‘Do you want to give me the grand tour?’ he elaborated.
‘But I can’t—I’ve never been in here before.’
He gazed into her velvet eyes, convinced she was joking. ‘You never visited your grandmother, who lived on the same estate as you? But I thought she only died eight years ago?’
‘She did but she was a miserable witch who hated people andreallyhated children.’
‘That explains the décor then,’ he murmured.
A glint of humour flickered over her face and then she put a hand to her mouth and giggled. ‘It’sawful, isn’t it?’ She shook her head, her giggles turning into a peal of laughter. ‘Marcelo told me it was bad but I never guessed it was this bad. I’m glad she never let me visit. This would have given me nightmares.’
The weight in his chest lifting at the sight of Alessia with glee etched over her beautiful face and the sound of her husky laughter ringing in his ears, Gabriel couldn’t stop his own amusement escaping. In his laughter was a huge dose of relief.
Since the statement had been released, Alessia had carried herself with a careful deportment around him. She was unerringly polite but meticulous about not touching him... Not until they went to bed. The moment the light went out, she would wrap her arms around him under the bedsheets and press her face to his bare chest just as they’d done on their wedding night. But, as on their wedding night, she held herself rigidly, barely drawing a breath. He could feel the fight she was waging with herself, the rapid beats of her heart a pulse against his skin, but knew better than to do anything more than hold her. As painful as it was to accept, he’d hurt her deeply. He couldn’t wipe that hurt out with confidences about his childhood. She needed to learn to trust him.
And so he would lie there with her, under the sheets, her beautiful body entwined with his, holding himself back from even stroking her hair, hardly able to breathe himself with the pain of his desire cramping his lungs, having to push out the memories of the first time they’d laid entwined, both naked, fitting together like a jigsaw. When he did manage to push aside images that only fired the desire he was having to suppress, his thoughts never strayed from her. The more time he spent with her, the greater his thirst to know everything there was to know about the woman behind the always smiling, dutiful princess who so rarely smiled for him.
So to see her now, her face alight with the joy of shared absurdity, her laughter still filling his senses...
‘Do you think she put these paintings here to repel people from going any further than the front door?’ he asked, ramming his hands into his pockets to stop them from reaching for her.
God knew how badly he longed to reach for her.
‘I’d put money on it.’
‘She hated people that much?’
‘More.’
‘How on earth did she cope with royal life if she hated people?’
‘By drinking copious amounts of gin. As soon as my mother took the throne after my grandfather’s death, my grandmother announced she never wanted to endure another royal engagement or the company of another human ever again and insisted the stables be converted into a home for her. When she moved in she demanded—in all seriousness—that her new household be staffed only by mutes.’ But relating this only set Alessia’s laughter off again as the ridiculousness of her grandmother’s behaviour really hit home, which in turn set Gabriel’s laughter off again too.
Feeling lighter than she’d done in a long time—itwastrue that laughter was good for the soul—Alessia wiped the tears from her eyes. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘let’s go and see if we can find her potion room.’
The pair of them were still sniggering when they went under the arch and entered a rectangular room with cantilevered stairs ascending from the centre. The posts at the bottom of each gold railing were topped with a gargoyle’s head.
‘They can go,’ Alessia said, shuddering at the ugly things.
‘The whole lot can go. Shall we start from the top or the bottom?’
‘Let’s start at the top and then we can save the dungeon for a treat at the end of it all.’
He laughed again.
He had a great laugh, she thought dreamily, a great rumble that came from deep inside him and was expelled with the whole of his body. When he laughed... Just as when he smiled, creases appeared around his eyes, deep lines grooving along the sides his mouth... Just as when he smiled, it did something to her.
She hadn’t laughed like that with anyone since her school days.
‘Did you have much to do with her?’ he asked.
‘Not really, thank God. I was six when my grandfather died so I don’t have many solid memories of her before that. She would terrorise us at Christmas, Easter and family birthdays when my mother forced her to join us for celebration meals but that was the extent of my interaction with her...apart from the time when Marcelo and I were playing tennis and the ball went into what was considered to be her garden, and she chased me off like I was trespasser.’
Stepping through the first door they came to on the landing, Alessia was relieved that the worst thing about the bedroom was the blood-red wallpaper. It was replicated in all the other rooms, including the master bedroom. As she peered into the adjoining dressing room, a walled mirror reflected the four-poster bed back at her and her heart jolted to know that this suite would be the room she would share with Gabriel for the rest of her life, and as she thought this, he appeared in the reflection and their eyes met.
He stood stock-still.
The force of the jolt her heart made this time almost punched it out of her.