Claiming My Duchess

by Jessica Blake

  “Yet,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “One of my secretaries has a granddaughter a few years younger than you that she’s been telling me about. Perhaps you’d be interested in meeting her? Or someone else? We have a ball coming up. According to legend, those are perfect nights for young noblemen to meet their lady loves.”

  I snorted. My parents’ own arranged marriage had ended in an epic failure with my mother leaving the country, leaving me, when I was just a boy. My uncle’s marriage had been arranged as well, but it’d been happy. In fact, he had been so happy with my late aunt that I doubted he’d ever attempt to marry again.

  The only downside to their union was the complications my aunt had experienced producing an heir. Although over twenty years my uncle’s junior, Queen Helena had suffered through numerous miscarriages and stillbirths before Penelope came screaming into the world. But, sadly, my cousin’s birth had taken the ultimate toll on the queen’s body, and she hadn’t been able to recover from the ravishes she’d gone through.

  Her last words to me before she closed her eyes for the last time were, “Promise to care for her, Sebastianos. Make sure she understands that I would gladly die a thousand deaths to give her a moment of life.”

  So care for her I did, and although my little cousin didn’t realize it, she’d cared for me too. Just her sweet presence had been a balm to my war weary soul.

  “Well?” my uncle asked, pulling me back to the present. “What do you think about meeting my secretary’s granddaughter?”

  The king wasn’t the only person in Cassia trying to set me up. Little Penelope was too.

  She’d gotten to the age where she was a huge fairy tale fan and had started asking me when I was going to ever find a princess. In fact, she asked me that very question just last week.

  “You’re the only princess I need in my life,” I’d shot back.

  She just rolled those pretty blue eyes and sighed, acting for all the world like she was twenty years old. “No, a princess for you to marry.”

  “If I ever marry, she won’t be a princess,” I reminded her. “She’d be a duchess.” Although officially, she could be either.

  Penelope had considered my words a moment before turning her blue eyes back up to me. “Okay, Sebastianos…” she only used my full name when she was irritated with me, “when are we going to find you a duchess?”

  The question rang in my mind because it seemed to be a favorite topic of conversation now between father and daughter whenever they caught me alone.

  I’d never really wanted a duchess before, to be honest. I’d shied away from dating anyone in the peerage because gossip was vicious in that circle, and I already had a big enough target on my back. Even though I was rarely at home, I was blamed to have broken many a female heart.

  Which was total bullshit.

  I’d never been with a woman long enough for her to properly fall in love with me, but that didn’t stop the conniving females from claiming it to be true. Now, it seemed I’d been labeled a playboy. The Duke of Debauchery, one tabloid had called me, though they’d been forced to use a picture of my eighteen-year-old skinny self since I’d managed to escape their telegraphic lenses since my return to life at court.

  Returning to my uncle’s conversation, I tried to respectfully decline. “If it’s all the same to you, Uncle, I imagine I’ll be far too busy to worry about meeting single women at the Legacy Ball. It’s a big night with my official debut as duke.”

  He scowled, and I bit back a grin. I was pretty sure he didn’t like me using the job he’d persuaded me to take against him and his matchmaking attempts, but I’d won that round.

  “Soon,” he said, a warning to me. “You need to find yourself a good woman and settle down soon, Seb. You’ve earned it.”

  Being married was a reward? Not likely.

  “Besides, we need more heirs, you know.” Sadness flickered over his face, and I knew he was thinking of all the little heirs who didn’t take their first breaths. And he was also thinking of my father, his beloved brother who’d been taken too soon.

  He didn’t say it, but it would be up to Penelope when she was older to continue the lineage, and it was up to me to be that backup should something go terribly wrong.

  I stood when he did and gave him another bow as he said goodbye. “Don’t be a stranger. Dinner is at six every night. We’d love to see you sometime.”

  I managed not to cringe. I much preferred to eat without worrying about my manners. I’d just as soon eat something at my desk before wandering back to my apartments on the fourth floor.

  “I’ll make it there soon,” I promised as he left.

  Looking back at the paperwork on my desk, I sighed as I lifted an invitation for some ribbon cutting event I needed to schedule myself to attend. Worse, I’d be expected to speak and smile for the cameras.

  I cursed.

  It would get better soon, I reassured myself as I typed out an email letting my secretary know I’d attend.

  Smile and wave, folks. Smile and wave.

  Yes, it would get better.

  It would.

  It had to.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Iliana

  “Never turn your back on the monarch,” my new boss, Thierry Masters, was repeating to me as we walked through the carpeted hallways that led away from his office. He was carrying his camera, and I was walking beside him tugging a large wagon behind me with what felt like three hundred studio lights and ninety-eight different lenses.

  “And while it’s not the official dictate nowadays, it’s still a good idea to wait until you’re spoken to,” he added. “And remember to stand when any of the royal family enter the room, and for goodness’ sake, remember a proper curtsey.”

  Ah, the curtsey. This single act alone had me more distressed and anxious than anything else in all of my twenty-four years. I’d watched Marta do it at least a hundred times in the past four days since I started the internship, and I still felt wobbly and unstable each time. My arms would flounder about like misfiring flippers to keep me from toppling forward, and I couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that Marta was able to look poised and graceful in heels.

  “It’ll come,” Thierry said. “If you practice enough. I can’t have my interns making a fool out of our office, so do your best to avoid catastrophes today if you can.”

  I promised that I’d do my best, and he motioned me away so that he could have a strategy session with his first assistant, Pascal.

  I was a lighting assistant today, something I knew fairly little about because I hadn’t been especially fond of portrait workshops through the years and only took them when absolutely necessary. Travel photography and landscapes were my passion, but it looked as though portraiture was going to pay my stipend for the summer, so I’d be whatever assistant Thierry needed me to be.

  A pair of guards in palace livery opened the large floor-to-ceiling double doors for us as we approached and let us into the throne room.

  I’d worked especially hard the past few days not to look like some slack-jawed annoying tourist around the palace, but the throne room did me in. It was simply spectacular, and from my crude calculations, it was about the same size as three of the houses I lived in during my years in San Diego put together.

  The domed ceilings were massive, seeming to go on forever.

  The throne room of the Cassian monarchy, I learned, was a living thing. When the royal family changed, so did the throne room. After the passing of the queen, her throne was put into the museum, and a smaller, more graceful throne was put to the right of the king’s throne. It was where Princess Penelope sat during State events, I assumed.

  I smiled wistfully at the thought of being a crown princess, or nobility in general. My father hadn’t thought much of it, and he’d been the son of a baron. From what I’d heard from Hermione and Nigel, Princess Penelope was a sweet girl who was incredibly photogenic.

  “Like a little cherub,” Auntie Hermione said with a
sigh.

  “Will grow up someday to make a stunning queen,” Nigel added, to which Hermione agreed.

  The team set up on the tables toward the side, and I helped unpack all the gear. We were about fifteen minutes from the arrival of the king and the princess when my stomach started to feel sick.

  I pressed my hand to my belly, hoping to still the roiling going on inside. I was nervous, sure, but it wasn’t like I was a diplomatic visitor from a foreign country or anything. I was a damn intern and probably wouldn’t be within fifty feet of the king, but I still worried that I’d muck something up somehow.

  I’d been warned to dress professionally, so I was already sweating in my beige pantsuit that featured capri length pants. I’d paired the suit with a silk scoop neck blouse in a green that matched my eyes and selected the tall but surprisingly comfortable nude platform pumps Auntie Hermione had purchased for me, promising that my toes would thank me later.

  Small silver hoops completed the ensemble, and I’d pulled my hair back from my face in an easy half up, half down style. I’d been assured that the dress code in the summer was much more relaxed, although not quite as relaxed as I’d been on my first day. Since then, I’d taken fashion cues from Marta, who wore sundresses with light weight cardigans or jackets most days. Thierry never strayed from his dark Italian suits and his outrageously colored bowties. He wore the same uniform day in and day out, no matter the weather.

  “Secret to my creative success,” he said with a grin. “I never have to use a creative cell to wonder what I’m wearing that day. I can pour it all out into my camera.”

  It was definitely one way of looking at it.

  “How’s your curtsey?” Marta whispered after the equipment had been set up. I gave her an unconvincing thumbs-up, and as soon as she turned around, I dipped my left toe back behind my right heel and tried to gently, gracefully lower myself while reining in my arms.

  It’d almost worked, too, but on the way up, my back foot gave me too much of a boost, and I came unbalanced. I took a jerky step forward and bumped the table, sending a spare lightbulb rolling off the edge, where it fell to the floor and shattered.

  Loudly.

  So loudly that it seemed like everyone who’d gathered on the other side of the tables and near the doorway stopped what they were doing and looked back at me.

  I untangled my feet and did my best to disappear on the spot by making like a column and freezing. It didn’t work, but thankfully, conversations picked back up, and people returned to what they were doing so that I could clean up the broken glass.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to Marta, who’d turned around to check on me. “I bumped the table, and a light bulb fell off.”

  Marta gave a tense smile and whispered, “Get housekeeping to help.”

  Not wanting to bother someone to clean up my mess, I squatted behind the table and began to gingerly pick up the larger pieces and collect them in my open palm. Tottering that way in my heels wasn’t easy, and I came unbalanced again. Trying to catch myself, my hand came down on a shard of glass. Lifting my hand, I dropped my knee for balance. Yep, right onto another piece of glass.

  Silly Illy.

  Sucking in my breath, I could almost hear my mother calling me that. I had been a clumsy child who had turned into an even clumsier adult. Eyeing the floor carefully, I managed to get to my feet without bleeding on anything important… and saw the darndest thing.

  I believed in déjà vu, but I was pretty sure this was the first time I’d ever experienced déjà butt. Through the crowd, from my vantage point, I caught the back of a man near the doorway. He was speaking to someone I didn’t recognize, standing nearly a head taller than the other man.

  He was wearing a snowy white dress shirt and a pair of impeccably tailored black slacks. It was the slacks that drew my eyes to his butt and his butt that drew me back to the night that I brazenly eyed a man’s tush as he made his way to the restroom.

  The butt was so familiar it made me smile. And then almost groan in want. For as good as Seb’s butt had looked that night, it’d felt all that much better while I was grabbing hold of it all through the early hours of the morning.

  Covering my grin with my non-bloody hand, I backed up and away from the mess I’d created and looked for a footman along the wall. I explained what I’d done, and instead of directing me to a broom and dustpan as I’d been hoping, he assured me that he’d notify the housekeeping staff who would take care of it posthaste.

  I thanked him and made my way back to the equipment bags in hopes of finding a few bandages. Blood had already created a circle on my knee and was trailing down my shinbone while also gathering in my palm. Geez, it was a good thing these cuts were small, or it would have looked like a massacre was taking place.

  Begging for a box of Band-Aids to appear, I dug through bag after bag and couldn’t find a thing.

  I was getting ready to find a restroom when a footman yelled, “Announcing His Royal Highness, King Demetrius,” and I nearly jumped out of my skin. The assistants gathered behind Thierry, and I hobbled toward them, trying to stay directly behind everyone as they paid homage to their king.

  In front of me, the royal photographer and the monarch struck up a friendly conversation, making it clear they were old friends.

  “Good to see you, old man,” the king said, and I heard Thierry laugh and return a greeting. From the corner of my eye, I spotted a little girl in an uncomfortable looking ball gown made of gold standing in the hallway. There was a purple sash going down her narrow chest and a sparkling tiara on her blonde head. I couldn’t help but smile at the Crown Princess Penelope.

  She was a doll.

  A doll who also happened to be looking at me — more specifically, the blood running down my leg, her eyes wide.

  She motioned to me, pointing toward her own knee and then to mine, trying to let me know about it. I gave her a smile and a shrug and then a thumbs-up, trying to pantomime that I was okay.

  The little girl frowned. Was a thumbs-up some sort of faux pas when it came to royalty? What about royalty in the first grade?

  I hid my hands behind my back and realized my mistake too late — I’d just smeared blood from my hand on my right thigh, adding to the carnage.

  With a dramatic sigh, I silently wished the old school chums ahead of me would hurry up already, so I could go try to wash some of the blood off me and check out the slice on my palm which was really starting to hurt something ugly.

  “…yes, Your Highness, she’s from America this year.”

  I froze at the word America.

  Please, no.

  No. No. No.

  I prayed for some sort of divine miracle to save me from what was about to happen. Not only was I a bleeding mess, I was about to be some horror-movie extra trying to curtsey to the king. What if I fell forward on him with my bloody hands? Would secret service shoot me?

  I was in a full-blown panic as the assistants and Thierry parted like the Red Sea, and before I could dive under a table and save myself, I was suddenly standing four feet from the King of Cassia.

  I swallowed hard, a jumble of everything Thierry and Auntie Hermione tried to tell me swirling together like some godawful smoothie of rules and etiquette that I was never going to get right.

  “Come forward, miss,” the king said, motioning me to step up. “I’m happy to meet you. I’m a bit of a photography buff myself.”

  Mess that I was, I had no choice but to step forward. And wouldn’t you know it, I suddenly had the strongest urge to pee on top of it all.

  When I was about two feet from the king, I got my feet into position… and dipped. It probably wasn’t as shallow as it was supposed to be, but I didn’t tumble to the king’s feet, and I’d been able to keep my arms pinned to my sides.

  When I was back on my feet, I nearly fist pumped the air in pure glee, but managed to refrain.

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” I said, suddenly forgetting when to use majesty and highn
ess. Most of the people I’d heard around here said highness, so I was going with it.

  “How are you enjoying your stay so far?”

  Oh, crap. He wanted to make small talk? I wasn’t prepared for small talk. My mind raced. Small talk was easy. Small talk was simple. Say something, Iliana, I internally screamed at myself as the monarch of Cassia stood looking at me.

  “It’s been a wonderful first few days, thank you,” I managed, sucking in a breath and plastering a smile so hard on my face, my cheek muscles ached.

  “And how long will you be staying?”

  I blinked. Staying. Staying where?

  It took me a good two seconds to realize he was talking about my stay in the country.

  “I’ll graduate from the university here in December,” I said. “I’m taking my last semester of classes here in the fall, sire.”

  Sire. Did people still use that word? Had I watched too many princess cartoons growing up? Was King Demetrius even my sire if I was an American citizen? My anxiety was making my head swim when the adorable little princess flounced forward, gold and purple coming at me in a swirl.

  “Father, her—” she began, but the king cut her off with a look.

  “I don’t remember hearing your name being called,” he gently scolded his daughter, an eyebrow raised high on his forehead.

  Princess Penelope had the good manners to look embarrassed. “But—”

  The king’s mouth twisted as if he was attempting to hold back a smile, but he continued to give his royal daughter a firm look. “But since you’re here, allow me to introduce you to Miss Costas, an American citizen who is interning with us through the end of the year.” He turned to me. “Miss Costas, this is my daughter, Penelope.”

  Shit. I needed to curtsey again.

  Taking a deep breath, I managed to dip lower this time, thinking that because she was shorter that maybe I had to make an extra effort? I had no idea. I was making it up as I went along.

  “Hello, Your Highness,” I said. She was a highness too, right?