Page 42 of Cursed

Chapter Fifteen

Edeena tried to keep her smile steady as she stood in the center of three bustling women, all of them fussing with her hair, her gown, her face. By now she should have been used to it. It was her third day in Garronia, she’d not left the royal palace, and she’d not seen her father. But she’d done everything else for her family other than dance on the head of a pin.

The brunch with the foreign diplomats, communicating her value to the press corps, who’d picked up the recent arrival of the Countess Saleri with breathless anticipation. The extended luncheon with the queen’s “closest friends,” a gaggle of legendary gossips whose necks and ears and wrists and fingers had been practically encrusted with jewels handed down through generations in their families. The women had thrown themselves whole-heartedly into the question of Edeena’s marital options, but had come to only one conclusion: none of the foreign princes would be sufficient to address the core requirement of the Saleri curse.

Bringing their highly divided family back together again.

Edeena grimaced as the queen’s head dressmaker gave a particularly brutal tug on her evening gown. It was hard to believe that the Saleris would come together at all if even the father and daughter couldn’t see fit to endure each other’s company.

Silas had good reason, of course. His wife, being far younger than he, was still in her mid-thirties, and her pregnancy was considered high-risk. God love the man, he truly did seem to care for his bride, and every moment he was able, he stayed by her side. Edeena had yet to see her, had been given to understand that the mother-to-be didn’t have the stamina to face a stepdaughter less than a decade younger than she was, and Edeena hadn’t pushed it. Lord knew she had enough on her plate with the queen’s social schedule.

A movement at the door caught her eye, the palace’s staffers standing aside to admit a new man, and for the first time that evening, her heart gave a little flip of joy. “Vince,” she said.

She’d intended it to be a mere greeting, but two of the three women fussing with her looked up sharply, and even she heard the note of desperation in her voice. She colored, steadying her next words with a ruthless hand. “We’re almost finished here. Have you had a chance to check the ballroom?”

“Security is at the ready. Your father hasn’t arrived, but he’s not expected for another hour or more.” Unlike hers, Vince’s was voice was perfectly controlled, his words crisp and cool. He’d been like that since they’d first arrived, a rock of calm in the middle of a building storm. She hadn’t seen nearly enough of him as she’d wanted, but every time she was in public or met with any group, inside or out of the palace, he was there, escorting her to and from rooms, buildings, and vehicles with a warm smile, an easy touch, a comforting presence.

But they hadn’t been alone for more than two minutes since she’d set foot back in her homeland.

Part of her knew she should feel lucky for what she got. Vince was a foreigner, an interloper many would say, and it was only the queen’s approval of his presence that allowed him to be near to her at all. His presence had caused quite a stir among the tittering matrons of the queen’s set, especially when the queen had called him Prince in front of the women. There ensued yet another explanation—by Vince himself, with his unfailingly gracious and professional demeanor—yet again why he was known as Prince among his friends. The women had been enraptured, but Edeena couldn’t blame them; they didn’t get a lot of polite foreigners willing to give them the time of day, despite their vaunted status, whereas Vince seemed comfortable catering to them. All that time he spent with his cousins’ families, Edeena suspected, and remembering the boisterous dinner party at Vince’s parents’ house made her smile.

The expression brought spontaneous applause from her handlers.

“Yes!” said the dressmaker, the bossiest one of the set. “That is the smile that will go best with the way you have been styled this day, Countess Saleri,” she said, speaking in rapid Garronois. “This is your official introduction to society, where you will see all the young men vying for your hand. Your engagement ball is in only a few days, and then you may be more sophisticated and arch—but not today, eh?”

Edeena lifted her brows. “This truly is the way it’s done?” she asked the woman, for what seemed to be the millionth time. “I go from blushing ingénue to sophisticated socialite in a matter of three days, and people think this is legitimate?”

“It doesn’t need to be legitimate, it is pageantry,” the woman assured her. She was the queen’s own primary dresser, and Edeena had found her to be a font of information—even if it was information Edeena was finding impossible to digest. “There will be no one in that ballroom who doesn’t believe you’ve already found your partner. The game will be to guess who you’ve chosen.”

“But I haven’t even met these men,” Edeena groaned, suddenly glad to be speaking in Garronois. She hadn’t had the privacy to fill Vince in on the more ridiculous elements of this farce, but she got the impression someone had. Even now he watched her impassively, his hands crossed behind his back, waiting for her to be released from her keepers. “Surely they realize how much of a farce this is.”

“They would not be here this night unless they were willing to consider the possibility of matrimony, my dear. You are making this far too complicated.” She stood back, eyeing her handiwork with a studied eye, then nodding with approval. “In most marriages, you laugh, you dance, then you decide if you will suit. In Garronia, at least for the noble class, it is simply the other way around.”

“You decide you will suit, you dance . . . and then you laugh?” Edeena asked.

“With the right man, you will know, eh? And that is who you choose. Come now,” she said briskly when Edeena’s demeanor clearly didn’t convey the appropriate level of enthusiasm. “There is an entire roomful of right men waiting to dance with you beyond that door, each hoping to some degree to make you laugh.” The woman tucked a curl of Edeena’s hair behind her ear, and gave her a reassuring smile. “There are many women who would wish for this choice, no?”

And that’s, of course, what did it. The dressmaker was right—all of them were right. Edeena had been blessed to be born into a family of grace and privilege, and her only requirement was that she found a man with whom she could spend her life in reasonable contentment. For that small sacrifice, her entire family would be strengthened.

She needed to grow up.

She smiled more determinedly now at the dressmaker, and the woman nodded, though her gaze was still assessing. “Not so much focus, my dear. Remember the smile as you were recalling a happy memory. That’s what we want. You are not assessing marriage prospects as much as being a young woman, delighted to be at a party that is filled with possibility. You can do that for me, yes? It will make all who have helped you so happy to see their work showcased with your beauty and your joy.”

Edeena glanced around at the hopeful faces surrounding her, young women and old giving her shy smiles—some of them dreamy smiles, as if they wondered what they would do in her position, who they would pick, how they would dance.

The whole thing was impossible.

Still as she turned back to the dressmaker, her gaze caught Vince’s eyes as he stared at her. Despite his stoic and perfectly professional demeanor, in his gaze was something more than calm assurance—it was dark, intense, and it made her feel admired and adored. Something about this dress, this look was meeting with his approval, and that more than anything fueled the smile she turned on the queen’s dressmaker.

“Yes!” the woman exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “Now, you are ready.”

Vince walked with Edeena down the wide, gracious hallway, aware of the strange glances he was getting. It’d been like that since he’d arrived at the castle, had only gotten worse after he’d been assigned as Edeena’s bodyguard. He suspected it was because he wasn’t exactly acting like her bodyguard.

He’d trailed local officials, even mid-range celebrities before, and the routine had always been the same. He was present, he was part of the entourage, but he didn’t get too close. He didn’t let anyone crowd the client, but he didn’t crowd the client either.

With Edeena, however, he was the entourage. No other security was conspicuous as they met and dined with various rotations of royal relatives or hangers-on, and he acted less as Edeena’s hired help than as her trusted friend. Even here tonight, instead of walking respectfully behind her, she was on his arm—and he was dressed in a freaking tuxedo. Worse, Dimitri Korba, who’d turned out to be a captain of the Garronia National Security Force, hadn’t given him permission to carry his weapon inside the castle. Instead, he’d made him go low tech, with a blade for close range strapped to his leg. Vince had trained with knives, but he found he was far more at ease when they traveled outside the castle, and he could holster his own Sig Sauer.

He sensed Edeena slowing and he glanced down at her, catching the tightness of her expression. “You okay?”

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