“Where did she go?”
“Who?” Delphine’s smile is innocent, which means it’s not.
I scan the room one last time and spot Addison near the back, talking to Patterson Cross. My friend. My drinking buddy when I visit New York. The guy who gives me shit about my accent and doesn’t care that I’m royalty.
She’s talking to him like she knows him. Is this the woman he told me about months ago?
Addison glances over and catches me watching. For a moment, neither of us moves. Then she raises her glass in a small, almost imperceptible toast. I raise mine back.
“Let’s go,” Delphine says, tugging my arm. “You can buy me dinner and tell me more about how inconvenienced you are by your title.”
I let her pull me toward the exit, but I look back once more. Addison’s still watching me.
In the car, I can’t get comfortable in my seat.
“That was Patterson Cross in there,” I say. “Why was she talking to him?”
Delphine examines her nails. “That’s her older brother.”
His sister. Not his girlfriend. Relief floods through me for one stupid second before the real problem registers.
“What?”
“Addison Cross. Patterson’s little sister.” She looks at me with a serene smile. “Didn’t I mention that?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Hmm.” She turns to look out the window. “Must have slipped my mind.”
I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes. I spent twenty minutes flirting with my friend’s little sister while my arranged marriage waits for me at home.
“Everything okay?” Delphine asks.
“Fantastic.” I try my best to keep my tone as neutral as possible.
She doesn’t respond, and I’m grateful for that.
As I lose myself in my thoughts, I can still smell Addison’s perfume on my jacket, still feel the warmth of her hand in mine. She looked at me like she saw the real me. Not a prince, a headline, or a crown to be worn.
Right now, I have to forget Addison Cross exists and prepare to meet my future wife. I can never think about blue-green eyes, subway paintings, or how she made my heart race ever again.
2
LOUIS
Ihave a rating system.
I created it when I was eighteen, and my mother first began parading eligible women in front of me like show ponies at an auction. Delphine caught me rating a duchess’s daughter on a napkin and laughed so hard that she snorted champagne through her nose. The joke became a habit, which became a method, and now I have a little black book that would scandalize half of Europe if anyone ever found it.
I have coined it Ten to Win. Ten categories, which are each scored on a scale of one to ten. A perfect hundred means I’ve foundthe one, the woman worth throwing away my entire life for. Unfortunately, no one has ever broken sixty.
I pull the book from my jacket pocket while I wait in the portrait gallery for the first candidate to arrive. The leather is soft from years of handling, and the pages are filled with names and scores that tell the story of my failures.
Lady Marguerita: 43. Awful human.
Contessa di Venetia: 47. Sneezed constantly.
Princess Alice: 51. Bored me to death by the second dinner.
