The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain (6 page)
If he knew she’d gone to bed as early as seven, he’d be convinced she was ill. She saw no reason to enlighten him. “I was tired.”
“But you are not sick?”
“No.”
“You are certain?”
“Yes.”
“Are you pregnant?” He asked the question with the same lack of emotion he’d asked if she was sick to begin with.
The words skewered her. And there was no sense of anticipation in his features, no warming at the prospect, which hurt just like everything else did right then.
“No. Not pregnant,” she forced out of stiff lips.
“You are sure?”
She hadn’t started, but she was sure. “I’m positive.”
“Then this strange behavior is the result of period hormones?”
No doubt a good portion of what she was feeling and her willingness to act on those feelings was caused by hormonal imbalances. “If it pleases you to think so, then yes.”
Hormone driven, or not, the knowledge her marriage was over was real. His lack of love for her was fact. Her unpredictable reproductive system was not the stuff fantasies were made of and the pain inside her was a physical ache that made it hard to breathe.
He made an impatient movement. “Nothing about this situation pleases me.”
“I am sorry.”
“I do not want an apology. I want an explanation. You said you had things you wanted to talk about but I come back to the suite only to find you sleeping.”
“Is that a crime?”
“No, but you are making no sense to me right now.”
“Heaven forbid I should stop fitting in the slot you’ve assigned me to in your life.”
“I have done nothing to deserve your sarcasm.”
“Except refuse to listen to me.”
“On your timetable. I am here now. Ready to listen.” He spread his hands in an expansive gesture that also served to draw her attention back to his beautiful naked body.
Tears burned the back of her eyes, but maybe they were not as never ending as she had thought because no moisture glazed her vision. She was going to miss him so much and it did not even shame her to admit that part of that missing would be pure physical need going unmet. Because for her, the desire was part and parcel to the love and both would be starved of his presence soon enough.
She sighed, trying to breathe through a very different kind of hurt than what had been consuming her body for months now. “I realized that I was foolish to fly up here to talk to you. Waiting three days won’t change anything. I’m not even sure there is a point in having the discussion I wanted to have at all.”
Really, she just needed to tell him about her condition and then let him work out the details of the separation and divorce. But after her emotional holocaust in the shower, she didn’t have the wherewithal to discuss that with him. Her inner reserves were all gone and she simply couldn’t face telling him of her failure as a woman, as a wife, especially in the face of his obvious hostility.
“Why is that?” he asked in a dangerously soft undertone she was too drained to understand. Shouldn’t he be relieved she didn’t want to get all emotional with him?
“Some things cannot be changed.” No matter how much she wanted them to be.
“And what are those things?”
“I’d rather not talk about it right now,” she admitted in a voice that sounded dodgy to her own ears.
In a move she did not expect, he came around to her side of the bed at supersonic speed and lifted her right out of it. “That is unfortunate because I do.”
She gasped and wrapped her arms around his neck to stop herself from falling. “You can’t always have your way.”
“That is not a concept I recognize.”
“Then it’s time you did.”
He tightened his hold on her. “Stop playing games and tell me what the hell has you acting so far out of character.”
The furious undertone in his voice said his patience was about used up. And the iron-hard glint in his brown eyes said he wasn’t giving up until she spilled, either. No matter what she wanted, no matter how hard it might be for her, he would settle for nothing less than full disclosure.
She knew it and finally accepted it. She’d started this thing and she had to finish it, no matter how much she might want to put it off. No matter how deeply she might regret her impulsive decision to come to
And she wasn’t even sure how to say it.
Feeling pressured beyond endurance in her current overly emotional state and overwhelmed by the simple sensation of being held in his arms for what she was sure was the last time, she ended up just blurting it out, “We have to divorce.”
Eyes filling with inimical rage, he dropped her in an act of such utter repudiation her stomach knotted with pain to add on top of all the other hurt she was feeling. If she hadn’t grabbed him for support, she would have fallen flat on her bottom.
But he shook her touch off with disdainful rejection. “You bitch.”
She’d never seen him so angry and it scared her silly. “I…I h-have to tell you—”
“You will divorce me over my dead body,” he interrupted in a deadly voice.
Her mouth opened, but she couldn’t make anything come out. She tried, but no words would issue forth. It all hurt too much. She’d never believed she would have to say those fatal words to him. She would have done anything, given any amount of money…even years from her life not to have had to do so. And yet as horrific as his response was to her demand for divorce, she could not make herself speak the truth that labeled her a total failure as a woman.
He had hurt her too much and there was nothing left inside her of trust for his willingness to spare her emotions.
And the harshness of his reaction confused her…made it harder for her to think, to cope with what needed to be said. She simply had not expected him to respond with such fury. After all, they were in effect discussing the dissolution of what he considered a business contract. Nothing more.
For him. For her, it was the end of everything beautiful in her life.
Unless…maybe their marriage was more important to him than she had thought. Could it be true? Could his reaction mean he cared after all? Inside her, her heart leaped…could she have misread him from the beginning? All of the evidence she had compiled in her own mind pointed to the fact that she did not matter to him on a personal level, not for who she was—the person inside who craved his love so ardently.
But had she misread it all? She didn’t see how she could have. No. She shook her head. It simply wasn’t possible. Maybe she could have misread a misspoken phrase here and there, but not an entire lifestyle that continuously pointed out how small a role she played in his life. And nothing could be more convincing than her knowledge of how a Scorsolini male acted in love, because she’d seen it in his younger brothers.
Yet, he was behaving as if the end of their marriage really mattered to him. “Why are you so angry?” she asked in an almost whisper, trying not to let hope build again.
He looked at her in incredulous fury. “You have just told me you want a divorce and you ask me this?”
“Yes.” His answer meant so much, she was trembling with fear and anticipation of what it might be.
“I had certain requirements when looking for a wife, you knew this,” he gritted from between clenched teeth.
“Y-yes.” It was not sounding promising.
“One of those requirements was a wife who understood and accepted the importance of duty and sacrificing one’s personal happiness for the sake of what is best for
“Were you sacrificing your personal happiness to marry me?” she asked painfully.
She’d always wondered if he’d wanted a different woman, even a different kind of woman. One who was more vivacious and exciting. A woman who would not necessarily make the ideal princess, but who would have matched the fiery passion that bubbled beneath the solid surface of his duty.
“Happiness never came into it one way or the other.”
Hurt lancing through her, she said, “It did for me. I was happy to marry you. I wanted you more than I could imagine wanting anyone else.”
For some reason, her words made him flinch. “But now you want a divorce. Your desire for me, this happiness you mention was short-lived. It did not last even three full years. And yet what did I withhold from you that I promised to give you?”
“Nothing.” He had withheld nothing except his love and that had never been on offer as part of their bargain.
“So, you will accept that I have not reneged on my side of our marriage bargain?”
“Yes, I accept it.”
“You accept also that you married me with the understanding that it was for a lifetime?”
“Yes, of course.”
He moved to tower over her, his fury all the more powerful because he stood there magnificently naked and not in the least bit ashamed of it. “Then you must also accept that I will not allow you to renege on the lifetime commitment you made to me.”
“Sometimes things happen that make it impossible to keep a bargain.” Even in his vaunted world of business.
“Not in our marriage, they do not.”
“They do. They have. I have…” Her throat closed over. She had to say it, but it hurt more than she’d ever expected to say the words out loud.
“Do not say it,” he barked. “I will never let you go.”
She stared at him. “You don’t mean that,” she gasped out.
He spun away from her, his whole being vibrating with a palpable rage she still did not understand.
“You will not walk away from our marriage and make me the second sovereign in Scorsolini history to be divorced. Do you understand me?” he bit out in a voice as sharp and frozen as an icicle shard. “I will not allow you to make me a laughingstock amidst my peers and subjects.”
Finally she understood. It wasn’t his heart being impacted here, it was his pride. He didn’t need her…only a whole marriage, because he did not want to look like a fool. Anger welled from deep in her soul. She’d agonized over the prospect of losing him, but all he cared about was how he appeared to the international community.
“Is that all that matters to you? That people might compare you to your father?”
He spun back to face her, his expression a mask of stone. “My father broke his marriage promises. I did not break mine. I will not let you divorce me simply because you want to break yours…or have already done so.”
The emphasis he gave on the last bit sent chills down her spine and she had to swallow before she answered. “I don’t have a choice.”
He said a word that made her flinch. “We all have choices, you are making bad ones. You promised me an heir to succeed me on the throne. What about that?” he asked with pure derision.
She almost choked on the pain his demand evoked. She could not give him that heir and his wording reiterated the fact that that alone was her primary requirement as his wife. “I didn’t want it to be this way. Please, believe me.”
But he looked like he’d rather strangle her than believe her. Even knowing he would never, ever physically hurt her, she found herself stepping backward and away from him.
If possible, his jaw went more rigid.
A knock sounded on the door and she jumped.
“Go away,”
She’d never heard him use that tone and she knew if she had been the one on the other side of the door, she would have listened, but after a brief pause another knock sounded again. “Your Highness, it is extremely urgent.”
She could not make out what the security man said, but she heard the ugly curse that spit forth from her husband’s mouth as his body jerked as if receiving a blow.
“
But he just shook his head and opened the door wider, obviously planning to leave the room. He stopped on the threshold and looked back over his shoulder, his expression feral. “This is not finished.”
The security man gave
And for the second time that night, she stood stock-still in the middle of the bedroom reeling from unenviable emotions after he walked out on her. She did not wonder what could be more important than the end of their marriage because it could be just about anything, she thought sadly. However, she acknowledged that whatever it was, it had to have been singularly important for security to interrupt