make a lot of sense. I bet there’s not another girl in the world who is being expected to do that.”
Poor Julienne. He regarded her with a mixture of exasperation and a certain sad bemusement. How had she managed to make it this far without learning that being royal meant you weren’t like everyone else? That had its obvious advantages, but there was also a downside. She was stuck. She could twist and turn and try to think of every sort of angle, but there was no escape. She would feel a whole lot better about things once she accepted that and got on with her life. In a strange, convoluted way, her plight touched his heart. But there was nothing he could do to remedy it.
She looked so young, so innocent. The late-afternoon light shafting in through the huge picture window seemed to turn her skin a creamy gold.
“You’re probably right,” he told her, fighting off the impulse to reach out and cup her lovely flushed cheek in the palm of his hand. “You’re the only one.”
He saw the hope that flared in her eyes and he hated to douse it, but it had to be done. He knew it was asking a lot to rest all the culture and peace of one country on the shoulders of one tiny twenty-one-year-old girl. But what was right and what was fair just plain didn’t matter. That was the way it was. Her situation was her situation, and if she didn’t abide by the rules he’d set up a lot of people might die. It had happened before. It could happen again. They couldn’t risk it.
“You’re looking at this all wrong,” he told her helpfully. “You should be proud of the sacrifice you are making for your country.”
Her eyes clouded and she wrinkled her nose. “Sorry. Ask someone else, please.”
Was she going to cry? He tensed. If she started to cry it would be impossible to keep his distance and he knew it. But she looked up and smiled at him tremulously. And that was almost as bad.
He had to turn away and begin pacing again. When she sat there looking so adorable, everything in him seemed to yearn toward her. And so he paced, gritting his teeth and searching for strength.
He thought of the first time he’d seen her, when she was only fourteen years old. He’d spent a hard few days negotiating with her parents, the King and Queen, in order to convince them that the only way peace would be achieved would be for them to lock their daughter into a marriage contract that would cement the ties and keep the jealousies in check. With Emeraude and Diamante joined as one, the renegade House of Rubiat wouldn’t dare try another power-grab.
They’d invited him to share their dinner, and, though he usually didn’t like to socialize with negotiating partners, he’d liked the two of them well enough, and respected them enough, to make an impulse decision to eat with them. They’d been talking pleasantly when Julienne had come into the room.
“And here she is,” her father had said fondly. “The center of all our conversation these days.” He’d smiled at his daughter. “Prince Andre, may I present Princess Julienne?”
He remembered rising and giving her a deep bow, while she curtsied in her charming way. He recalled smiling at her and thinking she was the cutest thing he’d seen in ages. For just a moment he’d wished he had a young sister about her age, someone he could take under his wing and mentor in the ways of royal life. And that was odd, because he’d never had a thought like that before in his life—nor had he since—and yet that was pretty much what very soon came to pass.
She’d charmed him right from the beginning. She was such a sweet, lively girl, but with a spark of humor and a quick understanding that seemed to belie her young age. He’d liked her immediately.
Only weeks later her parents had been killed when their light plane went down in the mountains. Andre became her guardian from the first, with the consent of all concerned. He’d been the architect of the treaty and it was up to him to make sure its elements were complied with.
He’d brought her to Diamante Castle and treated her like one of the family from the first. King Harold, his father, was busy with affairs of state, his life’s work, which he’d thrown himself into with a vengeance once Nadine, his wife, queen and Andre’s mother, had been killed by a sniper years before. They rarely conferred. Harold was the sort of man who seemed weighed down by his work. To the casual observer, he was an old grouch. But not to Andre. Andre knew the tragic sorrow he carried with him at all times and he loved him for it.
Still, his father never showed much interest in the young, lively and engagingly coltish girl who’d come to live with them, and it was up to Andre, despite the fact that they were less than ten years apart in age, to act the part of elder authority along with everything else. And the two of them had got on well together. He looked back on those days as some of the happiest of his life.
As she’d grown older, he’d known it couldn’t last. And then came her eighteenth birthday and the dance—and the kiss.
That was when he knew he had to call upon some inner well of strength to get through the next few years until she married. And here they were, with six days left. Was he going to make it?
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