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CHAPTER ONE
‘EARTHTOEARTH,ashes to ashes, dust to dust...’
Sara stood at the edge of the royal mausoleum as the priest intoned the committal service. A small group of mourners and official witnesses, as required by Lauritania’s constitution, huddled round on a day that outside was too bright and beautiful to contemplate the three grand coffins of King, Queen and Crown Prince, waiting to be interred.
She paid little attention to the people around her, her focus entirely on the coffin holding the earthly remains of Crown Prince Ferdinand Betencourt. Their country’s flag was draped over the top, bedecked with lilies, their scent cloying in the still morning air. A mere ten days ago she’d been Lady Sara Conrad, his fiancée. A woman one day destined to ascend the throne by his side...
The hysterical sound bubbled from her before she could stifle it. She clutched a handkerchief to her mouth to try and cover up the barely suppressed laugh at how foolish she’d been. She’d never believed ignorance could be bliss, but had learned a powerful lesson.
‘You’ll be by his side, you’ll bear his heirs, but you’ll never have his heart...’
Poisonous words whispered in a ballroom just a few months earlier. Words spoken by some woman, tall and elegant and worldly and everything Sara wasn’t, telling her exactly where her place was in the hierarchy of Ferdinand’s needs.
She frantically dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief, pretending her laugh was a grief-stricken sob. Had anyone noticed the sound of near hysterical disbelief? Because, in truth, she’d grieved the loss of Ferdinand months before his untimely death. The destruction of her immature dream that once they were married he might find the time to love her. She kept the handkerchief to her face, chancing a furtive glance at the assembled group. As she did so, a prickle of awareness tripped along her spine. She turned to her right and caught a man she didn’t know staring at her. A stranger in the tiny band of familiar faces. She hadn’t noticed him before in the throng of black-bedecked mourners and cronies at the funeral.
There was no missing him now.
He stood out. From his imposing height to the perfect cut of his dark suit and his undeniably authoritative presence. All screaming bespoke tailoring and old money. The only thing out of place was the expression of bored indifference on his face, while those around them were in the clutches of sorrow. A face that was square-jawed, cleft-chinned, sculpted perfection. His intense focus made her feel too small for her skin. As if she wanted to split from it, shed the dour black clothing she wore and morph into something brighter, more beautiful.Changed.
How inappropriate, considering she was supposed to be mourning her fiancé today. Yet there was no controlling how her body reacted to this captivating stranger. Much like she couldn’t control the seething anger that twisted down to the pit of her soul—anger at the charade everyone had maintained around her. Perpetuating the vicious lie that she could ever have had a ‘devoted’ relationship with the Crown Prince. Theirs had been no growing love match, as she’d kidded herself to believe, but one of absolute indifference—on his part at least.
And then the stranger cocked his head and raised an eyebrow, the curve of his perfect mouth hitching in a way that said,I see what you did.
That look flashed over her, hot and potent. Petrol thrown onto the smouldering coals of her long-suppressed desires. She went up in flames, the heat roaring through her, incandescent and overwhelming.Heknew she wasn’t grieving like the rest of them. Her heart tangoed to an inexplicable thrilling beat in a way it had never done before.
Sara looked away before her lips quirked in return at his knowing look, which would have been highly improper and a complete disregard for her now worthless royal training.
Sometimes you knew things about yourself, and Sara knew she wouldn’t have made a good Queen. It was no wonder Ferdinand couldn’t love her. Not with all the ‘unseemly’ emotion that threatened to burst from her, which her parents, and the courtiers who’d been tasked with turning her into the perfect future monarch, had required her to ruthlessly contain.
‘You need to try harder, Sara...’Their constant refrain at some misplaced smile or, heaven help her, laugh. All of them had seemed intent on squashing the joy right out of her.
They’d very nearly succeeded.
The same problem didn’t appear to afflict her best friend, the only surviving immediate member of Lauritania’s doomed royal family. Annalise stood across from her, expressionless, a slender, lonely figure. Did she suffer the same drowning sensation as she faced being Queen that Sara had experienced at the mere prospect of taking on the role? The frantic desire to escape the golden handcuffs of the palace?
Sara couldn’t tell. The Lauritanian Queen was required to marry. Now, Annalise was unlikely to find the love match she’d once dreamed of. And yet there she stood, stoic and impassive, as a queen should. Not noticing Sara’s inner turmoil at all.
Sara stared at the floor once more as she twisted the now tortured handkerchief in her hands, not willing to risk her friend seeing the ugly truth. That she’d been overcome by emotion, just not the one expected of her. Sara should be mourning the loss of her future, yet everything seemed lighter because she was...free. Of the expectations that had bound her for as long as she could remember.
She’d been betrothed to the Crown Prince at birth. Sara had known from the moment of first conscious thought that she was destined for one man, fated to be his Queen. Now, for the first time in her twenty-three years, her life was her own. Not tied to a person she’d come to learn was many things, but none of them what he seemed. It had been on the night of that ill-fated ball when she’d finally realised he would never love her. Any naïve hope that he could, quelled by his words when she’d confronted him. How he saw their forthcoming marriage as a duty to his country and nothing more. No promise of fidelity, just an expectation of long, lonely years trapped in a marriage without any feeling. Back then, there’d been no escaping the juggernaut of a royal wedding bearing down on her.
Now? Relief she shouldn’t feel wrapped round her like a blanket. It made her a wicked, wicked person. Thinking of herself when her country’s monarchy had almost been obliterated. Yet when had she ever had that luxury? Being a queen sounded nice when you were a little girl craving tiaras and ball gowns, until the reality of it hit like an avalanche. The relentless press, the jealousy of others, the absence of true friends. Till all you could foresee was a lonely future buried under the cold weight of expectation...
Still, that blistering sense ofawarenesshadn’t lessened. She lifted her gaze once more. The man’s eyes remained fixed on her, his mouth still holding its amused curve. A honeyed heat drizzled over her and she basked in it, the sensation new and illicit. What would it be like to kiss that mouth?
If another future had been hers, she might have been brave, done something about it. But as much as she craved to give in to it, such feelings screameddanger. Because powerful men like Ferdinand and this alluring stranger didn’t really seewomen as individuals. She was more than a mere accessory, despite how she’d been treated when her engagement was formally announced. The sacrificial virgin for the royal dragon. The monarchical behemoth had threatened to swallow her alive the longer she’d stayed in its clutches. And she’d concluded that was all people saw for her future. To be a pretty little bauble on the Crown Prince’s arm. To smile on cue, to bear equally pretty children and quietly fade into the background when not required.
No more.
She shut down her random musings. Turned away from yet another handsome man who made her dream of things that would remain better in fantasy than reality. Instead, she focused on her friend. Annalise walked forward to her family’s coffins, yet as she reached them she looked at Sara. Eyes strained and weary. Mouth pinched and trembling from suppressed sobs. Tears forbidden to fall. Sara wished the world wasn’t watching and she could console her friend rather than being required to stand remote from her Queen. And for a moment the weight of it all threatened to crush her.
Because they were both young women who’d lost the world they’d expected to wake up to each day. Their lives had changed for ever.
Sara bowed her head, saying a silent goodbye to the monarchy she’d thought she’d known but now realised she hadn’t ever really understood. There was no fairy tale to be found here, no happy ending. Still, life was hers for the taking. All she could do was bide her time until her chance came. And now she had all the time in the world.
Lance loathed funerals. It wasn’t the sadness that bothered him. Life was an unending parade of grief and lost chances. No. It was the hypocrisy. The exalted dead bearing little resemblance to the people they’d been in real life. The three individuals whose lives they’d been remembering today were that sort. Beloved of their people, but a mere fantasy. One he had no interest in remembering or promoting.
He’d been invited to be official witness to the interment, as the antiquated Lauritanian constitution required. Returning to the place of his blighted high school education during his father’s long tenure as British Ambassador here. Lance supposed he should have felt privileged. His not so dearly departed dad had cultivated a close friendship with Lauritania’s royal family, thinking it might assist his son’s fortunes as the future Duke of Bedmore. But in truth Lance would never have returned to this conservative little country, even with a direct invitation from the Queen, had his best friend and business partner Rafe De Villiers not requested it.
