When it had come to making a goodbye visit to the research unit where she had worked for just over the last year she’d changed tack, not requesting permission, instead just announcing her intention the next morning. Wait, no, it had been this morning. Things were happening so fast it was a struggle to retain any sense of time in this speeded-up version of her own life. She had hidden her surprise when the tactic had worked. Perhaps in the future she should stop saying please and simply demand?
Being the future Queen had to have some benefits.
You’re getting ahead of yourself, Brina. You’re not even a princess yet.
Her ironic grin barely surfaced before it vanished, because soon she would be.
She supposed she didn’t really have the right to feel so shocked, it was hardly news, but in the past it had been a distant thing. Now it was all very real and there was no more pretending that her life was normal.
An expression of impatience drifted across her heart-shaped face, firming the lines of her delicate jaw and soft full lips as she cut off the self-pitying direction of her thoughts.
It is what it is, Brina, so get over it, she told herself sternly as she shook out the silky blouse she was clutching and put it on a hanger.
Was it actually worth the effort of unpacking?
The rate at which things were moving now would mean this wouldn’t be her home for much longer. They were talking June wedding. Weeks away, not months or years. Once more she stubbornly ignored the flurry in her belly, less butterflies and more a buzzard’s wings flapping this time in the pit of her stomach.
Her determined composure wobbled, as did her lower lip, as she pulled out the last item. The outline of the white lab coat she held up blurred as her dark eyes filled with hot tears.
She dashed a hand impatiently across the dampness on her cheeks and blinked hard as her thoughts were inexorably dragged back to when the colleagues she had worked beside for the past year had given her an impromptu leaving party. Some party poppers left from New Year had been pulled from a drawer and dutifully popped, exciting a mild overreaction from the security men, one of whom had flung her to the floor.
Someone whose name she didn’t even know was willing to put himself between her and a bullet. She could see the surreal realisation hit her friends almost as hard as it did her.
In the subsequent dampened party atmosphere someone had handed around sausage rolls hastily bought from the twenty-four-hour mini-mart on the corner, and then they had presented her with the lab coat, a crown emblem sewn onto the breast pocket.
She had struggled to smile at the joke while accepting the leaving present and hugs of colleagues, who’d all said how much they were going to miss her, while she had tried hard not to think about how much she would miss them. She’d miss, too, the challenge of her work—unlike the challenges that lay ahead, this one had been of her own choosing.
Despite the hugs she’d been able to see they were looking at her differently, thinking about her differently. The realisation had saddened but not surprised her. Experience had taught her to expect no less. It was why once she’d had a choice in such things she had never advertised her title or background. She’d wanted to be accepted for who she was with no preconceptions.
She would always treasure her time at university, both as a medical student and then staff member at the prestigious research unit. Dr Summerville was a title she had earned and was proud of. Lady Sabrina, daughter of the Duke and Duchess of East Vela, was simply an accident of birth, the same accident that would see her promotion to Princess and one day Queen of the soon-to-be-reunified island kingdom.
She had relished the opportunity to be judged for her ability and not who her parents were. She had liked that when people had asked her where she was from, East Vela had drawn a puzzled frown and an inevitable, where is that? Or, don’t you mean Vela Main?
There were big advantages for someone who did not like attention of being a royal from somewhere so obscure, the main one being that a third-division royal did not rate heavy security—one of those things she was learning that you did not fully appreciate until it vanished.
For the last few years Velatian politics had seemed a long way away, and she had kept it there, enjoying her freedom, her taste of real life. Sure, she’d been able to hear the clock ticking down, and the knowledge of what lay ahead had never vanished, but she had always known that her parents would make sure she was eased gently into her future role.
But there had been no gentle easing, more like a total immersion. A sink-or-swim introduction of what it meant to be Queen-in-waiting.
One day she had gone to bed as Dr Summerville, an invisible white coat in a laboratory, and had walked out into the street the next morning to calls of, ‘Lady Sabrina, when is the wedding?’
Her eyes clouded with memories as she rubbed her arm where the imprint of his fingers was beginning to turn from black to a more mellow yellow. She squeezed her eyes shut but couldn’t block out his face...or her guilt, or the feeling in the pit of her stomach when she remembered how his mouth had felt against hers, his taste, the raw sexual energy he exuded.
She lifted both hands to her head and yelled, ‘Go away!’
‘Why? What have I done?’ Sabrina’s eyes flew open as her sister walked into the room and flung herself face down on the bed.
‘There’s a wasp...do you mind?’ Sabrina said, pretending a crossness she didn’t feel because she was glad to see her sister. She eased a dress out from under Chloe’s prone form. ‘I am wearing this tonight.’
Chloe propped her chin on her steepled fingers and scanned the garment that Sabrina hung on a coat hanger and hooked over her wardrobe door.
Chloe gave her verdict. ‘Nice, love the fifties vibe, but you could show a bit more cleavage.’
Sabrina raised a brow.
‘You did ask,’ her sister said.
‘No, actually I didn’t.’
‘Well, you should. Have you any idea how many people read my fashion blog? I am considered a fashion guru.’
‘And what do you think Dad is going to consider about that?’
Sabrina angled a nod in the direction of the micro miniskirt her sister was wearing in neon green.
‘He won’t see it,’ Chloe said with a grin as she rolled over and pulled herself into a sitting position, her long legs tucked under her.
It was then Sabrina saw what her sister was wearing on top.
Chloe gave another million-voltage smile and held her arms wide to proudly show off the T-shirt. Sabrina had seen identical ones in the tourist shops in the capital of Vela Main, where the iconic image was reproduced on everything from tea towels to mugs. It was of the Venetian Prince who had fought for, and gained, independence for Vela.
‘You like? I’m showing my hands-across-the-border solidarity. They say his eyes follow you round the room.’
‘They do,’ Sabrina said shortly. She had seen the original on the wall of the great hall in the royal palace.
‘Don’t you think their Pirate Prince looks like the bad brother? I can’t see how anyone could have thought he was a bastard,’ Chloe added, pulling the fabric outwards to look at the face of the Venetian Prince famous for being the man who had fought dirty to secure Vela Main’s independence from Venice. That, and his career as a successful pirate.
It was Luis who had pointed out the similarity