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They arrived at the main level once more, and Henrik accompanied her back to the room she’d slept in. But he didn’t hold open the door. Instead, the two of them lingered, caught at a crossroads.
“So you’re leaving now?” he said.
She fiddled with the zipper on her coat. “I think it’s best. Don’t you?”
Henrik frowned. After a moment’s pause, he gazed down the hall in the direction of the stairs. “I think we’re beyond the point of my opinion mattering,” he said.
She knew it. His father had given him a hard time yet again, and he was respecting his duty. That was a good thing. That was what she’d wanted him to do in the first place.
Lily just couldn’t bear the thought that he would be fulfilling his duty without her.
21
Henrik wandered his castle like a lost soul. He stepped into the room Lily had occupied several times a day, as though that would somehow bring her back or give him answers to the questions he didn’t know how to pose.
Had he done the wrong thing by letting her go? She hadn’t wanted to come to Einvar in the first place. She’d made as much clear. The only reason Lily had come had been because he was arrogant and couldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.
He’d decided to let ‘no’ have its place. If Henrik hadn’t persuaded her to come here, Damon would never have sought her out. He would never have posted the tampered emails she’d been so worried about.
He wished she’d felt she could confide them to him. Henrik would have stepped in and done exactly what he did to the buffoon in the cells below. He would have used as much persuasion as he legally could to get Damon Neely to destroy every shred of anything he owned that could ever pose a threat to Lily.
How that must have wounded her. How scared she must have been.
Father had indeed invited Lady Eden to stay at the castle, but Henrik had barely been able to spend more than minutes in her company. The King gave his reminder daily—Henrik’s birthday was soon approaching, within six months. He had to be married before he turned twenty-five or he would lose the throne.
After an exhausting party featuring at least a dozen foreign diplomats where Henrik and the King had been ensconced in meetings for ten hours straight, Henrik slipped into the library, needing some time to himself.
To his surprise, he found Mother sitting in her husband’s leather chair and staring at the crackling fire. She turned at the sound of Henrik’s entrance.
“Need somewhere to hide?” she said.
“Is that what you’re doing in here?”
She’d been overseeing the staff and the castle upkeep with so many visitors. Henrik had never considered how much work that entailed until the prospect of teaching it all to Lily had come up. She could learn to do what his mother did, he was sure of it, no matter what his father said.
Mother sat up straighter and pierced him with her apt stare. “Something has been bothering you since Lily left, hasn’t it?”
“I don’t like what happened with her, Mother.” He’d been about to propose one minute, only to find that she’d been threatened the next. And then he’d let her go? What kind of coward was he?
“I know,” she said. “I don’t like it much either. How are things going with Lady Eden?”
Henrik sat on the chair across from her. The heat from the fire stroked his left side. “Not well. Father insists I figure out how to make things work with her. I’m supposed to propose to her tonight.”
“But? It’s Lily, isn’t it?”
He brought his gaze to hers. They shared the same gray eyes, and hers were rimmed with understanding. “It is. I love her. Have you ever had someone just wrap themselves around every part of you, and you didn’t even realize how much?”
“You love her?”
“I wasn’t sure at first. I didn’t want to rush into the feeling, probably because I felt so rushed into everything else. But I think I do love her. When she’s all I can think about, all I dream about, all I see in my future, what else can it be?” It was true. He’d missed her. Her face had been forefront in his mind from the minute he awoke every morning, and the last thing he saw before he drifted into sleep every night.
He missed their long talks. Every cell inside of him had been attuned to her from the minute they met. He missed her smile, her laughter, her kisses. And he hated that the last memory they’d shared was something so brusque and uncomfortable. He’d respected her wishes not to accompany her out and instead had come to find her room empty. Well and truly empty.
Henrik hadn’t felt anything but longing and emptiness since. Had she returned to Florida? How was she doing? Was she okay?
Mother’s lips thinned with sympathy.
“I let her go,” Henrik said, voicing his biggest regret. “What are my options, Mother?”
