shook her head. The headpiece wobbled. Madeline made a disapproving, clucking sound as she straightened it again.
“It’s just too fast, that’s all.”
“Too fast,” Madeline echoed. “Did I miss something?” she wanted to know. “Switching your emotions from loathing and dread to whoopee shouldn’t be all that difficult.”
It was fine for Madeline to make jokes about it. Madeline wasn’t being served up on a tray named Diplomacy. “I can’t shake the feeling that I’m still being used as a pawn.”
Like Amelia, Madeline had grown up around politics all of her life and had made it a point to pay close heed. Unseduced by the glamour of a fairy-tale wedding, she knew exactly what was happening.
Slowly, she surveyed Amelia from all angles. The ceremony was set to begin in a few minutes. “By your father? Obviously. But since the king on the chessboard is Carrington instead of Reginald, being captured shouldn’t be something to drag your feet about.”
“No, I mean by Carrington. I feel, no, I mean I’m afraid,” Amelia amended, “that he might be using me as a pawn.”
“Carrington?” Surprise and amusement played along her face. “Amelia, think. Carrington doesn’t need you to become king. He doesn’t need an alliance with Gastonia to put him on the throne. But you need him to protect Gastonia from dreadful little countries like Naessa, remember?”
But the fear refused to go away. Because Russell had kept his distance, it had gotten a toehold on her and insisted on festering.
She drew Madeline close to her and lowered her voice. “What if, after our night together, Russell decided to have the prince killed?”
Madeline’s eyes met hers. Amelia couldn’t tell what she was thinking. And then she saw that quirky smile she was so familiar with that lifted only one corner of her friend’s mouth. The one that mocked her good-naturedly. “My, my, and don’t we have the swelled head? Just how good do you think you were in bed?”
Amelia sighed, waving a hand. Madeline was right. She was overthinking this. It was just that it all seemed so surreal to her. “I guess I’m just confused.”
Still looking at her in the mirror, Madeline placed her hands on her friend’s shoulders and gave her a little comforting squeeze. “Honey, Carrington is crazy about you. Anyone looking at him can see that. This is a good thing, I promise.” Releasing, her, Madeline stepped back. “Just this once, it looks as if your fairy godmother has really come through for you. Enjoy it. Enjoy him.” Madeline’s quirky smile made a return appearance. “Or if you don’t want to, I will gladly become your second string and you can send me in to take your place.”
The tension broke and Amelia began to laugh, really laugh. She laughed so hard that she found herself holding on to her sides. “Oh God, that felt good. What would I ever do without you, Madeline?”
Born without a single bone of conceit in her body, Madeline assured her, “You’d muddle through. It would just take you a little longer, that’s all.” Familiar chords began to resonate over the intercom in the vestibule. It was time. Madeline gave Amelia an encouraging smile. “I think they’re playing your song, Princess.”
The butterflies in her stomach made a quantum leap, butting wings against one another. Amelia’s hand flew to her stomach and she pressed against it, feeling as if she was going to throw up. “Oh, God.”
“Just smile and look gorgeous,” Madeline advised. “And remember to say ‘I do’ in the right place.” Bending, she shifted Amelia’s train so that she could walk out of the small room. “Just remember, this could have been Reginald and thank your lucky stars that you wound up dodging that bullet.”
Amelia opened the door. The other bridesmaids, a mixture of women she’d known since childhood and daughters from prominent families, all began talking at once.
The sound formed a wall of noise around her. Amelia forced a smile to her lips and froze it there as she exited the small room.
It was time to meet her destiny.
He looked so stern, Amelia thought as she approached Russell and the altar in rhythmic, measured steps, her hand resting lightly on her father’s arm. Shouldn’t he be smiling?
Russell stood by the minister who was officiating at the ceremony. Close beside him was the king, taking his place as the best man. She knew that the monarch had insisted on it because it made him feel closer to Reginald. Right next to Weston were the groomsmen.
All she could really see was Russell.
His face looked rigid, as if he were waiting for a battle cry instead of his bride-to-be.
Fear ran in on spiked cleats. Was this a mistake? Should she have insisted on having the ceremony canceled, or at the very least, postponed, until matters between them had been ironed out?
Until the matter of whether or not the prince had been murdered was resolved?
Any way she looked at it, this just didn’t seem like the ideal time to get married. The whole country, not to mention the relationship between the two of them, was in a state of chaos. Yet here she was, approaching the altar, about to say the words that would officially join their two countries, their two destinies.
Something inside Amelia wanted her to raise her skirts, turn on her heel and run as fast as she could to the nearest exit. But she didn’t do any of that, she continued approaching the altar. Approaching Russell.
Despite everything, she thought, as King Roman placed her hand in Russell’s, she loved him. That much she was certain of. No matter what he might be guilty of, she loved Russell.
For better or worse.
The words had added significance to her as she heard them being said by the minister. She repeated them, cadence for cadence, glancing up only briefly at the man she said them to.
Russell’s expression remained unreadable. She could feel the frost forming around her heart.
Lucia Cordez, dressed in a stunning, blue street-length dress that lovingly adhered to every supple curve her finely trimmed, martial-arts-trained body had to offer, dabbed subtly at her light blue eyes as she pretended to be moved by the ceremony she and so many others were attending.
No one had questioned her presence. With a Latin father and a mother who was half African American, half Caucasian, and blessed with model-perfect good looks, Lucia had the kind of face and bearing that easily allowed her to fit in anywhere people of quality gathered.
She’d arrived in Silvershire a little more than an hour ago, just in time to catch Carrington before he left for the church. She’d put a few pertinent questions to the duke, the most important of which was whether he knew the whereabouts of the late prince’s laptop. He’d had the presence of mind to place it under lock and key within his own room.
Lucia had commended him for his action and taken possession of the key. The moment the reception got underway, she intended to make herself scarce and get started hacking into the prince’s computer files. Because Reginald had been Silvershire’s future king, his files had been highly secured with intricate pass codes that only he had known. She had come prepared. Cracking them could take her a matter of hours, or it could take as long as several months.
