by Teri Wilson
Slapping Asher had never entered Amelia’s thoughts. She hadn’t been thinking at all. The moment Asher’s lips touched hers, she’d done nothing but feel. She’d been hyperaware of every sensation, every point of contact between herself and the world around her—her back against the bedroom wall, her nails sinking into Asher’s beautiful flesh, the forbidden warmth of his mouth.
God, it had been like nothing she’d ever experienced before. The numbness she’d worked so hard to achieve over the past few weeks had melted away in an instant. She’d felt alive again. Whole. Yet at the same time and in some strange and thrilling way, hollow. Her entire body had seemed to sigh in relief. At last. But a searing yearning had also taken hold of her. An aching emptiness. She’d been inflamed.
Desperate.
Just thinking about it made her squirm in her chair.
She should be mortified, and she was. But she was also strangely fascinated at how quickly she’d been ready to give herself to Asher when he’d uttered those tantalizing words.
I want you.
“Everything all right, Your Royal Highness?” Amelia’s private secretary stood beside the banquet table, frowning down at her.
No, actually. Everything is the exact opposite of all right. “Fine, thank you.”
“Very well. Here’s the list you requested.” She set a bound notebook down on the table’s smooth surface and opened it. “This spreadsheet details every wedding-related gift. The column on the left identifies the item, and the column on the right indicates who the gift is from.”
Amelia glanced at the page. The first entry in the right-hand column said, “the country of France.” She wondered if that meant she was expected to write a thank-you note to every French citizen. Probably not, although she should. She deserved that kind of penance.
She deserved far worse. She’d let Asher Reed kiss her. She’d let him do far more than that, too. And now all she wanted was for him to do it again.
“You’re rather flushed, Your Royal Highness. Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you. It’s just a little warm in here, that’s all.” More lies. When would it end?
Now. It’d end now.
From this point forward, Amelia was going to be the perfect bride. The perfect daughter. The perfect princess. Why, oh why, did Princess Naughty have to rear her ugly head every time Amelia thought she had her life on track?
“I’ll speak to someone about adjusting the temperature in the room.” Her secretary’s gaze flitted up and down the table, sagging beneath the weight of so many gifts. “Then I’ll help you with the letter writing.”
“Thank you, but I’d prefer to finish it myself.” It was the least she could do. Besides, it would help her stay focused on the wedding. And Holden.
She tried not to think about the fact that kissing Holden didn’t feel anything like kissing Asher. That didn’t mean anything. She’d never had an experience like the one she’d had with Asher in her entire life. With anyone. So it really wasn’t fair to compare kissing her groom to kissing a total stranger. Because that’s what Asher was, technically. A stranger. She’d known him for less than a week. It was no wonder what had happened felt so seductively foreign. She’d fallen under the spell of something new and different. It didn’t mean a thing.
“Very well, then. I’ll leave you to it,” the secretary said. She gave Amelia a final penetrating look before swishing out the door.
Amelia sighed. Alone at last. Well, sort of. Willow sashayed into the room just as her assistant exited. The dog sniffed the air a few times as she glanced around the room.
“Looking for someone?” Amelia muttered under breath.
Willow let out a woof.
“Well, he’s not here,” Amelia said. “And you can forget about finding him anywhere in the vicinity ever again.”
The corgi stared at her with her usual expression of disdain, but this time it seemed more personal. Either that, or Amelia was fully losing her mind. Either possibility seemed feasible.
She redirected her attention to the thank-you note she’d just begun, but Willow didn’t budge. She kept standing just inside the doorway with her unwavering gaze trained on Amelia.
Halfway through the second paragraph, Amelia slammed down her pen and locked eyes with the dog. “Look, I’m sorry. It has to be this way.”
She was apologizing.
To a dog.
When had her life become so ridiculous?
Willow let out a dramatic doggy sigh, shuffled toward Amelia, and plopped into a dejected pile of fur at her feet. Amelia reached down to stroke the corgi’s head and her throat grew tight. She’d never known Willow to become attached to anyone before. Not even the queen.
“I know you like him,” she whispered. “I like him, too. But we just can’t, okay?”
Why was this so hard? She barely knew the man.
Enough. Willow might have the luxury of wallowing, but Amelia didn’t. She had a wedding to prepare for. A marriage. She swallowed around the lump in her throat and got back to the task at hand, writing one note after another while doing her best to ignore the crestfallen weight of Willow’s head on the toe of her Chanel flat.
Two hours after she’d begun, she’d made her way through four pages of the spreadsheet. Most of the gifts had been somewhat ordinary—china, crystal, silver—with the occasional extravagant exception. Midway through the fifth page though, she came upon an entry that gave her pause.
Engraved pocket watch.
Amelia frowned. It seemed like a personal present, most likely meant for Holden rather than the two of them. So many gifts had been arriving at the palace. Perhaps it had ended up in the wedding present inventory by mistake.
She glanced right to identify the bearer of the gift. Lady Wilhelmina Wentworth.
Amelia frowned. She’d already written a thank-you card to Lord and Lady Wentworth for a silver-plated punch bowl. Why would there be another gift from the same couple?
She checked the list again to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Nope. Lady Wentworth’s name was right there in black and white. The fact that there was no mention of her husband’s name alongside it seemed odd.
Why would Wilhelmina give Holden an engraved pocket watch?
Amelia knew Lady Wentworth and Holden were old friends. Maybe the watch was a private joke of some kind, or something reminiscent of their days on the riding circuit. It probably had a horse head on it or something.
Amelia skipped the entry and moved on to the next one. But her gaze kept flitting back to Lady Wentworth’s name.
She wasn’t jealous. She was simply curious. Too curious to let it go.
She pushed back from the table and stood, rousing a snoring Willow from her slumber. Amelia stepped over her and walked the length of the table, looking for a small box somewhere among all the gleaming tableware, candlesticks, and goblets. But there was just too much. She’d never find something as small as a pocket watch hidden in that pile.
She checked the spreadsheet again. One of the columns contained a list of letter and number combinations. Coordinates? Probably. But Amelia had no idea how the gifts had been organized on the table.
She told herself to forget about the whole thing. It was a pocket watch. What did it matter? She had enough to worry about without adding a random piece of man-jewelry to the mix. Still, she found herself marching over to the call button instead of resuming her seat at the table.
James appeared within minutes. “Can I help you, Your Royal Highness?”
“Yes, please.” She glanced at the table. “Can you help me find something?”
“I can certainly try. What is it you’re looking for?”
Amelia gestured toward the spreadsheet. “One of the gifts on this list. I’d like to see it, and I’m not sure how to locate it.”
James nodded. “I’ve helped organize some the items. I can probably find it for you, assuming it’s been put in its proper place.”
“Great.” Amelia wasn�
�t sure whether to be relieved or not. She felt awkward all of a sudden, which was ridiculous. These were her gifts, after all. It was a perfectly normal request.
Except she had a sneaking suspicion she wasn’t supposed to see this particular gift, and James had already witnessed a few too many of her private moments recently.
“It’s silly, really.” She let out a laugh that sounded every bit as forced as it was. “There’s a pocket watch listed on the inventory, and I think it might be a mistake. I’d like to check and see.”
She pointed to the line on the spreadsheet.
“Ah, I see. That gift should be located in section G-fifteen, which is at the far end of the table.” He motioned for her to step ahead of him and escorted her to the other side of the massive room.
Amelia held her breath as he scanned the tabletop. He found a small box in the section marked G-fifteen straightaway.
“Here you go, Your Royal Highness.” He handed it to her. “Would you like help with anything else?”
“No, James. Thank you very much.” She clutched the box to her chest and waited for him to leave.
She didn’t want to open it in front of him. Asking for his help locating it had been humiliating enough. She’d seen the tiny furrow in his brow when he read Lady Wentworth’s name on the spreadsheet. If the box in her hand contained anything incriminating, she wanted to be alone when she discovered it.
A little dramatic, don’t you think? It’s a pocket watch, not a time bomb.
She lifted the lid. A blue velvet pouch was nestled inside the box on a bed of tissue paper. Amelia opened it and slid the watch into the palm of her hand.
It was heavier than she’d expected, gold and worn down to a smooth shine around the edges. Vintage. Probably some kind of heirloom, which would have been enough of an indication that the gift was intended to be an intimate gesture. But just in case Amelia needed a more obvious clue, the engraving on the face of the watch’s cover featured two intertwined initials.
W and H.
The style of script was an exact duplicate of the engraving on the locket she’d seen hanging from Lady Wentworth’s neck.
Amelia ran the pad of her thumb over the swirling letters. W and H. Wilhelmina and Holden.
Not Wilhelmina and Henry, as she’d originally thought.
Oh my God.
Were Wilhelmina and Holden lovers? This definitely didn’t seem like a gift from one “old friend” to another.
Amelia stared at it, waiting to feel something. Anger . . . jealousy . . . anything. She should feel one of those things, shouldn’t she? She didn’t, though. She didn’t feel a thing, actually. A cold nothingness crawled over her skin, a familiar numbness that worried her far more than if she’d been enraged. At the very least, she should be shocked. But instead, she felt herself slipping back into the dull, unfeeling state she’d been in before Asher Reed had set foot on English soil. Before she’d heard him play his cello in the darkened Abbey. Before he’d kissed her.
A shiver ran up her spine. She was cold all of a sudden. As cold as ice, and she wondered how long the numbness would last this time. How long would she go through the motions, refusing to feel? Refusing to live?
She was vaguely aware of James returning to her side and uttering something, but she couldn’t focus on what he was saying. He sounded like he was very far away, as if she were lying on the bottom of a pool of dark, still water and he was above the surface.
Amelia was transfixed by the engraving on the watch in her hand. She couldn’t make herself look away or focus on anything else.
Say something. Do something, for God’s sake.
She flipped the timepiece over, so she wouldn’t have to see the intertwined letters anymore and could collect herself. It wasn’t until then she realized the back of the watch had been engraved as well. The script on the reverse side was smaller, simpler. It contained just a single word.
Forever.
* * *
WITH THE WEDDING ONLY a day away, Westminster Abbey had at last officially closed its doors to visitors. Rehearsals had been moved from Cadogan Hall to the church, and when Asher carried his cello case through the centuries-old arched doorway, it was the first time he’d stepped inside the Abbey since the night he’d first arrived in London.
He lingered just inside the entryway, steeling himself against the memory of playing for Amelia. But everywhere he looked, there were reminders—colorful shafts of light streaming through the stained-glass windows, candles dripping with wax, and the statues that had been their audience. The air felt heavy, swollen with secrets.
How was he going to play in this place? How could he sit there and slide his bow across the strings of his cello while Amelia married someone else?
Kissing her again had been the worst sort of mistake.
Now that he’d played for her, touched her, watched her fall apart, his music seemed tied to her somehow. He couldn’t lay a finger on the curves of his cello without imagining his hands on Amelia’s waist or his fingertips gliding down her spine toward the captivating dip of her lower back.
She’d looked like a goddess in that wedding gown, too heavenly to be real. Through its wispy lace bodice, he could somehow see nothing and everything all at once. Every inch of her porcelain skin, all the places he yearned to touch—the elegant slope of her collarbone, her shoulder, her delicate wrists—were barely visible through a sheer layer of intricate embroidery.
But it had been the way she looked at him that had done him in. It had been the liquid desire he’d seen in the depths of her emerald gaze.
She wanted him.
For days, he’d told himself he only indulged her friendly overtures because he pitied her, a blatant lie. He’d told James she drove him mad, which she did. Mad with longing.
But all the while he’d pretended none of it was real. He’d come to the convenient conclusion that the way he felt when he was around her was just a trick of the mind. Darkness made everything seem more intimate, didn’t it? Buckingham Palace was like a playground. She’d taken him places they never should’ve gone, and he’d been caught up in the thrill of the forbidden. She was Princess Naughty, and he was a serious musician. They didn’t have a thing in common.
Lies. All of them.
The moment he’d seen her standing there in a puff of tulle, he’d known the truth. He didn’t simply want her. He needed her. He craved her.
“Mr. Reed.”
Asher looked up and found every musician staring at him, including Jeremy.
Shit.
He’d missed his entrance. A rookie mistake if ever there was one.
“Sorry,” he muttered, then launched into the opening bars of his solo.
Beads of sweat gathered on his brow. He wasn’t in any condition to perform. He just needed to get through the piece.
He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on the technical aspects of the music. But the elegant weight of the cello’s neck in his grasp was reminiscent of the way his fingertips had traced a path from Amelia’s jaw down to her collarbone, and how his hands had slid in her hair to cradle the back of her head while he kissed her.
The memory was too powerful to be confined to his mind. It lived and breathed in his flesh, like the way his hands knew how to play certain Bach and Beethoven concertos of their own volition. He no longer had to think when he sat down to play them. The notes had become part of him. Muscle memory, they called it.
Likewise, his body had memorized everything about his brief encounter with Amelia, from the softness of her thighs to the honeyed warmth of her center. He’d come to this country to play for her, but not in the way he’d anticipated. And now she was hopelessly intertwined with his music.
He wasn’t sure he could sit there and play while she walked down the aisle toward a man she so clearly didn’t love. He couldn’t even manage to get through rehearsal. Even after he’d begun to play, he couldn’t think straight. Or maybe he was thinking too hard. Maybe he should just play. He kne
w the music. He’d practiced enough.
But he couldn’t seem to do that either. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw her in that dress. In this church. Standing alongside Holden Beckett in front of the Archbishop of Canterbury.
As the orchestra began the anthem, Asher’s hands shook. His bow skidded over the strings too lightly and barely made a sound. He increased the pressure, but overcorrected. A horrible screeching sound echoed through the church. He winced, then realized with horror that he’d been responsible for the god-awful noise.
He somehow finished, then put down his bow and kept his gaze glued to the floor while the orchestra launched into the next piece. His head throbbed. His tongue felt thick, and his mouth had gone dry as bone. He couldn’t seem to remember how to swallow.
What was happening to him?
This couldn’t happen on the day of the wedding. His career would be over. He’d be ruined.
Shit, shit, shit.
Asher stood, resting his cello against his chair. None of the musicians around him dared to look at him, either too caught up in the concerto they were playing or afraid his incompetence might be contagious.
Leaving was the last thing he should do. An artist never got up and left the stage in the middle of a performance. Ever. But he needed air . . . space . . . anything to calm the chaos swirling inside of him. His next entrance was halfway through the program. By Asher’s best estimate, he had twenty minutes to get himself together. He would. He had no choice.
But he sure as hell couldn’t do it here.
“Excuse me,” he murmured to no one in particular as he slid down the aisle and away from the orchestra, trying his best to make himself invisible.
It was a pipe dream, obviously. He could feel Jeremy’s gaze boring into the back of his head, but he didn’t dare turn around.
He’d say he had food poisoning or something and needed to step out.