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“Did you know that her father has said if she isn’t engaged to me by Christmas, he’ll take her home before the new year?” he asked.
Brigitta’s eyes went wide, and she grabbed Petrus’s arm. “She’s intimated as much to me before, as well as lamenting over how hopeless the situation feels to her, but she hasn’t yet come out and said it in so many words.”
Petrus let out a heavy breath. “I don’t know what to do, Brig. I…I cannot marry Lady Jenny.”
“Because you are practically engaged to Miss Sloane already,” Brigitta said.
Petrus’s brow shot up. “How do you know that?”
Brigitta laughed and shook her head. “Men are so very thick when it comes to recognizing matters of the heart, especially when those things are right in front of them.”
Petrus felt his face heat. “Have Charlotte and I been that obvious?”
“Yes, you have,” Brigitta said, her teasing look returned.
“Which must be why Lady Jenny is so distressed,” Petrus said, his shoulders dropping. “She knows her chances of having me are almost nil now.” He glanced directly at his sister. “But what am I to do? It pains me to think I am ruining a woman’s life by not loving her.” Especially when, not half an hour before, he had been worried about ruining Charlotte by loving her too much.
“Uncle Milas wants you to marry Lady Jenny,” Brigitta said, expressing the other part of the problem. “He wants the diplomatic alliance with Sweden. And Lord Lindstrom not only has influence with King Oscar of Sweden, he has made himself a powerful industrial fortune. Uncle Milas is desperate for the connection.”
Petrus sighed and sank to lean against the wall, scrubbing his hands through his hair.
“What am I to do, Brig?” he appealed to his sister. “I love Charlotte more than anything, but I have a duty to our family. And Lady Jenny is a good and kind woman.”
“That is no reason to marry her when you love someone else,” Brigitta said. “Even if our uncle wants it.”
“But is my happiness worth losing an important diplomatic connection for the family and the kingdom?” Petrus asked, genuinely not knowing the answer. “I have a duty to my family, my king, and my kingdom. Is love more powerful than that?”
“I want to say yes,” Brigitta said, slouching against the wall opposite Petrus.
Petrus raised one eyebrow. “You want to, but you cannot?”
Brigitta chewed her lip and glanced across at him. “You still have two days before Christmas. That’s two days to figure out a way to make Uncle Milas happy, Lady Jenny’s father happy, and yourself happy.”
“If it were my happiness alone at stake, I would propose to Charlotte directly,” Petrus said.
“And that is the trouble with being a royal,” Brigitta sighed. “As plain and logical as things may seem to the rest of the world, those same rules do not apply to us. We are not always at liberty to give our hearts away where we choose.”
The thought made Petrus wince, partially because he hated it when Brigitta sounded like Oskar. He also stared hard at his sister and asked, “If Uncle Milas decided on a man you should marry, would you agree to the match, regardless of your feelings about the groom?”
Brigitta winced. “I suppose I would have to,” she said. “Though it would greatly depend on who that groom of choice was.”
Petrus nodded, then pushed away from the wall. He moved to rest a hand on Brigitta’s arm and to kiss her forehead.
“All we can do at this point is wait and see what happens,” he said. “While also keeping an eye out for any sort of magical solution that might present itself.”
“I hope for your sake a solution does appear,” Brigitta said. “I like Miss Sloane, and I can see how happy she makes you.”
“She makes me blissfully happy,” Petrus agreed with a smile.
But he knew full well exactly what they’d just been talking about. Just because a course of action might make a royal happy, that didn’t mean they were at liberty to pursue it.
ChapterSeven
Charlotte had never been one to rest on the laurels of her own happiness when she knew that others were still in distress. As joyful as she felt after her illicit evening with Petrus, and as confident as she was that Petrus would formally propose to her before her visit to Aegiria was over, she knew she could never be truly happy while the threat of being taken away from Aegiria still hung over Lady Jenny.
“It isn’t that I wish for Petrus to marry the poor woman to save her,” she confided in Priya and the other Rathborne-Paxton brides as the five of them sat around a table in the center of the ballroom, hastily crafting more bows that would adorn the palace for the Christmas Eve ball on the morrow. “Petrus and I have an understanding, and I do not believe he would ever go back on that.”
Nanette eyed Charlotte warily as she fastened a bow together with thin wire on the other side of the table. “Do you truly think that?” she asked. “Not to say that he doesn’t love you and wish to marry you,” she rushed on. “But I’ve performed in enough dramas where one or the other lover was forced to marry someone else for the sake of family duty.”
