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He scoffed. “There’s nothing for me there now.”
“Then you can stay here and serve the new King.”
He hesitated. “What about the baby?”
“What about it?”
“Will I…” he didn’t finish.
She sighed, all the fight going out of her. “I don’t want the baby confused,” she said softly. “We’ll have different lives. Maybe… maybe it’s best if you pretend none of this ever happened.”
“You don’t want me to see the child?” His voice sounded strangled.
She put her hands over her face. That tone of his nearly did her in. But if she let him be a part of her life, if she saw him on a regular basis, if she let him help raise their baby—would she ever stop wanting him, ever stop missing what they’d had? Would she ever heal? He’d made his priorities clear, and they weren’t her. She wasn’t sure if it would be better for a child to grow up with a father like that, or no father at all. “I don’t know,” she said, miserable. “I need time to think.”
He walked out without a word. She sat on the bed for a long time, head in her hands, trying to imagine a future where she didn’t feel as completely shattered as she did in this moment.
18
Simon was starting to hate the library.
He leaned over the desk, pen at the ready, staring down at the legal brief in front of him. The words on the document might as well be random ink blots. He’d been sitting here for over an hour already this morning and still hadn’t been able to focus enough to read the damn thing, much less make notes on it, even though he’d promised one of the senior lawyers he was working with that he’d get them his thoughts on it by this afternoon. Truth was, he hadn’t been able to focus for days. Not since he’d realized what a complete and total ass he was.
It hadn’t taken him long. The day after Pen had left, one of the castle lawyers had come to ask him to stay on as a consultant, and Simon had thought maybe this would give him a sense of purpose again. He was serving the Crown, after all. Not in a public, exalted way like last time, but glory had never been what he was after anyway. He just wanted to be a part of something bigger than himself. He just wanted to belong. So he’d accepted the job offer, hoping it might give him that.
It hadn’t.
He’d woken up in the middle of the night last night and finally had to give in and admit what he’d known for days now. He didn’t feel fulfilled. He was serving the Crown, had even been offered a new set of small apartments nearby, but this place still wasn’t home. Nowhere would be, not without Penelope.
But he’d lost Penelope. Because of his complete, total ass-ness.
He shoved the brief away with a disgusted huff. Ass-ness? Had he really fallen so far as to make up words now? This was just pathetic. He needed to stop moping around feeling sorry for himself and make a plan. He knew what he needed to do: find a way to get Pen back on the throne and into the life she needed and deserved, and ask her if she could find any way to let him into her heart again. But not only did he have no idea how to do that, he also had no idea how to do it without making it look like he was using her to fulfill his own needs. He could find a way to get her on the throne without asking her to be with him again, of course, but he didn’t trust himself to be able to follow through on that, because he’d been without Pen for exactly one week now and he already felt adrift and broken without her at his side. Plus, the image of her marrying someone else—which she would have to, in order to have a secure reign—made him want to put his fist through the nearest wall.
How could he have been so stupid? Why hadn’t he just gone with her, torched those divorce papers the second she tried to hand them over—he knew she hadn’t wanted the separation either, not truly—and told her the truth? His home was with her. He didn’t feel like he belonged here anymore because she wasn’t here. He’d been fighting for the wrong thing all along, trying to support the Crown instead of his wife, and he had no idea how to make that up to her.
He wondered what she was doing right now. How she was doing. Did she still have morning sickness? Was there someone around to take care of her? Who would help her take care of the baby when it was born, if she decided she didn’t want him in the child’s life? He tried to stop himself before he followed that thought too far, before he felt the phantom weight of his son or daughter in his arms, before he imagined what his and Penelope’s child might look like. Would it have her hair? His love of books?
A librarian dropped a tome in front of him, saving him from his reverie before he broke down completely. “One of my friends at the royal library asked me to pass this along to you. Said they spent weeks searching for it after you requested it,” the woman said. “Apparently someone mis-shelved it.” She sounded scandalized.
He opened it half-heartedly. The book was from an old request he’d ma
de, back when he’d been researching Pen’s legitimacy for the throne after they’d first met. At the time he’d hoped to add it to his stash to take back to Danovar and study before the wedding, but he had no use for it now. Still, he didn’t want to offend the librarian and he always did have a compulsive need to see a project all the way through, so he thanked her and flipped through it. What had he needed this book for? Right: more research on The Advancing of Dynastes Law of 1645. He flipped to the right chapter, not even stopping to savor the smell of old books the way he used to, and squinted at the page.
Then he blinked and re-read the passage. The offspring of an unfit heir shall not be part of the succession while other heirs remain able and willing to take the throne. He jumped to his feet, strode to the archaic law section of the library, and pulled two more books off the shelf with his heart pounding in his chest. Half an hour’s research confirmed that the law had never been amended, and that the type of complete abdication Nathaniel had performed had, in the eyes of that law, put him squarely in the “unfit” category.
Which meant his son, whether or not he’d been born before the abdication, couldn’t inherit if Penelope still wanted the throne.
Simon jumped to his feet and scooped up the books, elated—then stopped.
What if Pen didn’t want the throne anymore? What if she didn’t want him? Or what if she thought she had to take both or neither?
He had to approach this carefully. He wanted nothing more than to be with Pen again, but he wanted her to be with him because she wanted to be, not because of any perceived ulterior motive. Their first marriage had been necessitated by the laws of Escona and the needs of her nation. If they were to have any shot at being together again, it had to be their choice. Her choice. If she wanted him and not the throne, he would be completely fine with that, because his home was with her. If she wanted the throne but not him… he would need to find a way to be okay with that too.
Swallowing hard, he gathered up his things and went to find the woman he loved.
19
Penelope stared at the miniature rocking horse on her desk, feeling as wooden and lifeless as the toy. She’d been off her game ever since she came back to her old store. Her creative well had run dry; no matter how many new designs she tried to draw up, they all felt joyless and pointless, and they’d all ended up in the trash. Even working the front and seeing the happy kids with their new toys couldn’t cheer her up. She wanted to blame the hormones—the first trimester was no joke—but she knew that was only a tiny part of it. The biggest reason she’d been so listless was sitting halfway across the city in one dusty library or another, carrying on his life as if she’d never been a part of it.
