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‘I blame them, not you.’

‘Right. So you just don’t like me.’

‘Yet I just helped you.’

Really didn’t feel like it. ‘What arrogance, Alex.’

‘What gratitude, Tilly. You agreed and now everyone already knows, so we’re stuck with it for now.’ He abruptly turned away.

She followed the direction of his focus and saw an enormous painting on the back wall. ‘Oh, it’s a Mleux.’

Mleux’s works were unfathomably ethereal. Expensive. Rare.

‘I didn’t think you’d recognise anything less than two hundred years old,’ he mocked.

‘It’s beautiful and I’m not letting you ruin my appreciation of it.’

He shoved his hands in his pockets and glared at the picture. ‘I don’t know about you, but I need food.’

She followed him onto the covered balcony, where a table was set and laden with options. Tilly sank into a seat and served herself from the array of salad, pasta, sliced meat. Alex did the same—his lips compressed, his movements fast.

After ten minutes of silence so stony she couldn’t stand it, she drummed up distraction. ‘Bianca said you sometimes lunch with them in the dining hall.’

‘When I can,’ he muttered tersely. ‘I’m often in meetings.’

That calendar had showed Alex spent more time doing princely duties than she’d realised. There’d not been many blank squares for holidays. Nor could anyone sustain a series of late nights with all those early morning hospital visits and sessions at sports academies.

‘You thought life on Zaffira was a twenty-four-seven disco with stripper poles and multiple music stages, didn’t you?’ He glanced up.

‘That’s what you encouraged me to assume.’

He lifted his glass. ‘We work hard, we party hard. I’m not going to apologise for it.’

‘So it’s true about the stripper poles?’

‘What’s worse—having a few flings with willing, single partners, or repeatedly cheating on your dying wife?’ he asked bitterly. ‘My father hiding disloyalty behind a happy marriage is a hypocrisy I’ll never forgive him for.’

He would never forgive her mother either. Tilly didn’t blame him for that. Elisa had been a carer at the clinic where Alex’s mother was treated and caught the King’s eye on a visit. They’d said no relationship began until after Alex’s mother had passed. Apparently Elisa had helped the King ‘smile’ again after years of caring for his ill wife.

Tilly chewed the food but it was difficult to swallow. She knew Elisa had never been without a plan—anything for financial security, better still an element of power with the adoration. She’d taken Tilly and moved to Montaurella purely because of the number of high net worth individuals who lived there. But to bag the King had been beyond even Elisa’s dreams. They’d married less than six months after Alex’s mother’s death.

Alex had been pointedly absent that first Christmas. Didn’t show for birthdays other than Erik’s. He only appeared at formal state occasions and was always seated a mile away from her. And then her capricious, selfish mother had decided it wasn’t enough. That palace life was onerous. So, another short, ill-fated marriage. Tilly had vowed not to be like her mother, yet here she was suddenly married to a man just to get some semblance of control. She was a failure and furious with him for twisting the situation to make this happen.

‘I thought you liked fried gnocchi,’ Alex said jerkily. ‘It’s the one dish you always eat at the palace.’

Tilly glanced up, surprised. He’d noticed that? Surely he’d not ordered it specially?

‘I do. And this is delicious… I’m just…’ She speared a piece with her fork, confused and aggravated.

‘You don’t have to eat it to please me,’ he growled. ‘You don’t have to do anything to please me. If you’re not hungry, that’s fine, but if there’s something else you would prefer, that’s fine too. All you have to do is ask.’

She gaped. He looked and sounded grumpy yet was almost being kind. ‘Thank you.’

His brows lifted. ‘Regretting marrying me already?’

‘It’s an unnecessary mess.’

‘Don’t worry, you’ll have every sympathy when it ends.’