The Prince She Never Knew

He lifted his head and she smiled and waved to the crowd. It was done.

Still smiling, Leo led her to the waiting carriage, all gilt and scrollwork, like something out of a fairy tale. A Cinderella carriage for a Cinderella bride.

He helped her in and then sat next to her on the narrow leather seat, his thigh pressing against her hip, her dress billowing over his lap. The liveried coachman closed the door and they were off for a celebratory ride through the city, then back to the palace for the reception.

As soon as the door had closed, Leo’s smile, his mask, dropped. There was no need for it now; no one was watching. He turned to her, a frown appearing between his brows.

‘You’re too pale.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I’m tired.’

Leo’s frown deepened, and then it ironed out and he sighed and raked his hands through his hair. ‘It’s no wonder. The last few days have been exhausting. I expect it will be good to get away.’

They were leaving tomorrow for a ten-day honeymoon: first a week on a private Caribbean island and then a whistle-stop tour through London, Paris and Rome.

Alyse’s insides quaked as she thought of that first week. An entire week alone, without cameras or crowds, no one to perform for, no audience to entertain. A week completely by themselves.

She lived in both hope and fear of that week.

‘Yes,’ she said now, and thankfully her voice remained steady, strong. ‘I expect it will.’

Leo turned to the window and waved at the crowds lining the ancient cobbled streets of Averne, and Alyse turned to her own window and waved as well. Each flutter of her fingers drained her, as if she were lifting a huge weight. Her engagement ring, an enormous emerald surrounded by pearls and diamonds, sparkled in the sun.

She didn’t know why everything felt so much harder now. She’d been living this life for six years, after all. She’d come to enjoy her interactions with the public and had learned to live with the media’s attention.

Yet today, on her wedding day, with nearly the last words she’d spoken having been vows before the world, before God...

She felt the falseness of their masquerade more than ever. They’d only been married a few minutes and already she felt how difficult, how draining, this life of play-acting was going to be. She’d been moving towards that realisation for months as the weight had dropped off and her stomach had churned with nerves, as everything had steamrolled ahead with such frightening implacability that she had known she couldn’t call a halt to the proceedings even if she’d wanted to. The pretending.

And the terrible truth was, she still didn’t want to. She’d still rather hope.

‘Alyse?’

She turned from the window where she’d been blindly staring at the crowds, her hand rising and falling in a fluttering wave without even realising she was doing so. ‘Yes?’

‘You don’t look well,’ Leo said and he sounded concerned. ‘Do you need a few moments to rest before we go into the reception?’

Alyse knew what the reception would entail: hours of chatting, laughing and pretending to be in love. Of kissing Leo, squeezing his hand and laying her head on his shoulder. She’d done it all before, of course, but now it hurt more. It felt, absurdly perhaps, more fake.

‘I’m fine.’ She smiled and turned back to the window so he wouldn’t see how her smile trembled and almost slid right off her face. ‘I’m fine,’ she said again, this time for herself, because she needed to believe it. She was stronger than this. She had to be stronger, because she’d chosen this life, knowing how hard it would be.

At times it might have felt as if she had no choice, with the pressure of both the media and the monarchy urging her to agree, but if she’d really wanted to break off the engagement she surely could have. She would have found the strength to.

No, she’d chosen this life, and chosen Leo; she’d believed in the duty she was performing and she’d held out for love.

She still did. Today was a beginning, she reminded herself. Today was the start of her and Leo’s life together, days and nights spent with each other in a way neither of them had ever experienced before. Maybe, finally, Leo would fall in love with her.

* * *

Leo just wanted this day to be over. Although of course with its end would come a whole new, and rather interesting, complication: the night. Their wedding night.

He glanced again at Alyse; her face was turned away from him but he could still see how pale and wan she looked. And thin. The dress clung to her figure, which had already been slender but now looked rather waif-like. Clearly the strain of the heightened media attention had got to her over these last few months.

Just as it had got to him. He’d lived his life in the spotlight and he certainly should be used to it now. As a child, the play-acting for the media had confused him, but as he’d grown older he’d accepted it as the price he had to pay for the sake of his duty to the crown. At least this time, with Alyse, he’d chosen it. He’d entered this loveless marriage willingly, even happily.

Because wasn’t it better to know love was a sham from the beginning, than to live in desperate yearning for it—just as he had done for the whole of his confused and unhappy childhood?

At least he and Alyse agreed on that. She’d always known he didn’t love her, and he knew she didn’t love him. Really, it was the perfect foundation for a marriage: agreed and emotionless expectations.

Yet he’d found the last few months of intense media speculation and interest wearying. The charade of acting as if they were in love had started to wear thin. And he’d wondered, not for the first time, just why Alyse had agreed to this marriage.

He’d never asked her, had never wanted to know. It was enough that she’d agreed, and she’d gone along with it ever since. Just as he had.

Only, unlike him, she had no incentive to please the press, no duty to repair a badly damaged monarchy and increase the tourist revenue for a small and struggling country. No need to pretend to be wildly in love. So why had she agreed all those years ago? Why had she continued to agree?

He had to assume it was because, like him, she wanted this kind of marriage. Or maybe she just wanted this kind of life—the life of a princess and one day a queen. He didn’t fault her for it. She wouldn’t be the first person to have her head turned by wealth and fame. In any case, she’d approached their union with a practical acceptance he admired, and she’d embraced the public as much as they’d embraced her.

Really, she was perfect. So why did he wonder? Why did he now feel a new, creeping uncertainty? The questions—and the lack of answers—annoyed him. He liked certainty and precision; he prided himself on both.

He didn’t want to wonder about his bride on his wedding day. Didn’t want to worry about why she looked so pale and shaky, or why her smile seemed less assured. He wanted things to be simple, straightforward, as they had been for the last six years.

There was no reason for marriage to complicate matters, he told himself.

The carriage came to a stop in front of the palace and he turned to her with a faint smile, determined to banish his brooding thoughts and keep their relationship on the courteous yet impersonal footing they’d maintained for their entire engagement.

‘Shall we?’ he said, one eyebrow lifted, and Alyse managed just as faint a smile back as she took his hand and allowed him to help her out of the carriage.

CHAPTER TWO

THEY WERE ALONE. Every muscle in Alyse’s body ached with exhaustion, yet even so she could not keep a heart-stopping awareness of Leo from streaking through her as he closed the door behind them.

They’d retired to the tower suite, a sumptuous bedroom, bathroom and dressing-room all housed in one of the stone turrets of the ancient royal palace. A fire blazed in the hearth and a huge four-poster bed with silk coverings and sheets took up the main part of the room. Alyse stared at the white silk and lace negligee laid out on the bed and swallowed hard.

She and Leo had never talked about this.

They should have, she supposed, but then they had never really talked about anything. Their relationship—and she could only use that word loosely—had been little more than a long-term publicity stunt. Conversation had been limited to managing their appearances together.

And now they were married. It felt, at least to her, like a complete game-changer. Until now they’d only experienced manufactured moments lived in the public eye; but here, for the first time, they were alone with no need for pretence.

Would this moment be real?

‘Relax,’ Leo said, coming up behind her. Alyse felt his breath on the back of her neck and she suppressed a shiver of both anticipation and nervousness. ‘We’ve been waiting for six years; we don’t need to rush things.’

‘Right,’ she murmured, and then he moved past her to the window. The latticed shutters were thrown open to a starlit sky. Earlier in the evening there had been fireworks all over the city; the celebrations of their marriage had gone on all day.

It was only now that the city’s joy was finally subsiding, everyone heading back to his or her home—and Alyse and Leo to this honeymoon suite.

She watched as Leo loosened his black tie. He’d changed into a tuxedo for the evening party, and she into a designer gown chosen by the team of stylists hired to work on her. It was pale pink, strapless, with a frothy skirt. A Cinderella dress.