‘Leaving?’
‘I can’t do this. I can’t look those people in the eye day after day after day and live a lie. I don’t know how I ever thought I could. They deserve more than this empty marriage, and a Princess who isn’t fitted for the task.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Luca’s voice was still husky with sleep, and his face was incapable of subtlety while he was only half-awake. He was angry and surprised.
‘I’m leaving you,’ she said again. ‘It’s for the best. I can play-act for a while, like anyone else, but I’d mess it up spectacularly in the end. Even you must admit, I’m hardly traditional princess material.’
‘Which is exactly the point, and why you’re here. I didn’t want traditional—I’m not even sure what that is,’ Luca growled, knuckling his eyes.
‘You should take your time. Choose a bride properly, not just be landed with me because I bumped into you and suited your purpose for a few months.’
Luca’s dark eyes narrowed to slits of suspicion. ‘You’re putting a time limit on our arrangement now?’
‘It just ran out,’ she fired back. ‘This is anarrangement, which ismy point. It’s not a love match, and we both deserve more. What happens when you eventually fall in love with someone else and you can’t live without them?’
‘I’ll certainly miss you,’ he admitted, scowling deeply. ‘Imagine the peaceful lie-in I’d get in the mornings.’
‘But we hardly know each other,’ she pointed out with exasperation.
‘I’d say we know each other pretty well already,’ Luca fired back. ‘I can’t think of any other woman I’ve been on such a rapid journey with, and I can’t say I appreciate hearing that you’ve taken nothing from it apart from physical gratification.’
‘That’s not true!’ She flared up. ‘How dare you turn this around on me?’
‘You’ve just decided our marriage has a sell-by date.’
‘You decided that first. It was for five years, you told me. It was never meant to last for ever.’
‘Well, maybe I changed my mind,’ he growled. ‘I hope you’re not suggesting I’m as dishonest and manipulative as your ex? I thought we arrived at this agreement together, and that it was for ourmutualbenefit?’
‘A straightforward business transaction is what you called it.’
‘And now that’s not enough. Maybe what has happened since I said that is too much for you? Please,’ he said, throwing his arms wide. ‘Enlighten me.’
‘I don’t know what it takes to be a princess, but I’m pretty sure I don’t have it,’ she insisted stubbornly.
‘Just be yourself. That’s all anyone would expect from you.’
‘I don’t know who that is anymore,’ she wailed.
‘Then, perhaps you should leave,’ he said coolly. ‘If you can’t leave the past with all its doubts and demons behind, then maybe I’d be better off without you.’
‘You would be. As I would be better off without you, because you can’t leave the past behind, either, and the sooner you come to terms with that, the happier you’ll be. You’ve said you let your brother down. I believe I let my mother down, when the truth is, we loved them with all our hearts, and would have done anything to make things better for them, but what I’ve come to realise is, they each left us, not the other way around. I’m right about that, aren’t I? About Pietro?’
There was a long silence, and then Luca nodded and said quietly, ‘When did you get to be so wise?’
‘When I met you and started seeing things as they were, rather than as I dreamed they might be—which was rather terrifying when I discovered you were the infamous Pirate Prince.’
‘So why can’t you see things as they are now—this minute—right here, right now? You are a princess. Suck it up.’
‘Are you kidding? I mean, look at me.’
‘You look beautiful to me, though those boots could do with some loving attention from a tin of polish.’
She was still riled up inside, but relieved at the same time that the crisis seemed to be over, and they could part as friends, as she’d hoped. ‘This is me,’ she said, running a hand down her shabby clothes. This is who I really am. I’ll never make a suitable Princess for you. Even you can’t fit a round peg into a square hole.’
‘No,’ Luca admitted thoughtfully, ‘but I know someone who can.’
‘Who?’
