Page 26 of Mistaken as His Royal Bride

Maddi held in a gasp. ‘But she would have only been a baby.’

‘Just born.’

She couldn’t help but see an image of a small, serious child, trying to understand such a monumental thing. It made her heart clench.

‘That’s a lot to put on an eight-year-old’s shoulders. Never mind a baby’s.’

‘Nevertheless, this is how marriages between royal families have happened for generations. It’s what we expect.’

‘And how many happy royal families do you know?’ Maddi asked.

Aristedes’s face tightened. ‘That’s not the point. The point is—’

Maddi put up her hand. ‘Duty, responsibility, stability... I get it.’

A discreet cough sounded from nearby.

Maddi flushed at the King’s warning look.

He looked over her head. ‘Yes, Santo?’

‘Sorry to interrupt, Your Majesty, but the call you were waiting for is on hold.’

‘Thank you. I’ll take it on my phone.’ He put a hand into his jacket’s inside pocket and took out a sleek mobile phone. He looked at Maddi expressionlessly. ‘That is all. Santo will escort you back to your suite.’

His cursory dismissal filled Maddi with conflicting emotions. Chief of which, though she hated to admit it, washurt. He obviously hadn’t appreciated their exchange. Hadn’t appreciated her opinion. It reminded her that she wasn’t of this world. That she’d been rejected by it long ago.

Not for the first time the difference between her and her sister couldn’t be starker. On her birth, Laia had already been promised in marriage to a future king. On Maddi’s birth, she’d been born to a single unwed mother, heartbroken and abandoned, promised to no one.

If anything, this event had just demonstrated how out of her depth she was. And how far removed she was from being a princess.

She hated the feeling of insecurity that washed over her. Worse, the feeling of rejection.

Before Aristedes turned away she said, in a low voice, ‘Is this how you’d be treating Princess Laia? Wheeling her out for viewings and then shutting her away again? Making no attempt to get to know her?’

‘If Princess Laia was here, you can rest assured I would, of course, be making an effort to get to know her—after all, she will be my wife. But you are not her, and after Laia and I are married, you and I will never meet again.’

So why would I bother with you?

He didn’t have to say it. The words hung in the air.

Aristedes turned and walked away to a quiet corner of the garden and took his call.

Maddi felt stunned. Well, she’d asked for that. She suddenly saw the ruthlessness that had been hiding in plain sight underneath his very suave exterior and it sent a shiver down her spine.Thisman would indeed track Princess Laia down and bring her back here to do her duty, of that she had no doubt.

And in the meantime, she was just an irritating inconvenience.

Somehow, in the last couple of days, Maddi had been fostering some kind of notion that he might notlikeher, or this situation, but that he was...intrigued by her. And that he too felt the electric charge between them. That...

What?asked a snarky voice in her head.That he’s become more interested in getting to know you than the woman who is destined to be the mother of his children? The next Queen of Santanger?

Full of swirling emotions that she’d stirred up all by herself, by provoking the King into telling her exactly how inconsequential she was, Maddi started when someone coughed discreetly behind her. She turned around to see Santo, the aide, still waiting.

He put out his hand, ‘If you’ll follow me, please?’

Maddi blindly followed him on wooden legs, feeling ridiculously vulnerable for the first time since she’d taken the audacious move to do something drastic to save her sister.

She’d become adept at not allowing the rejection by her father to get to her, but sometimes it crept through the defences she’d built up over the years and reminded her that she had a hole inside her, and no matter how much she might try to tell herself it didn’t matter,it did. And the fact that she’d just allowed King Aristedes to remind her of how painful this wound could be was not welcome.

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