Kate Hewitt - A Queen for the Taking?

‘I ran my own IT firm.’

‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Very much so.’

‘Yet you gave it up to return to Maldinia.’

It had been the most agonising decision he’d ever made, and yet it had been no decision at all. ‘I did,’ he answered shortly.

She cocked her head, her lavender gaze sweeping thoughtfully over him. ‘Are you glad you did?’

‘Glad doesn’t come into it,’ he replied. ‘It was simply what I needed to do.’

‘Your duty.’

‘Yes.’

Sandro pried a mussel from its shell and ate the succulent meat, draining the shell of its juices. Liana, he noticed, had not touched her meal; her mouth was drawn into a prim little line. He arched an eyebrow.

‘Are mussels not to your liking?’

‘They’re delicious, I’m sure.’ With dainty precision she pierced a mussel with her fork and attempted, delicately, to wrest it from its shell. Sandro watched, amused, as she wrangled with the mussel and failed. This was a food that required greasy fingers and smacking lips, a wholehearted and messy commitment to the endeavour. He sat back in his chair and waited to see what his bride-to-be would do next.

She took a deep breath, pressed her lips together, and tried again. She stabbed the mussel a bit harder this time, and then pulled her fork back. The utensil came away empty and the mussel flew across her plate, the shell clattering against the porcelain. Sandro’s lips twitched.

Liana glanced up, her eyes narrowing. ‘You’re laughing at me.’

‘You need to hold the mussel with your fingers,’ he explained, leaning forward, his mouth curving into a mocking smile. ‘And that means you might actually get them dirty.’

Her gaze was all cool challenge. ‘Or you could provide a knife.’

‘But this is so much more interesting.’ He took another mussel, holding the shell between his fingers, and prised the meat from inside, then slurped the juice and tossed the empty shell into a bowl provided for that purpose. ‘See?’ He lounged back in his chair, licking his fingers with deliberate relish. He enjoyed discomfiting Liana. He’d enjoy seeing her getting her fingers dirty and her mouth smeared with butter even more, actually living life inside of merely observing it, but he trusted she would find a way to eat her dinner without putting a single hair out of place. That was the kind of woman she was.

Liana didn’t respond, just watched him in that chilly way of hers, as if he was a specimen she was meant to examine. And what conclusions would she draw? He doubted whether she could understand what drove him, just as he found her so impossibly cold and distant. They were simply too far apart in their experience of and desire for life to ever see eye to eye on anything, even a plate of mussels.

‘Do you think you’ll manage any of them?’ he asked, nodding towards her still-full plate, and her mouth firmed.

Without replying she reached down and held one shell with the tips of her fingers, stabbing the meat with her fork. With some effort she managed to wrench the mussel from its shell and put it in her mouth, chewing resolutely. She left the juice.

‘Is that what we call compromise?’ Sandro asked softly and she lifted her chin.

‘I call it necessity.’

‘We’ll have to employ both in our marriage.’

‘As you would in any marriage, I imagine,’ she answered evenly, and he acknowledged the point with a terse nod.

Liana laid down her fork; clearly she wasn’t going to attempt another mussel. ‘What exactly is it you dislike about me, Your Highness?’

‘Sandro. My name is Sandro.’ She didn’t respond and he drew a breath, decided for honesty. ‘You ask what I dislike about you? Very well. The fact that you decided on this marriage without even meeting me—save an unremarkable acquaintance fifteen years ago—tells me everything I need to know about you. And I like none of it.’

‘So you have summed me up and dismissed me, all because of one decision I have made? The same decision you have made?’

‘I admit it sounds hypocritical, but I had no choice. You did.’

‘And did it not occur to you,’ she answered back, her voice still so irritatingly calm, ‘that any woman you approached regarding this marriage, any woman who accepted, would do so out of similar purpose? Your wife can’t win, Sandro, whether it’s me or someone else. You are determined to hate your bride, simply because she agreed to marry you.’

Her logic surprised and discomfited him, because he knew she was right. He was acting shamefully, stupidly, taking out his frustration on a woman who was only doing what he’d expected and even requested. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a moment. ‘I realise I am making this more difficult for both of us, and to no purpose. We must marry.’

‘You could choose someone else,’ she answered quietly. ‘Someone more to your liking.’

He raised an eyebrow, wearily amused. ‘Are you suggesting I do?’

‘No, but...’ She shrugged, spreading her hands. ‘I do not wish to be your life sentence.’

‘And will I be yours?’

‘I have accepted the limitations of this marriage in a way it appears you have not.’

Which made him sound like a hopeless romantic. No, he’d accepted the limitations. He was simply railing against them, which as she’d pointed out was to no purpose. And he’d stop right now.

‘Forgive me, Liana. I have been taking out my frustrations on you, and I will not do so any longer. I wish to marry you and no other. You are, as I mentioned before, so very suitable, and I apologise for seeming to hold it against you.’ This little speech sounded stiltedly formal, but he did mean it. He’d made his choices. He needed to live with them.

‘Apology accepted,’ she answered quietly, but with no real warmth. Could he even blame her? He’d hardly endeared himself to her. He wasn’t sure he could.

He reached for his wine glass. ‘In any case, after the debacle of my brother’s marriage, not to mention my parents’, our country needs the stability of a shock-free monarchy.’

‘Your brother? Prince Leo?’

‘You know him?’

‘I’ve met him on several occasions. He’s married to Alyse Barras now.’

‘The wedding of the century, apparently. The love story of the century....’ He shook his head, knowing how his brother must have hated the pretence. ‘And it was all a lie.’

‘But they are still together?’

Sandro nodded. ‘The irony is, they actually do love each other. But they didn’t fall in love until after their marriage.’

‘So their six-year engagement was—?’

‘A sham. And the public isn’t likely to forgive that very easily.’

‘It hardly matters, since Leo will no longer be king.’

God, she was cold. ‘I suppose not.’

‘I only meant,’ she clarified, as if she could read his thoughts, ‘that the publicity isn’t an issue for them anymore.’

‘But it will be for us,’ he filled in, ‘which is why I have chosen to be honest about the convenience of our marriage. No one will ever think we’re in love.’

‘Instead of a fairy tale,’ she said, ‘we will have a business partnership.’

‘I suppose that is as good a way of looking at it as any other.’ Even if the thought of having a marriage like his parents’—one born of convenience and rooted in little more than tolerance—made everything in him revolt. If a marriage had no love and perhaps not even any sympathy between the two people involved, how could it not sour? Turn into something despicable and hate-filled?

How could he not?

He had no other example.

Taking a deep breath, he pressed a discreet button to summon the wait staff. It was time for the next course. Time to move on. Instead of fighting his fate, like the unhappy, defiant boy he’d once been, he needed to accept it—and that meant deciding just how he could survive a marriage to Lady Liana Aterno.