Chapter Nine #3
He shook his head, trying to shake away her compliment. He would not be touched by her empty compliments. ‘No. Not happening. And you’re getting a bit melodramatic again, Princess.’
‘Am I? Then how about we put the boot on the other foot, as unlikely as it might be. What if you’d been promised in marriage to a fifty-something-year-old woman against your will, when you’d been always told by your father that you could marry for love, and no matter how far you ran, someone would search the world to drag you back to comply with someone else’s wishes? How would you feel?’
He stood stock-still. ‘You’re saying this man your evil brother has promised you to is in his fifties?’
‘Yes, he’s in his fifties. But why should age even come into it? Whatever the age, how is it possible that you could wilfully return me to this hell, and to marrying a man that I have been sold to, a man that I can never love? A man that I will never love, knowing the circumstances of our union.’
Her words were tumbling over each other, her colour was high, her eyes beseeching him to believe her.
Theo had to hand it to her. If she were acting, she was giving one hell of a good performance.
Theo knew that the Princess would stop at nothing to prevent her return to Rubanestein, and she’d now supplemented the forced marriage story by adding the age detail, in case he wasn’t already sympathetic.
The Princess was twenty-five years old, and to be promised—if that’s what was happening—to someone, a colleague of her brother and not a partner she’d chosen to spend the rest of her life with—that was wrong.
And yet, she wasn’t a teenager, she was an adult, which raised even more questions.
‘When did you think you were going to get married?’
‘What?’
‘You’re twenty-five, and I’m guessing, you have no boyfriend waiting in the wings for your return.’
‘And your point is?’
‘My point is, it occurs to me that if you’d already been married, your brother—if I am to believe your story—wouldn’t be able to marry you off so readily.’
She looked up at him with incredulous eyes. ‘You’re blaming me not being married for my brother’s actions? Are you serious?’
‘You have to admit, if you were already married, you wouldn’t have a problem. You wouldn’t have had to flee.’
‘I don’t believe it. You are blaming me.’
‘No, I’m just saying… No, I’m asking. I’m sorry, Princess, because it’s not like you’re unattractive, and yet there’s been nobody you’ve been interested in?
Nobody you wanted to spend the rest of your life with?
’ He’d met Sophia in university, and what started as a friendship had soon turned to love.
‘I’m having trouble understanding that.’
She blinked. Long slow blinks that told him she had little regard for his words.
‘Thank you, I think. But for the record, there has been plenty of interest—in me. Apparently being a member of the royal family—a “not unattractive” princess with ready access to palaces and riches attracts plenty of interest. My problem has been determining who is more interested in me, for who I am, rather than my place in the monarchy.’ She cocked one side of her mouth.
‘As you admitted, you wouldn’t understand. ’
Ouch.
Theo deserved that. The Princess was wiser and more grounded than he’d ever anticipated. He bowed his head. ‘Once again, Princess, I need to apologise.’
‘Accepted,’ she said brusquely. ‘And now, I think I’ll turn in. Sleep well.’
She breezed past him and headed up the stairs.
He listened to her footfall, heard the slow click of her door closing, and knew there was no sleep waiting for him.
Whatever point he’d been trying to make, he’d badly botched.
Although it did help him understand why someone as attractive as the Princess hadn’t been snatched up already.
Theos. He’d called her “not unattractive”.
It was a wonder she hadn’t slapped him across the face.
He glanced at his watch. The Princess was right, it was time to turn in. Time to be done with watching her. Time to be out of her presence. He’d told himself he wasn’t attracted to her. He’d tried to convince herself of that. He couldn’t afford to be attracted to her.
But truth was, he needed to get away from her, to get out of her presence, before he started to believe her story.
The night was one howling mess. The wind blew, the rain lashed, and the palm tree fronds rattled as they shook and smacked into each other.
Theo barely slept, wishing the storm would die down so that the airport would open, no matter how unlikely that seemed with the racket going on outside, and that they could fly out tomorrow.
Hoping that he wouldn’t be hijacked during the night again.
He’d employed the same improvised alarms that he’d employed the night before, his bedroom door was still open in case the Princess tried to flee out the front door, but tonight he’d secured his door with a tie to ensure it couldn’t be pushed open enough to allow someone access—if he even managed to snatch a moment of sleep.
He needed desperately to sleep, but it was too dangerous. He turned over in his bed, punching his pillow into submission.
Given what had happened earlier this evening, if the Princess did find a way into his room again, knowing what he knew and how good she felt, would he even bother to send her away?
Of course, he would.
It was ridiculous even contemplating the question. But the fact he’d even had to ask himself required some serious analysis.
Never before had he felt the pull of attraction for one of his rescues. And not since Sophia had he felt the power of attraction for any woman. No woman could take the place of Sophia. So why did the Princess affect him so?
She was both a rescue and a Princess. Double the reason to deliver her safely home untouched by him. He had a contract to find and return her.
He had a duty to return her.
Attraction didn’t come into it.
Her story about her brother selling her off didn’t come into it. That wasn’t part of his remit. That wasn’t something he was contracted to consider. His job was to get her home. End of story.
Except…
Her story still niggled at his conscience. The idea that she’d run away because the Prince planned to marry off his sister in order to settle his gambling debts was fanciful. A fancy she’d then embellished by saying the man she’d been promised to was in his fifties.
Trying to convince him by enhancing the injustice?
An attempt to further appeal to his sense of right and wrong by stressing their difference in ages?
She’d got him there. The idea that he was returning her home only to be forced to marry a man in his fifties that she wanted no part of—that wouldn’t just be a waste.
It would be a crime.
The Princess was young and vibrant and was entitled to be living her life with the man of her choice.
But if she were lying and her story completely fabricated?
On the other hand, her brother’s story was equally thin.
The Princess didn’t look in the least bit worried or envious about not being the one to occupy Rubanestein’s throne.
If the Princess was so certain she should be the one to sit on the throne, surely she would be bagging her brother’s efforts at ruling the principality, pulling him down at every opportunity, pushing her own credibility to perform the role instead.
On the contrary, she seemed more interested in just being able to live her life the way she wanted.
Certainly, she’d run for a reason. But right now, uncomfortably, her story was making the more sense.
So where did that leave him? She didn’t mean anything to him, not really, other than providing endless irritation one way or another.
When she wasn’t needling him with her smart tongue, she was driving him to distraction with her lush mouth or her beguiling eyes or her all too bewitching body.
She was a pint-sized distraction he didn’t need.
It would be a relief to see the back of her.
And given he was contracted to return her to Rubanestein, what choice did he have?