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Now her throat moved in an obvious swallow. ‘My brother told me to stay away from you.’
He’d just bet he had. ‘Do you always do what your brother tells you?’
‘Yes.’
He raised a brow and murmured, ‘And do you always want to do as you’re told?’
There was the slightest shake of her head.
The duke was only paces away from their table.
Suddenly, her hand shot out to take Nathaniel’s and in one graceful movement, she rose to her feet.
Her eyes darted to the dance floor as if she were searching for someone, before she looked at him and said, ‘One dance.’
He bowed his head. ‘If you insist.’
Her lips twitched. ‘It has to be just one dance. I have to think of my reputation. There are spies everywhere.’
One dance was good enough for him. Not giving her time to change her mind, Nathaniel led her to the dance floor, leaving the duke staring at their retreating backs with a scratch of his balding head.
When he found a spot for them, he kept her hand entwined in his, pulled her close and snaked his free arm around her waist, resting his hand above the lining of her dress so it lay against her bare back. Her skin had the texture of creamy silk.
She fitted into his arms perfectly.
The added height from her heels meant her head rested perfectly in the crook of his neck. He could smell the expensive scent of her shampoo, mingling so deliciously with the sultry perfume that drove his senses wild.
He pressed himself a little closer, close enough that she would be able to feel his racing heart.
‘Relax,’ he murmured, stroking her rigid back. ‘I don’t bite.’
But I think I want you to...
During Catalina’s short courtship to Helios and their even shorter engagement, they had danced together many times. She had never felt anything like this. Her heart had never beaten so fast that she could feel it clamouring against her ribs.
The heat that had steadily built in her most intimate area that day under Nathaniel’s relentless attention spread through her pores, a tingling desire that thrilled and terrified her in equal measure.
She’d seen desire for herself when she’d been an impressionable fifteen-year-old. The beauty of the moment had eventually counteracted the horror of who she had found in desire’s throes, awakening something inside her; a yearning...a wish...
Oh, how she had hoped she would feel it with Helios but the chemistry between them had been non-existent. The chemistry between herself and the duke was even less.
The skin on her back whirred under Nathaniel’s touch. She could feel every bump of his hand, the pads of his fingers. That yearning...that wish...heavens, she was feeling it.
But all too soon their one dance was over.
Catalina took a deep breath and made to step away but his hold tightened.
‘I am staying in the palace tonight in the same wing as you,’ he said quietly, the words whispering against the sensitive lobe of her ear.
‘How...?’ It was a fight to breathe, let alone talk. ‘How do you know which wing I’m in?’
‘Because I made it my business to know.’ He inhaled deeply and she knew it was her scent he breathed in so greedily.
He kept his hold on her hand as he stepped back and gazed down at her.
At thirty-five Nathaniel’s face was a craggy cast of crinkles and lines, his impossibly tall body hard and rangy, testament to a man who enjoyed a varied outdoor life. His nose was strong and bumpy, his eyes that always seemed to spark with amusement were a pale green and he had a generous mouth that smiled often to create a dimple in his left cheek. Topping it all off was short brown hair that seemed to fight any attempt to be neat.
He had a magnetism which she had felt from their first introduction all those years ago.
He was the only man she had ever wondered about...
‘At one o’clock I will come to your door.’ He pressed a kiss to her knuckles. ‘I know your companion has the adjoining room so I will not knock. I will be there but I will leave our fate in your hands. If you don’t open the door I will go back to my room and you can pretend I was never there. But before you make the decision of whether or not to open it, ask yourself this—when was the last time you did something solely for yourself that wasn’t bound up in duty? You’re a princess, Catalina, but tonight I can teach you how to be a woman too.’
And with those words, he let go of her hand, bowed, and left the dance floor.
Three weeks later.
The stick with the pink line stared at Princess Catalina Fernandez mockingly.
Merry Christmas, Catalina. Here’s your surprise present.
All the poise she had spent twenty-five years perfecting had gone. All she felt now was a rabid terror eating her from the inside out.
Two blissful minutes when Nathaniel had entered her for the first time without protection before he’d withdrawn and sheathed himself. Two minutes of madness.
What was she going to do?
The nausea swelled up again and she retched, but her stomach was now so empty all that came out was bile. She didn’t know if it was the terror causing it or the new hormones taking over her body.
She brushed her teeth for the third time that morning but could still taste the acid on her tongue. She patted her face dry and stared at her reflection, trying desperately to force a smile to her pale face. In six hours she would sit down with her family for their Christmas feast. Aunts, uncles, cousins; those who worked at the palace and those that didn’t. They would all be there.
She breathed deeply, the exhalation coming out in ragged movements from lungs that seemed to have closed in shock.
A knock on her bedroom door brought her to her senses.
That would be Marion, her cousin and chief companion. Marion had brought Catalina’s breakfast to her earlier—the tray still remained untouched—and now would be ready to draw her bath.
She couldn’t confide in her. Marion had a sly side that Catalina had never warmed to. When she’d come of age and had been permitted to appoint her own ‘companions’, a House of Fernandez euphemism for personal staff, she’d been obligated to take Marion on. In a palace full of servants, personal staff always came from family, and Marion’s mother was sister to Catalina’s father.
She counted to five in her head and composed herself. Not with a single whisper of body language would she show that anything was amiss.
Stepping back into her room, she called out ‘Come in,’ and sat down at her dresser.
Except it wasn’t Marion who opened the door. It was her brother, Dominic.
There was nothing festive about the look on his face.
‘So...’ he said silkily, closing the door behind him. ‘It’s true. You’re pregnant.’
Thank goodness she was already seated or her shaky legs would have given way.
When the test had shown itself positive only half an hour ago she had known she wouldn’t be able to keep this a secret for long but she’d hoped for a few days’ grace.
She clamped her lips together and nodded. There was no point in lying. And little point in wondering how he knew. Privacy was an alien concept when it came to the female members of the House of Fernandez. Not trusting Marion, Catalina had been forced to take Aliana, a second cousin and one of her newer companions, into her confidence and had sent her out to get a pregnancy test. Aliana, barely eighteen, had left the palace on the pretext of some last minute Christmas shopping, promising to keep it a secret.
But nothing in the palace remained a secret for long. To keep one required a mental strength most people didn’t have, not when the King and his heir had a palace full of spies and the power to use the knowledge they gained to their advantage.
Catalina had kept her one true and most precious secret by never telling a soul.
Dominic took in her appearance with a critical sneer, then, without any warning, whipped his hand through the air and slapped her cheek. Hard. ‘Merry Christmas.’
Catalina didn’t allow herself to react, nor did she place a hand to her stinging flesh. Any response would give him what he wanted.
He loved nothing more than making her cry. He fed off it.
She hadn’t cried in front of him since their mother’s funeral seven years ago.
Suddenly she wished, with a desperation she hadn’t felt since the funeral that her mother were there. Just so she would be able to hold her and receive her words of comfort. How she missed her soft voice and gentle smile.
She even wished Isabella were there but her younger sister had escaped the House of Fernandez’s Christmas festivities to spend the period with her husband’s family.
‘Who’s the father?’
She pressed her lips together.
‘A virgin conception? How fitting.’ His mouth curved into another hateful sneer. ‘Nathaniel Giroud?’
Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t stop the little tremor that raced through her at the mention of Nathaniel’s name.
‘It is him.’
Such was the fury that spread across her brother’s face Catalina braced herself for another strike.
Instead, Dominic stooped down, close enough for her to smell his rancid breath. ‘You disgusting slut.’
She didn’t react. She wouldn’t react. It would only make matters worse. She didn’t even flinch when his spittle flew into her face.
‘Bad enough Helios dumped you, a pure-blood royal princess, for a commoner and that the whole world knows it, whatever the press release we issued might have said, but for you to then open your legs for that piece of scum...?’ Malice shone on his face. ‘You realise Johann was preparing to ask Father for your hand in marriage? That’s another prospect ruined.’
Bile crept up her throat, threatening to choke her.
‘You’re ruined; you know that? Johann won’t want you now you’re second-hand goods.’
She couldn’t breathe.
‘Giroud won’t want you either,’ Dominic jeered. ‘He screwed you to get one up on me. You were nothing but a game to him and an easy lay. I told you to stay away from him and now you must pay the price.’
He stared down at her, his face twisted in an ugly contortion. ‘Father will wish to speak to you. He will decide what needs to be done and what the consequences are to be.’
He made to leave then paused, turning back around to slap her other cheek. ‘That’s for disobeying me when I told you to stay away from Nathaniel Giroud.’
Straightening his tie, he left the room.
Alone, Catalina closed her eyes and took a long, deep breath.
The screams in her head rang out.
Placing a protective hand to her stomach, she forced herself to look in her dressing-table mirror. Bright red finger marks marred both her cheeks.
There was no way to fix the damage before Marion came to her rooms. All the same, she applied foundation with shaking hands, hoping to tone down the worst of it.
Breathe, Catalina, breathe.
When Nathaniel had left her room that morning three weeks ago, she had felt an inexplicable wrench to see the door close behind him.
She hadn’t heard from him since and she hadn’t expected to. They had both known it could only ever be for one night.
But she’d been aware of him for years.
Friends with the Kalliakis Princes, if not Catalina’s own brother, Nathaniel had often attended the same functions she’d been at; a tall magnetic figure her eyes had always been drawn to. She’d experienced a little pull in the pit of her stomach whenever she’d met his eye and experienced an even greater tug whenever they’d greeted each other with the kiss on both cheeks that everyone used. But she had never allowed herself to think anything about it. They were part of the same social network but they were not friends. Male friends were not permitted for a princess from the House of Fernandez.
Until Helios’s wedding, when Nathaniel had taken it upon himself to act as her guardian angel on the day that should have been her wedding, she had never exchanged more than pleasantries with him.
He was intensely private, so she knew little about him other than that his parents had died in an accident when he was very young—she didn’t know the details—and that he’d been raised by an uncle and had attended the same boarding school as Dominic and the Kalliakis Princes. He owned a string of hotels and business developments, along with the Club Giroud, a private members club for the most affluent, which had made him one of France’s richest men and a self-made billionaire before he’d turned thirty. Gregarious and charming, he was a notorious womaniser and hell-raiser, someone who enjoyed the lifestyle his wealth brought to its fullest extent.
But he’d shown a different side to her that day. He’d seen that she was vulnerable and had made it his mission to get her through the wedding with a smile on her face. Whether his motive from the outset had been to bed her, she didn’t care. She’d wanted him too. For the one and only time in her life she’d thrown caution to the wind and embraced a side she’d spent a lifetime suppressing.
Even if she hadn’t been a princess and he a commoner whom her brother detested, she would never have expected more than one night. Commitment was an alien concept to him.
But she hadn’t been able to get him from her mind. Every time she closed her eyes she could see him. She could taste him. She could feel his skin under her fingers. In the privacy of her bed she would relive their night together, playing it over like a movie in her head. Every touch. Every caress.
She had assumed the next time she would see him would be at some function or other. She had assumed he would greet her with the usual kiss and that maybe his hand would press into her side a little longer than normal, a subtle acknowledgement of their time together. She had assumed she would hug their secret to herself for the rest of her life.
Since she could remember, it had been made plain her virginity was sacred, something to be saved for her wedding day. For twenty-five years she had accepted this.
She was a princess. She had a life of wealth and privilege. She was a representative of the House of Fernandez, expected to marry into a family that would strengthen her own family’s cultural links and power. She was expected to behave with decorum and propriety at all times and not once had she failed in this. She had never whispered a word of complaint that her brother was allowed to do whatever he wanted with whomever he wanted and neither had she complained that free spirit Isabella’s bratty behaviour was indulged by their brother and father alike.
Dominic had never raised a finger to Isabella.
Not once in her life had Catalina ever done anything that wasn’t for the good of the House of Fernandez. Not once.
And then she had.
She had cast aside duty for one forbidden night.
And now she would be punished for that moment of blissful madness for the rest of her life.
What she didn’t know and couldn’t begin to predict was what that punishment would entail.
