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

CHAPTER THREE

SHEDIDN’TKNOWwhy she was nervous. It was a very strange thing. To feel nervous. He was not a prisoner anymore. Sometime during the flight they had made the transition from prisoner and jail keeper into allies. And she was much more comfortable with that. She had no wish to become a jailer. Not simply because she’d had one her entire life. It was far too much work. She needed help. She did not need another project. If he had continued to resist her...

It would have been a problem.

Of course, his denial that he wanted her body had wounded her slightly, but she would not dwell on that. There was no reason for her to feel out of sorts over that exchange.

They walked into the palace, and she found she wanted him to like it. Which was quite strange. But she had changed the palace quite a bit since the other regime had fallen, and she was proud of the changes she’d made. The modernizations.

“It is a bit different since you were here last,” she said, feeling proud.

He flicked a glance around the space. “I suppose it is.”

“You do not remember.”

“I have one job when I am sent on these missions. It is to get in and out without being detected until it is too late. That’s it.”

“You’re cold, aren’t you?”

“I have to be.”

“To have a secret life? Or just to live?”

“Either. Both. Don’t you think?”

“I wish I could be cold,” she said, feeling a bit flat. “But I’m not. I never have been.”

“Only a while ago you claimed to be ruthless,” he pointed out.

It was quite annoying.

“I think they are different things. I am willing to do whatever I must for Aillette. For my people. They have suffered enough. I have suffered enough. We all have lived a collective hell. And yes, I have been willing to do what needed to be done in order to pull us from it. But there is no... There is no coldness in me. I burned with it. Like I said.”

“I burn when I’m angry.”

She stared at him, and suddenly, she felt warm. There was something about the look on his face, about the keenness in his blue eyes, that made her feel unsettled. That made her feel...strangely hungry. She did not like it. Did not understand it.

She squinted. “But you’re cold mostly?”

Amusement tipped his mouth upward. “Mostly.”

One of the women who worked on her staff, Elise, rushed up to them. “You’ve returned,” she said, speaking in their native language, which was a dialect of French that the Parisians insisted was not French at all.

“Oui,”Annick confirmed. “With Maximus King. He is my new...guard. Adviser.”

“Good?” she said, phrasing it as a question.

“For the whole country,” Annick said, switching to English. “He will be a great asset to Aillette. He is a businessman. And he will know how to help with the finances. He will also be exactly what we need to be taken seriously.”

He chuckled. “I can’t say that the world takes me seriously.”

He had slipped into some sort of character. She had noticed it on the plane. Their interactions at his house and the initial interactions when he woke up were markedly different to the interactions they had after she’d given him his whiskey. She didn’t know why. Except...

She knew that he had a double life. She knew that the man that he pretended to be was not the man he actually was. She knew that he was lethal. Dangerous. And that the majority of the world had no idea.

Perhaps he was playing that up, even now. And she could see why. He played an interesting and dangerous game. Being as visible as he was, conducting missions that required the utmost in discretion.

“Ready him a room,” she said, and all of the women that were present in the antechamber nodded and scurried about their business. She looked to him, to see if he was impressed with the organization of the palace.

“You have a lot of women working here,” he said.

“I do,” she said happily. “That was one of the first changes I made, you know. For when I was here before, it was all men. Except those doing menial positions. I made a change. Women in this country who desperately needed money... I hired them. Now they can take care of themselves. If they have husbands that are cruel to them, they can leave. This is a very good thing.”

“It is a good thing,” he confirmed.

“I would hire men if I needed them. I am hiring you. But for the most part I find women do the work just fine.”

He chuckled. “Sadly, you need a man to protect you?”

“It’s sad, this thing in the world. I am not so strong.”

She looked up at the ceiling. It was midnight blue marble, swirled through with bright colors. It reminded her of the painting The Starry Night, and she had always thought it beautiful. She had made changes to the palace, but what she’d said was true. They were not flush with money. These things were not changes she had bought. These stones had been here for centuries. The only things that remained of her family. She had always found them soothing.

“I do not care much for men.”

She had not meant to say that out loud. He was, after all, a man, and she needed his help, so perhaps it was not in her best interest to say mean things about his gender.

“You don’t?”

She would have to answer for that now. “Non. It was not women, after all, who seized power in my country and killed my family.”

“No, I suppose it wasn’t. If it helps, I’m not a big fan either. I have seen a great many atrocities in this world. Most of them committed by men. So I’m with you.”

“Well. I’m glad we can at least agree on that. Though I hear tell that your sex has a few things to recommend it.”

“Do you?”

“I have heard. I surround myself now with many women, and we have conversations. Most of them have a fondness for at least one man in their lives. That is fair, I think. But...I do not know enough of men.”

“Is that why you offered me your body?”

Heat flooded her face. “It is not a gentlemanly thing to remind me of that, I think.”

“Is that so?”

She frowned deeply. “You turned me down.”

“I was not aware it was a proposition, so much as a form of payment.” He looked her over, his expression dispassionate. “Payment I don’t require.”

“Yes. That is what it was. Payment. If you don’t want it, it’s okay with me.”

“Then you don’t need to be so angry about it.”

“I’m not angry,” she said. “I have no anger to waste on you, in truth.”

“Another very good thing, because I have a feeling that anyone who is on the receiving end of your anger is going to find himself very unhappy.”

“Yes. This is true.” She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “It was a good thing they did not wish me dead. Pierre Doucet, he was a friend of my father’s, and yet he killed my father, his wife and son. By order, at least. He did not spare me due to any sentimentality. I tell you this. He only wished to use me when it was convenient to show my face, and I made it hellish hard for him. I do not hold my tongue well.” Anger, sadness and old fear welled up in her chest. “I might have suffered when I misbehaved, but it was worth it. A reminder that I was still me.”

“They hurt you?”

She lifted a shoulder. “They killed my whole family. Stole my life. A beating here and there was nothing.” She felt moisture in her eyes and hated it.

He stopped her. He did not touch her, but his gaze stopped her. And she saw there... The predator.

“I am very glad I was put on the mission to kill Pierre Doucet. I am glad I ended him.”

She was not used to this. Not used to someone being so firmly on her side. “As am I.”

She led him through the palace and toward the rooms that she had chosen to be his. “Here you are,” she said, thankful to leave the previous subject and its accompanying heaviness in the past. “I think you will be comfortable. I have given you extra blankets.”

That earned her a very long stare. “Thank you. In your chloroform kidnap, you didn’t by chance happen to pick up a razor, did you? Because if not, I find myself inconvenienced.”

“It is there,” she said, feeling proud. “Everything you need. I anticipated that we might have difficulty. You know, I came prepared with chloroform. And I was prepared to have this room fitted out for you. With razors and anything else you might need.”

“I see. And how did you, a woman who admittedly knows nothing of men, accomplish that?”

“I told you. I have women I work with who know. I do not need to know.” She stepped into the room, pleased with the grandness of it. Surely he would be too. Shortly, he would be happy with this place. She might need his help, and she might need an investment, but with what she had she could offer much. The room was large, and though everything in it was old, it was competently outfitted. And she was quite pleased with it. “You will find suits.”

“I don’t wear suits that you buy in a store.”

“We did not buy these in a store. They are made for you.”

“And how,” he said, “did you accomplish that?”

“I was very proud of this. I called your sister.”

He frowned. “You called my sister? Which sister?”

“Minerva. I called Minerva, and I told her that I was designing you a suit, but could not get a hold of you, and that I needed information from your tailor, which she gave to me. And then I got your measurements.”

“You are a stunning little weasel—do you know that?”

“What does this mean? A weasel. I’m not a weasel.”

“Sneaky. Weasels are sneaky.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, feeling pleased with that. “I am sneaky. So. A weasel it is.”

“You know,” he said, pausing at the center of the room. “You’re the only one who knows. The only one who knows who I am. Everyone else in this world knows Maximus King, and some might know about The King, that much-whispered-about super soldier. But they don’t know both.”

“I know both. Though what I do wonder is if actually no one knows either one. Do you know?”

“What kind of question is that?”

She shrugged. She shouldn’t keep staring at him. He really was desperately handsome, and it was throwing her off-balance.

He was the kind of man who made a woman do foolish things. Those were the kinds of things she knew about from her staff. They had become her friends. And she could admit she had hired women her age so that she might have some friends.

She had missed a lot of life.

And she listened as they sighed and moaned and talked about all the ways they were fools for the men they claimed to love. Annick had found it incredibly off-putting. But she was also curious; she couldn’t deny it. She did not know men. And that was... It was a difficult realization.

She had lived around them and been kept by them, but men to her were nothing more than imposing physical presences. Every one of her captors had disgusted her. Every one. But what she felt when she looked at Maximus was not disgust. Not even close. She had a feeling it connected up to all that long-suffering sighing of the women she knew. But she also could not quite imagine what it would mean. Physical intimacy like that. She knew what it was, in the practical sense. Knew what it was physically. But she did not really understand why a person would do it.

She looked at him, and heat stole over her body.

Do you really not understand?

“An honest one,” she said. “The man you were at your house, the man when you woke up on the plane, the man you are now, they are not all the same man. So I wonder. Do you know which is real? Are any of them real?”

“Here’s a hint. I was this man once. This one. Maximus King. Charming and easy to be around. With absolutely no blood on his hands.” He paused for a moment. “Until I wasn’t.”

“I see. Something happened to you.”

“Yes. Something happened to me.”

Except, she had the sense that that wasn’t strictly true either. That he was holding something back, even saying that much.

“Get your suit,” she said. “And dress for dinner. You will join me and we will go over the timeline for my plans. I am eager to speak of such things.”

Then she turned and left him there, feeling trembly and shaky and not entirely certain what was happening inside of her.

But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that in just two weeks, she would be Queen. And Maximus King was here to protect her.

She had done it.

That was all that mattered.