ANHOURLATER, Briony had barely moved. Cass had conducted some business on his laptop, expecting her to pepper him with questions about her family, royal life, anything but the silence that permeated the cabin.
It bothered him, he realized with some annoyance. Yes, he was getting something out of their arrangement, but didn’t she realize that he was rescuing her and her ungrateful stepfamily? That between his wealth and social standing he could literally offer the fairy tale that so many were raised on yet never got to experience?
One of his flight attendants, Sarah, entered with glasses of sparkling water. Briony stirred long enough to accept a glass and thank Sarah with a gracious smile. But as soon as the flight attendant disappeared, she went back to being stone-faced.
He sighed. “Are you going to sulk the whole flight?”
She glanced at him from beneath her lashes. “I just left the only home I’ve ever really known and am flying into an unknown future. I think I’m allowed some time to ‘sulk,’ as you put it, although I thought of it more as taking time to process the monumental changes in my life.”
Of course she would need time. Irritated at himself for taking her silence so personally and jumping to erroneous conclusions, he opened his mouth to apologize.
“Not to mention I signed a contract to marry someone I’ve known less than a week. Actually,” she said as she leaned forward, “make that less than twelve hours. I thought I was getting to know Cass Morgan. You still haven’t apologized for lying to me.”
His regret disappeared.
“I didn’t lie.”
It was ridiculous that her statement should cause a tensing of his muscles, especially since he was keeping secrets from her. He hadn’t outright lied, but he had certainly played a game with the words he’d spoken last night. She didn’t know that he had been the one to offer the solution to Daxon, instead of the other way around. She didn’t know about his personal vendetta against the Van Ambrose royals. And she had no idea that not only was her father a self-absorbed monster, but he didn’t care about her existence unless it benefited him.
Something in his chest twisted as he watched the woman across from him. He hadn’t told her of Daxon’s illness, and judging by her lack of questions, Daxon hadn’t addressed it in the letter he’d included with the file. Even if Daxon was a monster, what would it do to Briony learning that her father was most likely going to die within a couple years of her mother? Was he doing the right thing, exposing her both to the pain of yet another loss and Daxon’s horrid, selfish nature?
You’ll be with her. Even though theirs would be a marriage of convenience, and it would obviously take some time to regain the camaraderie they had enjoyed when he had simply been Cass Morgan, he would protect her from Daxon, be there to support her with whatever the future dealt.
He would never be able to love her. Love, as he’d observed, could make a person deliriously happy...until it didn’t. It could twist into something dark and angry, like it had with Aunt Alecine and Daxon, so-called love turning to hatred. Or it could be enough until it wasn’t, like it had with his mother. It had been much easier for his mother to go against her parents’ wishes as a young woman with stars in her eyes and marry an aspiring lawyer from a decent family than to flee with a king’s accusations of betrayal hanging above her head.
Even if love didn’t destroy, it didn’t last. When he told Briony he would never be able to love her, he meant it. But that didn’t mean he would leave her at the mercy of Daxon. In less than sixty days, she would be his wife. She would be family. And he protected family.
“Understandable after the numerous bombshells I’ve dropped on you.”
Surprise flashed in her eyes, followed by a tiny smile of thanks.
“It’s a lot to take in. And I don’t like that you misrepresented yourself.”
He tamped down his guilt and spread his hands in a gesture of openness. “Ask away. What do you want to know?”
“Why do you want to marry into the royal family so badly?”
He covered his surprise at her bold question with a sip of water. He turned her words over in his mind, trying to decide how best to address a natural yet loaded query.
No matter what, he couldn’t tell her the whole truth yet. Would she have any interest in meeting her father once she learned how cruel he could be? Or would she decide that life with her selfish stepfamily would be at least marginally better?
Cass had been eleven years old when he, his father and his aunt had fled Linnaea under cover of darkness before King Daxon had tossed them in prison. Cass’s father, Leopold Adama, had committed only one crime: he’d been the brother of Alecine Adama, Daxon’s latest mistress. Alecine may have fallen for the king, but she’d also seen the signs that her time as lover was coming to an end. Unlike her predecessors, Alecine had prepared for the inevitable breakup by preparing a dossier of secrets that would have brought the king to his knees, records of payoffs to less-than-respectable individuals, under-the-table contracts for exorbitant quotes on construction projects that left royal accounts empty and Daxon’s personal accounts full. When she’d given in to her anger and agony at being rejected for a younger woman, she’d threatened the king. A sympathetic maid had warned Alecine that the police were coming to arrest her and her family for treason. When Alecine had tried to withdraw money for their escape, she’d found their accounts frozen.
The slam of the door against the wall as Alecine had rushed into his family’s home still woke him up some nights, her frantic cry of “Leo!” making his heart pound. His mother’s sobs as she’d learned that her privileged life as wife of one of the most revered members of Linnaea’s court was coming to an end still echoed, too. At the time it had terrified him even as he’d patted his mother’s back, trying to tell her it would be okay. But now he looked on the memory with disgust for how quickly she’d abandoned him and his father, her hope that disassociating herself from the Adamas would help her salvage her own future more important than the man she had once gone against her family to marry.
Catapulted from the luxury of a wealthy household to the dirty, unforgiving streets of Europe, Cass, his father and Alecine had lived a harsh life that first year while his mother had returned to her family in France.
Grief hit so fast he barely masked it. He could still remember his mother walking out the front door with a Prada suitcase in hand, ignoring her husband’s desperate pleas. She’d whirled around, told Cass he could come with her but would never be able to see his father again, not if they were to recover from the destruction Aunt Alecine had brought down upon them. He’d chosen to stay. She’d walked away without a backward glance. It had taken Cass nearly a month to stop crying himself to sleep.
“I was born in Linnaea. My family lived there for generations. My aunt had a falling-out with the king, your father. We were asked to leave.”
Briony frowned. “That seems harsh. What did they fight about?”
“My father was the former treasurer. My aunt had strong views on how the government was spending money and made her opinions known. It turned ugly.” His shrug masked the banked coals of a slow-burning anger that had been torturing him for nineteen years. Just like his significantly pared-down version of events was so sparse it bordered on a lie. “But political differences are a part of life. Your father is still not partial to my family. But things have changed drastically in the last few years.”
“The country’s on the verge of financial disaster.”
“Done some reading?” he asked with a slight smile.