Harlequin Presents September 2021--Box Set 1 of 2 by Lynne Graham

Author:Lynne Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ONE

‘HIS MAJESTY HAS arrived, Your Majesty.’

Inara looked up from the email she’d been in the middle of excitedly typing to a colleague in Helsinki and blinked at Henri, her elderly butler. ‘What? Already?’

Used to her absent-minded lapses when it came to time, the butler inclined his head. ‘Indeed, Your Majesty. He’s in the lavender sitting room.’

Inara’s heartbeat accelerated. The lavender sitting room wasn’t the tidiest room in the Queen’s Estate and she knew her husband valued order. Henri and his wife Joan kept the estate in reasonable order, but it wouldn’t be up to the King’s standards.

How awful.

Inara felt her face get hot. She shoved back her chair and stood up quickly, her heart beating even faster. Even now her palms felt sweaty and her breath was short.

It was always this way whenever he visited. Five years she’d been married, and she was still as in love with him as she’d ever been, while he still barely acknowledged her existence.

No, that was a lie. He used to visit her regularly, shielding her from the scandal that their marriage had caused, then making sure she’d been looked after as the years had gone by. ‘The Prince’s Forgotten Wife’, the press had dubbed her, which was fine. She didn’t care.

He’d protected her from her parents with his name and his power, allowing her to finish school and attend university, pursuing her interest in mathematics. Most of the time he left her alone, though he’d used to visit for dinner or sometimes lunch, a breakfast here and there, and they’d talk, discussing all manner of subjects.

She’d loved those visits. She’d had him all to herself.

Then, two years after their marriage, his entire family had been killed in an accident and he’d become King. And the visits had stopped.

Inara wiped her hands on her dress unthinkingly. ‘Oh dear, I know I left about a thousand teacups in there, and I—’

‘It’s all tidy,’ Henri interrupted in that fatherly way he had. ‘Don’t fret, Your Majesty.’

Inara gave him a grateful smile then half-raised her hand to her hair, wondering vaguely if she should do anything about it, before lowering it as Henri gave a small shake of his head.

No time to change or fuss with her appearance. The King didn’t like to be kept waiting.

Inara moved around the side of her desk and into the wide hallway that ran the length of the little manor house. She’d moved here from Katara, the capital, when Cassius had ascended the throne. The traditional holiday estate of the queens of Aveiras, it was buried deep in the countryside amongst farmland and ancient forests, and she loved it for its isolation and privacy. Here, she was away from the city and its frenetic pace that disturbed her thinking, and away from the glare of the press and the eyes of the world that always made her feel small and plain and inadequate.

Cassius had only visited her a couple of times since he’d been crowned, preferring her to come to the city whenever there were royal duties to carry out as his queen.

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