Page 79 of Thrones We Steal

“Eduardo and I loved each other. Madly. Passionately. But it wasn’t easy. Not by a long shot. They were the best and worst twenty years of my life. I’ve never loved another person like I loved him.” Her eyes take on a far-off glow. “We fought all the time, like cats and dogs. Mostly when I’d find out he was cheating again.”

My heart twangs at this information, and I badly want to ask a question. Her sixth sense picks up on this and she cocks her brow. I obediently take a bite of soup.

“I know you’re wondering how I could stay with him. I didn’t always. Sometimes I’d leave for a night, a weekend. Once I left for a month. But I always came back.” She shrugs her bony shoulders. “He was my best friend. I didn’t know how to be without him. I knew I’d never find what we had with anyone else. So we made it work.”

What she’s describing sounds like the kind of toxic relationship Colleen Hoover dreams up.

“Don’t think I was a victim in all of this,” she says and gives me a sharp look. “He had to put up with a lot too. I wasn’t always faithful either. Sometimes I just wanted something bloody normal. But normal sickened me and so I’d go back. God, the making up afterwards was always worth it. He would—”

“Please stop there,” I say. “Unlike you, I’m not looking to vicariously live your love life.”

She smiles and clasps her hands together on the counter. Her soup sits forgotten next to them. “Do you hate me now, love?”

“Of course not.” I take a minute to untangle my thoughts. They resemble a mass of Christmas lights no one took the time to put away properly. “I’m just confused. What you described sounds awful. Don’t you think if you had been in a less … volatile relationship, you would have been happier?”

“I never told you I was married before Eduardo?”

God, will the surprises ever stop?

“It only lasted three years. He was as calm as a glass of milk. Nothing fazed him. Sometimes I would do things just to see if he’d react, but he’d just look at me like he couldn’t understand who I was. There was no fire, no passion. Eventually, we just drifted apart until divorce felt like the next step. I’m not proud of it, but it did help me to figure out exactly what I wanted from my next relationship.”

“At least he wasn’t breaking your heart.”

“With great love comes great risk. Those we love the most have the most power to hurt us.”

“I don’t see how they’re worth it.”

“I have no regrets. If I could bring him back, even with all of his flaws, I would.”

“It just seems unhealthy to love someone that much.”

“Henry made you feel more in a month than Beck did in two years.”

The truth of that statement strikes home. “And look at me. I’m a mess.”

“Would you trade it? Give up every moment to avoid the pain?”

I don’t know how to answer this. A lifetime of memories with Henry flit through my mind. Curled in an armchair alternately reading pages from Harry Potter aloud. Sneaking snacks from the kitchen while the chef pretended not to see us. Building a tiny hut in the forest with scraps we salvaged from the property—no proper tools allowed. Tricking Beatrice into using salt rather than sugar in her tea. Kissing him. Falling in love.

“It doesn’t matter,” I finally say. “He made it clear we can’t be together, so I need to find a way to move on.”

“In that case, try distraction. Nothing helps you get over a man like getting under a new one.”

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. “Thank you for the soup. I should go before you make me regret coming here.”

She guffaws. “You’d die of boredom without me.”

* * *

As scandalized as I pretended to be by Adelaide’s gauche suggestion, it reminds me that I still haven’t given Beck an answer. I suppose if I were less practical, I’d be ashamed of having feelings for two men at the same time. But love is complicated, and what I feel for one is so completely different from the other, they can hardly be compared.

And Adelaide is right: I need a distraction in the worst way.

Because you can’t just approach the king at breakfast and ask for a private word, we do that pretentious thing where my people (aka Maisie) talk to his people to arrange an official meeting, and that’s how I find myself in King William’s office several days later and he’s staring at me with the same stoic expression as always, with the addition of a tiny glint of amusement in his eyes because I’ve just asked him how one sneaks a lover into the palace.

I almost didn’t come. I still can’t look at him without remembering what he did to Henry, and right now I’m curling my hands into fists at my side so I don’t do something idiotic like launch myself across his massive wooden desk and rake my nails down that hard face.

As if reading my thoughts, he reaches up and scratches it, albeit less violently than I would have—there’s no blood. “It’s not as difficult as you’d think.”

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