Prince of Secrets

by Lucy Monroe

  It had been years since Chanel had sat through one of her mother’s preparation routines for a social function, but the sound of Beatrice’s voice giving instruction to the stylists resonated with old memories.

  Memories were so much easier to deal with than the reality of the present. She was marrying a prince.

  It was beyond surreal.

  “Your fingers are like ice.” The manicurist frowned as she took Chanel’s hand out of the moisturizing soak. “Why did you say nothing? The water must be too cold.”

  Beatrice was there in a second, testing the water with her own finger and giving Chanel a look filled with concern. “Are you all right, sweetheart?”

  Chanel nodded.

  Her mom did not look comforted. “The argan oil solution is warm enough, but the manicurist is right. Your hands feel like they’ve been wrapped around an icicle.”

  Chanel shrugged.

  “Mom, she’s marrying a prince. That’s not exactly Chanel’s dream job,” Laura said in that tone only a teenager could get just right. “She’s stressed out.”

  “But he’s perfect for you.”

  “You’ve barely seen us together. How would you know?” Chanel asked, with little inflection.

  “You love him.”

  Chanel nodded again. There was no point in denying the one thing that would prompt her to marry a man related to royalty.

  “He adores you.”

  Laura grinned at Chanel, her eyes filled with understanding. “I agree with Mom on that one, at least.”

  “I think he does,” Chanel admitted. Demyan acted like a man very happy with his future.

  Beatrice reached out and put her hand against Chanel’s temple, frowning at whatever she felt there. “You’re in shock.”

  “Sheesh, Mom, way to state the obvious.” Laura didn’t roll her eyes, but it was close.

  Beatrice frowned. “I do not appreciate your tone, young lady.”

  “Well, you’re acting like Chanel should be all excited and happy when it’s probably taking everything in her not to run away. She’s a scientist, Mom, not a socialite.”

  “I am well aware of my daughter’s chosen profession.” Beatrice was careful not to frown—that caused wrinkles—but her tone conveyed displeasure.

  The interaction fascinated Chanel, who hadn’t realized her mother and Laura had anything less than the ideal mother-daughter relationship.

  Beatrice looked at Chanel. “Do you need some orange juice to bring up your blood sugar?”

  Chanel shook her head. “It just doesn’t feel real.”

  “Believe it or not, I threw up twice before walking down the aisle to your father,” Beatrice offered with too much embarrassment for it not to be sincere.

  Laura snorted. “You were preggers, Mom. It was probably morning sickness.”

  “I was not morning sick. I was terrified. I nearly fainted when I was getting ready for my wedding to your father.”

  Chanel couldn’t imagine her mother agitated to that level. “Really?”

  “It’s a huge step, marriage. No matter how much you love the man you’re marrying.”

  “I don’t know what the big deal is. If it doesn’t work out, they can get divorced,” Laura said with the blasé confidence of youth.

  Their mother glared at her youngest daughter. “That is not the attitude women of this family take into marriage.”

  “You and Chanel can get all stressed about it, but I’m not going to. If I get married at all. It all seems like a lot of bother over something that ends in divorce about fifty percent of the time. I think living together makes a lot more sense.”

  Chanel almost laughed at the look of absolute horror crossing their mother’s features. She would have, if she could feel anything that deeply.

  Right now the entire world around her was one level removed.

  “Stop looking like that, Mom. You and Chanel take everything so seriously. I’m not like you.”

  It was a total revelation to Chanel that Laura considered her like their mother.

  “You’re more like us than you realize, young lady. Regardless, there will be no more talk of divorce on your sister’s wedding day.”

  Chanel had never heard her mother use that particular tone with her golden-child sister.

  And Laura listened, but her less-than-subdued expression implied she had heard it before and didn’t find it all that intimidating.

  How much had Chanel missed about the world around her? She hadn’t realized Demyan was a corporate king, much less a real-life prince. She’d had no idea her mother still loved her father and she’d been sure Beatrice no longer loved her.

  Chanel had been wrong on all counts.

  It was a sobering and hopeful realization at the same time.

  Nevertheless, she continued through the rest of her personal preparations for the wedding in the fog of shock that had plagued her since waking without Demyan in her bed.

  As the makeup artist finished the final application of lip color, a knock sounded at the door.

  “The driver is here. Are you both ready?” Beatrice asked, managing to the look the part of the mother of the bride for a prince, anyway.

  Laura looked like a blond angel in her ice-blue Vera Wang maid-of-honor dress that was a perfect complement to Chanel’s vintage designer gown.

  Chanel hoped her mother had worked some kind of magic and she looked her part, as well. She hadn’t looked in the mirror since the hair stylist had shown up.

  “It’s not the driver,” Laura announced after opening the door. Then she dropped into a curtsy and Chanel’s throat constricted.

  Had the king come to tell her he didn’t want Chanel marrying his quasi-adopted son? No, that was an irrational thought.

  But…her thoughts stopped their spin out of control in the face of the majesty that was Queen Oxana in full regalia. The Queen of Volyarus swept into the room, making the huge chamber feel very small all of a sudden.

  “Good morning, Chanel. Beatrice.” The queen gave Chanel’s mother a small incline of her head and then a smile to Laura. “Laura, you look lovely.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” Laura replied with her irrepressible smile.

  “And you, my dear,” the queen said as she focused her considerable attention on Chanel. “You look absolutely perfect. That’s an original by Coco Chanel herself, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was a brilliant and innovative designer who changed the face of female haute couture almost single-handedly. I find your choice to dress in one of her gowns singularly appropriate as I am sure you will be equally as impacting in your field.”

  It was the first time anyone who mattered to Chanel emotionally had made such a claim. Bittersweet joy squeezed at her heart, even through the layer of numbness surrounding that organ. “Thank you.”

  Oxana smiled. “You are very welcome.” She offered Chanel a medium-sized dark blue velvet box meant for jewelry. “I would be honored if you would wear this.”

  Expecting pearls, or something of that nature, Chanel felt her heart beat in a rapid tattoo of shock at the sight of the diamond-encrusted tiara. It wasn’t anything as imposing as the crown presently resting on the queen’s perfectly coiffed hair, but it was worthy of a princess.

  “I’m not… This is…” Chanel didn’t know what to say, so she closed her mouth on more empty words.

  “Part of my own wedding outfit,” the queen finished for her. “It would please me to see it worn again.”

  “Didn’t Prince Maksim’s wife wear it?” Laura asked, managing to verbalize at least one of the questions swirling through Chanel’s brain.

  “King Fedir gave her his mother’s princess tiara. It was decided between us that mine would be reserved for the wife of our eldest.”

  Chanel’s heart warmed to hear Demyan referred to as the eldest child of the king and queen.

  Somehow, though the stylist had been unaware that a tiara would be added later, the updo she had designed f
or Chanel lent itself perfectly to the diamond-encrusted accessory.

  Or so her mother told Chanel.

  “Here, see for yourself,” Oxana insisted.

  Both Laura and Beatrice gave her a concerned look. So, they had noticed she hadn’t looked in the mirror since that morning.

  But Chanel didn’t want visual proof that she didn’t look like a princess.

  “I trust your judgment,” Chanel hedged.

  “Then you will trust my instruction to look at yourself, my soon-to-be daughter.” Oxana’s expression did not invite argument.

  Oh, gosh…she’d never even considered this woman would truly consider herself Chanel’s mother-in-law.

  “You look like a princess,” Beatrice said with far more sincerity than such a trite statement deserved.

  “You’re going to knock Demyan on his butt,” Laura added with a little less finesse, but no less certainty.

  Far from offended, the queen laughed and agreed. “Yes, I do believe you will.”

  Taking a breath for courage, Chanel turned to face the impartial judge that could not be gainsaid. The mirror reflected only what was—it made no judgments about that image.

  The woman staring back at Chanel with wide gray eyes did not look like a queen. No layers and layers of organza to look like any princess bride Chanel had ever seen in the tabloids, either, but in this moment she was beautiful.

  The vintage Coco Chanel design fit her like it had been tailored to her figure, the antique lace clinging in all the right places. The single-layer floor-length veil and tiara added elegance Chanel was not used to seeing when she looked in a mirror.

  The makeup artist had managed to bring out the shape and pink tint of Chanel’s lips while making her eyes glow. Her curls had been tamed into perfect corkscrews and then pinned up so that the length of her neck looked almost swanlike.

  This woman would not embarrass Demyan walking up the aisle.

  Chanel turned to her mother and hugged Beatrice with more emotion than she’d allowed herself to show in years with the older woman. “Thank you.”

  “It was my pleasure. It has been a very long time since you allowed me to fuss over you. I enjoyed it.” Beatrice returned the embrace and then stepped back, blinking at the moisture in her eyes.

  Chanel and her mother would probably never agree on what it meant to fuss over someone else, but she began to see that, in her own way, her mother hadn’t abandoned Chanel completely as a child.

  *

  Wearing the gold-and-dark-blue official uniform of the Volyarussian Cossack Hetman, Demyan waited at the bottom of the palace steps, as it was his country’s royal tradition that he ride with Chanel in the horse-drawn carriage to the cathedral.

  His dark eyes met hers, his handsome face stern and unemotional. Yet despite wearing what she’d come to think of as his “corporate king” face, there was an unmistakable soul-deep satisfaction glimmering in his gaze.

  He put his hand out toward her. The white-glove-covered appendage hung there, an unexpected beacon. He wasn’t supposed to take her hand yet; he wasn’t supposed to touch her at all. They had been instructed to enter the carriage separately. She was to sit with her back toward the driver and he was to face the people on the slow procession to the Orthodox cathedral.

  According to the wedding coordinator and royal tradition, she and Demyan were not supposed to touch so much as fingertips until the priest proclaimed them man and wife.

  So this one gesture spoke volumes of her prince’s willingness to put Chanel ahead of protocol.

  Without warning, the mental and emotional fog surrounding Chanel fell away, the world coming into stark relief for the first time that day. Though it was early fall, the sun shone bright in the sky, the air around them crisp with autumn chill and filled with a cacophony of voices from the crowds lining the palace drive that were suddenly loud.

  Love for Demyan swelled inside Chanel, pushing aside worry and doubt to fill her with a certainty that drove her forward toward the hand held out to her.

  Their fingers touched, his curling possessively and decisively around her cold ones. He tugged her forward even as electric current arced between them despite the barrier of his glove.

  Devastating emotion shuddered through her, completely dispelling the last of the strange, surreal sensations that had plagued her since waking.

  His eyes flared and then he was pulling off the cape from his uniform and wrapping it around her. Several gasps sounded around them and the king said something that Chanel had no doubt was a protest.

  She couldn’t hear him, though, not over the blood rushing in her ears. The long military cloak settled around her shoulders. She didn’t argue that she wasn’t really cold, because it carried the fragrance of Demyan’s cologne and skin, making her feel embraced by him.

  He helped her into the open landau carriage, further eschewing protocol to sit beside her.

  Cameras flashed, people cheered and while all of it registered, none of it really impacted Chanel. She was too focused on the man holding her hand and looking at her with quietly banked joy.

  “It’s just you and me,” she said softly, understanding at last.

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t relate to her as a prince, though he was undeniably that. Demyan related to her as the man who wanted to share his life with her.

  That life might be more complicated because of his title, but at the core, it was the life she wanted. Just as at the core, she knew this man and connected to him soul to soul.

  The deep happiness reflecting in his gaze darkened to something more serious. “Always believe that, no matter what else might come up, our marriage is about you and me. Full stop.”

  “Period,” she finished, her heart filled to bursting with such love for this man.

  It didn’t have to make sense, or be rational, she realized. She had fallen for him immediately and she was wholly and completely in love with him now.

  They could have waited another year to marry and she wouldn’t be any surer of him than she was right now.

  As her mom had said, this man was it for Chanel, the love of her life, and he felt the same. Even if he hadn’t said the words.

  Even if he never did.

  “I love you,” she said to him, needing to in that moment as much as she needed to breathe.

  “I will treasure that gift for the rest of my life, I promise you.”

  He made the vow official less than an hour later when he said it in front of the filled-to-capacity cathedral as part of the personal vows they’d agreed to speak. He also promised to care for her, respect her and support her efforts to make the world a better place through science.

  Chanel, who never cried, felt hot tears tracking down her cheeks—thank goodness for her mother’s insistence on waterproof makeup—as she spoke her own personal promises, including one to love Demyan for the rest of her life.

  It wasn’t hard to promise something she didn’t think she had a choice about anyway.

  His name change was also acknowledged for the first time publicly during the wedding ceremony, when the Orthodox priest led them in their formalized vows before pronouncing them married.

  A murmur rippled through the crowd, but Demyan seemed oblivious, his attention wholly on Chanel.

  The king’s expression was filled with more emotion than Chanel thought the rather standoffish King of Volyarus capable of as he made his official acknowledgment of his son’s new married state.

  Crown Prince Maksim and his wife were both gracious and clearly happy about the name change when Chanel finally met them for the reception line after the ceremony.

  She’d thought it odd she hadn’t yet met Demyan’s brother and was relieved when Princess Gillian remarked on it, as well.

  It had been clear from several remarks Demyan made that the two men were close. The fact Chanel hadn’t been introduced before had had her wondering if maybe the Crown Prince had disapproved of the wedding.

  Only now it was o
bvious he hadn’t even known about the upcoming nuptials until he’d been summoned back to Volyarus by his parents. Chanel didn’t understand it, but she was the first person to admit that most politics of social interaction and even family relationships went right over her head.

  Prince Maksim seemed nice enough and quite willing to accept Chanel into the family. His own wife wasn’t royalty or even nobility, so he had to have a fully modern view of marriage within his family.

  Though a comment, or two, made by his wife implied otherwise.

  Once they’d finished greeting those allowed into the formal reception line, the entire Yurkovich family addressed the people of Volyarus from the main balcony at the front of the palace. The king gave a speech. They all waved and smiled for what felt like hours before everyone but she and Demyan retreated inside.

  He addressed the crowd, telling them how honored he was that Dame Chanel Tanner had agreed to be his wife, that he knew her ancestor Baron Tanner would have been very happy, as well.

  Then he kissed Chanel.

  And it wasn’t a chaste, for-the-masses kiss. Demyan took her mouth with gentle implacability, showing her and everyone watching how very pleased he was she was now officially his.

  *

  Chanel found herself separated from Demyan during the reception, but she wasn’t surprised.

  He’d prepared her for the way the formal event would unfold, during which they would have very little time together. He had promised to make up for that on their wedding night and the extended honeymoon that was to follow.

  What did surprise Chanel was to find herself completely without any of the people who had seemed intent on making sure she was never on her own in the highly political gathering.

  Queen Oxana was occupied talking to Princess Gillian. Chanel’s mother had been waylaid by an elderly duke, while Andrew flirted with the man’s granddaughter under the watchful and not-very-happy gaze of the teen’s eagle-eyed mother. Perry was talking business in a corner somewhere—not that he was one of Chanel’s self-appointed minders.

  Even Laura had lost herself in the crowd.

  Chanel thought now would be the ideal time to find a quiet place to regroup a little. The crush of people was overwhelming for a scientist who spent most of her days in the lab, the mixture of so many voices sounding like a roar in her ears.