Page 198 of Modern Romance September 2026 Books 5-8

She glanced at him, but his expression was inscrutable.

“These doors lead to the bridge and the crew’s quarters,” he said, gesturing to a door in the direction of the bow, then headed to the wooden banister that marked the spiral staircase to the lower floor. She followed him down the steps and found herself in a dining room, with an elegant table at the center and buffet cabinets built into the sides. The room was lined with large portholes, ringed with sparkling brass with a view just above sea level.

“Supper is served at eight o’clock in this room. In good weather, most other meals are enjoyed in the open air of the aft deck, though the chef will be happy to accommodate other preferences, of course.”

Livia ran her hand over the well-polished wood of the chairs. They looked very much like an upper-class version of the well-used furniture in the groundskeeper’s cabin where she had lived with her parents on the edge of the forest, before she had been old enough to move into the stately residential halls and begin at the Alpine Institute for Girls. Before she had been introduced to the school’s social hierarchy and her place in it. And for a breath of a moment, she could feel what life was like before.

“This is lovely,” she said, pushing away this visceral response. Nostalgia was the last thing she should feel when the man in front of her had just trapped her into marriage.

She followed Gustav through another door into a hallway that ran along one side of the boat. “There are a total of three bedrooms, each with their own en suite bath,” he said, then came to a stop in front of the last door. “This is ours.”

He opened the wooden door, and Livia entered a room filled with the same mahogany and brass, with two walls of windows that looked out on the shining sea. A painting hung on the cabin-side wall showing a wooded island with a single red house on its shore, and in one corner, facing the windows, were a small chair and desk. On the far side was a doorway and a short staircase that led to what looked like a private deck on the bow with chairs, surrounded in glass to shield from the winds. But Livia found herself staring at the enormous built-in bed at the center, with a bedspread the color of the sea and a mountain of white pillows on top of it. The bed where they would sleep together.

She glanced up at Gustav. His eyes traveled down her body, and she flashed back to their kiss at the altar. The aching want. The part of herself she thought she had left behind in a forest eight years ago. The part she could not listen to now.

“You will find your personal items unpacked in this closet,” he said, gesturing to the first of two along the cabin-side wall.

“How thoughtful,” she said, the sharp edge of her voice the hidden blade she had been searching for.

The miraculous timing of this packing and transportation and unpacking, all supposedly during her wedding ceremony, suggested that her belongings had been gathered when she’d left the apartment, before she had agreed to this plan. Clearly she had been entangled in Gustav’s plans for far longer than she had been aware. Livia welcomed the surge of anger this idea brought, and she sat with it, letting it push out murkier feelings. This anger would keep her sister safe.

Gustav studied her, his expression inscrutable. Then he smiled as if he had read every one of her thoughts. “I believe it is time to celebrate.”

He led them out of the bedroom and through the hallway and the dining room. They climbed the regal staircase to the aft deck, lined with a semicircle of cushioned benches. In the time they had toured the boat, the staff had inserted a table on one side of the deck, neatly secured in place much like everything else on the boat, she noted. On the table was an elegant tray of traditional Isrikeslandic foods, including her favorite shrimp-and-dill salad along with fresh breads and a spread of cheeses, meats and vegetable dishes. There was a bowl of wild strawberries and blueberries and another with newly whipped cream. All this food was arranged around two champagne flutes and a bottle chilling in a stone holder in the center.

Livia slid onto the bench and tried to ignore the fact that Gustav was next to her, so close she could touch him. The chef appeared to open the champagne and handed her a bubbly glass, and Gustav raised his own.

“To the future,” he said, and there was both challenge and a hint of satisfaction in his voice.

Livia raised an eyebrow. “After such an auspicious start, I can’t wait to see what happens next.”

“Did you foresee more control over the life you brokered with Edvin?”

His question was moot, of course. She had never planned to actually marry Edvin. But now she found herself imagining what a marriage to this new, hardened version of Gustav meant. In eleven months, she and Adele would retreat to her house in Greece, but in the meantime, what on earth would she do with her unexpected husband? And how would she eventually extricate herself from this man, who was staring at her as if she was his possession? None of this she could have foreseen.

He rested one arm across the back of the cushions, not quite touching her but close enough to feel his heat. He let the champagne glass dangle from his fingers. A cursory glance might’ve suggested that this man was the picture of princely ease, but there was a tension in his gaze. She took him in, both familiar and completely foreign.

“I try not to make predictions about things I have no control over,” she said. “I just plan for the things I can change.”

His eyes narrowed, as if he heard the subtle hint of rebellion in her words. Livia looked away from him, at the shore, where a larger crowd had gathered on the pier. They were watching the boat. Watching her. A little boy holding an ice-cream cone waved tentatively, and she waved back as the boat pulled away from the dock and into the harbor.

Her insides seemed to sigh in relief as they left the everyday life on land behind. From here, the stone walls of the Old City and the castle on its rocky island perch looked more like an idyllic vacation setting and less like the immovable confines of her future. They were just the backdrop, rising above busy docks full of boats, their masts swaying in the warm summer breeze. Isrikesland was not her country, and she had never intended for it to be. But now that she was suddenly its princess, she couldn’t ignore the longing she felt as she looked out at the shoreline.

Growing up on the grounds of an elite private school had made for an uneasy home from the moment she’d realized her family didn’t quite belong, despite the fact that they had lived there the longest. It was this lens that helped her make sense of her parents’ ambitions, however maddening and manipulative her own role in them was. She understood their urge to finally rise up among the elite that had so carelessly trampled on them. But after years of living and eating and sleeping and studying next to those girls in a world where privilege and money was simply the air they breathed, not something one strived for, she knew her parents would never get what they really wanted. They never would feel the ease that her peers felt, the confidence that the world would lay itself out at their feet.

She might have been tempted to defend her decisions to Gustav if it didn’t mean revealing her hand. Not before her sister turned eighteen and was safely on the island, with a chance at a life she could call her own. Not when Gustav still had that hard determination in his gaze that made her wonder what this new version of him was capable of. They were married, yet she could feel this game was far from over.

“How do you see our life, Livia?”

“In the two hours I’ve had to contemplate it?” she asked, as if she were truly considering the question. “I’ll report back once I’ve digested what just happened. You, on the other hand, must have been planning this for a while.”

“Since the moment I saw the photographs of you and Edvin,” he said with a coldness that sent a shiver through her.

“So this is all about revenge and jealousy,” she shot back. “I made the mistake of giving you the benefit of the doubt, thinking I was just collateral in your game. But this is worse. I am your target.”

He flinched, but before he could speak, she added, “I guess it’s all the same to me. After all, this isn’t a real marriage.”

The expression that flickered across his face disappeared too quickly to read it.