A Queen for the Taking? Read Online Free PDF Page B

cause.’
    And that, Sandro thought bemusedly, was that. Very well. He had plenty of time to discover the secrets his bride-to-be was hiding, should he want to know them. ‘And what about before you moved to Milan? You went to university?’
    ‘No. I started working with Hands To Help when I was eighteen.’ She shifted restlessly, then pinned a bright smile on her face that Sandro could see straight through.
    ‘What about you, Sandro?’ she asked, stumbling only slightly over his name. ‘Did you enjoy your university days?’
    He thought of those four years at Cambridge, the heady freedom and the bitter disillusionment. Had he enjoyed them? In some respects, yes, but in others he had been too angry and hurt to enjoy anything.
    ‘They served a purpose,’ he said after a moment, and she cocked her head.
    ‘Which was?’
    ‘To educate myself.’
    ‘You renounced your title upon your graduation, did you not?’
    Tension coiled inside him. That much at least was common knowledge, but he still didn’t like talking about it, had no desire for her to dig. They both had secrets, it seemed.
    ‘I did.’
    ‘Why?’
    Such a bald question. Who had ever asked him that? No one had dared, and yet this slip of a woman with her violet eyes and carefully blank expression did, and without a tremor. ‘It felt necessary at the time.’ He spoke repressively, just as she had, and she accepted it, just as he had. Truce.
    Yet stupidly, he felt almost disappointed. She wasn’t interested in him; of course she wasn’t. She’d already said as much. And he didn’t want to talk about it, so why did he care?
    He didn’t. He was just being contrary because even as he accepted the necessity of this marriage, everything in him rebelled against it. Rebelled against entering this prison of a palace, with its hateful memories and endless expectations. Rebelled against marrying a woman he would never love, who would never love him. Would their convenient marriage become as bitter and acrimonious as his parents’? He hoped not, but he didn’t know how they would keep themselves from it.
    ‘We should eat,’ he said, his voice becoming a bit brusque, and he went to pull out her chair, gesturing for her to come forward.
    She did, her dress whispering about her legs as she moved, her head held high, her bearing as straight and proud as always. As she sat down, Sandro breathed in the perfumed scent of her, something subtle and floral, perhaps rosewater.
    He glanced down at the back of her neck as she sat, the skin so pale with a sprinkling of fine golden hairs. He had the sudden urge to touch that soft bit of skin, to press his lips to it. He imagined how she would react and his mouth curved in a mocking smile. He wondered again if the ice princess was ice all the way through. He would, he decided, find out before too long. Perhaps they could enjoy that aspect of their marriage, if nothing else.
    ‘What have you been doing in California?’ she asked as one of the palace staff came in with their first course, plates of mussels nestled in their shells and steamed in white wine and butter.
    ‘I ran my own IT firm.’
    ‘Did you enjoy it?’
    ‘Very much so.’
    ‘Yet you gave it up to return to Maldinia.’
    It had been the most agonising decision he’d ever made, and yet it had been no decision at all. ‘I did,’ he answered shortly.
    She cocked her head, her lavender gaze sweeping thoughtfully over him. ‘Are you glad you did?’
    ‘Glad doesn’t come into it,’ he replied. ‘It was simply what I needed to do.’
    ‘Your duty.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Sandro pried a mussel from its shell and ate the succulent meat, draining the shell of its juices. Liana, he noticed, had not touched her meal; her mouth was drawn into a prim little line. He arched an eyebrow.
    ‘Are mussels not to your liking?’
    ‘They’re delicious, I’m sure.’ With dainty precision she pierced a mussel with her fork and attempted, delicately, to wrest it from its