Will wasn’t about to give any away. He gave every bit of energy to his work. It was important, it was ground-breaking, it was necessary. He had none to spare.
“Look,” he said, stopping to clear his throat. “I’m heading towards court so I can give you a lift if you’re heading in that direction. Or drop you...wherever it is you are going.” On foot. Through muddy countryside. In what had probably been some pretty fancy shoes, considering the party dress that went with them. From what Will had seen there was nothing for miles bar the village behind him, and the palace some distance ahead. “Were you heading to the wedding, then?”
It was a simple enough question, but the girl looked as if she’d been slapped. Laughter gone, colour gone, dark tears suddenly wobbled precariously in the corners of her eyes.
She recovered quickly, dashing a finger under each eye, sniffing and taking a careful step back. “No. No, thanks. I’m... I’ll be fine. You go ahead. Thank you, though.”
With that she lifted her dress, turned her back on him and picked her way across the road, slipping a little, tripping on her skirt more.
If the woman wanted to make her own way, dressed and shod as she was, then who was he to argue? He almost convinced himself too. Then he caught the moment she glanced towards the palace, hidden somewhere on the other side of the trees, and decidedly changed tack so that she was heading in the absolute opposite direction.
And, like the snick of a well-oiled combination lock, everything suddenly clicked into place.
The dress with its layers of pink lace, voluminous skirt and hints of rose-gold thread throughout.
The pink train—was that what they called it?—trailing in the mud behind her.
Will’s gaze dropped to her left hand clenched around a handful of skirt. A humungous pink rock the size of a thumbnail in a thin rose-gold band glinted thereupon.
He’d ribbed Hugo enough through school when the guy had been forced to wear the sash of his country at formal events: pink and rose-gold—the colours of the Vallemontian banner.
Only one woman in the country would be wearing a gown in those colours today.
If Will wasn’t mistaken, he’d nearly run down one Mercedes Gray Leonine.
Who—instead of spending her last moments as a single woman laughing with her bridesmaids and hugging her family before heading off to marry the estimable Prince Alessandro Hugo Giordano and become a princess of Vallemont—was making a desperate, muddy, shoeless run for the hills.
Perfect.
“YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS.”
Sadie swallowed as the man’s voice echoed through the thicket. Or she tried at the very least. After crying non-stop for the last hour, her throat felt like sandpaper.
In fact, her entire body felt raw. Sensitive. Prickly. As if her senses were turned up to eleven.
Adding a near-death experience hadn’t helped a jot.
Well, pure and utter panic had got her this far and she planned to ride it out until she reached the border. Or a cave. Or a sinkhole that could swallow her up. Where was a batch of quicksand when you needed it?
She gathered as much of her dress as she was able and kept on walking, hoping her sardonic liberator would simply give up and drive away.
Unfortunately, his deep voice cut through the clearing like a foghorn. “You’ve made your point. You can stop walking now.”
Sadie’s bare foot squelched into a slippery patch of mud. She closed her eyes. Took a breath. Turned. And faced down the stranger in her midst.
When she’d heard the car coming around the corner her life had flashed before her eyes. Literally. Moments, big and small, fluttering through her mind like pages in a picture book.
Not yet school age, screaming, pigtails flying behind her as she was being chased through the palace halls by a grinning Hugo. Her mother waggling a finger at her and telling her to act like a lady.
At five, maybe six, Princess Marguerite gently reminding her not to hold her hand up to block the bright lights from the TV crew. Hugo standing behind a camera making faces as she sat on a couch in the palace library, answering questions about growing up as a “regular girl” in the palace.
The blur of high school without Hugo at her side—the first sense of feeling adrift without her safety net.
Her attempt to overcome that feeling—wide-eyed and terrified, landing in New York when she was twenty. Then grabbing that safety net with both hands as, teary and weary, she fled New York and moved back into the palace at twenty-five.
Her memory had not yet hit the anxious, fractured, out-of-control mess of the past few weeks when she’d spied the driver on the muddy road.
For time had slowed—imprinting on her mind wind-ruffled dark hair, a square jaw, a face as handsome as sin. A surge of drama at the end. At least the last thing I’ll ever see is a thing of beauty, she’d thought.
Of course, that was before he’d proceeded to storm at her for a good five minutes straight.
Quite the voice he had. Good projection. With those darkly scowling eyes and that muscle ticking in his impossibly firm jaw she’d first thought him a Hamlet shoo-in. From a distance, though, with those serious curls and proud square shoulders he’d make a fine Laertes. Then again, she’d had a good grip on that which was hidden beneath the suit. A dashing Mercutio, perhaps?
Though not in one of her high-school productions, alas. One look at him and her twelfth-grade drama students would be too busy swooning to get anything done.
That, and she’d been “encouraged” to take a sabbatical from her job the moment she’d become engaged. The palace had suggested six months for her to settle into her new role before “deciding” if she wished to return.
“Ms,” he said again, and she landed back in the moment with a thud.
Focus, her subconscious demanded, lucidity fluctuating like a flickering oil lamp during a storm. Her brain seemed to have kicked into self-protect mode, preferring distraction over reality. But, as much as she might wish she was living a high-school play, this was as real as it got.
“Ms—”
“Miss,” she shot back, levelling the stranger with a leave me be glance. Oh, yes, she was very much a “miss”. Her recent actions made sure of that. She remembered the rock weighing down her left hand and carefully tucked it into a swathe of pink tulle.
“As I said I’ll be fine from here. I promise. You can go.” She took a decided step back, landing right on the cusp of a jagged rock. She winced. Cried out. Hopped around. Swore just a bit. Then pinched the bridge of her nose when tears threatened to spill again.
“Miss,” said the stranger, his rumbling voice quieter now, yet somehow carrying all the more. “You
