The Scorsolini Marriage Bargain (7 page)

She walked across the room, feeling like she’d been through World War III and was not quite sure if she was a survivor or not. Yet neither she nor
Claudio
had actually ever raised their voices. He was incredibly good with undertones, though. No one listening could have doubted how furious he was with her, or how determined he was to keep his marriage for the sake of appearances.

She rubbed her eyes with thumb and forefinger, feeling tired despite the fact she’d woken from what amounted to a longish evening nap and that it still wasn’t all that late. Sh
e’d
been so stupid to think that she meant anything to
Claudio
on a personal level. His whole reason for wanting to stay married to her had to do with him not being the second Scorsolini sovereign in history to be divorced by his wife.

In his eyes, she had no right or reason to make a mockery of him in that way. He’d gone to pains to marry a woman who would not do just that very thing. She remembered when he told her about his stepmother divorcing his father.

Therese
had been shocked the woman had gone to such extremes. She’d grown up around couples who had stayed married in similar circumstances for the sake of political unity. She realized now why
Claudio
had liked that reaction so much. Although he’d been absolutely committed to fidelity, saying it was one sin he would find impossible to forgive in either himself or her, he had liked knowing she had been trained to believe that marriage vows were to last a lifetime despite personal differences. Duty came first, last and always.

Which was exactly why she’d asked for a divorce, but he didn’t know that. Once he did, he would grasp for an end to their marriage grabbing a divorce with both hands.

Therese
slowly sank into one of the armchairs in the corner, weariness overcoming her.

She could not have handled the confrontation with him worse if she had tried. Instead of telling him of her condition and almost certain infertility, she had told him they had to divorce. While that might well be true, it was not the first thing she should have said to him.

He thought she’d brought up divorce because she wanted one, which could not be farther from the truth, but duty dictated she let go of the man she loved for both his greater good and that of his country. His final words before they were interrupted had said it all. He needed heirs. She could not guarantee providing them. The odds of conceiving were not good enough for a future king.

Those facts left her dreams in shambles around her feet. Why was life so hard? What had she done wrong to bring this kind of misery on herself? Her doctor had said it wasn’t personal, that endometriosis happened to lots and lots of women, but it felt personal to her.

Especially when the results of the disease were ripping her life apart into big jagged patches of pain and more pain.

And that was her only excuse for the way she’d handled the news. She was hurting so much, her usual diplomacy had completely deserted her. Her father would be so ashamed, but then he’d never been overly impressed with her to begin with.

In his eyes, she’d always had two strikes against her…she’d been born female and she had no interest in politics. No matter how pleased Mother had been, the fact that
Therese
had ended up married to a crown prince meant nothing to her father. He would have been happier if she had gone to the right schools, made friends with the right people and pursued American politics. Then she would have been of benefit to him.

Regardless of
Claudio
’s influence in world politics, she could not personally significantly benefit her father who had moved on to a diplomatic position in South America. He therefore considered her useless to him and let her know it in all the subtle ways he had been employing since her childhood.

Psychologists said that women often married men like their fathers and she’d been determined not to. She had always believed that she had succeeded in marrying a man very different, but now she realized she’d done exactly what she’d sworn not to. She’d married a man who was no more enamored of her person than her father was.

Looking back over almost three years of marriage, she saw that
Claudio
employed a subtle means of letting her know the insignificance of her place in his life as well. She simply hadn’t seen the road signs for what they were because she so desperately wanted them to say something else. Because he had needed her in the most basic ways—sexually and as an adjunct to his position—she had believed he had more feelings for her than her dad did.

She couldn’t even blame him for deceiving her, the delusion had been entirely self-perpetuating. But acknowledging that did not make the pain of realization any less.

Talk about being an idiot. She had that role down to an art and admitting it hurt almost as much as
Claudio
’s rejection.

And his attitude had been nothing less than that. He wanted to keep their marriage intact, but only for the sake of his own pride and for the baby he expected her to give him. Not because he wanted to keep her as his wife. Not because she meant anything to him.

She shivered, her entire body shaking violently and she realized she was very cold. It was a chill that came from deep inside, but nevertheless she got up and pulled the blanket from the bed to wrap up in as if it might help. It didn’t.

Feeling so torn apart standing was not an option, she sat back down in the armchair…and waited.

Claudio
had said it was not over and as much as she had no desire to continue their confrontation, she had no doubt that was exactly what would happen when he came back. And no matter how much it might hurt to give, or how angry his pride filled responses made her…she owed him an explanation.

She didn’t know how long she sat there, thoughts skittering through her brain. It could have been a few minutes, or as long as an hour, but at some point he came back into the room, his expression one she had never seen on his face before.

“Get dressed.”

Chapter 4

“What? Why?” Was he kicking her out of the suite because she’d asked for a divorce? No, that made no sense.

“We have to fly back to Lo Paradiso immediately.”

She jumped up from the chair, holding the blanket tight around her like a shield. “Is something wrong?”

“My father had a heart attack.”

“No.” Not King
Vincente
. “How bad is he?”

“He is stable, but requires a bypass surgery. He is in the hospital,”
Claudio
gritted out, his eyes accusing. “He is alone, without any family around him because you saw fit to fly up here for no good reason.”

“Where is your brother?”

“On his way now that I have called him. Papa refused to have him called and allowed me to be contacted only after he had stabilized. Had you been there, this would never have happened.”

She gasped. “You cannot blame me for him having a heart attack.”

“No, but had you been there, you would have contacted my brothers and myself despite my father’s wishes. He could not have ordered you like a servant.”

“Are you sure about that?” Perhaps the king would not have ordered her compliance like that of an employee, but she cared for him and might well have acquiesced for the sake of his stress levels.

But then she acknowledged, she would have somehow managed to do what she thought was best…which would probably have been to call
Claudio
. She, and the rest of the family, were used to relying on him in a crisis. Indeed, her first reaction when she had started having pain in her lower abdomen had been to tell
Claudio
, to ask for his help dealing with it.

She had decided against that course of action out of a need to protect him.

“Yes, I am certain. You would have contacted me, even if Papa had not known you had done it,”
Claudio
said, showing he knew her well in almost every way but the one that counted most to her.

He did not know of her love for him and could not care less about its existence, she painfully admitted to herself.

“You have been contacted now,” she pointed out.

“What if he had died? What if it is worse than he told me that it is?”

“I could not have controlled either of those outcomes and I have no doubt you have spoken to the doctor already and know exactly the extent of your father’s illness.”

“I have and it is not good. You should have been there,” he repeated as if that betrayal was as bad as her request for a dissolution to their marriage.

“You’re not being fair. You know I felt I had to come. I needed to talk you.”

“About breaking your promises to me. And yet you had already decided before I returned to the hotel suite tonight that the discussion could wait. What was so imperative was not really that important to you at all. You left on a selfish whim and my father paid because of it. I made a huge miscalculation when I asked you to marry me,” he said in a final slash of derision.

However, she was too inured by her own anger at his reaction to the news of his father’s illness to experience the pain his words would have caused a few short hours ago. “I can see how you might think that way,” she said with a sigh. “But there are things I still have to tell you.”

“I do not want to hear them.”

“You need to.”

The disdain in his expression said it all. He was listening to her explanations when hell froze over. “I am leaving here in ten minutes. If you wish to go with me, be dressed.”

* * * * *

Therese
spent the first two hours of the flight between
New York
and Lo Paradiso simmering with anger. She’d taken a seat as far away from him as possible when they boarded the plane and hadn’t even cared when he showed every sign of being content with that fact. A one word description of his behavior came to mine and it was anything but complimentary.

When had she ever given
Claudio
cause to believe that she was flighty or selfish? She had fulfilled her duty as princess, dismissing her personal needs time and again, but apparently two years as the perfect diplomat’s daughter and political ally had gone up in smoke with one act he did not approve of.

Didn’t she, as his wife, deserve even a little understanding in that regard? But he’d made it clear…she was a princess, first, last and always to him. Her role of wife was always overshadowed by her primary role as his future queen. The knowledge shredded what was left of her feminine ego.

She had shown the temerity to reorganize her schedule for something she felt was important and he had gone ballistic. Not only that, he just assumed that her reasons for saying they needed to divorce had to be spurious and selfish ones. Why? She had given him everything she had to give as his wife, even if he had not realized it. When had she ever made any choice related to him out of selfishness? Even her decision to marry him had been made with the knowledge that she could be the kind of wife he wanted.

She had loved him, but she would not have married him knowing he did not love her if she had believed she would not be the right kind of wife for him. Looking back at how much she had agonized over what was best for him and how little time she had spent worrying on her own behalf, she wondered if she was some kind of masochist or a real idiot, or both.

But then she’d spent her whole life trying to please other people. First her parents, each of whom had a different agenda for her life. She’d fulfilled her mother’s because it had seemed the only one she had a chance at succeeding at.

Mother had said time and again that
Therese
’s beauty and poise were her greatest assets, that she was to play those assets carefully. That had been easy to do. The physical beauty was a gift of Providence and the poise was something that no diplomat’s daughter could survive her school years without.

Those attributes had won
Claudio
’s attention, but even her perfect manners and political savvy added in had not been enough to sway him toward the marriage vote. He’d wanted to be sure she would not disappoint him in bed and had tested her on that score.

She remembered
Maggie
saying Tomasso had done the same thing. Not in those exact words, of course, but she’d known what the other woman meant. After all,
Therese
knew these Scorsolini men. She’d been shocked by Tomasso’s behavior only because it had been so obvious to her from the beginning that he really cared about
Maggie
.