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He lowered his voice conspiratorially. ‘That’s whatI’ddo.’
At the mention of a bed and Sara in the same breath, her father turned a ripe shade of puce. ‘Come, Sara. We’ll take our leave.’
Good. Get her away from the vultures who circled here. Though he doubted her parents were any better.
Lance turned to the glorious woman before him. ‘Lady Sara?’ The way he’d positioned himself meant her back was now to her parents. She removed the handkerchief. Tears of mirth smeared her cheeks, her eyes aglow. A perfect smile lit up her whole face.
Time simply stopped.
Lance took her hand in his. ‘It’s been a pleasure, although I’m sorry it’s in such unfortunate circumstances. I hope we meet again...soon.’ There was no chance of that. He rarely came to Lauritania and had little expectation of being invited to the new Queen’s wedding. Still, he relished the small fantasy curling between them that a second meeting was inevitable.Fated.
She didn’t remove her hand from his. The warmth of her fingers seeped through her glove. They were lingering too long and they both knew it. She curtsied deep and low, holding his gaze. ‘The pleasure has likewise been mine. Thank you for your attentions, Your Grace.’
And, for the first time since inheriting it, he gloried in the sound of his wretched title spilling from someone’s lips.
CHAPTER TWO
ITWASSOMEcruel kind of irony that had Sara sitting at her new Queen’s wedding reception some two months after the death of the Crown Prince. On a wedding day that had been marked as her own. Though the room didn’t much feel like a wedding reception. Yes, there were flowers, grand table decorations and a cake, but this place held all the joy of the wake.
‘That should have been you,’ her mother whispered. True enough. Still, it was a heartless comment if her parents accepted the fantasy that she could be upset by today. That it wasn’t her sitting at the bridal table with Ferdinand as her husband. But Sara had come to realise over the past weeks that they really didn’t consider her thoughts much at all.
‘Well, Mother, it’s not.’
‘They could at least have made fresh choices. This was all meant to be yours,’ her mother hissed.
No. This had never been for her, she knew it now. She’d fooled herself for years, despite the niggling doubts that perhaps this wasn’t what she wanted for herself. The flowers in the centrepiece of the tables were exquisite hothouse orchids, which hadn’t been her choice, but the most expensive and fitting for a royal wedding, or so the planner had dictated. The cake was a ten-tier monolith of baked engineering and fondant icing. She recognised it all because none of what had been ordered for her and Ferdinand’s intended nuptials had been wasted, all recycled for Annalise’s wedding.
Relief ran over her like a warm shower, though Sara wasn’t sure it boded well for her best friend. The monarch who’d married a commoner, surprising everyone except Sara, because Annalise had mastered the art of quiet rebellion.
Unlike herself. She was a master of nothing, really. She didn’t rebel at all. It was an alien concept. She was always behaving, doing what she’d been instructed to do. Even as a teen her only act approaching defiance was to grab a pair of scissors and hack her hair short in a fit of pique, a ridiculous thing to do because it had made her blonde curls tighten so she looked something akin to a dandelion. Not a great success, and in the end only made her feel foolish. In fact, she wondered what rebellion truly felt like. Was it a quiet thrill or something loud that got the blood coursing? Was it terrifying or exhilarating?
She glanced over at the top table. To the best man. The man whose white handkerchief embroidered with his initials was kept in the drawer beside her bed. A shiver ran through her. She’d never expected to see him again, whilst hoping against hope that she would. But he was sitting there in morning dress with a stern, aristocratic demeanour, the perfect tailoring of a silver waistcoat gripping his powerful chest, that torso accentuated by the best Italian superfine wool and Savile Row tailoring money could buy. He stared out at the crowd with a supercilious air, as if they should bow down before him. As if he was above them all. Her stomach swooped and her heart took off on a race of its own, throbbing as if it were fighting to escape from behind the ribs caging it in.
She might not be sure what rebellion felt like, but she knew what its name was.
Lance Astill.
Goosebumps raced over her skin at the memory of his murmured words, the caress of warm breath at her ear.
You’ve been a very bad girl.
Her toes curled whenever she thought about that moment, and it crept into her consciousnessoften.She’d fooled everyone else at the funeral. They all thought she’d been overcome by emotion at the loss of Ferdinand. A man who had never been hers to begin with.
Not Lance.
Because he understood. He’d owned her the moment he’d whispered those words in her ear. He was rebellion all wrapped in a tall, muscular package with broad shoulders and narrow hips.
Ferdinand might have been born to be King, and he’d been an attractive man in his own way—God rest his soul. But Lance? She twisted the napkin in her lap.
He ruled the room absolutely, with no effort.
She’d watched people attempting to talk with him. Men, the young heirs to their father’s titles. His contemporaries. He’d cut them all with a glance till they shrank away and he stood alone. The only one he spoke to was the new King, Rafe De Villiers. She’d heard her parents hissing that they were best friends. That together they’d bring the country into disrepute. They’d been wanton boys and worse adults. They had to be stopped.
All of that only made himmoreinteresting. It had been bad enough googling him. But after she’d left the wake with her parents, Sara couldn’t help herself. One tiny peek was all she’d allow herself. One illicit glimpse at that powerful body with defined muscles carved by the hand of a generous creator, as Lance stood slick and wet from a swim on the deck of some yacht in the Riviera. Or the action shot of him on horseback, powerful thighs gripping a polo pony as he was snapped mid-swing. The tremble in her fingers as she scrolled down the screen at the more salacious pictures. The scandalous headlines. The exquisite women.
It shouldn’t have thrilled her. It shouldn’t.
But it did.
