Virgin Princess's Marriage Debt

The stark irony struck home for Sofia, but she tried instead to cling to the quickly changing direction of his chain of thought, so easy to flip between her wanting the throne and wanting to throw it away.

‘We should have let you go to him. You will be the death of this country. You were never fit to rule,’ he cried as one of the carers administered an anti-psychotic drug. For them to be doing this now meant that they must have been struggling with him almost since he’d left the engagement party. Sofia knew they would have tried everything else.

‘I know, Papa,’ she couldn’t help but admit as he somehow drew out her greatest fears. ‘But I’m trying. I really am.’

As the two men assisting her father settled him gently back into a chair, her mother watched her with large, shimmering eyes.

‘Sofia—’

‘It’s okay, Mama, I know. I know he doesn’t mean it,’ she lied as she turned away. Fear, sadness, loss, grief, it all pressed against her skin like little pin pricks, drawing blooms of invisible blood that left her feeling drained and exhausted.

* * *

Theo was watching the sun rise slowly over the forest surrounding the estate, the scent of pine and earth slowly unfurling from the ground in the gentle heat of the early morning. He relished that almost sappy resin taste and he tried to combine grape lineages in his mind in an attempt to distract himself from Sofia’s revelation only an hour before.

He could tell that she had been giving him some truths. There was definitely something she was holding back, but...tiny tendrils of doubt about that night were corroding his fierce belief that she had purposefully set him up. They spread through his chest and tightened around his heart. Because just beneath that erosion was something deeper. Something darker and much more pain

ful. Something that spoke of grief and the acrid taste of loss, one he remembered from years before meeting Sofia. This odd sense that he’d lived with almost all his life...a barely audible whisper from an inner voice...abandoned, again.

Usually Theo could go for months without thinking of the man who had run from his mother, run from him. But ever since he had set out on this path of revenge he had always been a shadow at the periphery of Theo’s vision, hovering, waiting. He remembered thinking as a child that it was only natural to think of his father and had half convinced himself that when he became a man, when he was eighteen, he’d somehow magically stop thinking of him. And to a certain extent that had been true. But only because of the damage limitation he’d been forced into following Sofia’s actions. But here, in Iondorra, a place that—as far as Theo knew—his father had never set foot, a phantom pain was tingling, burning back into a life he thought he’d long snuffed out.

The creak of the large doorway at the top of the stone steps to the estate cut through the early morning air, and the moment he saw Sofia all thoughts fled his mind.

She looked...devastated. And it was horrible. Because he recognised that look. It was the look a child wore, no matter their age, when something truly awful was happening to a parent. He had seen it the moment he’d looked in the mirror after his mother had been taken to hospital.

He went to take a step towards her but held himself back. He wanted to take her in his arms, to hold her in the way that no one had held him that day. But he couldn’t. Whether for her, or himself, he didn’t know.

‘Sofia?’

She descended the steps as if in a daze, her eyes unseeing, a numbness almost vibrating from her. This woman who had come alive in his arms, to his touch and his need only hours ago, was now hollow and absent. She came to stand before him, her head barely reaching his shoulders, so that he had to bend almost, to try and catch her sightless gaze.

‘Sofia...’ Her name almost a plea on his lips.

‘Take me away, Theo. Please.’

Her request rang out over the years from all that time ago, the one he so desperately wanted to forget. They were words he had thrown back at her outside the Parisian ballroom. As if realising it herself, only after it was too late to recall them, she flinched. And then trembled.

‘Entáxei.’ He nodded. ‘Okay,’ he repeated for her benefit. ‘We will go.’

And then he finally gave in to his desire, and pulled her into an embrace.

* * *

He had spoken briefly to the chauffeur of the change in plans and, while settling Sofia into the back of the limousine, Theo started on the phone calls needed. He’d pulled up the contact details for Sofia’s personal secretary, ordered her to pack a bag and get it to the airport, and cancelled all Sofia’s appointments for a week. He’d messaged Seb to make his apologies to Maria, realising that he’d be unable to make the exhibition he’d assured her he’d attend the night before.

As the limousine ate up the miles of smooth tarmac, he began to doubt his decision. He had never taken a woman back to his winery, to the place where his mother still lived. He wondered what she would make of the young princess and hated that he had once had the same thought, under the same circumstances. Hated the fact that he would introduce Sofia to his mother as his fiancée, only to abandon her at the altar. But he would. He must. Because only then would she realise just how much damage she had caused. Just how much hurt...

But as the limousine passed the castle and carried on, it failed to draw any kind of response from Sofia. The kind of numbness that she wore about her like a shield began to scare him. He remembered that feeling. That hopelessness that was so very easy to hide in. And he couldn’t help the wish, the need, to protect her. To shelter her, even if it ran contrary to his own plans. She needed to get away. She needed to find herself again. And for the first time Theo began to doubt his plan for revenge.

* * *

Sofia opened her eyes and frowned in momentary confusion at the unfamiliar sights that met them. And then she remembered. Remembered the short flight on Theo’s private jet, the drive to the exclusive marina, remembered the way that Theo had ushered her onto the small, but beautiful and most definitely luxurious, yacht and walked her straight into the cabin and ordered her to sleep.

Smooth mahogany surrounded her, and the gentle, rhythmic sway beneath her called her back to that blissful slumber. Sofia wanted nothing more than to bury herself in the comfortable bedding, but unease told her she couldn’t. Instinct, memories, they all crashed about her mind and she felt...it all. The numbness that had settled about her had finally worn off, and everything in her hurt. Ached. Her heart for her father, her head for Theo, and her bones, a deep, low ache—that was for herself.

Untangling herself from the nest of sheets wrapped around her body, she sat up, swung her legs over the side of the bed and saw a bathroom off to the left. Peeling off clothes that felt days old, she turned on the shower, not even giving it time to warm up. The shocking cool jets of water hit her skin like a slap, bringing her round, before the water warmed and comforted like an embrace.

By the time she had emerged from the bathroom, a selection of clothes were laid out on the bed. Someone had been in here while she was in the shower. Unseen hands had placed the clothes on the bed she had only just left, an unseen body had been barely a foot from hers while she was naked in the shower, and instinctively she knew. Theo.