Do you?Gabriel wanted to bite.Then why did you give me those puppy eyes and tell me you wanted me at Amadeo’s wedding? Was it to guilt me?
But he wouldn’t bite. He would never bite. His parents had always bitten at each other, the early passion of their marriage turning into passionate hatred that rained misery on everyone.
Instead, he filled his lungs with all the air he could fit in them and rested his chin on the top of her head, and waited for Alessia’s soft fruity scent to work its magic on him.
It didn’t.
The fury inside him refused to diminish, his mother’s betrayal a scalding wound, and then there was Alessia too, failing to tell him her whole damn family were going to the theatre engagement. She wanted him to break the conditions of their marriage and attend Amadeo’s wedding but refused to renege on an engagement for his sister’s birthday. As a result, Gabriel had blown his sister out on her birthday so he could snatch a few hours with his wife when it turned out the engagement she ‘couldn’t’ miss was one she actually could have missed because the rest of the damned Berruti royal family, including the queen and her heir, had been there. Alessia’s absence would have been minimised.
Duty would always come first to her, he thought bitterly, and disentangled himself from her arms so he could pour himself another bourbon.
CHAPTER TWELVE
GABRIEL’SMOODHADN’Timproved the next day, and when the invitation came to dine with the queen and king in their quarters that evening for a family meal, he bit back yet another cutting remark and reminded himself that these weren’t just monarchs, they were his in-laws and the grandparents of the child growing in his wife’s belly.
There was a snake alive inhisbelly, a cobra fighting to rise up his throat and strike.
He would not let it out.
He was conscious from the way Alessia was walking on eggshells around him that she was aware of the darkness. Conscious too that his tone was curter than he would like, he tried hard to moderate it and respond to the affection she continued to show him.
Tomorrow morning he was flying back to Madrid. His departure couldn’t come soon enough. Some time alone, away from this damn castle, would give him his perspective back. He tried to find some perspective now too.
So his mother had sold him out? Hadn’t he been expecting it? Even his sister, when she’d called to commiserate, had been indulgent in her reaction to their mother’s actions. But then, Mariella had never hated the media circus that had followed their childhood and adolescence. She’d hated the fights as much as him and, like him, refused to be drawn into arguments that led to raised voices, but the media didn’t bother her in the slightest.
And so Alessia had attended an engagement with her family she could easily have cancelled to spend an evening with his sister for her birthday? In Madrid, Alessia was free to be Alessia. Here, in the ancient castle, she rarely removed her princess skin. It would be easier for the woman to emerge fully when they were living together full-time, and she wouldn’t need or want him to be anything more than her husband.
Despite his pep talk to himself, it was with a great deal of trepidation that Gabriel set off with Alessia to her parents’ quarters.
He’d dined with the queen and king in their quarters once before, the night his plane was grounded. Then, the meal had been formal, the food and wine as exquisite as anything he’d been served in a Michelin-starred restaurant. That night the food, although served with the usual ceremony, was a lot more homely, slow roasted lamb and ratatouille. The whole atmosphere was much more welcoming and light-hearted, the conversation, too, relaxed.
The only person not relaxing into the atmosphere was Alessia. Seated across from him, she held herself with a straight-backed deportment that would be fitting if it were a state occasion and not a family meal. She wasn’t speaking much either, he noted, and every time he caught her eye, her smile seemed forced. The queen, he noted too, wasn’t engaging her daughter in conversation, and he thought back to Alessia’s comment about her mother still being angry with her over the circumstances of the pregnancy. It was a comment he’d mulled on a number of times as there was something about that whole conversation nagging at him, a feeling that there was something about it he was missing. Something important.
‘How are the wedding preparations going?’ Clara asked Amadeo.
The heir to the throne pulled a disgruntled face. ‘Very well.’
‘The whole of Ceres has gone wedding mad,’ she said with glee. ‘I can’t wait! It’s a shame I’m not a bridesmaid but I get why I can’t be—best not to antagonise King Pig!’
To Gabriel’s amusement, even the queen looked like she was trying not to laugh.
‘What a shame that despot had to be invited but then it would kind of defeat the purpose of the wedding not to have him there,’ Clara continued before whipping her attention to Gabriel. ‘Is it true you’re not coming?’
‘I’m afraid it is true.’
‘Noway? Why’s that?’
‘Because I wish to remain a private person,’ he said tightly, his muscles bunching together. He took a sip of his wine. Why must he continually explain himself?
‘I know that, but this is a wedding. How can anyone not love a good wedding? And this will be the wedding of the century. And Elsbeth seems really sweet,’ Clara added, looking again at Amadeo, who pulled another disgruntled face. She stuck her tongue out at him, which, to Gabriel’s amazement, made everyone, including the perpetually stiff-necked Amadeo, laugh.
Laughing along with them, Gabriel drank some more wine to drown the poised cobra.
‘You were quiet tonight,’ Gabriel said when they were back in their quarters and finally alone. ‘Want to tell me what’s on your mind?’
Alessia sank onto the nearest sofa and sighed forlornly. ‘Just my mother’s attitude towards me. I keep hoping she’ll forgive me but there’s still no sign of it.’
She kneaded her aching forehead. Alessia’s insides had felt knotted from the moment she’d woken. For the first time since they’d become lovers, Gabriel had shared a bed with her and not made love to her. She sensed the demons working their darkness in him and longed for him to open up to her, but she knew what the cause was: his mother’s treachery in selling him out. He’d been open with her about that.