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Until now.
He had been so sure he knew what he was getting into. He had met Calista’s sister once before, and she’d seemed so small and slight to him. She had cowered in her chair, half-feral with her hair like a curtain, and he’d thought—very distinctly—that she needed someone to take care of her.
Not himself, mind.
But when his brother had suggested—in that way of his that was not, in fact, a suggestion—that Griffin make good on his promise, and quickly, and with Melody, he had warmed to the idea.
He could prove, at last, that he could care for something so tender, so delicate. That he was better than the role he’d played all these years. That he was as in control of leaving his disreputable past behind as he’d been in creating his reputation in the first place.
What he hadn’t counted on was Melody.
The rain had soaked him through on his walk back across the courtyard. He took his time changing, then made his way to his offices. But when he arrived, it was to discover that his staff had dispersed into the wet afternoon.
“You always dismiss the staff on New Year’s Eve,” his personal aide said, sounding baffled. And looking at him as if he’d come in with a selection of extra heads.
“Things have changed,” Griffin said, attempting to sound dignified.
Or he had, which was far more disconcerting.
His aide gazed back at him. “Would you like me to call them all back, Your Royal Highness?”
This time, there was no doubt about it. Griffin was not smiling. He was grimacing and trying to put a spin on it. “Of course not. You might as well take off yourself.”
And then, for the first time in as long as he could remember, Griffin found himself...at loose ends.
It was humbling, really, to consider what a huge amount of time and energy it had taken to conduct his life and affairs as he had before. Or so he was forced to assume, since the lack of his usually overstuffed and heaving social life seem to echo in him like an abyss this afternoon.
Then again, perhaps he was brooding again. Because all the parties he’d used to attend were still occurring, in their usual forms. He had made stern announcements that he was to be left alone after his marriage, that was all, and he was a royal prince. His announcements held some weight for those who wished to curry his favor,
That didn’t meanhecouldn’t dip into his old life as he pleased. If he pleased.
But even as he thought that, Griffin realized it wasn’t what he wanted. The parties. The people. The endless jostling for his attention that, if it suited him, he pretended to believe was genuine feeling. He stood in his ancient house, the rain beating against the windows and gray straight through, and tried to imagine immersing himself in that world again. The world he’d considered his before Christmas.
Now it seemed like someone else’s memory, fading quickly into insignificance no matter how he tried to draw it back.
Not only because he’d made a promise to his brother to avoid scandal.
It was her. It was Melody.
She’d kissed him, out there in the dark. She’d put her hand over his mouth. She made him ache, she disturbed his sleep, and he did not understand how this woman who could quite literally not see him...saw him best of all.
Griffin was a man with so many acquaintances, so many so-called friends. He had famously never met a stranger.
But he had always felt like one.
Until the least likely person in all the world...recognized him, somehow.
He didn’t understand it.
But Griffin accepted the fact that left with nothing ahead of him tonight but empty hours, the ceaseless rain, and the dawning of a new year whether the world was ready or not, the only thing he was at all interested in doing was finding his wife. And that somehow, this thing that should have been anathema to him—his arranged marriage to a woman he should have had no interest in at all—in no way felt like a downgrade from his usual activities.
He decided he might as well embrace it.
He wouldn’t touch her, Griffin assured himself as he found himself prowling through the halls of this sprawling, empty house. He didn’t need to be led about by his desires after all these years of pretending he was a slave to them. He had no intention of allowing such a thing. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t...talk to her.
The simple truth was that he’d never met another person like Melody.
Because there was no other person like Melody.
