“I was under the impression that people with lineages that could lead to thrones and crown jewels tended to keep better track of their members.”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” The princess shifted back on her soaring heels and regarded Natalie more closely. “Conspiracy theorists claim my mother was killed and the death hushed up. Senior palace officials assured me that no, she merely left to preserve her mental health, and is rumored to be in residence in a hospital devoted to such things somewhere. All I know is that I haven’t seen her since shortly after I was born. According to my father, she preferred anonymity to the joys of motherhood.”
Natalie wanted to run out of this bathroom, lose herself in her work and her boss’s demands the way she usually did, and pretend this mad situation had never happened. This encounter felt rash enough for her as it was. No need to blow her life up on top of it. So she had no idea why instead, she opened up her mouth and shared her deepest, secret shame with this woman.
“I’ve never met my father,” she told this total stranger who looked like an upscale mirror image of herself. There was no reason she should feel as if she could trust a random woman she met in a bathroom, no matter whose face she wore. It was absurd to feel as if she’d known this other person all her life when of course she hadn’t. And yet she kept talking. “My mother’s always told me she has no idea who he was. That Prince Charming was a fantasy sold to impressionable young girls to make them silly, and the reality was that men are simply men and untrustworthy to the core. And she bounces from one affair to the next pretty quickly, so I came to terms with the fact it was possible she really, truly didn’t know.”
Valentina laughed. It was a low, smoky sound, and Natalie recognized it, because it was hers. A shock of recognition went through her. Though she didn’t feel like laughing. At all.
“My father is many things,” the princess said, laughter and something more serious beneath it. “Including His Royal Majesty, King Geoffrey of Murin. What he is not now, nor has ever been, I imagine, is forgettable.”
Natalie shook her head. “You underestimate my mother’s commitment to amnesia. She’s made it a life choice instead of a malady. On some level I admire it.”
Once again, she had no idea why she was telling this stranger things she hardly dared admit to herself.
“My mother was the noblewoman Frederica de Burgh, from a very old Murinese family.” Valentina watched Natalie closely as she spoke. “Promised to my father at birth, raised by nuns and kept deliberately sheltered, and then widely held to be unequal to the task of becoming queen. Mentally. But that’s the story they would tell, isn’t it, to explain why she disappeared? What’s your mother’s name?”
Her hands felt numb, so Natalie shifted her bag from her shoulder to the marble countertop beside her. “She calls herself Erica.”
For a moment neither one of them spoke. Neither one of them mentioned that Erica sounded very much like a shortened form of Frederica, but then, there was no need. Natalie was aware of too many things. The far-off sounds of planes outside the building. The television in the lounge on the other side of the door, cued to a twenty-four-hour news channel. She was vaguely surprised her boss hadn’t already texted her fifteen furious times, wondering where she’d gone off to when it was possible he might have need of her.
“I saw everyone’s favorite billionaire, Achilles Casilieris, out there in the lounge,” Valentina said after a moment, as if reading Natalie’s mind. “He looks even more fearsome in person than advertised. You can almost see all that brash command and dizzying wealth ooze from his pores, can’t you?”
“He’s my boss.” Natalie ran her tongue over her teeth, that reckless thing inside of her lurching to life all over again. “If he was really oozing anything, anywhere, it would be my job to provide first aid until actual medical personnel could come handle it. At which point he would bite my head off for wasting his precious time by not curing him instantly.”
She had worked for Achilles Casilieris—and by extension the shockingly hardy, internationally envied and recession-proof Casilieris Company—for five very long years. That was the first marginally negative thing she’d said about her job, ever. Out loud, anyway. And she felt instantly disloyal, despite the fact she’d been psyching herself up to quit only moments ago. Much as she had when she’d opened her mouth about her mother.
How could a stranger who happened to look like her make Natalie question who she was?
But the princess was frowning at the slim leather clutch she’d tossed on the bathroom counter. Natalie heard the buzzing sound that indicated a call as Valentina flipped open the outer flap and slid her smartphone out, then rolled her eyes and shoved it back in.
“My fiancé,” she said, meeting Natalie’s gaze again, her own more guarded. Or maybe it was something else that made the green in her eyes darker. The phone buzzed a few more times, then stopped. “Or his chief of staff, to be more precise.”
“Congratulations,” Natalie said, though the expression on Valentina’s face did not look as if she was precisely awash in joyous anticipation.
“Thank you, I’m very lucky.” Valentina’s mouth curved, though there was nothing like a smile in her eyes and her tone was arid. “Everyone says so. Prince Rodolfo is objectively attractive. Not all princes can make that claim, but the tabloids have exulted over his abs since he was a teenager. Just as they have salivated over his impressive dating history, which has involved a selection of models and actresses from at least four continents and did not cease in any noticeable way upon our engagement last fall.”
“Your Prince Charming sounds...charming,” Natalie murmured. It only confirmed her long-held suspicions about such men.
Valentina raised one shoulder, then dropped it. “His theory is that he remains free until our marriage, and then will be free once again following the necessary birth of his heir. More discreetly, I can only hope. Meanwhile, I am beside myself with joy that I must take my place at his side in two short months. Of course.”
Natalie didn’t know why she laughed at that, but she did. More out of commiseration than anything else, as if they really were the same person. And how strange that she almost felt as if they were. “It’s going to be a terrific couple of months all around, then. Mr. Casilieris is in rare form. He’s putting together a particularly dramatic deal and it’s not going his way and he...isn’t used to that. So that’s me working twenty-two-hour days instead of my usual twenty for the foreseeable future, which is even more fun when he’s cranky and snarling.”
“It can’t possibly be worse than having to smile politely while your future husband lectures you about the absurd expectation of fidelity in what is essentially an arranged marriage for hours on end. The absurdity is that he might be expected to curb his impulses for a year or so, in case you wondered. The expectations for me apparently involve quietly and chastely finding fulfillment in philanthropic works, like his sainted absentee mother who everyone knows manufactured a supposed health crisis so she could live out her days in peaceful seclusion. It’s easy to be philanthropically fulfilled while living in isolation in Bavaria.”
Natalie smiled. “Try biting your tongue while your famously short-tempered boss rages at you for no reason, for the hundredth time in an hour, because he pays you to stand there and take it without wilting or crying or selling whinging stories about him to the press.”
Valentina’s smile was a perfect match. “Or the hours and hours of grim palace-vetted pre-wedding press interviews in the company of a pack of advisors who will censor everything I say and inevitably make me sound like a bit of animated treacle, as out of touch with reality as the average overly sweet dessert.”
“Speaking of treats, I also have to deal with the board of directors Mr. Casilieris treats like irritating schoolchildren, his packs of furious ex-lovers each with her own vendetta, all his terrified employees who need to be coached through meetings with him and treated for PTSD after, and every last member of his staff in every one of his households, who like me to be the one to ask him the questions