Alex transferred his gaze to his brother-in-law of a few hours, the Grand Duke of Carathia. Gerd wasn’t given to displays of overt emotion, but Alex blinked at the other man’s unguarded expression when he looked down at the woman on his arm. It was as though there was no one in the room but the two of them.
It lasted scarcely a moment, just long enough for Alex to wonder at the subtle emotion that twisted inside him.
Envy? No.
Sex and affection he understood—respect and liking also—but love was foreign to him.
Probably always would be. The ability to feel such intense emotion didn’t seem to be part of his character. And since breaking hearts wasn’t something he enjoyed—a lesson he’d learned from a painful experience in his youth—he now chose lovers who could accept his essential aloofness.
However, although he couldn’t imagine that sort of emotion in himself, he was glad his half-sister loved a man worthy of her, one who not only returned her ardour but valued her for it. Although he and Gerd were distant cousins, they had grown up more like brothers—and if anyone deserved Rosie’s love, Gerd did.
Couples began to group around the royal pair, leaving them a space in the middle of the ballroom.
The man beside him said, ‘Are you planning to sit this one out, Alex?’
‘No, I’m pledged for it.’ Alex’s blue gaze moved to a woman standing alone at the side of the room.
Elegant and smoothly confident, Princess Serina’s beautiful face revealed nothing beyond calm pleasure. Yet until Rosie and Gerd had announced their engagement, most of the rarefied circle of high society she moved in had assumed the Princess would be the next Grand Duchess of Carathia.
Regally inscrutable, if Serina of Montevel was secretly grieving she refused to give anyone the titillating satisfaction of seeing it. Alex admired her for that.
During the last few days he’d overheard several remarks from watchful wedding guests—a few compassionate but most from people looking for drama, the chance to see a cracked heart exposed.
Made obscurely angry by their snide spite, Alex mentally shrugged. The Princess didn’t need his protection; her impervious armour of breeding and self-suffi-ciency deflected all snide comments, denied all attempts at sympathy.
He’d met her a year ago at Gerd’s coronation ball, introduced by an elderly Spanish aristocrat who had formally reeled off her full complement of surnames. Surprised by a quick masculine desire, Alex had read amusement in the Princess’s amazing, darkly violet eyes.
A little sardonically he’d commented on that roll call of blood and pride, power and position.
Her low amused chuckle had further fired his senses. ‘If you had the same conventions in New Zealand you’d have a phalanx of names too,’ she’d informed him with unruffled composure. ‘They’re nothing more than a kind of family tree.’
Possibly she’d meant it, but now, possessed of disturbing knowledge about her brother, Alex wasn’t so sure. Doran of Montevel was only too aware that those names were embedded in European history. Did the Princess have any idea of what her younger brother had got himself mixed up with?
If she did she’d done nothing about it, so perhaps she also wanted to see herself back in Montevel, a true princess instead of the bearer of a defunct title inherited from her deposed grandfather.
And Alex needed to find out just what she did know. He set off towards her.
She saw him coming, of course, and immediately produced an irritatingly gracious smile. The smoky violet of her gown echoed the colour of her eyes and hugged a narrow waist, displaying curves that unleashed something elemental and fierce inside Alex, an urge to discover what lay beneath that lovely façade, to challenge her on the most fundamental level—man to woman.
‘Alex,’ she said, the smile widening a fraction when he stopped in front of her. ‘This is such a happy occasion for us all. I’ve never seen such a blissful bride, and Gerd looks—well, almost transfigured.’
A controlled man himself, Alex admired her skill in conveying that her heart wasn’t broken. ‘Indeed,’ he responded. ‘My dance, I believe.’
Still smiling, she laid a slender hand on his arm and together they walked into the waiting, chattering circle around Rosie and Gerd.
Alex glanced down, a phrase from childhood echoing in his head. White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony. Snow White, he remembered.
And Serina was an almost perfect snow princess.
Exquisite enough to star in a fairy tale, she radiated grace. Her black chignon set off her tiara and classical features perfectly, contrasting sensuously with the almost translucent pallor of her skin.
She’d passed on one part of the description, though; her lips were painted a restrained shade of dark, clear pink. A bold red would be too blatant, too provocative for this Princess.
But they were tempting lips…
A hunting instinct as old as time stirred into life deep within Alex. He’d wanted Serina Montevel ever since he’d first seen her, but because he too had wondered if she was wounded by dashed hopes he’d made no move to attract her attention. However, a year had passed—enough time to heal any damage to her heart.
He stopped with Serina on the edge of the crowd of dancers and sent a flinty territorial glance, sharp as a rapier, to a man a few paces away eyeing Serina with open appreciation. It gave him cold pleasure to watch the ogler hastily transfer his appreciative gaze elsewhere.
The band swung into the tune and the crowd fell silent as the newlyweds began waltzing. Softly the onlookers began to clap in time to the beat.
Serina glanced up, tensing when her eyes clashed with a sharp blue gaze. Her breath locked in her throat while she wrestled down an exhilarating excitement. Tall, dark and arrogantly handsome, Alex Matthews had a strangely weakening effect on her.
Warily, because the silence between them grew too heavy, almost significant, she broke into it with the first thing that came into her head. ‘This is a very pretty tradition.’
‘The Carathian wedding dance?’
‘Yes.’
Neither Rosie nor Gerd smiled; eyes locked, it was as if they were alone together, absorbed, so intent on each other that Serina felt a sharp stab of—regret?
No, not quite. A kind of wistful envy.
Just over a year previously she’d decided to make it clear to Gerd—without being so crass as to say the words—that she wasn’t on the market to become Grand Duchess of Carathia. Such a union would have solved a lot of her problems, and she admired Gerd very much, but she wanted more than a convenient marriage.
Just as well, because shortly afterwards Gerd had taken one look at the Rosie he’d last seen as a child and lost his heart.
What would it be like to feel that herself? To be loved so ardently that even in public their emotions were barely containable?
Keeping her eyes on them, she said quietly, ‘They fit, don’t they.’ It wasn’t a question.
Alex’s enigmatic glance, as polished as the steel-sheen on a sword blade, brought heat to her skin. What a foolish thing to say about a couple who’d just made their wedding vows!
Of course they fitted. For now, anyway, she thought cynically. Somewhere she’d read that the first flush of love and passion lasted two years, so Gerd and Rosie would enjoy perhaps another year of this incandescent delight in each other before it began