It was exactly what Sydney had said. And that made him angrier than ever. He gritted his teeth and apologized, though he was sick to death of saying how sorry he was. “It’s all my fault. I can see now I’ve handled everything wrong.”
His mother put her cool hand against his cheek. “No, darling. You did what you had to do—except for not telling me the moment you left her. Lili will need me now. I’ll go to her right away.” And with that, she swept from the room.
Into the echoing silence after her departure, Rule said, “I think I would like to hit someone.”
His father nodded. “I know the feeling.”
“I’ve broken Lili’s heart. And my wife is furious at me.”
“Lili will get over this, Rule. Leave it to your mother. She loves Lili like one of our own and she will know just what to say to comfort her—and why is your bride angry with you?” His father frowned. “You’ve told her already, about the boy?”
Rule swore. “No. Not yet. And I won’t. Not … for a while, in any case. Sydney’s upset about Lili. She sympathizes with Lili. She says I used Lili as my ‘ace in the hole,’ as a way to hedge my bet in case I didn’t find someone I really wanted to marry before Montedoran law took my title and my fortune.”
“She sounds like a rare person, your new wife. Not many brides have sympathy for the ‘other’ woman.”
“Sydney is like no one I’ve ever known,” he said miserably.
“That’s good, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know what to think. She has me spinning in circles. I don’t know which end is up.”
“A good woman will do that, turn your world upside down.”
“I’ve mucked everything up.” Rule sank to the sofa again, shaking his head. “Sydney believes absolutely in honesty and truth and integrity. She’s disappointed in me because I wasn’t honest with Lili, because I didn’t make my true feelings—or lack of them—clear to Lili long ago. I keep thinking, if Sydney can hardly forgive me for not being totally honest with Lili, how can I ever tell her the truth about Trevor?”
His father sat down beside him. He said gently, “You have a real problem.”
“I used to see myself as a good man, a man who did what was right….”
“Do you want my advice?”
“You’ll only tell me to tell her, and to tell her now.”
His father’s lips curved in a wry smile. “So that would be a no, then. You don’t want my advice?”
“I can’t tell her. Honesty is everything for her. If I was going to tell her, I should have done it at the beginning, that first day I met her, before I pushed for marriage …”
“Why didn’t you?”
“She confided in me concerning her past romantic relationships. I knew she had very good reasons not to put her trust in men. If I’d told her before I married her, she might never have allowed me to get close to her. Certainly she wouldn’t have let me near her in the time allotted before the twenty-fourth of June. It’s as I said to you on the phone. There was no good choice. I made the choice that gave me a fighting chance. Or at least, so I thought at the time.”
“What do you have on your calendar?”
Rule arched a brow. “And what has my schedule got to do with my complete failure to behave as a decent human being?”
“I think you should clear it.”
“My calendar?”
“Yes. Fulfill whatever obligations you can’t put off here and do it as quickly as possible. Reschedule everything else. And then return to Texas. Make it up with Sydney, get through this rough patch, spend time with Trevor, strengthen your bonds with both of them. And return to Montedoro when your wife is ready to come with you.”
That morning, Sydney actually had two reporters lurking on her front lawn. When she backed out of her garage on the way to the office, she stopped in the driveway, rolled her window down and let them snap away with their cameras for a good sixty seconds.
They fired questions at her while they took the pictures.
She told them that yes, she had married her prince and she was very happy, thank you. No, she wasn’t willing to share any of their plans with the press.
One asked snidely if she’d met the Alagonian princess yet. She said no, but she was looking forward to making Princess Liliana’s acquaintance—and in case they hadn’t noticed, hers was a gated community. She would be calling neighborhood security the next time she found them on her property. That said, she drove away.