The Wedding Party And Holiday Escapes Ultimate Collection. Кейт Хьюит
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her than call up all those feelings and needs. Perhaps antipathy would actually be easier.
‘I just want you to be happy,’ Gabriella said quietly. ‘As your father does.’
And they thought marrying a stranger would make her happy?
No, Liana thought tiredly, they didn’t want her to be happy, not really. They wanted to feel as if she had been taken care of, dealt with. Tidied away. They wanted to forget her, because she knew soul deep that every time her parents looked at her they were reminded of Chiara. Of Chiara’s death.
Just as she was.
If she married Sandro, at least she’d be out of the way. Easier to forget.
Better for everyone, really.
She drew a breath into her lungs, forced her expression into a smile. ‘I am happy, Mother. I will be.’
Her mother nodded, not questioning that statement. Not wanting to know. ‘Good,’ she said, and kissed Liana’s cold cheek.
A few minutes later her mother left for the chapel, leaving Liana alone to face the walk down the aisle by herself. Maldinian tradition dictated that the bride walk by herself, and the groom keep his back to her until she reached his side.
A stupid tradition, probably meant to terrify brides into submission, she thought with a grimace. And would it terrify her? What would the expression on Sandro’s face be when he did turn around? Contempt? Disgust? Hatred? Desire? She knew she shouldn’t even care, but she did.
Ever since she’d first met Sandro, she’d started caring. Feeling. And that alarmed her more than anything.
She closed her eyes, fought against the nerves churning in her stomach and threatening to revolt up her throat. Why had this man woken something inside her she’d thought was not just asleep, but dead? How had he resurrected it?
She longed to go back to the numb safety she’d lived in for so long. For twenty years, since she was eight. Eight years old, pale faced and trembling, staring at the grief-stricken expressions on her parents’ faces as she told them the truth.
I was there. It was my fault.
And they had, in their silence, agreed. Of course they had, because it was the truth. Chiara’s death had been entirely her fault, and that was a truth she could never, ever escape.
This marriage was, in its own way, meant to be more penance. But it wasn’t meant to make her feel. Want. Need.
Yet in the six weeks since she’d returned from Maldinia, it had. She felt the shift inside herself, an inexorable moving of the tectonic plates of her soul, and it was one she didn’t welcome. Ever since Sandro’s scathing indictment of her, his assault on her convictions, her body, her whole self, she’d started to feel more. Want more. And she was desperate to stop, to snatch back the numbness, the safety.
‘Lady Liana? It’s time.’
Woodenly Liana nodded and then followed Paula, the palace’s press secretary, to the small chapel where the service would take place.
‘This will be a very quiet affair,’ Paula said. ‘No cameras or publicity, like before.’
Before, when Alyse and Leo’s charade had blown up in their faces, Liana knew, and they’d been exposed as having faked their fairy-tale love story for the entirety of their engagement. This time there was no charade, yet Liana still felt as if everything could explode around her. As if it already had.
‘All right, then.’ Paula touched her briefly on her shoulder. ‘You look lovely. Don’t forget to smile.’
Somehow Liana managed to make the corners of her mouth turn up. Paula didn’t look all that satisfied by this expression of expectant marital joy, but she nodded and left Liana alone to face the double doors that led to the chapel, the small crowd, and Sandro.
Drawing a deep breath, she straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin. She was doing this for a good reason. Forget her own feelings, which she’d tried to forget for so long anyway. There was a good reason, the best reason, to marry Sandro, to make her life worth something. Her sister.
For a second, no more, she allowed herself to think of Chiara. Chi-Chi. Her button eyes, her impish smile, her sudden laugh.
I’m doing this for you, Chi-Chi, she thought, and tears, tears she hadn’t let herself cry for twenty years, rose in her eyes. She blinked them back furiously.
Forward.
‘Lady Liana?’
Liana turned to see Alyse Barras—now Diomedi—walking towards her, a warm smile on her pretty face. She wore an understated dress of rose silk, with a matching coat and hat. Silk gloves reached up to the elbow on each slender arm. She looked every inch the elegant, confident royal.
Liana had met Alyse briefly at the dinner last night, but they hadn’t spoken beyond a few pleasantries.
‘I’m sorry we haven’t had a chance to talk properly,’ Alyse said, extending one hand that Liana took stiffly, still conscious of the tears crowding under her lids. ‘I just wanted to tell you I know how you feel. Walking down an aisle alone can be a little frightening. A little lonely.’ Her gaze swept over Liana’s pale figure in obvious sympathy, and she instinctively stiffened, afraid those treacherous tears would spill right over. If they did, she feared there would be no coming back from it.
‘Thank you,’ she said, and she knew her voice sounded too cool. It was her only defence against losing it completely in this moment. ‘I’m sure I’ll manage.’
Alyse blinked, her mouth turning down slightly before she nodded. ‘Of course you will. I just wanted to say... I hope we have a chance to get to know one another now that we’re both part of this family.’ Her smile returned. ‘For better or for worse.’
And right now felt like worse. Liana nodded, too wretchedly emotional to respond any further to Alyse’s friendly overture.
‘Thank you,’ she finally managed. ‘I should go.’
‘Of course.’ Alyse nodded and stepped back. ‘Of course.’
Two footmen came forward to throw open the doors of the chapel, and with that icy numbness now hastily reassembled, her chin lifted and her head held high, Liana stepped into her future.
The chapel was as quiet and sombre as if a funeral were taking place rather than a wedding. A handful of guests she didn’t know, her parents in the left front row. Sandro’s back, broad and resolute, turned towards her. She felt the tears sting her eyes again, her throat tighten and she willed the emotion away.
This was the right thing to do. The only thing she could do. This was her duty to her parents, to the memory of her sister. She was doing it for them, not for herself. For Chiara....
She repeated the words inside her head, a desperate chant, an appeal to everything she’d done and been in the twenty years since Chiara’s death.
This was her duty. Her atonement. Her absolution. She had no other choice, no other need but to serve her parents and the memory of her sister as best she could.
And as she came down the aisle she finally made herself believe it once more.
* * *
Sandro had heard the doors to the chapel open, knew Liana was walking towards him. He fought an urge to turn around, knowing that tradition had Maldinian grooms—royal ones, at least—facing the front until the bride was at their side.
When she was halfway down he gave in and turned around, tradition be damned. He wanted to see Liana, wanted to catch a glimpse of the woman he was about to promise to love, honour, and cherish before he made those binding vows. For the past six weeks he’d been trying not to think of her, of the proud contempt he’d seen on her face the last time they’d spoken, when she’d told him with a sneer in her voice that she didn’t respect him.
And as shocked