Page 5 of Rags to Royals

I’ve pulled him over to the windows in the dining room. Though we’re still in the same room with both Astrid’s and my families, the room is enormous—that’s a palace thing, I guess—and we’ve got plenty of space for a private conversation.

“For you to marry Astrid?” Henry asks.

I feel the knot in my gut pull tighter. It’s not as if I showed up to my brother’s wedding with any clue my grandfather would pull outanotherarranged marriage and that I’d be a part of it.

But Astrid is…awesome.

I’ve known her all my life. We’re definitely friends. I’d probably be an idiot tonotmarry her. Hell, it probably should have occurred to me that marrying her was a good idea even before now, honestly. Any normal, intelligent man would.

But my first reaction to my grandfather’s announcement isfuck no.

Why?

Because of Scarlett.

Goddammit.

I don’t even know her last name. I haven’t seen her innineteen fucking months.

However, I can also admit that at least a part of my resistance to marrying Astrid is simply because it’s my grandfather’s idea. Hiscommand. I’ve been working very hard, for over a decade, to be sure my grandfather thinks I’m too careless to be given any kind of meaningful command at all.

And it’s been working. Perfectly. My grandfather has never given me any kind of responsibility. No one really has.

Apparently, marriage to his best friend’s granddaughter doesn’t count as a real responsibility though? That seems wrong.

“Say on a scale from one to a hundred?” I ask Henry.

“Probably in the seventies.”

I lift a brow. “Not even in the nineties?”

Henry lifts a shoulder. “It occurs to me that perhaps we should have been prepared for this.”

“Prepared for my grandfather to tell us on the night of my brother’s wedding thatInow have to marryAstrid?” I ask. Astrid and I are the youngest children in our families. And my brother’swedding was supposed to solve all this ‘arranged marriage’ stuff. “Why should we have prepared forthat?”

Henry never bullshits me. “The agreement never said that the O’Grady grandson that married had to be the one that became king. Or even that it had to be the eldest grandson. It didn’t stipulate which of you would be married to the Olsen girl at all. It simply states, ‘an O’Grady grandson and Olsen granddaughter’.” He pauses. “You and Astrid are the only ones left.”

Right. My brother’s marriage isn’t to an Olsen. But Torin will be the next king of Cara and Abigail will be queen, and my grandfather is thrilled with that. With them. So we all assumed that made the agreement null and void.

I stare at Henry. “This is just now occurring to you?”

He nods. “We—I—really thought the goal was for Linnea to be queen.”

I shove a hand through my hair. “Of course you did. We all did.Linneadid. She’s been raised to be queen. The whole thing is over. The stupid agreement is settled.”

“But evidently not,” Henry says. “Seems a baby is actually the point.”

I feel a jab in the gut. Yeah, that’s news to us all.

The ‘agreement’ between my grandfather, King Diarmuid, and Alfred Olsen, has always been laughed off. They’d come up with it one night playing poker. Rip-roaring drunk. As the story goes—and mind you, the only people who have ever actually recounted this story are my grandfather and Alfred, so they could be making the entire thing up—my grandfather offered up a grandson in order to stay in the game. Alfred accepted the bet… and then, ironically, laid down a royal flush to my grandfather’s measly pair of, perhaps even more ironically, kings.

I mean, what are the chances?

Maybe if they’d said Alfred had a full house and my grandfather had three of a kind. But the added ‘flair’ of the royal flush is a little much.

And if it’s true, what the hell was my grandfather doing betting on a pair? Even if they were kings? That was stupid.

The whole thing seems fishy as hell to me whenever I think about it.

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