Author's note: So we reach the end of part 1, and I wanted to get it over and done with today. Major profanity in this chapter.
Thank you so so much for all of the reviews. I am so glad you're enjoying it.
He was prone to waking earlier now than he ever had and the last time he'd slept properly had been when she had last lay in his arms. Every time he'd looked at her in the past week he saw her differently. Candy-coated in the light of the woman who was carrying his child, he felt a tenderness towards her that seemed magnified even more. But there was horror too, like granite in the pit of his stomach, when he thought of what would ultimately become of his child.
A child that would never be.
Head down, eyes pricking with humiliating tears that seemed to accompany him everywhere, he came into the security room just as the nightshift were finishing up. He was always here for the handover, despite the fact he didn't need to be. It was part of the routine that reminded him he was Head of Security, despite the fact he still mostly acted as a trumped-up bodyguard because he couldn't relinquish her security to anyone else.
"Morning boss," Juan smiled, though he looked tired.
"Uneventful night?"
"Mmm, yeah."
"Not strictly true," Dominic interrupted and Joe watched as Juan winced for a moment.
"What?" He asked, knowing his tone was unnecessarily sharp.
"Nothing-"
"The queen went to the king's chamber last night," Dominic laughed loudly, his tone one of boyish joy, "King will be grinning today."
"Sorry, what do you mean?"
His stupidity was a result of reluctance to believe it. She had refused the idea outright, refused it in favour of an option that he hated as equally. She would have told him, he knew, she would have spoken to him if she chose to do that. He had to believe she would have prepared him for It, at least.
"What do you think I mean?"
Juan remained tellingly silent. Joe wondered how much the man suspected.
"They're a married couple," Joseph answered, lack of oxygen constricting his gullet to a strangle of muscle, "They can do what they want."
Dominic just shrugged, ignorant and happy, "Yeah, they can. I'm out. Time for sleep."
Joe watched him go.
"That's not our business," Juan said, removing his earpiece.
"You would think so, wouldn't you?"
Once they were gone, and the next shift were yet to arrive, he had a moment to think straight. She'd slept with her husband. His immediate reaction was one of fiery jealousy but it was one he was not entitled to. Entitlement or no, he felt it acutely. And it flung him into a black rage.
Going out, slamming the empty room's door behind himself, he let Violetta know he had to go into town – he fabricated an emergency – and taking his car, sped towards anywhere that wasn't near her.
He found himself on the empty sand of the beach and couldn't remember how he had got there. The sea was a dull grey, foaming against the storm that had rattled the country over night. While she had been fucking her husband a storm had been throwing itself lustily against the windows. The image was too much to bear.
For the first time, his back against the cliffs and his body facing the wide and angry sea, he cried. He cried because he pitied himself and hated himself too. He hated what he had done to her and to them.
And he hated what she had done.
Of course, he knew why she'd done it. He wanted to be happy because of it too but the betrayal seemed worse.
Determined to speak to her, he was back at the palace just before noon. Like a phantom or intruder, he waited in a recess between her apartment and the doors that led to the palace proper for over an hour. He didn't understand the theatricalities of it, why he simply didn't just steal into her rooms and confront her there. He knew though, if she was prepared, she wouldn't speak to him.
He heard the clack of her heels, and her heels alone, on the marble floors. Reaching out he grasped her arm and pulled her into the recess with him. The look of fright on her face rendered him momentarily guilty but then it just made him angrier. He knew the grip on her arm was bruising and sore and that her flinch was entirely justified.
"You fucked him?"
She blanched, stuttered, scrambled for, and lost track of any response.
"You didn't tell me?"
She looked suddenly furious, "Don't ever speak to me like that."
"I thought we were past trivialities," he growled, "Didn't you know you'd slept with someone who'd clambered from the gutter? You didn't even had the guts, the courtesy, to tell me! You slept with him and you didn't tell me."
She simply stared at him and it was the disgust on her face that made him realise how awful he'd been, "Clarisse, I –"
"I fucked him," she spat, "For our child. I could never have told you, because you would have talked me out of it. Because you make everything impossible! This way, I do not lose my boys, I do not lose my child. The only person I lose is you…and right now, that appeals. I fucked him because I had to."
The absolute venom in her words, the fury and the rage which emanated from her mouth with that foul curse, was all the more startling for the fact he'd never seen it before.
Turning on her heels, she didn't even look back. He slumped against the wall and listened to the hasty retreat and the slam of her chamber door.
He deserved her hatred and her anger. He knew that.
-0-
Shuddering, she stumbled into the cool darkness of her bedroom. It seemed hardly worth it now, for him. She hadn't enjoyed it, she hadn't wanted the hot scotch breath and unskilled hands. She had done it because she had committed the worst of the sins and she had to atone in some manner.
Naively, she had thought she would make him happy by doing this. It was the only way to ensure the safety of their child.
Collapsing to her knees she wrapped her hands around the cool ceramic of the toilet just in time to vomit profusely.
"Your Majesty?"
She was too weak to answer, her voice giving out before she could make a sound. Violetta was at her back then, a hand caressing her in the way her nanny had when she was a child. She was sobbing openly now, her tears mingling with vomit and spit. Her assistant slipped her hand round to her lapels and pulled her jacket off, then she slid down onto her knees on the cold tiles beside her queen.
"I've been such a fool," she sobbed, chin perched on the seat.
Violetta said nothing but she pulled her into her embrace, holding her there as she curled up on the beautiful marble.
"When you're ready, you should sleep."
"I am frightened I won't wake up," she said, "I'm so frightened I don't want to."
"Let's get you to bed."
She scooped her up then, pulling her and jamming her surprisingly strong arm around Clarisse's hip. She guided her towards the bedroom, the cool satin sheets that beckoned her.
"Please don't say to him…"
She didn't really know to which 'him' she was referring to.
"I won't," Violetta pulled back the sheets as Clarisse stumbled out of her shoes and fell onto the bed, "I will cancel your appointments."
"Thank you Violetta."
"You're welcome Your Majesty," she whispered, pressing a cool cloth she had miraculously produced to Clarisse's forehead.
She fell into fitful sleep then and dreams of monstrous little children filled her head.
-0-
He had never known a situation where he couldn't fix things. His behaviour had been so deplorable that he couldn't begin to imagine a way to escape what he'd done. He poured himself a siezable scotch, though his shift wasn't over, and began packing a bag of things that made no sense. The photo from the boys, the silk tie, a pair of shorts, dress shoes. There was a rattling knock on his door, forcing him to pause his nonsensical packing.
On the other side, it was Violetta.
Without being invited in, she walked and let him shut the door behind her.
"You've just made a dreadful situation, for her, worse," she said quietly.
He didn't have to ask what she meant, he already knew.
"She's not someone you can do that to. She's a human being."
He said nothing still.
"You have to make this right," she said, "Otherwise I don't know what she'll do."
He finally broke his silence.
"She slept with him."
"Yes, because she was doing what you wanted. Whether or not you said that to her. I don't need to hear it to know she has compromised everything for you. It seems underwhelming to suggest you should cut her some slack but that's all I can say. You are as much to blame for this as her. I saw it in your eyes, in her eyes, in Spain, what you intended to do. It's been there for as long as I have been here. Now you've both done it and you have to live with the consequences. It's not just about you now, or her, or even that child. It's about two young men and a country. It is so much bigger than her sleeping with her husband."
She turned to go then, slamming the door behind her. He sunk into the couch and wondered if he had any more tears to cry. Reaching for the pen and pad on the table, he wrote his child a list of all the reasons why he loved their mother. Once he was done, he folded it in the small wooden box he kept under his bed. Then he took up the pad again to commit something far more difficult to paper.
-0-
She woke up in the silence of dawn. Physically she felt better and she felt emotionally better too, until it all came flooding back to her. With a groan she rolled over, as if being battered by the invisible horror of it all. Underneath her hand there was a letter. She recognised the hand-writing, the sensible and neat hand in dark ink. She didn't have the strength to read it, so she stowed it in her dresser drawer and took a shower.
The thought of it haunted her through the morning and by noon she had excused herself from her meeting to open it.
I can't begin to apologise for how I spoke and how I behaved. I had no right to treat you like that. You made a decision I was too afraid to make and you're braver than me for it. I don't expect you'll forgive me Clarisse, but I want you to know that I won't ever forgive myself either. I am truly sorry.
Joseph
Setting it aside, an urgency she hadn't known for weeks came over her. She found him in the silence of the garage, aimlessly polishing an already pristine bonnet.
He looked up at her, his eyes an agony of apology.
"I want you," was all she said, as if the words were coming from someone else entirely.
"Here?"
He stepped back. She knew there were no cameras here, no one would come in here when he was in an undoubtedly awful mood, and a madness had invaded her body.
"Here."
"I am so sor-"
I never want to hear those words again," she whispered, letting her jacket fall onto the hard concrete below.
"Clarisse…"
"Do you love me?"
"Of course," he touched her face.
"Then understand that I need you just now," she whispered, hands shaking against the buckle of his belt, "And that whatever happens, I'll always need you."
-0-
It was gritty and feral, this and now. But it was what she needed. He supposed it was what he needed too.
Afterwards, when the hot smell of oil and dust was bound to her half-naked skin, he pulled her into the cool darkness of the limo. He needed to speak to her; holding her, having her, was not enough to confirm that, in some way, she was still his.
He hadn't noticed it before but now that her shirt was undone and it was only the tight material of her skirt, her stomach had curved minutely. It left him breathless and his hand, as if of its own volition, rubbed the material.
"It will be okay," she whispered, her voice shaking over the lie.
"How does it feel?"
"Lovely, really," she placed her hand over his, "It's lovely, really. To know that there's someone you've made."
"I love that you're carrying my child," he admitted, wondering if it was an insensitive thing to say.
She was silent for a moment.
"So do I," she said softly, turning her face away from him and he knew what was coming next, "But no one can know. And Joseph, between us, this has to be the last time."
He had known she would have to say this. And she was right. He was risking his child, and her, if they continued this. He hadn't wanted it to be their last time, in this horrible and dark place, but he supposed he had condemned them to this.
"I know Clarisse," he said softly, "No one will ever know. And I won't…I won't ask you again."
"It will be the only way to ensure our child's safety, you understand?"
"I do," he muttered, trying to keep his voice even as tears threatened him, "When will you tell the King?"
"Soon, as soon as it is believable. I won't ever be with him again. I promise you."
"You don't need to promise me. I was wrong."
"Perhaps I don't need to promise you," she said, "But I need to reassure myself. I don't think I've ever felt so…"
He waited for her to say something that would kill him but the words didn't come.
"Felt so?"
He knew she needed to speak and he owed her his attention and comfort. Despite the fact he didn't want to hear it, he supposed he didn't have a choice.
"Cheap. I felt cheap. What else are you supposed to feel, going between the man you love and the man you are married to?"
"I am sorry you felt like that, I'm sorry I made you feel like that."
"You were angry and that, I understand entirely. Joseph, if I'd said what I planned to do you wouldn't have let me, or you'd have sat getting furiously drunk while I did what I had to do and all the while you would have been so angry. I could not do that to you. I couldn't have gone through with it knowing you knew. This way, it was easier to convince myself I could do it. It was easier to do it when you did not know."
He was silent because there was nothing to deny or refute about what she said.
"He doesn't deserve you," he said finally, "And nor do I."
"You love me," she said, "And that's all your jealousy of yesterday confirmed. Unhealthy as it may be, your jealousy is born out of incredible love. My panic, my fear, is that you will let it eat you. What about when he presents our child to the world as his own, as he must, or they call him papa. What then? Will you hate me then? Worse, will you hate the child?"
"No," he vowed but he knew it was a lie.