Page 12 of Take My Place

“Which means we have to finish our song,” Declan says, not giving up. And I don’t want him to. “You should come over to mine and we can work on it together. I did try to finish it without you, but it wouldn’t come together. It really needs your brilliance to make it work. Maybe you could come over tomorrow?”

“I’d love to,” I say.

“Okay, well if you’ve finished making plans to see everyone except me, maybe we can get on with our shopping.” Romy all but snaps.

I place my hand on his under the table without thinking about it.

Romy is used to clicking his fingers and having girls flocking to him and I imagine he doesn’t know what to do with me, but I still don’t want to see him hurt. I just can’t.

I’m born and bred for King Town, for an heir, and I have three to choose from.

But what happens if I just can’t choose?

Will I start a war?

Chapter Six

After we say our goodbyes, Archer and Declan leave me and Romy to our shopping. He takes me back to the same place Isabella had taken me to, and I had a lot of fun taking outfits I had no intention of buying into the changing rooms, just because I wanted to make Romy sit around waiting for me.

To his credit, he is very patient and even when I deliberately put on clothes I knew would look awful; he is wonderfully complimentary, finding something nice to say about everything.

Much as I wanted to spend his father’s money, when it came to actually buying anything, I really struggled. Having grown up bouncing from one foster home to another, it felt wrong to spend money for the sake of it, so in the end I found myself picking out a few things I really needed without going overboard and putting the rest back.

However, when it comes to finding a ring, Romy insists on making sure I have something special.

“Everyone needs to look at you and know you’re engaged to a Navarre,” he tells me. “This ring symbolises our two Houses coming together for a brighter future.”

“Not to mention you want everyone to know I belong to you, right?”

“You look at Archer and Declan like they are yours and they look at you like you are theirs. I don’t want to share you,” Romy says unapologetically, making my cheeks redden. “I want you to know I’m not going to forbid you from seeing them. We’re all heirs, and it’s important to maintain ties between the Houses. But you’re my fiancée and they need to respect that. A ring sends out a signal to everyone that you’re off the market. Besides, my father will expect you to have something which shows off the Navarre fortune. He’d be very disappointed if you didn’t come home with something appropriately impressive on your ring finger.”

I try not to wince when I see the price tags on the engagement rings Romy picks out for me to choose from. Reminding myself that this is an investment in my escape plan, I decid to go for a cluster of diamonds around a black sapphire. Set in a platinum band, it will surely broadcast to the world I am an engaged woman.

After he paid for it, Romy insists on placing it on my hand and it all feels so wrong.

“What–you’re not going to propose to me in some romantic set up to make it all official?” I jokingly ask.

“Do you want me to?” Romy looks surprised.

“Believe it or not, I always thought the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with would care enough to plan a beautiful proposal,” I honestly say. I didn’t spend all my childhood thinking about it, but a good amount of my childhood I pretended to be a bride and dreamed of my fairy-tale ending. I dreamed of princes and kings. Knights and jokers. And somehow the joker of the bunch is the one I’m engaged to.

Even though he is the joker of the story, he is so much more than it seems. “Even if it is just taking me out to dinner and bringing the ring out with dessert, I figured he’d take the time to make me feel wanted.”

“Why Ivy Archaic. I do believe you’re quite the romantic at heart,” Romy teases, but honestly looks surprised. “I had no idea.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” I remind him. “Maybe if you knew me better, you wouldn’t be so keen to rush me down the aisle.”

“I don’t think there’s anything I could learn about you that would put me off marrying you,” Romy tells me. “In fact, I’m looking forward to a lifetime of learning all about you. You strike me as the kind of woman who’s always going to surprise me, and that sounds like the perfect recipe for a successful marriage if you ask me.”

“Hmm.” Part of me hoped Romy would see this marriage as being as much of a game as I did, but by the sound of it he is actually taking it seriously. I’ll have to tread carefully over the coming months while I figure out how to get myself out of this mess. I might not be in love with Romy, but I like him a lot. The last thing I want to do is hurt him.

I fiddle with the ring on my finger, which feels like it shouldn’t be there.

“All right. Take it off,” Romy says.

“What?”

“Take it off,” he insists. “You want a romantic proposal, you’re going to get one. You’re right. If this is going to work, we need to start as we mean to go on. I’m going to spend the rest of my life treating you like the queen you are, which means a proper proposal.”

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