Kate Hewitt - A Queen for the Taking?

There was a surprising hint of humour in her voice, and his interested snagged on it. ‘These grasping women?’

‘You seem to have met so many, Your— Sandro. I had no idea there were so many cold, ambitious women about, circling like hawks.’

His lips twitched at the image even as a cynical scepticism took its familiar hold. ‘So you do not count yourself among the hawks, Liana?’

‘I do not, but you might. I am interested in being your queen, Sandro. Not for the wealth or the fame, but for the opportunity it avails me.’

‘And what opportunity is that?’

‘To promote the charity I’ve been working for. Hands To Help.’

He stared at her, not bothering to mask his incredulity. Was he really expected to believe such nonsense? ‘I know you said that the charity meant everything to you, but, even so, you are willing to marry a complete stranger in order to give it greater visibility?’

She pursed her lips. ‘Clearly you find that notion incredible.’

‘I do. You are throwing your life away on a good cause.’

‘That’s what marriage to you will be? Throwing my life away?’ She raised her eyebrows, her eyes glinting with violet sparks. ‘You don’t rate yourself highly, then.’

‘I will never love you.’ Even if he had once longed for a loving relationship, he knew he would never find it with this woman. Even if she wanted to be queen for the sake of some charity—a notion that still seemed ridiculous—she still wanted to be queen. Wanted his title, not him. Did the reason why really matter?

‘I’m not interested in love,’ she answered, seeming completely unfazed by his bald statement. ‘And since it appears you aren’t either, I don’t know why our arrangement can’t suit us both. You might not want to marry, Your Highness—’

‘Sandro.’

‘Sandro,’ she amended with a brief nod, ‘but obviously you have to. I have my own reasons for agreeing to this marriage, as you know. Why can we not come to an amicable arrangement instead of festering with resentment over what neither of us can change?’

‘You could change, if you wanted to,’ Sandro pointed out. ‘As much as you might wish to help this charity of yours, you are not bound by duty in quite the same way as I am.’

Her expression shuttered, and he felt instinctively that she was hiding something, some secret sorrow. ‘No,’ she agreed quietly, ‘not in quite the same way.’

She held his gaze for a moment that felt suspended, stretching into something else. All of a sudden, with an intensity that caught him by surprise, he felt his body tighten with both awareness and desire. He wanted to know what the shadows in her eyes hid and he wanted to chase them away. He wanted to see them replaced with the light of desire, the blaze of need.

His gaze swept over her elegant form, her slight yet tempting curves draped in champagne-coloured silk, and desire coiled tighter inside him.

An amicable arrangement, indeed. Why not?

She broke the gaze first, taking a sip of wine, and he forced his mind back to more immediate concerns...such as actually getting to know this woman.

‘So you live in Milan. Your parents have an apartment there?’

‘They do, but I have my own as well.’

‘You enjoy city life?’

She shrugged. ‘It has proved convenient for my work.’

Her charity work, for which she didn’t even get paid. Could she possibly be speaking the truth when she said she was marrying him to promote the charity she supported? It seemed absurd and extreme, yet he had seen the blazing, determined light in her eyes when she spoke of it.

‘What has made you so devoted to that particular charity?’ he asked and everything in her went tense and still.

‘It’s a good cause,’ she answered after a moment, her expression decidedly wary.

‘There are plenty of good causes. What did you say Hands To Help did? Support families with disabled children?’

‘Yes.’

A few moments ago she’d been blazing with confidence as she’d spoken about it, but now every word she spoke was offered reluctantly, every movement repressive. She was hiding something, Sandro thought, but he had no idea what it could be.

‘And did anything in particular draw you to this charity?’ he asked patiently. Getting answers from her now felt akin to drawing blood from a stone.

For a second, no more, she looked conflicted, almost tormented. Her features twisted and her eyes appealed to him with an agony he didn’t understand. Then her expression shuttered once more, like a veil being drawn across her face, and she looked away. ‘Like I said, it’s a good cause.’

And that, Sandro thought bemusedly, was that. Very well. He had plenty of time to discover the secrets his bride-to-be was hiding, should he want to know them. ‘And what about before you moved to Milan? You went to university?’

‘No. I started working with Hands To Help when I was eighteen.’ She shifted restlessly, then pinned a bright smile on her face that Sandro could see straight through.

‘What about you, Sandro?’ she asked, stumbling only slightly over his name. ‘Did you enjoy your university days?’

He thought of those four years at Cambridge, the heady freedom and the bitter disillusionment. Had he enjoyed them? In some respects, yes, but in others he had been too angry and hurt to enjoy anything.

‘They served a purpose,’ he said after a moment, and she cocked her head.

‘Which was?’

‘To educate myself.’

‘You renounced your title upon your graduation, did you not?’

Tension coiled inside him. That much at least was common knowledge, but he still didn’t like talking about it, had no desire for her to dig. They both had secrets, it seemed.

‘I did.’

‘Why?’

Such a bald question. Who had ever asked him that? No one had dared, and yet this slip of a woman with her violet eyes and carefully blank expression did, and without a tremor. ‘It felt necessary at the time.’ He spoke repressively, just as she had, and she accepted it, just as he had. Truce.

Yet stupidly, he felt almost disappointed. She wasn’t interested in him; of course she wasn’t. She’d already said as much. And he didn’t want to talk about it, so why did he care?

He didn’t. He was just being contrary because even as he accepted the necessity of this marriage, everything in him rebelled against it. Rebelled against entering this prison of a palace, with its hateful memories and endless expectations. Rebelled against marrying a woman he would never love, who would never love him. Would their convenient marriage become as bitter and acrimonious as his parents’? He hoped not, but he didn’t know how they would keep themselves from it.

‘We should eat,’ he said, his voice becoming a bit brusque, and he went to pull out her chair, gesturing for her to come forward.

She did, her dress whispering about her legs as she moved, her head held high, her bearing as straight and proud as always. As she sat down, Sandro breathed in the perfumed scent of her, something subtle and floral, perhaps rosewater.

He glanced down at the back of her neck as she sat, the skin so pale with a sprinkling of fine golden hairs. He had the sudden urge to touch that soft bit of skin, to press his lips to it. He imagined how she would react and his mouth curved in a mocking smile. He wondered again if the ice princess was ice all the way through. He would, he decided, find out before too long. Perhaps they could enjoy that aspect of their marriage, if nothing else.

‘What have you been doing in California?’ she asked as one of the palace staff came in with their first course, plates of mussels nestled in their shells and steamed in white wine and butter.