“Jean-Charles,” Eric replied. “Thanks for fitting us in.”
Jean-Charles was a thin, suave-looking man with a black moustache and goatee. In a way, he reminded me of Kostin – polite and professional. But I wasn’t surprised by that since that was Jean-Charles’ job after all and we were – technically – higher on the social hierarchy than him. Presumably.
“Not a problem, my lord.” He gestured around the mostly empty room with a wry tilt to his lips. “As you can see, it was a challenge,” he said and Eric laughed. “It is a pleasure to have you and Lady Tatiana here. Come. I’ll show you to your table.”
Eric indicated I go ahead of him so I followed Jean-Charles to a booth at the side of the room. Jean-Charles left us with a couple of menus, rattled off the specials in the way that seasoned waiters had, asked us if we wanted drinks to start – to which I left the choice in Eric’s very capable hands and he ordered us both beer – then left us to decide what we wanted.
“There are no prices on this menu,” I said.
“Prices?” Eric asked me, looking up.
I nodded and turned the menu to him in case his might have. “No prices.”
“Do menus usually have prices on them where you come from?” He asked it in such a way that it wasn’t meant condescendingly but he seemed surprised.
“Um. Yes,” I chuckled. “Have you never been to like just a normal burger place or something? Just a place that does have prices?”
Eric looked thoughtful. “Only take away places.”
I snorted and he looked at me confused. “Firstly, that’s my usual sort of fare,” I explained. “And secondly, I was just trying to picture Dmitri having ever been to the fish and chip shop or something.”
Eric grinned. “I don’t imagine he’s had much between places like this,” he waved his hand around to indicate the place, “and whatever the military give him.”
I nodded in agreement. “No. I suppose not.” Feeling really weird about talking about Dmitri with Eric, I held up my menu again and changed the subject back. “So everything is outrageously expensive then?”
Eric huffed a laugh. “Depends on your definition of outrageously expensive.”
I shook my head as I tried to school my smile. “That’s a yes then.”
We talked over the items on the menu – the burger did look amazing and they had the equivalent of schnitzels which was always excellent, and who didn’t like steak? He told me what he’d had and liked. The way he talked, he’d been there a lot. Which yes he’d already said, but it also sounded like he was there on a lot of…dates basically. I was slightly distracted by wondering exactly what Dad’s reasoning behind introducing me to Eric had been. What was it about Lord Baker that had Dad thinking ‘yep, he and Anya will hit it off spectacularly’?
Jean-Charles came back with our drinks and we ordered and then chatted some more while we waited. Eric got the steak with the promise I could try the sauce, and I went with the burger.
“So you don’t mind being basically set up with some guy you’ve never met before?” Eric asked me.
“I mean it’s not like I came to Gallyr thinking, ‘Gosh, I really need to find a husband. Stat’. And the whole set-up thing is a bit weird. But someone had to, didn’t they?”
“Oh!” Eric laughed.
“What?”
“No. I get it. I’m the distraction.”
I smiled. “The distraction?”
He nodded. “We’ve been set up so talk shifts away from you and one of the princes.”
“I think a little. Yeah…” I grimaced with the admission, but he just smiled.
“No. I get it. It makes sense.”
“It does?”
He nodded again. “We’re both the…dark horses of our peers, shall we say. The media will love that we’re being set up to look like an item.”
“Does that make it weird?”
“Do you want it to make it weird?”
I shook my head. “No. No, if there was anyone I was going to have to spend time with to make it look like I wasn’t dating one of the princes, I’m glad it’s you.”
He grinned and gave me a single nod. “Me too, Tatiana. Me too.”
Chapter Five
Well it certainly hadn’t taken long for the media to get wind of my second date with Lord Eric Baker.
Nothing about the fact I was being seen out and about with another man made them take me out of the running for Crown Princess Watch. But excitement was ramping considering Dmitri had something like fifteen days and so far no sign of anyone to propose to. All the while Gunter and Annelise tried to attach all us girls to as many potentials as possible in the hopes of trying to work out who was the most likely.
When you talked to Dad, it was obvious that Amanda Schuller was still the most likely, no matter how much he was on board with disliking her now. I think it was in part due to the fact that he couldn’t see any world in which either Lia or I were with the crown prince. And I think a lot of it came back to what Faith and Lina had said about when you’re introduced to someone and it’s just sort of understood you’re meeting to see if you’re going to end up together.
Which meant, in all the eyes that mattered, Amanda was actually the only contender for the crown prince’s great-grandmother’s ring.
And I didn’t mind talking about it or hearing more about it. I just never thought that I’d find myself talking to his mother about it.
“I suppose he could do worse,” Hilde sighed, looking at me like she not only dared me to disagree but hoped I would.
I coughed to hide a laugh. “She is…a strong woman.”
“She certainly did not pick up the nuances of language and tone as quickly as you have.”
“In what way?”
Hilde looked over the room at the family who was there. We were in the drawing room for after dinner drinks. Kostin and Rex were talking to Lia over by the fire and Dad and Dmitri were engrossed in what was probably a more intense conversation than Hilde would approve of for the situation. And Hilde and I were sitting on one of the sofas.
“Miss Schuller is incredibly adept in the art of insulting you without actually saying anything wrong. I have no doubt you are fully aware of this,” she said and we shared a look that I knew was an exchange of agreement. “However she did not pick it up as quickly as you. And if there is one thing high society in Gallyr is proficient in, it is aristocratic passive-aggressive attacks.”
“Well it’s all about appearances, isn’t it?” I said.
Hilde nodded to me with a knowing smile. “It is. We have to seem to be kind and polite but at the same time we do not maintain our status without ensuring we remain superior to those we profess to call friends.”
“So not much has changed since you were my age?”
Hilde gave one of those demure little laughs, but her eyes shone with humour. “No, my dear. Although I was married with Mitya by your age, so it was a little bit different. It was less acceptable for them to try to intimidate the crown princess, particularly one who had successfully delivered a healthy heir.”
I breathed out and sank back into the sofa. “Oh so that’s all I need to get them off my back?” I teased and thankfully Hilde realised it was a joke.
“You would be surprised how well that helps,” she said ruefully.
“Is it rude of me to ask if it was a shot gun wedding?”
“No, dear. Not you.” She smiled at me more warmly. “Reginald and I just knew. He, like Mitya, was nearing his birthday and the whole country was watching out for who he would marry. Reginald had all but given up on marrying for love, but he was trying to find it.”
“And you just happened to come along at the right time?”
She nodded. “Fate is funny like that. I was not sure I was ready to be a wife, let alone a crown princess. But I knew if I did not say yes when he asked that I would lose him to someone else. And I knew that being with him was worth facing
anything this world had to throw at me.”
My eyes slid to Dmitri and I wondered. For a moment, I wondered.
Was being with him worth anything the world might throw at me? One answer to that was yes. But it wasn’t just what I could withstand that mattered. It was what the country needed. Hilde had grown up as part of this world, much like Amanda. She knew how to be a princess and she knew how to help her husband rule. I didn’t think I’d be the sort of person who could learn all that given an entire lifetime.
“I do wish Mitya had been looking for love,” Hilde said softly.
“You want him to be happy.”
“I do. But he is married to the country and the military. I worry that the right girl might have come along and he missed her.”
My heart jolted and I wasn’t sure if I was hoping for his sake he hadn’t or if I wanted it to be me.
“But Miss Schuller is the…last resort?”
Hilde sighed, “She is. We have tried to introduce him to several eligible women over the years but none of them have seemed worthy to him. I am his mother, but I am not naïve enough to believe he has not been…with other women either. However he seems determined to marry for obligation only.”
“There was never any woman you thought he was in love with?”
Hilde took her eyes off the room and looked at me. She nodded once slowly. “Once. Once I thought he had found his match. But I fear I was wrong.”
I looked at him again. In his usual dashing, perfectly cut suit. He’d pulled off his tie and undone his top button like he was itching to put work behind him. His hair was sitting a little less impeccably than usual and I finally noticed that he hadn’t kept it as trimmed as I was sure the military expected him to. His smattering of definitely not military approved stubble was a little thicker as well.
Everything in me reached for him. Every time I looked at him, I felt the overwhelming urge to smile and laugh warring with a niggle feeling of dread. I knew whatever we were to each other couldn’t last for any longer than the next fifteen days at most.
“And you,” Hilde started as though she was shaking off some upsetting thought or feeling. “How are things with Lord Baker?”
I shook off my own depressing thoughts and gave her a smile. “Eric is…nice. He’s happy to listen to me go on about Jenn and Bea, and life back in Adelaide. He tells me about his friends at home in England. We compare lifestyles and talk about books and movies. He’s funny.”
“You like him.”
I laughed awkwardly. “Oh. Uh. Not like that. I think.”
“But there is potential?” When I looked at her I wasn’t sure if she wanted there to be potential or not.
I shrugged, actually thinking about it. Was there potential? Or the more accurate question was actually, would there be potential once I let Dmitri go? But I couldn’t really admit to his mother that I couldn’t see any potential in Eric at the moment – even if I looked for it – because I was hung up on her eldest son.
“I don’t know. I enjoy spending time with him, but I don’t know I’ve really stopped to think about him like that.”
She nodded. “The noble matchmaking service works its magic again.”
I laughed more loudly than I’d intended and I saw more than one person turn to look at me before I dropped my gaze to my lap, a smile still on my lips.
“Is that not the sort of thing you expect a queen to say?” Hilde asked quietly as she leant over to me.
I shook my head, still smiling. “Not so much.”
“We are not so different, Anya. You and I.”
I looked up at her quickly, not sure if I was reading a message into her words or if the message was actually there. I also wasn’t sure what the exact message might be.
“We have a public face. But when we find someone we can be ourselves with…” She looked around the room nonchalantly. “Well we would be stupid to let them go.”
“I’ll remember that.”
Hilde took my hand for a moment and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Be sure you do,” she said before changing the subject to whether I’d finally got around to submitting my uni application yet.
Soon others joined us and then groups and conversations moved around the room for the next hour or so before people started excusing themselves to bed. When it was my turn, Dmitri sidled up to me.
“Will you be asleep in half an hour?” he asked me quietly and I looked round to check that no one was looking at us.
I shook my head. “No. Are you planning on visiting?” I teased.
“Only if you would like me to.”
“I’d like you to.”
He gave a curt nod, giving nothing away. As far as anyone else in the room was concerned, we could have been talking about the weather. “I will see you soon.”
“You will.”
Before I walked away, his fingers trailed through mine softly and I said the rest of my good nights, went up to my room, and dismissed the maids and Nikolai with that goofy smile on my face and a happy warmth in my chest.
I spent the next must have been half an hour just pacing my room, pretending to scroll through my social media, chatting a little absent-mindedly with Jenn and Bea. So I was close to the door when there was a soft knock. I hurried to it and pulled it open to find Dmitri standing there with a gorgeous half-smile on his face.
“Hi,” I breathed more than said.
“Hi.”
I pulled him into my room, shut and locked the door behind us, and grabbed him to me to kiss him. He wrapped his arms around me tightly and I felt all the corny, clichéd things like safe and wanted and happy. And I loved it.
“I missed you,” he said when he finally pulled away, but as though he hadn’t really wanted to.
“I…missed you too.”
“You sound unsure.”
I shrugged and watched my hand run over his chest aimlessly. “No. I missed you. I just… I don’t think I’m supposed to miss you.”
“Why?”
“Because it will make this harder in the end.”
I felt him nod as he pressed his lips to my hair. “We have our obligations. You are the strongest person I know. You will find your way through.”
“How do you do it?” I asked him with a sigh.
“Do what, Tati?”
“Fulfil said obligations and make it look so…easy.”
“I do not understand what you mean.” He nuzzled the spot under my ear and goose bumps chased each other across my body.
“Escorting…women to things when you don’t seem to enjoy it.”
“Escorting Amanda, you mean.”
“I might.”
He wrapped his arms around me tighter. “I was born wearing a mask, learning from a young age that I could never be my true self, that I could never show my emotions or feelings because it wasn’t proper.”
“So doing things you don’t want to do is…easy?”
“Not easy, nie. I wanted so badly to be the one to escort you to your ball. But that was not my job. So I kept my mouth shut and watched as Dominic walked you in.”
“You wanted to take me?” I would have pulled away to look at him, but a rather intimate conversation was easier without looking at him.
I felt him nod. “Ja. I wanted it to be me who held you, who danced with you without raising questions, the one who had an excuse to be by your side all night.”
“Was this just because you were stuck with Amanda then? Or did you actually want to be with me?” I teased.
I felt him huff a rough laugh. “Can it be both?”
I smiled. “It definitely can.” I paused and he must have felt the question coming.
“What?”
“So you don’t…love her, then?”
I felt him shake his head. “Nie.” He paused then, as though unaccustomed to such words, said in a bit of a rush, “She is a shallow, unpleasant, social climbing horror of a woman who thinks I do not real
ise how false she is.”
I snorted. “That’s certainly the posh description of her.”
“Really?” he chuckled. “What would your Jenn say about her then?”
“I’m not sure anything Jenn would say is appropriate for polite society.”
He nuzzled my neck again and I could feel the smile on his face against my skin. “I would not call myself polite society when I do not have to be acting the part.”
Well that was true. And I stoically pushed away any comparison I could draw between his words and what his mother had said only a couple of hours earlier.
“I think the most polite thing Jenn’s said about Miss Schuller is that she’s a raging malicious bitch villain who gets totally murdered at the end of the movie.”
He said nothing for a moment, then came out with, “I think I would like Jenn.”
I snorted and his arms squeezed me momentarily. “I think you would too.”
We stood in silence for a while, him just holding me and me feeling the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against me. It was peaceful. There was no need for talk, not when I could just breathe easy with him.
I might not have known what his favourite colour was. I might not have known what his favourite movie was. I might not have known who his favourite celebrity was – although did celebrities have favourite celebrities? But I knew the sort of person he was. Beneath the cool, hard exterior was a passionate guy who was thoughtful and funny and doing his best to make as many people happy as he could while he silently dealt with his burdens.
And that was enough to know that I could totally love him.
Given more time together, the ability to actually be together in public without causing questions and potentially more catastrophic heartbreak, and without the knowledge he was going to be marrying someone else, Dmitri, Crown Prince of Gallyr, was totally the guy I’d fall head over heels in love with.
If I was the sort of woman who could help him run a country without embarrassing him and making him resent me then I’d be all in and I’d actually tell him right then. To his face and everything. But as it was, I reminded myself that the time we had together now was better than no time at all and I was prepared to let him go.
Some Proposal (I'm No Princess Book 4) Page 4