Stop babbling and start acting like a normal person.
Inara closed her mouth hard against the urge to chatter, her joy at seeing him fading somewhat. ‘Why are you here, then?
Slowly he turned around to face her and Inara’s heart clenched like a fist.
Cassius de Leon, King of Aveiras, was quite simply the most beautiful man she’d ever met, and she lost the power of speech whenever he was near. At six-four, he towered above most men, and was built broad and muscular, like a mediaeval warrior. His hair was coal-black and his eyes were dark amber, his features possessing a fierce, compelling masculine beauty that captivated everyone he met.
When she’d first met him, he’d been a notorious playboy with a wicked streak a mile wide, and a charming smile that had granted him access to bedrooms and hearts all over Europe and beyond.
Those days were over, however. Now, that charm rarely made an appearance, and wickedness not at all. There was only a steady, cool authority that made most of his court, not to mention parliament, cower before him.
The notorious playboy prince was gone, leaving in his place a rigid and unbending king.
The King who was her husband.
Inara gritted her teeth against the urge to kneel before him that always gripped her whenever she was confronted with him. She’d done so once, the day of his coronation, and he’d told her to get up. Queens didn’t kneel, so she’d tried not to give in to the urge.
That didn’t stop it happening, however.
With difficulty, she met his gaze.
‘It’s quite simple,’ the King said. ‘I’m here because I want a divorce.’
Cassius was expecting his wife to nod in her usual absent-minded way and tell him that a divorce was fine, before offering him a cup of tea and launching into a conversation about whatever thing was holding her interest at that moment. Six months ago, when he’d last visited, she’d been talking about dark matter and he’d been lost within minutes.
To be fair, that might have had more to do with how she’d been wearing a ridiculously filmy white shirt through which he’d been able to see her lacy bra, and he’d been far too distracted for his own good.
Another reason—as if he needed yet another—why a divorce was a good idea.
Except this time Inara didn’t nod in her usual absent-minded way. Her pretty elfin features went pale and her small, perfect rosebud of a mouth opened in what looked like shock.
‘A...divorce?’ Her voice, usually sweet and clear, now sounded husky.
She looked as if he’d stabbed her and he wasn’t quite sure what to make of that. They’d agreed they’d divorce when she legally became an adult at eighteen, but then his brother and his parents had died, he’d become King and everything had gone to hell in a handcart.
A divorce had been the last thing he’d wanted to think about and it had been the last thing the country had needed after the shock death of its king and heir. Stability and normality was what Aveiras had needed so that was what he’d delivered.
But three years had passed since then and, now the country had recovered, it was time to shore it up by producing an heir. His ministers were very insistent about it and he couldn’t argue with them. Cassius was the only surviving member of his family so securing his legacy with children—and lots of them—was imperative.
He needed a woman who could be a real wife to him, who could provide him with the heirs he required and who could take her place at his side as a proper queen. Someone who could meet heads of state and hold her own at royal functions, who had the authority, grace, and dignity of Aveiras’s previous queen, his mother. And, most importantly, someone who was not the teenage girl he’d married when he’d been young and stupid, still thinking that he could be somebody’s saviour. That saving her would prove that he wasn’t as selfish as his father had always believed him to be.
Inara’s misty grey eyes were huge behind the lenses of her glasses, her fingers curled into fists. She wore a loose, white cotton dress that was as filmy as the shirt she’d worn the last time, and the material was transparent enough for him to see her underwear. Her knickers were lacy and dark-blue, her bra lacy and purple.
He shouldn’t be looking. His days of being led around by his baser appetites were over and done with. They’d died along with his brother.
Inara’s hair was in its usual messy tumble of silvery white curls that hung to her waist and it looked as though she hadn’t brushed it. Some of it was tied back from her face with a rubber band. She had a small blue line across one pale cheek, as if she’d accidentally drawn on herself with a pen.
Definitely not queen material.
No, she never had been. And when he’d married her that had been the last thing on his mind.
‘But I...’ Inara began, still sounding husky. ‘Um, I mean, c-can I ask why?’
Of course there would be questions. He’d expected that.
He stared at her impassively. ‘To be blunt, I need heirs. And I’m sure you can understand why. Also, Aveiras needs a queen who takes an active interest in the country and who supports me in my duties as King.’
‘Oh,’ Inara said faintly. ‘I...s-see.’