Page 95

He couldn’t bear to push her away, yet he also couldn’t bear to touch her because if he did, he knew he’d never let her go.
‘You have to.’ His voice was wooden. ‘You deserve a man who can love you the way—’
‘And I have found him,’ she interrupted yet again, lifting her head and looking up at him. ‘What I deserve is to be with the man I love, and that’s you. So, no. I’m not leaving, Tiberius.’
His heart felt like it was chained in barbed wire, little hooks digging into it, tearing it. ‘Lioness, I can’t…’
‘I’m not going to ask you to put me first,’ she said. ‘I would never ask that of you. All I want is a little corner of your heart that is mine. That’s all.’
A little corner of his heart…
‘Guinevere…’
‘You love an entire country,’ she said. ‘Are you telling me you really can’t spare a small piece of that great heart of yours?’
He looked down into her eyes and he could feel the fear wrapping around him, squeezing tight. The fear that she hadn’t just claimed a small piece, that she’d claimed all of it. All of him. And he was afraid, because where did that leave him?
‘If I love you,’ he began roughly, ‘then what is there left for Kasimir?’
Her eyes were midnight-blue and her arms around him were warm as she said, ‘Why do you think love is limited? That if you give it to your country there’s nothing left for anything else? Think bigger, my king. Love is boundless. I can love you and love my country. It’s just a different kind of love.’
His will was fading, his strength to put her from him failing. ‘I can’t make you happy, Guinevere. I don’t even know what that looks like.’
Strangely, she smiled at him. ‘Yes, you do. It’s me and you in the orchard, lying on our backs and looking at the stars.’
She’s right.
It burst through him then, in a brilliant flash of light. Yes, hehadbeen happy with her that day in the orchard. He’d been happy with her in every one of their daily two-hour meetings, and he’d been happy because of her. Because she’d showed him what it felt like. And it was lying on his back with her in his arms, looking at the stars. It was her in his lap, kissing him and touching him as if he was precious.
It was her smile—the one she gave him every day—and it was her in her yellow dress, looking like a splash of sunshine.
And it was her, her eyes dark, telling him she loved him.
Shewas happiness.
Which must mean that the agonising pressure in his heart was love.
Because he did love her, even though he’d been telling himself he didn’t. Even though he’d been telling himself it was impossible to love her and his country at the same time.
In fact it was perfectly possible, and he’d been doing it for at least a couple of weeks now.
He lifted his hands and cupped her face between them. ‘Guinevere…little lioness…it cannot be just about me. You need happiness in your life too. Youdeserveit.’
Guinevere looked up into his beautiful face, her arms tight around his narrow waist. There was anguish there, and something fierce and hot and bright.
Her king. Her enemy. Her husband.
The man she loved without limit and without reservation.
She’d known that the minute he’d walked away from her, leaving her standing alone in the ballroom. After telling her that he couldn’t give her what she deserved and that she’d be better off if she’d never met him.
But she’d told him the truth—that she’d still have been hiding in the walls if he hadn’t come along and shown her the courage that had always been there inside her.
And as he’d walked away from her she’d known she couldn’t let him. That he needed to learn a lesson too, and one that only she could teach him.
A lesson about the love she knew lay in his heart. The love for his parents that had translated into a driving need to make their deaths matter. The love for his country and for his people that had kept him on the path to the crown.
This king was made of love. And it wasn’t a distraction. And loving his country didn’t mean he couldn’t love her.