Pure Princess, Bartered Bride

“What made you decide to get married?” she asked him finally, frantic to divert her attention from the restless agitation that was eating her alive. If the silence continued to stretch between them, she might be what snapped.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked.

She was sure that he had heard her. How could he not? Every time she shifted away from him he filled the space she created. His arm, his hard thigh, his shoulder brushed against her. A light pressure here, the faintest brush of his sleeve there. He was crowding her, making it hard for her to take a full breath. She was light-headed.

“Why now?” she asked, determined to break this strange, breathless spell that had her in such a panic. She had never been prone to flights of fancy before—she prided herself on being rational, in fact—but this situation was bringing it out in her. Which is perfectly normal, she soothed herself. Completely rational. This situation—being married to a perfect stranger like a medieval spoil of war—was what was not normal. Anyone would be beside herself. Though she couldn’t help thinking anyone else would have refused to be in this situation in the first place—refused to be married off so cold-bloodedly.

Married. The word echoed in her head, sounding more and more like doom each time. Married. Married. Married—

“I was looking for you,” he said, in that deep, sure voice of his that sent spirals of reaction arrowing deep into her bones. “The perfect, proper princess. No one else would do.”

Gabrielle glanced quickly at him, then away. “Of course,” she said politely, to restrain the rising hysteria she was afraid might choke her. “And yet you never met me until today.”

“There was no need.”

She felt more than saw the arrogant shrug. Temper twined with her distress and she felt her blood pump, hot and angry. No need?

“Naturally,” she agreed, in the most polite and iciest tone she could manage. “Why meet your bride? How modern of me.”

She felt the force of that dark gray gaze and dared herself to meet it. The contact burned. She felt a deep shuddering inside, and had to remind herself to inhale. To blink. To get a hold of herself.

“I am a traditional man,” he said. One dark brow rose, challenging her. “Once my mind is made up, that is sufficient.” On another man she might have thought there was a hint of a smile at the corner of his hard mouth. But his expression was so forbidding, his eyes so gray. She swallowed.

“I see. You decided it was time to get married, and I fit the bill,” she said carefully.

She was like a horse, or a dog—only her bloodline was considered relevant to the proceedings. Had he considered a selection of princesses before deciding she would do? She could feel hysteria rising again, and tried to stave it off by grabbing for her champagne glass. She gulped some of the fizzy liquid before continuing.

“Were there certain requirements to fulfill? A checklist of some kind?” she asked, her voice rising. But was she really surprised? Men like her husband—like her father—thought the feelings of those around them, her feelings, were beneath their notice. Irrelevant.

She thought she might be going mad.

“Gabrielle.”

She stilled at the unexpected sound of her name on his lips. Her fingers clenched tight around the delicate stem of her glass, but the way he said her name was like a bell ringing somewhere deep inside her—even though his tone was firm.

She didn’t understand it. He hadn’t even bothered to meet her before their wedding. And yet he spoke her name and she did his bidding at once, like the purebred dog he thought she was.

“Forgive me,” she said crisply, setting her glass down very precisely next to her plate, piled high with food she had yet to touch. “I think the emotion of the day is going to my head.”

“Perhaps you should eat,” he suggested smoothly, indicating her plate with a nod. Again, the ghost of a smile flirted with his hard mouth. “You must keep up your strength.”

Gabrielle’s eyes flew to his, then dropped to her plate. He could not mean what she thought he did, could he? Surely he couldn’t expect…?

“You look as if you might cry at any moment,” he said from beside her, his voice hard as he leaned closer. She could feel the heat of him pressed against the gossamer-thin sleeve of her dress, burning her, and ordered herself not to jerk away. “The guests will imagine you are having second thoughts.”

There was no missing the sardonic inflection that time. Gabrielle forced herself to smile prettily for the benefit of whoever might be watching.

“Heaven forbid,” she murmured, not realizing she’d spoken aloud until she saw he was watching her, those dark brows raised.

“Eat,” he suggested again.

She did not mistake the undercurrent of steel in his voice, and found herself reaching for her fork. Her body obeyed him without thought even as her mind reeled at his arrogance. What if she was not hungry? Would he force-feed her?

She shied away from that thought immediately, afraid to follow it through. He was…too much. Gabrielle took a bite of the fresh-grilled fish on her plate and tried to imagine what life with this man would be like. She tried to imagine an ordinary Tuesday afternoon. A forgettable Saturday morning. But she could not. She could only imagine his dark eyes flashing and his hands strong and demanding on her. She could only picture tangled limbs and his hot skin sliding against hers.

He was too much.

“Please excuse me,” she murmured, setting her fork down abruptly and presenting him with her most demure smile—as if her body was not undergoing a full-scale riot even as she spoke. She had to stop it. “I’ll be right back.”

“Of course,” Luc said, in the same polite tone. He rose as she rose, pulling back her chair and summoning one of the hovering servants to aid her with her voluminous skirts, courteous in word and deed. He looked like the perfect gentleman, the perfect husband.

And if she had not seen the knowing gleam in his dark gaze she might have been tempted to believe it herself.

Chapter Three

LUC paid only slight attention to the speech King Josef was making.

“Today Miravakia welcomes its future king,” his father-in-law intoned, standing in his full regalia at the head of the long table covered in gleaming silver and white linen, his voice pitched to carry throughout the great room. “But may that day be far off in the future.”

Luc was far more interested in his bride at the moment than stale jokes about royal succession, though the guests laughed heartily—as they were expected to do. It was only polite.

Gabrielle, however, did not laugh with the rest. The color was high on her soft cheeks, and she had been sitting far too still beside him since she’d returned from the powder room, her long skirts rustling as she attempted to angle her body away from him. He preferred her attempts at sparring with him, he thought, amused.

“And what about you?” he asked, picking up their conversation from before as if she had not run away in the middle of it. He wondered idly if she believed she’d fooled him—if she believed he was unaware she had made an excuse to escape him. He dismissed the thought. Let her believe it if it made her feel better about her situation.

She threw a cautious look his way, her eyes more blue than green in the dim glow of the ballroom. She vibrated with tension—and, he thought, awareness. Though Luc considered the possibility that she was too innocent to realize it. It seemed impossible in this day and age, but then Luc was used to achieving the impossible. It was one of his chief defining characteristics.

“Me?” she repeated.

“Why did you choose to marry now?” he asked. Once again, he found himself trying to put her at ease, and was amazed at himself. He had stopped trying to charm women when he was little more than a boy. He didn’t need it. No matter how he behaved, they adored him and begged for more. But none of them had mattered until this one. For her, he would be charming. Her perfection deserved nothing less.

“Choose?” She echoed him again—and then smiled, though this was not her usual gracious smile, the one that she had been wearing all day, beaming around the room. This one was tighter and aimed at her lap, where she clasped her hands in the folds of her wedding dress. “My father expected me to do my duty. And so I have.”

“You are twenty-five.” He watched her closely as he spoke, attuned to the way she worried her full lower lip with her teeth. “Other girls your age live in flats with friends from university. They prefer nightlife and the party circuit to marriage or talk of duty.”

“I am not other girls,” Gabrielle said.

Luc watched, fascinated, as the pulse in the hollow of her neck fluttered wildly. In her lap, her fingers dug into each other. She betrayed no other sign of her agitation.

“My mother died when I was quite young and I was raised to be my father’s hostess.” She expelled a breath. “I will be Queen. I have responsibilities.”

As she spoke, she kept her eyes fixed on her father, who had said something very similar, if Luc recalled correctly. Luc followed her gaze, not at all surprised to see that the King had retaken his seat, without any words specifically directed to his daughter. Evidently this bothered Gabrielle, though she fought to conceal it. Luc could see the sheen of emotion in her eyes, could read her agitation as clearly as if it was in schoolboy Italian.

Luc detested emotion. He loathed the way people blamed their emotions for all manner of sins—as if emotions were separate, ungovernable entities. As if one did not possess a will, a mind.

But Gabrielle, for all the emotion he had sensed in her today, was not letting it rule her. She did not inflict her emotions, her passions, on everyone around her. She did not cause any scenes. She simply sat in her seat, smiling, and handled herself like the queen she would be someday. His queen.

Luc approved. He reminded himself that her finer sensibilities were one of the reasons he had chosen her. Her charity and her empathy could not exist in a vacuum. Perhaps emotion was the price.