Page 39 of Crowned For The King's Secret

And he wanted to know hers. All those wasted years. The indifference, the self-recrimination because she thought if she could give her husband what he wanted, things would work out. But the goalposts constantly shifted. Not even Lance knew the full truth of what had gone on. He’d guessed some, but she’d held it in for so long and it was hard to say the words because they were trapped by a tangle of shame that snared and silenced her even now the man was dead.

That shame remained a prison she needed to break free from. She didn’t want to be caged.

‘The answer’s yes.’

‘Physically?’

‘Not in the beginning. And then not all that often. He didn’t want any evidence of what was going on behind closed doors. He liked being more subtle than that.’

Pushes, shoves, shaking. His greatest weapon, though, was psychological. Eating away at her confidence.

‘Why did you stay?’

She stiffened. ‘Are you blaming me?’

‘Never. I want to understand, so I never trigger the fear that trapped you with a man who didn’t deserve you.’

She took a deep breath and realised she’d never really been afraid of Sandro. And in that way, he was nothing like her husband had been.

‘It’s insidious. The chipping away of self. Isolating me from Lance, my friends, so that he became my world and the only truth was what he told me. Then with my foster animals, the sly threats of what would happen if I wasn’t there. I knew he’d do terrible things. He was always hard on animals. It’s how he died in the end, in a fall while pushing a horse too much, too fast. But I knew if I left, the animals I cared for would suffer, and I did everything I could to prevent that from happening.’

Sandro gave a pained exhale she felt more than heard. His arms wrapped tighter round her. ‘If he wasn’t dead, I would have killed him.’

‘If he wasn’t dead, we wouldn’t have met.’

Sandro dropped his lips to her forehead, the kiss affectionate, tender. ‘And that would have been the truest tragedy.’

Her heart leaped at his words, the apparent sincerity of them. ‘Would it?’

Yet in a terrifying way she knew it was the truth. Despite what had happened, she was glad to have met Sandro, to have him in Nic’s life.

‘We wouldn’t have our son.’

He was right, of course, but part of her wanted to believe the truest tragedy of their not meeting had something to do with her, not the child they’d made together. She hated herself for those thoughts. But it was what it was. Without Nic, she wouldn’t be here. She wasn’t enough on her own to hold this man.

A man who could have anyone.

‘No, we wouldn’t. I treasure him every day.’

‘Who treasured you?’

Wasn’t that the question? She couldn’t answer, because that answer was no one. Not in the truest sense of the word. Sure, there’d been Lance. He loved her, but he was a sibling. In an ideal world she should have been treasured by her parents. But the world wasn’t ideal. The rose-coloured glasses of her youth had been torn off and stamped on in the rage and recrimination of her marriage. She didn’t have those futile, teenage dreams of a handsome prince riding in to save her.

‘Nic does.’

‘Of course. You’re a wonderful mother. No one could have hoped for better.’

‘You didn’t always believe that.’

His hand stroked over her hair, his fingers twisting into it.

‘You asked me whether my parents would be proud of me, or ashamed.’

She lifted from the comfort of his embrace to prop herself on her elbow staring deep into the troubled blue of his eyes. ‘I’m sorry. That was a terrible question.’

‘You were right to ask it. The answer is yes, and no.’

‘Sandro—’

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