The Future King's Bride (The Royal House of Cacciatore 3)

‘Very well.’ His dark eyes sparked accusation. ‘The editor of the Mardivino Times rang Alesso this morning to ask whether anyone would like to comment on the rumours sweeping the capital about my wife.’

‘R-rumours?’ she stammered, in horror. ‘What kind of rumours?’

He heard the faltering of her words with a grim kind of understanding. Now, that—that—sounded like guilt. ‘You don’t know?’

‘Of course I don’t know—Gianferro, please tell me!’

He felt the acrid taste of jealousy and rage tainting his mouth with their poison as he glanced down at a piece of paper which was covered with Alesso’s handwriting. ‘Apparently you have grown close to—and I quote—“the devastatingly handsome young Italian who has broken hearts all over Solajoya”.’ He looked at her trembling lips, cold to their appeal. ‘Well?’ he shot out. ‘What have you to say?’

The accusation was so unjust and so unwarranted that part of her wanted to just tell him to go to hell and storm out of the room. But she couldn’t do that—and not just because that wasn’t the way queens behaved. She was his wife and this was a genuine misunderstanding.

‘It isn’t like that at all! He has just been…kind to me.’

His mouth twisted in scorn. ‘I’ll bet he has.’

‘Gianferro, please.’ Her voice gentled. ‘Stop it.’

But he couldn’t stop it, nor did he want to. It was as if he had stepped onto a rollercoaster with no idea of how to get off again. If she had obeyed his orders then she would never have found herself in this position! Black eyes bored into her. ‘So you do not deny that you have spent time alone with him after every class?’

‘That’s one way of looking at it,’ she said calmly. ‘But that isn’t how it—’

He sliced through her words. ‘Just you and him? No one else?’ If she denied this then he would know that she was lying, for had not her bodyguard been questioned just minutes earlier?

‘Well…yes. But nothing has happened—’

‘Yet.’

‘How dare you?’

‘No, Millie,’ he said heavily. ‘How dare you? How dare you be so thoughtless, so naïve?’

‘I thought that what was one of the reasons you married me!’ she retorted. ‘I thought you liked that!’

He believed her now, but she must understand that he would not tolerate such behaviour. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he said heavily.

‘I don’t want to sit down. And certainly not if I’m going to be treated like a naughty child.’

‘Don’t you realise how people talk?’ he demanded. ‘How quickly rumours can gather force in a place like this?’

‘And how quickly you believe them!’

‘Then prove me wrong!’ he challenged.

She had to convince him that she was completely innocent—and, more than that, didn’t she owe him some kind of explanation for how this ridiculous misunderstanding had arisen? Shouldn’t she try to make him understand why she’d acted the way she had? Dared she admit that Oliviero’s attitude had been like a breath of fresh air blowing through the formal world of the Court?

‘He made me feel like me,’ she admitted slowly.

‘Do not talk to me in riddles, Millie. Explain.’

‘He seemed to like me just as a person. As me—Millie. Not because I was Queen.’ Her blue eyes were full of appeal. ‘He didn’t even know for sure who I was. Not at first.’

His eyes were hard. ‘Now you really are being naïve. Of course he knew!

‘I didn’t tell him.’

‘The whole class knew.’ He sighed. ‘Do you not think that people might not have noticed the Royal crest on the car? The presence of a hulking great bodyguard outside? The fact that you were accompanied to the class by the Ambassador’s wife herself? Did you not consider that people might recognise you from your photographs?’

‘He may have known,’ she said staunchly. ‘They may all have known—but it didn’t seem to matter. It made no difference to the way they treated me.’