It had been two days since Clara fled Lake Geneva. Two of the longest days of his life. The lake house had changed from a haven to a haunting reminder of the happy memories he’d created with his wife over the past few weeks. Memories that, even after he’d decided to return to Linnaea, had followed him on the plane ride home.
In the hours after he’d banished Clara, he’d been righteous in his anger, whipping through one task after another with ruthless efficiency. He had told her not once but twice how much his father’s scandalizing had hurt him, had shared the most vulnerable parts of his past as he’d opened up to someone for the first time. And how had she repaid him? By keeping a scandalous secret from him. She had to have known something like that wouldn’t stay hidden forever, especially now that she’d been thrust into the international spotlight.
He’d stayed up until nearly two in the morning when his eyelids had drooped and he hadn’t been able to keep his head up. Somehow he’d slept until the sun crested over the horizon. The next thirty-six hours had passed in a blur of virtual meetings, phone calls and emails. He ate at his desk, typed brisk orders to Geoffrey and ordered the skeleton staff to leave him alone.
It worked until he’d woken up this morning, gotten out of bed and found one of Clara’s silk robes tangled in the sheets.
How weak did it make him that he missed her? That he craved seeing her smile, holding her in his arms, talking with her about revisions the Swiss ambassador had made to the proposed treaty? His mother had longed for the Daxon she’d known briefly during their courtship, the man she thought she had fallen in love with. How many times had she said, “I just remember how things were. I know they can be better again.”
Slowly, he walked down the hall to the suite of bedrooms. Three in total: a master suite with a bay of windows that overlooked the lake behind the palace and the mountains in the distance. A slightly smaller bedroom with equally stunning views.
But it was the third bedroom that made his chest tighten with pain. This bedroom had a connecting door to the master suite. This was the room for which Clara had picked out the soft green paint to serve as a backdrop for the white tree decals that re-created the forest behind the palace.
His fists clenched as he looked around the room. Clara had shared pictures she’d accumulated, from the white crib to the matching rocker in the corner next to a bookshelf stuffed with used children’s books. He’d never thought about a nursery before. Nurseries were where babies slept, had their nappies changed and were nursed by their mothers.
But as Clara had talked about everything she’d envisioned taking placing in that room, the stories that would be read, the laughter that would echo off the walls, he’d found himself getting excited about a baby’s room. Not just the room, but the sparkle in Clara’s eyes as she’d talked, the affectionate way her hand had settled on her stomach as she’d talked about their child.
Had he been so blind as to her true nature? Or had Clara just made a terrible mistake, one that he’d overreacted to?
He surveyed the room one last time before turning and closing the door with more force than he’d intended. When Temperance had told him about Clara being in the car, his first reaction had been hurt. He had asked Clara multiple times if there was anything in her past that he should be aware of. He hadn’t said anything about not marrying her, not providing for their child. He just wanted to know. He thought, too, that she had trusted him when she had shared Miles’s drunken state before he’d gotten behind the wheel. It had been why he’d felt safe opening up to her after finding out about Daxon’s prognosis.
Finding out that she had kept the full circumstances from him, not given him the chance to hear her side when he had bared the darkest parts of his soul to her, had been a stab in the back.
A shrill ring cut through the stillness. He pulled his phone out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. Ronan had taken it personally that he had missed the true circumstances of Clara’s husband’s death and had promised Alaric an update before midnight.
Alaric closed his eyes for a moment. Did he want to know what had truly happened?
He answered.
“Yes?”
“I’ve got it, sir.”
“Good. When can I see it?”
“One of my men is being admitted to the palace as we speak. He has a hard copy of the file. I didn’t want to send it via email.”
His hand tightened on the phone.
“Is it that bad?”
Ronan paused.
“Yes, Your Highness. It’s bad.”
Fifteen minutes later, Alaric was sitting in his office with a black file in hand, Ronan Security’s initials tamped in red in the corner. He kept his gaze averted from the desk. He should have had it replaced before he left Lake Geneva.
He stared down at the folder. What would he find inside? As angry as he’d been the day he and Clara had fought, he hadn’t for one second believed her capable of the accusation Temperance had leveled at her.
Didn’t show it very well, did you?
The voice of his conscience whispered in his ear as he remembered Clara’s beautiful blue eyes dull and wide with shock. He’d known as he’d berated her that he was being too harsh, that it wasn’t so much the potential scandal that had dug its ugly talons into his heart but pain. He had started to open his heart to his wife. Finding out her deepest secret not from her but from her ex-mother-in-law had felt like a betrayal.
Slowly, he opened the folder. His heart stopped. The first image inside was of the car, a mangled black mess wrapped around a tree. In the background was Clara, strapped to a gurney as she was being loaded into an ambulance. Her face was covered in blood and scratches, her eyes barely open, tears streaking down her cheeks.
He ran a finger over her face as nausea built in his gut. His wife had gone through hell, first with a spoiled, abusive husband and then this. And how had he responded? By focusing on himself, on his pain and his past.
He spent an hour reviewing the contents of the folder. The initial report stated that Miles had had a blood alcohol content three times the legal limit. An interview conducted with Clara in the hospital revealed that Miles had been driving recklessly, weaving back and forth across the road. Clara had begged him to stop. He’d steered toward another car. She’d grabbed the wheel, yanked it to prevent the other car from being hit. Unfortunately, she’d yanked too hard. Miles had lost control of the car and wrapped it around a tree. Other drivers on the road had corroborated Clara’s account, stating that the car had been moving erratically for several kilometers.