Vows to Save His Crown

He didn’t answer. He simply walked over to her and kissed her hard on the mouth. The nurses scattered like a flock of sparrows.

Mateo eased back and studied the six neat stitches by her eyebrow.

She was all right.

‘I’ll have quite a cool scar,’ Rachel joked uncertainly, looking at him with worry in her eyes.

‘I thought you were dead.’

Her lovely, lush mouth turned downward as she realised what he’d gone through, although of course she didn’t realise at all. ‘Oh, Mateo...’

He shook his head, the remembered emotion, the absolute terror of it, closing his throat. ‘Dead,’ he forced out, ‘or in a coma. A traumatic brain injury...’

‘Barely more than a graze.’ Her fingers fluttered on his wrist. ‘I’m okay, Mateo.’

Now t

hat he knew she was all right, he couldn’t escape the awful knowledge that this could have been so much worse...just as it could have been avoided. ‘I knew it was dangerous.’

She shook her head. ‘It wasn’t the rebels. Just some poor deranged man acting on his own. No one could have predicted—’

‘This time.’

‘Mateo—’

‘You should never have gone to the bazaar. I shouldn’t have let you.’ The words came out savagely, a rod for his own back.

‘You can’t keep me in a cage, you know.’ Rachel’s voice was deliberately light as her concerned gaze scanned his face. Mateo had no idea what she saw there. He felt as if he were a jumble of disparate parts; he’d been so terrified, and then so relieved, and now, inexplicably, he felt possessed by a fearsome, towering rage. He wanted to shout at the doctors. He wanted to tear apart the lone assailant with his bare hands. He wanted to hold Rachel and never let her go.

As the feelings coursed through him, each one more powerful and frightening than the last, he knew he couldn’t handle this tempestuous seesaw of emotions any more. He couldn’t live with the endless cycle of fear, relief, hope and guilt that had been his two years with Cressida. It had left him a husk of a man fifteen years ago, and he couldn’t bear to have it happen again. He couldn’t bear for Rachel to see it...or worse, far worse, for her not to see it, because one time it wouldn’t be six stitches above her eyebrow.

This was what love wrought—grief and guilt, fear and failure. And he didn’t want any part of it. He couldn’t.

Rachel pressed her hand against Mateo’s cheek and he closed his eyes. ‘It’s okay, Mateo.’

‘It isn’t.’ He opened his eyes and stared at her, imprinting her on his brain, his heart. ‘I can’t do this,’ he said, and he walked out of the room.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

IT HAD BEEN raining for over a week. It was late November, and Kallyria was in the grip of the worst weather the island had seen in a century, or so her staff had told Rachel.

She liked the rain; it fitted her mood. It reminded her of England, and of everything she’d left behind. And while she couldn’t bring herself to regret the choice she’d made, she still felt sad about it.

Ever since the day in the bazaar, Mateo had changed. When he’d walked out of her hospital proclaiming he couldn’t do this—and Rachel was frankly terrified to ask him what ‘this’ meant—he’d kept his distance. The fledgling feeling that she’d been hoping had been growing between them seemed to have withered at the root, before it had had a chance to blossom.

And yet it had blossomed for her; she was in love with him, had been slowly and surely falling in love with him since their wedding, or, really, before then. Really, Rachel acknowledged to herself, she’d been falling in love with him since she’d first met him, when he’d introduced himself as her research partner and her breath had caught in her chest.

For ten years she’d kept herself from falling, because she knew, of course she knew, how impossible a relationship between them could be. Yet he’d asked her to marry him, and made her feel beautiful, and even though the kind of relationship she really wanted still felt impossible, she knew the truth.

She loved him. And he didn’t love her back. Worse than that, far worse, was that he was choosing not to love her. Actively. Intentionally. And it was that knowledge, rather than him not loving her at all, that was bringing her closer to true despair than she’d ever felt before.

‘So we have a round-table discussion today,’ Francesca said, bustling into Rachel’s bedroom with a briskly officious air and a quick smile. ‘And a private engagement with the head of a girls’ school tomorrow...’

‘Right.’ Rachel managed a tired smile. At least, she hoped she did. She hadn’t slept well last night, with Mateo lying so silent and stony behind her, and she wondered if she ever would again. ‘I can’t do this,’ he’d said two weeks ago. Well, neither could she.

Francesca looked at her closely. ‘Is everything all right? You’re looking a bit peaky.’

Rachel just shrugged. As close a confidante as her stylist had become, she wasn’t willing to share this particular heartache.