Everyone stood to gain from their union, especially him. That was the mystery that eluded her. With so much to gain, why had he have thrown it all away and publicly humiliated her in the process?
Her face flushed with heat at the memory of riding in the traditional Aragonese open carriage from the palace through the streets of San José, the small capital of Aragon.
She had waved cheerfully at the sea of faces crowding the streets until the carriage stopped at Santa Maria Cathedral. Everyone smiled at her and waved back.
Then as the minutes ticked by and her brother hadn’t appeared on the church steps to take her down the aisle, people began looking around and whispering behind their hands.
But still, she’d smiled and kissed the few children who had been allowed to come closer and give her gifts and flowers.
When she’d seen her brother stomp away from the cathedral with a dark face, she had known something was very wrong.
Before she fully realized what was happening, the reporters crowded around the carriage, screaming their questions, shoving their microphones in her face, demanding to know why she had been stood up at the altar.
As the flashes popped around her, she hadn’t known what to do. Keep smiling? Grab the reins, turn the carriage around and head back to the palace, and never go out again?
The millions of people around the world watching the live broadcast got to see the torment clear on her face as the tears flooded her eyes when her brother climbed on the carriage with her and ordered security to keep the reporters back. The coachman had taken them home to the palace with haste.
Valantín had turned to her and explained, “Abelardo is not here and the palace ceremonialist can’t locate him anywhere in San José.”
Even though that bothered her a lot, it had been the confirmation of her worst fear. She wasn’t good enough for a man. That humiliated her more.
Now, everyone knew that not even a commoner would take her as his wife once he saw past her beauty and her brain and found her lacking in some essential way that made her unlovable. She was a failure as a woman.
The jilted princess bride became the talk of the country and all European gossip mags.
After that experience, she would’ve avoided any and every wedding invitation until the day she died, if she could have. But her brother had insisted on her presence in this particular wedding. And she had acquiesced, as she always did when it was best for her family and her country. So, here she was.
But she didn’t have to like it.
And now she watched as her brother walked out to the dance floor where he handed Siobhan back to her husband, Angus. The couple smiled at each other as they began to dance again, clearly very much in love.
She wished Siobhan all the luck in the world. But Angelica couldn’t help her twinge of cynicism at seeing them pressed so close together out there on the dance floor. No. Not cynicism. Realism. If true love was real and couples stayed together forever, that would be great.
But that wasn’t how things actually worked, she knew, and the statistics didn’t lie. However happily Siobhan and Angus looked at each other today, according to the numbers, it was a fifty-fifty chance whether they would still be married just three years from now.
Believing that you’ve found true love is as crazy as being certain the lottery ticket you’ve just bought is definitely going to be the winner. You can be as certain as you want; it doesn’t change anything.
Angelica shook her head slightly, only too aware she shouldn’t think like that but having been jilted at the altar didn’t make her sympathetic to these kinds of celebrations.
For Angelica, relationships were like the flower arrangement she was hiding behind. She plucked a white rose out of it and sniffed at it. Right now, they were beautiful. Perfect. Pristine with a shockingly beautiful scent. But in a day or two, they would be wilting, messily thrown in a waste bin. People who think otherwise are simply deluding themselves, however sweetly.
She was ready for the night to be over. She stared at the married couple and at the other couples as they laughed and flirted so easily. Even her mother, Princess Anchela, danced with a young blond man and smiled. Not that Angelica bemoaned her mother’s happiness.
At the age of forty-four, Anchela was a beautiful woman and still quite young, easily in the prime of her life. The yellow and purple amethysts in her crown highlighted her dark hair and glittered in the light of the ballroom. Her yellow ball gown was stunning and simple. It fit Anchela’s form with ease, gleaming dark beads accentuating her curves and gorgeous body.
Angelica had inherited her full, curvy figure from Princess Anchela and she hoped that one day her mother would find a new love. She was much too young to live the life of a spinster. Young widows are always a painful sight to see.
Jilted brides are even more pitiful than young widows—at least widows had been loved and cherished.
Angelica could hide in her room, hide beneath layers of elegant clothes and sparkling jewels, but she couldn’t hide from her own shame and humiliation.
For a moment, she was jealous, wishing she could be like one of those happy people enjoying the small celebration.
They laughed and joked like a giant family, a whole community bonded in trust and loyalty. She knew what it was like to belong to a family, one you could depend on and go to, one who would fight by your side, no questions asked. It was love and romance that had always eluded her.
“Would you like to dance?”
In a small kingdom called Aragon
Close to the Spanish border
“Goddamn,” Abelardo Gutiérrez slammed his fist on the steering wheel for the third time in five minutes. He was pissed.
“The bitch.”
Nobody could know how Angelica’s mind, and apparently her loyalties and her morals, worked. He beat the wheel in frustration as he drove through the hard, freezing rain.
“Like no one else’s I know of,” he muttered between his teeth. As he drove away from the mountain house that belonged to the leader of the Dragonslayers, the soft lamps subtly lit the front of the house slowly disappearing in his rearview mirror.
The Dragonslayers were a secret group comprised of active members of the Democracy for Aragon Movement. Their membership in the secret secondary group could never be discovered. Working strictly as a law-abiding, non-governmental organization could take decades to achieve their goals. Additional pressure on the Aragonese monarchy was needed, and the people had to feel the need for urgent reform. Thus, the Dragonslayers were born. To push things along and to speed up the process by which the DFAM could acquire political power in Aragon and ultimately, finally annex it to Spain. And in the process, Abelardo would become a hero in the people’s eyes.
But Angelica had managed to convince herself—and he was sure any number of her friends, her mother, her sister, the people of Aragon, the Dragonslayers, and Christ knew who else—it was his fault they hadn’t wedded.
Sure, he was to blame for not showing up, but it was her conniving-ass of a brother who required a last-minute signing of a prenup contract that ensured he’d never inherit a dime of her wealth under any circumstances and worse, he would never hold a government position, not even in the case of her illness or passing.
“I had—correction, I have every right to be pissed,” he decided.
But he had been an idiot when he’d fled San José instead of wedding her and trying to find a way into the government.
“Go ahead and work. Clean up your mess,” Aguilar Castro, the Dragonslayers’ leader, had told him a while ago.
He wasn’t sure how much cleaning would be needed to undo what leaving Angelica at the altar had done.
They had been careless to think that wooing a Crown Princess would not result in a wedding date with a prenup.
But maybe he could fix things now that the Dragonslayers were back together again.
Soon, very soon, the right time would come and he would be ready.
He looke
d in the rearview mirror and even if he couldn’t see anything, he promised, “This time I won’t fail you, Aguilar.”
Spain
On the other side of the Aragonese border
Aguilar Castro looked up from the papers on the desk as Celipa Alfaro, Dragonslayer’s second in command, closed the door after the last member had exited.
“Do you think he will do it this time?” asked Celipa, referring to Abelardo. “Do you think he will open the way for you?”
“If he doesn’t, he’s expendable…if he does, he’s still expendable, but at least he’ll have served his purpose.” Aguilar pulled Celipa by the sweater and kissed her hard on the mouth. “See that you don’t become expendable, too. As much as I like you, the cause is more important.”
Celipa grunted her acknowledgement and went around putting out the lights and making sure the windows were closed and the doors were locked in the large rustic mountain home.
Raised under the shadow of strong men and forced to do all the hard work, it was only a matter of biding time until Aguilar’s word had become law in the kingdom’s criminal underground.
Aguilar ruled in this deserted and lawless mountainous part of the two countries, controlling every single criminal deed that passed through these mountains—girls, drugs, weapons traffic, anything—and earning a nice profit from it. If a person needed to disappear—or to be disappeared with—Aguilar was the one to be contacted.
For many years, it was all that mattered: the power, the influence, the money.
Not anymore.
Now Aguilar wanted the real power, the real influence of the Aragonese king, the real wealth which waited in the palace. And if cheating, lying, and betraying was the way to obtain it, so be it.
“I’m done here.” Celipa slid onto Aguilar’s lap. “Let’s go to bed. I’ll give you a massage, make you relax.”
Celipa was certain that Aguilar felt something special for her. Maybe not quite at the level of love, not yet, but certainly something.
But what Celipa didn’t know was that Aguilar was above feeling love.
In fact, Aguilar was above feeling.
2
“Would you like to dance?”
At the deep voice, husky with a Lektenstaten accent, Angelica turned and looked up to see a fit, sturdy man with a lionesque head, complete with a shock of blond hair and electric blue eyes.
“I’m Ludwig,” he said, with a small bow and a crooked smile.
Why bother with Mr. Right when Mr. Right Now is gorgeous, available, and asking me to dance? Her insides fluttered and words failed her when he stood again to his full height.
He was easily a foot taller than she, and his eyes, blue and deep, gazed down at her in an impertinent and assessing manner.
No, she did not like the look in his eyes at all. Unease fluttered in her stomach.
He stood far closer than protocol dictated, and while she hadn’t cared about silly edicts before, she had never comprehended their worth before.
“It’s a shame to have great live music like this only for the prettiest woman in the room not to be dancing.” He took her hand, turned it palm up, and lightly brushed his lips against the sensitive skin of her wrist. “Don’t you think?”
Her breath caught and she had to clear her throat and mind to answer him.
But he didn’t give her time to say anything as he swept her into his strong arms and onto the dance floor.
Yes, this is exactly the kind of guy to have a fun fling with. Especially since he seemed to be as willing to act on impulse as she was. Well, for the moment, anyway.
Until her need for control re-inserted itself into her life.
But what if that time never arrives? What if I could live spontaneously for the rest of my life? Without the constraints of living in the public eye, and the constant scrutiny of the press.
The idea was thrilling, to be sure.
“You still haven’t told me your name,” Ludwig pointed out, twirling her around. “Or should I just go on calling you the prettiest girl in the room?”
How refreshing. She was glad—and surprised—he didn’t know her. To spend time with a man who hadn’t read the tabloid headlines of a year ago. It does have possibilities. “I’m fairly sure you’re supposed to say that the bride is the best-looking woman in the room.”
Her voice wasn’t usually that breathless. Then again, she didn’t usually see men this good looking in Aragon and dance with them. Much less, such men didn’t keep hold of her hand and draw lazy circles with their thumbs on her palm while dancing.
“She does look good,” he said, his voice low, his lips dangerously close to her ear. “But then, every woman looks beautiful on her wedding day.”
Uh-oh. Angelica twirled out, her fingertips in his, and when she was back facing him, she asked, “You like weddings?”
“Till death do us part?” He raised his eyebrows at her, pulling her again into his arms. “Two people making that kind of commitment to one another is the craziest thing in the world, but if I get to meet lovely women such as you while they’re doing it, who am I to complain?”
Phew! Mr. Gorgeous is not a romantic. She smiled and danced closer to him, brushing her hip against his hard leg and hoping she was doing it sexily enough. “I’m Angelica.”
He should be perfect for what she wanted. Hopefully, he would enjoy being with her and wouldn’t end up asking for more than she was willing to give.
“Angelica.” Ludwig wasn’t surprised that he ended up with the most beautiful woman at the wedding already in his arms. In fact, it almost seemed too easy. “A beautiful name for a beautiful woman.”
He looked into her wide eyes gazing back at him through the thick set of her lashes and he noticed that she seemed surprised not only by his comment but also by the fact that he was staring at her. But how can I not stare at a vision so lovely?
“Thank you.”
He felt her quivering beneath his fingers, felt the firm muscles of her back against his hand as she danced. And she moved as if she knew how to use her body to full advantage. She surely takes amazing care of herself. “It’s nothing more than the truth.”
She was beautiful.
A man didn’t get to be just shy of his thirty-seventh birthday without seeing some beautiful women, even if it was just on a movie screen. But that was not the case with Ludwig, who’d had more than his share of extraordinarily beautiful women. But this woman, in the flesh, was superlative. Beyond comparison to any he could recall.
Masses of silky hair the color of the darkest night pulled up around a face that looked like it had been carved out of a tanned porcelain—and if there was no such thing as a carving from porcelain, and much less tanned porcelain, how was he supposed to know? Soft, full lips with a dip at the bottom, a perfect heart shape, and big, deep, mysterious, and somewhat sad chocolate eyes.
His heart actually skipped a couple of beats when he had seen her, standing alone by an empty table, twirling a white rose in her long hands.
He felt a desire to run his fingers through her dark hair, to pull it down from the intricate updo. Who is she?
He hadn’t cared and still didn’t, yet Angelica was currently his favorite name ever.
He leaned into her, inhaling her scent. Lavender and something sweet, like burnt sugar. He knew no other woman capable of pulling off a scent like that.
There was something else different about her too. She seemed so confident and strong, and yet so gentle and subtle in the art of flirtation. It wasn’t hard to pinpoint this looking down into her hesitant eyes. That, in and of itself, was intoxicating. So different from what he was used to experiencing with beautiful women.
Ludwig’s body lurched with bold and fiery desire. However, he couldn’t just take her into a dark corner and have his way with her.
They ended the dance in front of the newlywed couple.
“I see you’ve met Angus’s cousin, Angelica.” Siobhan grinned, grasping Angelica’s hand and giving h
er fingers a squeeze.
Angelica gave her sister a tight smile. She and Siobhan had only recently met and they were still getting to know each other, which was not simple as Angelica was a reserved person. Siobhan’s gesture felt overly familiar, but Siobhan had no way of knowing what was proper and what wasn’t. She’d married a king but was still very new to the ways of royalty and high society, having been born and raised a pauper and an orphan in the slums of London. “Indeed, I have, Sister.”
Ludwig looked from Angelica to Siobhan. And then it clicked. Angelica—or rather, the Crown Princess of Aragon, Angelica Rafela de Castella y Aragon, the jilted bride. He could remember if he stopped being so dazzled for two seconds by her beauty, just how the gossip mags his sister, Adelia, liked to read featured her stunned face as the carriage returned to the palace after the wedding was canceled. The jilted bride. No wonder she has sad eyes.
“I just remembered where I’ve seen her before. The wedding last year. How could I have forgotten someone so beautiful?”
There the conversation ground to a halt. He almost thought she smiled at that, but the twitch at the corner of her lips disappeared before he was even sure it was there.
One, two, three… As a boy, Ludwig had gone back and forth between two worlds—between the cheerfulness of his warm and loving mother and the awkwardness of his royal father, so freezingly polite. There was a frozen silence that Ludwig associated with these moments of polite awkwardness.
It was that moment when everyone around made a calculation based on manners and decided to hold their thoughts to themselves rather than speak aloud and risk rudeness.
He’d been on the receiving end of that silence all too often as a young boy left in a very expensive, very exclusive boarding school: when on the day of his arrival, in the introduction meeting, he’d admitted that he’d spent the summer helping his father’s employees doing manual labor; that his favorite pastime was reading; and that his mother’s former occupation was a burlesque show performer. The dean and the teachers had looked at each other and back at the tittering students—all wealthy, well-born boys of young age—and then back at him, with tight-lipped smiles, and called another student to introduce himself.