Princess in the Iron Mask - By Victoria Parker Page 0,56
me? She cast me out. I was dispensable to them.’
‘Impossible,’ he said fiercely. ‘You are far from dispensable, cariña. And you were not cast out. The accident, I think, was the last bullet for her. If I had been in the same position and you had almost died I also would’ve taken you away. Far, far away. Somewhere safe. Where you could get help. St Andrew’s is the best—world renowned.’
‘And would you have left me there, Lucas? Alone? They hardly came. I waited. And waited.’
His stomach wrenched. Little wonder leaving Bailey had killed her.
Would he have left her? The answer hovered on his tongue. For what peace would it bring her? He could never say the words pounding at his temples, fighting to break free.
‘Your parents had a country to run, Claudia—a country in trouble at the time. I remember those years. Your parents had other children. Duty. Responsibilities.’ Even as he said the words they sounded hollow, knowing the price she’d paid. Her parents had sacrificed her happiness for the good of thousands. Something he’d done over and over in his career.
‘Trust you to see it that way,’ she said, bitterness lacing her voice, twisting her head until his hands fell away—hands that now felt bereft. ‘Of course you’d have left me. Duty. Obligation. That’s all you ever talk about. You’re just the same as them.’
He closed his mind to the disgust in her eyes. ‘I see both ways. For a young sick girl to be left in a foreign country. Isolated in such a way.’ His chest felt crushed by the impact. ‘It must’ve been very hard for you.’
He knew all too well the emptiness, the fear she would have felt—could feel it now, brewing in his system like poison. Fear that made you weak. Angry. Resentful. Determined at any cost to close the door to your heart and never reopen it.
‘Dios.’ The truth slammed into him, almost knocking him off his feet. ‘So blind,’ he said, scouring her face, drinking in her amazing beauty and tender vulnerability while the last remaining fragments fell into place. The final piece of intelligence he needed to create Claudia Verbault.
‘What happened when they came to see you, cariña?’
Her gaze fell, drifted to the window as the first strokes of dawn broke through the slit in the drapes. ‘I wouldn’t speak to them. Not one word. When I grew older, got better, had to speak, they started making demands for me to return. I pushed for my independence. I wanted my freedom.’
‘No, Claudia,’ he said, shaking his head slowly. ‘You pushed them away because you were hurting. Your freedom was a ticket to a pain-free zone.’
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip and she finally looked up at him, her amber eyes huge, swimming with unwanted tears. ‘Yes,’ she whispered, broken, still hurting.
‘You believed they would leave you alone. To live your own life.’
She sniffed. ‘Hoped would be more like it.’
‘Ah, Claudia, all the hope in the world cannot change who you are.’ He knew that better than anyone.
No matter the man he’d become, underneath he was still Lucas Allesandro Gallardo—the boy who’d failed to protect and had lost everything. The man who’d fought for king and country and pledged an oath to honour and obey. The same man who’d just surrendered to his selfish desires and taken an innocent. One he’d sworn to protect. A woman he was beginning to doubt knew what she wanted from life, let alone how to find the love she so desperately needed.
She was blossoming before his very eyes—a butterfly emerging from the chrysalis. She deserved happiness and there was a man out there, perfect and strong and made just for her. And now Lucas had ruined her reputation. Lucas who had nothing to offer.
His chest seized, the pain dominant, punishing. She was so damn vulnerable she hadn’t realised the consequences of her actions. That had been his job. And he’d failed. He’d allowed his emotions to reign. Again. He’d failed to protect. Again.
Lucas closed his eyes. What the hell had he done?
CHAPTER TWELVE
PADDING DOWN THE hallway, Claudia cinched her robe tight. Silence, even after years of it, made her cold from the inside out. What had happened she’d no idea, but after a night of heart-shattering euphoria Lucas was gone. Her Lucas, that is.
Lucas Garcia, Head of Security for Arunthia, was back in full military mode today. Distant. Guarded. Re-armed with enough strength to fight a seven-nation army. Even Armande had backed off, when Lucas