Page 18 of His Royal Bride Replacement
‘Temporary repairs. A proper fix will have to wait until we leave in a few days,’ Alessio explained. ‘I also asked for the damp rooms upstairs and the drawing room to be cleared and the furniture disposed of. The linen should all be replaced as well—’
‘So, does all that mean that you’re planning to keep this place?’ Rosy pressed in surprise.
‘Yes. Coming back here with you has somehow dispersed the unhappy memories,’ Alessio admitted quietly as they walked into the kitchen where she immediately saw the changes. A large fridge freezer had replaced the old fridge, and the freezer compartment was packed with ready-made gourmet meals. A microwave had appeared and a sophisticated coffee machine sat in another corner. The fridge was stuffed with fresh food and a prepared meal for that very evening.
‘I was quite happy cooking for us,’ she said ruefully.
‘But now you won’thaveto work so hard at it and we can relax,’ Alessio pointed out as she moved out into the hall and then crossed to the drawing room to stare at the new contemporary sofas and note that the moth-eaten hunting trophies had been removed.
‘Did you have furniture brought all this way from the palace?’ she asked with growing incredulity at the improvements that had been implemented in such a short space of time.
‘No, a store in Rifka was happy to step up and supply us with everything. It’s only twenty miles from here,’ he pointed out, referring to Sedovia’s third largest city.
Rosy could only imagine the alacrity with which a store proprietor would have stepped up to provide Sedovia’s reigning prince with such purchases. She glanced upwards and wasn’t at all surprised to see that the ugly antler chandelier had been replaced as well.
Alessio noted the direction of her gaze, his emerald-green gaze gleaming with wry comprehension. ‘I’m head of the Sedovian conservation society. Such relics from the past are better removed and there will have to be some sort of public consultation about what to do with them because the palace still contains problematic items as well. Destruction—denying our past—may not always be the best remedy. Hunting within accepted guidelines is still a popular rural pursuit.’
‘I can’t see anyone wanting to go to a museum dedicated to old hunting trophies,’ she remarked. ‘But you could be surprised, if you included the artworks that devolved from them. Add in an antique gun exhibition and old photos and it could work though, particularly if you added a conservation exhibition, showing how much attitudes have changed over the years.’
‘I hadn’t even considered that possibility.’ Alessio dealt her an appreciative and lingering appraisal. ‘That’s quite a comprehensive plan to come up with so fast. I can see that your museum training will be an asset.’
Rosy flushed, striving not to show how pleased she was by the compliment. ‘Let’s go upstairs,’ she suggested, because she wanted to shower and change.
‘We’ll have the Internet back now and a booster has been installed for phone reception,’ Alessio proffered as she glanced into the study to see one of the palace technicians still at work.
‘You really did think of everything.’
‘Not really. I had to concentrate on what could be done quickly. Even for a few days we don’t want to live inside a building site. The whole place requires extensive work but at least it should be clean and reasonably comfortable now.’
‘It’s certainly clean,’ Rosy conceded as they walked past empty bedrooms now stripped of all evidence of rot and damp and another bathroom that now looked surprisingly functional.
As she opened the door on their bedroom, Alessio was opening the room next door. ‘And this will be my room,’ he advanced calmly, walking into a neatly furnished room, coloured in pale shades of blue and grey. ‘I’ll use the other bathroom as well, so we won’t be getting under each other’s feet…’
Or snuggling or colliding in the same bed, Rosy translated with an inner wince of discomfiture. Without warning the oddest sense of hurt, regret and disappointment was assailing her and, her cheeks burning at that awareness, she hastened on into the bedroom that they had shared the night before. There she stopped dead on the threshold, only to stare at the unexpected new furniture and the fresh contemporary bedding with a green tropical colourway.
‘Why did you change this room?’ she enquired.
‘It was done in my mother’s favourite colours and I dislike being reminded of her,’ Alessio confessed rather stiltedly, faint colour scoring his hard cheekbones as she swivelled to look at him.
Rosy compressed her lips. ‘Oh,’ she said, keeping to herself the reality that she had actually quite liked the previous décor. True, it had been a little shabby, a little dated, but she found feminine florals soothing.
‘And you required more storage for your clothes. You were living out of your suitcases,’ Alessio pointed out, clearly determined to cover his tracks lest she suspect that he was more sensitive to reminders of his mother than was strictly masculine.
‘I was living out of my cases because I was too lazy to unpack last night, and now…’ she said in open appreciation as she opened a wardrobe door to view hanging garments, neatly folded garments on shelves and filled drawers ‘…it’s all been done for me, which is wonderful!’
‘The maids have been very efficient on our behalf but I didn’t request any live-in staff because—’
‘We don’t need them in a place this size when we’re not staying long,’ Rosy slotted in calmly. ‘You thought of everything…thanks. We’ll be more comfortable now but you didn’t need to have a second bedroom prepared for yourself—’
Alessio gazed down at her with hooded green eyes that smouldered. ‘Idid. You need your privacy while you decide where you stand in this marriage of ours. I chose to give it to you for your sake as much as mine. If you want a quick exit from this marriage, I want to know soon so that I can prepare the way,’ he murmured tautly.
It was the scorching intensity of his gaze that flushed heat through her entire body. She knew he was thinking about the cave. Did he think she was a bit on the wanton side? After all, in a temper just before that development she had told him she hadn’t signed her whole life over to him and had assumed that their marriage would be relatively brief. And that was true, but she had also made it surpassingly obvious that she foundhimvery attractive and in an outrageously short space of time he had charmed her out of most of her clothes. So perhaps, she reflected as she closed the bedroom door, he was right to say that separate bedrooms were a better idea than too much dangerous proximity.
Even if she kind of really, really strongly resented him for enforcing a separation? After all, she had never known what it was to crave a man the way he had made her crave him. That was utterly new, that was exhilarating, and it was perfectly normal for her to wish that that compelling sexual attraction had been allowed to go to its natural conclusion. After all, she might never again meet a man who attracted her as much as Alessio did. Only, Alessio had put himself off-limits. Alessio,veryunexpectedly, was acting like a bit of a prude, wasn’t he? In the end, whether they consummated their marriage or not didn’t really matter even if they did break up a couple of years down the road, she reasoned unhappily.
Uneasy with the conflicting thoughts whizzing through her head, Rosy went for a shower. Was she trying to argue herself into bed with Alessio again? What else was she doing? So, she was curious about what it would be like to be with himthatway. Nothing wrong with that when that curiosity came solely from her inexperience. A recollection of the physical feelings that had engulfed her in the cave shimmied through her body afresh and she shivered, still shaken by how potent and powerful those responses had been.
Towelling herself dry in the bedroom while she perused her new wardrobe and selected a casual long dress in a pretty fabric, she heard a noise and walked over to the window. She was astonished to realise that Alessio was chopping wood. Even as she watched two workmen she recognised from the palace approached him, clearly offering to do the job for him. Alessio, however, was determined to do the job himself and he reached behind his back to peel off his tee shirt in that distinctively masculine way. Rosy’s mouth ran bone dry.
