The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain (16 page)

Then he carried her through to the bedroom and laid her down on a miraculously clean bed. “The blankets don’t have blood anymore.”

“I instructed the staff to change it while we were in the bath.”

“Oh.”

“You did not hear me?”

“Don’t know…I miss a lot of stuff when I’m on the pain pills.” But vaguely she remembered that phone call. She opened her mouth to tell him so, but then closed it again when she forgot what she was going to say.

“I see.”

“What?” she asked muzzily, wondering what he could see that he thought he needed to make note of.

Strange man, her husband.

He said something that she didn’t answer. She was too busy snuggling into her pillow and falling asleep. She vaguely registered being taken into his arms before slipping into total oblivion.

* * * * *

Claudio
stared down at the detective’s report on his desk with unseeing eyes. It held no great revelations. Not after last night. He now knew…everything. There was no other man.
Therese
had not been unfaithful, nor did she want to divorce him because she wanted to move on to something better.

She had a medical condition that apparently affected at least one in ten women between the ages of twenty-five and forty. He could not imagine it, had never heard of it and in some respects that made him angry. One day he would be sovereign of his country…did he not need to know about things like this?

Perhaps he and the minister of health should discuss the compilation of a report of women’s health issues. He was a twenty-first century prince…not a patriarch from an outmoded era. He was sure his father would agree.

So would
Therese
…or she would have before. In fact, she would have insisted on taking the project over…before. Now she was intent on leaving him. Filing for divorce and ending their marriage—all because this strange disease had left her virtually infertile.

She saw no hope for their future, but his entire being rebelled at such a solution to her predicament.

He would not let her go.

Only he had this awful suspicion that it wasn’t going to be about what he wanted.
Therese
could be incredibly stubborn and she had decided that their marriage was no longer viable because she could not guarantee giving him children—an heir to his throne. Even if he could convince her that he did not see things that way, that he wanted her to stay, she might insist on leaving for the good of
Isole
dei Re.

She took her duty to her adopted country seriously. She had spent several months hiding debilitating pain and excessive bleeding in order to protect its inhabitants and the rest of the royal family from turmoil and speculation over her health. He could not believe he had been stupid enough now to believe that she would have an affair.

Even if she fell in love, she was too intensely aware of her duty to ever do anything to compromise her position. Which knowledge did not make him feel better, though it should have.

Not when she had refused to discuss anything further that morning. She had insisted she had no time if she was going to visit his father before her other duties began for the day. And she had laughed sarcastically when he had suggested that perhaps she should stay in bed and rest.

She’d curled her lip at him with a most un-Therese-like expression. “I’ve been dealing with this for months now and I’m not in the habit of abandoning my responsibilities because of it.”

“But you are ill.” And he had not known it, damn it.

“I was ill last month, too, but I did not take to my bed.”

“Perhaps you should have.”

“This from the man who read me the riot act for canceling my appointments to fly to
New York
to see him?”

His reaction to that event was going to haunt him for a long time, he just knew it. “I did not realize what was at stake at the time.”

“Nothing was at stake.”

“You can say that when you asked for a divorce?”

“I can say that when I know it to be true. The timing of my telling you was unfortunate. I should have waited to tell you about my condition until you got back.”

“No, you should have told me about your condition as you call it as soon as it began happening.” And definitely before she had asked for a divorce, but he wasn’t about to say that.

Blaming his vicious reaction to what he thought was news of an affair on her would not help the situation at all. He had to pay for his sins with humility…though it would not be easy to do. It was not a natural state of mind for him.

“You weren’t around to tell,” she said with unexpected anger, her green eyes snapping at him with derision. “Not during that time of month. You were always careful to plan your out of town business trips for when I wasn’t available sexually.”

She made it sound like she’d been nothing more than a sexual convenience. “It was not like that.”

“It was and is exactly like that. You’ve been doing it since practically the beginning of our marriage.”

“But it is not because I saw you as only a sexual convenience.” He’d begun scheduling his trips that way when he realized it embarrassed
Therese
for him to make sexual overtures during her menses. He always wanted her, so the best solution was to get out of temptation’s path.

“You could have fooled me.”

“Apparently, I did.”

She shrugged. “I have to go.”

But he could not leave it there. “I was not always gone during your periods. You could have told me, but you chose to hide it from me instead.”

“You didn’t make it very hard, did you?”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“You’ve been swearing a lot lately,” she said with what he thought was total irrelevance.

“And you have been lying to me for months.”

“Covering…it’s not the same thing. Ask any politician.”

“But you are not a politician. You are my wife.”

She pulled on a short pink-and-brown tweed jacket that matched her stylish skirt and flipped her hair out from her collar. “I am a princess…in today’s age, that makes me a politician.”

“It is because you are my wife that you are a princess. Our relationship comes first.”

“Like it did in
New York
?” she asked as she headed for the door.

“You took me by surprise.”

She opened the door, her expression one of cool challenge. “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty, or so they say, but your eyesight has been purely myopic where I’m concerned from the very beginning,
Claudio
. You see what you want to see, perceive only what is convenient and totally disregard everything else. Trying to rewrite our short history for the sake of my feelings or your pride will not change that reality.”

“I thought you were happy being my wife.” At least he had until the last few months.

“I was, but that doesn’t alter the fact that you made it so easy to hide my illness from you. Why was it so easy,
Claudio
? Why didn’t you care enough to notice that some months it was all I could do to hold it together?”

He had no answer, his gut tightening at the question and something in the region of his heart squeezing in a painful vise. She had turned and walked away then. No more questions. No histrionics, just a dignified exit…something she excelled at.

He had made it a point to be at the palace for lunch, but she had treated him like he was a stranger. Tomasso,
Maggie
and Flavia had been there as well and he had received a few odd looks from each of them, but no one pried. Flavia had looked at
Therese
several times, her brown gaze darkened with worry…but still no questions were asked.

And
Claudio
wondered why it was that an obvious problem could exist and yet no one remark upon it, but he could never remember it being any different. They were a royal family and they did not air their concerns in public, but when had that stretched to meaning he should not ask his wife why the heck she was acting so loopy?

He’d made assumptions about what that had meant and could not have been more off target if he had tried. He had believed she was having an affair and it had gutted him. But never once had he simply asked why she did not want to make love as frequently, why she zoned off when they were talking sometimes and why she had started pulling away from him.

Why hadn’t he?

The easy answer was that he had not wanted to hear what he thought was the answer, but it was more complicated than that. It had to do with an unspoken rule in his family that one did not discuss unpleasantness. A rule he had been completely unaware of on a conscious level until now.

The Scorsolinis were men of action, but talking about something as esoterical as feelings was an anathema to most of them. And admitting weakness was even worse. To have admitted he was worried, that he missed her formerly generous passion in bed would have been beyond his ability.

Which meant what? That he was willing to pretend nothing had changed when things patently had changed for the sake of his pride.

While all along, his wife had been battling this horrible, painful disease and telling no one. Because no one had asked. He had not asked. Guilt consumed him. He should have known something was wrong, even without asking. She was right…he’d made it too easy for her to hide her illness, but not because he had not cared.

Would he be able to convince her of that?

He got the impression she did not think he cared at all and nothing could be further from the truth. He had thought she was growing bored with his lovemaking when in fact she had simply been protecting herself. Did she not realize that a man needed to know these things?

Looking down at the report he had to acknowledge that there apparently was a great deal she had kept from him during their three-year marriage. Things she had obviously not realized he needed to know.

He found it incomprehensible that she had a secret doctor in Miami who had diagnosed her. She’d said that she had been going to this doctor for anything of a delicate nature since the very beginning of their marriage. How many appointments had she kept in secret, how many trips had she made and worked the visit in?

And how had she managed to do it while traveling with a security detail? He did not like the feeling there was a whole side to his wife he had not known existed. He did not like much of anything about this situation.

She said the doctor was discreet and that was why she had gone to him. She’d wanted to keep gossip out of the tabloids, but that did not explain her reticence in telling
Claudio
the truth. He was her husband, but she treated him like an adversary to be warily regarded and gotten around. She did not trust him at all.

There might not be another man in her life, but
Claudio
did not hold the place he should rightfully hold in it, either. And if her comments over the past few days were any indication, she did not believe she held the right place in his priorities, either. Their marriage was in trouble on a wholly different level than he had suspected, but it was in trouble nonetheless.

Things were not supposed to come to this pass. He had married
Therese
for the express purpose of preventing that eventuality. He had chosen her not based on emotion, but because she appealed to every need he had identified in having a wife meet.

She was not meeting those needs now and had some harebrained idea of ceasing doing so altogether. She wanted to end their marriage because her body would not cooperate in her role of providing him an heir. She seemed to think he would understand and approve this so-called solution. But there was no honor in abandoning a wife because she could not have children. And he was a man who had been raised to have honor.

She would learn that a Scorsolini did not give up at the first sign of adversity.

Chapter 9

Therese
was dressing when
Claudio
walked into their bedroom. She flicked him a quick glance and then looked away again. There was an air about him she did not want to contend with at the moment. Creases around his eyes spoke of tiredness, but the look in them spoke even more eloquently of determination.

He had made some kind of decision. And why was she so sure she was going to argue with him about it? She didn’t know, but her instincts were warning her with clamoring bells to be on her guard.

His hand settled on her shoulder and she had to fight a rearguard action against her body’s natural response to his touch. She wanted to lean into him, to draw on his strength, but she’d learned the only strength she could rely on was her own.