Trella hadn’t reacted beyond a remote, “I’ve played this game a long time. Say whatever you have to.”
She had played the isolation game as well and did know how to amuse herself. He wasn’t needed and didn’t know why he counted down the minutes until he could dodge the paparazzi on the hospital steps and enter the guarded sanctum of her room.
Her prison was as cozy as it could be made. Monitors and equipment feeds were tucked behind panels. The walls were a comfortable mocha, the blankets printed with Elazar’s national pasqueflower—the white buttercup that grew wild in their alpine meadows. Trella even wore regular clothes rather than a functional hospital gown.
But she reclined on the bed twenty-four-seven. Rising to use the toilet or shower was all the activity she was allowed.
Because of potential rupture.
Her doctor had scared the hell out of him when Trella had been admitted, explaining the need for such vigilance.
Trella had been stoic. She had checked into Hospital del Re the night they’d married and, despite only having resided in his apartment for a week, he’d felt her absence. Why? She’d been angry with him, cool when she’d been forced to speak to him, but somehow she had infused a sense of liveliness to the palace. The sound of her laugh in another room, or even just the splash of color from an abandoned scarf, made it less of a museum and more of a... Hell, it had always been his home. How could it suddenly feel like one?
He shook off the impression.
“You’re very well-informed,” he said, realizing the silence was stretching. “Yet you’ve never once asked me how she is.”
“How is she?” She used her among-the-people tone of fabricated warmth, smile inching toward supercilious.
Anxious, he wanted to say. Trella was keeping herself busy, but he read the stress that lingered in the corners of her mouth and the tension between her brows.
“As well as could be expected.”
“Then you should be able to leave her.”
“I know what you’re thinking.” He shook his head. “I’m acting like a decent human being, not becoming attached.”
Yet he was indulging himself with the visits. She hadn’t asked him to come.
I’ve done this before, she’d said of her seclusion, then had revealed her best coping strategy. She was an accomplished sketch artist.
Practice, she had dismissed when he went through her book. He’d been taken with each image. Some were graceful gowns, some intricate patterns for beadwork. Some were colored as brightly as a children’s book and others were shades of gray.
Then he had found one of their wedding day, copied from a photo her mother had taken. Trella’s hint of a smile as she gazed up at him held shy awe. He wouldn’t call his expression tender, but there was no hiding that he was absorbed by her doe-eyed stare. The captured moment was uncomfortably revealing, yet honest enough he couldn’t be ashamed.
“I meant that for Mama, but I think you should hide it in the palace, to be discovered a hundred years from now. Give the art historians something to get excited about.” She tore the page from the book and signed it. Her conspiratorial grin as she rolled it had tugged at him to play along.
It had been the first time she’d warmed up to him since their marriage, eyes sparkling with the vivacity that had first ensnared him in Paris.
He’d accepted the drawing with the strangest tingle of pleasure, liking the idea of her being resurrected generations from now, pulled from the footnotes and celebrated.
For a moment, there’d been nothing between them but this frivolous secret they were planning to keep. Then, as their gazes stayed locked, sexual awareness had crept in. The attraction was still there, ignored and subverted, but in those seconds, he felt the lava churning below the surface, swirling and burning, building with pressure against the cracks.
“Surely you can make arrangements with one of her family members if the round-the-clock care at the hospital isn’t sufficient?”
He snapped back to the breakfast room and his grandmother’s facetious tone. The heat in him faded.
“I’ve discussed that with her.” He had suspected Trella was homesick after catching her tearily viewing photos of her infant nieces. “Her brother and his wife are tied up with their new twins. Her mother is on hand to help them. Her sister can’t leave her new husband.” They were trying to get pregnant, if Xavier was reading the subtext correctly. “And something has gone off the rails with the brother who was engaged. She’d rather not speak to him, so...”
“You’re being manipulated.”
“By whom?” He held her gaze, turning one of her best weapons—barely disguised derision—against her.