Playing the Royal Game

‘I realised I was marrying the man I love.’

He felt the heat from her body, not passion, but a blush, because it was a brave thing indeed to admit, when you knew it was not reciprocated. He lay there with his breath held in his lungs and he frowned because her eyes were closed and she was half asleep.

‘What does it feel like?’ he asked.

‘Painful,’ Allegra said. ‘But you learn to live with it.’ She rolled over, she really would sleep. She’d told him—it would hardly make the news; after all, everyone thought that she did.

‘You love me?’

‘Why else would I be in your bed, Alex? Believe me, I’m not here for the million pounds, and as much as I love her, I’m not here for Izzy. My freedom’s worth a lot more to me.’

‘When?’ he asked. ‘Since when?’

‘I’m not sure...’ she mused in the darkness. ‘Probably when I excused myself to go the ladies’....’

‘The first day we met?’ he asked, but he was not waiting for an answer from Allegra. Instead he was questioning himself, for it was that day that he had for the first time truly spoken to another. Not even his brother nor his betrothed had heard his darkest thoughts, yet he had shared them easily with Allegra.

‘Tell me this pain.’

‘I can’t.’ She was tired, so tired. Her feet ached, her head pulsed with the sound of cheers and bells and she was lying next to the most beautiful man on God’s earth. But if sanity was to be her savior, if she didn’t want to fall asleep at her own wedding party, then she really needed to sleep.

‘Is it like wanting chocolate?’

‘Dunno.’

‘Then you eat and that is not what you want.’

‘Maybe.’

‘Where nothing tastes right?’

‘A bit.’

‘When you think it is sex you want, but you know it’s not what you need.’

‘Do we have to talk about...?’ She didn’t want Belinda in the room with them, didn’t want to hear about his failed attempts to screw his way out of this.

‘When you can’t look at another woman,’ Alex continued. And maybe she did want to hear after all. ‘Because even though that always worked before, now you find that all you want is her?’ He continued and her mind was dizzy. ‘Where you ask your brother to text because you want to know, not what she is doing, but that she is okay?’

And she opened her eyes to him.

‘Where you kick yourself over and over, where you lie awake at night and berate your choice of a single word, because when you said “ordinary—”’ he heard her sob, felt her burn in shame and he hated himself for ever saying it ‘—that you meant she was normal, that this was not the life for her, and you hate yourself for saying it?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I didn’t know.’ He lay there bemused by his own revelation. ‘Never, not for a minute, did I consider I might love my bride.’ He turned to her. ‘It was not a factor....’

‘Like describing a rainbow to a blind man.’ She saw him frown and she smiled. ‘It’s a saying. Like, how can you describe something you’ve never seen, something the other has no comprehension of.’

He looked to his past, to his rich, privileged life, and now that love lay next to him, now that love lived inside him, he understood her words. ‘For all that my parents said about your family, for all I have said,’ he stepped up, ‘there is so much love there. And I do,’ he said. ‘I do love you.’

‘When...’ It was her turn.

‘At about eight minutes past two,’ he admitted. ‘When I said my vows I meant them.’

And he kissed her because he couldn’t not. A kiss that was different to any Alex had ever delivered, for kisses had always been precursors, just not today. He kissed her and he tasted her and he loved her with his mouth. And because he loved her with his mind, because there was for ever ahead of them, because he wanted this to be right, he pulled away.

‘Sleep.’

‘How can I possibly sleep now?’

‘You’re tired,’ he said