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What would you do even if you did know who she was?
Oh, if he knew, he’d track her down. Find her and get her to agree to another night, that was indisputable. He’d enjoy another night with her, he’d enjoy it very much.
Eventually, after another fifteen minutes of staring pointlessly into the distance, he decided that flogging his brain about the puzzle of his PA wasn’t a good use of his time or energy, so he got out his phone and made the calls he had to make.
He couldn’t read, so emails or texts were out, he had to talk to people instead, but luckily that was one of his strengths and so he was able to use the time profitably. It took time to manoeuvre a change of king.
What he was planning wasn’t something he’d ever told anyone explicitly, but it was something that had to be done nonetheless.
He couldn’t be the king his father had wanted him to be, not after the accident, and so he’d decided, years ago, that the only decent thing to do was to hand the crown to someone who could.
That someone was his cousin, Philippe. He’d had to wait until Philippe was of age, but he’d turned twenty-one a month ago and so now it was time to begin the preparations he’d laid in place years earlier. He hadn’t told Philippe himself yet, but he needed to. The boy was at Oxford, reading law, and no doubt he’d need some time to adjust, so Augustine needed to tell him and soon.
Philippe was doing well, getting good marks, and he’d make a fine king. A better king than Augustine, that was for certain.
Philippe at least could read his own emails.
Philippe at least could read, full stop.
Augustine spent a couple of hours dealing with calls and then tried to rest on one of the couches in the lounge area. He knew he’d suffer for it later if he didn’t. But his rest was disturbed and full of dreams that made him ache with a longing he couldn’t articulate, and he woke a few hours after that, feeling as if he hadn’t rested at all.
It didn’t matter. They’d be arriving in Isavere very soon and since it looked as if Freddie hadn’t emerged yet, he was going to need to go in and wake her.
Getting someone else to wake her didn’t occur to him. He simply went to the door of the bedroom and opened it, stepping inside.
She was curled up in the very centre of the bed, still in her clothes, and for some reason he found himself shocked by how that stretchy black skirt she wore had hiked up to midthigh, and that her white shirt had become untucked. She was normally so put together that the untidiness of her clothes was even more arresting than it would have been with someone else.
It was intimate somehow, watching someone sleep. They were vulnerable and unguarded in a way they never were while awake. Not that he was in the habit of watching a woman sleep, yet in this moment he was oddly fascinated.
She was less his perfect PA now, the mere extension of his will that he noticed no more than he’d notice a shoe he put on, and more...a woman.
He came around the side of the bed, staring down at her, unable to help himself. Transfixed by where her shirt had come untucked, revealing the smooth olive skin of her hip and the curve of her stomach, already getting round with the new life growing inside her.
A couple of buttons on the shirt had also come undone, giving him a glimpse of the shadowed valley between her breasts.
Her dark hair, usually so smooth, was slipping out of her neat bun and unfurling across the pillows. He’d had no idea it was so long, or so glossy. Or so...silky-looking.
His gaze dropped to her face. It was peaceful and still in sleep, her lashes long and dark and silky as her hair, resting on her cheeks.
An interesting face, he realised with a certain deep surprise. Not pretty maybe, but...arresting. Straight, dark brows. A wonderfully proud nose. A mouth that was the perfect rosebud. A mouth made for—
No. No, that was not where his thoughts should be heading. Not about her. She worked for him. She was totally off-limits.
He sat down carefully on the side of the bed, putting a leash on his recalcitrant thoughts. All he was going to do was wake her. That’s all. Staring down at her, studying her like this was a gross invasion of her privacy, and he should stop.
Yet...
Her body was warm and he could smell the sweet scent of her skin.
She made a little sound as the mattress dipped under him, like a sigh, and for some reason that sound felt as if it had nailed him to the floor.
He knew it. He’d heard it before.
He stared at her, his heartbeat accelerating, and obeying without question an instinct that gripped him by the throat and wouldn’t let go, he leaned down so his mouth was almost brushing the exposed skin of her neck, just below her ear. He didn’t kiss her, he inhaled instead, and that scent hit him like a gut punch.
Sweet. Feminine. Musky.
He knew that scent. Heknewit.
