Claiming My Duchess

by Jessica Blake

  I gave her a look of horror and held two fingers up like a cross. “Don’t even say such a thing.”

  She laughed. “Just what you need, to give birth to an illegitimate duke.”

  I threw my napkin at her. “That’s not even a smidge bit funny.”

  She picked up the glass of wine, eyeing me thoughtfully. “You guys used condoms, right?”

  I signed and leaned back in my chair. “Of course we did. I’m not completely stupid.”

  Jenn looked relieved and settled back in her chair, lifting the wine to her lips. It took Jenn a long moment to speak, but when she finally did, she’d blessedly let the conversation drop.

  “So, is tomorrow a beach day?”

  ***

  Thierry handed me a gigantic smartphone that was worth about what some people pay for a used car. I held it gingerly in my hands although I wanted to toss it back at the royal photographer.

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “He requested you,” Thierry reminded me for the eighth time.

  “Yes, but—”

  Thierry cut me off with a dramatic sweep of his hand. “No, Miss Costas…” He wasn’t being unkind but there was force behind the words. “When Your Highness asks you to handle something, you don’t get to fret and stew and think you’re not good enough. You do it.”

  He sounded so logical, but I still wasn’t convinced.

  “Listen to what I’m trying to say,” I began, hoping I wasn’t coming across as too combative or ungrateful. “I don’t feel like I understand life inside the palace enough to be in charge of the social media accounts. I—”

  Thierry made a snorting sound. “My dear, first, as talented as you are, please be assured that you won’t be in charge of anything. Marta will oversee all posts before they go live. You’ll simply upload them into a site that schedules them, then either Marta or I will go through and approve them. Second, how else do you plan to get the know the palace and the people in it if you don’t wander around and take photographs?”

  He had a good point.

  “But—”

  “And third, when the King of Cassia issues a direct order… you do it. Understood?”

  Opening my mouth to speak, I could only close it again, knowing I’d been defeated. Turning the photographic marvel in my hands, I nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  He looked pleased. “Now, general guidelines. No candid shots of the royal family without my expressed permission — not the king, not the princess, and not the duke or any of their staff members. Group shots of activity of, say, guards or tour guides, gardeners, kitchen staff? Those are all fine. Get names and then double-check that we have photo waivers signed before uploading any images. Any questions so far?”

  “No, I understand.” Although I actually didn’t understand why no pictures of the royal family, but whatever. It was probably best that I had no additional reason to be near the duke.

  “Focus on the gardens, they’re a favorite of his majesty’s, and if you go anywhere around the country when you’re not here, post your travel photos. Our oceans and high deserts are glorious, and I think it’s just the thing His Royal Highness is looking for. As he told me, he wanted our beautiful country to be seen through the eyes of a newcomer.”

  Seemed simple enough, so I put the phone in its protective bag.

  “Any sort of quota or goal you want me to meet?”

  He shook his head. “Quality before quantity, naturally.” He peered at me over his glasses. “But at least one per day would make the king very happy.”

  “Understood.” I gave him a sheepish look. “And I apologize for being overly dramatic. I’m honored to have been selected for this assignment, and I promise to do my best.”

  He inclined his head, as regal looking as any royal. “Perfectly natural, my dear. Now, off you go. You looked a bit peaked.”

  In truth, I felt a bit peaked. My shift was over, and after a long afternoon behind a computer trying to learn and mimic Thierry’s photo editing style, I was tired. Very tired.

  I forced a bright smile and hooked my messenger bag over my shoulder. “I’m fine, I promise. I’m truly very happy to be here. This is a dream come true.”

  Photographer that he was, he eyed me critically. “Sleeping okay these days, Miss Costas? Or perhaps too much time shopping?”

  I frowned. How did he know I’d been shopping?

  But before I could ask, his phone rang, and he excused himself. Still pondering his knowledge, I gave a little wave of goodbye and ducked out of his office to wander the maze of palace hallways for a moment, making a mental plan of where I would start with my new mission.

  Gardens? Tours?

  I wrinkled my nose at that. The king was obviously trying to increase the country’s exposure and get more interaction on social media, but I couldn’t help but wonder if the audience and the messages were aligned.

  I wasn’t sure that the majority of people on the photo-sharing site were really interested in royal gardens or tour guides. My boundaries were definitely a little more constricting than I’d like, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t be creative.

  Wandering along the bustling halls, my mind jumped from idea to idea.

  The daily meals coming out of the kitchen? It was good. Definitely a good one, but not that different from about a million other accounts out there.

  As humans, we loved faces. It was how we oriented ourselves in pictures, and it was how we told stories and discerned what was happening in a photograph.

  But aside from guards and guides, the faces that people really wanted to see in the palace were off limits.

  My steps were slowing as I chewed my lower lip.

  Faces.

  The idea hit me hard, and I stopped in my tracks, nearly causing a page who’d been following too closely to crash into the back of me.

  “Excuse me, miss,” the young woman said as she darted around my still form and continued on her way.

  Pets.

  I knew the princess had her own little menagerie and that the king was partial to golden retrievers.

  What if one of the first features of the new social media account was a look at life as a royal pet?

  Knowing better but not really caring too much, I practically ran all the way back to Thierry’s office and forced myself to knock instead of barging on in.

  “Εισαγω.”

  I was beginning to pick up on a few words of the native language and entered when he called for me to do so.

  He looked surprised to see me. “Back already?”

  “Pets!” When he only raised an eyebrow, I went on, “The royal pets. Can I photograph them and make them a feature on the social media accounts? A peek inside their lives. People adore animals.”

  The royal photographer rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger as he considered it. “You’d have to walk a fine line to keep the royal family from looking too frivolous,” he said, his eyes off in the distance as he thought about my idea. “But it’s definitely a good start. I’ll run it by His Majesty when we have a staff meeting later this week. Start with his gardens in the meantime and get that off the list first, and I’ll have an answer for you by Friday.”

  I thanked Thierry and was out of his office like the whirlwind I was when I arrived, ideas bouncing around my head as I considered more ways to make the royal family of Cassia more approachable to the wider world.

  And keep my mind off a certain duke I couldn’t stop thinking about.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sebastianos

  As second in line to the throne of Cassia, I had people to manage everything in my life, from my calendar to my wardrobe. I had three drivers on staff who would drive me to the ends of the earth should I require it.

  Why, then, with all the responsibilities and trappings of a man so high in the palace food chain did I find myself nearly obsessing about the whereabouts of one tiny intern?

  Because I didn’t have enough to keep me busy… at least that was what I
told myself. Being a full time royal was too boring for my tastes.

  To distract myself, I was becoming more and more involved with palace security. One, it aligned with my training, and two, the head of palace security was struck by a sudden bout of pancreatitis, and the staff needed a leader. And three… I needed to do more than smile and wave.

  So, when I set about ensuring the security of an upcoming event, I was surprised how much resistance I received. No, not so much resistance as pure laziness. Or maybe apathy?

  I wasn’t sure, but when I asked for the full floor plan of the library in which Penelope was scheduled to cut a ribbon for the newly remodeled children’s department, the staff seemed surprised that I’d need such a thing.

  “They’ve never needed the plans before, Your Grace,” the director of the library told me on the phone, “but I can see if the maintenance department can find the most recent drawings.”

  “Please do so,” I told the man, irritated to the marrow. “Otherwise, you’ll be conducting the ribbon cutting with some ridiculously dull member of parliament.”

  I found the entire conversation disconcerting. Why wouldn’t we have asked for floor plans in the past? The ailing director of security and I would need to have a conversation regarding these types of lapses upon his return, especially now that rumblings of national unease continued to vibrate around the country.

  “I hate to alert you to these security concerns,” I told my uncle when he’d stopped by my office for yet another surprise visit. “But with the possible Amurian unrest, I prefer that we take every precaution.”

  Most times, my uncle would encourage me to relax a little. But despite his encouragement to the rest of the country that the threats of violence from Amur were baseless, he was much more conservative when we spoke in private.

  “I’ll have my chief secretary make the follow-up calls to ensure the plans are received,” he said as he poured himself a brandy from my wet bar. “You have much better use of your time, and Neoma is terrifying when she wants to be and has no problem throwing the crown’s weight around when necessary.”

  I chuckled, putting a face to the name. Neoma had to be nearly three hundred years old now because I remembered being young and running scared in the hallways from her whenever she caught Nate and me up to no good in the family wing of the castle.

  And she’d seemed ancient back then.

  “I appreciate it, sire,” I said, barely stopping myself from smiling as my uncle made a face, hating it when I was formal behind closed doors. I wasn’t just being a smartass today, I was also working on being vigilant with the formality expected of me. It wouldn’t do for me to be caught calling our monarch “Uncle Dem” in public.

  I could hear it now… the Duke of Disrespect.

  Just when I thought I’d escaped any pokes at my personal life, my uncle lifted a brow. “Any plans for the Legacy Ball?” The grin on his face let me know he was up to no good. “Happen to find a phone number taped to your computer monitor?”

  I had, in fact, found the phone number of one Geneva Rialta taped to my computer. I’d promptly thrown it into the trash.

  “No blind dates… Your Highness.”

  Maybe I was the Duke of Disrespect.

  The king looked like he wanted to argue the point a little more, but someone knocked, and I practically lunged toward the door to open it. It was a page with the king’s afternoon schedule.

  “Oh, joy,” he said rather joylessly as he read over what looked like endless meetings and phone calls.

  I bowed as he left, unable to stop myself. King Demetrius was a modern monarch and didn’t actually like many of the archaic etiquette rules attached to how people approached and left his presence, but I was feeling a bit guilty for digging in my heels so tightly against being set up. But dammit. I didn’t want an arranged date or an arranged marriage. Hell, I bristled against my arranged job.

  I shuddered thinking how close I’d gotten to being suckered into one of those back in my early twenties. Luckily, I had gotten the marriage unarranged before any media heard of it, or I’d really been called The Runaway Duke. No way was I going to let that happen.

  Uncle Demetrius sighed as he headed toward the door and his afternoon of meetings, and guilt hit me even harder. Not for the first time I wondered how lonely the view must be from the top. How he sat in a position that a majority of people around him would love to be in, and he was alone. On top of that, he was raising a daughter by himself and was constantly surrounded by people who treated him like he was some strange zoo exhibit instead of a flesh and blood man beneath the role he played.

  It was something that I never strived for personally. Not even before Penelope was born or after my father passed. Not once did I want the burden that Uncle Dem carried.

  Exhaling away the heavy thoughts that were weighing me down, I decided to leave my office, perhaps take a stroll around the grounds as I considered the ways in which I wanted to tighten palace security while I was unofficially in charge.

  Thinking I’d grab Nate as a sounding board, I did a double take as I went past one of the tall windows looking out onto the king’s rose garden.

  Lying on the ground flat on her belly with a smartphone stretched in front of her was Iliana Costas. At first, I thought she’d fallen, but when I peered closer, I could see she was smiling. No, beaming.

  But at what?

  Don’t go down to her. Don’t go down to her.

  I repeated the mantra to myself… as I headed straight outside. I had no willpower when it came to this woman, obviously.

  When she didn’t hear me approach, I grew even quieter as I strode up behind her. Dressed in khaki capris and a sunny yellow blouse, I noticed her messenger bag and jacket tossed on a nearby bench.

  Crouching down behind her, I got as close as I could before saying, “What on earth are you doing, Miss Costas?”

  My voice wasn’t loud, but by the way she jumped, you’d have thought I let an air horn rip instead of a whisper.

  “Oh my god!” She rolled onto her back, hand on her heart, gasping in large lungfuls of air. “Shit!” Apparently, she hadn’t meant to curse because she clapped a hand over her mouth. “You scared me half to death.”

  “Sorry about that,” I said, reaching down a hand to help her up. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it, and then made a cute little squealing noise when I yanked her in one swift movement to her feet. “I was just passing by and couldn’t help but notice you bellying up to one of the king’s prized rose bushes. I had to see what you were doing.”

  Wiping the dirt and debris from the phone’s surface, she opened the locked browser and turned the phone toward me. On the screen was a slow-motion capture of four bees flitting between a small growth of roses. It was a remarkable video, so detailed and fine-tuned and even more so for the fact that she’d captured it with a phone.

  “I have a new assignment from the king himself,” she said, looking down at the screen. “He thought it would be nice to see the palace and all of Cassia through the eyes of a newcomer, so I’ve been asked to take photos of things I find interesting for the social media accounts.”

  “And so naturally you came out here to video bees,” I said, nodding my head and trying to keep my smile in check. It wasn’t working.

  It made her grin, though, so it was working.

  “I’m trying to find something different for viewers to look at,” she said, looking down at her hands. “Anyone can pick up a brochure and look at the old furniture or the thrones. But I’m just trying to offer something new — something alive.”

  It was a brilliant thought. As part of my private school education, I’d spent countless hours wandering through the palace listening to a guide go on and on about eighteenth-century décor and priceless portraits hung in gilded frames — most of which, especially the furniture and the artwork, never changed. It was the same settees and powdered-wig portraits that I’d seen as a boy that were still featured in all the palace tours.


  “I like it,” was all I could manage to say as her gaze caught mine and everything around us disappeared. Her eyes were more luminous in the bright light of day, and when I looked closer, I could see specks of blue closer to the pupil. Absolutely gorgeous.

  I was being pulled into her orbit again, and it was like gravity had shifted direction and was pushing me toward her. But, dammit, I couldn’t.

  “I should let you get back to work, I suppose.”

  If I wasn’t mistaken, the light in her eyes dimmed a little, then she looked down at her phone again. “Yes, that would be for the best.”

  But we both just stood there.

  And stood there.

  Someone cleared their throat, and Iliana jumped back.

  I turned to find Nate standing in the doorway. He was giving me a solid I need to talk to you stare. Then he smiled at Iliana. “Sorry to interrupt, but I need to speak with Seb.”

  She took another step back. “Of course. Nice to see you both again.”

  Then she fled, picking up her bag and jacket and heading toward the gate. I watched her go then turned my death glare on my friend. “Seriously? We can’t even talk if we bump into each other?”

  His expression was grim. “It’s not that. I need to give you a head’s up about something… in the privacy of your office.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  We remained silent as we strode down the hallway. In my office, I went straight to the wet bar fridge and pulled out two beers, handing one to him.

  “What is it?”

  Nate let out a long sigh and finally sat down, taking a long drink.

  “I really don’t know how to tell you this, Seb.” His voice was quiet, which made me even more nervous. “But Reina Frangos is back. She was hired for a job in the communications office. She starts tomorrow.”

  Well, damn.

  Was he serious?

  The woman my father and uncle had once decided would be my bride was now working in the palace?

  Running a hand down my face, I cursed. “Please tell me she’s now happily married with three kids and another on the way.”