Xavier reached for her hand and squeezed it on her lap. “George and Edward are far closer than you could imagine.”
She blew a raspberry. “No shit.”
His chuckle was rueful. “Yes, no shit. But I meant something else.”
Perry turned away from the window, and searching Xavier’s gaze, frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“When George was three, he was very sick. Measles. It should have been nothing, should have been routine, but he almost died. Edward was ten at the time,” he murmured, pursing his lips. “I was eight. We’re the heirs to the throne, so as measles is contagious, we weren’t allowed to visit him.”
She stiffened. “What are you talking about?”
“We live to different rules in more ways than just wearing a crown and having fancy titles, Perry. Edward and George can never fly on the same plane because if Edward’s plane crashes and he dies, George can take over as Crown Prince.”
“That’s horrible.”
He jerked a shoulder. “That’s life. For us, anyway.” He licked his lips. “Edward hadn’t been fond of his brother. What ten-year-old is happy to share his parents’ already limited attention? He had to share Marianne and Philippe with a country… a baby brother was too much. And they were delighted too, because Marianne had found it very hard to carry a baby to term. She’d miscarried twice before Edward, and twice more before George appeared—of course, at the time, I didn’t know any of this.
“All I knew was George was sick and, from the hushed whispers of the staff, they thought he was going to die.
“Like I said, Edward didn’t like George from the get-go. But I told him what I overheard from the stewards. I think I told him more because of my own shock than because I thought Edward wanted, or even needed, to know. He didn’t really care, not that Edward was very cruel or cold, but because we’re raised to be so stoic—to hold any and all emotions inside, he just didn’t react the way normal children did. Except that day.”
The leather creaked underneath Xavier as he shifted backwards into his chair. His eyes were faraway, as if remembering that day in extreme detail. “Edward started crying, I couldn’t believe it. But once he started crying, I started crying. The next thing I knew we were plotting ways to sneak into George’s room every night.” Xavier shifted his attention back to Perry, his gaze warm.
Smirking, Xavier shook his head. “Aunt Marianne found us in the morning, curled up next to George. After that, whether you want to attribute it to us or not, George took a turn for the better. And Edward, well he had a tantrum every time they tried to get him to leave George. Screamed like hell.
“Once George was better, they both did it. Couldn’t bear to leave each other’s side.”
“That’s so sweet,” she whispered softly, not wanting to break the hazy air surrounding Xavier as he imparted tales of a past she knew George would never share with her.
“It was, I guess. But it was just the start. They got closer after that. We all did. I was their cousin, but we were like brothers. Then, when George was five and Edward was twelve, their nanny…” His mouth worked, but no words slipped out.
His horror, less comedic now and definitely genuine, bled into the small backseat. It choked her, made her slide across to sit beside him. His hand reached for hers and his grip was tight. “Their nanny’s partner used his connection with her to… George and Edward were abducted. They were gone for three days.”
A gasp escaped her. “I never heard anything about that!”
His laughter was grim. “We could never let a story like that leak. I was only ten, but I remember it. It was horrible. My parents had to move from our estate and into the castle. We were on lockdown because I was suddenly the heir to the throne.” She saw him bite the inside of his cheek. “That goddamn throne. Like it’s the only thing that fucking matters.” His nostrils flared, his outrage evident. “It felt like a lifetime. They were gone so long and yet, barely any time at all in the end.”
Silence fell between them as she collected her thoughts, and he was left to think back to that horrendous time when his cousins had been snatched away from their family.
Her mouth felt dry as she croaked out, “They were closer after that?”
His nod was more of a jerk of his head. “Edward changed. Became moody. Angry. He was very, very mad. All the time. When he became a teenager, it just got worse. He rebelled constantly, and Uncle Philippe and Aunt Marianne were at their wits’ end. But there was nothing they could do. Nothing anyone could do. Then, George turned seventeen, something happened. Something changed.”
Her eyes widened as she recalled what George had told her. At seventeen, he’d come across his brother with a woman, and Edward had invited him to share her.
“He got better?”
“Better?” Xavier whistled. “It was like he was a different person.”
“George told me that he started sharing women with Edward when he was seventeen.” Xavier didn’t seem all that surprised by that, so she carried on, “Why would that calm Edward down?”
Xavier let out a small laugh. “Perry, you don’t know my world yet. You don’t know the rules or the regulations. Nobody does until they’re in the inner circle. I just told you that my cousin was dying but we couldn’t see him just in case we caught the sickness too. We live in a different world to yours. Where children can be kidnapped, and all that seems to matter is a throne. No one wants it. Not really. I certainly don’t, and yet if George and Edward hadn’t come back to us, I’d be waiting to be King one day. All that mattered was my family, but to everyone outside the family who knew what was happening, it was all about securing the lineage…
“When your world is like that, Perry, don’t you think sharing a woman, even if it’s in secret, is like the ultimate rebellion? Don’t you think being a part of something that, if it ever came out, would rock the very foundations of the goddamn establishment you’ve been forced to live around… well, don’t you think that’s one of the most liberating things a man can be a part of?”
When he put it like that, Perry could do no less than sigh in understanding.
She herself had had a cloistered childhood. Rebellion… Xavier was right. Nothing was sweeter.
Chapter Nine
George wasn’t relieved when he saw Xavier’s car pull up outside the palace from his mother’s sitting room.
No, relief wasn’t an emotion that could describe the complex mélange of feelings flooding his system.
This afternoon, when he’d gone to Perry’s room and found she’d left without leaving a note, he’d thought…
Well, he wasn’t sure what he’d thought.
Watching her alight from the car, seeing Xavier cup her elbow as he guided her into the palace, he had to curl his hands into fists.
“Your brother likes Perry.”
His mother’s words had George frowning and spinning away from the window. “So?”
The disapproval in Marianne’s tone was hard to handle. Perry wasn’t perfect. Nobody was. But Marianne’s idea of perfection came in the form of women like Arabella, who she’d married off to Edward.
Arabella made Perry look perfect in George’s eyes. It didn’t matter that Perry hadn’t attended a finishing school or that she only knew how to use two forks on a table setting.
None of that crap mattered. Not where it counted.
“She’s hardly appropriate,” Marianna said softly, but a smile curved her lips. “Charming though. In her own way. Very…”
“American?” George supplied with a smile of his own.
Marianne laughed, the sound as charming as it had been when he’d been a little boy, completely unaware of her flaws, and when he’d thought she was a fairy princess. Of course, back when he’d been a boy, she’d been a princess. Not a queen.
“Yes, she is rather, isn’t she?”
He smirked, turned back to the window.
“I thought you were interested in her, if I’m being quite truthful. T
hought this visit was a pretense for us to meet her at last.”
At his mother’s perception, he shrugged. “She’s a friend.”
A friend he wanted to worship, but his mother didn’t need to know that, did she?
Marianne sighed. “Sometimes, you’re so like your father I could scream.”
He grinned. “I do try.”
“I’ll just bet you do.” A huff escaped her.
“Would it bother you if she and Edward did… become friendlier?”
“After the disaster that was Arabella and his marriage, hardly,” his mother scoffed, stunning the hell out of him. “But I’d have preferred someone who didn’t take off her shoes upon first meeting royalty. Good God, I thought my eyes were going to pop out when I saw her toe nails.” She sniffed. “At least they were pedicured, I suppose.”
He spun around to gawk at her. “What do you mean the disaster that was their marriage?”
Marianne stared at him like he was a fool. “She made him miserable. I mourned the girl when she passed, and wish she was still here with us, but they were heading for a divorce. Even your father, as blind as he can be, realized that.” She shrugged. “He’d already engaged someone to handle the aftermath.”
“The aftermath of what?”
“When news broke, of course. Edward kept on asking us certain things, carefully trying to hide the truth.” She pulled a face. “Arabella wasn’t the sort to leave in peace, for however much a cold fish she was. We knew we’d have to engage the best to combat any filth she spilled.”
He gaped at her. “You would have been fine with him divorcing her?”
“I’d have preferred for him to have been happy with her, but as that wasn’t possible, a divorce seemed far better than having him suffer. The days of ‘til death us do part’ are long since passed, George.”
“You don’t have to tell me that. I just wasn’t sure you knew it.”
She rolled her eyes. “How old do you think I am?”
“Old enough to care that Edward could have an American girlfriend,” he pointed out wryly.
She squinted at him. “That’s different.”
“How is it?” he argued.
“She’s totally underprepared in all ways. There’s no way she could be happy with the kind of life she’d have to lead here. Hers has not been a life of service and duty.”
His jaw clenched because, though it killed him, he knew his mother was right.
“She cares. A lot. Her duty might not come in the shape ours does, but she cares about the earth, about the environment.”
Marianne winced. “I suppose the fact you’re fighting me on this suggests Edward is very keen on the girl.” She sighed. “A mother knows, I suppose.” She tapped her nails against the armrest. “I was just hoping you wanted her instead.”
A mother knows…
She wasn’t exactly wrong.
“She’s a friend, mother. That’s it.” He turned his back on her. “And if she makes Edward happy, then that’s all that matters to me.”
Marianne just hummed under her breath, then, after he carried on peering out the window, wondering exactly when Xavier and Perry had agreed to meet, and what the reasons were for such a meeting, Marianne asked, “Is there a reason you’re visiting me today? Or is it just to glower at the garden?”
He spun on his heel, embarrassed that she was right. The roses had been on the receiving end of some rather nasty looks in the past ten minutes or so.
“Is it wrong to want to visit with you?”
“No. But you could try sitting down so we can call for tea.”
He grunted. “I don’t want tea.”
“Coffee then,” she retorted. “I’m certain you weren’t this difficult before you left for college.”
He grinned. “I was. You were just used to it.”
“Distance makes the heart grow fonder, not more irascible.”
He grimaced as he took the side of the sofa nearest her. As he settled, he murmured, “I missed you, Maman.”
Her eyes were twinkling as she replied, “I missed you too, child. But I don’t know why you took a seat. The bell won’t ring itself, you know?”
His lips twitched as he went to press the bell that would have a maid coming to attend them.
Life at the palace was surprisingly hard to acclimate to.
Staff on hand to attend his every whim, ears constantly around to listen in on every conversation. During his childhood, he’d never noticed it. The staff, as mean as it sounded, became a part of the furniture. But having been away from it for so long, it was cloistering.
Suffocating.
How Edward had stood it all these years, without even a taste of freedom, George wasn’t sure. But after he left his mother’s sitting room ninety minutes later, well fed and watered on her favorite Danish pastries and coffee, he had to commend Edward for his patience.
When he and Perry hung out, they might be interrupted twice. His cell ringing and hers. Marianne had been called away twice, had had to deal with a call she’d taken at her desk, and had spoken to one of the staff about a gala the palace was holding next week.
Maman was right in the fact that Perry hadn’t been raised for a life such as this.
Was it selfish to bring her into it? Into a world that was completely alien to anything she’d ever known? Where considerations she’d never even have contemplated in the past were suddenly priorities?
He rubbed his chin, heading toward Edward’s study in the west wing of the palace.
He’d seen little of his brother over the past few days. Not altogether surprising considering his schedule and the one George and Perry were adhering to thanks to her research project.
Still, he felt certain Edward was avoiding him, and that would never do. Not when Perry’s happiness was at stake.
After years of pushing his desires aside, of pretending they didn’t even exist, what had changed, and so swiftly?
It had to be Perry. Perhaps she’d stunned Edward as much as she’d always stunned George? But he didn’t know that for certain, and he intended to find out.
If his brother hurt Perry in even the tiniest of ways, he’d have George to damn well answer to.
Edward stared out the window, wondering why fate had prompted him to look out at that exact moment to behold Perry alighting from Xavier’s car.
The hand his cousin held to Perry’s elbow had his own fisting at his side.
She smiled up at Xavier, laughing as he murmured something to her. Edward’s left eye twitched at the sight of her so free and at ease when she barely glanced at him, and if she did, she did so mournfully. Ill at ease.
His jaw worked but he purposely put the situation and her from his mind as he returned to his desk. He had a lot of paperwork to handle and a meeting at four as a deadline.
When a knock sounded at the door, he didn’t bother looking up, just called out, “Come in.”
“Edward, I need to talk to you.”
The sound of his brother’s voice had him scowling as he raised his head. “I don’t have time, George.”
“Then you’re going to have to make time. You’ve been avoiding me.”
Had he? Edward didn’t think he had. “If I have, it’s unintentional. I have a lot of work to do. Life doesn’t stop just because you visit and bring a woman you want to upturn our world with to the castle.”
George narrowed his eyes as he stepped further into Edward’s office, taking an uninvited seat in the tubular steel design.
Unlike the rest of the palace, Edward’s office was to his specifications. He’d ripped out the ancient fittings, much to his family’s horror, and made this place a modern haven.
It was the one place where he didn’t have to sit down on chairs that had once supported ten kings or look at family portraits that were older than some nations.
The walls were a blessed white. His desk was glass. The furniture was white leather—a sofa and two armchairs for guests he didn’t wish to visit with a
t his desk. Visitor’s chairs opposite him were tubular steel propped together with black leather.
He had inbuilt filing systems so as not to mar the minimalist nature of the room. Wires, too, were things of the past thanks to miracles his interior designer had wrought with an engineer.
Everywhere was sleek, white, elegant.
This place was his respite from over the top gilt and Renaissance art.
There really was such a problem as too much of a good thing.
The chair George sat in bounced with his momentum, and his brother murmured, “You know we need to talk.”
“We really don’t.”
“You laid down the gauntlet the other day when you came barging in to Perry’s dressing room.”
Edward snorted. “The gauntlet? That’s a little melodramatic, George, don’t you think?”
His brother glowered at him. “You inferred you wanted Perry. I want to make sure you’re not setting her up for hurt. I’ll have her myself, Edward. I love her, but I think she can make us both happy.”
Edward’s jaw flexed. “You can’t know that. I don’t know that. I hardly know the woman.”
“And yet, you stormed into her room and made it clear you were interested in her.”
There was no denying that he had, in fact, done that.
Edward sighed and sitting back in his low slung white desk chair, rocked a little as he ran a hand through his hair.
Could he say he hadn’t known what he was thinking?
Maybe with someone else, but not George.
George knew him and knew him well. Even with many years of distance having separated them, no one knew him better than George. Except maybe Xavier. A fact that didn’t escape Edward’s attention, nor made him want to punch his cousin any less for making Perry smile.
“I reacted rashly.”
“So, what? You regret what you said?”
“Did I say that?” he spat, glaring at George. “I just said I acted rashly. That I should have had more caution.”
“That’s because you acted on instinct.”
Perry and Her Princes (Kingdom of Veronia Book 1) Page 11