Page 60 of Stranded with His Runaway Bride

Ten months since he’d virtually pushed her into that car and out of his life. Ten months since he’d turned away before she’d even left the castle forecourt and strode back into the dark maw of the castle entrance wishing it would swallow him whole.

At the time he’d told himself he’d had a lucky escape because it would inevitably have ended badly. How could their fledgling relationship have survived the rigours of running two countries facing unprecedented challenges? He told himself he was relieved.

Only the first time he walked past the empty Elisabetha suite he felt the lack of her like a gaping hole in his chest. As if all the joy had been sucked out of his world. As it had every day since. No matter how hard he tried to move on.

His anxious advisors had urged him to start searching for a new bride. Providing him with a list of eligible women. European aristocrats, poised, accomplished, perfectly qualified. Even easy on the eye.

He took the list and shoved it at the very bottom of his to-do pile.

None of them had sparked a moment’s interest for him because they hadn’t been her.

Leo headed towards his private gym. An hour in there might burn off the energy burning through him. It had been building ever since he’d agreed to inviting all of San Nicolo to the May Ball, which of course included their grand duchess.

His father would have berated him for being weak. Needing anyone, especially a woman, was beyond the pale for a von Frohburg prince. Yet that last night they had been together Leo had needed Violetta as much as he needed to breathe.

He’d thought he’d extinguish all that need from his body by taking her that last time. Only he hadn’t. The want, the longing, had remained.

He’d convinced himself she was too young to have made her decision for life and that at some point, like his mother, she’d find something she loved more and move on.

It was as inevitable as breathing.

He’d thrown himself into work. Into the rebuilding of Grimentz and helping his people, barely taking a day off since the storm. It meant his country was fast recovering and his people being taken care of and it suited him to keep his days full.

It was the nights that were the problem.

Because when he was alone and tired and weak, he tortured himself by trawling the Internet for news and the latest photos.

A month before their ill-fated wedding Violetta had sat for an official portrait, in tiara and blue sash and a dress encrusted with way too many beads. She was smiling but Leo had seen the discomfort behind that demure facade and knew that someone else had chosen that outfit.

A month later came the release of her first official photograph as Grand Duchess. This time the gown was breathtakingly simple and the tiara nowhere in sight. Good girl, he thought.

Then he’d looked closer and seen what had replaced the tiara. Her up-do was decorated with a jewelled brooch, doubling as a hair ornament. Almost as valuable as any state bauble. He knew for a certainty because it had come from the Frohburg royal collection.

She’d made a modern tiara of her spider brooch.

Now each time she appeared on official duties he greedily searched for any sign that she’d used it, and sure enough each time it was there. Sitting high on a one-shouldered gown for a ballet premiere, or clipped to the ribbon waistband of a chiffon skirt on a visit to San Nicolo’s state hospital, or pinned to a skull cap while braving the snow during a Memorial Day parade in wool coat and leather boots. Often it was her only embellishment and Leo knew she wore it each time to send a message to him.

I’m still here and I still love you.

No matter. One day soon she’d stop wearing it and then he’d know he’d been right to let her go.

As for her political ambitions, a nation of subjects couldn’t become a democracy overnight but, by God, their new grand duchess had started her people along the route.

Announcing before her ministers had time to stop her that she was calling a referendum on making San Nicolo a democratic state. With her as their head of state...or not, whatever they decided she’d stand by.

Turned out her people loved her for it. Embracing her and her ideas. They’d voted to become a democracy and keep her and her issue as titular head of state. Even her sister had been welcomed home as the lost daughter she probably was. Bringing a small son with her, who had the brown eyes of the Della Torres and the black hair of his English father.

A son that looked like him and Violetta. When he’d seen that picture it had taken Leo several minutes to be able to breathe normally again.

Of their own accord Leo’s feet took him to the Elisabetha suite. As they often had since that one night when Violetta was there.

The rooms were immaculate, of course, but they felt fresh and vivid, alive somehow. As if their owner had just stepped out and left a vital shimmer of energy behind her.

What owner? Grimentz was without a crown princess. He had no mate to inhabit these rooms and fill them with a feminine warmth and welcome. They’d been no oasis when his mother had been in possession of them but that single night, when Violetta had been mistress here, he’d found solace.

And passion like he’d never known.

From the window, his gaze was drawn across the waters of Lake Sérénité to San Nicolo, sunning itself on this perfect May afternoon. The duchy palace itself wasn’t quite visible from here, tucked away in a curve of the lake shore, but he could see Violetta’s standard fluttering over the city rooftops and knew she was in residence. It would be a place of welcome, he knew, despite all the difficulties her duchy faced.

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