Royal's Wedding Secret (10 page)

Finally, however, they ended up back at her apartment, which, despite the fact that it was nowhere near as fancy, was at least familiar and safe. Victoria, amidst groans that she wasn't tired, was sent to her room for a nap, and when she was breathing deeply and evenly a few moments later, Marnie was finally able to turn to Philip.

"Wow, that was some day," she said, and Philip, who had stretched out on the couch, glanced up at her.

"You don't look happy about it," he observed, and with a sigh, she flopped down on the couch next to him. As naturally as if they had been doing it for years, he put his arm over her shoulder, and she pressed closer.

"I should be. I'm going to sound like the world's most ungrateful bitch, but honestly, I don't know what to think. Thank you for today, but the truth is that on my own? I couldn't afford to do this more than once a year or so, if that. I … I loved getting to see Victoria so happy and so thrilled, but I know it won't last …"

"That was actually the point of today," he said softly, pulling back to look at her. "It can last."

She blinked at him. "What are you saying?"

"This is something that I have been thinking over for some time," he said. "I care about both of you. So much. More than I ever have. Today … today was meant to be a taste of what I can offer Victoria. She's a brilliant little girl, and I'm not just saying that because she's mine. If you and Victoria come back to Navarra with me, this could be your real life, one that you live with me."

Marnie looked at him hard. There was no trace of deception or insincerity to him. "As what?" she asked, and she wondered if she saw him flinch.

"It wouldn't be as my daughter," he said. "She would have the best of everything, she would be given the finest education. She could become my ward, a distant cousin. Something like that. It happens often enough."

Marnie was enough of a reader and history fan to know about arrangements like that. Her stomach was growing colder and colder, and she pulled her hand away from him. "And what would I be?"

Philip looked at her, and just then, she couldn't read his expression at all.

"We could be together," he said. "Not at the palace, of course. Some subtly and some care would be required, especially after I get married."

“"Get married …? Oh my god, are you actually asking me what I think you're asking me?"

He flinched ever so slightly, but it was enough for her to figure out that she had hit the nail on the head.

"My parents have been putting pressure on me to marry," he said. "The reason why I'm in New York is because I couldn't deal with it. Then I saw you, and found out about Victoria, and now everything's been turned upside down. If I marry, I will have all of the power and money to do exactly what I want, and Marnie, what I want is to give the world to you and to Victoria."

"By keeping us in a little house off in the country somewhere," Marnie shot back. "By making us your dirty little secret …"

Philip looked shocked. "Marnie … I would never consider you my dirty little secret. This isn't what this is all about at all …"

She was suddenly so angry that she could have spit at him. "Oh? Really, Prince Philip? Why don't you tell me what you would call it, hmm? What did your historians call it when women like me loved men like you?"

Damn, damn, damn
. She hadn't meant to use that word. She hadn't meant to reveal that much of herself, but the damage was done. There was no coming back from it, so she only bulldozed on.

"I don't think you understand what I'm offering or what you're turning down," Philip said, a darkness stealing over his face. "I can give you both so much, and you are turning it away over something incredibly petty, something that shouldn't matter even a little bit …"

"Do you know what it's like, raising a girl?" Marnie asked, her voice strident.

Philip looked momentarily confused. "What do you mean?"

"The world is terrifying for girls, Philip. It doesn't matter how smart or kind or clever you are. People look at girls, and sooner than you want to believe, they realize that they are only good for one thing."

"She's five!" Philip exclaimed, and Marnie offered him a hard grin.

"Ever hear your cousins talk? What about your mother? Believe me when I say that the pressure for girls to grow up fast is right there, and it isn't even all that difficult to see.

"Every day, I fight with the world to protect Victoria, to make sure that she understands that she is worth so much more. So much more than what the assholes on the subway want from her or what her boss might imply some day."

Philip looked grief-stricken at her words, but she continued. This was something he had to hear. He had to understand this.

"You would know this if you were with me, raising her. I understand that you didn't know. What I'm not convinced of is whether it would have made a difference."

"Marnie, you're not being fair."

"Fair is being open with the people who care about you and who you care about," she said, her voice a little bit gentler. "Fair is recognizing those who love you and support you."

There was a pause, and when she continued, her voice was softer, sadder. "What is it going to be like when you do get married?" she asked. "I know you are going to. You care too much about your family not to, and about your country as well. When that happens, you will have a woman in your life who stands by your side. You'll have children with her. After that, what do I tell Victoria when she asks why we are always lesser than your other family? What do I tell myself?"

Philip reached for her hand, but she pulled it away. There was no anger in that gesture, nothing but weariness and pain.

"I wouldn't let that happen," he said, but Marnie shook her head.

"Don't you see, Philip? You're planning for it. You want to put us out in some remote location where you can have us whenever you like. It might be a very beautiful prison, but it is still a prison."

She could see the moment when the truth of her words struck Philip. He could see how it would go, and to his credit, he looked uncomfortable. Marnie, for her part, had never felt so tired in her life.

"I want to give Victoria the very best," he said. "You too."

For some reason, the thought of that made her smile a little. "That's the problem with you, Philip," she said gently. "You never thought all that much of yourself either. The best is yourself. It's not what your money can buy, and it's not all the classes you can make sure she attends or what spas I get to go to. It's you. That's all we want, and that's the one thing that you can't give."

Philip was silent for a very long time. He sat in the dimness of the room as if he were a man turned to stone. Marnie was outwardly calm, but underneath her cool exterior was a welter of emotions, anger, grief and more, that could not be quiet, would not be quiet.

"I see," he said. "I understand."

When he stood, Marnie felt as if her heart was ripping in two, tearing like heavy paper. She kept herself from reaching for him, because she couldn't stand to do so and be rebuffed. His offer was made from the heart, but if that was all he could give them, she wouldn't have him. She knew where it would lead, to an empty life and one that would make her grow small and bitter.

She looked up at him. For a moment, his hand hovered next to her hair, as if he wanted to touch her one last time. For the second time in her life, she realized that he would never touch her again. She had been wrong the first time, but she wouldn't be wrong the second time.

"I'm sorry, Marnie. Tell Victoria that I am sorry as well."

She wanted to tell him that he should tell Victoria himself, but she couldn't stand the idea. If she, an adult woman, felt as if her world was rocking back and forth on its moorings, how would a tiny child deal with it? She couldn't do that to her daughter.

He got up, and left.

Suddenly, Marnie was alone in her apartment. It should have been a familiar feeling, but somehow, over the last few weeks, she had become unused to it. There was an echoing silence where once she had had Philip to fill it, and even when they were simply resting after a long day out, there was the feeling of someone else in the world, someone else who cared.

It wasn't real
, she tried to tell herself.
It was just temporary. He was playing daddy and husband. He wasn't really going to stay.

That was what she tried to tell herself but somewhere else in her mind was the rock-hard understanding that he was being completely real. She shook her head, trying to shake it away. She was no one's mistress, and she refused to let anyone consider Victoria Philip's bastard.

Marnie knew that she had to be strong, both for her own sake and for that of her daughter. She had been for so long before Philip showed up, but now it felt impossible. Since she had been a single mother, she had worked up an image of herself as a stone fortress, impregnable and powerful enough to protect her daughter from every possible ill or menace. Now she felt as fragile as glass.

I need to be strong,
she thought to herself over and over again, but somehow, her heart didn't want to listen. She started to cry, and the best she could do was to keep it quiet so that her child wouldn't hear and worry.

*

On the cab ride back to his hotel, Philip started out numb. He felt as if everything he was seeing and feeling was removed. Everything was distant and strange, and a part of him was convinced that the past hour or so was nothing more than a particularly bad dream. He hadn't talked with Marnie. She hadn't told him that he was essentially making her his whore. He could still see the most lovely woman in the world and the daughter that they had made together.

It wasn't until he was in the hotel room with the door behind him that he started to feel something, and underneath that numbness was rage. It wasn't rage directed at Marnie or even himself. It was a rage at the world for being the way it was, and for forcing people into the roles that never suited them. He was going to lose Marnie a second time, and for the same damned reason, and suddenly the fury of that broke him apart.

Before he knew what he was doing, there was a lamp in his hands and he flung it straight across the room where it smashed into the fireplace. Then a ceramic bowl followed it, and then a chair.

By the time Philip was done, the room was trashed, but there was a calmness in him. He realized now that the anger was merely hiding something much different, and at the bottom of it all was grief.

The anger made sense, but the grief was something he had to live with. It didn't matter how or why, but he had lost. He had lost Marnie, and he had lost Victoria. Less than a month after discovering the family that he had never even known that he wanted, he was losing them, and the pain that that caused was so intense he wasn't even sure that he would survive it.

Tears burned at his eyes, and he swiped them away angrily. Marnie, in one gloriously unguarded moment, had said that she loved him. Fool that he was, he hadn't said it back to her. Now Philip wondered if it would have made a difference. If she knew that he suffered at the idea of being together but legally apart as well, would she have changed her mind?

Philip knew it didn't matter.

One of the things that he had always respected about Marnie was the fact that she was incredibly decisive. She knew her own mind, and she knew what she could and could not stand. If she could not stand the arrangement that he had proposed, she would not agree to it, no matter how much she loved him.

Finally, Philip collapsed on a small armchair, the last bit of undamaged furniture in his room. With a nearly careless gesture, he dialed his mother.

"Philip! You got the message! What are you doing? What's happening there
—?"

"I'm fine, mother," he said hollowly. "I'm coming home. I'm getting married. I am done with this."

To his surprise, his mother didn't crow over her victory like his father might have done. Instead, there was a silence at the end of the line as she considered what must have changed to make him sound like that.

"It will be for the best, you will see," she said. "Ever since you were born, I have known that you have a grand destiny in front of you. Now that you are willing to submit to it, there is no end to the good you can do."

He knew what she was talking about. Navarra was a wealthy country, one that had a great deal of influence throughout the world. Both at home and abroad, there were many different social goods he could do.

When he thought about doing good and taking care of things, however, what he thought of was a dark-haired girl with black eyes, glancing up at him as he looked down at the paints. He thought about her solemnly taking his hand and making sure that he knew how to draw. Then he saw her flying towards him, her hands full of paint and her eyes full of laughter.

That was the good he wanted to do. With Victoria and Marnie gone, however, it felt like there was nothing else worth his time. He knew that wasn't true. He had a life before them, and he would have a life after.

He just wasn't sure that it was a life worth having.

CHAPTER SIX

The next day Marnie woke up to a deep throbbing in her head and a feeling as if her heart had been ripped to pieces and then put back together. For one happy moment, she thought she was sick and wondered if Philip would lie down with her a little longer. Then she woke up a little more and wished that she hadn't.

The problem with being a mother, she thought, was that life wouldn't ever really pause for her pain.

Even if she felt as if she wanted to lie down and never wake up again, she still had to go rouse Victoria from a dead sleep and get her ready for school. She had to cook breakfast, check her emails from her editor, and look into the summer programs that were being offered in the district. When she saw that they offered ballet and a few art classes, she winced. They would be adequate, and regardless Victoria would love them, but from an adult's perspective, she knew that they would be nowhere near as good as what Philip could provide.