We had a lot to talk about over that week at the chateau. Ivetta had accumulated a lot of questions in our time together, and she peppered me with them throughout the days and nights. We had quite a few discussions about the future, especially covering topics that had been too dangerous to broach prior to the wedding. She wasn’t holding anything back. I was. Just because we were married didn’t mean the danger to her was past. It was greater now than ever before, and it was more important to me than ever before that nothing should happen to her. She didn’t need to know everything. I wanted her smiling and carefree, not worrying about the troop of my knights who were on guard a mere five miles from the chateau, patrolling the circumference twenty-four hours a day to ensure we would have a peaceful, safe honeymoon.
As we were, the dirty laundry was her biggest concern. I saw her casting disparaging glances at the growing piles in the corner, and although they annoyed me, too, I wasn’t about to let her spend any part of our honeymoon doing laundry. But the solution was simple. Keep her distracted.
I wasn’t having any trouble doing that.
The morning of our fifth day, I decided she was at risk of taking the sheets straight to the laundry room if she touched them, so I set about changing the bedding while she performed her morning toilette in the bathroom. I’d never done such menial work before, but I’d seen her do it hundreds of times, and I didn’t have to worry about making the bed neatly. We just needed clean sheets. That was all.
Fortunately, the servants had stocked the master bedroom with a plentiful supply.
“Thanks for doing that.”
I glanced up to see her leaning in the doorway, a small smile playing across her lips as she watched me.
“It’s not hard,” I replied dismissively.
“Are you insulting my abilities?” she asked teasingly.
“I’m complimenting mine.”
“Then maybe you’d like to try making breakfast this morning.”
I straightened up and smirked at her. “No.”
She walked up to me and wrapped her arms around my waist, resting her head on my chest as she hugged me. I returned the gesture, savoring the feel of her in my arms. She always fit there. From the first moment I embraced her, this had been where she belonged. Her place to my right in bed, her hand in mine, her small frame in my embrace - she filled in the gaps I hadn’t known existed. Nothing was right without her anymore.
“Chevalier?” she asked.
“Yes?” I responded, stroking her long, silky hair.
“You’re not allowed to die in an assassination attempt or some war.”
“I don’t intend to.”
“Good. Because if I have to raise our children alone, I’m going to be very angry with you.”
I chuckled. “Is that the only reason?”
“Well, I don’t really like politics, but I’m not going to let a bunch of wizened court ministers rule Rhodolite when I’m still the queen.”
“And?”
She pulled back to look up at me shyly. “And I don’t think I can live without you anymore.”
I knew I couldn’t live without her anymore. She was my everything. I leaned in as she stood up on tiptoe, our lips meeting in the middle for a long kiss.
“What would you like for breakfast this morning?” she asked, settling back on her feet. “Eggs? Bacon? Toast?”
“Surprise me.”
She smiled and stepped out of my embrace, taking my hand in hers. “It won’t be much of a surprise if you’re watching me make it,” she teased, leading me out of the bedroom toward the kitchen.
“I enjoy watching you.”
The dusting of pink on her cheeks as she smiled back at me made that comment worthwhile. I pulled myself up onto the counter next to her workspace while she set about collecting ingredients and dishes.
“There are chairs at the table,” she said, glancing over at me.
“I prefer to sit here.”
She giggled. “Why do you and your brothers like sitting on counters?”
“There are rarely enough chairs in the kitchen for all of us, and counters are easily accessible.”
“For tall people like you. I would have to jump to get up there.”
I’d never heard her remark about her height before.
“Does your height ever bother you?”
She shrugged. “Not really. I never thought about it until I came to the palace and was suddenly living in a tall world. I don’t think I ever had to climb a ladder to clean before that.”
Her statement surprised me. I knew she had worked a lot of odd jobs prior to coming to the palace, and the first time I saw her on top of a ladder, she looked quite comfortable, as if she routinely climbed to such heights.
But then, she always had been adept at hiding the truth.
“How long have you been working?”
“As long as I can remember,” she replied, slicing up fruit while the fire in the stove caught and sputtered into life. “Mother usually took me with her because I got into too much trouble on my own. Of course, I often got in trouble while I was with her, too.”
“I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who has had difficulties with you,” I teased.
“Careful what you say to someone holding a knife,” she teased back. She set the knife in the sink and moved over to the stove. “I couldn’t go to school or out to play with other kids because they’d beat me up, but I wasn’t of much help to Mother, either - not when I was really little.”
My hands clenched into fists involuntarily, as when she first told me about her childhood beatings in the carriage after our afternoon at the Foundation Day festival. She didn’t notice. Her attention was on the three pans on the hot stove filled with bacon, eggs, and toast. She moved with practiced efficiency as she talked, flipping and stirring effortlessly.
“People used to complain about her bringing me along,” she continued, as if we were discussing the weather. “Sometimes they’d hit her, or try to hurt me, and she’d very calmly pick me up and go home. She never blamed me.”
That I didn’t know. It was no wonder Ivetta was willing to risk bodily harm to herself in order to care for her mother in her final days.
“I guess I started working on my own when I was…thirteen, maybe? Although I usually still worked with Mother. It was safer for both of us to stick together. The people in the village who knew us and liked us couldn’t afford to pay us, so we had to go into town and work for people we didn’t know.”
Thirteen. When Jack approached her for the first time. She never talked about him, beyond the occasional reference to the assault and her nightmares. It really was nothing short of a miracle that she hadn’t been raped before she came to the palace.
She dished everything onto the two plates she’d set next to the stove and carried them to the table. “I’m making it sound so horrible. Most people were really nice, and if they weren't, we just stopped working for them. Would you get the fruit?”
I slid off the counter, picking up the two bowls of fruit and following her to the table. She deserved much more than the kiss I placed on her cheek, but my hands were full.
“I know your mother’s reasoning, but I wish you had come to the palace sooner,” I said, setting the bowls down and pulling her chair out for her.
“She was pretty nervous about it until Foundation Day,” Ivetta said, taking her seat. I let my fingers brush across her shoulders as I pushed the chair in. “You should have seen her face light up when I told her about the festival. After that, she was always asking about you.”
“According to her letter, you were always talking about me,” I replied, smirking as I took my seat across from her at the little table.
“Only because I knew how happy it made her,” Ivetta said dismissively, her lips twitching as she tried not to smile.
It was nothing short of a miracle that she could still smile, that she was still so sweet. Nobody would guess at her painful past from looking at her. I was the only one who was allowed to see the evidence left behind as scars on her skin.
What would it have been like to encounter her for the first time when she was still a child, hiding behind her mother’s skirt?
I would never have considered her as anything more than an annoyance.
The way we met, the difficulties she’d endured, had brought us to this moment. She had spent her life struggling to survive, pushing past unspeakable trauma to look for a reason to smile. I had spent my life ignoring people like her in my quest to gain the throne, thinking pure knowledge untainted by paltry emotion was all I needed to rule effectively. I didn’t deserve her. But now that she was mine, I wasn’t going to let anyone hurt her ever again.
We finished eating, and she stood up and walked over to me, her green eyes shy but intense. I pushed my chair back, watching her curiously. She sat on my lap and wrapped her arms around my neck.
“What is this about?” I asked, stabilizing her with an arm around her waist and a hand on her thigh.
“Thank you for everything, Chevalier.”
She leaned in and kissed me, starting in soft and chaste, tentatively deepening and intensifying by slipping her tongue between my lips. Her kiss was a bouquet of flavors, the saltiness of bacon blending with the sweetness of fruit, enhancing her own unique taste. She tilted her head to change the angle, sliding her hands up into my hair and shifting on my lap to press her body closer to mine. My fingers dug into her waist and her thigh as my heart sped up. She pulled back just enough for a quick breath and kissed me again, running her hands down to my shoulders and gripping them tightly as she moved to straddle my lap. The sound of fabric ripping made her pull back.
“Oops.”
“Keep going,” I murmured, finding the bare skin of her thigh exposed by the tear in her nightgown and running my hand up and down the length of it.
She shivered and kissed me again, sliding her hands slowly down my chest and stomach, and then back up again. I couldn’t take it anymore. I grabbed the collar of her nightgown and tore it open.
“Chevalier!”
“It’s already torn,” I replied, and then I kissed her, and she wrapped her arms around my neck as I took control. I ran my hands up her thighs and picked her up just below her rear as I stood. She gasped softly and wrapped her legs around my waist as I carried her out of the kitchen, back to the bedroom, laying her down in the clean, soft sheets and continuing to shower her with the affection she deserved.
“Ivetta,” I murmured.
“Yes?” she breathed.
“I need to thank you.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
Her heart was pounding against mine, her skin hot to the touch, her lips sweet and inviting.
“Oh, Chevalier, I love you so much,” she gasped.
“I love you, Ivetta,” I purred, enjoying this beautiful woman that I had no right to have.
It was a shame we ever had to leave, but all honeymoons must come to an end, and our last day came far too quickly. She and I packed our luggage in silence that afternoon. I laid my clothes for the next day out beside her dress and undergarments, easily accessible and out of the way until tomorrow. She was standing over her trunk, holding her wedding dress up in front of her and sighing heavily.
“It’s such a beautiful dress, and I only got to wear it once,” she said regretfully.
I came up behind her and slid my arms around her waist, pulling her back against me and resting my chin on her shoulder.
“Doesn’t it seem silly?” she asked, carefully folding it up. “Having a dress this beautiful and elaborate, only to wear it once and then put it away, never to be seen again? And I have two of them. The engagement gown is just as pretty.”
“You can wear them whenever you like for me,” I murmured.
She giggled. “Oh, yes, I’d love to wear this as I sit in the window reading. It’s pretty, but it’s not very comfortable.”
I released her as she bent over to pack it into the trunk, although I kept one arm around her waist and stayed at her side. The red negligee covered in powdered sugar caught my eye. She needed more of those.
“But we need to have at least one girl so I can give her these dresses,” she continued, oblivious to my train of thought as she straightened up and leaned into my side. “I wonder what Mother’s wedding dress looked like.”
There was always a touch of sadness in her voice when she talked about her mother, and it was stronger than usual just now. I led her to the sofa and sat down, pulling her onto my lap. She rested her head on my shoulder.
“I wish she could have been there,” she said quietly. “She always loved weddings, and she was really looking forward to mine. Even though I thought it would never happen.”
“How fortunate I am that you lived among fools,” I said, stroking her hair.
“How fortunate I am that you had no interest in marriage until you became king,” she countered.
“And not even then, beyond my duty to continue the family line.”
She giggled. “It’s hard to picture you performing out of duty when you’re always so passionate with me.”
I chuckled. “The thought disgusted me until I met you.”
Her lips grazed my jaw. “Me, too. So, now that we’ve established that neither of us disgusts the other, how many children do you want?”
I shifted to reach her better, leaning in for a soft kiss. “I had planned for two boys: one to inherit the throne, and one as a stand-in should something happen to the first,” I replied, brushing a few stray black hairs back from her face. The question was not so straightforward anymore. I would rather let the lineage die out than risk something happening to her. But she had already made it clear that she wanted to have children, and I had a sudden longing to see her radiant smile as she held our baby in her arms.
“Although I am enjoying my marital duties, I have no plans beyond seeing how you handle the first one,” I finally said.
“Well, I don’t have any plans, either, so I guess we’ll see what happens,” she said, showing me that smile now. She ran her fingers through my hair, her touch light and intensely satisfying. “Can we go outside for a while? We’re not going to be able to spend time alone in the gardens at the palace. Not really.”
I stood up, scooping her into my arms. “We’re not going to be able to spend nearly enough time alone there.”
She wrapped her arms around my neck as I carried her outside. “But now I can go on those boring inspection tours with you, and we can visit Obsidian and Benitoite and Jade, and we can steal every chance we get to sneak away from it all and make love in a foreign locale.”
“I might come to like traveling,” I said, smirking.43Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8sPMRyrbhP
