Chapter Three #3
“I didn’t have to worry about optics,” he said, in that deliberate way that made her feel…edgy. Inside. “That was Venediktos’s job. Now it’s mine.”
He looked serious, so she tried to match that energy.
“You’ll have to catch me up,” she told him. “I know that you played about with money for some time, but I didn’t realize that you had…” She shook her head. “I don’t know how to put this. A work ethic?”
He was lounging on the sofa across from her, with his hands laced behind his head, and he should have looked languorous. Lazy in every way.
But somehow, when he looked at her, all she could see was the danger. She could feel it deep beneath her skin.
“I was in private equity,” he said. “But unlike many, I enjoyed using the money that I made to help others. Short-term losses for long-term gain. Because in case you haven’t noticed, Princess, you and I have very little to complain about in terms of material comfort.
From the moment of our birth, even if we had dedicated ourselves to squandering every bit of the fortune that was ours, we would not have managed it.
” His gaze never wavered from hers. “So, aware of this great privilege, I never wished to take more from others. Unless, of course, they deserved it and could afford it.”
“A regular Robin Hood,” she said.
When he lifted a brow, she almost laughed. But he didn’t.
And she wondered if it was true. If he really had spent all that time redressing wrongs. She made a note to speak to her staff about it tomorrow. Because for all the things she knew about him, the only thing she knew about the work he’d done was that no one else in their circles had ever done it.
They paid others to do it for them.
She made another note to find out if they’d paid him.
“In any case,” he said when she only gazed back at him, “when Venediktos collapsed and it was clear that he would not recover, I divested myself of my business. For as I have been told a great many times over the past year, a prince can only have one master. And mine must now be Zaccaria.”
She didn’t know why that felt important, somehow. Or perhaps what she meant was complicated.
Because it felt like a betrayal to talk of Venediktos’s plans, his deep desires for this country, or his dreams of what could become of the island.
She didn’t like that, so she shifted where she sat and started pulling the pins out of her hair, gathering them into a small pile on the cushion beside her.
“There are so many arguments for and against ruling sovereigns,” she said as she let her hair fall free.
“And of course, I always knew that I would become one, so perhaps my impression of them is not to be trusted. It’s corrupted, I suppose.
But I have always thought that the point of a sovereign in this day and age is to promote stability.
No more, no less. And I cannot help but think that in a world that grows ever more crowded and complicated, that this is a gift. Or it could be.”
She realized that he was watching her pull out those pins with an intensity that should have made her uncomfortable. But that was not how she would have described the heat that swirled around within her.
“It is not that I don’t think that’s true,” he said after a moment.
“It’s that I never envisioned myself a part of it.
” She only gazed back at him, and he lowered his gaze.
“I left here for university and I’ve visited since, but I had no intention of moving back.
Zaccaria is beautiful, but to me, it has always seemed like a time capsule—perfectly preserved in its amber while the rest of the world turns in and out of turmoil. ”
Aikaterini smiled. “Surely that is the point.”
“Is it?” That dark gaze of his found hers, and held.
It was a marvelous gaze, she found herself thinking. There was gold there, and dark green, and browns besides. An endless array of hazel. Focused entirely on her.
“I have always thought it is,” she found herself saying, her voice far quieter than before.
“There’s a difference between a living, breathing institution,” he said, very intently, “and a dusty antique.”
Aikaterini found she was holding her breath.
But those words seemed to break some kind of spell.
He sat up and raked his hand through his hair.
“I intend to find out which one Zaccaria is,” he told her, sounding mild again.
Much less intense. She should have been pleased by that.
“An institution carries on, after all. Antiques are too often confused for junk and discarded.”
And that was what she found herself turning over again and again in her head the rest of that night, long after he stretched out on his couch and closed his eyes and told her she should sleep in the bed. Long after he clearly fell into an immediate, deep sleep, and she found herself wide-awake.
Staring at the ceiling. Thinking about antiques and junk. Wondering if she was keeping this particular vigil with her eyes on the ceiling because she didn’t want morning to come and her new, married life to truly begin.
Or, more worryingly, that she did.