Chapter Two #2
Challenged, Orazio went back further in history and she got every question right. ‘OK,’ he declared with rather bad grace. ‘We’ll scratch the history teacher from your schedule. Where did you learn so much history?’
‘From books and newspapers at the library. I took an interest in Mandovia from quite a young age. It was something to cling to back then. Who I was, where I was from, what I was from.’ Zia lifted a biscuit and crunched through it in the brooding silence.
‘You did assume that I was going to be thick as a brick.’
‘Of course, I didn’t!’ Orazio shot back at her. ‘If you must know, working off our one and only meeting as children, I thought you would be a bad-tempered little shrew.’
Zia appreciated that honesty and nodded slowly. ‘Oh, I am…if you rub me up the wrong way, but it takes a lot to rile me. Unfortunately, you do it quite easily. You’re so sure you know best, so certain of yourself…it’s very annoying.’
‘I’m not about to apologise.’ Perfect white teeth flashed in a half-smile.
For a split second, Orazio looked so stunningly handsome that she couldn’t take her eyes off him.
Those amazingly bright green eyes, that astonishing chiselled bone structure, the fine dark brows and lush black curling lashes.
Anyone else with that shade of blond hair would have inherited blond or sandy brows and lashes, but Orazio had naturally got black to accentuate his already very striking eyes.
‘You can relax with me, Orazio. I don’t want to marry you either,’ Zia told him boldly, amused by the way he froze in surprise at her frankness.
‘I don’t want to be a queen any more than I really want to be a princess, but agreeing to become a princess was my way out of a difficult situation.
I will do my best with these classes but don’t waste time having someone teach me about what cutlery I should use at the dinner table—I was a silver waitress as a teenager and I know cutlery and table manners backwards, forwards and sideways. ’
‘Another class will be struck from your timetable,’ Orazio informed her with unholy amusement. ‘You are a minx, Your Highness. Be aware that a woman has never told me before that she doesn’t want to marry me.’
‘I thought candour might let you relax a little more. After all, Massimo didn’t conceal his fond hopes very well during the flight. Have you ever asked a woman to marry you?’ she prompted with intense curiosity.
Faint colour outlined the model-like cheekbones that gave his lean, bronzed features such stunning impact. ‘No.’
‘But I imagine you have a lot of pressure on you to find a wife and start playing happy families,’ she guessed with a grimace. ‘Luckily for me, I’m just a surplus princess and unimportant in the grand scheme of the Mandovian reunification.’
‘That’s completely untrue. The people from your part of the country were extremely attached to your mother and revere her memory.’
‘Yes, I’ve read that but, sadly for them, I’m not her. And I think if I’d had her life I would have started the revolution myself,’ she admitted truthfully.
Orazio caught himself back on a helpless bout of appreciative laughter and studied her with frowning force. ‘You can’t say stuff like that in Mandovia. Someone would take offence and neither of us are supposed to express any opinion that sounds even slightly political.’
‘Massimo already warned me of those boundaries. But surely I can say what I like to you?’
Orazio thought about that before releasing his breath in a slow hiss. ‘Yes, you can.’
It occurred to him that Zia would become part of a very tiny minority in his life.
He only ever spoke his mind freely to Fiero and his fiancée or his own grandfather.
Very few people could be trusted to keep his opinions private and he would watch Zia carefully before he gave her that amount of trust. Her habit of saying exactly what she believed could be a disaster in the wrong situation and a PR nightmare.
But he was surprised by the thought that it would be a shame to see such forthright speech silenced by royal convention.
She was very much an individual and she was totally unimpressed by his status.
He had never met with such a reception before, particularly not from a young, attractive woman.
He was infinitely better acquainted with being met with flattery and flirtation.
She had argued with him, gone toe to toe with him, made an excellent point while discussing the revolution, a point he should’ve seen for himself.
She was highly intelligent, quick on the draw… oddly fascinating, he conceded.
There was something very relaxing about a woman who told him upfront that she didn’t want to marry him.
Obviously she wasn’t attracted to him. Why that should set his teeth on edge he had no idea as the news should’ve come as a relief.
Was it because he found her attractive? He hadn’t wanted to but he was a predictable male at heart and he did.
She was bright, vivacious, outspoken and beautiful.
He had never noticed that many positives in a woman before, even while acknowledging that the outspoken trait could be a dangerous weakness.
In private, however, a male who lived in a world where so few spoke their minds or even told the truth, he found that candid trait uniquely captivating.
‘So, what’s she like?’ Fiero asked immediately when he phoned his friend to bring him up to date.
‘Different. Beautiful, opinionated, stubborn, clever, surprisingly well educated. Knows everything there is to know about Mandovia, including the news about the new National Park scheduled for the autumn,’ Orazio told him.
‘You sound like a guy with a crush.’
‘And you’re being weird again.’
‘I’ve never heard you enthusing this way about a woman.’
‘Oh, yes…she has no interest in marrying me,’ Orazio imparted with enjoyment.
‘And who raised that delicate subject?’
‘She did. Massimo showed his hand during their time together and she cottoned on. She’s not any keener on getting married than I am.’
‘And yet I sense that you’re offended,’ his school friend commented. ‘A princess without aspirations—’
‘Evidently, and I wasn’t offended,’ Orazio swore.
‘Tell that story to someone who hasn’t known you practically from the day you were born,’ Fiero quipped. ‘Your lady friend in Paris is getting restless and phoned me to point out that you were supposed to be with her this weekend.’
‘I was. I told her official business had come up.’ Raz considered his current sexual partner without any sense of disappointment.
Crystal was a gorgeous English fashion model and they had been intimate for a couple of months, which was pretty much the time limit on the extent of his interest. On his next visit he would be concluding that connection.
He tried to keep his sex life discreet but it was challenging to keep his name free of close female associations.
If he spent more than ten minutes with any woman or laughed or smiled too often in her company, the rumours kicked off.
It was embarrassing for the women involved when he had no serious intentions and so he met women out of the country, only had sex out of the country, only let loose outside Mandovia.
He functioned best with females who knew the relationship was going no further than the nearest bedroom.
It was cold and transactional and against his deepest instincts, which craved the closeness, intimacy and emotion that had always been his ideal, particularly after the cold, distant childhood he had endured.
It worked the best for him. An unemotional arrangement with a woman was safe, risked no scandals or tell-all confessions from ambitious wannabes and nobody got hurt.
And that was just how his life had to work now.
Strong moral standards were expected from him.
He had learned that he wasn’t allowed to be a young, single male with a healthy libido.
Upper Mandovia, at least, was a very conservative, God-fearing place and he had to maintain the illusion of being a clean-living monarch without inconvenient desires.
Desires of a sexual nature were supposed to be met only within marriage.
At the same time, however, nobody wanted him to turn into his father, who had married at a comparatively young age and had still continually sought out available women, which had triggered many ugly rumours.
Orazio was conscious that he walked a tightrope of risk every time he visited that Parisian apartment.
If that revelation ever hit the tabloids, he would be toast in the eyes of the most conservative Mandovians as proven to be a fake status symbol.
In truth, it would be easier for him to get married and settle down but he had a poor view of matrimony, raised by an essentially cold, embittered mother, who might as well have been a single parent even while still living with her lawfully wedded husband.
He didn’t want to risk marrying the wrong woman.
He didn’t feel any urge to settle down or have children.
He thought he was still too young to make that life-changing decision.
‘Dining with a king,’ Alina mused, settling back into a chair in the corner of Zia’s large, opulently furnished cabin. ‘Whoever would’ve guessed you would be in this position?’
‘Well, it never would have occurred to us even a week ago,’ Zia sighed. ‘He’s less stuffy than I expected and more approachable.’
‘He’s very handsome,’ Alina remarked with a smile.
Zia reddened. ‘I don’t think of him that way.’
‘Be careful with him. You’ll be alone with him at dinner. I asked for a tray in my room…and no, don’t you try to argue with me. I’m staff…or retired staff,’ the older woman muttered. ‘I hope I know my place.’
‘Your place is with me,’ Zia replied, giving the older woman a fond hug before flipping open the built-in closet again and saying, ‘The black or the red dress?’