Charlotte pulled her gaze away from staring into the corners of the room, searching for Petrus, to see one of the most beautiful women she’d ever seen coming forward to stand at the queen’s side.
“This is Lady Jenny Lindstrom,” Queen Sylvia introduced the woman with a bright smile. “She has been our guest these many months now, and we could not do without her.”
“How do you do?” Lady Jenny asked, curtsying beautifully and nobly. Charlotte noted that, as lovely as the woman was—with thick, blonde hair, blue eyes, and soft, pink lips—she did not smile. To Charlotte, it seemed almost as though she were a great deal too grand to smile.
“The pleasure is all ours, Lady Jenny,” Lord Cathraiche spoke for them all yet again. “Allow me to introduce you to my family.”
Charlotte studied Lady Jenny a bit more as Lord Cathraiche introduced everyone. She seemed to be everything Charlotte was not—refined, elegant, and well-mannered. There was a degree of tension around the woman that Charlotte could not put her finger on, though. She didn’t think she could come right out and say Lady Jenny was unhappy, but something was…off.
“And this is Miss Charlotte Sloane,” Lord Cathraiche finished up the introductions. “She is a dear friend of our family.”
“And she is a dear friend of mine.”
Charlotte sucked in a breath and whirled around to see Petrus entering the room. The comment had come from him, and it made Charlotte’s heart sing. She noticed briefly that Lady Jenny seemed to tense even more at the sight of Petrus, but Charlotte’s own heart was too filled with joy to pay it any mind.
There he was, Petrus, her love, in all his regal glory. At last, the two of them could be reunited.
ChapterTwo
Petrus had been beside himself for most of the day, ever since one of the palace staff had informed him that the ferry from Copenhagen had been spotted on the horizon and their guests would be with them soon. He was delighted to spend Christmas with not only his mother’s family, but the other, new part of his heritage. His newly discovered Rathborne-Paxton half-brothers and their wives were an utter delight, and he felt like a child awaiting the arrival of Santa’s sleigh.
But what had had Petrus flitting about from meaningless task to meaningless task just to distract himself from waiting since the moment he’d awoken that morning was the promise that Miss Charlotte Sloane would be with his half-family.
“She really is the most remarkable woman,” he told his younger brother, Fredrik, as he paced the length of the sitting room they shared in their mother’s wing of the palace.
“So you’ve told me a hundred times at least already,” Fredrik said with a lopsided grin as he glanced up from the newspaper he was reading in his chair by the fireplace.
Petrus sent him a flat look to say he knew Fredrik was teasing him, then went on. “Her father is a successful industrialist and shipping magnate. I admire everything he has done and the successes he has had through doing it. His outlook on business and trade is almost American, it is so progressive. He has earned his fortune several times over.”
“Did you not say he was born in the middle classes, though?” Fredrik asked.
“He was,” Petrus nodded, pacing past the window and looking out over the sea yet again. “That is why the Sloane family is only grudgingly accepted in polite society in London.”
“I always did find the British to be a bit too devoted to class and class divides,” Fredrik said, turning a page of his newspaper. “A man is a man, no matter what his status at birth. And a man who started with nothing and has become wealthy should be admired even more, not shunned because he has no title, or because everything he has did not belong to his father first.”
A sharp, humorless laugh sounded from the parlor’s doorway, and both Petrus and Fredrik turned to see their cousin Oskar entering the room.
“Spoken like a true Aegirian,” Oskar said. His face was set in the same frown he’d been wearing all too often as of late.
Oskar was the crown prince and heir to the throne, but no one would have known it from the way he had seemed dissatisfied about life in the last year or so. The change in his cousin’s personality had been so noticeable that Petrus felt guilty about spending so much time in England, away from the palace. He and Oskar had been close for their whole lives, and he should have been there for his cousin.
Fredrik stood, folded the newspaper, and set it aside. “I am proud of our kingdom’s progressive ways,” he said with a shrug. “Nowhere in the world will you find ideals of equality and equanimity like we have in Aegiria.”
“Yes, which is perhaps why so many of our neighbors fear us and seek to keep us as quiet and insignificant as possible,” Oskar said, walking over to join Petrus, as if he would pace along with him. “There are days when I feel as though the only thing keeping Sweden or Germany from invading and annexing us is our insignificant size.”
Petrus laughed despite the seriousness of the statement. “My dear Oskar,” he said. “Always the diplomat and future king.”
“Someone needs to be concerned about Aegiria’s place in the world,” Oskar defended himself. “Our way of life depends on being sovereign and independent.”
“Which we will always be as long as we maintain our status as every nation in Europe’s best friend,” Fredrik said. He walked over to clap a hand on Oskar’s shoulder and said, “No one will invade Aegiria. Few people even know we’re here.”
“And I’m certain you will seek to keep it that way,” Petrus laughed.
Oskar sent Petrus a frown, then said, “Speaking of people being here, your guests from England have just arrived.”
Petrus’s heart leapt immediately to his throat, pounding away as if it longed to jump from his body and rush straight to Charlotte.
“Then why are we lollygagging around here?” Petrus asked, making straight for the door.