The Prince’s Bride (28 page)

*   *   *

When Véronique opened the door, Nicholas found himself exhaling. Dressed in a cheerful
gown of peach silk with tiny floral sprays, she was indeed a sight for sore eyes.

She stepped aside and invited him in. “Thank goodness you are here. What happened?
I haven’t been able to sit still all afternoon.”

She wrapped her arms around his neck and rose up on her toes. He curled his body into
hers and held her tight, feeling as if the world might come to an end if he let go
too soon.

“I think you should sit down,” he said when she stepped out of his embrace.

Her nose crinkled at his words, as if she had caught a whiff of something unpleasant.
She moved closer to sniff his jacket collar.

Oh God.
His heart sank.

“I have something important to tell you,” he explained.

She backed away from him, her face pulling into a frown.

“A few things, actually,” he added, knowing that he must not hide what happened in
the alehouse. He could not let Véronique imagine it was worse than what it was … though
it was hardly an inconsequential matter. He suddenly wanted to dash from the room,
change out of these dirty clothes, and scrub the stink of the stale liquor—and that
woman’s cheap perfume—from his person.

Véronique seemed to recognize the strain in his expression. “You don’t need to say
it. I already know. I can smell it on you, and I am not referring to the whiskey.”

His brow furrowed with regret. “I am sorry, Véronique. I am not proud of what happened
today, but you must let me explain.”

Though he did not deserve her forgiveness. This was the third time, was it not? Or
dammit … was it the fourth?

His wife moved to a chair by the fire and sat down. “I am listening.”

He could feel the color slowly draining from his face. When he hesitated, she said,
“I thought you were going to see Pierre.”

“I did see him,” he replied, thankful for this small detour from the more abhorrent
sections of the day. Nicholas moved closer but did not sit down. “It was as we suspected.
Pierre revealed his intention to blackmail me into signing over the deed to d’Entremont
Manor. He threatened to reveal my mother’s affair with the marquis, and the fact that
I am illegitimate.”

Véronique squeezed the ends of the armrests. “What are you going to do?”

Nicholas crossed to the window and looked at the snowy landscape. A full minute must
have passed while he watched a pigeon on the ledge, huddling in the cold. Then at
last he answered the question in a voice hardened by ruthlessness.

“I am going to crush Pierre and all his devious plans by revealing the truth myself.
Randolph is at this moment drafting a formal statement, which he will read before
Parliament and release to the newspapers. He will tell everyone that I am illegitimate,
and he will have no choice but to strip me of my title of prince. I will no longer
be addressed as His Royal Highness, and that will be the end of it. No more lies.”

He heard the sound of the chair creak as his wife rose and approached. “Are you sure
about all this?”

He faced her. “I don’t intend to live a lie, Véronique, and I suspect you don’t want
that either.”

She shook her head. “No, I do not. But I must ask—did you consider giving him what
he wants?”

“Only briefly. Why? Is that what
you
think I should do?”

She pondered it for a moment. “No. If you must know, I have always felt it would be
difficult to hide the truth forever. It would have come out eventually. These things
always do.”

“Which truth are you referring to, exactly?” he asked. “There must be another layer
to this observation.”

She inclined her head as if bewildered. “There is no other layer, Nicholas. I am referring
only to the blackmail scheme.”

“But what about the other women?” he asked matter-of-factly. “Clearly you can smell
the perfume on my coat. You must know I was somewhere filthy today.”

She gave a sigh of resignation. “I know something happened, and I am still waiting
for you to explain it to me.”

Nicholas frowned in disbelief. “It is the perfume of a prostitute in the Green District!”
he said. “I stopped at a pub after my meeting with Pierre. She came to my table, slid
her hands into my coat, and propositioned me. I declined, of course. Do you believe
me?”

Her head drew back. “It almost seems as if you do not
want
me to believe you—as if you are challenging me to doubt you, so that you can say
‘I told you so.’”

He sat down on the windowsill and folded his arms across his chest.

His challenge compelled Véronique to question him more thoroughly. “Fine. I will ask
the question you clearly want me to ask. Did you kiss her?”

Though she did not really want to know the answer, for it would only cause her pain
if it was a yes.

“She kissed
me,
” he replied.

“Did you kiss her in return?”

He took too long to answer. Perhaps it was only a few seconds, but it was enough of
a hesitation to expose the truth.

“I pushed her away,” he explained. “Then I walked out.”

Though she tried, Véronique could not erase the sickening image of another woman’s
lips upon her husband’s. How long had the kiss lasted? She could not bear to think
of it.

She turned away from him and moved slowly to her chair in a daze, sat down, and stared
blankly at the floor. “Will women
always
be throwing themselves at you?”

He sighed, and his voice, at last, grew gentle. “If it helps,” he replied, “I didn’t
invite her. I don’t
want
to be unfaithful to you, Véronique.”

She stared up at him. “You say that as if it is beyond your control. But it is not.
I believe in you, Nicholas. I believe you love me, and you want to be a good husband,
but for some reason, you continue to be influenced by your dead father’s opinions
of you. Do you not understand that? And do you not realize that he resented you because
he knew your mother loved Lord d’Entremont just as much as—if not more than—she loved
him
? He wanted to punish you for her betrayal, and he wanted to see you fail while his
own children, by blood, succeeded. He wanted to hurt you, as a way of retaliating
against
her.
”

Nicholas listened to all of it with a clear head and a willingness to accept what
she was saying. Nevertheless …

“Even if that is true,” he said, “I still do not understand how you can trust me.
That woman in the alehouse … she kissed me, and for a few seconds, I kissed her back.
You deserve better, Véronique. Surely I am not worthy of you.”

“But you are,” she insisted. “You have been my hero from the start.”

Heaven help her, despite everything, she was still spellbound by him. No wonder women
found him irresistible. She would have done anything in that moment to know that she
would never lose him. She was no different from the others.

“I will stand by you through all this,” she told him. “You’re my husband.”

He nodded, as if conceding that point to her. Then his chin lifted. “Very well, then,”
he said, as if something had been decided, but nothing about this was simple. “I suggest
you prepare yourself for the tidal wave of gossip that is about to hit us all. The
newspapers will be cruel. It will not be easy, Véronique, and I apologize in advance
for whatever we must endure.” He turned to walk out, but stopped at the door. “Incidentally,
Randolph will not be stripping us of our ducal titles. We will remain the Duke and
Duchess of Walbrydge, and the property will remain ours as well.”

“What wonderful news,” she replied with forced cheer as she watched her husband leave
her bedchamber without looking back.

*   *   *

Feeling as if he were suffocating, Nicholas burst through the palace doors to the
back terrace and strode quickly across the gray flagstones to the balustrade. Taking
the cold air into his lungs, he shut his eyes and tried to calm the violent beating
of his heart.

Very soon, everyone would know the truth. They would all know he was a bastard and
a fraud. It would be ugly, and God knew what extra dirt they might dig up from his
past.

Véronique would see and hear all of it.

What had he been thinking when he proposed to her all those weeks ago? Did he truly
believe he could rescue her by making her his wife? It was quite the opposite now.
Her reputation would be ruined.

Turning, he sank his weight onto the cement balustrade and looked up at the clean
palace walls, the ornate sculptures, and the golden cornices.
God!
None of this wealth or opulence mattered to him. He didn’t care about living in a
royal palace, or the loss of his title, or the scorn he would endure from the people
of Petersbourg. All that mattered was Véronique’s happiness—her trust in him—but all
that was at stake now.

He grabbed hold of his jacket collar, tugged it to his nose to smell the whore’s perfume
from the alehouse. He caught a whiff of it and shook his head in disgust.

Why the hell had he stopped in the Green District and gotten out there, of all places?
Was he testing himself? Or was he taking dangerous risks because he
wanted
his marriage to fail?

Roughly wiping his sleeve across his mouth to rid himself of the memory of that foul
kiss, he resolved to get through this. Somehow he would endure the gossip and censure,
no matter how vulgar it became. He would take Véronique away and leave the country
if he had to.

Ah, Véronique.…

Though he wanted to be good husband, he couldn’t seem to quit stumbling—yet she never
lost faith in him. A part of him hated her for it, for he was not sure he could succeed,
and God knew, he did not want to fail. Not with her.

How odd and unfair that when he was finally ready to amend his tarnished soul, to
become a better man, he would—in the very next instant—be exposed publicly as a bastard,
unworthy of a royal title. They would call him irresponsible and degenerate, just
like the old days. What would they say about Véronique? Would they punish her as well?
Guilty by association? It sickened him that she would be dragged into this.

He wouldn’t blame her if she left him. He’d certainly done his best to drive her away
just now.

He realized suddenly that he couldn’t let go of the belief that he would lose her
one day. If not because of this, then for some other reason. Childbirth perhaps?

Part of him wanted to face the loss now and get it over with, before his feelings
grew any deeper and he became so profoundly attached, it would be …

Unbearable.

Suddenly his thoughts drifted to the past.

*   *   *

“I am so proud of you, Nicholas. This is the best picture you have ever done.”

His mother gathered him into her arms and held him close while she admired the rudimentary
painting of a little boy holding his mother’s hand. They stood beneath a yellow sun
and a rainbow.

“I daresay you are destined for greatness. What a brilliant man you will grow up to
be. I am so happy you are my son. Do you know you are everything to me?”

Nicholas gazed up at the sky and realized how fortunate he was to have found Véronique—a
woman who, like his mother, believed in him. And by God, he
loved
her for it.

Did he deserve her? Perhaps, in some small way, he did. Perhaps she was right, and
in truth, he was not the miserable, depraved scoundrel his father had always made
him out to be. The realization struck Nicholas hard and left him strangely hopeful,
in a way he had never been before.

How odd that he could feel so hopeful when he was about to be stripped of his royal
title and labeled a bastard.

PART III

An Honest Life

Chapter Twenty-eight

The news of Nicholas’s illegitimacy was read before the members of parliament by King
Randolph, who revealed that his brother was not the true blood son of King Frederick,
but illegitimately born after their mother’s return from a yearlong visit to France.
Nicholas’s father was the Marquis d’Entremont, a known Bonapartist, recently deceased.

The announcement was received initially with quiet, confused murmurs as the members
of parliament absorbed what seemed an impossible state of affairs. A short while later,
they scattered like mice, eager to be first to spread the news.

A special edition of the
Petersbourg Chronicle
was published that night, while Véronique and Nicholas dined privately at the palace
with Randolph and Alexandra.

To Véronique, it felt as if the city were ablaze outside the palace gates, while they
were sheltered inside from the flames—at least for this one, final supper. Tomorrow,
everyone would know the truth, and when she woke, nothing would ever be the same again.
The people of Petersbourg would no longer throw roses at her coach when she passed.
It was impossible to imagine what they might do. How tolerant or forgiving would they
be?

*   *   *

“I am afraid to ask,” Véronique said as she watched her husband enter her chamber
with a gossip sheet in hand. “What is it now?”

Every writer in the city had been ruthless over the past week, using pens like skewers.
Naturally, the incident with the prostitute in the alehouse found its way to the front
page of every paper. The guard who had accompanied Nicholas that day was paid handsomely
for his firsthand knowledge of the encounter—and was promptly fired by palace officials
as soon as the headline broke.

Nicholas endured every possible insult. He was the subject of intense social and political
debate in the public gathering spots and private drawing rooms of the city. He had
been advised not to leave the palace and venture into the streets—a necessary precaution
for his own safety and peace of mind, for it was generally expected that he would
meet with hisses and verbal abuse, and no one wanted to give the papers any more fodder
upon which to chew.