The Marriage That Made Her Queen (Mills & Boon Modern) (Behind the Palace Doors…, Book 1) by Kali Anthony

Author:Kali Anthony [Anthony, Kali]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-08-31T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THREE DAYS AWAY, and they’d returned to the palace with its timetables and strictures. Lise was torn. For a brief time she had found a measure of peace, away from the capital. Those days were like an oasis of calm in the middle of a wasteland of grief. She hadn’t wanted to leave the tranquillity of Rafe’s home in the mountains, where she might once have pretended they were simply a man and a woman united by shared grief, and not who they truly were. A man who wanted power from a beneficial marriage and a woman forced to marry by her constitution. No matter what Rafe had shared with her, that was their truth. They were who they were, and life wasn’t all glitter-covered fantasises but full of harsh realities. Living with the dark, twisting ache that she didn’t deserve any meagre shred of happiness.

Yet her pain had dissipated to a background hum in the fog of passion in Rafe’s arms. All she could think about was what he’d done to her. The exquisite sensation of his mouth on the heart of her, the way she’d broken apart under his wicked tongue. Her craving for more, for everything. The heat rose in her chest, and she was sure the blush bloomed over her face.

‘They call this informal?’

Her stomach swooped as Rafe walked into the dining room. He’d taken a call for business and hadn’t followed her to breakfast, so she’d thought she’d have longer to eat without him. At least in the mountains she could walk the narrow cattle trails to escape. To create a little space, since being back in the palace allowed her none. Here, togetherness was everything. The illusion of Queen and King working together for the good of the country.

The man in question glowered as he looked at the expansive table, set in full silver service for two. Lise sat at one end. A place for him lay at the other where a patch of sunshine hit the table. In front of the setting lay perfectly pressed newspapers. If it weren’t so real, it might have been comical.

‘We’re serving ourselves. Here, that’s almost considered to be camping.’ The laden buffet could have fed a family of ten, rather than the two of them. Though she hadn’t eaten much of the magnificent meal set out on the sideboard. Since they’d returned to the palace her stomach had recommenced twisting itself into complicated and uncomfortable knots.

Rafe snorted. ‘I’m not sitting so far away we need to phone each other to speak.’ He strode to his end of the table, grabbed the cutlery and newspapers and placed them next to Lise. ‘It’s ridiculous.’

She nodded to the end of the table he’d vacated.

‘That was my father’s place. He liked to read the paper in the sunshine.’ Lise sipped her coffee. ‘My mother sat here because she said the sun ruined her skin.’

‘I’m not your father.’

The memory of the King, sitting at the end of the table poring through the papers, sliced like a shard of glass.

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