Читать книгу The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection - Кейт Хьюит, Aimee Carson - Страница 104

CHAPTER ELEVEN

SANDRO ATTEMPTED TO listen as one of his cabinet ministers talked, his voice reminding him of the buzzing of a bumblebee that flung itself against the window of one of the palace’s meeting rooms. He’d been closeted in here with his cabinet for nearly three hours and he’d barely been able to hear a word that had been said.

All because of Liana.

Ever since he’d unburdened himself to her he’d felt as if they were closer than ever. He loved her more than ever, for simply loving him. And that fact—that they actually loved each other—felt like an incredible blessing, a miracle.

A wonder and a joy.

And yet occasionally, when he glimpsed the shadows in her eyes, the way she’d suddenly turn away, he’d still feel as if she was keeping something from him. Hiding part of herself, but he didn’t want to press. Demand answers she might not be ready to give. They had time, after all. Their love was new, perhaps fragile. He wasn’t ready to test it in that way.

They had time.

‘Your Highness?’

With effort Sandro jerked his gaze back to his expectant cabinet and attempted to focus on the discussion of domestic policy that had been taking up the better part of the afternoon.

‘Yes?’

The minister of economic policy cleared his throat. ‘We were just going to take a look at the budget Prince Leo proposed....’

Sandro glanced down at the painstakingly and laboriously made list of figures he’d assumed his ministers had put together. Not just Leo.

‘Leo drafted this budget?’ he asked, heard how sharp his voice sounded. ‘When?’

He saw several ministers glance at Leo sitting on the other end of the table and an unease that had been skirting the fringes of his mind for months now suddenly swooped down and grabbed him by the throat. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

‘A few years back, when—’ one of the ministers began, glancing uncertainly at Leo, whose face was expressionless, his body still.

‘Years,’ Sandro repeated, his mind spinning. Years ago, when Leo had thought he would be king.

He turned to stare at his brother, who gazed evenly back. ‘I didn’t realise you had taken such an interest, Leo,’ he murmured. His father would have been alive, of course, and reigning as king. Leo would have been waiting, no more than a reluctant placeholder. Or so Sandro had thought.

But perhaps his brother hadn’t been so reluctant, after all.

‘I took an interest in all government policy,’ Leo answered, and Sandro couldn’t tell a thing from his tone. ‘Naturally I wanted to be prepared.’

‘For when you would become king,’ Sandro clarified, and he felt a silent tension ripple its way around the room, felt it in Leo’s body as well as his own.

‘Yes.’

The air felt charged, electric. Why hadn’t Leo told him this before? Why had he kept it from him, like some damn secret he was the only one who didn’t know?

‘Perhaps we ought to review your proposals,’ Sandro said after a moment. ‘I’d be interested in knowing just what they are.’

Something flickered across Leo’s face, something sad, almost like grief. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’ll have my assistant put all the relevant paperwork in your study.’

They held each other’s gaze for a moment longer, a moment that felt taut with tension, almost hostile. Then Sandro broke first, reaching for another sheaf of papers as the meeting went on.

* * *

Three hours later Sandro sat in his father’s study, dazed by what he had learned and read. What he had never known, even if he should have. Guessed, or at least wondered about.

For fifteen years Leo had thought he would be king. Sandro had been utterly out of the picture, disinherited, as good as forgotten, and Leo would have been preparing for his own kingship, planning on it. And then Sandro had swept in and taken it away without so much as a passing thought for his brother.

He sank onto a chair in his study, his head in his hands. He’d spent the past few hours reading all of Leo’s proposals, well-thought-out multi-year plans for industry, economic policy, energy efficiency. After his father’s outdated and uninterested reign, Leo had been poised to take Maldinia in a whole new and exciting direction.

Until Sandro had returned and taken it all away from him.

Sandro’s mind spun with realisations, with new understanding about the nature of the coolness between him and the brother he’d once loved more than any other person. The brother who had hero-worshipped him as a child. The brother who he had left because he’d been so angry and hurt by his father’s contempt and rejection.

The brother, he thought hollowly, who would make an excellent king.

Better than he would.

Why had Leo never told him of his ambitions, his plans? When Sandro had returned, Leo had not made a single protest. He’d stepped aside so quickly Sandro had assumed he’d been relieved to be done of his duty. He’d projected his own feelings onto Leo without ever really considering how his brother might have changed over the past decade and a half.

Yet the uncertainty had always been there, lingering. The fear that Leo would make a better king than he would—deserved to be king more than he did—had always taunted him from the dark corners of his heart and mind.

And now?

Now, Sandro thought numbly, he should step aside and let his brother rule as he’d been intending to for so long. As he deserved to. The cabinet would surely approve; their respect and admiration for Leo and his proposals had been evident in every word they’d spoken this afternoon.

And if Leo were king...Sandro would be free, as he’d claimed he always wanted. He could return to California, take up the reins of his IT firm once more. Be his own man. Live his own life.

Why did the thought make his stomach sour and his fists clench?

He knew why; of course he did. Because of Liana. Liana had married him to become queen. No matter what feelings had since grown between them since then, he could not escape that truth. He couldn’t escape the hard reality that their marriage was that of a king and queen, based on convenience and duty. Not a man and woman deeply in love, as much as he might still wish for it. As much as it had felt like that, for the past few weeks.

Weeks. They’d only had weeks together, little more than a handful of days. Put that against fifteen years of Leo working for the monarchy and there was no question. No contest.

A knock sounded on the door and Sandro jerked his head up, blinking the room back into focus. ‘Come in.’

‘Sandro?’ Leo stood in the doorway.

Sandro stared at his brother and felt a pressure build in his chest. Everything inside him felt so tight and aching he could barely force the words out. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

Quietly Leo closed the door, leaned against it. ‘Tell you what, exactly?’

‘How hard you’ve been working these past fifteen years—’

Leo raised an eyebrow. ‘Did you think I’d been slacking off?’

‘No, but—’ Sandro raked his hands through his hair, shook his head. ‘I thought— I thought— I don’t know what I thought.’

‘Exactly,’ Leo answered, and with a jolt Sandro realised that underneath his brother’s unruffled attitude was a deep, latent anger—an anger he was now giving voice to, even as his tone remained steady. ‘You didn’t think. You haven’t thought about me or what I’ve been doing when you were away for fifteen years, Sandro, and you didn’t think about me when you returned.’

Sandro stared at Leo, felt a hot rush of shame sweep over him. ‘That’s not true, Leo. I did think of you.’

‘In passing?’ The cynicism in his brother’s voice tore at him. ‘A moment here or there? You didn’t even say goodbye.’

Sandro glanced down. No more excuses. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘I should have. I should have done it all differently.’

‘So why did you leave, out of curiosity?’ Leo asked after a moment. ‘Did it all just get a bit much for you?’

‘I suppose you could say that. I felt— I honestly felt as if I’d lose my soul if I stayed another minute. All the lies, Leo, all the pretending. I couldn’t stand it.’

‘Neither could I.’

‘I know.’ Sandro dragged in a breath. ‘And I’m sorry if it felt as if I were dumping you in it. But when Father disinherited me— Well, I had no choice then. I had no place here.’

Leo’s expression tightened. ‘He only disinherited you because you told him you were leaving.’

‘I was bluffing,’ Sandro confessed flatly. He felt that familiar ache in his chest. ‘I was trying to make him admit— Oh, God, I don’t even know what. That he needed me. Loved me.’ He blinked hard and set his jaw. ‘Stupid, I know.’

He couldn’t look at Leo, didn’t want to see the pity or scorn on his brother’s face. ‘Not stupid,’ Leo said after a moment. ‘Naive, maybe, in believing there was anything good in him. He was the most selfish man I ever knew.’

‘And I can’t believe I didn’t see that until I was eighteen years old. You saw through him from the first, didn’t you? And I insisted on believing he was a good man. That he loved me.’

Leo shrugged. ‘I was always more cynical than you.’

‘I am sorry,’ Sandro said again, and he felt his regret and remorse with every fibre of his being. He hoped his brother did too. ‘I should have reached out to you. Explained. And when I came back I should have asked if you still wanted to be king—’

‘It’s not a game of pass the parcel, Sandro. Father chose you to be king. He never really wanted me.’

Sandro shook his head. ‘That’s not true. It was me he didn’t want.’

Leo let out a hard bark of laughter. ‘Oh? How do you reckon that?’

‘He told me. When I threatened to leave. He said he didn’t care, I should go right ahead, because he had another son who would do just as well.’

Leo stared at him for a long moment. ‘He never acted as if he thought I would,’ he finally said. ‘He was always telling me how I was second choice, second best, and he only put up with me at all because you were out of the picture.’

Sandro shook his head slowly. ‘What a bastard.’

‘I know.’

They sat in silence for a moment, but it lacked the tension and hostility of a few moments before. It felt more like grief.

‘Even when I came back,’ Sandro finally said, the words painful to admit even though he knew Leo needed to hear them, ‘he said he’d still rather have you as his heir. It was only because of the media fallout with Alyse that he summoned me.’

‘He was just looking for an excuse to get you back.’

‘I don’t know.’ Sandro sat back in his chair, weary and heartsick at the thought of how their father had manipulated them for so long. Hurt them with his casual cruelty. ‘It’s all so pointless. Why did he want us both to feel like a second choice? What good would it do?’

‘Because he was a weak man and he wanted us to be weak. Strength scared him. If one of us was actually a decent king, his own legacy would look even worse.’

‘Maybe so.’ They were both silent for a moment, and then, a new heaviness inside him, Sandro spoke again. ‘And you would be a good king, Leo, no matter what our father thought.’

Leo just shrugged. ‘I would have done my duty, just as you will.’

‘I wish I’d known—’

‘Do you, really?’ There was no anger in Leo’s voice, just a certain shrewdness. ‘Because you never asked.’

‘I know.’ His own weakness shamed him. He hadn’t asked because he hadn’t really wanted to know, no matter what he said now. Hadn’t wanted to consider that not only did he not deserve his title, but his brother did. ‘I’ve been ashamed of myself, Leo. For running away all those years ago. For not being strong enough to stay. What kind of king acts like that?’

Leo was silent for a long moment. ‘Sometimes it’s stronger to go.’

‘It didn’t feel like strength to me.’

‘You did what you needed to do, Sandro. There’s no point raking yourself over the coals now. The past is finished.’

‘It’s not finished,’ Sandro said quietly. ‘Not yet.’

Leo frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

He met his brother’s gaze squarely. ‘You should be king.’

Leo narrowed his eyes. ‘Sandro—’

‘I shouldn’t have come back,’ he continued steadily, as if Leo hadn’t even spoken. ‘If I hadn’t, you’d be king now. All those plans, all those proposals—you’d have put them into place.’

Leo just shrugged again, but Sandro saw a certain tautness to his brother’s mouth, a hardness in his eyes. He was right; his brother still wanted to be king. Still should be king. ‘Tell me, Leo, that there isn’t at least a part of you that wants what you deserve. What you’d been preparing for, for half of your life. It’s only natural—’

‘Fine. Yes.’ Leo bit off the words and spat them out. ‘I’ll admit it. A part. It’s hard to let go of certain expectations of what you think your life is going to look like. I thought I’d be king, and I wanted to be a damn good one after Father. Then in the matter of a moment it was snatched away from me. I won’t pretend that didn’t sting a little, Sandro.’

‘More than a little.’

‘Fine. Yes. What does it matter now?’

‘It matters now,’ Sandro said quietly, ‘because I should abdicate. Let you take the throne as planned.’

Leo’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Don’t be ridiculous—’

‘I’ve only been king for six months. A blip on the radar. The people here don’t even know me, except as the brother who ran away.’ His smile twisted. ‘The prodigal son. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. I suppose I was too blinded by my own misery. But it makes sense, Leo. You know it does.’

‘I don’t know anything of the sort.’ Leo’s jaw bunched. ‘Stop talking nonsense, Sandro.’

‘It isn’t nonsense—’

‘Do you want to abdicate?’

He heard curiosity in his brother’s voice, but also a certain eagerness, even if Leo would insist otherwise with every breath in his body. Sandro knew better, and he kept his face blank, his voice toneless, as he gave the only answer he could. ‘Of course I do. It’s the right thing to do. You’d make a better king, and I never wanted to be king anyway. You know that, Leo.’ He felt as if the words were tearing great strips off his soul, pieces from his heart, and yet he knew it was the only thing he could say. Could do, even if it meant losing Liana. His brother deserved his rightful place.

And he deserved his.

Woodenly he rose from the desk. ‘It shouldn’t take long to put it into motion.’

‘Sandro, wait. Don’t do anything rash—’

‘It’s not rash. It’s obvious to me, Leo. And to you, I think.’

He turned, saw his brother shaking his head, but there was a light in his eyes neither of them could deny. He wanted this. Of course he did.

Smiling, Sandro put a hand on Leo’s shoulder. ‘I’m happy for you,’ he said, and then he left the room.

* * *

Liana gazed in the mirror, smoothed a strand of hair away from her forehead and checked that her dress—a full-skirted evening gown in a silvery pink—looked all right.

She heard the door to her bedroom open and saw with a light heart that it was Sandro.

‘I was wondering where you were. We’re due at the Museum of Fine Art in an hour for the opening of the new wing.’ Sandro didn’t answer, and she smoothed the skirt of her evening gown. ‘I don’t know about this dress. Do I look too much like Cinderella?’

‘An apt comparison.’

She laughed lightly and shook her head. ‘How’s that?’

‘She found her prince, didn’t she? At the ball. And then she lost him again.’

For the first time since he’d entered the room Liana registered his tone: cool and flat. She turned to face him with a frown. ‘What’s wrong, Sandro?’

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’

Confusion deepened into unease. Alarm. ‘You’re acting rather strange.’

‘I had an eye-opening cabinet meeting today.’

‘Oh?’ Liana eyed him warily, noting the almost eerie stillness of his body, the blankness of his face. She hadn’t seen him look like this in weeks...since they’d first been strangers to one another, talking marriage. ‘Eye-opening?’ she repeated cautiously. ‘Why don’t you tell me about it?’

‘The details don’t matter,’ he dismissed. ‘But it’s made me realise—’ He stopped suddenly, and for a moment the blankness of his face was broken by a look of such anguish that Liana started forward, her hands outstretched.

‘Sandro, what is it? What’s wrong?’

‘I’m planning to abdicate, Liana.’

* * *

Sandro watched the shock rush over Liana, making her eyes widen, her face go pale. She looked, he thought heavily, horrified.

‘Abdicating?’ she finally repeated, her voice little more than a whisper. ‘But...why?’

He felt emotions catch in his chest, words lodge in his throat and tangle on his tongue. So far her reaction was far from hopeful. She looked shell-shocked. Devastated. And all because she wouldn’t be queen. ‘Does it really matter?’

‘Of course it matters.’

‘Why?’ The one word was raw, torn from him. He stared at her, willing her expression to clear, for her to say it didn’t matter, after all. She’d follow him anywhere. She’d love him without a throne or a title or a crown. But why should she say that? She obviously didn’t feel it.

She didn’t say anything. She just stared at him helplessly, her face pale and shocked as she shook her head slowly. ‘Because, Sandro, you’re king. And I’m your wife.’

‘My queen.’

‘Yes, your queen! You can’t just leave that behind—’

‘But I did before, as you’ve reminded me—’

‘I’ve reminded you? When was the last time I’ve mentioned that?’

‘You haven’t forgotten.’

‘I don’t have amnesia! It’s not something you can just forget.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Why are you thinking of this?’ Liana asked, her voice wavering, her expression still dazed. ‘It seems so sudden—’

‘And unwelcome, obviously.’ There could be no mistaking her disappointment, her distress at learning he might no longer be king. And she would no longer be queen.

‘Of course it’s unwelcome,’ Liana said, and Sandro’s last frail hope withered to ash. ‘We were just starting to build a life here, a life I thought you were happy with—’

‘Being king is not my life. It’s not me.’ The words, he knew, had been in his heart, burning in his chest for his whole life. Hadn’t he wanted his parents, his friends, anyone to see that he was more than this title, this role? Hadn’t he wanted just one person in his life to see him as something other than future king, heir apparent?

And obviously Liana didn’t. He hated that he’d put himself out there again. ‘But obviously,’ he continued, his voice cold and lifeless now, ‘you don’t feel the same.’

Liana went even paler, even stiller. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Our marriage doesn’t have much point now, does it?’ he asked, his mouth forming a horrible parody of a smile. ‘If I’m not king, you’re not queen.’

Something flashed across her face but he couldn’t tell what it was. ‘True,’ she said, her voice expressionless. She’d assembled her features into a mask, the Madonna face he recognised from when they’d first met, icy and composed. Sandro hated seeing her like that again, when he’d seen her so vibrant and beautiful and alive. So real with him...except perhaps none of it had been real, after all, or at least not real enough.

‘And if our marriage has no point,’ he forced himself to continue, ‘then there’s no point to being married.’

He didn’t see so much as a flicker on her face. Damn it, he thought, say something. Fight for me. For us. Here he was, pushing as he always did, practically begging. Accept me. Love me. And of course she didn’t.

She just remained silent, staring and still. No response at all. Even so Sandro ached to go to her, take her in his arms. Kiss her into responding to him, just as he had when they’d first met. He wanted to demand that she admit the days they had were real, and they could have more. That she could love him even if he weren’t king.

Still Liana didn’t speak, and with a sound that was somewhere between a sneer and a sob Sandro stalked out of the room.

* * *

Liana stood there, unmoving and silent as the door clicked shut. He’d left. In a matter of moments—not much more than a minute—her entire life, all her hope and happiness, had been destroyed.

Just as before.

Just as when Chiara had choked to death and she’d watched and done nothing. Been unable to do anything, and that appalling lack of action would haunt her for all of her days.

And had she learned nothing in the past twenty years? Once again she’d let her own stunned silence damn her. She had seen from Sandro’s expression that he wanted something from her—but what? As she’d stared at him, his expression so horribly blank, she’d had no idea what it was. And while her mind spun and her body remained still, he walked out of her room.

Out of her life.

As if the realisation had kick-started her, she suddenly jerked to life, strode to the door, and wrenched it open. Sandro was halfway down the hallway, his bearing straight and proud as he walked away from her.

‘Stop right there, Sandro.’

He stiffened, stilled, then slowly turned around. ‘I don’t think we have anything more to say to each other.’

‘You don’t think?’ Liana repeated in disbelief. She grabbed handfuls of her frothy dress as she strode towards him, full of sudden, consuming rage. ‘You just drop that bombshell on me and walk out of my life with hardly a word, and you think that’s it?’ Her voice shook and tears started in her eyes, although she didn’t know whether they were of anger or grief. ‘You told me you loved me, Sandro. Was that a lie?’

‘You told me the same,’ he answered coolly.

She stared at him for a moment, trying to fathom what had brought him to this decision. ‘I think I get it,’ she finally said slowly. ‘This is another ultimatum.’

‘Another—’

‘Just like with your father.’

‘Don’t—’

‘Don’t what? Don’t tell the truth? You threatened to leave once before, Sandro, with your father all those years ago. You wanted him to admit he loved you and he didn’t. He disappointed you and so you left, and now you’re doing the same to me, threatening me—’

‘It wasn’t a threat.’

‘Maybe you don’t think it was. Maybe you are seriously considering abdicating. But you didn’t come to me as a husband, Sandro. As a—a lover and a friend. You didn’t sit me down and tell me what was on your mind, in your heart, and what I might think about it. No, you just walk in and drop your damned bomb and then leave before the debris has even cleared.’

‘Your response was obvious—’

‘Oh, really? Because as I recall I didn’t say much of anything. I was still processing it all and you decided that meant I couldn’t love you if you weren’t king. You jumped to so many damn conclusions you made my head spin.’ And her heart break.

Sandro folded his arms. ‘You made your reasons for our marriage clear, Liana. You wanted to be queen—’

‘You’re going to throw that at me? After everything we’ve said and done and felt?’ She shook her head, her throat too thick with tears to speak. Finally she got some words out. ‘Damn you, Sandro. Damn you for only thinking about your feelings and not mine.’

A muscle flickered in his jaw. ‘So you’re denying it?’

‘Denying what?’

‘That you married me to become queen—’

‘No, of course not. That is why I chose to marry you. There were a lot of messed-up reasons behind that choice, but what I am trying to say—what I thought you knew—is that I’ve changed. As I thought you had changed, except maybe you didn’t because I thought you were a cold-hearted bastard when I met you, and you certainly seem like one now.’ He blinked, said nothing, and the floodgates of Liana’s soul burst open. She drew in a wet, revealing breath.

‘I never told you about Chiara’s death.’

He blinked again, clearly surprised, maybe discomfited. ‘You told me she choked—’

‘Yes, she had a seizure and she choked on her own vomit. But what I didn’t tell you was that I was there. The only one there. My parents were away and our nanny was busy. I was alone in the room with her and I watched her choke and I couldn’t move to help her. Couldn’t even speak. I panicked, Sandro, so badly that it caused my sister’s death. I could have run to her, could have called for help, and instead I was frozen to the floor with shock and fear.’ She felt her chest go tight and her vision tunnel as in her mind’s eye Chiara’s desperate face stared up at her in mute appeal. And she’d simply stood there, wringing her hands. ‘By the time I finally got myself to move, it was too late.’ She’d run to her, turned her over. Cleared out her mouth with her own scrabbling fingers, sobbing her sister’s name. And Chiara had just stared lifelessly back. Too late.

Liana drew in another ragged breath. ‘I as good as killed her, Sandro, and I’ll live with that for my whole life.’ She realised, distantly, that tears were running down her face but she didn’t care. Didn’t wipe them away. ‘And when you delivered your awful ultimatum, I froze again. Didn’t speak. Didn’t move. But damn if I’m going to lose my soul again, Sandro, because I didn’t have the courage or the presence of mind to do something.’

She stepped closer to him, close enough to poke him in the chest. ‘I love you. You love me. At least I hope you do, after what I just told you—’

He shook his head, his own eyes bright. ‘Do you really think something like that would make me change my mind?’

‘I don’t know. It changed my parents’ minds. At least, it felt like that. We’ve never recovered. I never recovered, because I spent the past twenty years living my life as an apology and cloaking myself in numbness because feeling meant feeling all the guilt and shame and fear, and I couldn’t do that and survive.’

‘Liana—’ Sandro’s face was twisted with anguish, but she wasn’t done.

‘So we love each other, then, and I might not know much about love but I do know that when you love someone, you believe the best of them. You don’t wait for them to let you down. You don’t set up situations so they fail. Maybe you’ve been looking for love for most of your life, Sandro, since you didn’t get it from your parents. Guess what? I didn’t get it either. My father has barely looked at me since Chiara died. But even I know enough to realise that you don’t find love when you act like it’s going to disappoint you. When you don’t trust it or the person who is meant to love you for five minutes of honest conversation.’ She shook her head, empty now, so terribly empty. ‘You think I disappointed you by not saying something when you wanted me to. Well, you know what, Sandro? You disappointed me.’

And with another hopeless shake of her head, she turned and walked back down the hall, away from him.