His glance flickered across the lovely, anguished features of the woman he had married. Finally seeing sense was how his father had reacted when he had broken the news that they were splitting up.
‘She has come to her senses. Beatrice is leaving me.’
Dante had pushed the fact home that this was her choice, though not adding that fighting the decision was about the only noble thing he had done in his life. Lucky for him nobility was not a prerequisite for the job of King-in-waiting, unlike hypocrisy.
He knew that he ought not to be feeling this rage, this sense of betrayal. Their marriage had been about a child, then there was no child. Beatrice’s decision had been the logical one. He could not see why it had shocked him so much.
Most successful marriages owed their longevity to mutual convenience and laziness, or, as in his parents’ case, they were business arrangements, two people living parallel lives that occasionally touched. This was not something that Beatrice could ever understand.
In the end, the official line had been trial separation, while behind-the-scenes lists of replacements were drawn up for when the trial was officially made permanent.
He wasn’t much interested in the lists, or the names of those that were added, or deleted after a skeleton emerged from their blue-blooded closet.
One suitable bride was much the same as another to him, though he wondered if the woman who had been chosen to share the throne with his brother, and had unwittingly been his brother’s tipping point, had been included. He could not remember her face or name, just that she belonged to one of the few minor European royal families he and Carl were not related to.
Carl had choked before it was made official, choosing to step away from the lie and his life…because though San Macizo was considered progressive, the idea of an openly gay ruler unable to provide an heir was not something that could be negotiated.
His option had been walk away, or live a lie.
Dante had wondered whether, if the situations had been reversed, he would have shown as much strength as his brother.
One of the things that had struck him, after his initial shock at the revelations, was that he was shocked that he really hadn’t seen it coming. When his brother had revealed his sexual orientation and his deep unhappiness, Dante hadn’t had a clue. But then he never had been much interested in anyone’s life but his own, he acknowledged with a spasm of self-disgust.
There was an equal likelihood that he hadn’t recognised his brother’s struggles because it really wouldn’t have suited him to see them.
His glance zeroed in on Beatrice’s face, the soft angles, the purity of profile, the glow that was there despite the unhappiness in her eyes. Just as he had tried not to see Beatrice was unhappy.
‘And you’re out.’ His shoulders lifted in a seemingly negligent shrug. ‘Fair enough.’
She blinked, hard thrown by his response, a small irrational part of her irked that he wasn’t fighting. ‘You agree?’
‘I already did. We are getting divorced, so relax, things are in hand,’ he drawled.
‘Are they?’ Yesterday she’d have agreed but yesterday she hadn’t been breathing the same air as Dante. Since then she had been tested and had come face to face with her total vulnerability, her genetic weakness where he was concerned.
‘It’s in everyone’s best interests for this to happen. We’re all on the same page here.’
‘Pity the same couldn’t be said for our marriage.’
It shouldn’t have hurt that he didn’t deny it, but it did.
Her decision to leave had been greeted with thinly disguised universal relief, which gave a lie to the myth that divorce didn’t happen in the Velazquez family. It made her wonder if there had been others before her who had been airbrushed from royal history.
‘I don’t think anyone expected it to last, not even you…?’
Dante shrugged and deflected smoothly. ‘I never expected to get married. I think it has a very different meaning for us both.’
In his family marriage was discussed in the same breath as airport expansion, or hushing the scandal of a minister who had pushed family values being caught in a compromising position, and the latest opinion poll on the current popularity of the royal family—it was business.
His heart had always been shielded by cynicism, which he embraced, but maybe it was the same cynicism that had left him with no defence against the emotional gut punch that Beatrice and her pregnancy had been.
‘You’re right.’ He unfolded his long lean length and stood there oblivious to his naked state before casually bending to retrieve items of clothing, throwing them on the bed before he began to dress.
She couldn’t not look; his body was so perfect, his most mundane action coordinated grace. She just wished her appreciation could be purely aesthetic; just looking made her feel hungry and ashamed in equal measure.
‘I am?’ she said, the practical, sane portion of her mind recognising this was a good thing, the irrational, emotional section wanting him to argue.
He turned as he pulled up his trousers over his narrow hips, his eyes on her face as his long fingers slid his belt home.