Amalie could only imagine what a violin made for a queen would fetch—especially a queen who’d left such a huge legacy to the classical music world. It made her joyful and sad all at the same time to know this would have been the violin Rhea had used at Carnegie Hall, when she’d played with Amalie’s father all those years ago.
‘I am bequeathing it to you,’ the King said.
‘What do you mean?’
Surely he had to be talking about her using it for the gala?
‘It is yours, child.’
‘Mine...?’
His smile was sad. ‘It’s sat in darkness for five years. It needs to be played. I know you will treasure it and I know you will honour Rhea’s memory. Take it, child—it’s yours.’
Amalie was truly lost for words. She knew this was no joke, but all the same... The King of Agon had just given her one of his wife’s most prized possessions—a gift beyond value.
‘Thank you,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders with helplessness at her inability to come up with anything more meaningful.
‘No. Thank you,’ he answered enigmatically, then beckoned his nurse over and spoke to her in Greek.
The nurse took hold of his wheelchair.
‘And now I bid you a good night,’ Astraeus said. ‘It has been a pleasure meeting you, despinis.’
‘It has been an honour, Your Majesty.’
Talos had risen to his feet, so she followed suit, only to have the King take her hand and tug her down so he could speak in her ear. ‘I’m glad my grandson has found you. Please look after him for me when I’m gone.’
In another breach of protocol she kissed his cold cheek and whispered, ‘I promise I’ll try.’
It was the best she could do. She doubted Talos would ever give her the chance.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A DRIVER RETURNED them to Talos’s estate. They’d been sitting in the back, the partition up, for a few minutes before he spoke.
‘What did my grandfather say to you?’
That was what he was concerned about? Not that she’d been given a family heirloom? The heirloom that now sat on her lap, where she held it tightly.
‘I think he whispered it to me because he didn’t want you to hear,’ she answered, striving for lightness.
‘Don’t be absurd. I’m his grandson. We have no secrets.’
She finally found the courage to look at him. ‘You hold on to your secrets extremely well. You must have inherited that from somewhere.’
‘Are you deliberately talking in riddles?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me he was ill?’
His jaw set in the clenched fashion it had been fixed in throughout the evening. Her heart ached to see it and she wished she could breach the wall he’d erected between them. Even before they’d become lovers she’d never felt as if she couldn’t touch him, but right then she was certain that if she reached out he would recoil from her.
‘My grandfather’s illness is not a subject for idle gossip.’
‘I appreciate that.’
She took a breath. It wasn’t so much his answer that had cut, but the dismissive tone in which he’d said it. As if she were no one.
‘But if you’d told me the truth about his health from the beginning...’
‘Then what?’ he asked bitingly. ‘You would have agreed to perform for him without having to be blackmailed into it?’
‘I don’t know.’ She tightened her grip on the violin case, soothing her fingers on the velvety material. It was the only part of her she could soothe. ‘I don’t know if things would have been different—my point is you never gave me the chance to find out if I would have reacted differently.’
‘You wouldn’t have,’ he said, with tight assurance.
‘We’ll never know.’ Now she clenched her own teeth, before loosening them. ‘What I don’t understand is why you haven’t told me since. We’ve shared a bed for over a fortnight.’
There had been plenty of opportunities for him to tell her. Times when she’d asked him if there was something wrong. The time she’d asked him outright if the gala held more importance to him than the reason he’d shared with her.
‘Do not presume that sharing a bed means I owe you anything.’
She had never known him to be this cold. She’d never known him to be cold at all. When something angered him Talos burned.