“Only my very close friends,” she amended, her eyes challenging him.
He met her challenge and finally shrugged. “If you would prefer me not to employ this perfectly harmless greeting then I won’t. I won’t kiss you again, Charlotte.”
Desolation was a storm cloud in her gut. I won’t kiss you again. She wanted to scream. To rail against the pronouncement that she’d all but demanded he make. “I think that’s for the best,” her voice was small and determined. It rung with cold detachment – something she definitely didn’t feel.
“You live here?” He seemed to have no difficulty moving on from the topic, looking around the space with interest.
She dipped her head forward in acknowledgement; her heart hammering hard and fast. “I split my time between here and the palace.”
Again, Charlotte had the sense he was looking at her and seeing everything. “Why?” He pondered after a moment, sipping his water without breaking eye contact.
“I like the privacy,” she said, seeing no need to be vague. “And I like the boats.” She moved towards the glass doors and stepped out on the balcony. He followed. They were high in the sky, towering over the Royal Marina that was home to some of the most expensive super yachts in the world. There were fishing trawlers too, contained in a separate pontoon. At water level there were restaurants; world class dining, bars, and exclusive boutiques. Tiffany & Co had a flagship store directly beneath them.
“As a child, I used to spend a lot of time here.” Her smile was nostalgic. “It was easier then. Now I like to spy on people from way up here.”
He studied her profile thoughtfully. “Why was it easier?”
“I thought you knew?”
“That you’re secretly a fraud?” He couldn’t resist teasing, watching the emotion flit across her face.
Charlotte turned to face him fully, then wished she hadn’t, when a slick of awareness assaulted her insides. “Yes. I killed the real princess and took her place. I’m an imposter.”
His smile lit her world on fire; she fought to quench the flames. “So calling you Charlotte makes sense after all.”
She laughed, turning back to the view. Her eyes watched a family, tiny in the distance, move along the esplanade. The father, mother, two children and a pram with a baby that, even from high in the air, she could see was pleasingly chubby. Its feet were bare, sticking up over the edge of the stroller.
“So what changed?” Ashad brought the conversation back to her original statement. Tenacity. She noted the quality, and that it didn’t bother her.
“It was forbidden to photograph me until I was fourteen,” she murmured.
“Seriously?”
“You didn’t know?” She looked at him with surprise. “I presume you had similar protections.”
“No. Nothing like it.”
“It’s not just a guideline, either,” she said with a nod. “It’s an actual law. If photographs were taken and printed, it would have resulted in an automatic jail sentence. My father was very, very serious about my privacy.”
“I hadn’t realised.”
She shrugged. “I can see why. Once I turned fourteen, my world tipped on its head.” A small frown pulled at her lips as her mind wandered back to those days, many of them dark and unpleasant.
“But until then,” he murmured, “you could wander the marina without being noticed?”
She nodded. “No one knew who I was. Mika and a single bodyguard would bring me here and we would sit for hours. I loved watching the boats come and go. I still do.”
“Do you have one?”
“A boat?” She shook her head. “No. I’m terrified of the water.”
His laugh was short. “You’re terrified of something? I’m surprised.”
“Why?”
“Because you seem fearless.”
“Ah,” Charlotte loved that he thought that of her. It made her feel like a sort of super hero, rather than a princess. “You’re right. I am. Except for water, which might as well be barbed wire.”
“Your kryptonite?” He said, almost as though he’d read her mind.
“Like a tonne of it.”
“Have you always felt like that?”
“No.” She turned to look at him again and then wished she hadn’t. His eyes were loaded with such interest that her heart thumped hard against her ribs.
“No?” He prompted when she didn’t expand.
“You know how it goes. Bath tub. Too much water. I’m a stereotype.”
“You, Charlotte, are anything but.” He propped his elbows on the railing. Her eyes were drawn, against their will, to his broad chest. She swallowed, looking back down at the marina. “How old were you?”
“Five.”
“I would have thought at five you’d have had nannies and carers making sure you were watched around the clock.”
“Mmm.” She blinked at him, a grin tickling her lips. “I don’t think I should tell you what I used to be like. It might lead you to poison your cousin against me before we are married.”
Charlotte was caught up in their conversation and didn’t notice the way he stiffened.
“Rest assured, I have no interest in doing that.”
“I was joking,” she said with a small shake of her head.
“What were you like?” He moved closer, as though anticipating that she would whisper and he didn’t want to miss her words.
Charlotte suppressed the flush of adrenalin that coursed through her at his nearness. “Naughty.”
Again, an involuntary stillness descended on Ashad as he digested her description of herself. “Naughty?” He repeated after a moment, the word a single, deep inflection.
“Uh huh. So naughty. I loved to swim,” she remembered. “And I’d been at the pool all day. I’d been put into bed, and my nanny had left the room. I sneaked into the bathroom, filled the bath to overflowing and climbed in.” She knitted her brows together as the memories, so far in her past, seemed to be playing out before her. “I lost my footing. The bath was slippery and so enormous. I went under water and I couldn’t do anything. I swallowed and water seemed to be filling me up.”
“You must have been terrified.”
“Well, I was five,” she said with an attempt at humour. “So, yes.”
“And you’ve been afraid since?”
“Oh, yes. I couldn’t approach the bath for years.”
He arched a brow. “No bathing?”
“Yes. I was a princess who didn’t wash.” She rolled her eyes. “I showered instead. That’s where Mika and I met. She came into service a month after it had happened and slowly helped me get over the trauma of it.”
“Not enough though, if you still can’t go on a boat.”
She smiled at him, and it spread across her face like a ribbon of red. “What’s wrong with watching?”
“There’s something incredible about being on the water. For people like you and me, who live such constrained lives, it is …”
She held her breath, waiting for him to finish the sentence. He turned to her, his eyes clashing with hers, locking her in a vice from which there was no escape.
“Freedom,” he expelled the word into the sky and it carried away, high above them.
“Freedom,” she repeated, imagining that. The freedom to be whoever she wanted. To study, to work, to live, to run, to play, to marry where she chose. It was a sobering thought, because it was so far from the reality she faced.
“We should get started.” A business like shift. Charlotte flicked the briefest smile at him, but it was no longer comfortable and relaxed. She was drowning again, but there was no water. It was life itself that was dragging her under, and she feared there would be no rescue this time.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ash looked at the print out she’d prepared with her topics listed down the side and stifled a smile. “You’ve gone to a lot of effort to make sure this is business-like.”
Across from him, Charlotte lifted a brow. “Isn’t that what it should be?”
He nodded, a slow, thoughtful gesture. How could he have this wedding voided without hurting her feelings? There had to be a key to releasing Syed from the union without embarrassing Charlotte in any way.
“Tell me,” he tapped his pen on the side of the table, his eyes refusing to let go of hers. “Why Syed?”
She blinked, her confusion apparent. And for a moment he felt sorry for her. But not as sorry as he would if the betrothal was ended in a public way. He would not have Charlotte pilloried in the papers as The Bride Syed Didn’t Want.
His fingers curled more tightly around the pen, and his stare intensified.
“Because my father wished it,” she said after a moment, but the words were dragged from her as if by force.
“That’s not good enough,” Ash responded swiftly. “You have shown me that you are a woman who knows her own mind –,”
“There’s a difference between knowing my mind and being free to act as it wills me,” she said quietly. “And the marriage is important. Not just to my father but to the kingdom. We have the hangover of civil unrest that only an alliance with Kalastan will properly end. I want peace for my people.” She squared her shoulders. “I presume Syed feels the same.”