Noel smirked. “Oh, he realized.”
I rolled my eyes. “Sounds like you have no place to complain about Kayla then, if you were being just as heavy-handed.”
“Give me some credit. I can at least recognize if my attention is welcomed.” Noel took another sip of wine. “Be warned, Kayla made sure to mention that she’d be attending your ball. I think she is hoping a connection to you will earn her introductions to influential men.”
“Poor Jeff.”
Noel raised an eyebrow.
“He’s in love with her and hoped to win her over by bringing her to the ball.”
“Then she’s using him to gain access to bigger fish.”
“I’m not surprised.” It explained why she hadn’t bragged about attending the ball around the village. She was waiting to announce that she had caught someone. “Maybe Jeff will finally see her true self at the ball. He doesn’t want to hear it from his friends, and they don’t want to hurt him by forcing him to see the truth.”
“I’m not trying to insulate you from pain,” Noel said suddenly. “I truly don’t know what Alan might do.”
I blinked. Finally, I realized what had prompted the defensive statement. “I wasn’t accusing you of keeping the truth from me. You know better than to think it would protect me. Nor do I refuse to see the possibilities. I know there is a chance Alan won’t forgive me.Even if he forgives me, that doesn’t mean we can return to how things were.”
“But maybe you can move on to something even better. I may not be able to give you a clear answer about Alan, but I can tell you that you shouldn’t give up hope. I talked to several people while I was in Skorsa. If what I heard was true, I don’t think Alan’s feelings for you are the type to just fizzle out. In fact, it is probably the strength of his feelings that is causing the problem. His sense of betrayal wouldn’t be so strong if he had felt less.”
“Who told you he has feelings for me?”
“Apparently, you two caused quite a stir at the Midsummer Festival.”
“We did?” I knew people had noticed us, and Alan’s presence had caused a few whispers, but we had barely spoken to anyone except Sam, Gemma, Cole, Hannah, and Phillip. Though I knew better than to think the person at the center of gossip would be included in the conversations.
“From what I heard, when you went around telling people you had an announcement, they expected a betrothal, not to learn you were a princess.”
“Oh,” I whispered, trying not to betray how much Noel’s news pained me. Whatever emotion people had thought they had seen at the festival, I had done my best to erase it completely by lying to Alan.
Noel, of course, knew exactly what I was feeling. “Mina, this is a good sign. Like I said, feelings like that don’t disappear overnight.”
“You also pointed out that Alan’s sense of betrayal is probably in proportion to the strength of those feelings. And that, too, is a feeling that won’t disappear overnight.”
“Then it is a good thing that there are still a couple weeks before the ball and you have friends in Skorsa who will plead your case.”
Twenty-Nine
Mina
???
The men invitedto stay at the palace began arriving three days before the festivities began. I greeted each one personally after he settled in, and took supper with them, their female relations, and Noel each evening instead of with the court. I tried to be welcoming and friendly, but with each new arrival, it grew harder.
It was an effort to maintain my smiles, except when the men I had personally invited made their appearances. I might not want to marry any of them, but I enjoyed their company. A couple had been on my list of possibilities before Alan made that list painful to even contemplate. Mostly though, I had invited men who I felt comfortable around who wouldn’t read too much into my invitation.
The young merchant I had met the previous summer was a little in awe of me, but he had a wonderful sense of humor that didn’t dim even when he was nervous. The secretary I had met in my sixteenth year and the farmer from my fifteenth would balance out the wildness of the man I had met riding with a merchant caravan when I was nineteen.
With one day to go before the performances marking the start of the celebration that would culminate in a ball, most of the twenty men invited to the palace had arrived. But only three of them were men I had sent personal invitations to.
“This is quite a home you have here, Princess Mina.”
I spun around. “Jacob! When did you arrive?”
I had been wandering the gardens for most of the morning, chatting with my guests. Someone should have found me and informed me of the arrival of one of the men I had invited so that I could have gone to greet him. Apart from the two from Skorsa, Jacob was the last of my invitees to arrive. He was also the one I had most looked forward to seeing again—apart from the men from Skorsa.
“Just now. I told the guards I didn’t need to freshen up and asked them to show me to where you were instead.”
