‘But as for us, I want us to live separately. I’ll still live in the palace, but in a separate wing. I’ll continue with my own interests and charitable causes, and I’ll appear with you in public, but privately we won’t spend time together or have a relationship.’
‘What...?’ Mateo’s mouth gaped open as he stared at her. ‘But...’
‘I think you’ll find this works best for both of us,’ Rachel said firmly, even though she felt as if her heart were being torn into little pieces and then stamped on. How could this be better? And yet how could she survive otherwise?
‘We’re married, Rachel—’
‘A marriage of convenience only.’
‘I still need an heir—’
‘That’s no longer an issue,’ Rachel told him woodenly. ‘Because I’m pregnant.’
* * *
Mateo stared at Rachel, his mind spinning uselessly, as she told him she was expecting his child and then rose from the table and walked out of the dining room with stiff, wounded dignity.
He slumped back in his chair, hardly able to take it all in. Rachel living separately from him. Trying not to love him.
Pregnant with his child...
A sound close to a moan escaped him as he raked his hands through his hair. How had this happened? And why did he not feel relieved—that Rachel was suggesting exactly the sort of arrangement that should suit him? No complications. No messy emotions. No danger, no risk, no guilt or grief.
This should be exactly what he wanted, but in that moment Mateo knew it wasn’t. It wasn’t what he wanted at all. Instead of feeling relieved, he was gutted. Eviscerated, as if the heart of him had been drawn right out, replaced by an empty shell, the wind whistling through him.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, his mind and heart both empty, but eventually a member of staff came to clear the plates, and Mateo stumbled out of the room.
He must have fallen asleep at some point in the night, although time seemed to have lost all meaning. He spent most of those endless hours simply staring into space, his mind empty of coherent thought and yet full of memories.
Memories of Rachel...ones he hadn’t even realised he’d had, and yet now held so dear. The way she’d stick a pencil in her messy bun as she was working, and then forget she had it there and search for one uselessly around her until Mateo drew the stub out of her hair and handed it to her with a laugh.
Evenings at their local pub, him with a pint and her with a shandy—such a funny, old-fashioned drink—testing each other on the periodic table. She’d come up with the game first, insisting she could name all the elements faster than he could. Even though he’d won that first time, they’d continued to play the game, finding it funnier with each playing.
And then later, far sweeter memories—Rachel in her wedding gown, her heart in her eyes, and then Rachel with nothing on at all, her hair spread out in a dark wave against the pillow as she looked up at him with so much trust and desire and love.
Yes, love. She loved him. He knew that; he felt it, just as he felt his own love for her, like a river or a force field, something that couldn’t be controlled. Why didn’t he just stop fighting it?
‘Mateo.’ His mother’s gentle voice broke into his thoughts, and Mateo looked up, surprised to see his mother in the doorway of his study. Had he gone to bed? He couldn’t even remember, but sunlight was now streaming through the windows, the fog finally breaking apart.
‘What time is it?’ he asked as he scrubbed his eyes and tried to clear the cobwebs from his mind.
‘Seven in the morning. Have you slept at all?’
‘I don’t know.’
Agathe came into the room, her smile sorrowful and sympathetic as her gaze swept over her son. ‘Is it Rachel?’ she asked quietly.
‘How did you know?’
‘I have been watching you both all this time, and seeing how you love one another. Knowing you would fight it.’
‘I made such a mess of my last relationship,’ Mateo said in a low voice. ‘My love was toxic.’ He choked the words, barely able to get them out.
‘Mateo, that wasn’t your fault.’
‘Wasn’t it?’ He stared at her hopelessly. ‘She said it was.’