He was stiff and cold, a throw rug not really up to a draughty palace in spring, and neither his long frame nor his status were used to roughing it on a sofa.
Still it was not that which had him irritated, more a night spent trying not to picture her breast, and that body, and when he did close his eyes...
He padded across the room in the dawn light, pulled back the sheet and climbed in. The bed was cold and he lay there a moment. He heard her stir a little, knew that she was awake, and he said what had been on his mind all night. ‘I’m sorry, Allegra.’
‘It’s just for a few minutes.’
‘I meant for everything. I know how hard these weeks have been. I know it’s not a life that you’re used to.’
‘It would have helped to have seen you a bit more,’ Allegra said, ‘and I’m not being needy. But—’
‘I know you’re not. It’s the way it is here—I’ve had a lot of duties to attend to, as well as trying to keep up with things at work.’
‘I can’t even go out without an escort. What do they think’s going to happen?’
‘The people might recognise...’ He started with the familiar line, the one his father had drummed into him all these years, except he was older now, could see things more clearly. ‘The royals used to be more accessible, there was more freedom, but it does not work.’
She turned over to face him. There was a guardedness in his voice and she wanted to know more, to understand better, but he said no more; it was clearly a closed subject.
‘I couldn’t live like this.’
Alex was silent.
‘I couldn’t.’
‘Most women would be—’
‘I’m not most women,’ Allegra said.
‘No,’ he admitted, ‘you’re not.’
She turned back from him then, wished she hadn’t seen his face on the pillow beside her, for it danced now in front of her closed eyes, a vision she would always remember. Because though she could never live like this, there was a part of her that wanted it to be real, that wanted Prince Alessandro who lay beside her to be her real fiancé, a woman who wanted the dream...
...who wanted him.
He looked at the clock and saw it was almost seven and it would look strange, surely, for two newly engaged people to be sleeping so far apart on the bed.
‘Sorry about this.’ He moved over, not sorry at all; his feet were freezing and he heard her breath catch as they slipped in between her calves. Her side of the bed was so warm, and for appearances’ sake, for his own sake, but not for decency’s sake, he moved his body in.
He was male, used to waking next to a woman, not used, though, to a night spent frustrated and alone—so many nights recently, in fact. It was hell being back at the palace—especially as a newly engaged man—and the feel of her next to him, the scent of Allegra and the warmth of a woman, well, it was good. ‘You’re warm.’ He wrapped his arm around her.
‘You’re freezing.’ His foot moved against her calf and she didn’t halt him. His long arm slid between hers, his hand looking for a place to settle and she did not move away when it found a home just a whisper away from her breast.
‘Did you get some work done?’ He had, to his credit, always asked about how her book was going. ‘Did you ask your brother about his mother, Lucinda?’
‘I didn’t really get a chance to talk to him. You should do your family history.’
‘It is all documented already.’
‘The real version though,’ Allegra whispered. ‘There are surely things only you know, things only your sisters or brother know. Your parents—’
‘Just leave it, Allegra.’ She hadn’t been prying, she’d just been talking, but feeling him tense, Allegra realised she had stepped on a raw nerve. It was none of her business, of course; she was paid to be his fiancée after all. But more and more she wanted to know him, wanted to understand the workings of this remote family, wanted more of his life. Except there was no more talking and she wondered if he had gone to sleep.
There was something about morning, something special about lying there, waiting for the maids, something a little sad, because here, this very morning, it all came to an end.