Rivals at the Royal Altar by Julieanne Howells

Author:Julieanne Howells
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-03T15:30:02+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

HER FUTURE HUSBAND sat still and silent beside her. His gaze was fixed on the view unfolding beyond the car window; his first glimpse of the grounds of the Summer Palace.

And his new home.

He’d have a harder time taking charge of everything here than he had in London. Whisking her to the von Frohburgs’ London residence. Organising her staff, who’d fallen in with his plans far too readily. He’d made sure she ate something, told her to rest, even charming Dorel, whom he’d had flown from Paris, into obeying his commands.

‘Traitor,’ she’d muttered as her maid had hurried to do his bidding. Dorel had shrugged and done it anyway.

They’d left Mayfair in the early hours. Seb arguing that they should travel through the night to be with her mother by morning, and before the story broke properly in that day’s news schedules.

He’d hustled her onto the plane—her plane—and ushered her straight to the bedroom, where he’d insisted she got into bed. Then promptly left her. She’d been too wrung out to argue, falling asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

What Seb had done on the three-hour flight was anyone’s guess. When he’d woken her twenty minutes before landing, he’d looked as fresh faced and in control as when she’d closed her eyes.

Agnesse desperately wanted to know what he was thinking now as his new home appeared before them. One not really of his choice. He was only marrying her out of his sense of duty. How different might this homecoming have been for them both had there been any love involved?

The physical attraction was there. She’d happily ravish him on the plump leather seats of this stately limo. Despite the driver and security sitting up ahead. She sighed in frustration and instantly Seb’s head swung towards her.

‘Is everything all right?’ There was an anxious glance, an all too fleeting brush of his hand, but there wasn’t a flicker of heat in it. If there was, he’d tamped it down so well it was completely hidden. The ache of lust and longing had become all hers, apparently.

The familiar landscape slipped by. The parkland with its ancient trees, the deer grazing at the edge of the lake. Her home itself was partly obscured by a haze that often rose from the lake in the summer months. It would clear in an hour or two but until then, only the upper stories were visible, floating, as if by magic, above the tendrils of mist. The palace’s pale lemon walls and white-tiled sloping roof were dazzling in the early-morning sun.

‘Ellamaa,’ Seb said, softly. ‘The land of fairies.’

Agnesse knew her principal home was nothing like the one he grew up in—a hulking fortress built primarily to keep its owners safe and intimidate its enemies.

Not this elegant palace. Yes, created to impress visitors but still more, made for the pleasure and comfort of its occupants, with its formal gardens and sprawling parklands, its sumptuous staterooms and forty bedrooms. The von Frohburgs of Grimentz might

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