Forbidden Royal Vows

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Q UEEN E MILIA OF L AS S OSE GADAS was perfect.

She made sure of it.

Las Sosegadas was a tiny country between France and Spain, all mountains and sparkling alpine lakes. Her family had ruled it for centuries, mostly in peace. And her people were consistently at the top of all the polls that measured the happiest citizens in the European Union.

And unlike some other kingdoms, support of her monarchy was always robust.

Because, she knew, she was perfect.

Perfection wasn’t simply her job. It was her calling. Her duty.

She spent hours every day discussing exactly how the Queen could appear to her best advantage in all things, not because she had an ego, because she didn’t. What she had was a crown and what she owed her subjects was to keep it untarnished.

In private, she could be a person. Even a woman.

In private, she still thought of herself as Mila, the nickname only her sister still called her. Even her mother called her Your Majesty now, likely to remind herself as much as anyone else that it was her daughter on the throne now instead of her late husband.

There were a lot of things Mila liked about being just Mila , but that was always a temporary state, mostly when she was asleep.

The moment she left her rooms and let anyone lay eyes on her, she was the paragon of a modern queen she always was. In public, Mila was only and ever the Queen .

She had promised herself to her country and that was that.

A life of service suited her perfectly, she always said, and she meant it.

Tonight her service to her country had involved the sort of dress fitting that had taken most of the afternoon. It was always necessary to make sure that she looked the part, of course. She had an entire wardrobe team dedicated to the task and they were good at what they did.

What Mila had to do in turn was always and ever appear relatable . But not too relatable. Subjects wanted to love their Queen, but they certainly didn’t want to know her too well. A simple flip through the headlines of any European kingdom on any given day told her as much.

Mila had to strike a balance between seeming almost approachable while never actually letting anyone near enough to get any fingerprints on the symbol she’d become in her short reign.

Figurative fingerprints, that was. Or the Royal Guards would get involved.

Tonight’s event was a banquet to honor service to the crown, an annual gala that also raised money for various charities. It was the usual collection of aristocrats, Mila saw at a glance as she arrived, her foot hitting the exact stone that she had promised it would hit at the exact time it had been announced she would.

Because it was always important to be a dependable icon, no matter what else she was.

Sometimes Mila thought it was all she was.

If so , she thought now, there are far worse things I could be.

And she did not list off what those things were, as she sometimes did. She already knew that did not lead to perfection. It went the other way, rather precipitously.

She swept through her usual protocols for these things. The selected greetings after her entrance. The few, carefully chosen comments to make it clear that she knew the people she was speaking to. Even a smile now and again.

Mila had always been good at these things. She’d always known how to make these little connections, over so quickly, feel bigger than the sum of their parts. Because she had not been thrown into the royal life in a turbulent fashion. She’d had the gift and curse of knowing that her father was not only going to have to die someday for her to succeed him, but that the doctors had given him a date by which they expected that to occur.

There were very few good things about that, but one of them—maybe the only one—was that he had taken the time to prepare her appropriately for what was to come. And not in the abstract, as she’d been taught as a child.

She had no regrets, she told herself.

What was there to regret? She was the Queen.

“You are looking splendid, Your Majesty,” said her mother from her side as they left the receiving line and processed through the party, headed for the Queen’s usual spot on a dais up near the throne. Mila inclined her head, lest anyone think she was engaging in something as base as small talk or gossip while the trumpets were playing.

Was it ostentatious to have balls take place in front of the throne of the kingdom? Certainly. On the other hand, she had been told many times that most people appreciated the touch of glamour.

Besides, it was expected.

No point going all the way to a palace and not experiencing anything palatial, now, is there? her sister, Carliz, would have said if she was there.

Mila let her lips curve with great serenity as she passed the line of bowing subjects. But inside, she felt that surprising pang again.

She didn’t know why it had not occurred to her that she would miss her sister.

When Carliz had gone off to university, the first one in the family to leave the kingdom to do so, she had been younger and consumed with learning her duties as Crown Princess. It wasn’t that she hadn’t missed her then, because she had.

But it was different this time.

She had gotten used to having Carliz here, was the thing. She had gotten used to her sister slipping into her room at night, when Her Majesty was left at the door and Mila could simply be Mila again. They had spent most of a summer that way and Mila had gotten used to it. She had come to rely on it, even. That was all.

It wasn’t that she would change a thing. She was too happy for Carliz, who had gone from being one of the world’s greatest sparkling It girls to about the happiest wife and mother Mila had ever seen.

But she could be happy for Carliz and sad for herself, it turned out.

I contain multitudes , she thought as she moved, practicing the dignified inclination of her head which she could often use in place of actual speech, or even a smile.

This was one of the great many ways she got people to forget how very young she was.

Only twenty-seven, though that was rarely mentioned in the way it had been at first, when her father had died and the whole of Europe had acted as if they didn’t know what an heir apparent was.

Now when they said “only twenty-seven” it was in tones of awe, as if no one could quite credit that she was still something less than the formidable dowager of indeterminate years she would be one day. The one she had gotten so good at pretending she already was.

If everything went according to plan, she would simply grow grayer but otherwise remain exactly the same.

The Queen, nothing more and nothing less.

As ageless as the currency she graced.

Her mother was murmuring to her as they walked, the usual comments about this noblewoman’s dress or that aristocrat’s wandering eye, because nobody minded if the Queen Mother offered commentary. And the dancing had begun, so there was no shortage of things to look at.

“And, of course, we are treated to the next regrettable stop along Lady Paula’s road to ruin,” her mother was tutting at her side. “I often look at her and think, there but for the grace of God above did your poor sister go.”

Mila was entirely too well-trained to react broadly enough that anyone could see it. All she did was slide a look her mother’s way. Nothing more. She did not even have to raise an eyebrow.

Still, the Queen Mother blew out a breath, aware that she had stumbled into one of the places she should know better than to go.

As Mila had made her feelings on this clear. As the Queen.

“My sister,” Mila said softly, smiling magnificently at a set of honorees as she passed them, dipped down low into their curtseys, “would never dream of embarrassing me. And she never did. Lady Paula, who I think you know I quite like, has a different goal entirely in mind.”

She did not go so far as to say, I support her.

But she was defending her, so that should have been obvious.

“You may judge me if you like,” her mother replied in that particularly aggrieved tone she was so good at pulling out at moments like this, as if Mila had thrown her in the dungeons. If the palace had actually had dungeons, which it did not, she might have considered it—for the express purpose of watching expression on her mother’s face. But that was childish. And the Queen could never be childish. Even when she’d been a child, it had been discouraged. “But I cannot for the life of me understand what it is Lady Paula is so upset about. Many women of her station are called upon to make life choices that honor their family legacy, not their own wild impulses.”

It was well known that Lady Paula’s father wished to marry her off to a man of his choosing. Lady Paula had made certain that no one in the whole of the kingdom could think for one moment that this was something she approved. Or would ever approve. She had gone to great lengths to make sure that her disapproval was recorded in the starkest possible terms in every tabloid that could be found.

With as many inappropriate men she could find, to her father’s fury.

“Maybe it’s time that we allowed women of whatever station to choose their own destinies,” Mila said.

Reasonably enough, to her mind.

The look her mother shot her was sharp. Too sharp for a public setting, Mila would have thought. “I hope you do not intend to follow Lady Paula’s example. Your Majesty.”

That was a shot and they both knew it.

Mila smiled as they came to a stop before the throne, because it was considered gaudy and inappropriate for her to guffaw. Or so she had been told, never having given in to the urge in public before.

“I know my duty, Mother,” she said softly. “I daresay I know it better than most.”

“Of course you do, my dear,” her mother replied, though they both knew that if it were up to her, the Queen Mother would be planning the sovereign’s wedding here and now.

And when she turned away to talk brightly to the people who came up on the other side, as if she hadn’t been squabbling with the Queen herself, Mila took a moment to gaze out at the whirling mass of dancers before her, looking for that telltale flash that was always Lady Paula’s orange-red hair.

When they’d been girls, Paula had won her friendship forever by wrinkling up her nose and laughing too loudly at a party where they were all attempting to out-ladylike each other, and then announcing quite boldly that as her hair was already problematic, she saw no particular reason not to make sure her behavior matched it.

Mila heard Paula’s laugh before she saw her. She was already smiling as she realized her friend had drawn near the way she usually did, moving along the sides of the ball that was in full swing across the floor of the great room. She turned her head, expecting to see what she normally did when Paula attended one of these parties.

Her friend always dressed almost inappropriately, but not quite, because it drove her staid and quiet family mad. And she took pride in always presenting herself in the company of some or other wildly inappropriate date, and then presenting said date to her friend—the Queen.

Usually Mila made it worse, according to her mother, by indulging Paula in this. Meaning she only smiled at her friend’s behavior when, as queen, she could also have indicated her displeasure.

That would not have stopped Paula, but it would have meant she had one less friend, and Mila had never seen the point.

She had so few as it was.

“Don’t start,” she warned her mother beneath her breath as Paula drew close.

Her mother sniffed in reply.

But then the crowd parted way and the man Paula was leading toward the throne stepped into full view.

And Mila froze.

She wondered for a moment if she’d simply died where she stood—or possibly it was only that she wished she had.

Because tonight it wasn’t just any old inappropriate man on Paula’s arm. This or that baronet from some country Mila hardly knew.

Tonight, it was the most inappropriate man Mila had ever met.

And he was looking right at her.

With that trademark near-smirk in the corner of his appallingly sensual mouth.

Because he was the only person in the entire world who knew the truth that Mila preferred to believe only she knew. That Queen Emilia of Las Sosegadas was not the least bit perfect.

He was, in fact, the only one who knew that she was capable of an epic, life-altering, unforgivable error of judgment.

Not just capable of it.

He was one of the last great European playboys in the old style, a recent article in a non-tabloid magazine had claimed quite seriously. And had backed it up.

He was famous for his long string of astonishingly beautiful, powerful, and famous lovers, his mesmerizing charm that Hollywood actors tried and failed to replicate onscreen, his deeply mutable moral code that some found charming, and the great fortunes he’d inherited from all branches of his enormously complicated family tree.

A tree, the article had claimed, that has its roots in every grand old family in Europe.

Worse than all that, he was impossibly, disastrously attractive.

A description of him would involve dark hair, dark eyes, and those cheekbones, but it would fail entirely to capture the way he moved through a room like the world was nothing but a crock of creamery butter waiting for the edge of his knife.

And she knew that he always, always, had that knife.

He was always perfectly dressed for every occasion, yet managed to provoke all the same. It was that swagger. It was that hint of a smirk. It was that lazy wit in his gaze, and his inability to show even the faintest bit of humility to stations higher than his own.

It was the fact that he could be so incisive. That he was so intelligent when there should have been nothing but air and smugness between his temples.

It was the formidable way he could gaze at a person and make them forget who they were without even seeming to try—

Mila had to remind herself to maintain her composure. She had to order herself not to lose her cool, right here in the middle of a gala.

Something she had not had to do since she was a child of eight who had accidentally indulged in too much sugar one Christmas.

But he was a whole lot worse than too many sweets at a holiday party.

He was a catastrophe.

He was Caius Candriano.

Mila’s one and only mistake.

And he was also, though no one knew this but the two of them nor ever would as long as she drew breath, still—legally—her husband.