The Wild Heir(21)

I cock my brow. “When have I ever lost?”

But the knowing gleam in his eyes reminds me that I’m currently losing at this very moment.

With Princess Planet finishing her spiel about Norway and the environment, the conversation turns to safer topics such as favorite travel spots or the latest programs on TV. When my mother asks Lady Jane about herself, she takes the questions and runs with it for most of the meal.

Which is more than fine with me. It gives me time to watch Ella closely, to really take her in. Normally I have a hard time focusing on people, like I’m able to look at them but not really see them. But with her, I have tunnel vision. I can’t look away even if I wanted to.

And I want to. Despite the craziness of this arrangement, despite the fact that I rarely care about what people think, I don’t want to be known as this crazy creeper who won’t stop staring at her.

But it’s probably too late for that. When she meets my eyes from time to time, it’s only for a second and then she quickly looks away. I’ve heard from women that my gaze can be intimidating and intense but all those times I was only faking it, faking my interest. Now that I’m really absorbing all her little details, I might just look certifiably insane. Magnus the Mad, indeed.

Since I’ve seen how outspoken she can be, she’s become a little less ethereal in my eyes. Still fairy-like and dainty, but there’s a fiery realness to her. Her eyes are this rich dark brown and narrow, like she’s permanently squinting, which is also kind of hot since she looks like she’s thinking of what sexual things she could do to you. Her mouth is wide, her lips soft but not outrageously plumped as it seems to be in style these days. Half the time I’m with a woman I can’t tell if those are her actual lips sucking me off or the plastic surgeon’s filler.

I think the most endearing thing about her are her teeth, which she doesn’t show much unless she’s smiling or laughing. The front ones are large and there’s the slightest gap between them. It’s both adorable and extremely sexy.

I just wish she’d show them off more often. Or, to put it another way, I wish I was the one making her smile. Usually the women around me can’t stop smiling at me. At first anyway. The scowling comes later (and there’s a fuckload of that).

Once dessert is finished, we all stand up and move into the parlor for drinks and digestifs in the world’s smallest cocktail party.

Before Ella gets settled though, she anxiously turns to my mother and asks where the washrooms are, then politely excuses herself and Jane as they head over to them.

I watch Ella carefully as she disappears from sight, still unable to tell if she’s nervous because of me, my family, the whole marriage thing, or everything combined.

I turn to my mother. “I don’t remember. There’s no window she can escape from in the washroom, is there?”

She laughs. “I think it’s all going fine, don’t you? She’s lovely.”

“And feisty,” my father says. “Oh, I look forward to arguing with her. She seems so quiet but I can see there’s a spitfire underneath.”

“She’s okay,” I concede, still unsure exactly how I feel about her. I’m definitely attracted to her, intrigued even, but whether we have any chemistry remains to be seen. I’m trying to not even think about marriage.

But I should probably start. I exchange a look with Mari and then say to my mother, “Don’t you get the feeling that she doesn’t know why she’s here?”

“Nonsense,” my mother says. She looks at my father, brows raised. “You did tell the Prince of Liechtenstein why Princess Isabella was invited, didn’t you?”

“Of course I did,” he says, looking rebuked. “I was completely honest and upfront about the whole thing. You know me. I told him that you were looking for a bride and that Isabella captured your interest and you wanted to meet.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” I say, waving my hands as I shake my head. “You told him I was looking for a bride? You didn’t tell him that I had no choice in the matter, that we’re doing this because of a scandal?”

He frowns. “Goodness, no. That would be most insulting, not to mention presumptuous. That would reflect very badly on us.”

I stare at him, open-mouthed. She honestly thinks she’s here because I want to potentially marry her, not because I’m being forced into the matter? She thinks this is…genuine?

If she even thinks it at all.

“You know this is all going to blow up in our face,” I tell him. “There’s no way around it.”

“Calm down, Son,” he says, his eyes wistfully going to a glass of champagne that my mother is plucking from one of the trays the waiter is carrying. “I’m not saying that we won’t tell her the truth. We will. She has to know what she’s getting into. But I couldn’t very well tell her father that on the phone.”

“So when do we tell her the truth?” Mari asks, taking a champagne for herself.

My father looks at me.

Fuck it. I need another glass of something. I finish the one in my hand and plunk it down on the waiter’s tray before grabbing another one. I meet the waiter’s eyes for a second, and even though they’ve got this blankness that so many of our servants seem to have, the look that tells you they aren’t listening, that they aren’t even here, I can see that this guy thinks the whole thing is crazy. I bet when he took this job he had no idea what our royal family was really like.