His Majesty's Mistake

“But I have always loved you. As a child I wanted nothing more than your approval. But you couldn’t give me that.”

“You were just so like her.”

“Like Jacqueline.”

Claire nodded.

“And you resented me for that,” Emmeline concluded.

“I think I did.”

“Why?”

“Because I wanted you to be like me.”

Seated in the limousine next to Makin, Emmeline stared out the window, overwhelmed. So much had happened in just a handful of days. Alejandro’s death. The revelation that Princess Jacqueline was the birth mother she’d never known. Her marriage to Makin. And then the scene with Claire in her bedroom. It was a lot to take in.

“Are you all right?” Makin asked, his voice a deep rumble in the darkness of the car.

“Yes,” she answered faintly, her face averted, her gaze fixed on a point far away. Her heart felt battered. Bruised.

“Did something happen when you went upstairs after the ceremony?”

“How do you know?”

“I can see the change in you. I hear it in your voice.”

It amazed her that he could already read her so well. “My mother came to see me.”

“What did she have to say?”

Emmeline felt a hot rush of emotion and she closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see. “She wanted me to know that despite appearances, she loved me. And I told her that I’d always loved her.”

He was silent a moment. “But it wasn’t exactly warm and satisfying?”

“No.” She laughed, a quick, sharp laugh even as she blinked back tears. “But then, nothing with my mother ever is.”

On board the plane, Emmeline curled into her chair and gave in to sleep.

While she slept, Makin called his close friend, Sultan Malek Nuri, to see how the Raha conference was going. Malek relayed that everything was going well, but, of course, everyone wished Makin was there.

“When do you return?” Malek asked. “I’d thought it was today, but maybe it’s later tonight?”

“No. I’m actually en route to Marquette.”

“Your Caribbean island?”

“Yes.” Makin hesitated, wondering how to share his news, as Malek’s wife Nicolette and her sisters were quite friendly, as well as distantly related, to Emmeline. Malek and Nicolette were also aware that Makin had never been a fan of Emmeline’s. “I just got married,” he said, believing the best way through something was directly.

“You … what?”

“I married Emmeline d’Arcy.”

Malek Nuri was successful because he knew when to speak and when to hold his peace. But he did neither now. He laughed, a great rich laugh of pure amusement. “Makin, my friend, I thought you were just seeing her safely home.”

“I was.”

“What happened?”

“I couldn’t let her go.”

Emmeline didn’t wake until they were in their final approach and close to landing.

“Where are we?” Emmeline asked, looking out the window. She’d expected a sea of sand, but instead it was blue underneath. Water.

“The Caribbean. We’ll be landing on my island Marquette in the next few minutes, but look out the window, we’re about to be treated to an incredible sunset now.”

He was right. The sun was low in the sky, a great red ball of fire moments away from dropping into the ocean. The horizon was already turning orange and purple and Emmeline felt a thrill of pleasure. “It’s gorgeous,” she said.

“Dramatic, isn’t it?”

She smiled, amused by his word choice. “So sometimes dramatic is good?”

His gaze met hers and held. “Yes. Sometimes dramatic is perfect.”

On the ground a driver in a white open Jeep met them at the airstrip and drove them across the estate to a sprawling plantation house. The two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old house had been built in the colonial style, with a steep thatched roof, high ceilings and thick stone walls to keep the interior cool.

On entering the house, Emmeline discovered she could see the ocean from virtually every room, with the last lingering rays of light turning the sea into a parfait of purple, lavender and red.

The house itself was furnished in the dark woods of the colonial style, with a mix of Spanish, French and English antiques, furniture brought over from Europe during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The fabrics, though, were all soft and light—white linens, red, green and blue cheerful tropical cotton prints.

It was a happy house, she thought, following Makin on the tour that ended in the spacious master bedroom with windows everywhere.

By the time they finished the tour, her luggage had already been brought in and a maid had unpacked her clothes into the large mahogany dresser and closet.