The Wedding Night They Never Had by Jackie Ashenden, Millie Adams

CHAPTER ONE

‘HIS MAJESTYHAS arrived, Your Majesty.’

Inara looked up from the email she’d been in the middle of excitedly typing to a colleague in Helsinki and blinked at Henri, her elderly butler. ‘What? Already?’

Used to her absent-minded lapses when it came to time, the butler inclined his head. ‘Indeed, Your Majesty. He’s in the lavender sitting room.’

Inara’s heartbeat accelerated. The lavender sitting room wasn’t the tidiest room in the Queen’s Estate and she knew her husband valued order. Henri and his wife Joan kept the estate in reasonable order, but it wouldn’t be up to the King’s standards.

How awful.

Inara felt her face get hot. She shoved back her chair and stood up quickly, her heart beating even faster. Even now her palms felt sweaty and her breath was short.

It was always this way whenever he visited. Five years she’d been married, and she was still as in love with him as she’d ever been, while he still barely acknowledged her existence.

No, that was a lie. He used to visit her regularly, shielding her from the scandal that their marriage had caused, then making sure she’d been looked after as the years had gone by. ‘The Prince’s Forgotten Wife’, the press had dubbed her, which was fine. She didn’t care.

He’d protected her from her parents with his name and his power, allowing her to finish school and attend university, pursuing her interest in mathematics. Most of the time he left her alone, though he’d used to visit for dinner or sometimes lunch, a breakfast here and there, and they’d talk, discussing all manner of subjects.

She’d loved those visits. She’d had him all to herself.

Then, two years after their marriage, his entire family had been killed in an accident and he’d become King. And the visits had stopped.

Inara wiped her hands on her dress unthinkingly. ‘Oh dear, I know I left about a thousand teacups in there, and I—’

‘It’s all tidy,’ Henri interrupted in that fatherly way he had. ‘Don’t fret, Your Majesty.’

Inara gave him a grateful smile then half-raised her hand to her hair, wondering vaguely if she should do anything about it, before lowering it as Henri gave a small shake of his head.

No time to change or fuss with her appearance. The King didn’t like to be kept waiting.

Inara moved around the side of her desk and into the wide hallway that ran the length of the little manor house. She’d moved here from Katara, the capital, when Cassius had ascended the throne. The traditional holiday estate of the queens of Aveiras, it was buried deep in the countryside amongst farmland and ancient forests, and she loved it for its isolation and privacy. Here, she was away from the city and its frenetic pace that disturbed her thinking, and away from the glare of the press and the eyes of the world that always made her feel small and plain and inadequate.

Cassius had only visited her a couple of times since he’d been crowned, preferring her to come to the city whenever there were royal duties to carry out as his queen. It made her wonder why he was here now.

Her stomach twisted in a sudden attack of nerves, but she swallowed it down. She didn’t want anything to ruin her joy at seeing him.

The door to the sitting room was open, so she went right in. Her husband stood before the fireplace with his back to her, a tall, broad statue in a dark suit. His hands were clasped behind his back, the royal seal of Aveiras gleaming on the middle finger of his right hand, his plain gold wedding band gleaming on the ring finger of his left.

Even with his back to her, he dominated the room.

Inara’s chest tightened, her stomach doing its usual swoop and dive, like the starlings over the south field in the evenings.

It was always the same whenever she was in his vicinity. She got hot and jittery, and her brain wouldn’t work. She also couldn’t stop staring at him.

She tried to hide her reaction to him, because she wasn’t sixteen any more, but she suspected he knew anyway. He was an experienced, much older man and, regrettably, not stupid. However, he never mentioned it, for which she was grateful, pretending not to notice her stutters and her sweaty palms, and coolly tolerant of her lapses into vagueness.

Really, it was a blessing she only saw him occasionally.

Inara pushed her glasses up her nose, took a breath and opened her mouth to welcome him.

‘How are you, Inara?’ he asked before she could get words out. He kept his back to her, his gaze on the watercolour of a vivid lavender field that hung above the fireplace and gave the room its name.

His voice was deep and cool, flowing over her heated skin like river water on a hot summer’s day.

‘Oh...um...good.’ Distractedly, she rubbed her hands down the sides of her cotton dress. ‘I’ve been chatting with Professor Koskinen in Helsinki about a theory I’ve been working on. It’s really interesting. I’ve had look at some of the—’

‘I’m sure you have.’ He continued to examine the painting in front of him. ‘But I’m afraid I’m not here to discuss your theories.’

Stop babbling and start acting like a normal person.

Inara closed her mouth hard against the urge to chatter, her joy at seeing him fading somewhat. ‘Why are you here, then?

Slowly he turned around to face her and Inara’s heart clenched like a fist.

Cassius de Leon, King of Aveiras, was quite simply the most beautiful man she’d ever met, and she lost the power of speech whenever he was near. At six-four, he towered above most men, and was built broad and muscular, like a mediaeval warrior. His hair was coal-black and his eyes were dark amber, his features possessing a fierce, compelling masculine beauty that captivated everyone he met.

When she’d first met him, he’d been a notorious playboy with a wicked streak a mile wide, and a charming smile that had granted him access to bedrooms and hearts all over Europe and beyond.

Those days were over, however. Now, that charm rarely made an appearance, and wickedness not at all. There was only a steady, cool authority that made most of his court, not to mention parliament, cower before him.

The notorious playboy prince was gone, leaving in his place a rigid and unbending king.

The King who was her husband.

Inara gritted her teeth against the urge to kneel before him that always gripped her whenever she was confronted with him. She’d done so once, the day of his coronation, and he’d told her to get up. Queens didn’t kneel, so she’d tried not to give in to the urge.

That didn’t stop it happening, however.

With difficulty, she met his gaze.

‘It’s quite simple,’ the King said. ‘I’m here because I want a divorce.’

Cassius was expecting his wife to nod in her usual absent-minded way and tell him that a divorce was fine, before offering him a cup of tea and launching into a conversation about whatever thing was holding her interest at that moment. Six months ago, when he’d last visited, she’d been talking about dark matter and he’d been lost within minutes.

To be fair, that might have had more to do with how she’d been wearing a ridiculously filmy white shirt through which he’d been able to see her lacy bra, and he’d been far too distracted for his own good.

Another reason—as if he needed yet another—why a divorce was a good idea.

Except this time Inara didn’t nod in her usual absent-minded way. Her pretty elfin features went pale and her small, perfect rosebud of a mouth opened in what looked like shock.

‘A...divorce?’ Her voice, usually sweet and clear, now sounded husky.

She looked as if he’d stabbed her and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. They’d agreed they’d divorce when she legally became an adult at eighteen, but then his brother and his parents had died, he’d become King and everything had gone to hell in a handcart.

A divorce had been the last thing he’d wanted to think about and it had been the last thing the country had needed after the shock death of its king and heir. Stability and normality was what Aveiras had needed so that was what he’d delivered.

But three years had passed since then and, now the country had recovered, it was time to shore it up by producing an heir. His ministers were very insistent about it and he couldn’t argue with them. Cassius was the only surviving member of his family so securing his legacy with children—and lots of them—was imperative.

He needed a woman who could be a real wife to him, who could provide him with the heirs he required and who could take her place at his side as a proper queen. Someone who could meet heads of state and hold her own at royal functions, who had the authority, grace, and dignity of Aveiras’s previous queen, his mother. And, most importantly, someone who was not the teenage girl he’d married when he’d been young and stupid, still thinking that he could be somebody’s saviour. That saving her would prove that he wasn’t as selfish as his father had always believed him to be.

Inara’s misty grey eyes were huge behind the lenses of her glasses, her fingers curled into fists. She wore a loose, white cotton dress that was as filmy as the shirt she’d worn the last time, and the material was transparent enough for him to see her underwear. Her knickers were lacy and dark-blue, her bra lacy and purple.

He shouldn’t be looking. His days of being led around by his baser appetites were over and done with. They’d died along with his brother.

Inara’s hair was in its usual messy tumble of silvery white curls that hung to her waist and it looked as though she hadn’t brushed it. Some of it was tied back from her face with a rubber band. She had a small blue line across one pale cheek, as if she’d accidentally drawn on herself with a pen.

Definitely not queen material.

No, she never had been. And when he’d married her that had been the last thing on his mind.

‘But I...’ Inara began, still sounding husky. ‘Um, I mean, c-can I ask why?’

Of course there would be questions. He’d expected that.

He stared at her impassively. ‘To be blunt, I need heirs. And I’m sure you can understand why. Also, Aveiras needs a queen who takes an active interest in the country and who supports me in my duties as King.’

‘Oh,’ Inara said faintly. ‘I...s-see.’

She was still very pale, which was odd. The plan had never been to stay married, and besides, he knew that she didn’t like living in the city. That she didn’t like being Queen, full-stop. So surely she should be pleased at this news?

‘You can keep the Queen’s Estate, if that’s what you’re worried about.’ He glanced around the room, noting that, while it had certainly been dusted well, there was still a lot of cheerful clutter everywhere.

The Queen’s Estate was a pretty place, but it reminded him too much of his mother, so if Inara wanted it she could have it.

‘Or you could take your pick of any royal property, if you prefer,’ he went on when she didn’t say anything. ‘You’ll also be given a monthly stipend that should keep you quite comfortable.’

Still she said nothing, continuing to look at him as if he’d hurt her.

‘Your life won’t change,’ he said gently, because her colour hadn’t returned and it concerned him. ‘You can stay here and continue with your research. You don’t have to move if you don’t want to. And you won’t have to come into Katara any longer.’ He paused. ‘You’ll be free, little one. The way you always wanted to be.’

Yet the shocked expression on her face lingered, and after a moment she looked away, clenching and unclenching her hands.

She definitely was not pleased by the news, and he still couldn’t understand it. When he’d offered her the protection of his name that night in the limo five years earlier, she’d been wary, and rightly so. She’d wanted to escape a marriage, not jump head-first into another one.

His parents had been horrified, as had the majority of the country after news of the marriage had come out. They hadn’t seen him as the saviour he’d hoped they would, and it didn’t matter that he’d done it to protect someone else. It had been a scandal attached to the family name and how could he be so selfish? What was one girl compared to the dignity of the crown?

They were right, of course; he hadn’t married Inara to save her. He’d married Inara to save himself in his family’s eyes. Still, what was done was done, and he’d stubbornly stuck to the story he’d told himself: he’d saved an innocent teenage girl from the clutches of a monster.

However, the necessity of the marriage hadn’t existed for three years. He should have started divorce proceedings earlier, but assuming the duties of a position he’d never wanted, and had never envisaged taking on, had consumed most of his time.

‘If you’re worried about what will happen to you,’ he said into the growing silence, ‘Then you needn’t—’

‘I’m not worried about what will happen to me.’

Cassius stared at her.

She kept her attention out of the window, her hands still clenched, her knuckles white. She’d never interrupted him before.

He frowned. ‘What’s wrong, Inara?’

Agitation poured off her. She’d always been bright and sparky and interested, with a magpie mind that darted here and there. He found her intellectual, yet quirky and amusing, and he enjoyed his visits to check on her progress.

She hadn’t seemed to care that he was a prince or a king. She’d been interested in his opinions, not because he was a royal, but because she seemed genuinely interested in him. And she didn’t always agree with his views; she was quite happy to argue a point, which he found stimulating, as hardly anyone argued with him any more.

She looked at him all of a sudden, her pointed chin firming as if she’d reached a decision about something.

‘No,’ she said flatly.

Cassius wasn’t sure what she was talking about. ‘No? No what?’

Inara’s chin came up. ‘No, I’m not giving you a divorce.’