Page 42 of The Princess Trap
“Did you… Google me at all?”
He could almosthearher eye roll. “You think that’s what I do with my free time? Research you?”
“Truthfully, I had imagined you would. I mean, why wouldn’t you?”
She paused. Then, with a huff, she admitted, “I kind of did. I started to, but the first thing that came up was—”
“Kathryn,” he finished grimly. It may have been eight months, but that particular scandal would never fade. He wondered how much she’d seen. How much she’d read. If she’d watched...
“I didn’t look,” she said quickly. “I wouldn’t do that. I just saw the headlines. And then I stopped.”
“I see.” He lay back, staring up into the darkness. Waiting for questions. But none came.
Apparently, she wasn’t going to push that particular issue.Still, he felt the need to move on before she changed her mind. “So, my brother, Harald. The king. And my sister, Sophronia. They’re my half-siblings. We have different mothers.”
“Okay,” she said, softly. As if she was treading carefully. As if she could already tell this was a difficult topic. Had his voice given him away? He’d thought it was admirably steady.
Actually, it was probably the fact that he’d been separated from his own grandmother for most of his life that clued her in. Yes. That made sense.
“My mother was a maid. Then she met my father, and I suppose they fell in love. He divorced his wife, the Queen Consort—my brother’s mother. This is when my brother was, I suppose, fifteen, and Sophronia must have been thirteen. My father abdicated the throne, and my parents married. I arrived soon after.”
“Your father abdicated,” she murmured. “Doesn’t that mean—”
“Harald’s mother was Queen Regent for five years,” Ruben said. His tongue felt dull, numb, too thick for his mouth. “Then Harald became king.”
“Only five years? That’s a lot of responsibility for a twenty-year-old.”
“Yes. But there wasn’t much choice. After five years, Johanna—the Queen Regent…” He hesitated. “Well, she took her own life.”
Cherry exhaled softly. It was barely a breath, but it containeda wealth of meaning. Before she could say anything, he forged on.
“She did so the day after my father’s death. My father and my mother.”
He heard her swallow. The tiny sound was loud as thunder in the stillness of the room. And then, out of the black emptiness, her fingers came to brush against his cheek. Tentative, searching. After that first contact, she touched him fully, her soft hand cradling his face as if he were a child. He realised too late that she would feel the dampness there. So much for keeping his voice steady.
“What happened?” she asked softly.
Ah, what a question. Still, he’d come this far in the spirit of honesty. And something told him Cherry valued that.
Ruben recited the story that had changed his life with as little inflection as possible. “They liked sailing. Had a house on the coast. And my mother liked to sneak out—that is, she hated being watched all the time, followed all the time.” He hated it too, even if he understood the need for security. He should learn from his parents’ mistakes and stop trying to disappear.
But then, if he wasn’t his reckless mother’s reckless son, he probably wouldn’t be here with Cherry right now. “They went sailing in the middle of the night, a storm struck, and they drowned. Tragic accident. Mundane, really.”
“I see,” she whispered. “I… I’m sorry.”
“They only married because of me. I was born six monthsafter the wedding. Eight months after the divorce. And they only died because they were together—”
“Stop,” she said softly. “That’s enough.”
He sucked in a breath, familiar dark thoughts like a jagged knife scoring his gut. Slicing open the same scar tissue. “Is it? I should tell you all the sordid details, really—”
“Ruben.”
“At least then you’ll understand why I can’t—why I have to avoid disgracing myself any further. The family name, you know. My existence alone already makes things… messy. If I could, I’d renounce my title completely. But I can’t. Because then I’d be just like—”
“Ruben.”
“I’m too much like my parents—like my mother, that’s what Harald always says. Reckless. But I know that, and I handle it. I had everything under control. It was all going well, until I chose wrong.”
