Virgin Princess's Marriage Debt

‘What are you doing here?’ Sofia demanded, apparently satisfied that there were no longer people to overhear them as her raised voice was carried away on the night air. Her outrage struck him low in the chest.

‘Why? Not used to discovering an ill-bred bastard amongst your high-society companions?’

‘What?’ He noticed her brow pucker in momentary confusion. ‘That has nothing to do with anything.’

‘No? I’d have thought your security teams would have vetted every single person here, check their DNA for their blue-blood credentials.’

‘Don’t be such a snob.’

Now he was outraged. ‘How dare you accuse me of being a snob?’

‘Just because it’s reverse snobbery, it doesn’t make it any less prejudicial.’

‘You’re speaking nonsense.’

‘Because I disagree with you? You never did—’

‘Don’t. Do not talk to me of what I did or did not do in the past,’ he spat as he lifted his mask away from his face and cast it aside onto the thick emerald grass of the gardens.

He watched her almost physically bite her tongue and he used the moment to take her in. The Sofia he knew had been breathtaking, but Sofia de Loria the Princess was obscenely beautiful. Her cheeks had lost some of the softness, striking cheekbones sculpting her face to perfection. The thick plaits of golden hair wrapped around her head glowed silver in the starlight of the night sky. A high brow made even more superior with the arch of a perfect, rich, honeyed eyebrow peeking out from the top of the mask, brilliant golden furls glinting in the moonlight.

And, as always, crystal-blue eyes crackled and sparked as she tried to repress the anger she clearly felt. An anger he matched, if not exceeded. Oh, he’d had his share of beautiful women in the last two years, once he’d given himself permission to relish and enjoy the success that all his hard work had reaped. Once he’d lifted his self-imposed embargo on sensual pursuits. But no matter how many times he’d cursed her to hell and back, he’d never been able to deny Sofia’s beauty.

But even in that he knew he lied to himself. It wasn’t just a simple fact of her beauty. It was as if a chemical reaction had ignited within him, fizzing in his veins, urging him to reach out and touch her. Draw her to him and seek her mouth, her kiss…to feed the burning arousal he had really only ever felt with this woman. He wanted her, needed her, with every ounce of his being. But he fought it. He would not give in to the temptation she unconsciously offered.

Sofia felt her chest heave against the confines of the tight corset as her body struggled for an outlet for the anger and pure shock at Theo’s appearance. Masked, he was impressive. Unmasked he was undeniable. Age had only honed what were already incredible features. Even in his youth he had stood heads above even the older students, and now she had to crane her neck to look up at his scowling gaze, his deep brown irises swirling like the richest espresso. His clenched jaw was dusted with a fine dark stubble as if, even in that, Theo rejected the same propriety that saw every other man there either clean-shaven or fully bearded. His straight nose created a sense of balance between the downward slashes of his cheekbones, and the night cast his proud jaw in deep shadows.

In obvious frustration he ran his hand through his thick hair and on any other man the result would have looked chaotic, but on Theo? It just made Sofia want to reach out and do the same. He was magnificent and for a second she imagined that she could reach for him, that she could draw him to her. Desire, thick and fast, rose up within her chest, even as she knew that she could not act upon it, should not feel it.

She tried not to flinch at the sound of apparent disgust as he finally turned that lethal focus of his to her, casting the entire length of her body in a glance that was anything but lazy, or accidental. No. There was purpose to this…to make her uncomfortable, and she hated that it was working.

‘If you’ve had your fill and there’s nothing else?’ She refused to stand there before his assessment and be found wanting. She just couldn’t. Not tonight. She still had to meet with Joachim, the third possible suitor, her last hope. She could not stand here caught between the past and her future—it was threatening to tear her apart.

Sofia turned to leave, but his hand snuck out and caught her at her wrist. His hold deceptively gentle. The delicate ring his fingers created around her skin thrummed with repressed tension. He tugged, and she almost fell against his chest and this time she just managed to stop her hand from leaning on his chest for…balance, she told herself. Balance.

With her hand still hovering mid-air between them, she risked a glance at his face. It was so close, angled down at her, lips that once she would have delighted in now cruelly sensual and taunting her with a knowing smile. But the anger in his eyes was easier to read than her own reaction, and she welcomed it, embraced it, used it to fuel her now.

‘I’m here for an apology.’

‘An apology?’ Sofia didn’t know how he’d caused her to revert to the stammering seventeen-year-old she’d once been. More than a decade of training, diplomacy, education and learning trade negotiations and she seemed only capable of two words around this man.

She knew she owed Theo an apology…more than that. An explanation at the very least, but before she could summon the words to her lips, he pressed on.

‘You doubt it?’

‘No, not at all, I—’

‘Do you know what I regret most? That even as I waited the first hour for you, the second, hidden amongst that ridiculous shrubbery, I didn’t even doubt you. It didn’t even cross my mind that you wouldn’t show. I waited, like a moon-eyed calf, half drunk on love for you. Even afterwards, when the headmaster came to find me, told me of the trick you pulled on his car, my first concern was for you, not for myself. My fear was that something had happened to you.’

She felt shame slash across her cheeks in a dark crimson blush, painful and stinging, as if he had slapped her with his hands rather than his words. And all the wishes, wonderings and dreams of what happened to him that night were painted in stark reality by his words.

‘It didn’t take me long to realise, though. Realise what you had done that night and in the weeks, months leading up to it. To realise that everything you had told me was lies, Your Highness.’

Secrets and lies had come back to haunt her and Sofia turned her head away, but his fingers, once again seemingly gentle, but determined, found her chin, and brought her back round to face him, to see the truth written in his eyes.

‘Can you imagine what it was like to realise that I had fallen in love with a fabrication? That everything I’d felt was simply the by-product of the ruse of a bored, pampered princess with nothing more to do with her time than to move people around a chessboard of her own imagination? That I was expelled because of your actions?’

Shock reared through her, and she stepped back as if she could distance herself from what he was saying.

‘I didn’t—’

‘You didn’t know?’ he demanded harshly, his fury palpable, shaking the very air between them. ‘You didn’t even know?’ He cursed harshly. ‘You all but ensured it when you left my scarf, my scarf, beneath the car. Tell me, did you even think of me when you ran back to your country playing the part of the perfect princess as I was kicked out of school? When I lost the scholarships to every single university I had gained entry to? When my mother was fired and we were forced to return to her family with little more than what we could carry? I thought of you, all the while knowing that everything we had lost, every struggle we experienced, was because of your lies!’

Sofia was struck dumb by the pain his words evoked, and the truth that lay within them. She hadn’t known that he had been expelled, she hadn’t even remembered that she’d been wearing his scarf when she pulled the prank with the car. Because that night, in between her plan to get revenge against the headmaster and meeting Theo, her parents had come to the school and revealed that her father had been diagnosed with early onset dementia. And in that moment, the bottom had fallen out of her world.

Every thought, hope and dream she’d ever held in her heart since falling in love with Theo had flashed through her mind, while she should have been focusing on the physical and mental sentence that had been handed to her father. That the entire time her parents had patiently tried to explain what that meant, what would happen, how she would have to ascend to the throne much sooner than anyone had ever planned for, all she had thought of was him. Theo. Standing there, waiting for her to come.

She had begged and pleaded with her parents to allow her to speak to Theo. To find him where he waited for her. To tell him what was happening. But her father had been uncompromising—no one could know of his diagnosis. No one. And then they had bundled her into a car, and then a private jet, and the whole time she had felt as if she had left her heart behind.

So, no. She hadn’t thought of what had happened to him after that night, because she couldn’t. She just couldn’t allow herself to go there. Because every time she did, what little remained of her heart fractured and shattered just a little bit more.

But she couldn’t explain that to Theo. Not now. Because her father’s diagnosis still had the power to rock the already shaky foundations of her precious country. Because this? This moment between them wasn’t about her or what she could say to justify what had happened that night. This was about him, and God help her, but she deserved every single word, every single feeling he expressed. She needed to honour that, because it was the only thing she would ever be able to give him.

‘Tell me, Sofia, did you mean any of it? The pleas you made, the plans…the future you fabricated, all the while knowing it was impossible? Punctuating lies with kisses? Untruths with touches and caresses? When did you know that you would ruin me, Sofia? Before you first spoke to me, or when you realised how easily manipulated I would be?’

‘That is enough,’ Sofia commanded, digging through the hurt to find some kind of strength to ward off the harshness of his words.

‘Enough? I’ve barely even begun. “Please take me away, Theo, I cannot return to Iondorra, Theo. Help me. Theo.”’ The cruel mockery his voice made of her childhood words stung as much as the memory of her desperation to escape the confines of a royal life she had been forced to accept.

Theo knew that he had gone too far. He had said too much. Revealed too much of his own pain and heartbreak. And he hated himself for that. He saw the moment that his words hit home, the shimmer of unshed tears in her eyes more bright than any star that night. He cursed, the breeze carrying it away from them. He steeled himself against the innate sympathy welling within him, knowing better this time than to fall for her games.

‘Christós, I didn’t know you at all, did I?’

Suddenly the cord that had bound them in the past snapped, pinging away under the pressure of a decade of hurt and distance between them. And he watched, half fascinated as that royal mantle settled once more around her shoulders, leaving no trace of the young girl he had once loved. Instead, a fury stood before him, iron will steeling her spine and her body as if no soft movement had ever settled beneath her skin.

‘You are right. You did not know me. You knew a child. A girl who was reckless, pulled pranks and gave no heed to the people or things about her. A pampered young woman, who knew nothing of real life, or consequences. I am sorry if that girl hurt you, caused you pain. Truly. But she is gone, living only in your memories and imagination.’

It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough, her half apology. Pain reared its ugly head. Not for the loss of her, he assured himself, but the years he endured after her. The years his mother endured. They did not live solely in his imagination. They were etched across his heart and hands as he had clawed his way to where he stood today.

‘Now, if you don’t mind—’

‘Off to find your next husband?’

She stilled her entire body. It was unusual for her, because everything about her contained a restless energy, its sudden and shocking absence such a stark contrast, and for a moment he could have been forgiven for thinking she’d turned to stone.

‘How do you…?’

He huffed out a cynical laugh. ‘Still keeping your secrets and lies close to your chest? Well, this time I’ve made sure that I will not fall for either. Unlike whatever poor bastard you’ve chosen for your next target.’