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Joseph pulled her nearer to him as a fresh sob grumbled from her mouth. Her fists balled up in his shirt as she continued to cry. He had been so angry at her for going off on her own that he had shouted. He should never have shouted at her – it had elicited the response she was giving now. He thought of their house by the beach that never was. She wasn't wearing black any more. She smelled like the sea and fresh air. She had been by the sea with Amelia. He was jealous and he hated himself for it.
Phillipe's death had been the death of lots of things. All of those things had manifested themselves in the body of a young man, trapped underneath an expensive Italian car – a young man freed of responsibility and 24 hours later, his mortal coil. Joseph could still smell the blood mingling with gasoline if he closed his eyes. He had lost a good man in Juan that day and a child he had loved in the prince. He had lost lots of things as that car tumbled down the rocky incline to the south of Mertz.
It was the closing of many doors.
And he had lost her to blackness.
"I lied to her..." she repeated again, this time her breath catching like a sharp hook in the back of her throat.
He wondered if any other man had tried to heave a car that weighed more than a ton to get to a child they felt was their own. He had cried dry sobs of frustration when it wouldn't move. He felt his hands burn with the strain.
He had tried to get to her, to tell her. He had failed. Sebastian told her first.
He hated himself for it.
What he hated himself for more, though, was the way in which he'd left her suite that morning. So sure of himself, so unconquerable. He had strolled along the corridor, hands in the pockets of two-day old dress trousers, the smell of her bedsheets on him and a lightness his soul hadn't known for years. He had asked her to lie longer but she'd made him leave in the half-light of day break. She had spent only hours in his arms and he had thought that was enough to keep her forever. The gods of fate, and a child driving a powerful machine and a slick of oil on a winding road had other plans though.
He pulled her toward the couch in the parlour of the consulate, cradling her to him. It had been so long since he had held her like this – intimately, without restraint.
He had taken her in his arms and danced with her at the beginning of the week and his tightly woven world had began unravelling again. He hated himself for it. She was a world of blackness that couldn't bear to look him in the eyes and then suddenly she had allowed him to draw her in again. She had stared and stared and the contact remained unbroken.
"You did it for the right reasons," he said eventually, stroking her hair.
"I am ruthless. I never learned from my mistakes," she said quietly.
He balled his fists by his side, refused to acknowledge what she meant by that.
"Don't say that," he murmured, running his hand over her arm.
"I- I..." she couldn't speak, "It's retribution for what I have done. For what I did to him. It's retribution for wanting-"
In his head he begged her not finish that sentence but Clarisse had never been so tactful.
"For wanting me..." he finished for her, bending up all the guts he had left to say what had been lingering between them from the moment of Phillipe's death.
He had known how she would feel as he had strained his muscles to try and move the car. He had let go then and Phillipe had stopped breathing minutes before. He had crawled below, those trousers fraying and tearing along the tough ground, and grasped the young man's still warm hand. He was half-trapped anyway.
He couldn't save him.
He hated himself for it.
A fresh sob, raw and unchecked, tore from her throat at his words.
He wasn't ready to be king and she hadn't been ready to lose her son. Joseph hadn't been ready to win and lose her in the space of hours.
"He wasn't ready to be king," she repeated.
No, none of us were ready for any of it, he wanted to say.
But he didn't.
And he hated himself for it.
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