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‘I require a husband.’
‘You don’twanta husband.’ She didn’t miss the acid in his tone. When he’d tried to see her after the argument with her family, she’d refused to give him an audience, even though her father had demanded it. ‘Change the Constitution.’
She clenched her hands into fists, her nails cutting into her palms. ‘That’s been tried and failed.’
‘In 1863 and 1974. Times change.’
Not in Lauritania. Her country was conservative to the core. Even worse, her people didn’t trust her, as the headlines in those infernal newspapers attested. The child conceived as an insurance policy in case the worst happened, with no expectation that it ever would. She was the country’s consolation prize. Second best. Unwanted. As Rafe knew too well. She’d poured out those childish hurts when she’d trusted him. How cruel of him to presume she now had a choice. ‘You know why you’ve been asked here. Stop pretending otherwise.’
‘I think you need to spell it out for me. I’d never presume to know a lady’s mind,ma’am.’
The formality of him. Lise whipped around, turning her back on the view. She used to love the way he appeared to savour her name on his lips.Lise.Like water to a parched man. All lies. She got right to it. There was no prettying the truth.
‘I’m asking you to be my husband.’ The words almost choked her. Lise glimpsed the mercenary gleam in his eyes. A gleam she’d mistaken for desire, once. Her own foolish mistake.
Rafe steepled his fingers. ‘You want me?’ His voice was a low murmur, gentle as a caress. Once she’d been desperate to believe anything his alluring timbre promised. That being forced to give up the sport she loved, the freedom she sought, didn’t mean her existence was meaningless. But deep in her heart, it had been more. Her own secret craving that, in a duplicitous world surrounded by simpering imitations, this glorious man might loveher.
But conceding the point was a fatal weakness, even though a whisper of heat flashed over her cheeks. She straightened her spine with all the hauteur she could muster. Later, she’d allow herself to crumble but not today and never in front of him.
‘I’m carrying out my father’s last wish.’
Rafe’s lip curled into the beginnings of what looked like a sneer. ‘A fitting tribute for a great man.’
Another shiver skittered down her spine. Or not so great if the rumours she was now hearing were to be believed. She was coming to suspect her family were only human, even though they had pretended otherwise. Sadly, she’d always been held to a higher standard by them.
‘I’m pleased you see it my way,’ she said. This was payment for what she’d done. And she would pay, for the rest of her life. But she had a few tricks up her coal-black sleeve. She might do a deal with the devil, but she wasn’t in the business of selling her soul completely. She waited for Rafe to settle back into his seat, to acquire the look of smug self-satisfaction that had become all too familiar in her life, before she pounced.
‘Have you heard of amariage blanc, Mr De Villiers?’
Rafe swallowed down the gall rising in this throat. He’d flown through the night, cutting short a business trip to answer her summons. Sure of what it meant, what he had been waiting for. Now this.Mariage blanc.A white marriage. A marriage unconsummated.
‘Yes, I’ve heard of it,’ he said, keeping his voice deliberately bland.
‘Excellent, that’s settled.’ Lise sat down once more, her hands twisting restlessly on the desktop, looking decidedlyunsettled.
‘What’s settled?’ He leaned back in his seat again, trying not to hiss the words through gritted teeth. Indolence was a look he’d perfected over the years. If he appeared not to care, no one could touch him. The aristocracy here had tried, since school, to destroy the upstart farm boy he’d been marked as. No matter that his family had a wealth of their own, although born of hard, physical work rather than lofty inheritance. When his brother, Carl, had died, they’d almost succeeded in crushing him. But he was made of stronger stuff than any of them realised.
Lise frowned. ‘Our marriage, of course.’
He sat back, nibbled on some innocuous sweet thing from the plate before him. Took another sip of his now cooling coffee. He never wished to be seen as the pretender, a choice compelled rather than freely made. That wouldneversatisfy him. He’d spelled it out to her father, emphatically. The only way he’d marry Lise was if she said yes, without compulsion.
He gave what he hoped was his most neutral look, when all he wanted to do was bare his teeth and snarl. ‘What does a so-calledwhite marriagehave to do with that?’
Her plush lips thinned into a pale, tight line. ‘It’s what I’m offering.’
Madness. This was not how things were supposed to be.
He’d asked her father for six months to win her. Never doubting it would take him fewer to secure the hand and heart of this woman who he’d wanted to come to him willingly. So she’d believe he’d been her choice alone. He’d been disdained enough for his working-class background. He would not have anyone say the only way Lauritania’s Princess would marry him was if she was forced to do so. No. He’d wanted to show them all. Their Princess hadchosenthe commoner above the aristocracy.
Yet what had happened? He’d been called away on a brief business trip a couple of months into the job and her father had pounced. Trying to force Lise into the marriage. A woman who required finesse and tender care. Instead of a happy homecoming, he’d returned to a debacle. Lise, refusing to see him at the risk of calling the palace guards when he tried. The King enraged that one of his subjects would dare disobey a direct command—ignore the fact she was supposed to be his precious daughter.
And him? Everything he’d planned, his careful manoeuvres foryears, in ashes.
He’d wanted to tear the smug portrait of her father from the wall, chop it to matchsticks and hurl it into the closest fire. Then, in a fit of pique on that fateful day which led them here, the King allowed the Queen and Crown Prince to travel with him in one vehicle. Probably to plan how to force Lise to accede to their command. Not to speak of palace security, capitulating to the act of foolishness. All of them grown fat and lazy on complacency. If the mundanity of a rock fall and car accident hadn’t killed her family, Rafe feared he’d have been tempted himself.
How many hours had he sat here negotiating? Asking the King to trust that he knew what he was doing. But like all the rest of them, that man could never believe a mere commoner might know better how to manage the Princess than he did. As they’d never believed Lise could ever love him. And now he was picking up the pieces.
Lise sat dwarfed behind a hideous monstrosity of a desk. Skin pale as the permanently snow-capped peaks around them. Dressed in severe black, the dark lace mantilla over her head an ill-fitting crown of grief. She should be in bright, dancing colours. Decked in all the shimmering jewels he could provide. He’d planned from the moment he’d set eyes on her. A triumph to show the blighted aristocracy here what he could achieve. Being loved by royalty. Taking one of theirs as his own. The man they’d underestimated. Dismissed. Her yes to the proposal was meant to be emphatic. Carefully orchestrated, of course, but unequivocal and full of joy on her part. The King in his infinite arrogance had destroyed it all.
