He placed the blade back to his cheek and swiped, revealing another line of smooth olive skin. ‘However much I adore your company, it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to attend.’
She pulled a face, inadvertently cracking the mask around her mouth. ‘Yes, I know. I am a commoner, and those attending your ball are the crème de la crème of high society.’
‘Nothing would please me more than to see you there, dressed in the finest haute couture money can buy. But it would be inappropriate for my lover to attend the ball where I’m to select my future wife.’
The deliciously warm bath turned cold in the beat of a moment.
She sat up.
‘Your future wife? What are you talking about?’
His reflected eyes met hers again. ‘The underlying reason for this ball is so that I can choose a wife.’
She paused before asking, ‘Like in Cinderella?’
‘Exactly.’ He worked on his chin, then wiped the blade on the towel again. ‘You know all of this.’
‘No,’ she said slowly, her blood freezing to match the chills rippling over her skin. ‘I was under the impression this ball was a pre-Gala do.’
In three weeks the eyes of the world would be on Agon as the island celebrated fifty years of King Astraeus’s reign. Heads of state and dignitaries from all around the world would be flying in for the occasion.
‘And so it is. I think the phrase is “killing two birds with one stone”?’
‘Why can’t you find a wife in the normal way?’ And, speaking of normal, how were her vocal cords performing when the rest of her body had been subsumed in a weird kind of paralysis?
‘Because, matakia mou, I am heir to the throne. I have to marry someone of royal blood. You know that.’
Yes, that she did know. Except she hadn’t thought it would be now. It hadn’t occurred to her. Not once. Not while they were sharing a bed every night.
‘I need to choose wisely,’ he continued, speaking in the same tone he might use if he were discussing what to order from the palace kitchen for dinner. ‘Obviously I have a shortlist of preferred women—princesses and duchesses I have met through the years who have caught my attention.’
‘Obviously...’ she echoed. ‘Is there any particular woman at the top of your shortlist, or are there a few of them jostling for position?’
‘Princess Catalina of Monte Cleure is looking the most likely. I’ve known her and her family for years—they’ve attended our Christmas Balls since Catalina was a baby. Her sister and brother-in-law got together at the last one.’ He grinned at the scandalous memory. ‘Catalina and I dined together a couple of times when I was in Denmark the other week. She has all the makings of an excellent queen.’
An image of the raven-haired Princess, a famed beauty who dealt with incessant press scrutiny on account of her ethereal royal loveliness, came to Amy’s mind. Waves of nausea rolled in her belly.
‘You never mentioned it.’
‘There was nothing to say.’ He didn’t look the slightest bit shamefaced.
‘Did you sleep with her?’
He met her stare, censure clear in his reflection. ‘What kind of a question is that?’
‘A natural question for a woman to ask her lover.’
Until that moment it hadn’t been something that had occurred to her: the idea that he might have strayed. Helios had never promised fidelity, but he hadn’t needed to. Since their first night together their lust for each other had been all-consuming.
‘The Princess is a virgin and will remain one until her wedding day whether she marries me or some other man. Does that answer your question?’
Not even a little bit. All it did was open up a whole heap of further questions, all of which she didn’t have the right to ask and not one of which she wanted to hear the answer to.
The only question she could bring herself to ask was ‘When are you hoping to marry the lucky lady?’
If he heard the irony in her voice he hid it well. ‘It will be a state wedding, but I would hope to be married in a couple of months.’
A couple of months? He expected to choose a bride and have a state wedding in a few months? Surely it wasn’t possible...?
But this was Helios. If there was one thing she knew about her lover it was that he was not a man to let the grass grow beneath his feet. If he wanted something done he wanted it done now, not tomorrow.
But a couple of months...?
Amy was contracted to stay in Agon until September, which was five whole months away. She’d imagined... Hoped...
She thought of King Astraeus, Helios’s grandfather. She had never met the King, but through her work in the palace museum she felt she had come to know him. The King was dying. Helios needed to marry and produce an heir of his own to assure the family line.