Page 32 of Scandal Queen

“We’ve just arrived,” he groaned. “Can we at least have a cup of tea first?”

“No time for tea. This is the rescue Princess Leia mission.” The Queen’s pale blonde hair shimmered as she almost danced with excitement.

“Mum!” Oliver’s voice tightened now, hardened. I wouldn’t mess with him.

“I don’t understand, Your Highness?” I wished I could stand up straighter like she asked, but my spine had left me.

“Well, Oliver has made it clear he won’t relinquish you. Now we will have to make you into a princess the people will love.”

I stared at Oliver. My heart beat so damn hard I could have puked.

“Mother for God’s sake!” he roared but I couldn’t really hear him over the pounding in my ears.

A dark head poked up from behind the back of one of the fancy Regency sofas. Oliver’s sister, Isabella Beaufort wobbled a little, a glass of something not tea in her hand. “Welcome to the fucking crazy house.”

Eight

Marcus Cartwright peered at me over the edge of his half-moon glasses. His grey brows were bunched together high. “Public opinion is down to one point.” He cleared his throat. “Public opinion has never been so low, not since the war.”

Fucking great.

I slunk down in my seat, but the Queen elbowed me in the ribs. Oliver, who sat at the other side of me, played with a glass of water, not looking the least bit concerned.

“I’m pretty sure, Marcus.” Oliver’s voice cut efficiently and clearly across the table. The man at my side reminded me of the prince who’d arrived at Bright Futures; guarded and standoffish. Nothing like the man I woke up in bed with this morning. “That I have brought the points pretty low at times over the years.”

I wondered what this point system could be; but there was no way in hell I’d ask. I had a mental list of things I’d ask Oliver later once we were alone.

Like when we got out of the car at the palace hours before and he’d held my hand and said I’d make his perfect princess. Why he didn’t actually tell me what he meant was that he’d told his family he was going to marry me.

I mean, I’m pretty sure I should have heard that first?

Of course, I’d have run for the hills screaming, but still.

Would I though? I cast a side-eye at him, analysing his face in profile. Noble and beautiful, well, until his lips curved as he caught me staring.

But marry?

Really?

I’m not sure a five-week whirlwind relationship where we’d hidden everything from, well, everyone, really constituted marriage.

But then hadn’t I already committed to him, to that, to a future, when I walked through the door at St Mark’s?

My head. Would they have cleaners to wipe my brains off the walls? Maybe it happened all the time in here.

“But never down to one point, Sir.” Marcus removed his glasses and rubbed at his nose. “Even after the wedding debacle, we never went as low as this. You cannot push this matter onto the public so soon after the bribery issue in Finsbury.” Bribery issue? Is that what it was called?

I stiffened at the mention of the failed royal wedding. Hadn’t Oliver been prepared to marry once before? Maybe it was his thing. I felt awful for even thinking it. His brother John had slept with his fiancée. It had been Oliver who’d been wronged, not his fiancée at the time, Charlotte Macclesfield, as the papers had reported.

But then we all knew the papers spoke a load of bollocks. Well I knew that now.

Oliver’s attention flickered back in my direction at my movement.

“Maybe if we hadn’t covered everything up, we wouldn’t have taken such a hit,” he said; his tone icy enough I leant away from him slightly.

“No, Oliver,” the Queen interrupted. “To be discreet is the principle on which this family is based.

I cringed and tried to slip down in my seat again.