A Baby to Bind His Bride

“You haven’t had one of your headaches in some time,” he said today, coming over to stand at the foot of the lounger where she sat. She set her book aside and peered up at him. Then she swept her sunglasses back and anchored them on the top of her head, narrowing her eyes at him in a way he couldn’t say he liked.

“What’s the matter?”

Leonidas didn’t want to answer that. Or acknowledge that she could see into him like that.

“Perhaps the worst of them is over,” he said instead.

Susannah stood, pulling her shawl around her and tilting her head slightly to one side as she regarded him.

“You’re not all right,” she said softly. “Are you?”

“What can that possibly matter to you?” It was ripped from him. Too raw. Too revealing. And yet he couldn’t seem to stop. “As you keep telling me—as you go to great lengths to make sure I never forget—I can never have you. What does it matter whether I am all right, whatever the hell that means, or not?”

Susannah didn’t flare back at him. She didn’t do anything at all for a moment but stand there and study him, and only when he thought he might come out of his skin did she move. Even then, it was only a small thing. She reached over and put her hand to his jaw, then held it there.

Small. Meaningless, he wanted to say.

But it felt like the world.

“You have this, Leonidas,” she said quietly. “And maybe this is enough.”

It shouldn’t have felt like a storm. It shouldn’t have rocked him the way it did, deep and wild, razing what had been there and leaving nothing he recognized in its wake.

But he would think about that later. He would piece himself back together later.

He would try to rebuild all the things she’d broken then.

If he could.

Here, now, he took what she was offering.

“It’s my mother,” he said gruffly, and tried to hold on to his anger. Because he was very much afraid that what was beneath it was the pointless hurt and grief of the child in him who still, all these years and bitter lessons later, wanted Apollonia to be his mother. Just once. “She’s the one who had the plane tampered with. She’s responsible for the crash.”

Susannah’s brow creased, but she didn’t say anything. She only waited, dropping her hand to her side to hold her shawl to her and keeping her gaze trained to his. And somehow that made it easier for him to keep speaking.

“I never stopped investigating the plane crash. Your investigators led you to me, but I wanted more. Because, of course, if someone tried to assassinate me once it stood to reason that they would do it again.”

“What’s frustrating is that there are so many possibilities,” she murmured. “And so many lead in circles.”

And Leonidas felt his lips thin. “Indeed. And it warms the heart, I must tell you, to realize the extent to which I am hated by my own blood.”

Susannah’s gaze sharpened on his, and her blue eyes were serious. Intent.

“They don’t hate you, Leonidas,” she said fiercely. “They don’t know you. They are tiny, grasping people who long for things to be handed to them, that’s all. They are victims forever in search of someone to blame. They look around a world in which they have everything and see nothing but their own misfortune.” She shook her head. “Being hated by these people says nothing about you, except perhaps you are a far better person than they could ever dream of being.”

“Careful, little one,” he said roughly. “You begin to sound as if I might have you after all.”

She looked away, and he felt that like a punch to the gut, even when she smiled. Was it his imagination or his guilt that made him think that soft curve of her mouth was bittersweet? And why should he feel that like it was the worst of the blows he’d taken today?

“The truth is that your mother is the worst of them,” she said, and he didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to talk about his mother. He wanted to trace the curve of Susannah’s mouth until her smile felt real. He wanted to wash himself clean of all of this. His name, his blood. “I mean no disrespect.”

Leonidas let out a short laugh with precious little humor in it.

“I doubt you could disrespect my mother if you tried.” And the air was so clear here, bordering on cold but not quite getting there. The island was quiet. The riot was in him, he knew that. “And still, I didn’t think it could be her. Not her. I didn’t want it to be her.”

Susannah whispered something that sounded like his name. Leonidas forged on.

“My cousins made sense to me as suspects. All they do is congregate and plot. Why not the biggest plot of all?” He shook his head. “But not one of them would actually want the things they claim have been taken from them. They don’t want to be in charge. That’s responsibility, and they would hate it. They just want money. Money and stature and power. They want the appearance of power, but certainly not the work that goes with it. My mother, on the other hand…”