life would come under scrutiny and he would have to play second fiddle to a princess. Natalia had appreciated his honesty but had felt wounded because she hadn’t even been given a chance.
That had been back then. Now Natalia wanted to shut the rest of the world out, so it shrank to just her and Finn. She resented the time spent chatting with the other six guests at their table. But politeness dictated that she distributed her time evenly. All that royal training in graciousness and good manners didn’t go away just because she was in disguise.
The other guests were all pleasant people from Eliza’s pre-Party Queens life. Natalia made it a point to chat with each of them. Finn joined in too, charming and thoughtful in his conversation. The others seemed to assume she and Finn were a couple, and neither of them did anything to make them think any differently.
One of the women was Chinese, and Finn surprised Natalia by exchanging a few words with her in her own language. ‘You sound fluent in Chinese,’ Natalia said when he turned his attention back to her.
‘Thankfully, yes,’ he said. ‘One of my biggest new export markets is mainland China,’ he explained. ‘It’s a great advantage to be able to speak Mandarin.’
‘I can imagine,’ she said.
‘My grandfather spoke to me in Chinese when I was a child and my mother insisted I study the language formally when I was older. I studied Italian to please my grandmother—also useful for the business. And my sister Bella studied both languages too.’
Natalia wanted to tell him she was also multilingual, even chat to him in Italian, but it was too risky in case she tripped up over the details of a made-up background. The less she said about herself, the better. Pretending to be someone else, denying the truth about herself, wasn’t as easy as she’d thought. Not when she really wanted to impress Finn.
‘Sounds like your grandparents were very influential in your life,’ she said.
Hers had been too. Her late paternal grandfather had been King when she was a child and had ruled his family like a tyrant, although he’d been seen as a benevolent ruler of the country. She’d been terrified of him. Thankfully her mother and father, despite their differences and the restrictions of their royal duties, had been united in being loving parents to her and her brothers.
‘My wonderful grandparents are both still around, fortunately,’ Finn said. ‘I have them to thank for my start in the business.’
Natalia hadn’t mourned the death of her grandfather, and her grandmother had remained a distant, disapproving figure. She’d never known her mother’s parents.
‘Really?’ she said, fascinated to know every detail of his life in the short time she had with him. Through him she could view life through a very different lens. ‘I’d love to hear about it.’
‘My grandfather and grandmother met each other in high school. It was like Romeo and Juliet set in the western suburbs of Sydney. His family owned the local Chinese restaurant—her family the Italian. Neither family was happy for their child to marry out of their culture—the old migrant story.’
Natalia leaned closer, sensing a real-life romance very different from her own family history of loveless arranged marriages. She was better off being single than being pushed into that kind of marriage—although to be fair to her parents, they had not pressured her, even when she’d said no to each of the unsuitable and unlovable six.
Anyway, how could you be sure of love? Her late brother Carl’s marriage to Sylvie, the daughter of a duke, had supposedly been a ‘love match’. Carl had been head over heels with her, and she’d seemed the same with him. But once she’d had her lavish wedding in the cathedral she’d proved to be greedy and avaricious, more in love with the wealth and status of being Crown Princess than with her husband. And there was no divorce for Montovian royalty. Make a bad choice and you were stuck with it for life.
‘It must have been difficult for them if they had to defy their families,’ she said.
‘They say it only made them all the more determined to be together,’ said Finn. ‘Once they were twenty-one they could marry without their families’ consent and they did. Fortunately they were both passionate about food, and my grandparents ended up running both restaurants. Their parents imported authentic ingredients from Asia and Europe, supplying other restaurants too. My nonna was a canny businesswoman and she soon grew the import side of the business so that it eclipsed the actual restaurants and they sold them.’
‘So where did you come in?’
‘I inherited their interest in food. However, my family also had a passion for education. I did a business degree at university, but worked all my vacations in the business. I went full-time when I graduated. I soon saw the opportunities for export as well as import. My grandparents handed the business over to me and I expanded it way beyond its original parameters. They still have a stake in it, but they’re enjoying their retirement. I take all the risks.’
‘Didn’t your parents and your sister feel they’d been passed over?’
The rules for inheritance were very strict in Montovia—for everyone, not just royals.
‘Not at all. My mother is a pharmacist. My father has his own construction company. My sister works with him. Seems we like keeping things in the family.’
‘Sounds like your family is very close.’
‘Yeah. It is. But that’s enough about me. What about you?’
‘My family story isn’t as interesting as yours,’ she said.
Of course it was—an unbroken line of rulers stretching back hundreds of years—but she couldn’t share that.
‘Just ordinary, really. I have a brother.’ It was too painful to mention her other brother, whom she had adored; his loss still cut too deeply. ‘My parents take rather too much interest in my life—which is annoying, considering I’m twenty-seven—but I guess that’s okay.’
‘It would be worse if they didn’t take an interest, wouldn’t it?’ he said with a smile.
‘True,’ she said, returning his smile and gazing into his green eyes for rather longer than was polite on a shared table.
Their heads had been bowed closely together, their voices low for the duration of the conversation. Reluctantly she broke her gaze away and returned her attention to the other people at the table, as good manners dictated.
A pleasant middle-aged couple sat opposite them—Eliza’s neighbours. Natalia and Finn chatted with them about how much they were enjoying the meal.
Once the plates for the main course had been cleared, the woman—Kerry—sat back in her chair. Her narrow-eyed gaze went from Natalia to Finn and back again. ‘So, is all the romance of this lovely wedding giving you two ideas?’ she said.
‘I beg your pardon?’ said Natalia, completely taken aback.
‘You and Finn. Any plans for a wedding of your own?’
Natalia wasn’t often lost for a diplomatic reply to an unexpected question. But the Australian woman’s blunt questioning had her floundering. She looked up to Finn for help, only to see him struggling too.
‘No
