Page 50 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 5-8

‘I didn’t do anything. I was myself.Thatwas the problem. I was the wrong daughter of the House of Montroy. Caspar and Cilla fell in love.’

To her, it seemed romantic. Her sister always sounded so happy when they spoke on the phone, inviting her to visit Isolobello any time she wanted, especially if she needed an escape from the expectations that bound her.

‘Love. What use is that when it makes you forget where your duty lies? It had always been the hope of our family that you and Caspar would be together. No matter. When you’re finally married, it will silence the critics. Your father and I are resolved. This is a sensible choice.’

What sort of man did her parents believe was sensible? It brought to mind someone bland, grey-suited, grey-haired, maybe older. Perhaps bland and sensible were good? She could melt away from publicity and everyone would forget her. There’d be no more pity, there’d be nothing. She’d simply disappear. She could live her life any way she chose without the public or her parents caring about her. Yet why did those thoughts make her feel that she’d be missing out on something real?

They approached her father’s study. The huge, oak doors loomed ominously in the otherwise bright hall, the windows to her left giving her views of the capital of the country she’d spent her whole short life representing. Her footsteps slowed. She didn’t want this, not right now. Maybe if she had more time... Her breaths came short and sharp. Where was all the air?

Her mother stopped, her private secretary at her side. ‘Anastacia, compose yourself. This man clearly found you attractive at the Spring Ball...’

Her heart stuttered for a moment as conflicting emotions coursed through her. Relief. Excitement. Dread.

‘He danced with you three times.’

Aston Lane?It couldn’t be. Yet he was the only man she’d danced with three times that night. Once, she might have been thrilled about this. But everything was different now. She wasn’t the perfect princess any more. She was someone else entirely. Someone she didn’t recognise. The woman Aston had danced with at the Spring Ball had ceased to exist and another person had replaced her. That woman wanted to hide away and lick her wounds. Her now seemingly childish fantasies about a man she might have dreamed of were one thing, but reality?

You’ll scar, and no one but me will love you now...

She was flawed in every way. For a few blissful moments that night, she’d been thought of as a goddess. She’d held tight onto that, a precious memory when everyone was now so focussed on her flaws. She wasn’t a goddess any longer.

Her mother’s private secretary gave the door a sharp knock and Ana flinched as it opened. Her heart beating a sickening rhythm, her breath heaving in her chest. Ana followed her mother into the room, wishing time could simply rewind. She fixed her gaze on her father, who stood as they entered. He looked satisfied, perhaps relieved. Her mother broke into as warm a smile as Ana had ever seen, for a man she could not look at as the breath crushed in her chest like the weight of the world sat upon her.

‘Mr Lane,’ her mother said in greeting. ‘How pleasant to see you again.’

Aston was a man who’d always tried to live in the moment. Since Michel had died, he’d fought not to dwell on the past, or fear for the future. In recent months, he’d been suffocating in both, a state forced upon him by his parents. Now the future had been thrust in his face in the shape of a woman—a seeming lifeline, a breath of oxygen. A woman he’d only admit in his quieter moments he’d thought far too much about in the months since the last Spring Ball.

You must marry...

It was something he’d not contemplated for himself, yet an edict from his parents he couldn’t ignore—to settle down when settling for anything was not where he saw his future lying.

When he did consider the future, it was tied up in the direction of his business interests or the next adventure to take, the next mountain to climb—keeping his promises to Michel, carrying out his dream of standing on the top of the whole world with his father’s ice-axe in his hands. What manwouldn’twant that, instead of being tied to another? A wife would only distract him from his dreams. Yet his parents had been clear—the Girard Champagne company was to be left to his cousin unless Aston managed to find a wife.

When his training for the Everest climb had first commenced months before, the hints had come. First from his father then more explicitly from his mother, until their last argument. “Find a suitable wife,” they’d demanded. What the hell did that even mean? Why force this upon him?

Though he suspected what their reasons might be. Finding a wife to gain his inheritance of the company whose history ran rich in his veins would consume all of his time. Time he’d planned to spend training for the promise he’d made to his brother, to climb Everest. But if he married? He suspected his mother and father believed that the prospect of a wife would be enough to entice him to abandon the climb altogether and focus his attentions on the business alone. That he’d lose his urge to conquer mountains if he could find contentment closer to home. They presumed, since they were happy in their own marriage, that marriage was a state he wanted for himself.

Why do you always need a bigger mountain to climb Aston? Isn’t living life well challenge enough for you?

His mother’s words. She’d never understand. Aston took a deep breath through the anger still burning like acid through his veins at the hurt over what his parents had demanded of him. Blackmail was never something he’d expected in his life, especially from them.

He’d almost told them to go to hell. His fortune was his own. Whilst some might have accused him of being one, he was no ‘nepo-baby’. Give him a hundred dollars, he’d turn it into a hundred thousand without blinking. He had investments that were all his. He didn’t need Girard. Yet he hadn’t been able to walk away. The wine was his life. Some laughed and said that, if you cut him, he’d bleed champagne. He wouldn’t lose the company to a man like his cousin—someone who did the books but didn’t understand the company’ssoul.

In any case, they were wrong. Nothing, nobody, would prevent him from fulfilling his vow. Marrying for love? All love did was hold you back, destroyed your resolve, distracted you. Distractions on a mountain could have fatal consequences—a fall, shattered bones...

I want to stand on top of the whole world.

Words he’d often heard his brother say. And now Aston was determined to fulfil a promise. To carry out Michel’s dream of standing on the summit of Everest with their father’s ice-axe in his hands.

He clenched his fists, then relaxed them. Memories of Michel had no place here. For now, they needed to stay locked in a vault of the past.

‘Your Majesty. Your Highness.’ He gave a short, polite bow, focussing on the princess, even though this was a done deal. He might not be happy about it, but he wasn’t ill-mannered enough to show it to the woman who was to become his wife. ‘The pleasure is all mine.’

That was no lie, so far as Anastacia was concerned. He’d forgotten the effect she had on him, relishing and rejecting it at the same time. The sight of her was a physical thing, like a blow to the head knocking the sense right out of him. Though, as he looked at her, he realised that she seemed little happier than he was at the prospect of an engagement. He didn’t question why that thought irritated him, like a burr in his shoe.

In fact, she looked almost unrecognisable from the woman whose visage had crept through the cracks in his consciousness more times than he’d cared to admit. At the Spring Ball she’d been like a tropical ginger flower, vibrant with the hint of spice. Now it was as if she were an arctic white peony—pale, impossibly beautiful yet would bruise at the merest touch.

Today, instead of a rosy flush of health her skin held no colour, as if the life had been sucked from her. Her eyes were a little too wide, her features pinched. Her hair had changed; no cascading golden waves or sophisticated chignon, which had once been her signature. Now it fell shorter around her shoulders, with a heavy fringe framing her face. In a plain, albeit impeccably fitted, conservative dress, she looked as if she were heading for a day in court rather than celebrating her betrothal.

---