Page 77 of Second Chance Prince
“I could say Ernest wrote the speech,” Tomas replied cockily.
“You cursed liar!” Ernest started forward, fists up, but Niki held him back. “And to think I wanted to help you.”
“Icouldsay that,” Tomas shouted back, his voice wavering. “But I won’t. I wrote the speech because I want to go home. I thought if I ruined the wedding, Mama would have to leave. I hate it here. No one likes me. I want to go back to London, and I want things to go back to the way they were. Beforehecame along.”
He pointed at Freddie, and the hatred in his young face was startling.
Matilda gasped. “But Tomas…What is wrong with Mr. Hart? Why do you hate him? What has he done to you?”
“He is not my father,” Tomas replied, sounding more and more like a child. “When he came, everything changed. I don’t want him in your bed, Mama. It is wrong. You are going to marry him, aren’t you? I know you are. And then he will never leave.”
Niki could see that Matilda didn’t seem to know what to say, and Freddie was hesitant to say anything that might make matters worse.
“Don’t you know what would have happened if Roberta had read those words?” he said sternly, barely holding back his anger.“There would have been a riot. The malcontents who want me dead would have used it to spread lies, and who knows what else. My rule might have ended because of your selfish act.”
Tomas curled his lip, but there was a glint of fear in his eyes. “I don’t care.”
“Tomas!” Matilda gasped. “Apologize immediately. Now!”
Tomas shot her a resentful look. “I was leaving anyway, on my own. I hate it here. I hate you, and I hatehim!” He pointed at Freddie and, turning, stalked away.
In the ensuing silence, Matilda gave a little sob, and when Freddie went to put his arm around her, she shrugged him off with a cry and hurried after her son. Freddie looked almost broken.
Ernest hung his head and shuffled his feet. “I am sorry, Niki. I never meant any harm. I could see how unhappy Tomas was, and I was trying to cheer him up.”
“I’m sure you were,” Niki said wryly. “Go to bed now. We can discuss this in the morning.”
Ernest nodded with relief and set off after the other two.
Niki rested a hand on Freddie’s shoulder. “It seems it was all a storm in a teacup with no harm meant. Tomas had no thought for anything beyond getting his mother to return to England. Will she let him have his way, do you think? I mean, when it comes to you, Freddie?”
Freddie met his gaze and sighed. “I don’t know. Tomas thinks the world revolves around him, and his mother loves him.”
“Hmm. You know you will have a fight on your hands if you want to win her.”
Freddie managed a wan smile. “Just as well I am good at fighting.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Roberta woke with a start. She was in a bed in a different room, and for a moment she was confused, until she remembered this was the royal suite. When she had gone to bed last night, she had noted the swans, the Holtswig emblem. Swans were everywhere. Sewn onto the bed canopy, swimming lazily in the mural on the ceiling, incorporated into the carpet that covered most of the floor.
This was where she was to spend her wedding night with Niki, but the other half of the bed was empty.
Bright moonlight shone through one of the windows and she looked about in case Niki was seated in a chair, but there was no one. She really was alone. She had left him at the celebration and been driven back to the castle in solitary splendor, but he had promised to join her.
He hadn’t.
A clock sounded outside somewhere, and she realized it wasn’t very late after all. Should she wait like a dutiful wife? But Roberta was never very dutiful, and besides, Niki seemed to like it when she asserted herself. Look what had happened in his chair.
The memory made her smile and shiver in anticipation.
Quickly, she climbed from the royal bed and, slipping on a robe—another swan was embroidered onto the back of it—hurried from the vast room. Outside in the passage, it was chilly, but shestrode along, trying not to notice the eyes in the portraits on the walls that seemed to be watching her. Lichtenbergs, and none of them very friendly. Maybe she should intersperse them with some of her Ashton relatives. On the landing, there was a tapestry and she thought she recognized the hermit from the story Antonia had told her. She would have liked to examine it more closely, but not now.
Where was Niki? It was like a game of hide-and-seek.
She paused and leaned over the railing, but there was no one there, so she descended the curving staircase which seemed to float above the medieval great hall. There were lamps lit, flickering in the drafts that were ever present in the old castle, but none of the servants she was used to seeing. Were they already in bed? The wedding preparations and then the wedding itself had been like a military operation. A war fought and won. No doubt, everyone from the young boy who scrubbed pots in the kitchen to the elderly lady who mended the sheets was tucked up and fast asleep.
But Roberta felt oddly agitated. Her nerves were wound up tight, her thoughts jumping all over the place. She needed Niki, shewantedhim. Where was he?
