Sauveterre. Most were from tonight, first the ones of them greeting each other outside the ballroom, then mingling within. A few showed her onstage, and one grainy snap across the restaurant last weekend was obviously a belated effort to pile on tonight’s revelation that they were dating.
Then there were a handful of images that showed her—it damned well looked exactly like her—in a clinch with the Prince of Elazar in a ballroom in Paris.
And someone had managed to snap her very tense expression as she had defended herself against two-timing right before they’d come up here.
Kasim gritted his teeth as he weighed Sauveterre security protocols against his own reputation. He could spare Angelique an hour to address this scandal in her own way, he allowed generously. After that, he would turn down the heat on this particular conflagration himself.
Twenty minutes later, Angelique emerged from the bedroom, cheeks flushed, brows pulled into a distraught line. Opening the door, she said, “Maurice, can you send a snapshot of that card I gave you to Trella? Merci.”
She closed the door firmly and turned to glare at Kasim.
“Does she do this often?” Kasim asked.
She pursed her lips as though deciding whether to answer. Then she huffed out a breath and crossed her arms defensively, but her shoulders fell a notch.
“It’s something she’s tried a few times in the last year, basically since she knew Sadiq was getting married. She wants to attend the wedding and is determined to get over…” She stopped herself. Sighed again. “It’s a way for her to test the waters of moving in public again. If she appeared as herself, the press would go stark raving mad. If she poses as me, however, and goes to Ramon’s race with Henri and Cinnia or something like that, it’s run-of-the-mill attention.”
Tonight was run-of-the-mill?
“Shouldn’t she get it over with? Coming out at my sister’s wedding is liable to take attention away from the bride and groom. Has she thought of that?”
“It will be a closed ceremony and don’t judge how she’s doing this.”
“Her actions deserve to be judged. I look like a fool. If you had had an actual affair with that man last year, I wouldn’t care.” That was a small lie, but he would be able to convince himself he didn’t care. “The fact you’ve been photographed with both of us in the same week makes all three of us look bad.”
“We’re all going to have to grin and bear it, aren’t we?”
“No,” he told her sternly. “You warned me about attention. You didn’t say your sister would ridicule me. I will give her the chance to come clean. If she doesn’t, I will make the completely true statement that you were with me in London all of last weekend.”
“No!” Her fists hit the air next to her thighs, arms straight and angry. “Don’t do that to her.”
“I didn’t take the photographs, Angelique. She’s bringing this on herself!”
“It could do so much damage, you can’t even comprehend.” She paced with agitation across the lounge. “The press was horrible to her for years after the kidnapping, printing every lurid scrap, fact or fiction, on what happened while she was captive. True or not, those things assaulted her every time, victimizing her again and again. Then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, they called her unstable and a drug addict and fat. She was barely a stone heavier than me, but there was this magnifying glass on her so she couldn’t buy a stick of gum without it being a cry for help, or a sign she was suicidal… It drove her to go the other way, until she was underweight and we were scared she would disappear completely. I’ll tell you, if anything is designed to break a person’s spirit, it’s that sort of relentless, vicious criticism.”
She paused to take a few panting breaths. Her face contorted in a wince of distant memory.
“Then, after my father’s funeral… I guess we finally looked like young women by then. It’s not like we were dressed for clubbing, you know, but photos circulated of us at the service and men stalked both of us online after that, saying the most disgusting things. Sending us—” She waved a hand toward her crotch. “Those sorts of pics. It was even worse for Trella. She knew what men like that are capable of.” Her voice broke on the last words, eyes haunted.
“Angelique,” he breathed, and started toward her.
She bent to unfasten her shoes and kick them away, then kept moving, restless with heightened emotion, dress swirling like a cape each time she turned.
“She started having panic attacks because of it. That is not public knowledge.” She pointed at him as though warning him not to speak of it. Then she whirled away again. “She was terrified all the time. It was horrible for her. For all of us. It was like watching someone who is depressed to the point of being suicidal, or in chronic pain, and listening to them scream. You can’t do anything except sit there and watch. She spent, God, a good two years stoned on medications, trying to get it under control. Finally she left the public eye and it took a while, but she was able to stabilize. That was so hard-won, none of us rocks the boat. We don’t want to throw her off again.”
She hugged herself, gaze fixed on the past.
“For years, one of us has always been with her, never farther than the next room. We all know it’s not healthy. We want a normal life for her. Our version of normal, anyway,” she muttered, then waved with exasperation toward the guards in the hall.
“Even Trella is balking at how she lives. I just asked her how this happened and she told me she feels like she’s been doing time on a prison sentence for a crime she didn’t commit. What did she do wrong, Kasim? Are her kidnappers half so tortured? They might be in jail, but have they suffered one-tenth as much as she has? And even through all of what she has faced, she tries.”
Her eyes were wet and gleaming. She was visibly shaking with intense emotion, making his heart feel pinched and tight.
“She’s been trying so hard to get over all her mental blocks. She flew to Paris alone. You have no idea what a big deal that was for her. And then, when she realized you and I were keeping out of the spotlight and I was expected at that dinner, she stole the chance to go out as me. To see how she felt going out alone. It was a spur-of-the moment thing, which is exactly like her when she’s at her best. In certain ways this is such thrilling news.”
She began pacing again, her dress flaring around her as she pivoted, but halted to press a hand to her brow.
“Not the part where she went home with a stranger, of course. I asked her how that happened, but she didn’t want to talk about it, only apologized for not telling him who she really was. My brothers are going to kill me for not being there to stop her.”
Kasim folded his arms, observing drily, “She took acting like you to the highest level, didn’t she?”
Angelique jerked her head up, eyes narrowed with antipathy. “I had dinner with you first!”
They hadn’t even finished their drinks, let alone started on the appetizers, but okay.
“That has to be me in those photos, Kasim. If the press gets wind that it was her…” She pinched the bridge of her nose. “Trella is a tiny baby sea turtle making her way to the water. If we can just give her time to get there before unleashing
