Love Islands…The Collection. Jane Porter

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       Chapter Twelve

      STELLA STRODE QUICKLY, trying to match Eduardo’s pace through the vast gilded corridors to his private rooms. Even though she’d spent chunks of her childhood in the immense palace, she now found it forbidding, and she’d certainly never been into the Princes’ wing before. Now she’d learnt that Antonio had one floor, Eduardo another, and there were formal reception rooms on the floor between the two, where they’d meet.

      ‘There’s a gym, but I will have a treadmill brought up to our rooms so you can have greater privacy,’ said Eduardo as he opened a door, waving away the servants who’d materialised.

      ‘I prefer to run outside.’

      ‘You can’t here,’ Eduardo said flatly, closing the door behind them but not stepping further into the room. ‘It isn’t safe, and I don’t want the paparazzi getting pictures of you pounding the pavement.’

      ‘That isn’t what princesses do?’ she asked wryly. ‘It seems I have a lot to learn.’

      ‘You’ll do fine.’ He met her sharp look. ‘I already know you’re a fast learner.’

      The atmosphere smouldered between them but the constraints niggled at her. ‘You’d better tell me what else I can and cannot do.’

      ‘Just continue to be your discreet, dutiful self and you’ll be fine.’

      She scowled, but Eduardo had already turned away.

      ‘I must see him,’ Eduardo said distractedly. ‘Shower and change. I’ll come for you in half an hour.’

      Stella walked through his expansive apartment. It was beautifully decorated but impersonal—there was none of the ‘stuff’ that had littered the shelves of the library on Secreto Real.

      In the sumptuous bedroom there was an adjoining dressing room. Her clothes, cleaned and pressed, hung on the rack. There were other clothes too—the outrageously expensive ones, purchased especially by a servant, that she’d never worn. The ones that would make her look the part. She turned her back on them. She wasn’t going to pretend to be anything other than herself when she dealt with the Crown Prince.

      It wasn’t Eduardo who fetched her forty-five minutes later, but one of the liveried staff.

      The second she walked in she knew things weren’t going well. The brothers stood on opposite sides of the room. Eduardo had that fiery, ruthless look he’d had the day he’d announced they were marrying. Antonio had no expression at all. They shared much—the same colouring, similar stature—but where Eduardo’s eyes were hot, Antonio’s were ice.

      ‘You are Carlos’s daughter?’ Antonio addressed her.

      ‘Yes.’

      He didn’t look at her—he looked through her. It was like being dunked in an Antarctic dive-hole.

      ‘May I offer my congratulations?’

      Stella couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not. He was expressionless. Bloodless. So unlike his brother.

      ‘All of Europe will wish to do the same,’ Antonio added. ‘So the ball scheduled for Saturday shall become a marriage celebration—’

      ‘Antonio, no.’ Eduardo interrupted him, moving to stand beside Stella. ‘You’re not still planning—?’

      ‘It has been planned for months, as you well know,’ Antonio said brusquely. ‘Guests have been arriving all week while you’ve been “ill”.’

      ‘But she’s not ready—’

      ‘I am cast as the evil older brother in this scenario you have created.’ Antonio turned his icicle eyes onto his brother. ‘I will not remain so.’

      Eduardo glared back. ‘Antonio—’

      ‘The ball has been planned for months—or do you expect us all to act rashly and ruin the happiness and expectations of others? You have deprived the nation of a royal wedding. This celebration is the least you can give the people,’ Antonio went on, his cold fury now evident. ‘She has less than forty-eight hours to get “ready”.’ Antonio sent her another dismissive glance. ‘But the sapphire, a dress and a smile are all that will be necessary.’

      Didn’t he like her jeans? What a cold, patronising jerk to relegate her to ‘decorative only’ status.

      ‘I think you’ll find Stella has more to offer than that,’ Eduardo answered, before she had a chance to breathe.

      Antonio’s eyebrows lifted almost imperceptibly, giving him a supercilious look. ‘You should have come to me first.’

      ‘Even you have to agree this solves several problems. Leave it, Antonio, it is done,’ Eduardo answered. ‘I promise we’ll parade beautifully and dutifully at the ball. We won’t let you down.’

      It was obvious Antonio thought they already had.

      ‘You will attend the pre-ball functions tonight and tomorrow as well,’ Antonio ordered. ‘But to maintain the “mystery” and heighten anticipation, the ball will be Stella’s first formal public appearance.’

      Stella’s pulse tripped as Antonio issued his wintry instructions. She recognised that look in his eyes. It was the same one she saw in her father’s. She was a disappointment. He didn’t want Eduardo to have married her. Yet again she was not ‘right’. Not for her job. Not for this relationship.

      Was Antonio’s disapproval because she wasn’t nobility? Her father was the first General who had earned his position through work—not via his birth, name and lineage. Did that make her unworthy of the wretched sapphire Eduardo had hung around her neck?

      Or was it just her?

      Eduardo’s hand was firm on her back, guiding her out of the room. She didn’t bother saying goodbye to the Crown Prince, as protocol and common politeness dictated. She was too hurt.

      ‘Please excuse my brother,’ Eduardo said briefly, but he didn’t offer any explanation for Antonio’s frostiness. ‘I’m sorry, I need to leave you alone again for a while. Ask Giulia if you need anything.’

      ‘Of course.’

      It wasn’t ‘a while’ that he was gone. It was hours. She dined alone in his apartment, waited up, but in the end sleep overcame her before he returned.

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