How to Love a Princess (8 page)

Nicolas caught her eye and
raised an arrogant brow. She matched it, aware that he was judging her by the
friends she kept and reminding herself how very irrelevant his opinion should
be.

“The official guests will
be here shortly,” she told Gascon. “I’m going to freshen up.”

Once she was safely inside
the guest bathroom on the ground level, she fisted her hands at her sides and
sucked in a deep breath.

Of course Nicolas judged
her. He probably believed she’d given up the domestic bliss he’d offered in
return for highlife socialising with the likes of Geoffrey.

What did it matter? What
did it matter what he thought of her? Her tummy clenched and she almost heaved.
It mattered so very much.

She crossed to one of the
gilt framed puffed chairs on legs that felt disconnected from her body and made
herself sit down and relax, flexing the cramps in her fingers and taking long,
steady breaths. Her eye caught the clock on the wall and she saw that time was
running out. She looked about her and laughed at her silliness. If anyone could
see her now, Princess Amelia Catherine Theresa de’Ariggo, locked up in a
bathroom and too scared to go back out.

She jumped up and smoothed
her hands down her thighs. Nicolas didn’t make her feel twenty-one again. He made
her feel fourteen.

At least she was laughing,
even if it was at herself, most of her composure restored. She let herself out
of the bathroom and, as she turned from closing the door, walked straight into
hard chest. Before she looked up, she knew. She knew his scent. Her body had
its unique way of reacting to his presence. Tingles, tremors and shivers.

He backed her up against
the door, raising one arm above her to put his hand to the wall. His knuckles
grazed underside her chin, then nudged it higher until she was looking into his
eyes.

“What—what are you doing?”
she stammered. She hated it when he did this. She swore he knew exactly how
devastatingly he affected her, erased her mind and nullified her convictions.
The barest hint of intimacy had the power to slam her straight back into the
past.

He brought his head down,
his lips a breath away from hers. His brown eyes were intense, burning a heat
into her soul. “You made a pact with the devil four years ago,” he murmured,
his fingers leaving her chin to stroke fire down the sensitive skin of her
throat. “Maybe I’ve come to claim my due.”

She swallowed hard and
tried to laugh, tried to pretend that everything was normal and her knees
weren’t instantly hollow. “Do you have to be so dramatic?”

“You bring out the best—”
His thumb pad paused at the base of her throat, applying a gentle pressure,
“—and worst in me,
dolce cuore.
”

“Nicolas—”

“Catherine,” he
interrupted in that deep baritone. His thumb was moving again, across her
collarbone, edging beneath the strap of her dress, tugging it along as he moved
to the curve of her shoulder. “You’re trembling. You’re not afraid of me,
surely?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve
only to raise my voice and a hundred guards will come trooping through those
doors.”

“But you’re not
screaming,” he said huskily, his breath warm on her lips.

She changed tactics. “My
guests will be arriving any moment.”

His roaming fingers
stilled, then slowly retraced their way back to her chin. His lips were so
close, she knew he was about to kiss her. She lowered her eyelids, unable not
to, lips quivering in anticipation. She’d tried hard enough to hold him off.
This was her reward.

There was no kiss.

He stood back, releasing
her, looking at her with a teasing light in his eyes. “Hold that thought.”

“If you had any idea what
I was thinking,” she said, frustration snapping her from the trance, “you might
regret that request.”

Fool!
He intimates the barest suggestion of tenderness and you jump circles to
justify your instant submission.

“But it wasn’t a request,
Catherine.”

Frustration turned to
fury. “You dare order me?”

He gave a mock shudder.
“Not with your hundred guards about to burst through that door. Or was that
guests?”

“Is everything a joke with
you?”

“You’re confusing me with
Geoffrey,
dolce cuore.
”

Her eyes blazed into his
amusement. “Leave Geoffrey out of this.”

“I’d love to, but I’m
afraid Geoffrey is yours to command, not mine.”

“What is that supposed to
mean?”

“You tell me.”

Catherine rolled her eyes
and pushed her way past him. “I don’t have time for riddles.”

She almost expected him to
grab her from behind. He didn’t. Of course he didn’t. He came to stand beside
her as she attempted to carry on a normal conversation with Geoffrey and
Gascon. His arm brushed hers. His closeness overruled her senses. She almost
cried out in relief when the Italian ambassador arrived with his wife, Eleanor
Gavatale. After introductions were made, Eleanor quickly set about devouring
Nicolas’s attention, leaving Catherine to entertain the husband with small talk
that touched on political matters but skirted the boundaries of actual
politicking.

Norway arrived, then
Sweden, and soon the room was filled with laughing, chatting amiability. At
last, Catherine was able to relax and stand back for a moment, observing her
guests converse.

“Your cheeks are flushed
and your eyes are bright.” Nicolas fell in at her side. “Power and politics
agrees with you.”

“Leave it alone,” she
said, keeping her smile in place and her gaze directly ahead.

“That was a compliment.”

“No. That was another
accusation.”

“What are you two mumbling
about?” Geoffrey demanded playfully, coming up to them.

Catherine excused herself,
murmuring something about checking up on dinner.

Nicolas gave Geoffrey a
cold look. “I’ve never mumbled in my life. As to what we were
talking
about, well, that was a private conversation.”
 

Geoffrey proved the
thickness of his skull by giving Nicolas a friendly slap on the arm and moving
to stand in line beside him, his gaze following Catherine’s exit from the room.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?”

“If by that you mean
beautiful, smart, charming and amusing, I have no choice but to agree.”

Geoffrey sighed.
“Sometimes I can hardly believe she’s mine.”

A hundred alarm bells went
off in Nicolas’s head. “Yours?”

“We’re practically
engaged,” Geoffrey said on another sigh.

Engaged?
Red flashes joined the clanging bells.
“Well,” he ground out just before following after Catherine, “I wouldn’t hold
my breath for the wedding if I were you.”

He found her in the formal
dining room, straightening an already perfect napkin while Serge gave last
minute instructions to the small army of servers lined up. The bells were just
an echo in his head now, dimmed by common sense. There was no way on earth that
Catherine would ever consider tying herself to that foolish, ignorant excuse
for a man. Either Geoffrey was boasting out of turn or, and this was not
unlikely, he’d somehow plucked conclusions from one of the rainbows he partied
on that were as false as the pot of elusive gold.

Catherine glanced up. She
did not usually leave her guests to tinker where she was not needed, and now
the man she’d so deliberately escaped had come after her. “Dinner is about to
be served,” she said coolly.

Nicolas scoured the place
settings, searching the cards for his name. “Please tell me you haven’t put me
anywhere near that ridiculous baboon.”

It wasn’t difficult to
guess whom he was referring to amongst her distinguished guests. Loyalty to
Geoffrey and an unwillingness to accommodate Nicolas in any way after his last
performance kept Catherine silent. She watched him flick up another place card.

“I’m referring to
Geoffrey. The idiot thinks he’s engaged to you.”

“Oh.” Her disconnected
aloofness collapsed. She should have seen this coming. “That is…”

Panic kicked Nicolas in
the gut. “You’re not, are you?”

The pause was but a
moment. It felt like a month.

“Not yet,” Catherine said,
suddenly unable to meet his eyes.

And Nicolas wished that
pause had gone on forever. That he’d never had to hear those words. “No.”

“No?”

He looked at her downcast
eyes. Waited until she finally raised her head to face him.

No.
That single word reverberated in his
skull. It drained his blood. Wound tightly around his lungs. Knocked behind his
knees. Shot arrows through his heart. “Just no.”

Catherine took a steadying
breath. She could have softened the truth, but there were enough
misunderstandings between them and, apparently, not nearly enough barriers. She
was still upset at the incident outside the bathroom. Her body was still on
high alert to everything about the man. She was holding onto her composure by a
thread and Nicolas’s reaction stunned her. She might have expected some caustic
remark, a jaded referral to their aborted engagement, but this, she didn’t know
how to interpret.
 

“You’re not making any
sense,” she said, deciding it would be wise to keep the edges of this
particular conversation fuzzy. With that, she swept around him in a wide berth
to make yet another exit. At this rate, there were too few doors in the castle
to contain the many exits she required.

Catherine put her smile in
place before moving between the natural groups that had formed while she waited
for Serge to announce dinner. Abandoned by Nicolas, Eleanor had attached
herself to Geoffrey. Reginald Arratore was bemoaning some hot spot situation to
the Swedish ambassador while both their wives were standing to the side,
throwing looks as sharp as daggers at Eleanor that no doubt matched bitchy
comments that stopped as soon as Catherine was within hearing.

“I hear that Alice finally
got Hammond to say yes,” Catherine told the ladies as she walked with them to
the dining room.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I do, my dear. That woman
has more tricks up her sleeve than David Copperfield,” Reginald’s wife said of
Alice, a mutual acquaintance who’d broadcast her intentions to marry the
cosmetic billionaire at a gathering last Christmas. Since then, the bets were
on, aided and abetted by Alice herself, who thrived on attention almost as much
as Eleanor.

Their attention and gossip
successfully diverted from Eleanor, Catherine was free to ensure that everyone
found their seats and to indicate with a discreet signal for the first course
to be brought in. Nicolas had recovered sufficiently to charm his dinner
partners on either side, but that didn’t surprise her. He was a diplomat in his
own right, accustomed to dealing and negotiating at the highest levels for the
many grants he’d secured.

Right now, for example, he
was chuckling heartily at something Eleanor had said, something obviously meant
for his ears only. Could their two heads
be
any closer together?

“Amelia?”

She started, then guiltily
lifted a smile at Reginald who’d been regaling her with stories of his son. She
thought to brazen her way through a plausible response, then decided on the
truth. “I’m sorry, Reginald. My thoughts tend to drift these days.”

He put a hand to her arm
and squeezed gently. “No need to apologise, my dear. How is your mother
faring?”

“We’re still not sure what
is wrong with her.” Catherine forced a light tone, not wishing to weigh down
the dinner party. “But I for one feel much better with Nicolas Vecca on the
case.”

Reginald glanced across
the table to where Nicolas was conversing in undertones with Eleanor, then back
to her with a reassuring smile. “He’s quite a remarkable man. I’ve heard only
good things about him.” He chuckled softly. “For a man so much in the public
eye, that’s quite an achievement.”

“Yes,” she agreed
sincerely. “And I’m sure that what we’ve seen so far is just a scratch on the
mark he’ll leave on this world.”

Reginald took his hand
back from her arm and ate in silence for a few minutes, then looked at her with
a curious expression. “You could do worse than him, you know.”

She didn’t even pretend to
misunderstand. “Oh, no, there’s nothing between Nicolas and me.”

Reginald grunted. “Does
the young man know that?”

Catherine laughed from
pure nervousness. “Now you’re pulling straw from an empty haystack.”

“I’m old, my dear, not
blind,” he scoffed. “I’ve seen the way his eyes follow— I’ve seen the way he
follows you.”

“Reginald,” she protested.

He shrugged his shoulders,
then grinned in defeat. “All I’m saying is, you could do worse. Now,” he added,
holding up his forkful, “what is this slop I’m eating?”