of the present day. That their longtime ally and closest neighbor, Santa Domini, had suffered a violent military coup when Reza was a child, had lost its exiled king and most of its royal family when he was eighteen, and had strewn out refugees seeking escape from the harsh military government all this time made Constantinians...upset.
Reza did not particularly care for the fact that his reign was often characterized as “rocky,” purely because he’d had to spend so much of it handling his neighbor’s messes and making up for his father’s adulterous yearnings, the blackmail that had nearly brought the kingdom to war, and the suicide he’d had no choice but to conceal from the public lest all the rest of it come out, too. He’d handled that necessary lie. He’d handled his furious, spiteful mother. He’d even handled his father’s awful mistress. It was unfortunate that no one outside his inner circle knew how much he’d handled. But things were looking up. Next door in Santa Domini, the usurper, General Estes, was dead. The rightful Santa Dominian king’s restoration to the throne had changed his country and calmed the whole region.
If this woman in front of him was the lost, long presumed dead Princess Magdalena as he suspected she was, that changed everything else.
Because Reza had been betrothed to the Santa Domini princess since the day of her birth. And while he prided himself on his ability to live without the mawkish sentiment that had brought down his father and led him straight into an unscrupulous woman’s hands, he suspected that what his people truly wanted was a convenient royal fairy tale with all the trappings. A grand royal wedding to remind them of their happy fantasies about what life in the Constantines was meant to be was just the ticket. It would generate revenue and interest. It would furthermore lead to the high approval ratings and general satisfaction Reza’s grandfather had enjoyed throughout his long reign. Contented subjects, after all, rarely plotted out revolutions.
He opted not to share the happy news with his prospective bride just then.
The woman before him shook slightly as she stared at the picture on his mobile. He’d expected joyful noises, at the very least, as he’d imagined anyone standing in a second-rate resort town undertaking menial labor might make upon learning she was, in all likelihood, meant for greater things than her current dire straits. Or a celebration of some kind, particularly given the circumstances under which he’d found her. On her hands and knees, scrubbing the floor like the lowest servant. Her hair like brittle straw around her bony shoulders, making her look even more pale and skinny than she already was. Wearing the sort of fabrics that looked as if they might set themselves alight if they rubbed together.
Her mouth as foul and crude as the rest of her.
This, then, was his long-lost queen. The fairy-tale creature he would use to beguile his people and secure his throne, all rough, red hands and that sulky, impertinent mouth. He supposed he would have to make the best of it.
And if there was some part of him that was pleased that he could not possibly be in any danger from this creature—that she was about as likely to beguile him as was the exuberant potted plant in the corner—well. He kept that to himself.
She raised her gaze to his again, her eyes a deep, rich caramel that he found he couldn’t read as he wished. He watched the curious way she set her frail shoulders and lifted her stubborn chin. As if she wished to hold him off physically. As if she thought she’d have a chance at it if she tried.
On some level, Reza was deeply appalled she might ever have had reason to lift a finger to protect herself. He was almost entirely certain that she was the lost princess of Santa Domini. His princess. A blood test would merely confirm what was obvious to the naked eye, as the family resemblance was astonishing. And the lost princess of Santa Domini, the future mother of the kings of the Constantines, was not a scrubbing woman. She was not this...hardscrabble washerwoman persona she’d concocted over the past two decades.
He told himself that he should find it in him to be sympathetic. If he was correct in his assumption about what had happened, she’d been granted a strange mercy indeed—but that made it no less merciful.
“I don’t have a mother,” she told him, without the faintest shred of deference. Or any hint of manners. And Reza admired her spirit, he supposed, even if he deeply disapproved of its application. “And if I did, she certainly wasn’t the queen of anything, unless maybe you mean welfare.”
Reza ignored that, already trying to work out how he could possibly take this...fake blonde sow’s ear and create the appropriately dignified purse, one worthy of being displayed to the world at his side.
She had the bones of the princess she clearly was. That was obvious at a glance. If he ignored the tragic clothes, the questionable hair, and the decidedly unrefined way she held herself, he could see the stamp of the Santa Dominis all over her. It was those high cheekbones, for a start. The sweet oval of her face and that impossibly lush mouth that was both deeply aristocratic and somehow carnal at once. She was an uncivilized, hungry sort of skinny, a far cry from the preferred whippet-thin and toned physique of the many highborn aristocratic women of Reza’s acquaintance, but she was evidently proud of the curves she had. He could imagine no other reason she would have gone to such trouble to wear her cheap clothing two sizes too small.
What Reza could not understand—what curled through him like smoke and horrified him even as it sent heat rushing through him—was how, when he had no worries at all that she could access his heart no matter who she was, he could possibly want her in any way. This...renovation project that stood before him.
And yet.
It had slammed into him the moment he’d walked into the shop and it had appalled him unto the depths of his soul. It still did. He was the king of the Constantines. His tastes were beyond refined, by definition and inclination alike. His mistresses were women of impeccable breeding, impressive education, and all of them were universally lauded for their exquisite beauty, as was only to be expected. Reza did not dabble in shallow pools. He swam deep or not at all.
The woman he’d intended to make his queen, until he’d seen this creature before him now in a photograph ten days ago, was appropriate for him in every possible way. The right background. Unimpeachable bloodlines dating back centuries. An excellent education at all the best schools. A thoughtful, spotless, and blameless career in an appropriate charity following her graduation. Never, ever, so much as a breath of tabloid interest in her or her close friends or anything she did. Not ever.
The honorable Louisa had been the culmination of a decade of hard searching for the perfect queen. He hadn’t imagined he’d ever find her until he had. Reza still couldn’t entirely believe that he was here, across an ocean from his kingdom and his people and the woman he’d intended to wed, hunting down a crass, ill-dressed creature who had already insulted him in about seventeen different ways. It offended him on every level.
As did the fact that every time she lifted that belligerent chin of hers or opened her mouth to say something indelicate if not outright rude, the most appalling need washed through him and made him...restless.
His Louisa had been crafted as if from a list of his desired specifications for his potential queen, and yet he had never, ever felt anything for her beyond the sort of appreciation for her lovely figure he might also feel for, say, a pretty bit of shrubbery or an elegant table setting. Reza was the king of the Constantines. The state of his garden and the magnificence of his decor reflected on him. On his rule. On his country. So, too, would his choice of bride.
His feelings, appropriately, were that all of these things should be beyond excellence. And that sort of distant admiration was the only feeling he intended to have for his queen, as was appropriate. Unlike his father’s disastrous affair of the heart.
“Perhaps
