No. There was just something too complicated and complex, and at least some of the change or healing or whatever it was had to come from Alex wanting those things.
Maybe she understood that his awful childhoodhadmarked him, but she could hardly make sense of all the different ways. Besides, he was an expert compartmentalizer. Evelyne probably had her own little compartment in his mind, more about protection than love.
“How do I get through to him when he’s spent over thirty years believing that love is a weapon? I just worry that I cannot.”
Evelyne sighed, leaning back in her seat. Gabri finished his bottle, and Evelyne shifted him onto her chest, where she began to rub circles on his back until he burped. She made it look easy, but Ines knew she had been gone for those months of the adjustment to motherhood, so she could hardly assume Evelyne had easily and perfectly adjusted to her new role.
“I cannot speak for everyone, but I do know something about deep-seated issues. Theyarepossible to overcome, and I think love is one of the best things to help accomplish that,” Evelyne said. “But sometimes so is giving them what they deserve.”
Ines knew that when Gabriel and Evelyne had been having their problems, Gabriel had determined he was a threat. Instead of fighting him on that, Evelyne had agreed with him and let him go—not because she actually agreed or wanted him to go, but because he had to come to terms with himself…himself.
Gabriel had come crawling back, though it had required a little interference from Ines and Alexandre. Not that Alex had wanted to interfere. But Ines had made her case, that it was Alex’s duty to get through to his friend.
Alex had done an excellent job of setting up a situation in which Gabriel would have to face the truth about himself. Ines had looked back on that moment as a bit of a triumph. Moving in the right direction. He’d listened to her. Interfered in his friend’s personal matters that involved love.
She’d thought change was in the offing, so how had they ended up here instead?
“I don’t suppose Gabriel could create a ruse in order to prove to Alexandre that love is no weapon?” Ines asked, somewhat miserably. Because she did not know how to fix childhood trauma.
Evelyne smiled wryly. “If he could think of one, I would have made him do it months ago. But this is…”
Different. Complicated.Alexandre—the king of Alisandbeing stubborn.
“I’ve done exactly what he wanted. I’ve run away. I’ve demanded he be a husband. I’ve given up. I feel like I’ve done it all. And he’s still…” Well, he wasn’t the same, was he? He’d broken down and told her the things that held him back. That was new. Maybe it was even progress?
But it was hard to see what the end result of progress would be when there was the ticking clock of this child, of the loveshewould need from her father.
Evelyne reached over with a free hand and squeezed Ines’s arm. “He does love you, you know.”
Ines let that settle inside her. Did he? Did she know that? “I think I do know that, but sometimes I worry I’m kidding myself. How doyouknow?”
Evelyne smiled, a little sadly. “He has spent his entire life trying to protect people, solve problems, undermine the bad in this country, all enacted by my father and General Vinyes—and then fix it once he had the chance. I have never seen him… You don’t make sense to him. By which I mean that you are something good for him—as a man, not as a king. He doesn’t know what to do with that. I think it is new for him, and so it feels like a threat.”
“A threat. Yes. Perhaps he thinks of it as a…curse, instead of a positive. What if he sees love only as that weapon? How could I ever be the one to show him otherwise if he uses that crown like a brick wall battlement between us?”
Evelyne clearly didn’t know what to say to that. She opened her mouth, but no words came out.
Ines sighed deeply. “Yes, that is the problem.”
Alexandre had been able to set aside what had happened in Ines’s bedroom. It was easy when things were moving at a quick clip. When the danger Gabriel had been concerned about seemed to snowball.
Vinyes had disappeared, along with a small group of soldiers. No doubt planning some kind of…threat.
Gabriel had been talking to all the soldiers he knew and not coming up with much, until a young soldier—who could not have been in service for any more than a year—had asked for a meeting with the king.
The man, little more than a boy, stood before him now in his uniform, explaining what he knew of Vinyes’s treason. Where Vinyes was hiding and the number of soldiers he’d taken with them.
“You’re certain?” Gabriel asked after the young man had outlined General Vinyes’s plan.
Alexandre looked at the young soldier—wide-eyed, a little pale, hands shaking. But he stood there before his king and Gabriel and nodded. “I’m certain. And I am certain it isn’tright, Your Majesty.”
“Your information is appreciated,” Alexandre said, somewhat stiffly. “We can offer you a safe place to wait until we’ve dealt with the Vinyes threat, or you may go back to your post. No one besides the two of us will know what was said here today.”
The boy straightened, chin jutted. The signs of nerves were gone now. “I will return to my post, sir.”
Alexandre nodded. “Very well. Should you change your mind, you only need to contact Lord Marti in the same manner you did before.”
The soldier bowed, then walked out of Alexandre’s office. Alexandre stared at the door as Gabriel closed it again. Gabriel looked at him, waiting for instructions.
