Dad and I watch her rush to the kitchen.
“Sweetie,” he says, “I often get this feeling that some basics that are obvious to most people, aren’t so to you. A loving couple is a very special team. They build a life together. Theycreatelife together. They take care of each other. They find comfort and joy in simply being with each other.”
As I listen to him, my mind forms an image of a man. It’s a tall, well-built, dark-haired, dark-eyed man with thick eyebrows and a firm jaw. A man who is objectively handsome to anyone, and painfully handsome to me. A good man who I fell hard for despite his ideas and despite mine.
Dad speaks again, “Even if your mom hadn’t worked a day in her entire life, it would’ve changed nothing for me. I’d love and support her just the same.”
A pang shoots through my chest.
Here I am, stuck on a man who doesn’t love me back. It’s an open-air prison. If I’d known love was like this, I would’ve enjoyed my freedom so much more!
CHAPTER32
JONAS
I stare out the window of my office at the grounds before me. It’s a slushy, gray day, but the castle’s park is beautiful regardless. Although I’m happy to be back home, and many good things have happened this week, I find myself in a rather dark place.
Must be the weather.
It’s been a week since I got home from London. Three days ago, I traveled to Pombrio and was received at the royal palace by Reigning Prince Richard himself. The sovereign awarded me the Royal Mount Evor Order of Chivalry and made me a Knight of the Brassiere. I am officially part of “the Club” now.
The prime minister held a reception in my honor. I fear he’d regret it when Margot cashes the check. I paid her the highest amount I was pre-authorized to disburse without checking with Pombrio.
For the first time in the two and a half years since the events that brought tragedy and shame to the d’Alenq family, I can walk with my head high. I feel like I am a man in my own right now, no longer tarnished by the scandal, no longer just an heir who had everything handed to him on a silver platter. I am now a man who accomplished something not for himself or his family, but for his country. It’s a good feeling.
The dark part is that throughout this past week, I’ve been thinking about Margot practically nonstop.
Granted, a lot of the thinking has been happening at night, when I stare at the ceiling, unable to find sleep, thinking about her body, her scent, her breasts, her ass, her sweet, sweet pussy… My bed is just too big. Definitely, too empty. But when I try to picture a woman in it, a nice Evorian lady with traditional views that align with mine, it feels wrong.
How weird is that?
When I fall asleep, I dream of Margot, which doesn’t help at all. And even during the day, my mind wanders in her direction. I picture her expressive eyes when I asked her why she wouldn’t take the check, the plea in them when she responded with an enigmatic, “Can’t you see?” and the disappointment when I told her that no, I couldn’t.
If one good thing has come out of so much rumination it is a theory about her refusal to accept payment for the key. What was a complete enigma at the time, is less so now, a week later. I may be wrong. I may be too cocksure, and even fuller of myself than Margot thinks, but I believe I know what she was trying to communicate by refusing the payment.
She was telling me she’d rather have a chance with me than a house with a garden on Roupell Street or a villa in Tuscany.
Iambeing presumptuous, aren’t I?
What regular woman, be it a pretty dimwit or a plain sage, would forego two mil for a relationship, knowing it might end too soon and in tears?
My phone rings.
It’s Mrs. Everly, calling in for her biweekly update on the Bloomsbury house. I press the video icon. She talks for the next fifteen minutes, and I provide inputs from time to time.
When we get to the mail, she picks up the first of the three piles in front of her. Usually she has two piles, “To Discuss” and “Likely Junk,” unless something stands out. She reports on the bills and other administrative correspondence. Moving on to the second pile, she lists the senders as I say “junk” to each. And then she gets to the single-letter pile.
“Who is it from?” I ask.
“Margot Nolan, registered mail.”
Judging by the suppressed smile on her face, she’d figured out something was going on between us.
“Is it a letter?” I ask stupidly, while deciding what to do.
If Margot wrote me a letter, I can’t have Mrs. Everly open and read it to me. I’ll have to ask her to forward it to the d’Alenq castle. Because Mount Evor has been hidden from the general public since its founding, a system of relays was put in place centuries ago. The system works very well, but speed isn’t one of its strengths. It might be a week before I receive that letter.I can’t wait a week!
Mrs. Everly feels the envelope before holding it up to the light. “It isn’t a letter, or a postcard. It’s a slip of paper. I believe it’s a check.”
