PROLOGUE
1816
Dashiell Talbot had worked for Giabella, Queen of Athawick, for almost ten years when her husband died. It had been a long illness, the end was expected, but that did not make it any easier to stand outside her chamber door at four in the morning, waiting to knock. To wake her. To give her this news.
The problem, of course, was that Dash was in love with her.
He had been since even before she had asked him to join her staff as her personal secretary. Since the first moment he saw her, if one wanted to be specific. He could recall every moment of that day when he brought the child of a member of court to be presented to her after the girl was orphaned. Giabella had taken her in. That was more than fifteen years prior.
Loving Gia had been the greatest joy and the deepest heartache of his life, because, of course, it could come to nothing.
He cleared his throat and knocked. There was hesitation from within and then the bustling of the queen’s maid. Giabella had always been an early riser, so Betsy was in her room by four every day in order to light the fires and ready the gowns and do all the things a queen needed done before she rose from bed at six to start her official day.
Betsy cracked the door, and when she saw Dash there, her eyes widened. Her gaze flitted to the black armband he now wore and she nodded slightly.
“I’ll wake her, sir,” she said softly.
He followed her into the sitting room and looked around. The curtains had not been pulled open yet so the room was lit only by the fire. A haunting glow that danced off all the personal items that said so much about the queen. Portraits of her beloved children, including Grantham, who for the last half hour had been king. A painting by one of her dearest friends hung on the wall, an artist she had championed for years. A pair of her slippers was tucked partly beneath the settee. He smiled as he pictured her sliding them off before she folded into herself and read on the couch the previous night before she retired to bed.
Betsy reappeared from the bedchamber and nodded. “She’s ready, sir.”
He entered the bedroom. Normally a man like him, unmarried to a lady, would never see the intimacy of her bedchamber. But he was a servant, her most trusted one, and he knew he was seen as almost sexless. At least by others. Occasionally Gia would look at him and he felt…
No, it was wrong to consider that now. Today of all days.
Giabella was propped up on her pillows, her hair arranged around her shoulders. She was still in her nightrail and he swallowed hard at how utterly lovely she was. Her dark hair was just barely touched by gray at the temples, her face expressive. Today it was pensive. She already knew what he would say.
He reached back and shut the door to the chamber. Inappropriate, perhaps, but no one else needed to hear her response when he gave her this news.
“Your Majesty,” he began softly.
“He is dead, isn’t he?”
Slowly, Dash inclined his head. “He is. I am so very sorry.”
She held his gaze a moment before she pushed the covers back and paced across the room to the window. She threw open the curtain and the pinks and purples of sunrise hit her, outlining her body beneath the thin nightgown. He ducked his head, tried not to look as he fetched her robe. He placed it over her shoulders gently and she turned toward him.
They were close now, probably too close, and she stared up at him. Her dark brown eyes sparkled with tears, her hands shook as she reached out and caught one of his lapels in her fist.
“How can I…how can I hate him so much and yet feel such a deep pain at his passing?” she whimpered.
He ignored propriety and wrapped his arms around her, drawing her to his chest. She shuddered against him, her arms coming around his waist and holding tight, like he was the only solid thing keeping her from washing out into the sea that sparkled in the distance.
“Your marriage was…” He shook his head. “Complicated. Of course your feelings would be, as well.”
She nodded against his chest and then sighed. “Does Grantham know?”
“Yes. And Remi. He was with his father at the end.”
“Poor Remi,” Giabella breathed. “The girls will have to be told, too. Though perhaps we should wait until a more reasonable hour.”
“I agree,” he said. “No use waking them. There is nothing they can do.”
She lifted her face toward his, drawing a short breath as if to say something more. She didn’t. It was as if she had just realized the precarious and inappropriate nature of their position. He released her immediately, but she didn’t move, didn’t make any attempt to step away. She just kept staring at him.
God help him, he wanted to kiss her. It wasn’t the first time he’d felt it, but definitely the worst in this moment when her pain and heartbreak and worry was so clear on every line of her face. Her hands shook against him, tears threatened to fall even as she focused so intently on his lips that he was shocked to realize she might want the same thing. As comfort? As relief?
He had no idea, but he shivered as she lifted up a little, closer to him. He felt the broken stir of her breath against his lips, and every part of him reacted exactly as it shouldn’t.
He bent his head as he backed away, extracting himself from her embrace with more difficulty than he had ever done anything before. Her cheeks brightened with embarrassment and she faced the sea again.
“I will dress and go see the princes…” Her breath shuddered out. “I’m sorry, Remi and the king. Grantham is king now.”
“Long live the king,” Dash said softly.
She faced him and she had erased whatever longing had been there a moment ago. She was Queen Giabella again, proper and elegant and wonderful.
“Long live the king,” she repeated.
He executed a bow. “I will wait for you outside. And after you have met with him, I will join the gathering of his courtiers and create a schedule for the announcements, as well as the funeral and other official ceremonies.”
She sighed. “It will be a very busy time, I fear.”
“And I will make it as easy as I can for you.”
She smiled slightly. “You always have. Thank you, Dash.”
He tensed at her use of his nickname. She so rarely used it that every time she did it felt like her nails raking along his back. He bowed again and backed from the room, motioning for her maid to go ready her for greeting the new king as Dash stepped into the hall to wait for her.
As he had been waiting for her for years. As he would wait for her until his last breath.
CHAPTER 1
It had been almost eighteen months since the death of her husband, and in that time, Giabella, Queen Mother of Athawick, had spoken or written about almost every moment of that day. Save one.
That was the moment she had nearly kissed her longtime secretary, Dashiell Talbot.
That moment she had never mentioned, not to her children, not to a confidante, not to the man himself. Dash had done the same, politely pretending she hadn’t almost humiliated herself in that awful moment where relief and grief and anxiety had mixed in her chest, making the future blurred.
“What do you think of this one, Mama?”
Giabella lifted her gaze, her attention drawn back to the two women across the room from her. Her daughters-in-law, Priscilla and Ophelia, princess and queen respectively. But she felt as close to them as she did her real daughters, Ilaria and Sasha.