“So, she’s shy?” Nick spits another pit. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“There is when your duties to your people include attending court functions and being the public face of the monarchy,” I say. “And need I remind you about the stutter?”
Nick pulls a face. “That stutter was bad. I always felt so bad for her. But maybe she’s grown out of it.”
“She hasn’t,” I say bluntly. “There’s a reason we stopped talking on the phone a few months ago. I just couldn’t take it anymore.”
“Then she’ll let you do the talking,” Jeffrey mutters. “We all know how much you love to talk.”
Nick chuckles, but I silence him with a glare before turning my piercing gaze Jeffrey’s way. “Exactly, Jeffrey. I do enjoy intelligent conversation. But sadly, Elizabeth is incapable of providing the kind of intellectual stimulation I find necessary to establishing an intimate connection. And I feel for her, I truly do, but the last time we spoke on the phone, it was physically painful. For both of us. Even if I were ready to settle down, how am I supposed to build a friendship, let alone a marriage, on a foundation like that?”
Jeffrey drops his chin to his chest, staring at me over the top of his dark sunglasses. “So…what? You’re calling it off?”
Nick squawks in alarm and almost chokes on a cherry. “But you can’t cancel the wedding. You promised Grandfather you’d go through with it.” His eyes go wide as he adds in a whisper, “On his deathbed.”
“I know what I promised and where I promised it, and I don’t intend to go back on my word.” I swing my bare feet onto the warm concrete, propping my elbows on my knees as I glance back and forth between my brothers. “But there’s a chance Princess Elizabeth can be convinced to change her mind. If properly…persuaded.”
“Mother will murder you,” Jeffrey says.
“A thousand cuts with her smallest scalpel,” Nick agrees, “so it will hurt more.”
“Mother isn’t going to murder me.” I roll my eyes.
“Oh, yes, she will.” Nick sets the nearly empty bowl of cherries on the table beside him and sits up, staring me down across Jeffrey’s prone body still lounged between us. “If you’re mean to Elizabeth, Mother will kill you. You know how she feels about manners, and it isn’t good manners to be an asshole to the woman you’ve promised to marry.”
“I didn’t promise anything. I was nine years old,” I remind them, rushing on before Nick can launch into another lecture, “and I’m not going to be ‘mean’ to Elizabeth. I already feel bad about the snakes in her bed thing when we were kids. I’m not planning to do anything else to add to my karmic debt with the woman.”
Jeffrey studies me with narrowed eyes. “What exactly are you planning?”
“I’m just going to help her see how incompatible we’d be in the long term, that’s all.” I point double gun fingers at Nick and Jeffrey and pull the triggers. “And that’s where you two come in.”
Nick frowns. “Come in with what?”
I shrug. “Nothing much. I just need you to keep Mother’s attention elsewhere when Elizabeth and I are alone. And if you happen to see me behaving strangely in my fiancée’s presence, act like my weirdness is business as usual.”
Jeffrey arches a brow. “You think you’ll scare her away that easily? You forget how much is riding on this for her, Drew. Her family is practically destitute. If she doesn’t marry you, they could lose everything.”
It’s a big speech from Jeffrey, but I’m ready for him.
“Exactly,” I say with a smile. “Which is why I plan to pay the tax on their land for the next fifty years as a ‘Sorry it didn’t work out, Elizabeth, no hard feelings’ present.” I brush my palms off and hold up my hands, fingers spread wide. “That way, everyone gets a happy ending. Elizabeth brings home the bacon for her family, I repay our grandfather’s debt to their grandfather, and no one is trapped in a loveless marriage. Win, win, win.”
“Her grandfather saved our grandfather’s life,” Nick reminds me as if I’ve ever had a chance to forget. “If King Fergus hadn’t jumped into the ocean to keep Grandfather from drowning, none of us would have been born. We literally owe him our lives. I don’t think fifty years of prepaid taxes is the kind of repayment Grandfather had in mind.”
“Then I’ll pay for a hundred years and give Elizabeth a generous disengagement severance package,” I say, refusing to back down. “Because I am grateful for the gift of life, too grateful to spend the rest of it with a woman I don’t love. Who I will never love, no matter how hard I try, and who I will leave lonely in our bed while I go out of my mind with sexual frustration.”