Page 8 of Prince She Shouldn't Crave
So, she’d learned how to bejust enough. But what was it about working in the Halrovian palace for their Crown Prince that made her hot under the collar? Her skin itch and prickle? As if she wasalwaysgoing to mess up, to do something wrong?
Gabriel opened the folder in front of him, and her heart froze, then dropped like an apple falling from a tree, right to her toes. He turned the page of the planner she’d begun putting together for social medial posts, to newspaper articles she’d printed, trying to get a feel for what was really going on in Halrovia. It had been difficult since she wasn’t as fluent in the language as she would have wanted. Except, she’d doodled all over the picture of the man the piece featured because she hadn’t liked the look of him…
Prince Gabriel took the sheet of paper out and held it up, facing her.
‘Your handiwork?’
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly too dry. What could she do other than admit the obvious truth? She nodded.
‘Why?’
Because the man in the picture had seemed…superior, but in a way that said he was looking down at you. Especially a person like her. One who’d come from a family with a single mother, even though it was the twenty-first century and who cared about that sort of thing any more? But she could never admit it, not to someone like aprince.
‘I—I was just doodling. Is he a friend of yours?’
Gabriel gave what some people might have said was a chuckle, but it had a sharp, dark edge to it. Not a happy sound. He looked at the paper and back at her. ‘No. He isnofriend of the royal family’s.’
Relief flooded over her that she hadn’t made yet another faux pas. ‘He does have the appearance of someone who likes to sit in judgement of everybody.’
‘You have experience of that type of person?’
To be honest, the King and Queen of Halrovia seemed like that sort of people, but that was just another thing in a long list she couldn’t say, so she told another truth instead. ‘A few headmasters and mistresses I’ve known.’
‘Ah, hence the horns and fangs.’
He said it in a chilly kind of way but with the slightest upturn of his lips, suggesting that he found her scribbles amusing, but perhaps childish.
‘I’m rather proud of those. I thought the flies about his head a nice touch.’
The corners of Prince Gabriel’s mouth seemed to kick up a little more, threatening a real smile this time. Her heart thumped in heady anticipation, but the smile never broke free. ‘They’re quite masterful. Were you a keen student, Ms Rosetti?’
Lena stilled, trying to forget the memories that assailed her. She’d been miserable at school, but she’d always known that to have a future where she stood on her own two feet, she had to do well. To excel. So she had.
But she’d also wanted to make her fathernoticeher. Hoping that if she achieved good marks, he might get to know her rather than remaining a distant figure whose feelings on anything she only really heard about through her mother.
‘Your father is very proud of your results. He thought the card you made for him was touching.’
Yet he never delivered those sentiments to her personally. Sure, he’d been around, when he came to the home and for a few hours they pretended to play happy families. Yet Lena always had the sense that he looked at her and her brother more as though they were perfect specimens under glass, rather than real living and breathing children. And one day she’d opened her mother’s bedside drawer and found the cards down at the bottom, as if her father hadn’t cared enough to take them with him. Whatever he and her mother had shared, he hadn’t shared any similar affection with her or her brother. He’d provided their genetic material. She guessed from what her mother had said that he’d applauded their achievements, but he hadn’t cared to truly know them.
Those memories of that time ached deep inside. Not sharp any more, but now she was an adult she didn’t understand having children if you didn’t have some interest in them. Was her and her brother’s existence all ego? She looked up at Gabriel, his frigid blue eyes once again pinning her to the spot. There were no answers there. She’d didn’t know what it was about him. The cool, impassive kind of gaze. Not giving anything much away, piercing right through her.
Lena shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t say keen. I believe I succeeded to spite them. And you?’
Gabriel’s eyebrows shot up. Why did she ask that? This wasn’t some chit-chat over coffee, this was her employer. Aprince. The things she could learn about him came from the Internet, or years of working with a person. Not this situation where she was a week into her job, finding her way. Trying to figure out as much as she could about the rhythm and feel of the palace from other staff. His efficient private secretary. His secretive valet, who she’d bumped into in a private corridor of the staff quarters in the palace, where she thankfully had a small apartment as part of her role.
‘I tried to do what was expected of me.’
It was an unusual kind of response. His school days didn’t feature much at all in her online research, other than he’d studied at a prestigious Halrovian private school. She’d thought it strange that with all his advantages he hadn’t attended university, announcing that his greatest education was to serve his people and learn beside the King. That had come surprisingly soon after he and his team had won the junior world football championship. He’d come home a hero. The small country in Europe overwhelming the giants of the game. It had been a triumphant moment. Lena wondered what made a young man give that all away.
‘Was winning the junior world championship expected of you?’
Something about Prince Gabriel’s gaze shuttered. She’d thought him closed off before, but she hadn’t realised till this moment how much he showed if you cared to look hard enough. Right now, it was like a door slamming in her face. She immediately regretted her words.
‘Winning was something I expected of myself, and for my team,’ he said.
She wondered about the pressures of a prince and heir to the throne of his country. Working for the Isolobello royals, shehadn’t much thought about it. Her royal family was loved, and their Prince had acquitted himself admirably when the King had fallen ill, guiding the country till his father’s recovery. Then with Princess Priscilla, and the upcoming royal wedding, the whole country was entering the fervour of anticipated celebration, even though the wedding was still months away.
‘Of course, but—’
