A ROYAL DECEPTION.

But beneath the surface, something cracked.

Emily's tray began to tremble.

She bit the inside of her cheek until blood salted her tongue. That mouth—God, that mouth—had once whispered "I want no one but you" against her bare collarbone. That mouth had tasted like wild grapes, stolen hours, and warmth.

Now it tasted like diplomacy.

---

Across the room, Lady Henrietta Vallance snapped her fan closed with a sharp flick.

She did not whisper. She never whispered.

"Well," she said to no one in particular, "if that wasn't a coronation disguised as foreplay, I'll eat my rings."

A ripple of delighted laughter curled through the court.

"Bold, isn't she?"

"She touched his lips like she owns him—"

"She does now."

"If he likes women, that is."

"He kissed her like one might kiss a duchess's dog."

"Did you see his hand? Didn't move an inch—"

"I hear his mother threatened to disinherit him again—"

---

Emily couldn't breathe.

Georgiana was still smiling — radiant, unshaken.

Then—slowly, deliberately—she reached up.

With two gloved fingers, she brushed Alexander's lips.

Once. Soft. Possessive. Lethal.

It was not affection.

It was a public execution.

The ballroom gasped as if they'd seen blood drawn.

Henrietta clapped once, then sighed:

"That girl was born to play monarch."

---

Georgiana leaned close to Alexander's ear.

"You may be dying inside," she whispered, velvet and venom, "but I deserve an ovation."

Alexander did not flinch. He kept smiling for the court, though his jaw was clenched like iron beneath velvet.

"Brilliant acting," he murmured. "You nearly looked like you enjoyed it."

Her fingers slid from his mouth like a satin-coated knife.

---

Emily turned away.

She could not bear the stage any longer.

She slipped down the marble corridor like a wound trying to clot, tray still clutched to her chest, the sound of applause behind her like falling daggers. Nobles brushed past her—perfumed, painted, drunk on power.

The orchestra struck up a march.

The toast was upon them.

Duchess Amelia Blackwood, austere and frost-pale in black velvet, nodded once from her throne-like chair.

Her son stepped forward — Alexander, Duke-to-be, heir to Ashbourne and the empire of duty.

He raised his glass.

"To House Hastings," he said, voice polished to clarity. "And to my fiancée, Lady Georgiana — the future of Ashbourne."

A hundred glasses lifted. Applause thundered.

Then he turned.

He did not kneel.

He did not smile.

But he took the ancient ring from the velvet box — emerald and gold, once worn by a Queen who murdered three husbands — and placed it upon Georgiana's finger.

A perfect fit.

A perfect lie.

And the ballroom roared.

---

The grand castle had finally stilled, its gilded halls emptied of laughter and clinking crystal. The last of the titled guests had departed in their lacquered carriages, leaving behind only the faintest trace of perfume—jasmine and bergamot, the scent of aristocracy.

But in the attic chamber beneath the eaves, where the roof slanted low and the floorboards groaned with every step, Emily sat curled against the edge of her narrow bed.

She did not cry.

Not yet.

Her arms were locked around her knees, her fingers digging into the rough fabric of her skirts as if she could press the pain back inside.

Two years.

Two years since she had been foolish enough to believe a duke's heir could love a housemaid.

And yet—

The memory came anyway, unbidden, relentless.

That night.

Summer heat had pressed against the windows of the old hunting lodge, the air thick with the scent of wild roses and damp earth. She had been nineteen, barefoot and breathless, slipping through the dark like a thief.

And he had been waiting.

Not Lord Blackwood, heir to Ashbourne. Not the man who would one day kneel before a noblewoman with a ring in his palm.

Just Alex.

His hands had trembled when they touched her. His voice had been raw, stripped of all its polished charm.

"You came."

As if he hadn't been certain she would.

She should have turned back.

But then his fingers had traced her cheek, calloused from riding, gentle as a whisper, and she had been lost.

The details still burned behind her eyelids—the way the moonlight had gilded the slope of his bare shoulders, the hitch in his breath when her fingers found the scar along his ribs. The way he had looked at her, as if she were something rare. Something his.

"Emily—are you sure?"

She had been.

God help her, she had been so sure.

Afterward, he had gathered her against his chest, his heartbeat a wild, unsteady thing beneath her ear.

"I'll never love anyone but you."

A lie.

A beautiful, ruinous lie.

She pressed her palms to her eyes, but the tears came anyway, hot and shameful.

Because she had believed him.

For two years, she had clung to those words like scripture, even as the seasons turned and the world outside their stolen moments reminded her, again and again, that men like Alexander did not marry girls like her.

And tonight—tonight—he had sealed that truth with a ring and a smile, bending over Lady Georgiana's hand in front of half the peerage while Emily stood in the shadows, her stomach hollow, her hands steady only because she had trained them to be.

A floorboard creaked in the corridor.

Her breath caught.

No.

Not now. Not after tonight.

But the footsteps paused outside her door.

A hesitation.

Then—

A knock.

Soft. Tentative.

Familiar.

Emily squeezed her eyes shut.

She knew that knock. Knew the way his fingers always lingered against the wood a second too long, as if he were steeling himself.

Two years ago, that sound had made her heart leap.

Now, it made her want to scream.

The door opened before she could speak.

Alexander stood on the threshold, still in his evening clothes, his cravat undone, his hair a mess of restless fingers.

He looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time since the engagement had been announced.

His face crumpled.

"Emily."

Her name on his lips was a wound.

She turned her face away, pressing her cheek to the bedpost, the wood cool against her flushed skin.

"Get out."

Her voice was raw, barely recognizable.

He didn't move.

Of course he didn't.

Because Alexander had always been good at many things—making promises, breaking them, looking at her as if she were the only woman in the world—but he had never been good at walking away.

Not when it mattered.

---

TO BE CONTINUED...