Or so Alyse assumed. She was the bride, and she felt as if she were in the way.
She wondered if she would feel so as a wife.
No. She closed her eyes as Marina next dusted her face with loose powder. She couldn’t think like that, couldn’t give in to the despair, not on today of all days. She had once before, and it had led only to heartache and regret. Today she wanted to hope, to believe, or at least to try to. Today was meant to be a beginning, not an end.
But if Leo hasn’t learned to love me in the last six years, why should he now?
Two months ago, with media interest at a frenzied height, her mother had taken her on a weekend to Monaco. They’d sat in deck chairs and sipped frothy drinks and Alyse had felt herself just begin to relax when Natalie had said, ‘You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.’
She’d tensed all over again, her drink halfway to her lips. ‘Do what?’
‘Marry him, Alyse. I know it’s all got completely out of hand with the media, and also with the Diomedis, to be frank. But you are still your own woman and I want to make sure you’re sure...’ Her mother had trailed off, her eyes clouded with anxiety, and Alyse had wondered what she’d guessed.
Did she have even an inkling of how little there was between her and Leo? Few people knew; the world believed they were madly in love, and had done ever since Leo had first kissed her cheek six years ago and the resulting photograph had captured the public’s imagination.
Leo’s mother Sophia knew, of course, as the pretense of their grand romance had been her idea, Alyse suspected, and of course Leo’s father, Alessandro, who had first broached the whole idea to her when she’d been just eighteen years old and starry-eyed over Leo. Perhaps Alexa—Leo’s sister, her fiery nature so different from his own sense of cool containment—had guessed.
And, naturally, Leo knew. Leo knew he didn’t love her. He just didn’t know that for six years she’d been secretly, desperately, loving him.
‘I’m happy, Maman,’ Alyse had said quietly, and had reached over to squeeze her mother’s hand. ‘I admit, the media circus isn’t my favourite part, but...I love Leo.’ She had stumbled only slightly over this unfortunate truth.
‘I want for you what your father and I have had,’ Natalie had said, and Alyse had smiled wanly. Her parents’ romance was something out of a fairy tale: the American heiress who had captured the heart of a wealthy French financier. Alyse had heard the story many times, how her father had seen her mother across a crowded room—they’d both been attending some important dinner—and he had made his way over to her and said, ‘What are you doing with the rest of your life?’
She’d simply smiled and answered, ‘Spending it with you.’
Love at first sight. And not just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill love, but of the over-the-top, utterly consuming variety.
Of course her mother wanted that for her. And Alyse would never admit to her how little she actually had, even as she still clung stubbornly to the hope that one day it might become more.
‘I’m happy,’ she’d repeated, and her mother had looked relieved if not entirely convinced.
Marina’s walkie-talkie crackled again, and once again Alyse let the rapid-fire Italian assault her with incomprehension.
‘They’re waiting,’ Marina announced briskly, and Alyse wondered if she imagined that slightly accusing tone. She’d felt it since she’d arrived in Maldinia, mostly from Queen Sophia: you’re not precisely what we’d have chosen for our son and heir, but you’ll have to do. We have no choice, after all.
The media—the whole world—had made sure of that. There had been no going back from that moment captured by a photographer six years ago when Leo had come to her eighteenth birthday party and brushed his lips against her cheek in a congratulatory kiss. Alyse, instinctively and helplessly, had stood on her tiptoes and clasped her hand to his face.
If she could go back in time, would she change that moment? Would she have turned her face away and stopped all the speculation, the frenzy?
No, she wouldn’t have, and the knowledge was galling. At first it had been her love for Leo that had made her agree to their faked fairy tale, but as the years had passed and Leo had shown no interest in loving her—or love at all—she’d considered whether to cut her losses and break off the engagement.
She never had; she’d possessed neither the courage nor conviction to do something that would quite literally have rocked the world. And of course she’d clung to a hope that seemed naïve at best, more likely desperate: that he would learn to love her.
And yet...we get along. We’re friends, of a sort. Surely that’s a good foundation for marriage?
Always the hope.
‘This way, Miss Barras,’ Marina said, and ushered her out of the room she’d been getting dressed in and down a long, ornate corridor with marble walls and chandeliers glittering overhead every few feet.
The stiff satin folds of Alyse’s dress rustled against the parquet as she followed Marina down the hallway and towards the main entrance of the palace where a dozen liveried footmen stood to attention. She would make the walk to the cathedral across the street and then the far more important walk down the aisle by herself, another Maldinian tradition.
‘Wait.’ Marina held up a hand and Alyse paused in front of the gilt-panelled doors that led to the front courtyard of the palace where at least a hundred reporters and photographers, probably more, waited to capture this iconic moment. Alyse had had so many iconic moments in the last six years she felt as if her entire adult life had been catalogued in the glossy pages of gossip magazines.
Marina circled her the way Alyse imagined a lion or tiger circled its prey. She was being fanciful, she knew, but her nerves were stretched to breaking point. She’d been in Maldinia for three days and she hadn’t seen Leo outside of state functions once. Hadn’t spoken to him alone in over a year.
And she was marrying him in approximately three minutes.
Paula, the royal family’s press secretary, approached with a brisk click of heels. ‘Alyse? You’re ready?’ she asked in accented English.
She nodded back, not trusting herself to speak.
‘Excellent. Now, all you need to remember is to smile. You’re Cinderella and this is your glass slipper moment, yes?’ She twitched Alyse’s veil just as Sophia had done, and Alyse wondered how much more pointless primping she would have to endure. As soon as she stepped outside the veil would probably blow across her face anyway. At least she had enough hair spray in her hair to prevent a single strand from so much as stirring. She felt positively shellacked.
‘Cinderella,’ she repeated. ‘Right.’ She’d been acting like Cinderella for six years. She didn’t really need the reminder.
‘Everyone wants to be you,’ Paula continued. ‘Every girl, every woman, is dreaming of walking in your shoes right now. And every man wants to be the prince. Don’t forget to wave—this is about them as much as you. Include everyone in the fantasy, yes?’
‘Right. Yes.’ She knew that, had learned it over the years of public attention. And, truthfully, she didn’t mind the attention of the crowds, of people who rather incredibly took encouragement and hope from her and her alleged fairy tale of a life. All they wanted from her was friendliness, a smile, a word. All she needed to be was herself.
It was the paparazzi she had trouble with, the constant scrutiny and sense of invasion as rabid journalists and photographers looked for cracks in the fairy-tale image, ways to shatter it completely.
‘I’d better get out there before the clock strikes twelve,’ she joked, trying to smile, but her mouth was so dry her lips stuck to her teeth. Paula frowned, whipping a tissue from her pocket to blot Alyse’s lipstick.
‘We’re at thirty seconds,’ Marina intoned, and Paula positioned Alyse in front of the doors. ‘Twenty...’
&nbs
p; Alyse knew she was supposed to emerge when the huge, ornate clock on one of the palace’s towers chimed the first of its eleven sonorous notes. She would walk sedately, head held high, towards the cathedral as the clock continued chiming and arrive at its doors when the last chime fell into silence.
It had all been choreographed and rehearsed several times, down to the last second. Everything arranged, orchestrated, managed.
‘Ten...’
Alyse took a deep breath, or as deep a breath as the tightly fitted bodice of her dress would allow. She felt dizzy, spots dancing before her eyes, although whether from lack of air or sheer nerves she didn’t know.
‘Five...’
Two footmen opened the doors to the courtyard with a flourish, and Alyse blinked in the sudden brilliance of the sun. The open doorway framed a dazzling blue sky, the two Gothic towers of the cathedral opposite and a huge throng of people.
‘Go,’ Paula whispered, and gave her a firm nudge in the small of her back.
Pushed by Paula, she moved forward, her dress snagging on her heel so she stumbled ever so slightly. Still it was enough for the paparazzi to notice, and dozens of cameras snapped frantically to capture the moment. Another iconic moment; Alyse could already picture the headlines: First Stumble on The Road to Happiness?
She steadied herself, lifted her head and gave the entire viewing world a brilliant smile. The answering cheer roared through the courtyard. Alyse could feel the sound reverberate through her chest, felt her spirits lift at their obvious excitement and approbation.
This was why she was marrying Leo, why the royal family of Maldinia had agreed to his engagement to a mere commoner: because everyone loved her.
Everyone but Leo.
Still smiling, raising one hand in a not-so-regal wave, Alyse started walking towards the cathedral. She heard a few snatched voices amidst the crowd, shouting her name, asking her to turn for a photo. She smiled, leaving the white carpet that had been laid from the palace to the cathedral to shake people’s hands, accept posies of flowers.
She was deviating from the remote, regal script she’d been given, but then she always did. She couldn’t help but respond to people’s warmth and friendliness; all too often it was what strengthened her to maintain this charade that wasn’t a charade at all—for her. For Leo, of course, it was.
But maybe, please God, it won’t always be...
‘Good luck, Alyse,’ one starry-eyed teen gushed, clasping her hands tightly. ‘You look so beautiful—you really are a princess!’
Alyse squeezed the girl’s hands. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured. ‘You look beautiful too, you know. You’re glowing more than I am!’
She realised the clock had stopped chiming; she was late. Queen Sophia would be furious, yet it was because of moments like these she was here at all. She didn’t stick to the royal family’s formalised script; she wrote her own lines without even meaning to and the public loved them.
Except she didn’t know what her lines would be once she was married. She had no idea what she would say to Leo when she finally faced him as his wife.
I love you.
Those were words she was afraid he’d never want to hear.
The cathedral doors loomed in front of her, the interior of the building dim and hushed. Alyse turned one last time towards the crowd and another roar went up, echoing through the ancient streets of Averne. She waved and blew them a kiss, and she heard another cheer. Perhaps the kiss was a bit over the top, but she felt in that moment strangely reckless, almost defiant. There was no going back now.
And then she turned back to the cathedral and her waiting groom.
* * *
Leo stood with his back to the doors of the cathedral, but he knew the moment when Alyse had entered. He heard the murmurs fall to an expectant hush, and the roar of approbation that she generated wherever she went had fallen to silence outside. He flexed his shoulders once and remained with his back to the door—and his bride. Maldinian princes did not turn around until the bride had reached the altar and Leo deviated from neither tradition nor duty.
The organ had started playing with sonorous grandeur, some kind of baroque march, and he knew Alyse was walking towards him. He felt a flicker of curiosity; he hadn’t seen her dress, had no idea what she looked like in it. Polished, poised and as perfect as usual, he presumed. The perfect bride. The perfect love story. And of course, the perfect marriage. All of it the perfect pretense.
Nothing more.
Finally he felt the folds of her dress whisper against his legs and he turned to face her. He barely noticed the dress. Her face was pale except for two spots of blusher high on her cheekbones. She looked surprisingly nervous, he thought. For the past six years she’d been handling the intense media scrutiny of their engagement with apparent effortless ease, and her attack of nerves now surprised him. Alarmed him a bit too.
She’d agreed to all of this. It was a little late for cold feet.
Conscious of the stares of the congregation—as well as the cameras televising the ceremony live to millions of people—he smiled and took her hand, which was icy and small in his. He squeezed her fingers, an encouragement if anyone saw, but also a warning. Neither of them could make a mistake now. Too much rode on this marriage, this masquerade. She knew that; so did he. They’d both sold their souls, and willingly.
Now he watched as Alyse lifted her chin, her wide grey eyes flashing with both comprehension and spirit. Her lips curved in a tiny smile and she squeezed his hand back. He felt a flicker of admiration for her courage and poise—as well as one of relief. Crisis averted.
She turned towards the archbishop who was performing the ceremony and he saw the gleam of chestnut hair beneath the lace of her veil, the soft glimmer of a pearl in the shell-like curve of her ear. He turned to face the man as well.
Fifteen minutes later it was done. They’d said their vows and Leo had brushed his lips against Alyse’s. He’d kissed her dozens, perhaps hundreds, of times during their engagement, always in front of a crowd. A camera.
He kissed her now as he always had, a firm press of lips that conveyed enthusiasm and even desire without actually feeling either. He didn’t want to feel either; he wasn’t about to complicate what had been a business arrangement by stirring up a hornet’s nest of emotions—either in her or himself.
Although now that they were married, now that they would actually consummate this marriage, he would certainly allow himself to feel attraction at least, a natural desire. All his life he’d controlled such contrary emotions, refused to let them dictate his behaviour as they had his parents’. Refused to let them ruin his life and wreck the monarchy, as they had with his parents.
No, he had more dignity, more self-control, than that. But he certainly intended to take full advantage of his marriage vows—and his marriage bed. It didn’t mean his emotions would actually be engaged.
Just his libido.
Leo lifted his head and gazed down at her, smiling slightly for the sake of their audience, and saw that Alyse was gazing at him with panic in her eyes. Her nerves clearly had not abated.
Suppressing his own annoyance, he gently wrapped his hands around hers—they were still icy—and pried them from his shoulders. ‘All right?’ he murmured.
She nodded, managed a rather sickly smile and turned towards the congregation for their recession down the aisle.
And now it begins, Leo thought. The rest of his life enacting this endless charade, started by a single moment six years ago.
Who could ever have known how a paparazzi photographer would catch that kiss? And not just his lips on her cheek but her hand clasped against his cheek, her face uplifted, eyes shining like silver stars.
That photo had been on the cover of every major publication in the western world. It had been named the third most influential photogra
ph of the century, a fact which made Leo want to bark in cynical laughter. A single, stupid kiss influential? Important?
But it had become important, because the sight of the happiness shining from Alyse’s eyes had ignited a generation, fired their hearts with faith in love and hope for the future. Some economists credited the photograph with helping to kick-start Europe’s economy, a fact Leo thought entirely absurd.
Yet when the monarchy’s public relations department had realised the power of that photograph, they had harnessed it for themselves. For him, his father King Alessandro and all the future Diomedis that would reign over Maldinia.
Which had led, inevitably, to this engagement and now marriage, he all the while pretending to live up to what that photograph had promised—because for the public to realise it was nothing more than a fake would be a disaster.
Hand in hand with his bride, he walked down the aisle and into a lifetime of pretending.
* * *
She was breaking up, splitting apart, all the fragile, barely held parts of her shattering into pieces. She’d held herself together for so long and now...?
She wasn’t sure she could do it any more. And it was too late not to.
Somehow Alyse made it down the aisle, although everything around her—the people, the colours, the noise and light—was a blur. Everything but the look that had flashed in Leo’s eyes after he’d kissed her, something bordering on impatient annoyance at her obvious unease. Her panic.
She felt Leo’s arm like a band of iron beneath her hand. ‘Smile as we come out of the cathedral,’ he murmured, and then the crowds were upon them, their roar loud in their ears and, still feeling sick inside, she smiled for all she was worth.
The wordless roar turned into a rhythmic chant: bacialo! Bacialo!
The crowd wanted them to kiss. Wordlessly, Alyse turned to Leo, tilted her head up at him as he gazed down at her and stroked her cheek with a single fingertip and then, once again, brushed his lips against her in another emotionless kiss.
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