“I’m not insatiable. I suppose, if you ask some, I’m wicked. But...insatiable implies a bit more passion than perhaps I feel.”
“You are not passionate?”
He looked down the table. “You’re hungry, yes?”
“Yes, I am hungry. Maybe five times a day. I eat small amounts at a time typically.”
“Sex is another appetite,” he said.
The words were flat, and practically spoken. And she did not think they should make her stomach go tight.
“When I am hungry, I eat. When I want a woman, I seek one out. I do not see the point in denying hungers. But I’m not a glutton.”
“Hmm,” she mulled. “Perhaps I am.”
“Do you think?”
She looked at her plate of food, which was half-demolished. And she looked at what remained. “Yes. I think I might be. I have been denied, and this is all here. And I want it all. Everything I have missed.”
“You think it will be the same with other things?”
“I’m beginning to wonder.” She frowned. “Will you have love affairs?”
“I do not intend that we should be beholden to only each other,” he said. “Be as gluttonous as you wish.”
“So, you would have me take lovers, then?”
“Eat your food, Annick.”
His patience with her was wearing very thin. She could see.
“I suppose I must learn to be less forthright.”
“Probably.”
“It’s just I’m very tired of this.”
“I’m sorry, but a life in the public eye is to an extent signing up for a life of subterfuge. This is something I know a lot about. And you did not answer me.”
“This is not fair. I want to be me, and I want to be free, but that is not... It is not possible, is it?”
“No. For a life of public service means always carrying yourself with a certain amount of diplomacy.”
“Yes. Though...”
“There is no though,” he said. “If you wish to be taken seriously as a leader, if you wish to be seen as something other than a child, caught in the center of all this, if you wish to be a Queen, to escape the tragedy that has happened to you, then you have to behave like any leader would be expected to behave.”
“I have done,” she said, feeling irritated now. And exceptionally hard done by. “I went and kidnapped you, did I not? I behaved as a leader would. I refused to subject my country to further unrest by keeping us at risk. I am strong.”
“Then you will learn to show it in a way that the world recognizes. You asked me to come and help you. I have offered marriage. Now, don’t resist me.”
She let out a particularly delicious French curse and then took another bite of delicious pastry. At least her fury paired well with butter.
“Don’t take it personally.”
“I’m tired,” she said. “That is all.”
“Go to bed.”