Laura and Jane had lived here long enough to make this place a home, and though they were only really a professor and an assistant, their digs were pretty nice.
Well, that made sense, he supposed. Jane was the daughter of a diplomat, after all. And Laura’s father ran one of Veronia’s most powerful private banking firms—one of which had offered George a position a few weeks back.
“She has a way of getting under your damn skin, that’s for sure,” Xavier admitted, not looking up from his cellphone.
“What has you so intrigued?” George asked, curious as to why Xavier had been glued to his phone all morning.
“You know that presentation Perry had a few days ago?”
“With the EA?”
“I’d seen the slides for her presentation, went through some of her report, but what she said put me on edge.”
George blinked. “What did she say?”
“That the dams were being sabotaged.”
He reared back at that. “Sabotaged?” he asked blankly.
“Yeah.” Xavier pursed his lips but otherwise, he sank deeper into the sofa like George had, and crossed his legs, setting his ankle on his knee. “And as much as Veronia is dealing with a lot of problems at the moment, we both know there isn’t a group in the land who’d damage something as basic as our water supply that wasn’t the UnReals.”
George rubbed his chin. “You’ve spoken to Father about this?”
“Yeah. The day I watched Perry’s presentation. She was right. About not getting anywhere with the agency, I mean. I had to set up a meeting on her behalf through Laurenne Jonquil because no one else was willing to give her the time of day.
“Only my presence, in the end, ensured we had the VP there. You’ll remember the idiot, Charles Françoise, from school?”
George rolled his eyes. “That moron.”
“Yeah.” Xavier scowled. “Did you know he and Luc De Montfort are good friends.”
“No. I didn’t. But they’re on the same party. Those Conservatives are all pally.”
“Yeah, but their wives are sisters, George. They’re family.”
George sat up. “What are you saying, Xavier?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m just thinking out loud that’s all. Can’t be a coincidence that De Montfort is seen with an UnReal, then a few weeks later we find out a high-ranking official on the EA is actively discouraging any further investigations into what Perry’s discovered.”
“I know Perry said the drought wasn’t as serious as she thought it was,” George reasoned slowly.
“Yeah. She’s an environmental scientist, George. Not an engineer. She came looking for reasons for a water shortage. She found one, but in our infrastructure.” He rubbed his chin, his unease evident in the taut skin about his eyes. “I spoke with Philippe the day before the wedding, and he’s looking into it.”
“But that has nothing to do with why he’s been so edgy?” George cocked his head to the side.
“As far as I’m aware, no.” He leaned forward to reach for his own mint tea. After taking a sip of the sweet drink, he murmured, “I only told him at the get together before the rehearsal dinner. The guards would barely have had any time to investigate anything.”
“Do you have a bad feeling about this?” George asked softly, catching his cousin’s eye.
“Why do you think I’m reading Perry’s reports?” He sighed. “You went with her on some of the interviews with the dam’s project engineers. What did you see?”
George pondered those few meetings that had had him and Perry flying all over the nation as they visited Veronia’s largest dams.
“The engineers all seemed very friendly and helpful.”
“You didn’t think anything they said was suspicious?”
“No. I’d have brought it up with Perry if I’d thought so, and if she’d agreed, I’d have told father or Edward. Or even you.
“Maybe, whatever’s going down, they’re not in on it?” he offered.
“Could be. But if they’re actively damaging the dams, then there has to be someone on the inside helping.”
“Has Father hired an outside engineer to come and inspect them?”
“Yeah.” Xavier rubbed his chin. “Thing is, I’m relieved I sat through Perry’s presentation. If I hadn’t seen the level of disregard the EA had for her findings, I don’t think I’d have put two and two together myself. She worked outside of the slides I checked over for her, and only through her voice did I really get a sense of how perturbed she was.”
“She’d have come to us eventually.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Xavier murmured slowly. “She wanted to handle things herself. And because she doesn’t know the politics, she wouldn’t have seen anything amiss.”
George sighed. “Poor Perry.”
Xavier cocked a brow. “Why?”
“She has a ‘Politics 101’ class coming up.”
A chuckle escaped his cousin. “We might need it too. I had no idea Françoise and De Montfort were related.”
George pulled a face. “Me neither. Still, you can’t discredit a man for who he’s married to.”
“No, but you also know it isn’t as simple as that. If the sisters share an anti-royalist background, then that’s only going to push any sentiments their spouses have out into the open.”
“You can’t say that.”
“I just did,” Xavier retorted drily. “But between that and Philippe’s unease, you’re damn right I have a bad feeling about what’s going on.”
George’s phone buzzed against the sofa cushion he’d perched it on. “Edward says Perry’s awake and wants to see us,” he stated after he’d read the message.
Xavier snorted. “She’s a bossy little thing when she wants to be.”
George wiggled his brows. “We’ll be glad of that shortly.”
“You do realize there’s no guarantee you’ll get more than a peck on the lips when we get there, right?” Xavier asked, narrowing his eyes at him as they both got to their feet.
“Of course.” He shrugged. “Like I said. I missed her. I’m used to having her around. When she isn’t, it puts me on edge.”
Xavier studied him a second, then it dragged on. Long enough for him to wriggle his shoulders with unease. “You really mean that, don’t you?”
George grunted. “Why would I say it if I didn’t mean it?”
Xavier shook his head and slowly murmured, “You did a good thing by getting Edward involved with Perry. Hell, me for that matter.” Xavier reached over and squeezed his shoulder. “Thank you.”
Discomfited, George grumbled, “Don’t be stupid.”
“No, it’s not stupid,” Xavier said softly. “I know you love her. I’d have to be an idiot not to see that. But I didn’t realize how much of a…” He paused, sought the right word, “sacrifice you’d be making by sharing her.”
“I want Edward to be happy,” he said mulishly. “Perry can do that.”
“What about her happiness?” Xavier retorted.
“I’ll die before I let her be anything other than content with her life,” George half-snarled, the growl in his voice surprising both of them. “Edward’s busy. He has a duty that neither of us could ever understand. We can make that easier on him, but only if we work together.
“I haven’t brought her into this life for her to be miserable, Xavier. Whatever she wants, whatever she needs, we’ll get it for her.”
Xavier held up his hands. “I know that.”
“Good. Well, as long as we’re on the same page.”
“And we are,” Xavier replied, nodding gently.
Knowing his cousin was trying to soothe him, George rolled his eyes. “Let’s get the hell out of here. We’ve got our woman to meet.”
Slouching back against the low sofa, Perry sipped at a glass of qamardeen, a thick apricot drink, as she looked over the pool in front of her.
It was a beauty.
The water was crystalline, a
nd with the sun so hot, it looked all the more inviting with its surface reflecting the sky almost perfectly overhead.
They were tucked in the shade, in a tent that seemed to fit right in with the grander elements of the palace.
“The Sheikh’s wife is Bedouin,” Edward told her, seeing where her attention was.
The great structure was the size of her apartment back in Boston, an apartment, come to think about it, that she really needed to move out of.
“What are you thinking?”
She smiled at him. “Thought you were a mind-reader.”
“I wish I was,” he said wryly.
“My dad said you were a strategist. Said that one of the reasons you weren’t happy is because you couldn’t put your brain to work where it should be.”
She knew she’d surprised him because his knife scraped noisily against his breakfast plate. He caught her eye, looked at her a second, then quirked his top lip up in a half-smile. “Your father is remarkably perceptive.”
“He’s right then?” she asked, curious now.
“He’s not wrong,” was his cautious reply.
“You know I’m no politician. Nor am I a stranger. You don’t have to watch your words with me.”
He frowned. “I’m not watching my words, Perry. I’m just not sure what to say.”
“Whatever was on the tip of your tongue before you blanked your mind.”
“I could say the same thing for you,” he retorted. “You just changed the subject on me.”
“Because my subject is inane. Yours isn’t. I was simply thinking I need to move my things out of my apartment in Boston. Pay off my lease, things like that. See, boring?”
He grinned at her. “George, with his new talent for management, sorted that out a while back. All of the things are being crated over. They’ll probably be arriving upon our return to Veronia.”
She cocked a brow. “Really? That was presumptuous of him… but cool.” Easy, too. She hated packing shit up.
Reaching for one of the freshly baked croissants that were tucked prettily on a napkin-covered bowl, she began to break it into pieces on the plate in front of her. She was slumped back amid the cushions of the low seat she was on, in an almost Roman pose for eating—she totally understood now why they’d laid back and eaten. She was comfortable and had no desire to move.
She might have slept the night through, several nights, if the air journey was taken into consideration, but she was still feeling the after-effects of a few months of one adrenaline spike after another.
That didn’t mean she wasn’t happy, however.
Just tired.
If anything, being here with him, knowing Xavier and George were on their way? She was at a peace she hadn’t realized she’d missed. As she popped some of the buttery pastry into her mouth, she pointed a finger at him.
“Spill.”
“Dictator,” he told her, taking a bite of his scrambled eggs. He, unlike her, was sitting forward, somewhat hunched over the low table before them.
He hadn’t complained though. He could have moved over to one of the higher tables, the one at the back of the tent that was more like their dining tables, but she knew he didn’t want to leave her.
Truth was, she liked how close he was sticking to her side. She liked it a little too much, considering when they made it back to Veronia, they’d have to be separated for the natural day-to-day tasks.
“You never said, you know, if you liked my uniform.”
She grinned. “Stop fishing for compliments. You know I liked it. I thought I made that clear when we were waiting to walk into the reception.”
With the four-hundred strong guest list waiting for their wedding breakfast, they’d had but a handful of moments alone between leaving the carriage that had driven them from the capital to the castle, and their arrival at the grand salon where the reception was being held.
When the groom would traditionally touch the bride up, she’d pulled his kilt out of the way to discover if men really did go bare under there.
She hadn’t been disappointed.
“You just liked the easy access,” he said with a mock pout firming his lips. “That doesn’t tell me if you liked it.”
She laughed, her head falling back. “I thought I was the one who needed to hear how beautiful I looked?”
He snorted. “You know you looked gorgeous. I wanted to fuck you, right there and then.”
“In front of God and the rest of Veronia?” Her eyes widened innocently. “My, that would have been a display.”
“It would have set the tone for the rest of our marriage, that’s for certain.”
She snickered, unable to help it. “I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it. My stomach was dancing like mad.”
“You looked a little pasty at first, but then, after the vows, you seemed to relax,” he remarked.
She nodded. “It was a lot easier to breathe when your eyes were on mine.”
His face softened at that. Any tension their earlier conversation might have caused dissipated in the truth of her words.
“I’m a very lucky man to be able to call you my own. Do you know that?”
She blinked. “I do now.”
“And you looked like…” He whistled. “I wasn’t sure if I had a Goddess walking toward me, or my future wife.”
Her cheeks burned a little at his candor. “I was only teasing. I knew you liked my dress.”
“Well, I was only teasing too—I knew you liked my uniform.”
“I did. And seeing it multiplied by three?” She let out a whistle of her own. “That certainly worked its number on me.”
He grinned at her. “Xavier said you’d like it. George just felt like a dick. Or so he grumbled. Constantly. Throughout the walk to the abbey.”
She laughed. “I can imagine. He can be such a baby sometimes.”
“A ‘baby’ isn’t the word.” He pulled a face as he set his knife and fork aside. Then, after reaching for his own juice, he took a deep sip and sank back onto the sofa opposite her.
They were in a low circular seating area, with the table in the center. Staff came and went sporadically, dipping curtsies and sending shy, polite smiles as they retrieved hot silver pots of coffee and freshened up teapots, while gathering dirty dishes and replenishing bowls of pastries and sweet treats that tasted of almonds and rosewater.
Edward had eaten a more hearty and traditional repast of bacon, eggs, and toast. She’d sampled the countless tiny morsels that were Arabic in origin. Anything from the sweet mint tea that was so sugary it was like a syrup and just as addictive as crack, to the almond and pistachio sweetmeats. But the call of a fresh croissant had beckoned, and her fingers bore the brunt of the buttery, delicious greasiness.
As he sank back, full now from his meal, he stared at her over his glass a second, and she realized then how relaxed he was.
Sure, he’d relaxed when it was just the two of them, or if Xavier and George were around. But this kind of relaxed was different.
She wasn’t sure why, either.
Just liked the look of it on him.
“That uniform wasn’t just ceremonial.”
“I never thought it was,” she murmured, taking another sip of tea. “It’s well known Veronia has conscription.”
He nodded. “Well, I did quite well during my service. We all did. Only Xavier wasn’t too keen. He prefers his trees and farms to the army. But George and I? We liked it.”
“Wasn’t it a bit…” She pulled a face. “You know, nepotistic?”
He laughed. “Never change, Perry.”
“What do you mean?” she grumbled.
“Always be as blunt as you are now, and we should have a very happy marriage.” Though she rolled her eyes, he just murmured, “No, it wasn’t about putting us somewhere and trying to make us look good while keeping us very safe.
“You should know by now, Veronia doesn’t do things by halves. If we’d died in the act of service, we’d have been belo
ved by the people. It’s a part of our society.”
“George never mentioned his time in the Forces, and yet, you say he loved it?”
Edward nodded, a grim smile twisting his lips. “Just before he moved to America, Veronia got involved with the conflicts in the Middle East. We shipped out troops.”
“He served over there?” Her eyes widened, unease flittering through her at the knowledge George had kept something of that magnitude from her.
“No. The government at the time said he would endanger the troops he was serving with. Soldiers would die to protect him, to keep him safe. Said that he would never be treated like any other enlistee.” He blew out a breath. “War is different to the maneuverings of an army during peace time. Unfortunately for George, who wanted to serve over there, do his bit, and as irritating as it is to have Parliament control our lives, they were right. George knew he’d be putting more lives in danger by going. He went and did his MBA instead, and never really forgave the government for it.”
She blinked. “How did I not know that?”
“Because he didn’t tell you. And what Veronia doesn’t want to leave its borders, information included, doesn’t leave our land.”
“What about you?” she asked, sorrow for George filling her. Although, it was hard to be sad for him when, if it wasn’t for Parliament’s dictates, they’d never have met.
“I had a talent for, as your father put it, strategizing. For a while, I helped the police force control corruption. We managed to send a few mafia heads to jail.”
She studied him a second, heard what he wasn’t telling her. “You miss it.”
He didn’t prevaricate. “I do.”
“Can’t you…?”
“Go back?” He shook his head. “It doesn’t work like that. Unless we’re at war, once your time is over, your time is over. And by that point, I had to take my duties as Crown Prince seriously.”
She processed that then blew out a breath. “Being royal sucks.”
He snorted. “Lucky for you, you just became royal too.” His eyes twinkled with amusement, and it surprised her because she would have expected him to wince or to try to make her see how great it was to be a DeSauvier. But he didn’t.
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