save herself from the relentless weight of wanting to be a mother? Wanting him to love her—knowing he never would?
If he would not give her the annulment, what then?
A knock sounded at her bedroom door where she sat at the mirror getting ready for dinner. Before she could respond, it opened, and Alexandre stood there. He did not cross the threshold.
“Evelyne has had the baby.”
For a moment, the words couldn’t arrange themselves in a way that made sense. His sister. Baby.The baby.
Her nephew had been born. Ines knew she should feel elation, but for a moment there was only a sharp stab of pain at the idea that she could not seem to find love and a future for herself. “Oh.”
“She would like us to come meet him.”
Ines gathered herself. There were some things that no matter how she was feeling, no matter how much she wanted tochangethem, she still had to put on a queen’s mask and face. This was one of those things.
Not because it wasbusiness, but because regardless of what went on between her and Alexandre, her nephew had been born.
Will he be my nephew if Alexandre allows an annulment?
