The silence between them hung all too knowingly in the room. The clock chimed the hour. Dread curdled sick in her stomach.
‘Almost time to go,’ she said, itching to adjust her veil as the pins fixing it pricked into her scalp. ‘I think I need a few moments to myself before the prime minister arrives.’
Albert gave her a curt, well-practised bow and turned.
‘Albert?’ He stopped at the door as she said his name.
‘Yes, ma’am?’
Her moment of beingjust Lisewas clearly over. ‘What do you think of my decision to marry Mr De Villiers?’
As she’d barrelled from the room after the final argument with her father, Albert had been there. Directly outside. There was no way he couldn’t have heard everything she’d said, but his face had told her nothing as she’d run down the halls to her own apartments, her world torn apart.
Albert smiled. ‘I’ve always thought you were a woman of great courage, Your Majesty.’
Rafe stood at the altar of the Morenburg Cathedral. The whispers of the assembled crowd echoed from the vaulted ceiling, melding into an amorphous hiss. Rainbow colours from the centuries-old leadlight stained patterns on the floor like blood spilled on the marble.
He stared down the long red-carpeted aisle to the firmly shut front doors. The scent of the lilies bedecking the hallowed space too cloying. He wondered whether the funerary choice of flower had been Lise’s, or whether they too had been pre-ordained. Ordered for her brother’s nuptials. The probability they had been galled him. That this day,histriumph, was recycled from others. He shook his head. No time to think of that since it was only minutes till the bride arrived. Mere hours till he would be King. The most powerful man in the country.
His pulse quickened, the thrum of excitement coursing through him. In the front seats sat his mother and father. Eyes not quite so wide as they’d been over the past weeks since he’d told them he and Lise would marry. For all the ceremony, his parents remained the humble, unaffected people they’d always been. Now, they’d take their rightful places in society, like him. Their grandchildren would one day sit on the throne. The De Villiers name linked to the Crown in perpetuity. His only wish was that Carl could be by his side, to witness his triumph. The pain of that loss knifed deep; a wound barely healed after all these years.
‘You sure about this?’
His best man and best friend stood surveying the pomp in the nonchalant way the finest aristocracy could breed. He’d met Lance at school, his father the British ambassador to Lauritania. An outsider, like Rafe. It hadn’t mattered that Lance Astill would inherit a duchy in England when his father died. He wasn’t Lauritanian, so he wasn’t good enough. Apart, they’d been bullied. Together, they’d been impenetrable. Lance had guided Rafe through the raw pain of Carl’s death, becoming like the brother he’d lost. The friendship had lasted when Lance’s father was posted elsewhere. It had never wavered.
‘Yes.’ Rafe’s certainty was absolute, unassailable. Coursing through his blood with the enthralling hum of a drug.
‘I’ve a car parked round the corner and this.’ Lance reached into his inner suit pocket and pulled out the hint of a silver flask. ‘Whisky. Plus a case in the back seat. We can make a dash for it through the door of the sanctuary. Escape. Drown our sorrows for days.’
His mouth quirked in the signature lopsided grin that drove women wild. But his eyes were tight and serious.
‘No,’ Rafe said.
‘You used to be more talkative. She’s got you cowed already? No stag night. Now passing up decent whisky. Wives, why would you have one?’ Lance gave an exaggerated sigh.
An organ piped hymnal tunes, which echoed from the vaulted ceiling.
‘Some things are more important than the whisky.’ Rafe’s words were almost sacrilege. Once it was always about the whisky and the women. But he hadn’t needed to celebrate his last night of freedom. This marriage gave him keys to every door. ‘Do you have the rings?’
Lance began an increasingly exaggerated farce of patting of his various pockets, frowning. A lesser man might have been worried. Rafe knew it was only for show.
‘I believe I do. Somewhere... Ah.’ He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled out two glinting circles of gold. ‘Hers is spectacular.’
Lance twisted it in his fingers, eyeing off the workmanship. If nothing else, Rafe’s friend had a keen eye for beautiful things.
‘Her Majesty refused an engagement ring. The occasion dictated something more than a plain band.’ The day required symbols. His great-grandmother’s wedding ring, tying Lise to him. The family’s past coffers reportedly plundered to have the magnificent token of love made, reflecting his great-grandfather’s adoration for his betrothed. A waste in his view. Rafe hadn’t wanted to accept it when it was suggested by his parents, given the heirloom was the symbol of a devotion absent in this marriage. However, he couldn’t turn down the honour of using it today.
‘Must be love,’ Lance drawled.
Rafe snorted. Not for him. He’d never allow himself that vulnerability. All ‘love’ had done for him was turn him into a fool. Never again would he dance to the beat of another woman’s drum.
‘Careful, my friend,’ Rafe said, with a smile meant for the cameras directed towards them. ‘The world is watching.’
He stared down the assembled crowd. Dour, serious-looking people. All the uniforms, medals and emblems they hid behind as if it made them better than the rest. In a short while he’d be set above them all, and there was nothing they would be able to do but bow and scrape before him. The victory would taste so sweet.
Lance glanced up at the cameras assembled to beam the marriage to millions. ‘Nervous?’
Rafe shook his head and spoke the unassailable truth. ‘I’m where I should be.’