The Wedding Night They Never Had

CHAPTER FIVE

INARADIDN’TSLEEPmuch that night and woke the next morning with a head full of cotton wool and scratchy eyes. She felt tender between her legs, her inner thigh muscles were sore and there was a certain electricity humming in her blood.

She didn’t want to think about Cassius, not when she’d spent most of the night going over and over what had happened between them in the library, but there was no avoiding it this morning.

He’d taken her virginity. He’d decided against a divorce.

He wanted to stay married to her.

She’d be his wife and his queen, not just in name only this time, but for real.

Inara rolled over and tried to burrow her way back underneath the blankets as if she could escape the reality of her situation. But there was no escaping it. What she’d secretly always wanted, had secretly always longed for, was happening, yet in the most nightmarish way possible.

Once again she was being shunted around, at the mercy of other people’s decisions, her own thoughts, feelings and opinions not mattering one iota. Her parents had never made any secret of the fact that she was only a tool to them, a disappointment, not the son they’d been counting on, and so it had been her responsibility to make up for it by being useful to them.

It had been bad enough knowing she wasn’t what her parents had wanted, but it was a million times worse knowing she wasn’t what Cassius wanted. She loved him. She cared about his opinion. And, as he’d pointed out so clearly the night before, she wasn’t his choice. He was stuck with her and that hurt.

But of course he wouldn’t want a small, stringy, awkward and chaotic maths genius as a queen. He’d want someone tall, beautiful and charming. Someone with perfect manners and all the social graces. Someone with natural authority and dignity, someone who looked the part.

Five years ago when her parents had told her that she was to be promised to Stefano Castelli—after she’d failed to make an impression on the duke’s son they’d been eyeing for her—she’d taken matters into her own hands and run away, going straight to the only man in the world she’d thought could help her.

But the man who’d helped her then was the same man who was forcing her into an impossible situation now, and there was nowhere to run to this time.

He was the King. If he wanted to keep her as his wife, as his queen, then he would and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

You’ll disappoint him in the end, just as you disappointed your parents. And not just him, but the entire country.

The thought made her feel ill, so she dragged herself out of bed at last and into the shower, hoping that the warm water would help her feel better. But when at last she stepped out, wrapping a towel around her as she wandered back into the bedroom, she still felt as ill as she had when she’d woken up.

The urge to lose herself in the research paper she was currently writing with a colleague in Helsinki gripped her. Numbers were simple. They were clear, logical and had absolutely nothing to do with the confusing mass of emotion currently tangling inside her. But there was no time for that. So she pulled on whatever clothes came to hand, then spent ten minutes packing the rest in a small suitcase.

It wasn’t much. After years of having her appearance checked over constantly by her mother, she’d let everything slide while living in the Queen’s Estate. It had been a relief not to worry about her hair, or make-up, or her posture, or her dress. Living here meant she was essentially forgotten—which was fine by her. The Queen’s Estate was her haven, her refuge.

A cage.

The thought came out of nowhere and for a second was so alien that she looked around to see if someone had spoken it aloud. But, no, apparently that thought had come from her own head, from a deep part of her subconscious even she hadn’t known existed.

It was wrong, though. Very, very wrong. The Queen’s Estate wasn’t a cage. How ridiculous. It was her place of safety and she was sad to leave it.

She stuffed a dress into her case, suddenly annoyed. At Cassius and his insistence on his kingly duty. At herself and her decision to seduce him. At the stupid crush she had on him and how that had led her to this moment, forcing her to leave her place of safety for the cold halls of the palace in Katara where her failings would soon become obvious to everyone who looked at her.

Then you have a choice, don’t you?

Inara forced the top of the case down and zipped it up, then stood there a second looking down at it.

Cassius had told her the night before that she couldn’t put her feelings before her country, and that was very true. It was also very true that she had a choice before her: she could choose to spend her future being miserable and, reluctant and negative about being Queen or, as she couldn’t change what would happen, she could choose to accept it. She could choose to try being the kind of queen Cassius wanted. And just because she’d failed her parents, it didn’t mean she’d fail him.

After all, hadn’t she wanted to be his wife? A real wife, sharing his bed, sharing his life. Having his children, living with him, being with him.

She’d always hoped that being his wife for real would include him being in love with her, but perhaps that would come in time. And if love wasn’t on the cards, then she’d settle at least for some respect. That would make being Queen easier, hopefully, and if not it would surely be some consolation?

At that moment there was a knock on her bedroom door that turned out to be Henri, advising her that the helicopter was here to take her to Katara. The King, as it turned out, had left hours earlier to prepare for her arrival, which meant they wouldn’t be travelling together.

Inara was relieved. Right now the thought of having to share the tiny space of a helicopter with Cassius was too much for her. She wanted some time alone before she was confronted with him again. Some time to think about how she was going to approach this, because if she decided to accept his decision and take her place as his queen—and really, she had to accept it, because she didn’t particularly want to be miserable for the rest of her life—then she needed to figure out how.

Ten minutes later, safely ensconced in the helicopter and flying over the mountains and down towards the coast where the palace was located, Inara decided to put her anxiety about being Queen to one side for now and concentrate instead on being Cassius’s actual wife.

And it required some thought, because what did a wife do, exactly?