One Night With The Prince. Fiona McArthur
that for future reference. Perhaps the Royal Guard can break from their regular duties protecting our beloved sovereign, and perform a salute.”
“I want only your applause, Adriana,” he told her silkily. “After all, you’re the one who insisted I become chaste and pure, and so I have. At your command.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, something that looked like a smirk flashing across her mouth before she wisely bit it back. “Did you describe yourself as ‘chaste and pure’? In an airplane, of all places, where we are that much closer to lightning, should you be struck down where you sit?”
She was a problem. A terrible problem, the ruin of everything he’d worked for all these years, but Pato couldn’t seem to keep himself from enjoying her. He couldn’t seem to do anything but bask in her. Tart and quick and the most fun he’d had in ages. With that sweet, hot fire beneath that would burn them both.
“Shall I tell you what I got up to at this particular benefit last year?” he asked.
“Unnecessary,” she assured him. “The video of your ill-conceived spa adventure is still available on the internet. Never has the phrase ‘the royal jewels’ been so widely and hideously abused.”
He laughed, and spread out his hands in front of him as if in surrender—noting the way her eyes narrowed in suspicion, as if she knew exactly how unlikely it was he might ever truly surrender anything.
“And look at me now,” he invited her. “Not a single lascivious actress in sight, no spa tub in a hotel room that was meant to be private, and I’m not even drunk. You should be proud, Adriana.”
She shifted in her chair, crossing her legs, and then frowning at him when his gaze drifted to trace the elegant line of them from the hem of her demure skirt down to the delicate heels she wore.
“Your transformation has been astonishing,” she said in repressive tones when he grinned back at her. “But you’ll forgive me if I can’t quite figure out your angle. I only know you must have one.”
“I prefer curves to angles, actually,” he said, and laughed again at her expression of polite yet clear distaste at the innuendo. “And it has to be said, I’ve always found lingerie a particularly persuasive argument.”
Adriana let out a breath, as if he’d hit her. Something terribly sad moved over her face then, surprising him and piercing into him. She ran her hands down the length of her skirt, smoothing out nonexistent wrinkles, betraying her anxiety.
Pato knew he was a bastard—he’d gone out of his way to make sure he was—but this woman made him feel it. Keenly. She made him wish he was a different man. A better one. The sort of good one she deserved.
“Perhaps you’ve managed to convince me of the error of my ways,” he said quietly, hating himself further because he wasn’t that man. He couldn’t be that man, no matter how much she made him wish otherwise. “Just because it hasn’t been done before doesn’t mean it’s impossible.”
Her dark eyes met his and made something twist in him, sharp and serrated.
“We both know I did nothing of the kind,” she said, her voice soft and matter-of-fact. She let out a small breath. “All I managed to do was make myself one among your many conquests, indistinguishable from the rest of the horde.”
“I don’t know why you’d think yourself indistinguishable,” he said, keeping his tone light.
He could have sworn what he saw flash in her dark eyes then was despair, but she swallowed it back and forced a smile that made his chest hurt.
“I should have realized,” she said, and he wondered if she knew how bitter she sounded then, how broken. “You’ve always been a trophy collector, haven’t you? And what a prize you won in London. You get to brag that the Righetti whore propositioned you and you—you, of all people—turned her down. My congratulations, Your Royal Highness. That’s quite a coup.”
For a long moment a black temper pulsed in him, and Pato didn’t dare speak. He only studied her face. She was pale now, and sat too straight, too stiff. Her eyes were dark again in exactly the same way they’d been that morning in the car, when he’d felt pushed to confront her about Lenz, and was fairly certain she’d broken his heart. Had he had one to break.
Pato hated this. He was perilously close to hating himself. For the first time since he was eighteen, he wished that he could do exactly what he wanted without having to worry about anyone else. Without having to play these deep, endless games. Adriana sat there and looked at him as if he was exactly the depraved degenerate he’d gone to great lengths to ensure he really was, when she was the first woman he’d ever met that he wanted to think better of him. The irony wasn’t lost on him.
It stung. Congratulations, indeed, he thought ruefully. This was what doom looked like as it happened, and he was doing nothing at all to prevent it.
“Adriana,” he said, trying to keep his temper from his voice. Trying to make sense of his determination to protect her not only from the things he shouldn’t allow himself to want from her, but from herself. “You and I both know you’re no whore. Why do you torture yourself over the lies that strangers tell? They’re only stories. They’re not even about you.”
“On the contrary,” she said after a moment, her voice thick and uneven. “Some of us are defined by the stories strangers tell.”
“You’re the only one who can define yourself,” he countered gently. “All they can do is tell another story, and who cares if they do?”
Emotion moved through her then, raw and powerful. He saw it on her face, in the way her eyes went damp, in the faint tremor of her lips. Her hands balled into fists in her lap and she moved restlessly in her seat, stamping both feet into the floor as if she needed the balance.
“Easy for you to say,” she stated, a raw edge to her voice. “Not all of us can be as beloved as you are no matter what you do, forgiven our trespasses the moment we make them.”
“Fondness is hardly the same thing as forgiveness.”
Her dark eyes seared into him. “You cheerfully admit each and every one of your transgressions,” she said. “There are videos, photographs, whole tabloids devoted to your bacchanals. But you are still the most popular young royal in all of Europe. No one cares how dirty you get. It doesn’t cling to you. It doesn’t matter.”
“I prefer ‘adventurous’ to ‘dirty,’ I think,” he said mildly, watching her closely, seeing nothing but shadows in her beautiful eyes. “Especially in that tone.”
“Meanwhile,” she said, as if he hadn’t spoken, “I happen to be related to three women who slept with Kitzinian royalty over a hundred and fifty years ago, and one woman who ruined a duke more recently. I’m the most notorious slut in the kingdom, thanks to them.” She pulled in a breath. “It isn’t even my dirt, but I’m covered in it, head to toe, and I’ll never be clean. Ever.” Her eyes held his for a long moment, fierce and dark. “It isn’t just another story strangers tell. It’s my life.”
Pato was aware that he needed to shut this down now, before he forgot himself. But instead, he shook his head and continued talking, as if he was someone else. Someone with the freedom to have dangerous conversations with a woman he found far too fascinating, as if both of them weren’t pawns in a game only he knew they were playing.
“You must know that almost all of that is jealousy,” he said, letting out a small laugh at the idea that she didn’t. “You’re a legend, Adriana, whether you earned it or not. Women are envious of the attention you get, simply because you have a notorious name and the temerity to be beautiful. Men simply want you.”
She let out a frustrated noise, and snatched up her book again, that smooth mask of hers descending once more. But he could see right through it now.
“I don’t want to discuss this,” she said, more to the book than to him. “You can’t possibly understand.