party mode. “Thanks again for hosting this on your land. I didn’t think the RPS guards would be able to fully relax on any official royal grounds.”
“No, that’s a smart move on your part. This way we’re equals. For the day, anyway.” Theo picked up his rifle and nodded. “Equals until I kick your ass in the four-hundred-meter run.”
Christian very much liked his new friend. He also felt very sorry for him, and the delusion that he could beat a prince. “You can try, Holst. I’ve been running with Kelsey lately. She’s upped my game. The girl’s got feet like Mercury.”
“Bah. He’s nothing more than a myth. Whereas I have legs like Usain Bolt. So eat my dust, Villani!”
Once he was gone, Christian didn’t join the others in the shooting range area. He stayed by the stables, watching.
Thinking.
Brooding.
Much as he’d done nonstop for the past twenty-four hours, ever since being blindsided by the prime minister.
“Why does it look like the legendary Party Prince is checked out?” Elias sidled up next to him. He jammed his fists into the pockets of his Royal Navy fleece.
Christian tapped his temple. “I’m just going over my mental strategy to wipe the floor with you in the fencing round.”
“No. You’re just distracted. Probably not so as anyone else has noticed. But something’s wrong. What is it?”
Damn. He hadn’t wanted Elias to notice. Should’ve known better. The man was trained to notice and act on the slightest change in behavior. “This can wait. I don’t want to bring down your party.”
“So tell me,” Eli insisted. “Get it off your chest, and then we can both party like we’re still twenty-nine.”
“Ha,” he said, deadpan. But maybe his friend had a point. It’d just be…tricky to discuss without compromising Mallory’s privacy any more than it already had been. He trusted Elias implicitly, with his life, but he wouldn’t reveal Mallory’s secret. “Okay, something is wrong.”
“No kidding. That’s even less of a surprise than it’ll be when I win today.”
Christian turned to stare out over the rolling, pine tree-covered hills. “I know a secret that I shouldn’t.”
“That one’s easy. Keep it to yourself,” Elias immediately responded. “And act like you never heard it in the first place.”
If only. “I can’t. I wish I could. It makes an already complicated situation far worse.”
Elias snorted. “Well, to quote my darling Kelsey, duh. That’s probably why it was a secret.”
“Eli, I’m serious. This is big. And I don’t know what to do.”
Stomping his feet against the damp cold, Eli said, “Last count, there were twenty courtiers both ready and willing to advise you. Dump it on them.”
“I don’t trust them.” Especially not with this. “I trust you. Still can’t tell you, though.”
Eli eyed him. “This is that big? That serious?”
“Yes.”
It was as big as the decision to be made about asking his father to abdicate. A king needed a queen. Together, they had to ensure the House of Villani continued on, unbroken, as it had for almost three hundred and seventy-five years.
The prime minister was right—that was his job. As king. One that he’d been simultaneously acknowledging and ignoring while he spent time with Mallory.
But as a man? How could he do his job without the love and support of a woman he trusted? Which had never been an issue, since he’d never been in love. You don’t know what you don’t know. Now that he’d experienced all of that with Mallory, he didn’t know how to move forward without it.
How could he leave Mallory for something that wasn’t her fault? For something, in fact, that one of his own subjects had forced upon her?
Yet how could he knowingly stay with a woman who couldn’t help him fulfill one of his most sacred duties as king?
“Don’t logic it out. Ignore your brain.” Elias patted him on the belly. “Go with your heart and your gut. They’ll never steer you wrong.”
Without having received any of the details of his dilemma, Elias’s advice was actually sound. It at least gave him a direction to focus his thoughts.
“Okay. Thanks.” Christian shook his head to clear it. “Sorry about all this. I promise my head is back in the birthday game. We should go get back to all the fun.”
Elias held up his hand to stop him. “First…if I have a secret, do you want to hear it?”
Snickering, Christian said, “Hell, it’s your birthday, Eli. Tell me anything—good, bad, or ugly. That’s always been our way.”
Oddly enough, he assumed a stance of parade rest: Elias folded