roiling his gut. ‘Are you saying you want this crazy marriage?’
‘Alliance,’ she corrected, her eyes calm. ‘Don’t panic, Charlie; it isn’t personal.’ She nibbled the inside of her lip again. A subtle gesture, and one most wouldn’t see, but Charlie could feel her fear, sense her worry, the loneliness of her position—and the stakes he still didn’t know became more urgent, reflected in the shadows inside her eyes. Eyes that, looking more closely, he noted were more like old Irish whisky than chestnut. ‘I know you care about others, or you wouldn’t have risked your life for that little girl, or the dozens of others we discovered you’ve rescued.’ Her gaze searched his in deep-hidden pleading and anxiety.
Not knowing what to say or do, he nodded, wishing he didn’t have to, but her complete honesty demanded his in return.
‘We need your help on a larger and more lasting scale than anyone you’ve saved in the past. There are five-hundred-year-old laws that need changing. Not merely that, but thousands of people lost family and homes and rights during the civil war. Some of my people have nothing. And, if you leave, they’ll have nothing to look forward to. Nothing.’
Though she’d said it three times, the word still held a starkness, a rawness too strong for her to be putting on an act.
‘I’m listening,’ he said quietly.
Her eyes lit from within, and his body tightened in spite of the gravity of the conversation. She was so pretty, so certain of her convictions. ‘I want to bring Hellenia into the modern world, but with the way the law currently stands I can’t do it alone. If you renounce your position, I lose my chance. According to laws in place since we took power in the 1700s, there must be an heir from the male Marandis line, or the crown reverts to a direct descendant of the royal family that was forcibly removed in the 1700s. The Orakis family was deposed by the people for their selfish and immoral ways. The head of the rebel force—a national hero, Angelis Marandis—was asked to become king. Marandis didn’t want to take the crown, but he did, for the sake of his people.’
Charlie nodded again, feeling an unwanted kinship with this long-dead relative. He’d heard most of this from the ambassador in Canberra, but it was obvious she had something to say, and interrupting her would break her train of thought.
The princess sighed. ‘The Orakis family never left. They’ve started civil wars, fomented unrest in troubled times—such as during World War Two, when our ally Greece was overrun. The troubles in Albania have given the Orakis supporters the opportunity to try to regain power in secret during the last twenty years.’ She stopped, nibbling her lip again. Looking almost adorably lost.
Trying with all his might not to respond to her plea, to touch her, he nodded. ‘Lady Eleni told us all that in Canberra.’
She smiled at his awkward attempt to comfort her. ‘Sorry if I appear to be going over old ground, but you need to understand why your decision is important to far more people than you and Lia. Markus Orakis is an autocrat in the old mould, believing in his right to rule. Orakis’s father spent twenty years trying to reclaim the throne.’ She blinked once, twice, but the suspicious sheen turned her eyes into beautiful mirror-pools of the suffering she saw in her people’s future. She looked up, those mysterious eyes shimmering with emotion, drenching his soul with her courage and her selfless duty.
‘It’s not that he’s a terrorist—he’s not. He just wouldn’t change anything. He’d keep Hellenia in the seventeenth century to keep the monarchy absolute and unchallenged. He’d put his family and followers in strategic positions to consolidate his power, and destroy anyone who threatened him.’ She sighed. ‘You’ve watched the international news, right? This isn’t melodrama. It’s what this kind of man does. They start with good intentions, doing good to the nation, then power goes to their heads and they justify any act of violence. He’s already that way with the following he has.’
Again, Charlie nodded. Anyone who watched the news could name the dictators who’d done exactly as Jazmine was predicting Orakis would do. ‘Go on.’
She touched his hand, and he could feel her trembling as she delivered her final words with the subtlety of a battle axe to his skull. ‘Ask yourself—if he could have returned, would your grandfather have done so? For his people, the people he loved? And, now he can’t, wouldn’t he want you and Lia to try?’
Ah, hell…
Click: a tiny sound in his brain, but deadly. It was the sound of manacles around his wrists. She’d found the key to his capitulation, and turned it without hesitation.
If he could have, Papou would have come back. He’d have urged Charlie to try to help if he could— and, despite his denial, he knew Lia’s answer. In all her life she’d never let anyone down, never said no if she was in a position to help. To her, the suffering in Hellenia would make this choice a sacred commission, the chance to put right Papou’s wrong in choosing love over duty.
An hour into their relationship, and she’d put his wrists in cuffs. For the sake of the Hellenican people: Papou’s people; her people. And for her sake, because it seemed the perfect princess did need a hero after all.
The perfect shell of the mysterious princess was a fragile illusion that, when shattered, couldn’t be reinstated. Those private, proud eyes had cried for him, and if he turned his back now he’d regret it for the rest of his life.
‘Enough, Your Highness.’ His tone froze even him, but he was losing the freedom he treasured. He might have to accept it, but he didn’t have to like it. ‘I’ll go back in there and behave. I gather that’s what you want?’
The appealing loveliness of her vanished as if it had never been. ‘There will be much more than that, Your Highness—but let’s take on one obstacle at a time.’
She was every inch the princess, cool and detached. But the woman of passion and commitment lingered like a super-imposition; her warm and vital heart beat beneath the icy layer she projected. He saw the princess, but heard the woman within. He saw her, beautiful and so earnest, pleading with him to stay. She’d stripped her defences, not for herself, but for the sake of her people.
He wondered why, when she could have used other cool, level-headed arguments, she’d chosen to show her real, hidden self to him.
‘Time to bow to the old dragon,’ he said, not without ruefulness. He didn’t want to, but he’d given his word. He put the choking tie back in place as she slipped her feet back into the heels that were way too high for so small a woman. ‘See, princess, I can pretend to be civilized every now and then.’
The smile she gave in return seemed remote, yet the super-imposition remained. As if she stood in a mirror, he could see the reflection of her uncertainty beneath—and it was that hidden woman under the princess’s surface face he couldn’t make himself reject.
He held out his arm to her. He’d have liked a more intimate touch. Holding hands would tell him if the simmering fascination he was feeling for her was returned, or if it was all duty on her side.
But the minders waited on the other side of the door. And two stood in strategic positions outside on the terrace. When it came to private matters, he’d never been one to put on a show.
Jazmine rose gracefully to her feet and slipped her arm through his. ‘Think of it as a game,’ she suggested. ‘You say yes, you capitulate—for now—and you make plans. When it’s your turn, you can change what you like, from law, protection levels and privacy, to the rate
