A Royal Wedding(118)

They chatted a while longer, and Julienne hoped that Andre was coming to terms with the fact that his cousin’s life hadn’t been completely ruined after all.

“So you’re still happy with the choice you made?” Julienne asked Giselle when she got a chance to talk to her privately. Andre was giving the girls turns at riding around the block on the motorcycle.

“Absolutely. The best thing I ever did.”

“You ought to let Andre know. He thinks you made a big mistake.”

Very quickly she explained about Alphonso, and how Andre was trying to convince her to marry him willingly. Giselle listened to the whole story, asked a few questions about the background and the treaty, then shook her head.

“Julienne, you do understand that the only reason you were paired with Alphonso was that Andre was already betrothed to that Italian princess?” she said, bringing up something Julienne had never heard a hint of before. She wondered if she’d heard what she thought she had.

“Wh … what?”

“You didn’t know that?”

“Italian princess?”

“Yes. And, believe me, he wasn’t ready to get married at the time. This was almost eight years ago. He fought it hard, but his father, King Harold, insisted he had to do it for the good of the country. And I have to admit Andre is all about duty and the country. He’s the essence of the patriot. He finally agreed to do it.”

“No! No one ever told me.” Julienne shook her head, stunned. “But he never did get married, did he? What happened to her?”

“She died. It was very sad.”

And Andre was back, so their conversation ended. But the revelation was shocking to Julienne and she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Was it true? Giselle had intimated that she might have been paired with Andre instead of Alphonso if the timing had been right. The very concept took her breath away.

“We’d better get going,” Andre was saying. “We want to make it to the lake house before dark.”

“Ah, you’re going to the lake house?” Giselle shook her head with a bemused smile. “So many happy summer memories, so many years ago.”

Looking at her, he realized the current practices his family engaged in needed updating. Why not invite Giselle and her girls to the lake house? Why not let a new generation start building those happy memories for themselves? It wasn’t as though she was the enemy, just because she’d reached for something else out of life.

But he couldn’t make policy on his own. He would need the King’s approval. That was something he was going to have to look into once this wedding situation had settled down. Still, he couldn’t help mentioning it and suggesting he was going to talk to his father. Seeing his cousin with her girls, he knew they were exactly what the lake house was meant to host.

“We do need a vacation,” Giselle admitted. “We are working much too hard. We’re going to have to figure out some way to take some time off. But at least we’re here and we’re together and we have our girls with us all the time. I couldn’t ask for a better life.”

Andre looked skeptical, but he didn’t challenge her on it.

As they were preparing to leave, Giselle came up to give Julienne a personal farewell.

“Julienne, you’re so beautiful. Your decision must involve both your heart and your head. The heart shows us the path to joy; the head shows us the way to wisdom. You need both to find happiness.”

“Thank you so much.” The two women shared a warm hug. “And I hope to see you and your family again soon.”

A moment later they were back roaring across the countryside, but they hadn’t gone far before Andre called back a message.

“We’re going to take a short detour,” he told her, pulling to a stop at a crossroad intersection.

“What kind of detour?”

“I want you to see the mining district. The fountain of our country’s wealth.”

“Oh.”

They rode over dirt and rutted roads, breathing dust and bouncing painfully. And finally they reached a lookout point where they could gaze down at the mining activity below. Huge gashes in the earth made way for big trucks and men with handcarts. It was a beehive of activity.

“There you see it,” Andre told her. “The backbone of our economy, the foundation of our royal houses, the reason we’ve gone to war with each other through the centuries. It all comes down to wealth and power, as always.”