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It was still early, and she suspected everyone else would be asleep after the festivities of the night before, so Amelia took advantage of the slumberous palace and dressed quickly, washing her face, pulling her hair back into a ponytail and slipping out of a side gate, moving towards the garage.
The chauffeur startled to be disturbed but rallied quickly. ‘Your Highness.’ He dipped his head. ‘Good morning. Where would you like to go?’
‘Nowhere in particular. Just...away from here for the morning.’
If he thought it was strange, he didn’t reveal as much. ‘The kingfishers have taken over Anemon Lake. It’s supposed to be an incredible sight. Would you care to see them?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ she murmured with relief, slipping into the back of the car as he held open the door for her. Amelia took great pains not to look over her shoulder at the palace as the car slipped elegantly through the gates.
Benedetto hadn’t been relishing the goodbye, but he had at least expected to be able to make it. He’d wanted to see her, one last time. Things between them had ended badly, and he hated that, but he still wanted to do this part, at least, properly.
Only, upon arriving at Amelia’s apartment, it was to find it deserted. A question to one of the housekeepers revealed that she was ‘out’.
He waited as long as he could, but after several hours cooling his heels, it dawned on him that she considered they’d already said their farewells. That there was nothing left to say—just as she’d said, after the wedding.
She’d come to him and literally offered her heart; he’d immediately declined. Her face and eyes had shown her hurt. Her surprise. But why should she have been surprised?
His gut twisted as he strode into the sunshine-filled courtyard. With Anton on his honeymoon, and Benedetto having already issued brief farewells to the King, Queen and Rowan, there was nothing for it but to leave.
Except, as Benedetto approached his car, the door held open by a chauffeur, he hesitated, pausing, inexplicably, to look back at the palace, his eyes chasing the windows, as if he might catch a glimpse of her, even now. His hand clenched into a fist at his side.
He knew what he had to do, and yet leaving felt strangely wrong, particularly leaving without seeing her again. He stood in the triangle formed by the open car door, at war with himself.
His head said leave, but there were other parts demanding he stay.
His head won out. He’d learned that it was much safer to trust his head, and so he sat heavily in the car and looked forward, towards his own future, and a life without Amelia Moretti anywhere near it.
The emptiness was pervasive. He hadn’t expected that. After all, he’d known her for only a short time, and yet arriving in New York, after a week in Athens, Benedetto couldn’t ignore the heaviness in his chest any longer, the feeling that something vital was missing from his days, from his life. He disregarded the feeling. Or rather, he compartmentalised it, as he’d learned to do as a boy, boxing away the hurt, the confusion, the disappointment and fear and stacking that tightly sealed box into the recesses of his mind, allowing him to function unimpeded.
As he’d learned to do when Sasha had become sick, when she’d died, and he’d had to co-exist with the heavy, pervasive grief of having lost her.
Except Amelia had done something to that grief. When they’d spoken of Sasha, he’d smiled, because he’d remembered all the happy, good, warm things about his daughter. And sharing that with Amelia had felt so right, as if he was bringing Sasha where she belonged—into the light. He hadn’t spoken of her in so long, because no one else had tempted him to, in the slightest. But with Amelia, it had all been so easy.
He buried himself in work, taking solace in the very familiar form of denial. He spent twenty hours a day at his office, becoming master of this domain again, reading and negotiating contracts, hiring staff, micromanaging every aspect of his business. And even then, she crept into his mind when he wasn’t firmly concentrating on control, allowing her to slip past the guards, and fill his thoughts, his body, so he would breathe in and swear he could taste her.
‘Damn it,’ he cursed, in the early hours of one morning, staring out at the glittering skyline, eyes bleary from lack of sleep. But it was sleep he feared, because in sleep, the vice-like grip on his self-control was weakened. His dreams were always filled with her.
‘It’s not because you’re different, you know,’ Anton, a month after his fairy-tale wedding and having returned from his honeymoon days earlier, sat beside Amelia in the pretty sun-dappled courtyard.
She turned to face him, her face pale, features tight, eyes, unbeknownst to her, lacking all their usual light and spark.
Anton was, for a moment, worried, though he didn’t show it.
‘What wasn’t?’ she murmured.
‘The reason for us clashing. It’s not because you’re different. In case you think that somehow I knew, all this time, that he’s not your biological father.’
Her smile was mournful; she turned away from him. It was enough to alarm Anton even further. ‘I didn’t think that.’
‘You’ve always been so much better than me, Amelia.’
She frowned without looking at him. Worry for his sister stirred through Anton. Why hadn’t anyone told him she was like this? She was a shadow of her former self, in terms of joy and vitality. She clearly wasn’t coping with being home.
‘That’s not true. Has Vanessa put you up to this?’
An attempt at a joke was good, but still Anton’s concern grew. ‘You are so much more patient, kind, wise, willing to listen to other people before making up your mind. In that sense, you are the most like Dad of all of us,’ he added. ‘Biology isn’t everything, you know.’
‘I know.’ Tears sparkled on her lashes.
