The Controversial Princess (The Smoke & Mirrors Duology #1)(15)

I’m blinded by his smile. “As did you.”

I roll my eyes and walk toward the garden. “If it pleases you, Mr. Jameson.”

“Oh, it does, Your Highness.”

“Will you please stop addressing me in that manner?”

“No.”

I toss a scowl back at him, picking up my speed as Major Davenport appears, as if by magic, blocking my escape to the garden. “The King has requested an audience,” he declares on a sniff, his stoic expression pointed over my shoulder. To Josh? Bugger it. Was my father’s private secretary spying again?

“An audience?” I sigh. “I am his daughter, not the Prime Minister or a member of the Privy Bloody Council.”

Major Davenport’s straight face turns to me. “In your own good time, ma’am,” he says, ignoring my insolence as he walks toward the stairs that lead to my father’s regal office.

I just want to enjoy my party. Is that too much to ask? I solidify when I feel a hard torso meet my back. “If the King wants to pass out punishments, I’ll happily volunteer my palm.” Josh juts his hips forward and catches my sore bottom with his still-solid arousal. “Just sayin’.”

“You are incorrigible.” I break away and head for my father’s office, hoping my walk appears stable when on the inside I am infuriatingly rickety. And it is all Josh Jameson’s fault. And it will also be his fault if my father is privy to my reckless shenanigans in the maze.

Major Davenport is waiting for me with the door held open. I walk in and find Sir Don in a chair opposite my father’s desk and my father looking at the portrait of himself at his coronation that hangs above the stone fireplace. He has a brandy in his grasp and a cigar in his mouth. “Father,” I say, pulling him from admiring himself. “You wanted to see me?”

“Ah, Adeline.” Holding his half-smoked cigar out, a footman takes it and places the brown, putrid-smelling stick on a freestanding ashtray. “Take a seat.”

I’m reluctant, even more so when I turn to see my mother enter the office. I know she sees my growing despondency, because she gives me that peaceful smile, the one she gives me when she thinks I should hear my father out. My beautiful mother glides gracefully across the carpet, the pleated skirt of her gown floating behind her. She sits on the velvet chesterfield, and Davenport shuts the door with him on the wrong side of it.

“That’ll be all, Major Davenport.” My mother is the only person who can dismiss him, aside from the King. But despite the Queen Consort’s order, Davenport still looks to my father for confirmation. The King nods, as does Davenport in response, before he silently leaves me alone with my parents and Sir Don.

Okay, I think to myself. What is it going to be? A reprimand on the shot Woman got of me outside the Royal Opera House? I cannot help that. Maybe Sir Don has advised the King of my indiscretion with Gerry Rush on that boring evening. Well, boring until I made it to the banker’s hotel room. I wince when I remember the image Kim showed me of Rush and his wife. Communications have handled it. I can’t be here because of that. So perhaps I am about to be lectured on—

“It’s time you marry,” the King says in his usual inflexible tone. “You’re thirty now, Adeline. You’ve had your fun.”

I balk. Fun? Is that what he calls it? Well, I’m not done having fun. Maybe never will be. “I’m quite aware of my age, Father.” I sit up straight in the oversized, gilded chair, feeling my mother’s despairing eyes on me, and Sir Don’s condemnation. I flick Mother a glance and see her mildly shake her head, silently pleading for me to bow to the King’s demands. Never. I refuse to fall victim to an arranged royal marriage. They’re all a farce in one form or another. Not one married member of the monarchy is genuinely in love. There was no love at first sight or sizzling chemistry, because, Lord have mercy on our souls, we don’t screw out of pleasure or because the chemistry is too potent to resist. No. We screw to produce heirs, to keep the royal bloodline strong and the country appeased. I don’t want to get married, not now, maybe never. I don’t want children, either. I would never thrust this life on a child. No one deserves this kind of suppression.

The King sighs, looking at my mother for support. He won’t get it from his queen, but I will not gain her defense either. She knows her position. Mother will remain quiet, overseeing the debate, sitting pretty. So my father looks to Sir Don, and I find my contemptuous eyes finding him, too. Sir Don is another story. A descendent of the greatest lord chamberlain this country has ever seen, his desire to make it into the history books with his grandfather is really quite sad. His life has been dedicated to advising the Sovereign. To maintaining this country’s greatest asset, the Royal Family. To help hide the many scandals and secrets. To support the monarchy.

My father nods firmly, taking direction from Sir Don. “Haydon Sampson—”

“Is a lovely man, Father, but he is not my cup of tea.”

“No, your cup of tea is a gentleman from a certain persuasion.” His bushy brows meet in the middle, his chin dropping to his chest. “Like married bankers.”

Oh, bugger. How? Then I laugh under my breath. Do I even need to ask myself that? I turn a filthy look Sir Don’s way. That’s how.

“Felix may have kept the incident out of the newspapers, Adeline,” my father says, “but there is not much you can keep from me.”