me again.’
‘Have you seen him since?’
He shook his head. ‘I tried making contact a couple of times but he doesn’t want to know. He’s got a new life now. He divorced Angelique and remarried. He has a couple of kids of his own now. I know he’ll never forgive me. He was the last of my family—my grandmother had died by then—and I destroyed our relationship.’
The last of his family...
And she had run away carrying the child that would be the first true blood tie he’d had in a generation.
‘Did you ever make the first move on her?’
‘No.’ His answer was so vehement that she believed him. ‘I never wanted it to happen. It sickened me but on another level I must have wanted it because I allowed it to happen.’
She nodded slowly. ‘When I was at finishing school, I remember one of the English girls talking about her teenage brothers. She said they were randy little sods—her words—and that if we ever visited we should make sure to wear chastity belts.’
‘Don’t make excuses for me.’
‘I’m not. What you did was wrong, yes, but you were practically a child. Angelique was quite clearly a predator and the one in the position of power. She was beautiful and you were a walking hormone stick.’
A walking hormone stick?
Despite the gravity of the subject, Nathaniel couldn’t hold back the small burst of mirth that came to him, surprised to find he felt a fraction lighter.
He’d never spoken of this to anyone before. His uncle had never either—the press would have had a field day if he had. And nor had Angelique.
That his uncle had kept his counsel after the heinous way Nathaniel had repaid the love he’d given him only verified the qualities of the man who had taken in his orphan nephew and done his best to be a father to him.
Catalina gave the glimmer of a smile and said gently, ‘The age of consent in Monte Cleure is eighteen. If Angelique had seduced you there, she would have been guilty of statutory rape. Whatever guilt you’re holding onto, I seriously suggest you try to let it go.’
Looking into the chocolate eyes ringing with such gentle compassion, he remembered all of the reasons why he’d kept his distance from her before; the innocence he’d conveniently ignored when he’d been intent on her seduction and had got them into this situation in the first place.
He could no longer call their situation a mess. She was carrying his child. In many ways it was a miracle.
And despite everything she had done, the part of his heart that wasn’t still furious with her knew she was the complete antithesis of the woman who he had allowed to seduce him as a teenage boy.
Catalina had been driven to run by desperation. She was only returning to Monte Cleure with him for his sake. Unlike Angelique, she didn’t have a selfish bone in her body.
‘It’s not that easy.’
Her eyes were kind as she shook her head. ‘I don’t imagine it is.’
Their conversation was mercifully interrupted by their food being brought out to them.
Nathaniel watched Catalina cut into her steak, her eyes widening with appreciation as she chewed her first bite.
Something low in his gut moved, like an intense tug, while a fist clenched simultaneously in his chest.
They ate in silence for a while before she put down her fork to gaze at him. ‘What happened between you and Angelique...’
‘I can’t believe I told you that,’ he admitted. He’d thought he would go to his grave without sharing his shame.
He braced himself for her judgement. He’d expected disgust but her initial reaction hadn’t been at all what he’d thought it would be. She’d had a few minutes to gather her thoughts however...
‘I’m an expert at keeping secrets.’
He could well believe it; after all, she’d lived in the Monte Cleure palace all her life.
‘But one thing that has never been a secret is my father’s affairs.’
It was true. They had been well documented through the years.
‘He didn’t suffer from guilt of any kind,’ she continued. ‘If he was a better man he would have. Dominic’s the same as him. To them, women are possessions. You feel remorse. Whatever happened when you were seventeen, you’re a hundred times the men they are.’
His heart expanded so much he didn’t know if there was enough space in his chest to contain it.
Guilt didn’t begin to describe the emotions he’d been living with for these past eighteen years but feeling remorse didn’t make him any better than her father. How could it when the cost of his actions was losing the last of his family, the one person since the death of his parents who had been there for him?
He didn’t see women as possessions as the King and Dominic did. He liked their company, and not only in a sexual context, but until he’d been forced into this situation with Catalina he’d always known when it was time to move on. He didn’t need or want anyone. He was better off on his own. You couldn’t hurt anyone when there was only you. And you couldn’t be hurt either.
‘How did your mother handle the affairs?’ he asked, thinking of his uncle’s devastation.
She shrugged and picked up her fork again. ‘I don’t know if his affairs bothered her much. Not on an emotional level. She wasn’t in love with him. Theirs was a marriage much as I was supposed to have.’
‘A marriage of duty,’ Nathaniel supplied, a strange tightness spreading through him as he spoke the words. He satisfied himself that the actions he and Catalina would be taking would free her from the life she’d had mapped out for her.
‘Yes.’ She focused her attention back on the plate of food before her and speared a tomato.
‘Did your mother have affairs too?’
There was the slightest twitch under her eye. ‘A woman in my mother’s position would never have had an affair. She had too much to lose.’
His eyes asked his next question for him.
‘My father has all the power, you must see that. Dominic is second to him. My mother was barely any higher on the scale of influence than I am: nowhere. If she’d been caught having an affair my father could have banished her from the country. He could have cut her off from her children. He could have taken away everything she had—do you really think she would have risked all that for a tawdry, seedy affair?’
He shook his head, instinctively knowing there was more to this than she was letting on.
She put her knife and fork together and pushed her plate to one side.
‘My mother didn’t have an affair. She fell in love.’ She met his eyes. ‘It was my mother I caught making love in the
