Page 54 of Scandal Queen

“Thank you. It wasn’t always easy.”

“I’m sure. You are setting a good example to other women out there on their own.”

I paused, hesitating, unsure whether to speak up. The King chuckled. “Oliver said you always have your thoughts on your face.”

I flushed. “I wasn’t alone, not really. I had Daisy and she was all that mattered.”

“Oliver loves her, that’s clear to see.”

“But? You are worried because she’s a challenge to the succession?”

He shook his head. “Not at all. Oliver’s a sensible man. He’ll make the right choices when he needs to.”

What did that mean?

“You don’t approve of the choice he’s made in me though, do you?”

The King met my gaze, his look sharp and intent. “Not at all. I worry for you. I remember all too well what it was like for Margaret as an outsider and I remember all too well how she had to change to fit in with the royal way. My own mother had very stringent rules.”

“But she’s happy now, your family are happy.”

The King shrugged, wordlessly, continuing to stare at me for a long moment. “I hated having to watch her change and I know Oliver will feel the same.”

“Would you prefer he’d married someone like Charlotte Macclesfield?”

Another pause, while I waited with bated breath for his answer. “In some ways, yes.” I kept in my gasp of disappointment as he continued. “Because she didn’t have half the heart to break. It was why we picked her in the first place.”

I went to stand. “I appreciate your honesty.” On shaking legs, I turned for the door.

“Leia. Any woman can fall in love with a prince. It takes a strong woman to withstand what that means.”

Shaking my head, I walked back out of the library.

Oliver found me out by the lake, on the seat we’d sat on the day he’d tried to explain what his life was like. That day the sun had been intense, insects had buzzed over the water. Now, the end of November was chasing us, with fingers of frost and gloomy afternoons. Weeks slipped past in the castle with no real sense of time passing.

“What are Granny Alice’s trinkets?”

His fingers lifted mine and his thumb ran along the dull glow of the square diamond and emeralds. “You remembered?”

“Yep.” I turned and smiled. “Isabella talks too much after champagne.”

“I think Isabella just has too much champagne.” A frown flickered across his face, but he chased it away with a smile. The royal family might be astoundingly normal, but just like your standard family on the street, talking about their issues wasn’t easy either. Maybe more so. Their silence about Isabella’s drinking unnerved me.

“So?” I prompted pushing away my thought and nudging his shoulder.

“Remember the fairy garden?” he asked. Like I could forget. I knew for a fact that the King had taken Daisy there since we’d moved into the palace apartment. I nodded. “That was Granny Alice.”

“Queen Alice?”

“Yes, exactly. She knew from birth, I guess much like me, she would always be queen. In fact, the law was changed to ensure she would be. Before that male heirs would have been first in line to the throne. The crown would only pass to a queen in lieu of there being a male born to succession.”

I stared at the ring. “You really need to stop giving me heirlooms.”

“They are mine to give, Leia. And anyway. That one.” He lifted my fingers and skimmed a kiss across my knuckles. “Is special. It’s a promise ring. Granny Alice was in love with the Earl of Richmond. He wasn’t considered a high enough birth for her, but regardless, on her seventeenth birthday he bought her a small green box and inside sat this ring.”

“He did not propose to her when she was seventeen!” I don’t know why this shocked me so much considering I had a one-year-old by the time I was that age. I was still only twenty-two and had all but declared undying love for the future King of England.

“No, Little Miss Scruples, but he made her a promise that he would find a way to become worthy of her hand in marriage, and that one day he would make her his wife.”