Page 58 of Her Royal Houseguest

‘It is my place!’ he said with force. ‘If I have committed the sin, then I must bear the consequences. Such is the law of the Golden Throne.’ It was not, in fact, the law of the Siamese court to bear any consequences for anything. However, this was the fastest way to end the argument, so he said it. And, as expected, she didn’t directly contradict him.

‘I will speak with my father. You can’t—’

‘I can.’

She pursed her lips. ‘I will stand before him—’

‘Am I to hide in your skirts like a child?’

‘That’s not what I meant!’

He touched her arm. Indeed, he had been looking for an excuse to touch her since he’d first seen her tousled from her bed. ‘I know you mean to soften your father’s anger but you must see that this cannot continue. In Siam, I had this problem many times. I was given tasks without the means to do them.’

‘You were? But why?’

‘Many reasons. Sometimes it was out of ignorance. If no one knew how to do a thing, I was given the task.’

She frowned. ‘Only sometimes?’

‘I was a prince without a mother’s protection. Many people enjoyed seeing me fail. Until I learned to do things only when I had the authority to do as I saw fit.’

She shook her head. ‘There’s so much I want to ask. What happened to your mother? Why were people mean to you?’ She pressed her hands to her cheeks. ‘Your life has been so different than anything I could ever imagine.’

He smiled. ‘I would like to explain it all to you. And I would like to learn about you. But to answer your question, my mother grew sick when she was pregnant with my younger sister. She lived long enough to give birth. Soon after, the child also grew ill. She did not live long.’

‘Oh,’ she whispered. Then—finally—she touched him. She brushed her hand down his forearm. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘It was a loss,’ he said flatly. ‘But I am a prince of Siam. I had many advantages.’

‘But if your mother was gone, who raised you?’

He thought about the complicated relationships within his father’s court. The alliances and jealousy that suffused everything. Anna would never understand. ‘I was raised by everyone and no one all at once. If something went wrong, it was my fault unless I could prove otherwise.’

‘No one protected you. Did no one love you?’

How like a woman to ask such a thing. Or perhaps she was just perceptive, cutting straight to the heart of a matter that had taken him years to unravel.

‘Vaji does. His mother is…difficult. We learned to rely on each other.’ He flashed her a grin. ‘After our initial disagreements, that is. I believe we despised one another at first.’

‘What happened?’

He smiled, then extended his arm in the English fashion. ‘I will tell you, if you walk with me.’

‘I’m hardly dressed for that.’ She pulled another lock of hair away from her face, then muttered a curse before quickly retrying the ribbon. It wouldn’t last long. She was too animated a person for any restraint to hold her for long.

‘You look lovely.’ He glanced back at the house. ‘And the chanting is still going on. Let us walk a bit so we may talk.’

She was undecided, clearly weighing the proprieties. He leaned forwards.

‘Unless you are in pain. You experienced something new yesterday. As did I.’

‘You did?’ she gasped. ‘But I thought—’

‘It was different with you. I feel different from yesterday.’ That was the simplest way for him to express things that he had barely begun to process.

‘I do, too,’ she said.

‘Then let us walk,’ he repeated, again offering her his arm by raising his elbow to her eye level.