Page 3 of Forbidden Royal Vows

That was a shot and they both knew it.

Mila smiled as they came to a stop before the throne, because it was considered gaudy and inappropriate for her to guffaw. Or so she had been told, never having given in to the urge in public before.

“I know my duty, Mother,” she said softly. “I daresay I know it better than most.”

“Of course you do, my dear,” her mother replied, though they both knew that if it were up to her, the Queen Mother would be planning the sovereign’s wedding here and now.

And when she turned away to talk brightly to the people who came up on the other side, as if she hadn’t been squabbling with the Queen herself, Mila took a moment to gaze out at the whirling mass of dancers before her, looking for that telltale flash that was always Lady Paula’s orange-red hair.

When they’d been girls, Paula had won her friendship forever by wrinkling up her nose and laughing too loudly at a party where they were all attempting to out-ladylike each other, and then announcing quite boldly that as her hair was already problematic, she saw no particular reason not to make sure her behavior matched it.

Mila heard Paula’s laugh before she saw her. She was already smiling as she realized her friend had drawn near the way she usually did, moving along the sides of the ball that was in full swing across the floor of the great room. She turned her head, expecting to see what she normally did when Paula attended one of these parties.

Her friend always dressed almost inappropriately, but not quite, because it drove her staid and quiet family mad. And she took pride in always presenting herself in the company of some or other wildly inappropriate date, and then presenting said date to her friend—the Queen.

Usually Mila made it worse, according to her mother, by indulging Paula in this. Meaning she only smiled at her friend’s behavior when, as queen, she could also have indicated her displeasure.

That would not have stopped Paula, but it would have meant she had one less friend, and Mila had never seen the point.

She had so few as it was.

“Don’t start,” she warned her mother beneath her breath as Paula drew close.

Her mother sniffed in reply.

But then the crowd parted way and the man Paula was leading toward the throne stepped into full view.

And Mila froze.

She wondered for a moment if she’d simply died where she stood—or possibly it was only that she wished she had.

Because tonight it wasn’t just any old inappropriate man on Paula’s arm. This or that baronet from some country Mila hardly knew.

Tonight, it was the most inappropriate man Mila had ever met.

And he was looking right at her.

With that trademark near-smirk in the corner of his appallingly sensual mouth.

Because he was the only person in the entire world who knew the truth that Mila preferred to believe only she knew. That Queen Emilia of Las Sosegadas was not the least bit perfect.

He was, in fact, the only one who knew that she was capable of an epic, life-altering, unforgivable error of judgment.

Not just capable of it.

He was one of the last great European playboys in the old style, a recent article in a non-tabloid magazine had claimed quite seriously. And had backed it up.

He was famous for his long string of astonishingly beautiful, powerful, and famous lovers, his mesmerizing charm that Hollywood actors tried and failed to replicate onscreen, his deeply mutable moral code that some found charming, and the great fortunes he’d inherited from all branches of his enormously complicated family tree.

A tree, the article had claimed, that has its roots in every grand old family in Europe.

Worse than all that, he was impossibly, disastrously attractive.

A description of him would involve dark hair, dark eyes, and those cheekbones, but it would fail entirely to capture the way he moved through a room like the world was nothing but a crock of creamery butter waiting for the edge of his knife.

And she knew that he always, always, had that knife.

He was always perfectly dressed for every occasion, yet managed to provoke all the same. It was that swagger. It was that hint of a smirk. It was that lazy wit in his gaze, and his inability to show even the faintest bit of humility to stations higher than his own.

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