“You know that is not what I meant.”
“I care?”
The king’s mouth tightened, but he stepped aside, having seemingly finally gotten the message that his admonitions were more effective goads to bad behavior than preventers of it.
* * *
Chanel threw the bouquet.
She even managed to dredge up a photo-op-worthy smile when Laura caught it and tossed it away again immediately. Her sister’s attitude toward the institution of marriage couldn’t have been more obvious.
Chanel had to wonder if the teenager had caught the bouquet just so she could throw it away again. The entire ballroom erupted into laughter and even Beatrice was smiling.
She should be.
Her disappointment of a daughter had managed to land a prince. No wonder she’d come to Chanel’s apartment with stories of undying first love.
Chanel couldn’t believe she’d thought her mom was finally showing a vested interest in her oldest daughter’s happiness.
But then she’d let herself be convinced that Demyan wanted to marry her. Not Bartholomew Tanner’s only surviving heir.
Smile still fixed firmly in place, Chanel looked out over the ballroom full of people. Her gaze settled on Queen Oxana. The older woman looked pleased, her normally controlled expression filled with unmistakable happiness.
Was that because she knew the Yurkovich fortune was secure, or was she happy at what she thought was her son’s marriage to someone she believed was his one true love?
Another memory clicked into place and the smile fell away from Chanel’s face. Oxana was the one who had made Demyan promise not to use protestations of love to convince Chanel to marry him.
The queen knew about the will. She must, but she had scruples where her husband and son did not. She might be the only person Chanel could trust to tell her the truth.
She was tempted to leave the reception early, but every time she let her gaze find Demyan, he was watching her. He would only follow her, but she wanted a chance to talk to his mother, to get some answers on her own first.
She got her chance unexpectedly when Oxana came up to her and laid a hand on her arm. “Are you all right, Chanel?”
Chanel looked toward Demyan. He returned her regard, his dark-eyed expression unreadable, but something in the way he watched Chanel and his mother told Chanel he had sent the older woman to her.
“You know,” Chanel said instead of answering.
“That you and my husband had something of an altercation earlier? Yes.”
Interesting that the queen considered the argument to be between Chanel and the king, not Chanel and Demyan. “Did he tell you?”
“Demyan did.”
Even the sound of his name on Oxana’s lips hurt Chanel in some indefinable way. “You were aware of their plans because of my great-great-grandfather’s will.”
Oxana nodded.
“You made him promise not to lie about loving me. Thank you.” She wasn’t sure how much worse the pain inside her would be if she’d believed false words of love. “I want to read the will.”
“If you ask Demyan, he will tell you everything.”
“I don’t want to hear from him. He had his chance to tell me. He chose not to.”
“He was trying to protect our nation.”
Chanel couldn’t help mocking. “Because I’m such a huge security risk.”
Oxana looked around them, obviously concerned someone might overhear. No one was in range of their subdued tones, but that could change any second.
“I don’t want to be here,” Chanel admitted hopelessly.
There was nowhere else she could be without someone she didn’t want to talk to following her, which included pretty much everyone but Oxana at the moment.
The queen sighed, looking at her sadly. “He cares for you.”
Maybe Oxana wouldn’t be the best company either. Chanel just shook her head, moving to turn away.
But Oxana’s hand on her arm stopped her from putting distance between them. “Come, I will take you someplace away from the scrutiny and company of others.”
Chanel thought it a bit obvious when the queen led her to the retiring room for the ladies, but they didn’t stop in the outer room as she expected. The queen led her into one of the three small chambers with toilets, closing the door behind them.
While the room was larger than the usual commode stall, it wasn’t exactly meant for two people and Chanel didn’t think talking about sensitive subjects with only a door between them and anyone who walked into the lounge was a good idea.
But Oxana did not ask any questions, or make any attempts at comfort. She simply pushed up on a section of wainscoting and then the wall behind the commode swung backward.
Oxana put her hand out to Chanel. “Come, I’ll take you to the private papers library for the House of Yurkovich. Your great-great-grandfather’s will has been stored there.”
DARKNESS SURROUNDED CHANEL as she stood on the balcony overlooking the now-silent grounds of the palace. The reception was long over, the last guest’s car having left the drive thirty minutes before.
Temperatures had dropped since that morning and she shivered in the cold air, but she did not go back inside.
Before leaving her to read over the will and relevant places in Bartholomew Tanner’s diaries the queen had marked for Chanel, Oxana had told her that her favorite place for solitude was this balcony.
“The bedrooms do not have security cameras in them, but they do have infrared monitoring. The public rooms and hallways are all covered with video feed, though. The only two places in the palace where you can relax unmonitored in any way are the public address balcony and the one outside Fedir’s rooms.”
“Isn’t that a security risk?” Chanel had asked.
But Oxana had shaken her head. “The walls and every approach are covered.”
Which meant that Demyan would eventually find her because Chanel’s path to the balcony would have been tracked by video monitoring once she left the secret passageway.
She could have left the palace completely. Chanel was a resourceful woman and there had been dozens of cars departing the grounds over the past few hours.
But she wasn’t a coward and she’d never hidden from the truth, no matter how much it might hurt
