The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

She was probably going to tell him that she had fallen in love, that she couldn’t help herself. He’d heard that line used before by friends and acquaintances in the world he moved within. But rarely did even the love vote move those people in positions of major political impact to divorce.

He had understood his stepmother’s need to leave his father, but he’d never understood her going so far as to get a divorce. It wasn’t as if she had ever remarried…and one time early on he’d overheard her tell someone she probably never would. So, why get a divorce, why drag the royal family’s name through the mud.

For a principle?

He’d been so damn sure Therese would never do anything so rash, but he had not accounted for her finding someone else.

Perhaps arrogantly, he had assumed he was enough for her both in and out of bed. He had been wrong. So why was she acting like his words devastated her?

He’d said them to save face. They’d come bursting out, totally unexpected, when he’d realized she was about to tell him all about the other man. He wasn’t proud of lying. He was an honest man and that shamed him, but he would not unspeak the words if he could.

His pride had been lacerated by her request for a divorce and the subsequent realization that his every niggling fear about her lack of sexual interest and ditzy woolgathering had been justified. She had found someone else and she wanted to divorce him, Principe Claudio Scorsolini, for this other man.

There was no other explanation possible for the night’s revelations.

The knowledge made him furious enough to want to kill, but it wasn’t her he wanted to hurt. It was the man who had lured his gentle wife to a passion that had obviously surpassed what they found together.

Claudio could barely believe that was possible.

The biggest lie he had told Therese was that he had grown bored with her. He continued to crave her body, even with her lack of recent sexual availability. In fact, it had challenged him as much as they had frustrated him. It was the natural predator in him, but having her move away had drawn him inexorably into chasing her.

The knowledge that he had planned seductions and had put so much effort into claiming her body when she had been pining for someone else made him sick with anger. Even so, he could not believe he had said what he did to her. Not because he wasn’t capable of being as ruthless as any of his ancestors who had settled Isole dei Re, but because the words had been so far from the truth. He was shocked he had come up with that line of defense.

Their marriage had never been only about the sex, though it had been a big issue for him. For what man wouldn’t it be? But she’d believed him. Which said what about how she saw him? He had been nothing more to her than a body in her bed and a way to fulfill her mother’s ambitious social climbing nature.

So who was the new guy? Not a nobody that was for sure. An American. That would make sense of her frequent trips to the States. It shouldn’t be too hard for his private investigator Hawk to find a name. For some reason, the idea of getting details on his own did not grind in his gut like broken glass like the thought of having her tell him did. Maybe because he felt in control when he was the one garnering the information.

What Claudio would do with that data once he got hold of it, he was not sure.

The desire for revenge was a bloodlust inside him.

Would he ruin the other man? Would he do anything to prevent the chances of Therese finding happiness with him? All he had to do was refuse the divorce. It was no easy thing to end a marriage to a member of the royal family of Isole dei Re.

Flavia had only succeeded with his father because the marriage had taken place in Italy, and even in that case because he had not contested the divorce or denied her charge of infidelity. She had no physical evidence to make a case with, but Papa had felt so much guilt over letting down his own high moral standards, he had let his wife walk away.

Claudio did not know if he had the same fortitude. He had told Therese that he would not cling to a relationship he did not want. That was truth…but it was not true that he did not want his marriage. He didn’t know if he could touch her again, knowing her body had belonged to another man, but he did not know if he could let her go, either.

And the knowledge galled him, making him feel even more vicious than learning of her unfaithfulness.

They arrived in Lo Paradiso sometime after one in the morning and went directly to the hospital.

Therese had tried to doze on the plane, but she’d found it impossible to sleep with her thoughts careening from the shock of Claudio’s expressed desire for a divorce and King Vincente’s heart attack. She had believed that nothing could be worse than learning she had endometriosis with a high chance of total infertility.