‘I asked my father where she was, and when he told me I started to cry. He was furious,’ he said, his voice so controlled, Juno felt her heart implode.
‘Why was he furious?’
He turned, his distant expression becoming quizzical. ‘Hmmm?’
‘Your father, what was he angry about?’
‘Public displays of emotion were not permitted behaviour for a prince,’ he said, his voice so distant, so controlled and unemotional, her heart broke. ‘When we returned to the palace, he punished me accordingly.’
‘He punished you?’ The horror turned her question into a hoarse whisper. ‘How?’
She’d thought he was cynical, pragmatic, even a bit of a snob, a man completely unable to connect with ordinary people, when in reality it was so much more complicated than that. Leo didn’t have a superiority complex, he was wary of public displays of emotion. And now she knew why.
‘By taking a riding crop to my backside.’
‘He hit you? On the day of your mother’s funeral?’
Leo’s face heated at the shocked sympathy shadowing Jade’s eyes. He’d said too much. Far too much. He’d never admitted his father’s dedication to corporal punishment to anyone. Because it would dishonour the monarchy and embarrass him. And it was ancient history now. But it had been so hard to resist her coaxing, and the squeeze of her fingers on his.
‘My father was a hard taskmaster,’ he murmured. ‘I think he believed it was for the best, that I needed to learn early the importance of dignity at all times.’
‘But you were a five-year-old child. Who had just lost his mother, Leo. That’s absolutely hideous—how could he punish you for grieving?’
He shrugged, but the movement felt stiff. Why should her compassion for that unhappy boy mean something now?
‘No one ever accused him of being a kind man, or a loving father,’ he said, the rawness in his throat spreading up his neck. ‘But he was a well-respected king.’
As the words left his lips, they sounded hollow and inadequate.
One thing Jade had shown him in the last few days, as he’d watched her engage with the crowds, treating them as equals instead of inferiors, smiling and laughing and connecting with his subjects in a way he never had, was that his father might have been well respected, but h
e had never been loved. And somehow he had taken that mantel on too, not by accident, but by design. In defending himself, defending that traumatised child, he had closed himself off from all but the most tenuous contact with anyone outside his inner circle.
‘Who cares if he was well respected?’ she said, the certainty in her voice making his ribs ache. Her trembling fingers squeezed his hand, and his heartbeat accelerated. ‘He was still a monster.’
The fierce statement had a lump forming in his throat.
A lump of raw emotion...
He swallowed heavily, trying to force it down.
Don’t let her see you bleed.
He’d become infatuated with the Queen of Monrova in the last week. Not just by her body and her scent and the way she responded to him so instinctively without even realising it. But also by her spirit, her intelligence, her smart mouth, her decidedly wicked sense of humour—and the unconventional way she seemed capable of sharing so much of herself with everyone she met.
But as she stared at him, with that fierce compassion in her eyes, and her fingers gripped his, the lump continued to grow.
‘You deserved so much better,’ she added. ‘You were his son first and foremost, not a prince.’
He let go of her hand, and thrust his fingers through his hair, the tight feeling in his chest becoming unbearable as the car entered the palace courtyard.
‘There’s no need to feel pity for that boy,’ he said, struggling to talk now around the ever-expanding lump. ‘He died a long time ago.’
‘But, Leo, what he did is still sickening and you’re still suffering because...’
‘Stop...’ He pressed a finger to her lips.
Her instinctive shudder of response ignited his senses in ways he understood.