Kandy Shepherd - Falling For The Secret Princess

Attending this wedding solo was more duty than pleasure, fond as he was of Eliza, and keen as he was to keep up his contact with Party Queens. But he wasn’t one for wasting time on social chit-chat with strangers he might never see again.

An evening spent in the enchanting Natalie’s company was a different matter altogether. Enjoying the pleasure of her company was now at the forefront of his mind.

Finn was about to tell her so, but there was a sudden burst of chatter from outside on the veranda. ‘The other guests are starting to arrive. We shouldn’t be seen in here.’

Natalia’s eyes widened in alarm. ‘We’ve got time to get out through that connecting door.’

He reached out his hand and pulled her towards him. ‘Let’s go before they realise we’ve been up to no good. Then we’ll march back in with the other guests and take our places at the table.’

‘Innocent of any crime of swapping seats,’ she said.

Not so innocent were his thoughts of where he hoped the evening might lead.

* * *

Natalie couldn’t have borne it if she had been forced to sit on the other side of the room from Finn. She didn’t want to waste a minute of this wedding away from him.

Tristan had probably had a hand in where she had been placed in the seating arrangements and might not be pleased at the switch. Too bad. Princess Natalia might have to sit dutifully where she was directed—not so just plain Natalie. She was going to grab this chance to be with Finn, no matter if she got dressed down for it later.

Tristan took his role of Crown Prince seriously. That meant protecting her. Since the loss of their brother, she and Tristan had looked out for each other. But sometimes she had to remind him that she didn’t take kindly to being bossed around by her brother.

With Finn holding her hand, she made it safely out of the room without detection. Just the casual touch of his hand clasping hers sent shivers of anticipation through her. Never, ever had she felt this kind of thrill.

She was pleased when he didn’t drop the connection after they’d made it to safety. Then, together, they strolled casually back into the ballroom alongside a group of other guests.

Each time she looked up to catch his eye she had to suppress a laugh, and saw that he did too. She felt like a naughty schoolgirl. Although in the private all-girls school she had attended there hadn’t been anyone as handsome as Finn to get into mischief with.

Their surreptitious work had paid off—the swapped name cards were still in place. Finn was hers for the duration of the celebration. She was scarcely able to believe that this gorgeous man was real and seemed to want to be with her as much as she did with him.

‘We did it,’ he said in a low undertone after they’d taken their seats at the table. ‘I caught Eliza glaring at me, but there’s nothing she can do about where we’re sitting from where she is, way up there on the bridal table.’

‘Clever us,’ Natalia said, holding his gaze and revelling in the warmth of his smile.

So this is what it’s like to be really attracted to a man.

Her thoughts were filled with nothing but him. Insta lust. That was what her English-speaking friends called the sudden overwhelming desire to be close to a man. But it wasn’t just a physical attraction. She liked Finn more than she could have imagined she could like someone in such a short space of time. Yes, she ached to touch him, to feel his smooth olive skin under her fingers, and wondered what it would be like to kiss him. But she also wanted to talk with him, listen to him, laugh with him, find out all she could about him.

She had never felt like this about a man before. Certainly never for any of the six men of noble birth she had rejected as potential husbands. Not even for the boy she’d had a crush on as a teenager in London.

It hadn’t just been her being caught out at a nightclub that had seen her recalled home to Montovia. She’d also been seen kissing Danny—a fellow student definitely not on the palace-approved list. It had hurt when she hadn’t heard from him again, and part of her heart had shut down, never to recover. It hadn’t been until much later that she’d discovered he’d been paid off by the palace to disappear from her life.

Her family’s betrayal had added a whole new level of hurt.

Back then, the law that forbade her and her brothers from marrying someone not of noble birth had still been in place. She’d discovered they’d done the same thing to Tristan—paying off the parents of an English girl he’d loved and moving her to another part of the country. Tristan had been understandably bitter at their interference. Especially considering what a sham their parents’ marriage was—the King still had a long-time mistress.

The history of unhappy, loveless marriages in their family had made both her and Tristan deeply cynical about marriage. Fortunately Tristan had found Gemma. For Natalia there had been no one.

On a trip to Africa the previous year, to visit a girls’ school that her charity had funded, she had travelled with an attractive photographer. Sparks had flown between them—not the kind of powerful attraction she’d felt instantly for Finn, but sparks just the same. But he had made it clear he would never get involved with her. Not when he knew his life would come under scrutiny and he would have to play second fiddle to a princess. Natalia had appreciated his honesty but had felt wounded because she hadn’t even been given a chance.

That had been back then. Now Natalia wanted to shut the rest of the world out, so it shrank to just her and Finn. She resented the time spent chatting with the other six guests at their table. But politeness dictated that she distributed her time evenly. All that royal training in graciousness and good manners didn’t go away just because she was in disguise.

The other guests were all pleasant people from Eliza’s pre-Party Queens life. Natalia made it a point to chat with each of them. Finn joined in too, charming and thoughtful in his conversation. The others seemed to assume she and Finn were a couple, and neither of them did anything to make them think any differently.

One of the women was Chinese, and Finn surprised Natalia by exchanging a few words with her in her own language. ‘You sound fluent in Chinese,’ Natalia said when he turned his attention back to her.

‘Thankfully, yes,’ he said. ‘One of my biggest new export markets is mainland China,’ he explained. ‘It’s a great advantage to be able to speak Mandarin.’

‘I can imagine,’ she said.

‘My grandfather spoke to me in Chinese when I was a child and my mother insisted I study the language formally when I was older. I studied Italian to please my grandmother—also useful for the business. And my sister Bella studied both languages too.’

Natalia wanted to tell him she was also multilingual, even chat to him in Italian, but it was too risky in case she tripped up over the details of a made-up background. The less she said about herself, the better. Pretending to be someone else, denying the truth about herself, wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. Not when she really wanted to impress Finn.

‘Sounds like your grandparents were very influential in your life,’ she said.

Hers had been too. Her late paternal grandfather had been King when she was a child and had ruled his family like a tyrant, although he’d been seen as a benevolent ruler of the country. She’d been terrified of him. Thankfully her mother and father, despite their differences and the restrictions of their royal duties, had been united in being loving parents to her and her brothers.

‘My wonderful grandparents are both still around, fortunately,’ Finn said. ‘I have them to thank for my start in the business.’