And there were so many people. In the pale blue silk dress which had been specially chosen for this occasion, Zabrina sat bolt upright beside the King, who was raising his hand to his adoring subjects, and she forced herself to follow suit. ‘Gosh,’ she breathed, her heart missing yet another beat. ‘This is...’
He turned to her, his face shadowed and enigmatic despite the bright sunshine. ‘What?’
She swallowed but somehow turned the movement into a small smile, the sort of smile her new subjects would expect to see, because she wasn’t supposed to be inside her own head, thinking about the man whose thigh was so tantalisingly close to hers. She was supposed to be thinking about other things. Like that sweet little girl by the roadside, who was waving like crazy in her direction. Zabrina lifted her fingers in response and the child’s smile widened.
But it wasn’t easy to rid her thoughts of the devastatingly handsome King, because it took some getting used to—seeing him in uniform when before she’d only ever seen him in billowing shirt, trousers and long boots. And naked, of course. She mustn’t forget that. But the Petrogorian army uniform was dark and formal and did incredible things for his already impressive physique. It emphasised the hard, honed body, while the peaked cap drew attention to the shadowed jut of his jaw and the proud posture which made his shoulders look so broad. Zabrina cleared her throat. ‘It’s massive,’ she breathed. ‘I wasn’t expecting all these people to turn out to greet me.’
‘You are their future Queen. Of course they wish to welcome you.’
‘I know, and I appreciate that. It’s just that you can be aware of something intellectually, but, when it happens, it doesn’t feel how you thought it would feel.’
‘And how does it make you feel? Nervous?’
She folded her hands together in her lap, terrified he would notice the tell-tale dampness of her palms, because hadn’t she fought for this? To be Roman’s future queen and to bear his children? In which case it would be inappropriate to showcase a quivering mass of uncertainties which seemed to have come at her out of nowhere. ‘I was told many years ago that nerves have no place in the life of a princess.’
‘And did you believe everything you were told, Zabrina?’
‘I suppose I did,’ she said carefully, resolutely ignoring the trace of mockery in his voice. ‘Doesn’t every child put their faith in the adults who form their view of the world?’
His laugh was unexpectedly bitter and the lines around his mouth became deep and tense. ‘Not necessarily. Not if they’ve discovered such an exercise to be futile.’
‘Is that what happened to you?’
‘I don’t dwell on the past, Zabrina. It’s pointless.’
She wanted to argue that the past informed the present and to tell him that she needed to get to know him better, but something told her now was not the time and her immediate concerns were of a far more practical nature. Soon they would arrive at the palace and, if her own father’s exalted position was anything to go by, the King would quickly be surrounded and swept away by a cohort of aides and equerries. And she would be on her own. Alone in a place where she knew absolutely no one.
Except him.
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘So what happens when we reach the palace? What’s the set-up there?’
He shrugged. ‘The set-up will be exactly as was always planned. You will have your own staff. A private secretary with their own office, plus various ladies-in-waiting who will provide you with anything you need. You will obviously wish to explore as much of Petrogoria as is possible in the run-up to the marriage and to acquaint yourself with your new country and its people. Some of these visits we will do together, some you will perform solo and, once we are married, we will tour nearby Greece.’
She touched one of the waxy blooms of the lily-of-the-valley bouquet she had been presented with on embarkation and fixed her gaze on his. ‘I was told that it would be possible for my horse to be brought here. And before you start telling me that you have the finest stable of horses in the world—it’s not the same as having a mount you’ve owned ever since he was a young foal.’
‘Of course you can have your horse here. I will set the process in motion,’ he said, his eyes narrowing, as if he had picked up some of her apprehension. ‘The aim is to make you feel at home, Zabrina, not alienate you, and all efforts have been made to do this. Your suite of rooms is in the southern end of the palace, where the outlook is particularly fine. I am sure you’ve heard about the fabled gardens here, which have inspired some of the nation’s finest poets and—’
‘Of course I have,’ she interjected quickly, because he was the last person she could imagine enjoying poetry and just the thought of that was more than a little distracting. ‘But what about you?’
‘Perhaps you could be a little more specific, Princess.’ His grey eyes gleamed with yet more mockery. ‘What about me?’
‘Is your...?’ A lump seemed to have inconveniently lodged itself in her throat, making her next words come out as a thready whisper. ‘Is your own section of the palace nearby?’
‘Why, is that what you were hoping for?’
‘Of course not,’ she said crossly, but her burning cheeks ran the risk of making her words seem like a sham.
‘I have decided that there will be no resumption of intimacy until we take our vows, as tradition demands. So I’m afraid you will just have to survive on the memory of how good it can be, Princess.’
‘Does anyone know?’ she questioned, in a low voice.
‘You mean, are my staff aware that we’ve already had sex?’
‘Keep your voice down!’ she hissed. ‘How...how are you going to explain the fact that you were even on my train when it arrived this morning, when I was supposed to meet you for the first time at the station? I could tell the crowds were surprised when they saw you jumping off in front of me and then lifting me down.’ She raised her hand to wave to the crowds, her serene smile belying the rapid thunder of her heart. ‘A completely over-the-top response, in my opinion.’
Roman expelled a reluctant sigh as the sunlight splashed pale gold streaks over her dark hair, because the reworking of the original plan had given him cause for concern. He had considered having the train make an unscheduled stop just outside the capital, and for one of his grooms to have a horse saddled and ready for him to ride to ‘meet’ the Princess for the first time. But the thought of any more subterfuge had been wearisome and he couldn’t guarantee how Zabrina would react to such a suggestion—negatively, he suspected. And besides, he was the King. If he occasionally broke the rules, so what?
‘I’ve already spoken to my aides and given them a story.’
‘A story?’
‘Don’t look so shocked, Princess. Isn’t that what everyone does?’ He saw an old woman lay her hand across her heart as he passed by and he gave a courteous nod of acknowledgement. ‘Reality is just an interpretation of facts,’ he continued smoothly. ‘And no two people ever see things the same way. I told them I was determined to protect my future bride and the most effective way of ensuring that was to guard her myself.’
‘Right. Because the real facts—the true facts—that you were secretly doing a character assassination of me, wouldn’t play out very sympathetically for you, would they, Roman?’
‘Possibly not,’ he mused. A flurry of rose petals drifted into the car and as one of them lodged itself beneath a pearl clip which gleamed in her hair, Roman had the strongest desire to smooth it away with his finger. But he didn’t. He didn’t trust himself to touch her again. At least, not yet. And certainly not in public, where his every action would be forensically scrutinised. What if some clever camera lens managed to capture his gnawing frustration at the way control seemed to be slipping away from him whenever he was around her?
Because none of this was turning out as he’d expected. He had thought, afte
r deciding to go ahead with the marriage, that they might spend the remainder of the night on the train, blissfully exploring each other’s bodies. There had certainly been plenty of sexual tension fizzing between them, after she’d given him all the reasons why they shouldn’t call off the union. In a way, he had almost admired her dogged determination to get her own way. It had certainly turned him on. And while he was aware that sexual propriety would have to be observed once they reached the palace and they wouldn’t be intimate again until their wedding night—surely that was even more reason to have capitalised on the strange circumstances which had led to that first delicious encounter. Silviana the servant could have been dismissed for the night and he could have locked the carriage door and let bliss take over.
But it had seemed that Zabrina had other ideas.
In fact, he had conducted the remainder of the journey standing to attention in the rattling corridor of the train, right outside her salon.
‘If you’re so determined to pretend to be a bodyguard, then maybe you’d better start acting like one!’ she had hissed, before slamming the door in his face—something which had never happened to him, not in all his thirty-three years.
Outside his stint in the Petrogorian army or those heart-knotting times after his mother had deserted him, it had been the longest night of his life—not helped by the thought of Zabrina lying in bed only a few metres away. At the beginning of his long shift, thinking about her and what they had done together had been a welcome distraction—until it had become a self-induced form of torture. He had found himself wondering whether she slept naked. He had begun picturing her tiny frame and the slender curves which had wrapped themselves around him so accommodatingly, and his body had stiffened with such a hard jerk of desire that a passing guard had looked at him with concern and asked if he was okay.
Of course he hadn’t been okay! He had been frustrated in more ways than one—furious at having been wrong-footed by the foxy Princess. A part of him still was...
‘And do you still think it was a good idea?’ she questioned suddenly, her soft voice breaking into the muddle of his thoughts. ‘To pretend to be someone you weren’t, just to find out what I was really like?’
He looked at her. It would have been easy to say no, that he regretted all the subterfuge and deceit, and surely that would dissolve some of the strain which had tightened her features. But a defining—and possibly redeeming—feature of their relationship had emerged during the short time they had known one another. She had said so herself. They had no illusions of love. No foolish dreams to shatter. Couldn’t total honesty elevate this arranged marriage into something which didn’t need hollow and placatory words to survive?
‘Perhaps the manner of execution wasn’t ideal,’ he mused. ‘But if you’re asking whether I regret having got to know you in that way, then the answer would have to be no. If we had been introduced in the traditional way, then all kinds of barriers would have been erected. We would have made polite small talk and been forced to endure a stilted courtship. And yes, it is going to be something of a farce and frustration to deny ourselves physical satisfaction in the run-up to the wedding, but it will certainly hone our mutual desire.’ He turned and slanted her a complicit smile. ‘Which is presumably why you kicked me out of the carriage last night.’
‘I did that because I didn’t trust myself not to kick you literally!’
He could feel the flicker of a smile tugging at the edges of his lips. ‘If you want me to be perfectly frank, it was something of a relief to discover you were sexually experienced.’
‘It was?’ she verified, her voice growing a little faint.
‘Undoubtedly.’ He turned and waved to someone in the crowd who was calling out his name. ‘To be honest, virgins are hard work.’
‘Hard work?’ she echoed dully. ‘In what way?’
He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Oh, I think it does.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Roman. I do. I thought we were going to be frank with one another. I don’t want you to spare my feelings.’
He shrugged. ‘If you want the truth, virgins need constant reassurance. They don’t seem to realise that if you’re constantly asking a man whether or not he likes it and whether or not you’re doing it properly, it’s a bit of a turn-off.’
‘I see.’ She pressed her lips together in what he was now coming to recognise was one of her determined smiles. ‘Well, I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way! Thanks very much for the enlightenment.’
Roman’s eyes narrowed. In many ways she surprised him as well as amused him, but there was something about her which was... He shook his head, unable to define what it was he was feeling and that did not sit comfortably with him. And surely it was simpler to push such feelings aside... He cleared his throat. ‘If you look straight ahead,’ he said unevenly, ‘you’ll get your first view of the palace, with the Liliachiun mountains behind.’
The iconic towers of the Petrogorian palace soared into view, but Zabrina could barely focus on the pale-hued magnificence of the ancient building ahead, so great was her anger towards the man by her side. He was...unbearable. He was the most unspeakably arrogant man it had ever been her misfortune to meet and if she was now committed to spending the rest of her life with him, she had only herself to blame.
So how come she still fancied him like crazy, even though some of the things he came out with made her want to scream with rage?
His damning assessment of virgins and their constant need for reassurance had been unbelievable! Was that how he regarded everyone who came into his orbit? In terms of how they impacted on him? Why, he’d made it sound as if he found some women boring even while he was actually having sex with them! Her heart missed a beat as an annoying flash of jealousy shot through her like a dark flame at the thought of him being intimate with another woman, but, once it had passed, her overriding emotion was one of relief. Thank heavens she hadn’t asked him if she was pleasing him! Or if she was ‘doing it right’.
But it hadn’t been like that, she remembered. There had been no sense of inequality when they had both lain naked on that sofa. It hadn’t felt as if he was the super-experienced one—which he clearly was—while she didn’t have a clue, because she had never done it before. Because everything which had happened seemed to have happened so naturally. As if, on a physical level at least, they knew one another.
She shook her head a little because thoughts like that were dangerous. Fanciful. If she wasn’t careful, she would start believing her own stupid fairy-tale version of what had happened. And Roman had tacitly warned her not to do that. He’d said that reality was just a personal interpretation of facts. So she’d better be careful not to misinterpret them.
Surreptitiously, she wiped her palms over the skirt of her silk dress and looked ahead. She could see even more crowds gathered outside the gilded gates of the palace and a huge cheer went up as the open-topped car began to make its stately progress up the wide, tree-lined boulevard.
‘Do you like it?’ Roman was saying. ‘Your new home?’
Zabrina’s eyes narrowed as they grew closer. She had seen pictures of the palace, of course she had, for it was widely acknowledged to be one of the finest examples of imperial architecture to be found anywhere in the world. The walls were the colour of rich cream, the conical towers rose-gold. Arched windows were edged with pale stone and a pair of intricately carved columns stood on either side of the vast main doors. In the distance she could see a glimpse of the famous gardens and parkland and, beyond that, the soaring splendour of the Liliachiun mountains.
‘It’s...beautiful,’ she said truthfully, but then almost regretted the sincerity of her words because they had caused Roman to smile with genuine pleasure, and she was ill prepared for the impact of that smile. Did he realise it was like the sun com
ing out from behind a thunder-dark cloud? He must do. Someone in the past must have told him that when he smiled like that it was like discovering something you’d never realised existed. As if you’d just looked up into the sky and noticed that a second sun had suddenly made an unexpected appearance.
And then he went and spoiled it.
‘So you think you will be able to tolerate your position here?’ he questioned coolly. ‘As the wealthiest consort on the planet, with untold riches at your disposal.’
‘How greedy you make me sound,’ she reflected, but the stupid thing was that it hurt. She didn’t want it to be all about money. She wanted it to be about feelings.
But his steely gaze was completely lacking in emotion. ‘Not greedy, Zabrina,’ he said calmly. ‘Just practical. We’re both going into this marriage because of what we stand to gain. And I think it’s wise to acknowledge that, don’t you? I read the prenuptial contract thoroughly before signing. I saw the clause your lawyer insisted on inserting—that you would be guaranteed a private income of your own.’
His black brows were raised in arrogant query as if demanding an explanation, but Zabrina was damned if she was going to give him one. She had her reasons for wanting that money, but she wasn’t ready to share them with him and maybe she never would be. He probably wouldn’t believe her anyway. And wasn’t there something a bit sad about someone who insisted on pointing out what a do-gooder they were? She didn’t trust him, he didn’t trust her, so maybe they should just leave it at that.
She shrugged. ‘And I noticed your lawyer inserted a rider to that clause, saying that I would only get the money for as long as the marriage lasted.’
‘Of course he did. Otherwise there would be no incentive for you to make the marriage work, would there? You could just take the money and run.’
He said something harsh beneath his breath, and Zabrina frowned.
‘Did you just say...“just like my mother”?’ she asked slowly.
One Night Before The Royal Wedding (Mills & Boon Modern) Page 8