The Wedding Night They Never Had by Jackie Ashenden, Millie Adams
CHAPTER ELEVEN
THEYWERETObe married the next day. Neither of them had seen the point in tarrying over the planning of the wedding. It was for security. And it needed to be done. Whatever else she might think about necessity, he knew that she understood that. His family had also arrived. They would be staying for a time after the ceremony, and there really was nothing he could do to persuade them otherwise. Annick, for her part, was pleased. And if he were a different man, he might find it charming.
“It is just that there has not been family in this palace for a very long time,” she explained, when expressing her delight about his family coming to visit. And he found he could not begrudge it to her.
She was so fragile. And yet so determinedly strong all at once. Annick and her chloroform. He had never intended to get himself embroiled in this sort of thing. Had never thought that he would get married. Most especially not after Stella. His love for her had been branded on his soul. Initially. Now what he did was not out of blind grief. It had left him in doubt of eternal love.
Because he didn’t feel that love anymore. He didn’t feel her close to him. That year he had spent loving her could do nothing to close the gap of the sixteen years spent without her. And so, revenge, balancing the scales, that was his quest. It was nothing to do with love. And the things he had learned about his father in the aftermath of it all...
It had twisted everything he thought about the world. Losing Stella had been more than simply losing her. It had meant a change to the way that he saw absolutely everything.
Annick made him feel something.
He did not care for it.
He had shared with her, though, and that had... It had moved things onto strange and shaking ground. There was a connection that he felt with her unlike anything he had experienced before, and that had not been the way this was meant to be.
He was supposed to protect her.
He was supposed to be helping her.
He was not supposed to be affected by her.
“Well, this really is quite something.”
He turned where he stood in the entry to the castle, just in time for his sister Violet and her husband, Javier, to walk through the door. Violet was pregnant and looking glowing. It did something strange to him, to see his younger sister grown in this way. He’d been through it already with Minerva, though it had come out later that the child she had come home from a semester abroad with was not actually her child, but the child of a friend who had needed rescuing. As if thinking of her conjured her up, Minerva came in as well, also pregnant. Dante was with her, carrying their adopted daughter in his arms. And behind them came Robert and Elizabeth King, his parents, who looked tan, fit and remarkably well-preserved. As always.
“This is incredible,” Minerva said. “You both live in such splendid palaces.”
“Cara,”Dante said. “Are you disappointed that I have not bought you a palace? Because I could. Would you prefer an atmospheric ruin in the Highlands? One with a very large library...”
“Yes,” she said. “Would you really buy me a castle?”
“And a pony if you so wish.”
His eyes glittered with humor. And Maximus was surprised to discover how pleased he was with that. His friend had been beset by darkness for years. And Minerva seemed to have brought him out of it. He never would’ve thought that. He would have said that Min was too shy. Too bookish. But she had done wonders for him. He didn’t know the Prince that Violet had married, but he had it on good authority that sunny, flashy Violet had done much the same for him.
He thought of his own fiancée. Wide-eyed, determined, and no less tortured than he was.
His sisters had brought with them a sense that the world could be right. And they had given it to those men that cared for them so.
He could bring nothing of the kind to Annick. And she would hold no magic elixir of healing for him.
They had seen too many dark things. They knew too many hideous truths about the world.
“Well, it’s good to see all of you,” Maximus said, working to put his mask in place. He wouldn’t have to explain that to Annick, which was a blessing. Because Annick understood. Annick knew.
He felt a ripple go through his family, and he turned. Annick was standing in the doorway, wearing her crown and a silver gown that wrapped around her curves.
Annick had taken this dressing-for-how-she-wanted-to-appear thing to heart. Intensely. She was nothing if not blatantly over-the-top at every opportunity.
“Hello,” she said.
“Your Majesty.” His mother curtsied.
“Your Highness,” came from his father.
Minerva curtsied and Dante inclined his head. Javier and Violet stepped forward, shaking Annick’s hand. “Your Highnesses,” Annick said. “It is good of you to come and grace my country.”
“A pleasure,” Javier said. “For I know full well how good it is to be able to share your country with the world after many years of it being on the brink of devastation. My own brother has just reformed our native land of Monte Blanco to a glorious state. And you are more than welcome to come for a visit.”
“I should like that,” Annick said. “I should love to speak to you about all the things that you have done to fix the...atrocities that were visited upon your people. I am working diligently to try and make right what has happened to mine. But it is not so simple always.”
“It never is.”
“Indeed not,” Violet chimed in. “Sometimes they must kidnap someone to accomplish their ends.”
“It makes for an interesting story at parties,” Annick said. “A slightly more interesting story about how we met than many others have, don’t you think?”
Violet laughed, and the rest of his family too. Clearly utterly charmed by this rather serene version of Annick that stood before them.
It was not a part she was playing. And yet she was also not the urchin he’d held in his arms the night before, who had told him dirty jokes, then happily ate pastries in bed and wiped her buttery fingers against his bare chest.
It was all of her, fused into one formidable being.
And it was a sight to behold.
“That is true.” Violet shrugged. “And I have the added bonus of being able to tell people that I was kidnapped specifically so that I could marry his brother. And ended up marrying him myself.”
“We’re interesting if nothing else,” Javier said.
“Quite,” Annick agreed.
“We shall have dinner,” Maximus said. “First, you may all find your bedrooms and put your things away.”
“Will you come with me?” Violet said, smiling. “It’s just that I have packed so many things, and I would hate to inconvenience your staff.”
“What about your husband?”
“Oh, I’ll inconvenience him plenty. It’s only that I still need more arms than that.”
Leave it to Violet to have packed an entire castle.
He followed his sister back out to the front of the palace, and she rounded on him.
“Are you in trouble? Blink twice if you need to leave.”
“It was my idea,” he said.
“Marriage was your idea?”
“Yes,” he said. “It was. She needs help. I’m not marrying her under sufferance.”
“Well, you can leave. We’ll get you diplomatic immunity. Whatever you need.”
“Whatever you need,” Javier agreed.
“I don’t need anything. I promise. Anyway, it’s entirely possible Annick is pregnant with my child. So I should probably stick around.” He knew the act he put on contributed to his family’s response to this. Had they truly known him, they wouldn’t have been half so worried.
“Oh, good God,” Violet said. “You are such a man whore that you had to have sex with the woman who kidnapped you?”
He looked pointedly at his sister’s baby bump. “What kind of person would do such a thing?”
“It’s different,” Violet said. “Isn’t it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you love her?”
He looked at his sister. “No.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
“I don’t need to be in love, Violet. I don’t want to be.”
“Is this because of Stella?”
He knew his sister couldn’t remember Stella well. She’d been too young. But Violet knew that their father wasn’t perfect. He’d sold her in marriage, after all. But she didn’t know about this. And he wasn’t going to explain.
“That was sixteen years ago. And things have changed. I am who I am.”
“So you’re going to marry that beautiful creature and never love her?”
That stung. But this wasn’t the moment to worry about Annick’s emotions. He was here to protect her. He was marrying her to protect her. That was it.
“Annick has a life to get to living. I’m not going to hold her back. Not when it’s her chance to be free.”
“And your chance to maintain the status quo. Congratulations.”
He rounded on his sister. “And what do you mean by that exactly?”
“I think you know. You found yourself a stunning woman who isn’t going to demand fidelity of you. And you get to be a King. Must be fun. And the bonus is that you get to rehab the image of the country. But what about you? Do you ever get deeper than image?”
“And where exactly is all this coming from?” he asked.
“It just seems to me that you found yourself a sort of ideal situation.”
“And yet you don’t sound happy for me.”
“Well, no. Because actually... I hoped for better for you.”
“You don’t know me, Violet. Not as well as you think.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“It wasn’t an accusation,” he said. “Merely an observation.”
His sister produced a purple velvet trunk, which he picked up off the ground and slung over his shoulder, walking back toward the palace. He didn’t need lectures from Violet on how he might proceed with his life. She didn’t know the half of it. Didn’t know the half of him. He strolled back into the palace and saw Annick standing there. Their eyes met. Annick was the only person who did know. His whole family, the people he had grown up with. His parents who had raised him... They didn’t know. Only this woman knew. This woman he had known for a couple of weeks. He didn’t quite know what to do with that realization. So he simply walked on. Tonight, they would have dinner. Tomorrow, they would be married. And it didn’t matter what Violet had to say about it. It was set in stone. It would not change.