The Queen's Baby Scandal Read online

  “You will add unnecessary duties to the staff at this time of year?” Lars sneered.

  “Not at all. I will boost the economy and provide with it extra money for the season. And I am well able to ensure it all goes to plan without involvement of anyone in this room.”

  “How?”

  “I have an assistant for a reason. And believe me, she is more efficient than this group of people all on her own. If the idea of helping to coordinate this wedding intimidates you, then I’m certain that Latika will happily take up the banner.”

  “This is unprecedented.”

  “That’s fine. I don’t mind being unprecedented in this manner, as I am unprecedented in every other way. You were the only ones that seem to have an issue with that. You are beginning to drag down the entire country.”

  “Mark my words,” one of the men in the back said. “If the country is to fall, it will be on your head.”

  She firmed her jaw, calling on all the strength she’d spent her life culminating. “Then so be it. But it will not be my head alone, but my new husband’s, as well. You will find he is nothing but a staunch supporter of me. You might be able to oppose me, but when I am joined with him I will only be stronger. Two are better than one. And the two of us will be vastly better than twelve,” she said, looking at them all meaningfully. “I will send you an invitation to the wedding if you wish. Otherwise, you may take a backseat. You will have to get used to that.”

  On that she turned on her heel and walked out of the room, listening with satisfaction as each step echoed loudly around her.

  She had been angry at Mauro last night about what he had done. She had been uncertain with how to proceed. But she knew now. Everything had a purpose now.

  Suddenly, this marriage actually seemed like the best idea.

  It might never be a real marriage. She didn’t need it to be a real marriage.

  He would be a figurehead, and she... She would finally be able to be the queen that she was always meant to be.

  * * *

  Dinner that night was at the palace, and it was filled with pronouncements. Mostly made at him. Mauro wasn’t used to such things, and he found he had limited patience for it.

  Though there was something exceptionally alluring about Astrid, even when she was being a pain in his ass.

  Sometimes, especially when she was being a pain in his ass, and he didn’t fully understand that.

  “We are to be married in time for the tree lighting in the palace. It will be integrated into the ceremony in point of fact.”

  “Is that so?”

  “How pregnant did you expect I should look on the day of our wedding, for all the papers to see?”

  For some strange, inexplicable reason the idea of her looking pregnant—her stomach round with his child—did something to him that he could not explain. Something he didn’t want to explain, even to himself.

  “How pregnant you are or aren’t when you walk down the aisle doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “The only reputation I have to maintain is one of total debauchery and general disdain for social niceties. For me, this is on brand.”

  “How nice for you,” she said, drily. “We will marry in a month.”

  “When do you suppose you will learn I don’t respond well to commands?”

  “I don’t know. I suspect we have a lifetime to discover that.”

  “Surely not a whole lifetime,” he said. “Only while the child is...a child, I’d assume. Do we really need to be so pedantic that we stay together for eighteen years?”

  “I hadn’t considered it,” she said, her expression bland. “Marriage, to me, is forever, but it certainly doesn’t have to mean together.”

  “Elaborate,” he said. “I am not from a household that contained a marriage. My view of it is limited to sitcoms and crime dramas. Both give a very different idea of what it means to be married. I imagine the truth lies somewhere between happy hijinks and murder.”

  Astrid chuckled softly, pushing food around on her plate. “Yes, something like that. I think that middle ground is called ‘quiet disdain.’”

  “Speaking of your parents’ marriage?” he asked.

  “Yes. You know, my father never wanted me to be queen. My mother was stubborn about it from the beginning. From making sure the announcement that the press received was unambiguous about which child was born first.”

  “But he was the king. Couldn’t he override her decision?”

  “Yes,” she said. “He could have. There were many reasons he didn’t. That he would suffer in the eyes of his people, and the world, being a large part of that. Also... He knew I wasn’t incompetent. If I had been I think he wouldn’t have hesitated to have Gunnar named the official successor to the throne. My father wasn’t an easy man, but he had a strong sense of duty. I don’t know that he... I don’t know that he loved anyone. But he loved the country. As for my mother...”

  “Did she love him?”

  “I don’t think she did. Mostly they spent their marriage sleeping with other people, once Gunnar and I were born. Heir and spare in one go. Exceedingly handy.”

  “Before your idea to circumvent the council, what was your thought on who you might marry?” He didn’t know why he was curious. He shouldn’t be. Not about this minx who had upended his whole life, forcing him into a situation he didn’t want to be in.

  No, he didn’t want to want this child. But he did.

  His mother was dead now, gone. Years of hard living having taken their toll on her. Installing her in a luxury penthouse for the last six months of her life had probably extended her time on earth, but not by as much as he’d hoped.

  His father still lived, but he’d vowed he’d never speak to the man again.

  The child, his child, would be a real flesh-and-blood connection he could have here on this earth. This child was something real to care about. To want to care for.

  He didn’t...want to need those things, and yet he found he did. It was more than just a feeling of responsibility. It was something that called to a deeper place inside him.

  One he’d done a great job pretending wasn’t there for the past thirty-five years of his life.

  Just another reason to find Astrid enraging.

  But he found he was still curious.

  “I didn’t think about it,” she said. “I imagined my parents would be involved in helping curate a selection of acceptable suitors. But they never did. My father died when I was twenty-nine. I still don’t know why he didn’t try to marry me off before then. A year ago, I thought of this plan. Oh, I hadn’t chosen you specifically but I had decided I would have a baby alone.”

  “You never wanted love?”

  She lowered her head, shaking it slightly. Then she laughed. “All I ever wanted was for the people around me to see that I was competent. Not in spite of being a woman. Not barely acceptable when they could have had a man. But qualified. A passionate leader, a good leader. One who loves her country and all of its people. Fantasies of romantic love have never factored into my life. I can’t even get respect, why would I hinge any great thing on love?”

  He could relate to that feeling, though his was not a sense he did not deserve love, but the deep, abiding belief it did not truly exist.

  Love, in his mind, was an illusion. When life became bleak, love was always the first thing to crumble. In the end, people would always choose themselves. They would not choose another person. Not really.

  It didn’t make him sad anymore to know that. As a boy, it had. He’d been convinced if only his father could love his mother, they would be a family and be happy. He’d been convinced that if only his father would meet him, he would love him and he would want to give him and his mother the money they needed to live.

  But his father loved himself. He loved the life he had in the palazzo on the hill with his wife and thei
r real children. The children he’d made intentionally, with the aristocrat woman he’d chosen. Not the gutter trash he’d knocked up during a dalliance.

  His mother had made it very clear where she’d stood in his father’s eyes. Never to make him feel sorry for her. Never to cry about injustice.

  Only to make it known why any reconciliation was impossible.

  Still, he’d always thought it could be so as a boy.

  He’d found out as a young man he’d been wrong.

  “What about you?” she asked. “Am I interrupting any marital plans?”

  “No,” he said. “I intended to whore my way around the world. I intend to continue doing so when our need for total discretion is resolved.”

  “Excellent,” she said, though her tone sounded quite crisp.

  “Does it bother you?”

  She shook her head. “Not at all. You recall I intended to walk away from you and never see you again. I hardly intended to own your sexuality for the rest of your life. I intended to forget your name.”

  He smiled. “And now, here we are.”

  “What the hell is happening?”

  He turned to look, at the same time Astrid nearly gave herself whiplash twisting around when a large man, who had slightly different coloring, with blond hair and a beard, but was identical to her in the stubborn set of his jaw, came striding into the formal dining room.

  “It’s five in the evening, Gunnar,” Astrid said, as she recovered herself. “I hope you didn’t get out of bed so long before your typical wake-up time just to question my life decisions.”

  “I’m questioning his,” Gunnar said, the anger in his expression making abundant sense now that he knew for sure this was Astrid’s brother.

  “Your sister is having my baby,” Mauro said. “What precisely should I have done to treat her in a more respectful manner? I have proposed marriage to her.”

  “And you’ll get your hands on the kingdom?” Astrid’s brother was like a very large, angry Viking barreling down on him, and if he weren’t an accomplished street fighter, he might have been concerned for his safety.

  “Whatever your plan is... It is not going to succeed,” the other man continued. “Astrid is much stronger than that.”

  “I’m aware of that. It’s one reason I’m so fond of her.”

  “Your stories are conflicting,” Gunnar said. “My sister made it very clear there was no father of her child. Then suddenly, you appeared.”

  “We had a disagreement. That disagreement has been resolved.”

  “It’s a political marriage,” Astrid said, sounding tired. “There’s no point lying to him. Neither of us can get away with lying to each other ever. It’s one of the worst things about having a twin.”

  “You don’t have to do this,” Gunnar said.

  “I do,” she insisted. “I overplayed my hand and I lost. But now we have a scenario that helps me in the end.”

  “In what sense?” Gunnar asked.

  “The council is madder at me than you are,” she said, her mouth lifting up into a small smirk.

  “That is something,” Mauro said.

  “I assume,” Gunnar said, turning his focus to Mauro, “there are official documents that can be drawn up and kept secreted away in your personal vaults well away from Bjornland?”

  “Of course,” Mauro said. “Discretion is key in my line of work.”

  “I didn’t know discretion was part of your vocabulary,” Gunnar said.

  “Because you’ve never gotten wind of a single thing that I appeared to be obscuring. I find hiding in plain sight is often the best plan.”

  Astrid’s brother regarded him with what appeared to be grudging respect.

  “Now that you’re through treating me like a child...” Astrid said.

  “Yes, I’m sure that if I appeared with a random fiancée you’d take it in your stride.”

  “Of course not,” Astrid said. “I’d renounce her as a gold digger.”

  “Then don’t expect me to sit back and allow you to make choices I find...deeply suspicious.”

  Mauro leaned back in his chair. “You should find it deeply suspicious. Though, as I said, I have no designs on your country.”

  “What do you have designs on?”

  Mauro leveled a gaze at the other man. “Is it so difficult to believe it’s your sister?”

  Gunnar shook his head once. “Not at all. But there are easier women in the world to be with. My sister has an obligation first to her country. My sister will never be able to take her husband’s name, or be his housewife.”

  “What a happy thing, then, that my name means less than nothing to me. I am a bastard son of a whore. My name is dirt in civilized circles. But I do have money. And money allows me to go where I like, to get what I like. Better still, I have no house. A series of penthouses, yes. Private apartments nestled in exclusive clubs. But nowhere one would expect a wife to put on a twinset and pearls and...bake. My lodgings are reserved for more exotic uses.”

  “You may have to childproof them soon enough.”

  Astrid’s response to that was to treat her brother to an evil glare. But she said nothing. She was a strong woman and certainly more than capable of speaking up in a situation like this and yet now she chose to remain silent.

  He could only assume there was a reason. One that had nothing to do with being intimidated.

  “My clubs are no place for children. But then, that is another issue. I want my child. Is that so hard to believe?”

  “Most men of your sort do not.”

  “Then they are not men,” he said. Simple. Hard.

  And that seemed to earn him the most respect of all.

  Eyes that were like chips of ice appraised with a coldness that would have sent a lesser man running from the room. Then finally, Gunnar turned his focus back to his sister. “Proceed with planning your wedding, Astrid, by all means. I won’t stop you.”

  “You couldn’t,” Astrid pointed out. “I command an army.”

  The corner of her brother’s mouth tipped up in defiance, and at that moment he could truly see that they were twins. “I said I won’t stop you. Not that I can’t. My choice of words was no accident.”

  “Then we’re all on the same page,” Mauro said. “Including those of us who had no choice in the matter.”

  After that Mauro had the feeling that whatever other obstacles might rise up in the future, his brother-in-law wouldn’t be one of them.

  * * *

  “It’s actually a good thing you’re getting married so quickly,” Latika said, staring appraisingly at Astrid in her close-fitting lace gown.

  “And why is that?” Astrid asked.

  “Because this dress would no longer fit you if you waited even another week. It’s getting snug as it is.”

  “I’m pregnant,” Astrid sniffed.

  The word sent a sudden jolt through her.

  Words like heir made it all detached. But the fact remained she was going to be a mother and no matter how much she wanted to be, the reality of it felt weighty, and infused with the weight of the unknown.

  But then, everything in her world felt inverted right now and there was no finding normal. Mauro was... He was a presence even when he wasn’t in the palace. He had committed to working mostly in Bjornland until the wedding, leaving only a couple of times, and even then never staying overnight. He had a residence in town but she swore she could feel him.

  And the feeling was...

  It was electric and it was unsettling.

  She wanted him. And there was no room in this situation for want. Especially when he was a brick wall she couldn’t read.

  He didn’t seem to want her at all.

  The night of the engagement he’d kissed her, and then he’d pulled away like nothing had happened while her entire
body had continued to burn like a wildfire had been set off in her belly, spreading out over everything.

  They could talk, and it felt cordial, but even that seemed...calculated.

  She’d come closest to knowing the man the night she’d met him in his club, of that she was certain.

  With no names, and no truth, she’d seen pieces of the real Mauro somehow.

  He wasn’t giving her any of that now.

  He asked her questions. He shared his own information with an easy defiance. As if he enjoyed his disreputable history, and lived to shock people with it.

  But none of it was real.

  None of it was what existed on the other side of a wall she shouldn’t even want to scale.

  He had been a means to an end. He continued to be.

  The world was agog over their union, but they’d quickly recovered from her declaration that her child had no father becoming a shock engagement. Mostly because, more than anything, the world wanted a love story.

  Even if it was improbable and unbelievable.

  Maybe most especially then.

  “I wasn’t insulting you,” Latika said.

  Astrid looked at the wall, refusing to look at her assistant. “It sounded like it.”

  “Well, I wasn’t.” She tilted her head to the side, her glossy black hair sliding over her shoulder. “You truly will make a magnificent bride.”

  “I don’t care about that. I want to be a magnificent queen.”

  Latika sighed. “You’re already that. You don’t need a husband to make it true. Even if you need one to help insulate you.”

  “Somehow this is starting to feel a little bit like the forced marriage I was avoiding.”

  “Except...” Latika trailed off, as if she thought better of what she’d been about to say.

  “What?”

  “You’ve already slept with him,” she pointed out. “You are attracted to him.”