The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain

Was she finally starting to realize what the result of those actions would be?

Pity she hadn’t considered it before becoming involved with another man. Just thinking of her with someone else made him feel murderous and he had to bite back angry questions he would rather be boiled in oil than ask in front of Danette. Was Therese regretting that involvement now? Was she counting the cost now that it was too late, wishing she had not asked for the divorce? Or was he merely engaged in wishful thinking?

Perhaps it was simple worry for his father that had upset her so much, but Claudio had never once seen her as lacking in control as she had been when she’d practically run from the hospital room. And he could not get past the fact she still would not look at him.

His jacket smelled of her…a soft floral scent that had the power to drive him mad with need.

His muscles were rigid with the desire to reach out and take her in his arms. Not that he would have done so in the circumstances, even if she had not asked for a divorce and confirmed his worst suspicions. He did not engage in public displays of affection. His dignity as future sovereign on the Scorsolini throne demanded he be circumspect in his dealings with his wife.

But seeing his younger brother kiss his wife, not caring who was there to watch had given Claudio a strange twinge in the region of his heart.

And he was almost positive that it had impacted Therese as well. If he had not thought it impossible in the face of the night’s revelations, he would have believed she was hurt that he was not that way with her. He’d seen her giving his brothers and their wives oddly wistful looks over the past couple of months and wondered at them.

Had she gone looking for affection from a man who was more outwardly expressive? The thought flayed his ego and his sense of masculine confidence. To not be all that his woman needed was not a prospect any man wanted to contemplate. Yet, how could a man who had to hide his relationship with her give her public affection?

And the relationship was hidden very well. Until she’d asked for divorce, Claudio had been almost certain his suspicions in that direction were mere musings of a befuddled male brain. Because he’d never once seen even a hint of impropriety on his wife’s part.

He’d spent the hours on the plane going back over the last year, trying to see where she might have strayed. What had at first glance appeared to be a casual greeting took on different significance until he forced his overactive brain to stop dissecting his memories.

This was doing him no good and driving him crazy in the bargain. Claudio would let Hawk do his job and then he would confront the truth head-on. Like a man.

Like he had faced the prospect of his father’s death…with no whining, or refusing to accept what such an event would mean for his own life. He had been taught since he was a small child that life must be faced and dealt with from the perspective of one’s birthright. His carried more responsibility with it than most and those responsibilities pervaded every aspect of his life—including his marriage.

He had known for as long as he could remember that one day he would rule Isole dei Re. He had accepted that duty and all that it entailed on every step of the journey through his life. He had never rebelled against what his birthright dictated. There had been no need for him to make promises to his father that he would fulfill it should the unthinkable happen and the older man not survive surgery.

Both men were fully confident in Claudio’s suitability for the job. He had been born to it and raised to know what that meant. He was a crown prince, destined to be a king. Yet, they had talked, as his father had told Therese they must…about political issues, family circumstances and personal matters.

His father had revealed a way of thinking that had shocked Claudio, but nothing more astonishing than the fact that the older man was still very much in love with Flavia.

All of the nonsense about the Scorsolini Curse his father told him about had been just that. Every mistress after Vincente’s divorce (and apparently there had been none between the one indiscretion and when the marriage’s dissolution became final) had been an attempt on his father’s part to forget his love for a live woman. Not a dead one.

Oh, he had loved Claudio’s mother all right, but he had fallen fast and deeply for Flavia. Too fast and too deep. It had made him feel incredibly guilty, like he was being unfaithful to his first beloved wife. Particularly when Flavia had gotten pregnant with Marcello. Before that, he had at least had the comfort of knowing his relationship with Flavia was merely a sexual one.

But then he had been forced to marry her and completely replace the first wife in his life. Intense feelings of guilt mixed with a grief he had never let himself vent in a public manner plagued Vincente the first years of his marriage. He had found it impossible to utter the necessary words of love to Flavia because he could not admit those feelings even to himself.