‘Don’t you think you’re being a tad dramatic?’ Ash asked her in a wry voice.

‘I’m not being dramatic,’ she defended herself. ‘Surely I should have some say in my own fate, instead of having to endure marriage to a man who has simply agreed to marry me because he wants an heir, and to whom my father has virtually auctioned me off in exchange for a royal alliance. I can’t bear the thought of this marriage.’

Her panic and fear was there in her voice; even she could hear it herself, so how much more obvious must it be to Ash?

She must try to stay calm. Not even to Ash could she truly explain the distaste, the loathing, the fear, she had of being forced by law to give herself in a marriage bed in the most intimate way possible when … No, that was one secret that she must keep no matter what, just as she had already kept it for so long.

‘Please, Ash, I’m begging you for your help.’

THE

SANTINA CROWN

Royalty has never been so scandalous!

STOP PRESS—Crown Prince in shock marriage

The tabloid headlines … When HRH Crown Prince Alessandro of Santina proposes to paparazzi favourite Allegra Jackson it promises to be the social event of the decade —outrageous headlines guaranteed!

The salacious gossip … Mills & Boon invites you to rub shoulders with royalty, sheikhs and glamorous socialites. Step into the decadent playground of the world’s rich and famous …

THE SANTINA CROWN

THE PRICE OF ROYAL DUTY – Penny Jordan

THE SHEIKH’S HEIR – Sharon Kendrick

THE SCANDALOUS PRINCESS – Kate Hewitt

THE MAN BEHIND THE SCARS – Caitlin Crews

DEFYING THE PRINCE – Sarah Morgan

PRINCESS FROM THE SHADOWS – Maisey Yates

THE GIRL NOBODY WANTED – Lynn Raye Harris

PLAYING THE ROYAL GAME – Carol Marinelli

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Harlequin Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over one hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Harlequin Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan: ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire, and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

We hope you enjoy The Price of Royal Duty which launches the new continuity, The Santina Crown. Penny’s final original novel, A Secret Disgrace, will be available in June 2012.

The

Santina Crown

The Price of Royal Duty

Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

‘ASH.’ Sophia Santina, youngest daughter of the King and Queen of the island of Santina, breathed the name silently to herself, almost reverentially. Just the feel of the nearly silent breath that whispered his name and caressed her throat was enough to raise erotic pinpricks of desire within her flesh. Ash. How the whispering of his name was enough to unleash within her an aching echo of the tumultuous teenage desires he had once aroused in her. The very air was electric with the reckless sensual excitement that wantonly flooded her, even though she had sworn she would not, positively not, allow herself to experience it.

She had known, of course, that he had been invited to her eldest brother’s engagement party here at the castle that was their family home, but knowing that and actually seeing him with that strikingly sensual maleness of his that she remembered so well were two very different things.

She would have recognised him anywhere, just as she had done now merely from her brief glimpse of the back view of him as he walked into the ballroom and then turned to refuse a glass of champagne. Just the turn of his head, just the thick dark sheen of his hair and the way it curled into the nape of his neck, was enough to conjure up old memories. Memories of longing recklessly for the right to bury her fingers in its softness, curl them around its strands and then urge his mouth down to her own. A shudder of sensual awareness jolted through her. Some things never changed. A certain kind of need, a certain kind of desire, a certain kind of love.

First love? Surely only a fool believed that first love was an only love, and she prided herself on not being that. No, Ash had killed that tremulous, tender love when he had rejected her, telling her that she was a child still who was putting herself in danger by offering herself to a man of his age, that she was fortunate that his own sense of honour and the repugnance he felt at the very thought of taking what she offered meant that she was protected from him taking advantage of her naivety. Telling her that even if she had been older he would not have wanted her because he was wholly committed to someone else.

She had promised herself then that in future her love would only be given to a man who was worthy of it and who valued it and her. A man who loved her as much as she did him. And because of that promise to herself, she needed Ash’s help now, no matter how much her pride reacted angrily against that need.

Putting down her virtually untouched drink, she started to walk towards him.

Standing in the packed ballroom in the castle on the Mediterranean island of Santina, the official residence and home of the royal family of Santina, Ashok Achari, Maharaja of Nailpur, frowned as his grim, obsidian gaze swept the scene in front of him. Beyond the open doors to the stunningly elegant ballroom with its crystal chandeliers and antique mirrors stood footmen wearing the livery of the royal family. An impressive dress-uniformed group of the king’s own personal guard had been standing motionless in front of the castle in honour of the occasion and the guests. As a fellow royal, Ash had seen them salute him as the limousine that had picked him up from the airport had swept up to the main entrance. It was plain that no expense was being spared to celebrate the engagement of the king’s eldest son and heir.

His fellow guests milled around him, and laughter and the sound of conversation filled the air.

Ash had gone to school with the groom-to-be, Alex, and they were still close friends. Even so, he hadn’t wanted to attend this engagement party as he had more pressing matters to deal with at home, but duty was important to Ash—far more so than any personal desires—and duty had compelled him to accept.

He had, though, ordered his pilot to have his private jet standing ready to fly him back to Mumbai where he had an important business meeting in the morning.

A sixth sense had him turning round just as an exquisitely beautiful petite brunette came hurrying towards him.

Sophia.

A woman now, not the girl she had been the last time he had seen her in person. Where he had remembered a girl trembling on the brink of womanhood, innocent and eager, in need of protection from herself, he was now being confronted by a woman who clearly knew all about her sexuality and its power and how to both use it and take pleasure from it. That his body had recorded and registered that information in the time it had taken him to exhale and breathe again pointed to a weakness within himself of which he had previously been unaware.

The shock of his instant male awareness of Sophia as a woman had caught him totally off guard and Ash did not like that. That kind of thing was not something he permitted himself to do. It smacked too much of a hidden repressed need and Ash did not allow himself to have hidden repressed needs—needs that could make him vulnerable. Besides, the very idea of him being vulnerable to Sophia was laughable. She wasn’t his type. No? So why then was his body reacting to her as though it had never seen a woman before?

A momentary lapse. He was a man, she was a woman, and his bed had been empty since he had dismissed his last mistress. If he was aroused by the sight of Sophia then it was probably completely natural. After all, from the luxuriant tumble of long, dark brown waves via the stunning beauty of her delicately shaped face with its dark eyes and soft full lips to the voluptuous curves of her sensationally sensually shaped body, Sophia Santina was an instant, irresistible magnet for male attention—and his own body was reacting just like any other heterosexual man’s would. Wasn’t it?

Yes. He would be a fool if he allowed that reaction more importance than it merited. To be caught off guard by a surge of physical desire so strong that he was glad of the packed floor of the ballroom and the darkness of his dinner suit to conceal the evidence of his reaction to her was an alien experience for him and added aggravation to what he was already experiencing. He had no desire whatsoever to be aroused by any woman right now, never mind Sophia Santina.

But he couldn’t deny the fact that he was. Not with that arousal already straining at the expensive fabric of his suit, despite the ferocity of the mental control with which he was attempting to prevent it.

She was still coming towards him and in another handful of seconds she would be flinging herself into his arms, just as she had done as a young girl. And if she did that … His body beat out a raw demanding pulsing clarion call of lust. Ash cursed inwardly. He was a man who prided himself on his control of his appetites, especially when it came to sex.

It meant nothing that Sophia was sexually desirable and—if one believed the gossip press—sexually available, as well, should a man chance to catch her attention. Desiring her wasn’t on his agenda for where he planned to take his life and it never would be.

Apart from anything else, as he had already reminded himself, Sophia simply wasn’t his type. Following the death of his wife, the women with whom he had shared his bed had all been elegant long-limbed women skilled in the arts of sexual pleasure, with cool logical minds in whose lives emotions did not play a part. Women who, when the game ended, gracefully accepted the generous gift he gave them and left his bed as discreetly as they had entered it.

Sophia was not like that. Sophia, as he well knew from watching her grow up, was an intense melding of passionate emotions. A man who took her to bed would need … His body reacted again, causing him to have to shift his weight from one leg to the other in an attempt to ensure that that reaction was disguised. There was no question of him taking Sophia to his bed. Not now, not ever.

‘Ash,’ Sophia said again, automatically stepping forward to embrace him, her eyes widening when he immediately encircled her wrist with his right hand to fend her off while stepping back from her in rejection.

How could she have been so stupid? There was, after all, a history of rejection between them, or rather of Ash rejecting her, and now she had put herself on the back foot by allowing him to feel that he needed to push her away. In her anxiety to plead for his help she had acted foolishly. She must be more mentally alert, she warned herself.

Yes, an inner voice argued defensively, but all she had been doing was greeting him as she would greet anyone she knew well, not coming on to him. She opened her mouth ready to make a feisty protest and berate him for misinterpreting her gesture and then closed it again, as she controlled her emotions. This was not the time to antagonise him, no matter how strongly she felt that she was being misjudged. And now that she was so close to him, she could see what she hadn’t seen before: the change in him that was clearly written in the steely uncompromising coldness of his expression.

Against her will, sadness locked her throat. The Ash she remembered had been a warm, outgoing young man who had laughed a lot and enjoyed life. What had happened to change him and turn him into the cynical, almost-brooding man in front of her now? Did she really need to ask herself that? He had lost his wife, a wife whom he had loved.

Her sadness grew, compassion for the Ash she remembered filling her. That Ash had been a young man whose innate kindness—especially to the young sister of a school friend on those holiday visits he had made to the island—had made that girl feel for the first time in her life that someone understood her, and valued her. His kindness and his understanding had meant so much to her, and it was her memory of those things that had brought her to his side now and not the abrupt sea change in their relationship as she had turned from a girl to a woman, and his rejection of her because of it.

Those qualities though had been stripped from the man in front of her now, Sophia recognised with a sudden painful jolt of her heart into her ribs. This Ash possessed a dark and brooding air that she didn’t remember, along with a cold remoteness, as though somehow a dark cloud had darkened the warmth of the personality of the young man she remembered.

Something deep within her ached for what he had been. Immediately, Sophia clamped down on that feeling. She must not allow herself to be vulnerable to him emotionally. She must not feel anything for him. Not even when she had once patterned her ideal of what she thought desirable in a man on Ash himself? That had been a foolish mistake and one for which she had paid through the heartbreak that only the young and idealistic can know. The reality was that right now she should be feeling glad that he had changed and that there was therefore no danger of her being foolish enough to …

To what? To still feel something for him?

That was impossible.

But what if her responsiveness to him both physically and emotionally was burned into her DNA? Burned into it? Sophia winced. Burned was the correct word and she still had the scars to prove that. But those scars protected her now. She would never make the same mistake again. She was immune to Ash now and she intended to remain immune. She wasn’t sixteen any more, after all.

Before, she had been filled with a young, romantic teenager’s need to taste the apple the serpent had offered to Eve, and she had turned to Ash to help her assuage that need. That had been a terrible mistake for which she had paid in tears of shame and anguish.

Now she had to think past that, to that innocent time when she had merely seen Ash as her saviour, the one person she could turn to, to help her, the person who had, after all, saved her very life on more than one occasion. It was that Ash she desperately wanted to talk to right now, the words she would use to elicit the help she needed from him honed and practised. Now though she was beginning to recognise that somehow she couldn’t just simply turn back and open the gate into the garden of innocence whose pathways Ash had walked with her when she had been a child.

She must not give up hope. She could not, Sophia reminded herself. But she must be careful. Careful and aware of what she needed to achieve for her own survival. This was just one meeting. One ordeal she had to go through to gain something she desperately needed. After tonight she would never have to see Ash again and she would be safe, from her own past and from the future her father planned for her.

She took a deep breath, and informed him with cool self-control, ‘You can let go of me now, Ash. I promise you I won’t touch you.’

Not touch him. Little did she know that his body, his flesh, his manhood, was screaming out to be touched by her. Inside his head, to his own self-disgust and anger, Ash could all too easily mentally visualise—right here, right now, in this packed and very public place—the need his flesh felt for him to place her hand over the hard aching pulse of his sex. No wonder she had the reputation she did if this was the effect she could have on his body. On his body, but not on him. That could not be permitted. Abruptly he released her wrist.

The very speed with which Ash released her proved to Sophia what her heart had already told her, namely that as far as he was concerned any physical contact between them was as taboo now as it had been when she had been sixteen.

And yet, as she had just reminded herself, Ash had once been kind to her. Very kind, indeed. The truth was that he had been her hero, her one place of safety and comfort.

Perhaps that was why, despite the dismissal and that brooding air of withdrawal about him, somehow, instinctively, if foolishly, she still felt as though Ash was the one person in her world to whom she could turn for help, should she need it. Or perhaps it was because she was desperate and there was no one else. And right now she certainly needed help. And needed it very much, indeed.

However, his grim manner had put a barrier between them so that now she was forced to recognise how misplaced her confidence in his kindness had been. And how much the change she could see in him complicated a plan which had seemed so simple when she had lain alone in her bed helplessly searching for a way to escape her fate.

She could easily have told the old Ash, the Ash she remembered, what the problem was and just as easily have begged him to play the role she needed him to for the course of this evening. But this Ash, who looked at her with a gaze that held no affection for their shared past, but which instead seemed to look broodingly into a past that excluded her, diminished the hope she had brought with her to tonight’s party.

But he had helped her in the past, she reminded herself. And not just helped her. He had saved her from death—not just once but twice. As she needed him to save her again now from another kind of death. The death that came from being sacrificed in a marriage to a man she had never met but whose reputation told her that he was everything she could never want in a husband.

Somehow she must find a way of breaking through the barriers between them, because without Ash’s understanding, without his aid, her plan simply could not succeed.

And if he rejected her—again?

She must not think of that. She must be honest with him. She must beg him for his help. Taking another deep breath, she began, ‘Ash, there’s something I want to ask you.’

‘If it’s which of your current string of young men you should take to your bed next then I’m afraid I don’t give that kind of advice. And anyway, you seem very skilled at picking the one that will gain you the most print inches and the largest photographs in the world’s celebrity press.’

It was an emotionally brutal rebuttal and rejection, and that hurt. She knew she had her detractors but somehow she had not been prepared for Ash to be one of them. Because she wanted him to remember her as the innocent girl he had protected?

What if she did? It was only because she needed him to remember that relationship. As for that sharp stinging pain his words had brought her, that was nothing. She was not going to allow it any power. Even so, she couldn’t stop herself from defending her actions. ‘So I go public with my … relationships and you keep yours private.’ She gave a small shrug, intending it to be dismissive.

‘Which of us, I wonder, would an unbiased bystander consider to be the more honest?’

She had her own reasons for not just allowing but positively encouraging the world at large to think of her as a young woman who relished her hedonistically sexual lifestyle and who indeed revelled in it. After all, wasn’t the best way to disguise and protect something precious to camouflage it, to hide it from view in plain sight?

Sophia daring to call his morals into question was something Ash’s pride could not tolerate, especially when … Especially when, what? Especially when he had once taken on the responsibility of protecting her from the consequences of her emerging sexual needs because of those morals? Or especially when he was already having to deal with the private fallout he was facing inside himself from his still-active, and very much unwanted, physical sexual reaction to her?

His voice as hard and unforgiving as his expression, he told her curtly, ‘But I’m afraid that such discussions aren’t of any appeal to me, Sophia, no matter how much idle chatter and currency they might find amongst your friends. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go and thank your parents for this evening, as I have to be back in Mumbai tomorrow morning, and I’m flying out just after midnight.’

He was leaving so soon? That was something else she hadn’t expected or prepared herself for. The window of opportunity that was her planned escape was closing down by the minute. Panic had started to build up inside her, a panic that had her blurting out emotionally, ‘Ash, once you were different, kinder. Kind to me … my saviour … You saved my life.’ Only desperation could be making her behave like this, betray herself like this. ‘I know from the charities in which you are involved and the help you give to your people how philanthropic and good you are to those in need. Right now, Ash, I need …’ She stopped, her breath locking in her throat. ‘I’ve never been able to say to you how sorry I was about the death of your wife. I know how much she and your marriage meant to you.’

He was withdrawing from her, she could sense it, almost feel it in the chilling of the air between them. She had learned young how to judge other people’s emotions and to be wary of antagonising them. She shouldn’t have mentioned his late wife. So why had she? No reason. She had just wanted …

There was a flicker of something in those dark eyes, a tightening of the flesh that clung with such powerful sensuality to the bone structure of regal facial features with a lineage that went back across the centuries to a time when his warrior ancestors had roamed and ruled the desert plains of India. She knew she had angered him.

He was angry with her. For what? Mentioning his wife? Sophia knew how much he had loved the Indian princess he had married but it was several years now since her death and she was sure his bed hadn’t remained empty during those years. Bedding someone was one thing, but as Sophia knew, loving them was another thing entirely.

However, if he thought he was going to frighten her off with his forbidding manner towards her, he was wrong. He no doubt remembered her as the young girl who was very easily hurt by any hint that she might have offended the man she hero-worshipped so intensely, but she wasn’t that young girl any more, and when it came to being hurt and surviving that hurt … well, she could easily lay claim to having qualified for a master’s degree in that particular emotional journey.

Ash could feel the tension invading his body. Sophia had dared to mention his marriage. He allowed no one to do that. It was a taboo subject.

‘I do not discuss either my late wife or our marriage with anyone.’

The words delivered in a harsh blistering tone only confirmed what Sophia already felt she knew, and that was how much Ash still loved his dead wife.

She must not think about that, though. She must think instead about her own need for his help.

From the minute she had learned he was coming to the engagement party, she had seen him as her salvation and her only hope of rescue from a situation she simply could not bear. She must not falter now, no matter how vulnerable she felt inside.

Sophia had gone silent. Ash turned to look at her. She was trying to appear confident but he could see the apprehension beneath. It was a protective device she had often employed as a child. A child who as the youngest of the family, and a girl, was often overlooked. Somehow against his will, he found his anger receding.

Ash’s penetrating gaze was assessing her with hawklike scrutiny, Sophia recognised, and yet there was something in his expression that had softened, as though the bones of his face had subtly moved so that she could see again the Ash whose memory she cherished, beneath the harshness that time had overlaid on those bones—something that resurrected her desperate hope.

There was no time to waste, she decided. She must be brave and strong, and trust in her own judgement, her own belief in him.

‘My father wants to marry me to off to some Spanish prince he’s found.’

What was that sensation that uncurled inside him and attacked with the deadly speed of a poisonous snake, causing his heart to lurch inside his chest? Nothing. Nothing at all.

‘So your father wishes to arrange a dynastic and diplomatic marriage for you.’

Ash shrugged dismissively, but Sophia stopped him. ‘It would be a forced marriage, and I would be the one forced into it.’

Her words might have been those of the passionate, emotional, sensitive young girl he remembered. How fierce she had been then in her defence of people’s personal freedoms, her conviction that everyone had the right to dictate the pathway of their own lives. It was no real wonder given how often she and her father had clashed, as they were obviously doing now.

‘Don’t you think you’re being a tad dramatic?’ he asked her in a wry voice. ‘You aren’t a naive girl any more, Sophia. Royalty marries royalty, that is the way of our kind. Marriages are arranged, heirs conceived and born, and that is how we fulfil our duty to our forebears and our people.’

This was not how she had imagined he would react when she had lain sleepless at night, longing for his arrival, aching for his help, needing his support.

‘I’m not being dramatic,’ she defended herself. ‘Surely I should have some rights as a person, a human being, some say in my own fate, instead of having my future decided for me by my father?’

‘I’m sure he only has your best interests at heart.’

Ash just did not want to get involved in this. Why should he? He was a busy man about to enter the final negotiations on a contract, the success of which would secure the future of his people for generations to come.

‘No. No,’ she denied immediately. ‘He doesn’t have my best interests at heart. All he is interested in is securing a royal marriage for a daughter of the house of Santina. He told me that himself when I begged him to reconsider, that he had had to promise this Spanish prince that I would be an obedient and dutiful wife, a wife who would not try to interfere in his own preferred lifestyle of bed hopping amongst his many mistresses.

‘When I told him that I didn’t want to marry this prince, he said that I was ungrateful and ignoring my royal duty. He said that I would grow accustomed to my husband. Accustomed. To endure marriage to a man who has simply agreed to marry me because he wants an heir, and to whom my father has virtually auctioned me off in exchange for a royal alliance. How could that ever be having my best interests at heart?’

‘I should have thought such a marriage would suit you, Sophia. After all, it’s well documented that your own chosen lifestyle involves something very similar, when it comes to bed hopping.’

A body blow indeed and one that drove the blood from Sophia’s face and doubled the pain in her heart. It shouldn’t matter what Ash thought of her. That was not part of her plan. But still his denunciation of her hurt and it wasn’t one she could defend herself against. Not without telling him far more than she wanted him to know.

‘Then you thought wrong,’ was all she could permit herself to say. ‘That is not the kind of marriage I want. I can’t bear the thought of this marriage.’ Her panic and fear was there in her voice; even she could hear it herself, so how much more obvious must it be to Ash?

She must try to stay calm. Not even to Ash could she truly explain the distaste, the loathing, the fear, she had of being forced by law to give herself in a marriage bed in the most intimate way possible when … No, that was one secret that she must keep no matter what, just as she had already kept it for so long.

Not even to Ash? Definitely not to Ash. Now she was letting her emotions get muddled instead of focusing on the practicalities of her situation.

Steadying her breathing she told Ash as calmly as she could, ‘When I marry I want to know and respect my husband and our marriage. I want to love him and be loved by him. I want us to bring our children up in the safe secure circle of that love.’ That, after all, was the truth.

And it was a truth that Ash heard and couldn’t refute. He frowned. Against his will he was forced to acknowledge that there was something in her voice that touched old nerves, revived old memories. Revived them? Since when had they really needed reviving? He had never forgotten, could never forget.

‘Please, Ash, I’m begging you for your help.’

CHAPTER TWO

THOSE words—the same words with which she had cried out to him once before—sliced through his self-control, cutting the cords that held fast the doors to the past.

Once before Sophia had begged him for something.

She’d been just past her sixteenth birthday the last time he’d seen her. He could still remember the shock he had felt at seeing her all grown-up. One minute—or so it had seemed—she had been a child, but somehow six months later she had been trembling on the brink of what would become her woman hood, a girl still for all her burgeoning physical maturity, a girl with tears tracking down her cheeks, her huge dark brown eyes drowning in tears. Then she had still been an innocent: naive, unknowing, virginal and vulnerable. He had been determined that it would not be through him that any of those things were taken from her, no matter how hard she begged him to do so.

What had happened to her during those intervening years to turn her into the wanton sensualist she was now? Why should he care? The sixteen-year-old towards whom he had felt so protective belonged to another life, another Ash.

Even then she’d been sensationally beautiful, with everything about her already hinting at the sensuality to come. Then she had had the promise of a sweet, almost ready-to-ripen peach, yet still a girl compared to his adult-male maturity, and his natural sense of responsibility and moral probity had naturally reacted to that. He had known that he had a duty towards her to protect her not just from herself but from that shock of awareness within himself of the fact that she was becoming a desirable woman.

Ash discovered that there was suddenly a sour taste in his mouth. For himself. For that brief ripping through his moral code, caused by the shocking sexual awareness he’d had of her when he had seen the change in her. Desires he never should have had for that girl given the protective role he had previously played in her life and the fact that he had been about to be married.

Desires he still had for her? He swallowed hard against that question. She was a woman, and available. He was a man, but he could not allow himself to want her. He would not allow it. After all, he had nothing left within him to give to a woman like Sophia, who so obviously brought emotional passion to her relationships along with her sexual desire. A grim wryness filled him. So he was back in his old role towards her, was he, protecting her from his own desire?

‘Ash, please.’ The panic in Sophia’s voice made Ash frown. Twice before he had heard her say his name in that same tone of mingled fear and need and now somehow his body reacted to that memory, instinctively halting him in his tracks.

‘Sophia …’

‘Please, Ash. I need you. There isn’t anyone else I can turn to.’

‘No? What about one of those young men who share your bed?’ His challenge was harsh and acerbic.

This was getting dangerous, Sophia recognised. The conversation was going now in a direction she most certainly did not want.

‘That’s just sex. What I need from you is help.’

Just sex? Ash could almost taste the ferocity of the atavistic emotions surging through him.

Across the years that separated him from those other occasions inside his head he could see the sixteen-year-old she had been, pleading with him for something it was impossible for him to give her. He could almost smell the hot summer fragrance of the small grassy bank on which they’d been sitting. Inside his head he could see a clear image of her in her thin cotton dress. It had shown quite clearly the perfect shape of her high rounded breasts with their eager thrusting nipples pushing against the fabric, just as she had pushed against his chest with small fists when she had begged him to take her and show her what it was to be a woman—and the icy cold shock to his system it had given him to realise that his awareness of her was darkened by the sexual desire. He had wanted to walk away from her there and then, to put an end to the danger he could sense, but before he could do anything she had continued emotionally, ‘I’m the only girl in my class who’s still a virgin, and I hate it. The other girls laugh at me because of it. They say that I’m a baby and …’

He could still remember the duality of the feelings her confession had brought him. Firstly, a desire to protect her and defend her, but beneath that, shockingly and shamefully, a slow awareness of the sweet pleasure there would be for the man to whom she would ultimately give herself for the first time. He had reminded himself that he was too old for her, and that she was too young for him. To even think about doing as she asked would be an abuse of their relationship that could never be allowed, but still there had been, inside his head, that treacherous thought that were she two years or so older and he two years or more younger … He would what? Bed her and then leave her—dishonour her—for the marriage that had been arranged for him since childhood? Never.

And so he had put temptation aside and told her as though it was no concern to him, ‘I’m sure there are any number of boys your own age who would be delighted to relieve you of your virginity.’

‘I don’t want it to be them, I want it to be you,’ she insisted, her eyes dark and stormy with the heat of her need.

Only he knew how tempted he’d been to wish away some of the years that separated them and to give in and take her. Just the smell of her sun-warmed skin had sent him half maddened with aching, longing to lie her down and lick and kiss his way over every inch of her delectable, hotly eager body until he reached those dark flaunting nipples. Inside his head he had already been suckling on them, drawing cries of tormented delight from her whilst his hand covered the wet heat of her sex and his fingers teased an open eager passage.

The secret betrayal of his thoughts and his body had felt to him as much of a betrayal of his duty to protect her as it was of the duty that lay on him towards his future bride and their marriage.

He had been angry. With himself more than with Sophia but it had been on her he had vented his anger, telling her savagely, ‘It can’t be me. You already know that, Sophia. I’m engaged to be married.’

‘An arranged marriage,’ she had reminded him. ‘Not a love match.’

Something in the truth of her words had turned a knife in his heart as sharp and destructive as one of the fine jewelled daggers favoured by his ancestors, cruelly sharp knives that could rip out the heart of a man and still leave that heart beating and the man breathing. For a while.

‘My marriage is my concern, and as for it not being a love match, it will be my duty and my pleasure to learn to love my wife and to teach her to love me. My very great pleasure.’

His words had been cruel. He had seen that in the look in her eyes. He had taken a step towards her, Ash remembered, and then he had stopped as she dashed away the tears she hadn’t been able to control. A child’s tears, and if he had been cruel then it had been to protect that child.

And now as then, Ash wanted to turn and walk away from her, but somehow he couldn’t, just as he couldn’t drag his gaze from her or stop his body reacting to her. His own weakness lashed at him, biting deep into his pride. But still he looked, still he let his senses fill with the pleasure of her.

Her dark curls caressed the bare shoulders revealed by her figure-hugging goddess-style amber-gold silk dress with its diamante waistband, her velvet-soft eyes sparkling, her lips warm and invitingly parted. They would taste of sensuality and promise, and her low-cut gown would be no barrier to the man who was determined to enjoy exploring the soft warmth of her naked breasts. But that man would never be him. Sophia was the sister of one of his closest friends; she was passionate and emotional. To bed her would bring complications into his life that he didn’t want. And why would he need to bed her when he had so many other willing women to choose from who understood that sex was all he required from them? Sex and nothing more.

Oblivious to the turmoil of Ash’s most private thoughts, Sophia looked over at the table where her parents were seated with some of their guests. As always it was her father who was commanding everyone’s attention whilst her mother looked on, her blonde head inclined towards him, her whole manner one of calm, controlled formality. Just as her father demanded. Just as the husband he had chosen for her would demand of her. She was not her mother. Her own nature was far more turbulent and intense. Still focusing on the table, she told Ash with fierce desperation, ‘My father thinks he can argue me into giving way. But I won’t.’

Ash could hear the desperation in her voice. Against his will he found himself thinking that she reminded him of a beautiful butterfly beating her wings against the iron bars of a cage that imprisoned her, her desperate attempt to find freedom destined only to leave her crushed and broken. Unexpectedly, for all the gossip about her hedonistic lifestyle, there was still an innocence and vulnerability about her. Against his better judgement he realised that he felt sorry for her, but he knew her father and he knew that King Eduardo would not give up his plans easily. He was as traditional and old-fashioned a father as he was a king, ruling his family and his country with the firm belief that they were his to command and control and that their duty was to obey him in all things. He did feel sorry for her, he allowed himself to acknowledge. Yes, but it was not his business and there was nothing he could do, other than offer her a reminder of the reality of what being royal meant.

‘As your father’s daughter you must always have known that ultimately he would arrange a marriage for you to someone he considers to be suitable?’

Just for a minute Sophia was tempted to drop her guard and admit to him that the kind of marriage of which she had always dreamed and for which she had always yearned was one based on mutual love, not dynastic necessity. But she knew that if she did that she might easily betray to him what she did not want him to know. She had her pride after all, and she certainly wasn’t going to have him feeling sorry for her because she wanted …

What? Love from the one man she knew would never give it to her? No. She might have wanted that once as a foolish sixteen-year-old but she did not want Ash now.

But she did want to marry a man she was in love with, a man who loved her back, and she was prepared to wait until she found it.

Only when she stood before her chosen bridegroom, ready to give herself to him in the sacred intimacy of marriage, would she finally be free of the scorching pain of Ash’s rejection.

But as yet she had not found that man or that love, and it certainly wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Watching her, he saw a bleakness in her eyes, and Ash felt himself filled with an unexpected compassion for her. She had been such a sweet child, so loving and giving, so sweet in her hero-worship of him. She had looked up to him as though he was a god. Childish adoration from a girl who had desperately wanted her father’s love and been denied it, that was all. He was not a god and she was no longer a child. He owed her nothing. Right?

She was not a child any more, he reminded himself. She had stopped being a child to him that fateful afternoon when she had begged him to take her virginity.

Who was the man who had taken it and her? Could she even remember his name? Given what the gossip columns had to say about her, Ash doubted it.

Sophia swallowed, knowing that she had to make one last attempt to secure his help. ‘Ash, all I want from you, all I want you to do, is behave towards me tonight as though you want me—not just to share your bed, but potentially as the wife everyone knows you must ultimately take in order to give Nailpur an heir. You are such a matrimonial prize that my father is bound to drop the Spanish prince if he thinks that there is any chance he can marry me to you. You have everything my father admires—royal blood, status and wealth.’

For once Ash was lost for words. When Sophia had said that she needed his help it had never occurred to him that she meant she wanted help of that nature for the kind of plan she had just outlined to him. She had a shrewd brain, he acknowledged. She was completely right in her assessment of her father.

‘Ash. I need you to rescue me and be my prince in shining armour just like you used to rescue me when I was little,’ Sophia continued in a voice made husky with impassioned need. ‘Do you remember that time I nearly drowned when I followed you, Alex and Hassan along that rocky cliff face?’

Against his will Ash could feel the tug her words were having on his heartstrings. ‘That was a long time ago,’ was all he permitted himself to say.

‘I still remember it,’ Sophia told him softly. ‘I was nine years old, and when I slipped into that deep pool you jumped in and rescued me. Alex laughed at me but you carried me back to safety. You made me feel safe and protected.’ Yes, he had then, she thought, but later … later he had hurt her so badly that even now … No. She mustn’t think about that tonight. She must only think of her plan, the plan she had been working on from the minute she had learned that Ash was coming to the engagement party and she had seen a possible way out of the trap that was closing round her.

Ash frowned. There it was again, that echo of vulnerability in her voice, that admission that was like a private memory, a private awareness shared only between the two of them, as though he was the only one she could allow to see beneath her shell.

Sophia let some of her pent-up breath ease out of her lungs, the release unwittingly causing her breasts to swell softly over the top of her gown.

They were fuller than they had been when she was sixteen, and even more tempting in their allure, Ash recognised, irritated with himself that he should be so aware of them. His memory supplied him with an intimate mental image of the dark crowning of her nipples, erect and hard, pushing against the fabric of the dress she had been wearing, showing him how much she desired him. That had been then, Ash reminded himself, and now he was old enough and cynical enough to know one woman’s body was much like another, and that physical desire once slaked soon evaporated, leaving him bored with the woman he had previously wanted.

Imploringly, Sophia reached out and placed her hand on Ash’s arm. Immediately his body reacted.

In an attempt to distract himself he tried to focus on her hand and not his own feelings. He looked down at where Sophia’s small hand lay against the sleeve of his expensively tailored, dark coloured Italian linen suit. Her nails were buffed to a natural sheen, and against his will his mind recorded for him the way he would feel if she were to rake those nails against his back in the intensity of her ecstasy. Sweat dampened his chest beneath his shirt from the heat pounding through his body.

‘Our father is allowing Alex to choose his own bride, so why should I have to submit to having my husband chosen for me?’ Her brother’s engagement had come as a complete surprise to her, and to Carlotta, the sibling to whom she was the closest. ‘You loved Nasreen. Why shouldn’t I be loved and love in return within my own marriage?’

The passion with which she spoke confirmed what he had already told himself about the emotional intensity she would bring to her sexual relationships. Such emotions had no place in his life any more, and he was determined that they never would. And if he could have her without those emotions? If they could enjoy each other now as the sexually experienced adults they both were? The rush of fierce male urgency that surged though his body gave him its own answer. But then there had never been any doubt about his awareness of her as a woman from the minute he had turned round tonight and seen her coming towards him.

In fact, if he was honest, Ash couldn’t remember ever before having such an immediate and insistent ache of hunger for a woman to the extent that it came between him and the cool logic of the business affairs to which he gave priority these days.

He had to distance himself from her.

‘My marriage is my business,’ he told her curtly, as he fought against his reaction to the thought of taking her to bed.

She had done it again, Sophia recognised. She had trespassed into a private place where she was not welcome. Because he still loved Nasreen?

That pain she could feel in the region of her heart was simply caused by the fact that if her father succeeded in marrying her off to this prince, she would never know what it felt like to be loved in that way. It wasn’t for any other reason—such as her wishing that it was Ash who loved her. Certainly not. She wasn’t sixteen any more. And neither was she going to let the subject drop. To her family she was the rebellious ‘difficult’ one, the one who was always challenging the status quo and pushing their father, the one who bit harder than anyone else. That was her reputation and she wasn’t going to abandon it now just because Ash was looking at her in that forbidding, icily cold way.

Nasreen. Ash wished that Sophia hadn’t mentioned her name, but she had.

He had vowed that he would love the bride who had been chosen for him, and that their marriage would be one of mutual, total faithfulness to each other. Loving the woman who had been promised to him in marriage from childhood had been a matter of great pride and honour to him, and a duty that he had taken seriously.

Orphaned as a young boy, he’d been brought up by an elderly nurse, whose stories about the great love affair between his great-grandfather and his English bride had built a responsibility within him to love and cherish the young maharani who would one day be his bride. Love mattered more than anything else, his nurse had told him. He must love his bride and she would love him back, with that love making up for the loneliness he had known as an orphan. After listening to his nurse he had believed when he married he would love his bride as completely and faithfully as his famous warrior ancestor had loved his.

Had that belief sprung from arrogance or naivety? He didn’t know. His mouth twisted in a grim expression of bitter self-contempt.

He only knew that the harsh reality of his marriage and the death of his wife—a death for which he believed that, in part at least, he had to carry a burden of blame—meant that he would never, ever again allow emotion into any intimate relationship he had with a woman. Never again would he mix sex and love. Never. Sex was a pleasure and a need, but it was just sex. He could allow himself to want a woman but he could not allow himself to love her.

CHAPTER THREE

ASH must still love Nasreen very much indeed to react to the mere mention of her as he had just done, Sophia decided.

How she hungered to be loved like that, wholly and completely, as herself and not for her royal blood. One day, one day she would find that love, Sophia assured herself fiercely, just so long as she remained free to look for it, and wasn’t forced into a marriage she didn’t want. Her passionate nature, like molten lava compressed for too long beneath unforgiving stone, pushed against the unspoken rules of never betraying any real feelings in the Santina family. Before she could stop herself she had burst out, in self-betrayal, ‘My parents don’t believe that love matters. Duty to our family name is all that counts. Especially to my father.’

The pain in her voice caught Ash’s attention. He knew her history so well that he could easily recognise the real reason for the way her voice had trembled over those telling words … my father.

What was happening to him? He had a thousand more important things on which he ought to be focusing. The negotiations he had been involved in to turn the empty, decaying palaces which had once belonged to minor, now long-dead members of his extended family into elegant hotel and spa facilities were at a vitally important stage, as was the exhibition of royal artifacts being mounted by his charity to raise money to help educate the poor of India. These should be at the forefront of his mind, not this wayward passionate and far too desirable young woman standing in front of him.

He needed to bring their conversation to an end.

‘I’m sure that your father only wants what’s best for you,’ he told her as he had done before. He knew that his words were bland and meaningless but why should he try to comfort and reassure her? Why should he care what happened to her? He didn’t, Ash assured himself.

Best for her? Wasn’t that what he had said to her all those years ago before he had walked away from her? That refusing the plea she had made to him was ‘best for her’ when what he had meant was that it was best for him.

‘The best for me?’

Ash could see the bitterness and the despair in her eyes as she shook her head in rejection of his words.

‘No!’ The second vigorous shake of her head that accompanied her denial had the dark cloud of her soft curls and waves sliding sensuously over her bare shoulders, reminding him … Reminding him of what? Of how much his body was still aching for her?

‘What my father wants is what he thinks is the best for him and for the Santina family. And as far as he’s concerned I’ve always been an unwanted and unexpected addition to the family.’ The softness of her mouth twisted painfully as she challenged him. ‘You know that’s true, Ash. You know the gossip about … about my birth as well as I do.’

It was true. He had been a boy, invited back for the school holidays with Alex after Alex’s mother had realised that he was an orphan with no family with which to spend the long holidays from their British boarding school; Sophia herself had barely started school when he had first heard the rumours that the king might not be her father.

‘You have the Santina looks,’ was all he felt able to say to her now.

‘That is what my mother said when I asked her if it was true that the English architect every one gossiped about might be my father, but doesn’t it tell you something that never once whilst I was growing up did anyone ever suggest I should have a DNA test?’

‘What it tells me is that both your parents were so sure that you are their child that a DNA test wasn’t necessary.’

‘That’s what Carlotta says,’ Sophia admitted, ‘but then with an illegitimate child of her own and her refusal to say who the father is, she would say that, wouldn’t she?’ Normally Sophia wouldn’t have been so outspoken about Carlotta’s situation. The birth of Carlotta’s son, Luca, had meant that she, too, was out of favour with the king. They both felt they were outsiders and this had bonded them together, despite the fact that Carlotta had a twin sister.

‘And Carlotta has always been very sensible.’

Sophia gave him a wry look. ‘You call having a child out of wedlock by a man who she won’t name and, according to our father, bringing disgrace on the family sensible?’

A child—a son—only he knew how atavistically he longed for fatherhood, Ash acknowledged as he felt the familiar strike of sharply savage pain burning into him.

He had assumed when he and Nasreen had married that she would be as keen to start their family as he had been. Initially, when she had told him that she wanted to delay it because she wanted to have time alone with him he had been charmed and captivated. But then he had learned from Nasreen’s own lips the real reason why she did not want to have a child—ever—and that had led to the first of many rows between them.

To outsiders, his desire for children would be seen as the natural desire of a man in his situation to have an heir to follow him. There was an element of that there, of course—he had a duty to his inheritance, after all—but his need went deeper and was far more intensely personal than that. The loneliness he had felt as a child had made him long for a family of his own in a way that had nothing to do with being royal, and it was a need he could not turn away from or deny. One day he would marry again—it would be a marriage of practicality and not emotion, but the children that came from that marriage he would love, because that love would come naturally and not have to be forced, or pretended. As he had done with Nasreen. The bitterness of his failure to love Nasreen still brought him guilt.

‘It isn’t what one would have expected of Carlotta,’ he acknowledged.

‘No, Carlotta was always the good one. Not like me. I suppose if anyone outside the family had to choose one of us to do something disgraceful to our father they would choose me.’ Sophia pulled a face. ‘Oh, don’t bother denying it. We both know that it’s true. If it had happened to me I’d do exactly what Carlotta has done and insist on keeping my baby. No matter who tried to take it away from me.’ Her face softened as she added, ‘Little Luca is so gorgeous that sometimes I almost wish he was mine.’ There was genuine warmth and tenderness in her voice. ‘Not that my father would ever tolerate such a lapse from what’s expected from me. It would be the last straw, I expect, and he’d probably completely disown me.’

‘I doubt that your father would be trying to arrange a suitable marriage for you if he himself wasn’t convinced that you are his child, especially not to a fellow royal.’

His statement was intended to reassure her, as well as bring their conversation to a halt, but instead of doing that, it had Sophia firing up again and telling him fiercely, ‘If you think that then you don’t know my father at all. It isn’t for my benefit that he wants this marriage. It’s for his own. For the Santina name. That’s all that matters to him. Not us. Just the reputation of the Royal House of Santina. It’s always been the same, all the time we were growing up. All he ever said to us was that we must remember who and what we are. He rules us as he rules the kingdom, because he believes it is his right to do so. Our feelings, our needs, don’t matter. In fact, as far as he is concerned we ought not to have feelings at all, and that applies especially to me. He doesn’t understand me, he never has. You could help me, Ash. It wouldn’t take very much. As I’ve already told you my father would drop the Spanish prince like a hot potato if he thought he had any chance at all of marrying me off to you.’

‘I doubt very much that your father would switch his allegiance, son-in-law-wise, on the strength of seeing us together for a handful of hours at a party.’

‘Yes, he would,’ Sophia told him succinctly. ‘And I’ll prove it to you if you help me.’

Sophia’s problems were nothing to him, Ash reminded himself. He was simply here as a friend of her eldest brother. The fact that he had felt a certain amount of protective compassion for Sophia as a young girl didn’t mean anything now. After all, then he had been an idealistic young man looking forward to a future filled with love and happiness, or so he’d thought. Now he was a realist—an embittered hard-hearted realist, some might say—who knew that such dreams were exactly that. Wasn’t the truth that it was his view now that an arranged marriage worked better, lasted longer and fitted the purpose it was designed for—the production of an heir and the continuation of a family name—than so-called love? Wouldn’t his own second marriage be exactly that? After all, one only had to look at Sophia’s parents to see the strength of such a union. Whether or not the rumours about Queen Zoe and the young architect were true, their marriage remained solid, as did their shared dedication to preserving the Santina family name. If Sophia thought that her father would ever sacrifice that to allow her to make a marriage of her own choice then in his opinion she was wrong. Besides, she was grown-up now, and could take care of herself. And he didn’t want to muddy the waters of diplomatic relations with a poorly timed flirtation.

‘I don’t see the point in us discussing this any further, Sophia.’ He pushed back the sleeve of his dinner jacket to look at his watch.

He had extraordinarily sexy hands and wrists, Sophia acknowledged, and the warm tone of his skin only emphasised that. For months after he had rejected her she had soothed herself to sleep at night imagining those hands on her body in a caress that was warm and loving, as well as sensually erotic. The pain of the sudden sense of loss that swept her locked her breath in her throat.

‘I have to leave soon,’ Ash told her. ‘If you spoke to your father about your feelings I am sure that he will give you more time to get to know the man he has chosen for you.’

The fierce shrug of her slender, tanned shoulders in a gesture of denial and despair caused the strapless top of her dress to slip downwards, so that the shadow of the areole of her nipples was clearly visible to him. Desire hot and feral shot through him. What was the matter with him? It was as though his body was taking delight in deliberately disobeying the orders he had given it, as though his own flesh was actively delighting in punishing him by making him … want her?

Anger gushed through him. With a figure like hers she must surely have known the risks of wearing a dress like that.

‘If you don’t want everyone here to see what I can see right now I suggest you do something about your dress,’ he warned her curtly. ‘Unless, of course, you do want every man in the room to see what only a lover should be permitted to enjoy.’

Not understanding what Ash was saying, Sophia stared at him in confusion and then took a step towards him, gasping as she stepped on the hem of the front of her dress and felt it slide down her body.

Instantly Ash moved towards her, shielding her from everyone else’s sight, his hands on her upper arms so that no one could see what she now knew must be clearly visible.

She had sunbathed topless as and when appropriate in front of any number of people, so why right now did she feel so embarrassed and self-conscious, her hands trembling as she tried to tug up the front of her dress, succeeding only in dislodging it even more. She choked, ‘You’ll have to help me—I need you to reach round and unfasten the hook and eye at the back so that I can adjust the front.’

He wanted to refuse but how could he without letting her guess the effect she was having on him, as though he was a callow youth who had never seen a woman’s naked breasts before.

It was just as well the elegant ballroom was so busy, Ash acknowledged as he reached around behind Sophia almost as though he was about to take her into his arms, deftly unfastening the hook and eye and then lowering the zip.

‘That’s too much,’ Sophia protested, her face burning as she felt the top of her dress fall away. Not, thankfully, that anyone could see that. Not with her virtually pressed up against Ash in the way that she was, his arms around her.

‘Pull the top up, then I can fasten the zip,’ he ordered her.

‘I can’t, you’re holding me too close,’ Sophia complained.

Exhaling impatiently, Ash started to step back only to have her grab hold of his arm and tell him frantically, ‘No. Don’t move, everyone will see.’

‘I thought that almost everyone already had,’ Ash felt bound to tell her grimly, and then frowned as he saw the speed with which she tried to conceal her expression from him and the hint of tears that had dampened her eyes. She was genuinely embarrassed, he recognised as she tried desperately to stay close to him and at the same time tug up the top of her dress.

‘Here, let me help.’

He had only meant to put the top of her dress back in place but somehow his hand was cupping the side of her breast, his fingertips accidentally grazing her nipple.

Fiery flames of male hunger burned at his self-control. Because his bed had been empty for too long, that was all, whilst an involuntary shudder of sensual awareness openly seized Sophia’s body.

Silently they looked at each other, and then looked away, neither of them willing to speak.

Why on earth had that happened? Sophia asked herself, still shocked by her reaction to him. She didn’t still want him. How could she when she had outgrown her foolish youthful feelings for him? It had been an involuntary reaction of her body to the unexpected intimacy of a male touch, she assured herself. And that male touch could have been any male touch? Yes, of course. Of course.

Silently Ash reached behind Sophia, his expression grim as he refastened her dress, and then stepped back.

He was on the point of walking away from her, his work done and his self-control shot to hell, when he saw that King Eduardo was beckoning them over. Impossible for him to ignore that royal command. Ash sighed and told Sophia, ‘I think your father wants us to join him.’

As they had reached the king and queen, champagne was being handed round in anticipation of a toast. Sophia’s intense focus on how to get around her father’s insistence on this ridiculous arranged marriage had momentarily made her forget that this was her oldest brother’s engagement party. His fiancée Allegra’s father, Bobby Jackson, got to his feet, albeit rather unsteadily, and made a rambling speech of congratulation to the newly engaged couple. When it finally came to an end, they all dutifully toasted the happy couple, but an uneasy rumble of chatter spread around the ballroom in reaction to Bobby’s graceless public display.

‘Ash, how lovely to see you,’ Queen Zoe welcomed him, the diamonds in the tiara she was wearing sparkling in the light from one of the room’s many chandeliers. Sophia’s mother was clearly covering her embarrassment with polite small talk.

Deprived of Ash’s presence at her side as her mother engaged him in conversation, Sophia had to fight hard not to feel alone and abandoned, emotions that were all too familiar to her growing up, despite the fact that then, as now, she had been surrounded by her siblings. The trouble was that she had never felt truly accepted or loved by them. Because she had never felt accepted or loved by her father? That was why it was so important to her to marry someone whom she loved and who loved her, someone who would share her determination to raise the children they would have in a loving home in which those children would know how much they were loved. That was her secret and deepest desire.

As her father began his toast to the happy couple, Sophia turned to look longingly towards Ash. Only a metre or so separated them but it might as well have been a mile. Listening to her father’s speech he had his back to Sophia, and she rubbed her arms in a small sad gesture of self-comfort.

Her father was still talking, and looking straight at her, Sophia realised, as he announced, ‘And Alessandro’s engagement is only the first Santina engagement we are to celebrate. I am delighted to be able to tell you all that my youngest daughter Sophia’s fiancé is shortly to arrive in the kingdom.’

The shock of what her father had said descended on Sophia like an icy wall, numbing her, reducing her to dumb, frozen shock, unable to speak or move as she was jostled by the throng of press photographers who had all been focusing on her brother and Allegra but who were now all around her, instead, their cameras flashing.

As swiftly as it had engulfed her, the numbness receded, leaving her with the reality of the full horror of her situation. Inside she felt as though she was shaking from head to foot, as she was gripped by a rising tide of nausea and furious helpless despair. This couldn’t be happening. Her father couldn’t have trapped her into an engagement without giving her any warning. But he had, and now she had no way of arguing him out of his plans. She felt so weak and helpless, so lost and alone. Instinctively she looked towards Ash but there were too many photographers in the way. Her father, on the other hand, she could see, and the cold warning look in his eyes told her what he expected of her.

Reporters and photographers surrounded her, pushing mikes and lenses in her face as they demanded a response to her father’s announcement.

‘I …’

‘My daughter is delighted to be engaged,’

the king answered for her. ‘Aren’t you, Sophia?’

Shock and a lifetime of always giving in to her father’s will couldn’t be ignored or overcome no matter how much she wanted to do so. As though someone else was speaking the words Sophia bowed her head submissively and responded, ‘Yes.’

From the queen’s side Ash watched and listened to what was happening with a mixture of feelings, the least wanted of which was the sudden savage stab of antagonism he had felt towards the unknown prince to whom Sophia was now officially engaged.

‘Such a relief that Sophia has finally seen sense and realised that her father knows what’s best,’ Queen Zoe murmured to Ash. ‘All this gossip about her in the press has made the king very angry. Marriage will do her good. The king believes that the prince shares his traditional values and beliefs on the role of a royal consort and royal children, and will soon have Sophia realising where her duty lies.’

‘Sophia …’ Sophia felt a small tug on her arm, and she turned from the throng of reporters to see the concerned face of her sister Carlotta.

‘I can’t believe what Father has done. He knows I don’t want to be engaged. I can’t stay here, Carlotta,’ she told her sister. ‘Not now. I’m going to my room.’

By the time she reached the relative sanctuary of her room Sophia’s thoughts were in such turmoil that she was trembling from head to foot as though the force of them couldn’t be contained within her body. How foolish and naive she had been to think that her father would allow her the freedom of trying to change his mind. That had obviously never been an option. Her father must have known all along that he intended to announce her engagement without her real consent. Now her plan to parade Ash in front of her father, in the hope that the king could be deceived into thinking that there could be a match between her and Ash, seemed so juvenile and ridiculous—the pointless hope of someone who didn’t recognise or understand reality. Angry, helpless, frustrated tears blurred her vision. All the things she had done to avoid marriage until she found the right man had been a complete waste of time. She might as well have remained here in her room at the palace as a good and dutiful daughter who never did anything to challenge the status quo.

How was she going to endure what would now be her future? She couldn’t, she wouldn’t, Sophia decided on the wave of panic and pain that welled up inside her, and she certainly wasn’t going to stay here and let her father marry her off. She’d run away and leave the island, cut herself off from her family, before she’d allow herself to be forced into this marriage. Her heart was hammering even faster at the enormity of what she was thinking.

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