The Playboy Prince and the Poison Pill.
Prince Rico and his Bride of Frankenstein.
They’d have a field-day.
She gazed out, wide-eyed and unseeing. Unseeing of anything except the cruel, unforgiving reflection that greeted her every day of her life.
Then, juxtaposed beside it, the image of Prince Rico Ceraldi.
The contrast was…grotesque.
She shut her eyes, as if to banish the image in her head.
All her life she’d known that she was not just unattractive, but actively repellent. It was a harsh word, but it was true. She had proof of it, day after day. She’d learnt to see it in men’s eyes—that instant dismissal and rejection.
It was the exact opposite of the reaction Maria had got. Maria, with her tall, slim figure and her lovely face, her long golden hair.
Lizzy hadn’t been jealous. What would have been the point? Maria had been the beautiful sister, she the plain one. It was the way it had always been.
Maria, in her kindness, had offered to try and do something to improve her appearance, but Lizzy had never let her. It would have been too embarrassing. Even worse than looking so repellent naturally would have been trying not to, trying to do something about it—and failing.
Because of course she would have failed.
‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear,’ her mother would say to her, her mouth pressing tightly in displeasure as she looked over her older daughter.
So she had never tried. She had accepted herself for what she was.
Totally without the slightest attraction to the male sex.
And with Ben it just didn’t matter. What did a child care if its mother was ugly? For Ben, it was her love for him that counted, her devotion to him. All he needed from her was her care and her hugs. That was all.
Ben.
Instinctively she reached out her hand and touched his folded little body, lightly brushing his hair before taking her hand away again.
Anguish filled her.
I want to go home. I want to go back home, to Cornwall—I want this nightmare never to have happened. Please, please let it not have happened. Please.
But her prayers were hopeless. The nightmare had happened, and she was caught in it. She would never be free of it.
Heaviness crushed her.
‘We’ll find another way to sort this out,’ the Prince had said.
But what other way? The Ceraldis must have been desperate to even entertain what he had come up with—a temporary marriage of convenience to turn her into a princess and therefore a suitable mother for Prince Eduardo’s grandson.
The weight on her chest intensified.
I’m nothing but a nuisance to them…
Then she rallied. Tough. Tough that she was nothing but a nuisance to the San Lucenzan royal family. Tough that she was a problem that had to be solved. Tough that their precious grandson just happened to come encumbered by a stand-in mother.
I don’t care—I don’t care about them, or what an inconvenience I am! I don’t care about anything except Ben and his happiness. Ben needs me…and that’s all that matters. And for him I’ll do anything—anything at all.
Except marry his uncle.
Rico stood under the shower and let the stinging needles of water pound down over his head.