Page 6 of Forbidden Royal Vows

Guilty as charged, he had said.

And it felt like a bit of poetic justice that he was now using those weapons on her.

He could see that she remembered that same conversation when he rose and met her gaze again. He could see the knowledge there, the memory. He could almost smell the sea air and feel the crackle of the fire they’d built, the flame a wild heat against his face.

He was not the only one recalling what had come after.

“Your Majesty,” said Alondra from the side, warningly, though Caius did not bother to look away from Mila, “Lady Paula has kindly come to present the Honorable Caius Candriano, late of Italy.”

Caius looked at the Queen Mother then, and bowed again more shallowly. “I am afraid I have not been to Italy in some while, ma’am. Nor can I claim to be anything like honorable.”

He lifted his head and grinned at Mila’s poor mother, who was very clearly both unamused by him...and yet amused despite herself.

That was the Caius effect.

“Your mother does not approve of me,” Paula was saying to Mila with more of that laughter, because she was a free-spirited thing and had no qualms about showing it, a rarity in these circles. She looked back at the Queen Mother. “You may wish to remove yourself from this conversation. I do not censor myself in front of my queen.”

“Or anywhere else,” said the acerbic older woman, but she did move away at that—with shoulders set to angles of pure umbrage.

Paula gave the impression of moving in close to the Queen, though she did not actually scale the dais or step up, or even encroach particularly on Mila as she stood there in all her state. Close enough to the great throne that not sitting on it seemed like more of a power move than sprawling there might have.

He had no doubt at all that it was deliberate, and more, that it was her doing.

“You’ve heard of Caius, of course,” Paula was saying happily, and did not seem to see the nearly pained look on Mila’s face. “My grandmother had a conniption fit when I announced that I would be attending with him. A proper fit of the vapors. Though I maintain that if she knows of his exploits, that must mean that she has the very lowbrow taste she claims to abhor.”

Mila made a low sort of noise that Caius supposed could be taken for assent. Paula leaned a bit closer and continued chattering on about her own reputation, and making shocking asides about Caius’s—shocking, that was, only because he had been much worse in the time period she was referencing, and had worked hard at being that notorious.

It was only when Mila still kept standing there in the same way, looking dumbstruck at Caius—though he supposed it was possible no one else understood that he was the cause of it—that Paula subsided.

“You seem a bit out of it tonight,” she said in a different tone. One that indicated, immediately, that the woman who had been nothing but laughter and fun thus far was, truly, the friend to Mila it was rumored she was. “Are you all right? Is it Carliz?”

Mila looked away from him at last, and he hated that.

But then she smiled, and the smile made him forget where he was. “Carliz is fine. More than fine. Carliz is great.”

Caius remembered himself, despite that unexpected shine and the way it was as if all the light in the room had clung to her like that. He did not shake it off, not physically, but he stood there, calculating. Taking stock of the fact that Mila clearly favored Paula, as some had said and others had debated. She liked Paula.

And he wasn’t sure he liked the part of him that was glad of that. He remembered too well the confessions she’d made to him on that long trek they’d taken together. How little she could trust that anyone truly liked her. That the specter of the queen she would become was always there between them.

“She seems deliriously happy,” Paula was saying. “Truly happy, not simply a bit of Carliz sparkle.”

The two of them spoke for a few moments longer, and he watched her eyes light up the way they always had at the mention of her sister.

But then it was time for the best part of this entire scene he had gone to such trouble to engineer.

No one got to stand and talk to a queen for long. There were always interfering ministers about. There were always haughty people who thought it was their right to demand a moment with her. There were long lines of those who only wished to curtsey before her and see if they could get a small smile, a kind word. Like she was an art installation.

It was not a surprise when Alondra reappeared, tugging on her left earlobe in what seemed like a casual gesture. But Caius knew it was a sign to her daughter that it was time to move on.

“We must catch up properly,” Mila said. “Have you seen all of Carliz’s baby pictures?”

Paula sighed. “She keeps promising to send them.”

“Something will have to be done.” But as Mila said that, she straightened, and Caius watched with interest as she became the Queen once again. Not chilly, but remote.

Paula understood at once. She reached for Caius’s arm and stepped back, then curtsied yet again. Beside her, Caius bowed, a gesture replete with all the mockery he could manage.

And then he had the very great pleasure of walking away from Her Majesty, Queen Emilia of Las Sosegadas, and not looking back.

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