A Royally Beautiful Mess Read online

  “What else?” he asked softly, sitting on the table in front of her chair. “What’s got you so torn up?”

  She pulled a blanket over her body and huddled underneath it. “Kensington and Anabelle are making an announcement of their own this week, too.”

  “They’re having a baby.” At least Darius didn’t have to worry about any of his siblings making the same splash.

  Esther nodded, tears streaking down her face.

  Darius reached out and rested a hand on her knee. “What can I do?”

  “Nothing. Go away.”

  The chair was big enough that he could squeeze in next to her. With his arm around her shoulders, he pulled her close. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Sobs began to shake her shoulders. Two sets of happy news, neither of which made her happy.

  He wanted to ask, to demand to know what happened to their baby, but he couldn’t bring himself to inflict more pain.

  Eventually, the shaking slowed, and her breathing evened out. When she finally went limp, he knew she’d gone to sleep. Probably the best thing for her. Could he get her over to the bed, though?

  Carefully, gently, he maneuvered until he could stand up and lift her into his arms. The bed remained unmade from the night before so he was able to lay her directly on it. All he needed to do was get her shoes off and cover her up.

  “Don’t leave me, Dare.” Her murmur stopped him short.

  She’d said it once before. The night he left. Her suggestion that they stay in that little hut together forever scared him because he’d found himself wanting the same thing. He’d known he couldn’t have it with a random girl he met at a resort in Sargasso, so he had to leave. As he watched her sleep for a final moment, she’d said the same thing.

  This time would be different. He toed off his shoes and went around until he could climb into the bed next to her. After tugging the covers up over them both, he wrapped an arm around her and held her as he dozed off.

  The room was noticeably darker when he woke up, but that was the second thing he noticed.

  The first was Esther. Kissing him.

  He kissed her back, the way he’d longed to do since he left her the last time. Neither of them said anything as they finally fulfilled the last requirement to make their marriage truly legal.

  Esther fell back asleep first. If, as he suspected, she’d been sleeping as well as he had, both of them could use an extra long night.

  So again, he held her as she slept. Prayed for her as tears came in her sleep. Prayed for both of them as he started to doze.

  And when he woke up, he was alone.

  3

  Three layovers.

  That’s what it took to get home.

  Esther took the first flight she could get out of the Springfield-Branson National Airport. It went to Minnesota. From there, she caught a flight to Chicago and then Atlanta. Atlanta had a direct flight to Cabo Juan-Eduardo.

  It would have been much faster if she’d just gotten permission from her father and chartered a plane.

  By the time she landed, she knew the baby had been born, but that was the only announcement that had been made. Unless she missed her guess, they were holding off on releasing more details until they were able to reach her.

  She’d only told Harrison she was on her way about half an hour before her flight landed. He said he’d arrange to pick her up at the airport and wouldn’t let anyone else know.

  He must have used some of his leverage as a member of the family because when she exited onto the jetway, she was pulled aside and taken down a separate set of stairs outside then through a secure area that wasn’t the terminal.

  Harrison waited in an office. She gave him a big hug but didn’t explain her absence or why she chose to reappear. Her picture had surely been taken by others on the plane and would begin to make the rounds on social media, but her hair was much longer than it had been in March when she left San Majoria the last time, so she could hold out a little bit of hope that no one recognized her.

  “Everyone is going to be ecstatic to see you,” he told her as they followed airport security to where the car was parked. “Do you have a bag we need to get?”

  She shook her head. “I figured I had enough clothes here already. The trip was spur of the moment when I woke up this morning.”

  With Darius in her bed. And a very clear memory of what had transpired the night before. She wouldn’t be the one left behind this time.

  The car drove straight to the palace. As they pulled up to the portico, she noticed an alert on her phone from one of the local news services.

  Princess Esther has been spotted on a flight into San Majoria as Crown Princess Astrid has just given birth. This is the first official sighting of the princess since early March.

  “Word’s getting out.” Which meant Darius would know soon, too.

  “You had to know it would.”

  “Are Astrid and the baby here or at the hospital?” She probably should have asked sooner.

  “The hospital. Should I have had the car take you there?”

  Esther shook her head. “No, but now that I’m here, they can make whatever announcements they need to and come home.”

  Her parents walked into the reception room as Esther and Harrison made their way across it. Mother opened her arms for Esther to walk into.

  “I’ve missed you, darling,” her mother whispered as her father wrapped his arms around both of them. “We need to talk.”

  “Yes, we do. Our apartment. Now.” She could hear the father in his voice as well as the king. Concern and compassion warring with his royal gravitas.

  With her mother’s arm around her waist, they made their way to the monarch’s quarters on the top floor of the palace.

  “Let’s start with where’s Darius?” her father asked as soon as she sat down.

  “In Serenity Landing as far as I know. He was asleep when I left.”

  He studied her in a way that made her uneasy. “I know you have separate rooms, so how do you know that?”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her that he knew. How much more was he already aware of? “He slept in my room,” she replied evasively. “More than once.” If you counted the nap the afternoon before. “He was asleep there when I left.”

  “Then why don’t you tell us the rest of the story.” Her mother took her hand and held it loosely.

  Esther shrugged. “There’s not much to tell.”

  “The baby?” her father prompted.

  That knife twisted again. “Had already stopped developing when I told you about it. It was a matter of time before my body decided to flush it out. I have the paperwork from the doctor in my email and can show you later.”

  “Forward it to me this evening. How did Darius take the news?” The concern in his voice wasn’t just for his youngest daughter, but also as a king who had used the baby as leverage against a country who wasn’t dealing well with them.

  Esther stared at her hands where her mother held on. “I never told him. I don’t know what he thinks.”

  “He sleeps in your room, but you’ve never talked to him about the loss of his child?”

  And there came the tone Esther had always hated. Disappointment.

  “Something like that. We are married, you know.” Her defensive tone wouldn’t help any, but she couldn’t help it.

  “I performed the ceremony.” Her father reached over and covered her hands, and those of her mother, with his own. “Esther, did you mourn the loss of your child, no matter what the circumstances were?”

  Tears blurred her vision as she nodded.

  “Don’t you think Darius deserved the same opportunity?”

  Could she tell the truth? “Not particularly,” she blurted out. “If I never saw him again, it would be too soon.”

  “Are things really that bad? Has he hurt you?” She didn’t want to see the concern on her father’s face.

  “Not in that sense. When we left Benjamin’s office, we had a
fight. That was the last time we really talked to each other until yesterday. Kind of.”

  “That was nearly six months ago.”

  “I know.” She swiped at the tears. “We had one other little fight a couple weeks ago. He said our marriage wasn’t legal, even in Eyjania, and he could do whatever he wished.”

  Her father’s grip on her hands tightened, before he released them. “What did he mean by that?”

  She closed her eyes. “Benjamin said Darius had to kiss me at the wedding and the marriage had to be consummated. It hadn’t been. He didn’t specify what he meant by doing whatever he wished, but I’m pretty sure there’s been several other women.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  They all twisted to see Darius walking through the door.

  “Explain yourself,” her father ordered.

  Darius stood tall and met her father eye-to-eye. “There hasn’t been any other women. Not before February, and definitely not after the wedding.”

  “I saw you flirting with them, and you’re never home,” Esther told him. “Remember the redhead last week? You were sharing the same square on the floor, and her hand was on your chest.”

  He shook his head. “She was flirting with me. If you’d watched much longer, you would have seen me take a step back. I’ve been spending a lot of time at the library because you told me to leave you alone.” His eyes bored straight into hers. “What I’d really like to know is why you never told me about our baby.”

  As Esther’s silky brown hair fell forward around her face, Darius felt conflicted. She’d kept this from him, been rude and obnoxious, and completely cut him out of her life after taking sacred vows.

  But he still wished things could be like they had been the night before when she’d let him be there for her.

  “Why didn’t you tell him?” Queen Miriam asked.

  “I’d really prefer not to get into this right now,” she said.

  The king reached for his wife’s hand. “Why don’t we give the two of them some space?”

  Esther finally looked up. “Wait. Is it a boy or a girl? How’s Astrid?”

  “She wants to talk to you herself.” The king glanced at Darius then back to his daughter. “Why don’t you call her, talk for a few minutes, then you and Darius need to work this out.”

  The authority in his voice was something no one in Darius’s family could duplicate. Isaiah tried to, but he didn’t actually have any power except what Benjamin gave him. But Benjamin still seemed like a kid wearing his father’s shoes and suit coat. He was an adult and the king, but still seemed so uncertain of himself and his role.

  Esther stood near a window in the monarch’s sitting room and talked to her sister on the phone. A few of her words drifted back to Darius. He could tell she was trying to put a positive spin on the conversation, a happy sound to her voice. He also knew she was devastated.

  She took the phone from her ear and pressed on the screen, clasping it to her chest with both hands as she tried to compose herself.

  Without looking at him, she started for the main door he’d entered through. “Are you coming?” she called over her shoulder.

  Darius followed her down the wide stairs to the floor below. The hallway was broken by occasional doors. Esther stopped and stared at the painting on the door before going in.

  He closed the door as he walked into a sitting room. “Your apartment?”

  “I moved in here when I turned eighteen and graduated from school. Harrison is the only one who moved out of the apartment upstairs before graduation. He moved out over a year ago.” She hesitated. “What’s the living situation like in Eyjania? Do you all have your own apartments?”

  “All of us out of school do now.” He slouched down on a couch. “Benjamin lives in the monarch’s quarters. It’s attached to the consort’s quarters, but my parents never lived apart. They both lived in the monarch’s apartment with the younger children. The older kids moved to the consort’s apartment as we grew up. After my father died, things didn’t really change until Benjamin turned eighteen. He moved into the monarch’s quarters and the rest of us moved out of the larger suite to a set of three suites that could have doors put in to connect them and make one larger suite. There’s a whole hallway, at least twice this long, of smaller apartments that we pick from when we turn eighteen.”

  He looked around. “Mine’s smaller than this. Two bedrooms with a living area and kitchenette consisting of a refrigerator, a microwave, and a small stove I’ve never used.”

  “It’s interesting how different things are, even though we both live in palaces.” She pulled a bottle of juice out of a refrigerator hidden in a cabinet. “There’s no kitchenette in here. Just a refrigerator and microwave, but I had to ask for those. There’s a full kitchen down the hallway. We all share it.”

  “Technically, neither one of us live in a palace right now.” They needed to get this conversation on track and deal with some of this.

  She twisted the cap off the juice. “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Darius asked the question as softly and gently as he could.

  Her hair hung around her face as she sat on the edge of a chair. “Why would I have thought you cared?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? It was my baby, too.”

  “You didn’t believe me when I told you I was having your baby. You told my father and your brother as much. I hadn’t seen you in weeks. Why would I think you cared?”

  He could see her point, though it wasn’t entirely accurate. “I believed you.”

  Esther’s head snapped up. “You did?”

  “Of course I did.” He couldn’t explain why he’d questioned it in front of the others. “Look, this isn’t what either one of us would have picked, but it is what it is, isn’t that what you said? You’re my wife, completely legal now, and I would have honored the commitment for life even if last night hadn’t happened.”

  “You really mean that?”

  “I do.” He ran a hand down his face. “Look, I’ll admit to flirting a little bit when I knew you were around, mostly because I wanted to see if you noticed or cared, maybe to make you jealous.”

  “It made me mad.”

  “At least I was getting some emotion out of you. The rest of the time you just ignored me.”

  She sat back and pulled her legs up to wrap her arms around them. “That probably wasn’t the best way to go about getting my attention.”

  “Probably not,” he admitted. “But you wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “Why would I? You only wanted one thing.”

  A bark of laughter shot out of Darius. “That’s what you think?”

  She looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Do you not remember Sargasso? And what was the first thing you wanted after the wedding?”

  He remembered every minute of their time on Sargasso. “It was a wedding. What’s supposed to happen after a wedding? Plus what my brother said about the legalities, and I assumed.” He sighed. “I shouldn’t have, but I did. I should have talked to you before kissing you like that.” With his eyes closed, he remembered the feel of her kiss, of the softness of her skin at the small of her back as he rubbed his thumb across it. “But after Sargasso, I just figured...”

  “You figured wrong.”

  “I know that now. We have to figure out where to go from here. Together.”

  She heaved a sigh. “I don’t know that together is a thing we’ll ever have.”

  4

  After another sip of her juice, Esther set it on the side table and looked for a blanket. Not because she was cold, but because she needed something, anything, as a barrier between herself and Darius. Some kind of protection against blue eyes that saw far too much.

  “How’s your sister?”

  Grateful at the change of subject, she took great care not to wonder about it. “She’s good. The baby is good. A boy. That’s all she really said. Now that she’s talked to me, they’re making the official announcement and will come b
ack here for a few days before going to San Minoria where they actually live.”

  “How are you feeling about all of it?”

  And there it was. Not so much a change of subject as a skirting around it. Did she dare be honest and vulnerable? Would it come back to haunt her? Would it be worse if she didn’t? “It’s not the baby that bothers me,” she finally told him, remembering the blanket stashed in a drawer under the side table.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Astrid was pregnant before we met.” A tear leaked out before she could blink it away as she pulled the blanket around her like a shield. “Kensington and Anabelle are making an announcement of their own this week. She’s expecting a baby, but I’m not sure when. February or March maybe.”

  “And it just reminds you that you’re not.” Compassion in his voice, understanding even, was something she hadn’t expected. “I’m the only one in my family who could even possibly make one of those announcements. I’m glad for that. Otherwise, I’d probably feel the same way. I don’t know your brother, or it could be worse.”

  “Exactly.” As much as she’d wanted to come home, maybe her father had been right to encourage her to stay away. “I know I told my father I wanted to attend University in the States instead of finishing here, and I picked the same one Queen Adeline of Montevaro attended, but I don’t know if that’s really the case.”

  “You already had two years finished, didn’t you?”

  She nodded. “It would have been three if I hadn’t dropped my classes last spring. It will be three when I finish this semester.”

  “So finish. Then finish your last year, then we’ll figure out where to go. I’m the same way. I’ll be done with my degree next year.”

  “But I don’t know if I want to go back to SLU.” More tears worked their way down her cheeks.

  “What do you want?”

  She looked up to see his blue eyes staring directly into her own. “Honestly? I want to go back to Sargasso and hide away in that hut with Dare.”