looked at it from every conceivable angle and there was no escape. From the moment she’d seen Spiros’s face, full of incredulous hope, she’d known what she had to do.
Alex had come back the next day and she had her answer ready.
‘Yes,’ she’d told him. ‘For a year. No more. And you touch me and the deal is off. It’s a marriage in name only. Is that clear?’
‘It’s what I want,’ he’d told her. Then, watching her, clearly unable to figure out her response, he’d added, ‘It’s a marriage, Lily. It’s not the gallows you’re walking into.’
‘It’s a trap,’ she’d said. ‘I’m doing it but I don’t have to like it.’
‘It’s not a trap of my setting and I don’t like it either,’ he’d said.
And then he’d left. There was financial chaos in Sappheiros, he’d told her, and he had to sort it out. But the wedding was to take place by the end of the month.
And then the roller coaster began. Or the avalanche. Or whatever it was, but it made her so giddy she thought surely she must still be drifting in and out of the same nightmare world she’d been in before.
Arrangements, arrangements, arrangements. Curt, formal telephone calls with Alex, interspersed by longer calls from officialdom, arranging everything from her bridal gown to a white teething ring for Michales so he could chew his gummy way through the ceremony and still look… bridal?
Yes, the thing was ridiculous, and finally she decided okay, if it was ridiculous she’d simply treat it as a joke gone wrong. She’d close her eyes and get it over with.
And here she was. Her wedding day.
She was about to enter the cathedral where Alexandros had taken his vows two months before. The last time she’d entered this cathedral, she’d slipped in at the rear, wanting to remain anonymous.
Now… Every man and woman was on their feet, waiting for her entrance, and Alex was standing at the altar. The Archbishop was in front and central. Waiting for her.
She was ready to walk down the aisle. Alone.
‘Have Spiros give you away,’ Alex had told her. ‘You can’t do this by yourself. Stefanos and Nikos will attend me. You need bridesmaids. At least have Spiros.’
‘I need no one,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t see why we can’t do this in a government office.’
‘It needs to be done with all the pomp and splendour we can muster,’ he’d told her. ‘The islanders need reassurance that this is real—no one should disbelieve that you’re my wife.’
‘I’m not your wife.’
‘You are,’ he’d said gravely. ‘You’ve agreed.’
‘Until you have the island stable. No more.’
‘Then for the time we have I’ll do you honour.’ In a different tone this might have been a lovely thing to say but it was said in the tone of a man who knew where his duty lay. ‘As the country will do you honour and as you’ll do yourself honour. It’s meant as a reassurance to the country that we can move forward. There’ll be nothing secret or covert about it. You’ll wear full royal regalia, as will I.’
This final decree had left her almost speechless. ‘A real royal wedding?’ She hadn’t attended Mia’s wedding—they’d been so distant by then that Mia would never have thought of inviting her—but she’d seen the media coverage and the thought of doing the same left her cold. ‘You’re telling me what I should wear?’
‘My people tell me there’s no time to make you a completely new gown but if you’ll agree… The royal wedding gowns have been amazing over the centuries, and they’ve been carefully stored and kept, every one. If we can get you here a few days before the wedding, we can get one altered. You could even wear Mia’s.’
And then he’d listened to the silence and conceded, ‘Okay, maybe not Mia’s. But there will be one that fits you. There’s no time to make you one as splendid, and this has to be done right.’
Fine. She was past arguing.
She could do it.
She’d flown here four days ago. The royal assembly line had swung into place the minute she’d arrived. She’d been shown to her own apartment within the palace—an apartment she assumed would be hers for the duration of her marriage. It was opulent to the point of crazy. They’d suggested Michales use the royal nursery and she’d knocked that on the head. There was a cot in the corner of her apartment now; as long as she had Michales she could live anywhere.
So she’d done what was expected, whatever she was told. She’d hardly seen Alexandros and then only when he’d been surrounded by palace officials, lawyers, advisors.
She’d been given her own lawyers. That had surprised her. In all the chaos she’d been given this one sliver of control. The lawyers had been engaged in her name, and they’d been competent and thorough in drawing up a pre-nuptial agreement for her protection. She had no doubt that at the end of her marriage she could walk away—with Michales and with an allowance that made her head swim.
She’d put up a feeble protest about the money but her lawyers had simply ignored it.
‘This pre-nuptial agreement may well become public and the Prince must be seen as doing the right thing by you and his son,’ she’d been told, and once again she’d subsided.
As she’d subsided in everything. At least Michales would always be well provided for.
But now… The organ blared into its triumphant wedding march. Reality was suddenly right here. She’d been pushed off the end of the royal conveyor belt and here she was, about to be married.
She wasn’t… her. She was inside some creature wearing full bridal gear, extravagant to the point of ridiculous, inside a cathedral, about to be married.
It wasn’t Lily who was doing this. It was someone else. Lily was trapped inside.
The doors swung open. At the end of the aisle… Alex.
For two weeks she’d blocked him almost completely from her mind. She was about to be married but this wasn’t about Alex. It wasn’t about either of them.
Maybe her decision to walk down the aisle on her own had been a mistake. She wouldn’t mind Spiros’s arm to lean on right now. She wouldn’t mind anything to lean on.
She needed to start walking.
Alex was waiting.
No. She told herself that sharply. It wasn’t Alex. Just as she was trapped inside someone else, the man at the end of the aisle was a stranger, some prince in his regimentals, waiting to marry a woman in a gown of shimmering beaded lace, with a glorious train trailing twenty feet behind her, with a three-tiered veil attached with a tiara, which had come straight from the royal vaults, the dresser had breathed. Worth a king’s ransom.
Her legs felt frozen.
Do this and get it over with, she
