Royal Surrender - chapter ten

It was exactly what Cajetan needed to hear from her. It was not too different from what he’d been planning to say himself, because it had to be said.

Despite the lure of the Diamond Club, this was not his life. It could never be his life. His life had been plotted out since before his birth, and he already had messages from the palace staff, none of them used to him wandering off to have a private life outside their control.

He had always been so dedicated to the palace’s ideas of what was appropriate, what was necessary. He had always bowed to his parents’ wishes, knowing that everything they did was with the kingdom in mind.

It would be easiest, he knew, to simply slip back into his life and do what was expected of him. The way he’d always intended.

This night had been meant to be just that: one night.

And he might have gone ahead as planned, but he didn’t much care for the way it sounded when Noe said it.

So final. So empty, after such a glorious night.

Cajetan went over to her and he took her hands in his. “What if it didn’t have to end?” he asked.

Perhaps somewhat more urgently than he’d intended. But he didn’t walk it back, because everything felt urgent now.

The truth, he understood, was that he didn’t want this to end.

“What do you mean?” Noe blinked, and there was a hint of emotion in her eyes that seemed to connect, hard, to the same in him…but she hid it. “You are the Crown Prince of Enrosadira. And I am me. Those things cannot change, no matter what happens within these walls.” Her voice seemed to catch. “It is a cruelty to pretend otherwise.”

“I’m not suggesting we pretend.” He brought her hands up so he could kiss her knuckles. “But what if we claim this space, these walls, and make them whatever we wish them to be?”

“You mean an affair.”

“I mean a man and a woman, free and unfettered. Something I am not certain you have experienced any more than I have.”

And he watched as emotion tracked across that gaze of hers once more.

Hope. Fear.

Longing.

The same things that sang in him.

“Cajetan…” she whispered. “I don’t think…”

“Let’s not think,” he suggested. And then, like a vow, he said, “This can be ours, Noe. This space, these walls, the things we do here. As long as we make it so, it can be whatever we make it. Yours and mine, and no one else’s.”

No palace. No press.

No expectations.

All Noe.

And he waited for what seemed like a long and torturous lifetime before she let out a breath. Her eyes fluttered shut for a moment, but when they opened again, they gleamed.

Slowly, almost carefully, she nodded. Then smiled.

And neither one of them returned to their lives that day for some while.