Page 12 of Back to Claim His Crown
‘I too am a virgin, yet I find I still have plenty else to offer,’ he growled.
‘You—’ She broke off, utterly shocked and unable to believe what she’d just heard. Yet in the next breath she did. ‘You don’t feel that need?’
There was a moment of mortifying silence in which she then couldn’t believe she’d asked that.
Lucian Monrayne struck her as a man who’d take what he needed whenever he needed it. And somehow—with his size, his imperiousness—he seemed like he’d need a lot. Her mouth dried.
‘Do you?’ he eventually countered coolly.
Her heart skidded. Until today she’d have said she didn’t. Anders’s barb had struck home and she was certain Lucian was thinking of those cruelly thrown words too.
She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. ‘No. I don’t.’
His scarred eyebrow lifted and she felt her face flush. But surely thisfrissoninside her right now was an aberration—shock or something.
‘Whether or not I do is irrelevant because I have too much work to do. I suggest you findyourwork,’ he advised bluntly. ‘Then get on with it.’
‘I don’t need you tomansplainmy options to me.’ She was angry and insulted andfascinated. ‘Perhaps I never had the opportunity to beeducatedfor any real work in the way that you did,’ she said. ‘There was no exclusive boarding school for Royals forme.’
Lucian had been sent to one, she knew. So had her sisters. They’d all had an elite education abroad, just perfect for young Royals. But Zara had been unexpectedly conceived more than a decade after Ana’s birth and by the time she was old enough for that school her parents had been banished to the castle.
‘There was only house arrest for me. My parents wanted to hide their financial mismanagement and were too proud for me to be seen going to an ordinary school in ordinary clothes.’
‘They kept you at home?’
Mia and Ana had been in their twenties by then. Even though they were powerless princesses, they were well-educated, well-connected and adaptable and still became social darlings. Neither had the time to deal with their parents. That was Zara’s role.
‘I was fortunate enough to have a governess.’ She shot him a look.
‘A governess?’ His eyebrow lifted crookedly. ‘For all this time?’
‘I’ve been caring for my parents and helping run the castle since finishing what education I was offered.’
Even as she’d got older her sisters had leaned upon her to stay there. She was needed at home and ‘so good’ at managing her parents’ demands. And she was too ‘shy’, too ‘awkward’ to want to go to university or to work in the city. But that was only because she’d never had the practice, the chance to get used to it or grow in confidence.
For so long she’d believed them—part of her still did. She’d been cast as the shy youngest, ‘happy’ to live in seclusion. In truth, she’d effectively been stranded in the countryside, caring for parents who couldn’t have cared less whether she was there or not. In the end her resentment at having her life suppressed by the assumptions and expectations of her family had grown.
She stiffened at the thought of it all now. ‘So when Garth came to visit—’
‘Garthapproached you?’ Lucian interrupted.
‘My sister Ana. She said she was too old for Anders.’
‘So you stepped in?’
‘Yes.’
‘Had you evenmetAnders at that point?’ His frown deepened as she shook her head. ‘What was so awful that you needed to escape?’
She paused. How could she explain it tohim,given all he’d been through? Her discomforts paled in comparison in terms of trauma and isolation. Yes, she’d been stuck in her ramshackle castle, yes, she’d been emotionally neglected, but at least she’d been physically safe, whereas Lucian had been in the wilderness for a decade. Declared dead.Wanteddead.
‘I thought it was an opportunity for a better life,’ she explained weakly. ‘But it seems he was only interested in my enthusiasm to give him my innocence and even that in itself had to beproven—’
‘Before he’d take you as his bride?’ Lucian finished harshly. ‘Yes, that sounds very like Anders. Given his depraved proclivities, I don’t think he was going to accept your idea of some alternative method of impregnation.’ Lucian said. ‘I think you should consider yourself lucky that Anders walked out of the wedding.’
‘I should consider myself lucky that I was publicly humiliated all over again, after already enduring that medical exam?’ she asked bitterly.
‘He would have humiliated you in far worse ways than that, had the marriage gone ahead,’ he said unfeelingly. ‘So isn’t it fortunate I turned up when I did?’
