A Royal Engagement: The Young Royals Book 1 (28 page)

As you may have gathered, Jacob and I remained close.
 
He had been my greatest supporter and my closest confidante.
 
We were brothers, in a fashion, and I miss him dreadfully.
 
He stood by me when we were disgraced by my father's actions and he offered me a sounding board when I first conceived of my ideas for the estate.
 
He backed up his encouragement with action and his singular support of my fledgling business is the reason it is such a success now.
 
I owe him everything.

Jordan, on the other hand, has been a thorn in my side.
 
You know our history, you know that as children the three of us were inseparable, but what you might not know is that Jordan was never really one of us.
 
That may sound callous and unkind, but what started out as childish fun between the three of us became a competition.
 
Jordan had this need to always win, to be on top and he was prepared to tread on whoever he had to to get there.
 
We allowed him a place with us, if only to ensure we could keep an eye on him and keep his bullying to a minimum.

My sister has told you how he stepped in when I moved away, but she doesn't know the full story.
 
Yes, my father became desolate after my mother passed and he turned to drinking to medicate his pain and loss.
 
And yes, Jordan did step in, but not for the reasons he may have you believe.
 
Jordan saw my absence and my father's inability to function as an opportunity.
 
What you may not know about Jordan is that he has a terrible gambling addiction.
 
He needed money and he saw my father's weakness as a way to get it.
 
He set his sights on my sister in the hopes of marrying into a title and as a way to get to my family's coffers.
 
He offered to help my father run the estate while I was away and proceeded to bleed us dry to furnish his addiction.
 
When he could get no more out of my family, he tried to ruin my sister and if not for your brother, he would have succeeded.

I fervently wish I had been honest with you from the very moment you returned to Merveille, but the moment I saw you with Jordan, I could barely contain my anger.
 
He betrayed me and my family and he betrayed your brother and I saw your association with him as yet another betrayal.
 
I now realise that I was wrong to have so carelessly labelled you.
 
You had no knowledge of the things that man was responsible for, but I was blinded by my anger and jealousy.
 
Can you ever forgive me for that?

As for the matters of business that you alluded to, I have no wish to change my earlier decision.
 
I owe so much to Jacob and for the store of trust and belief that he put in me.
 
I know his wishes were for my sister to inherit his shares, but I want to assure you, my sister will not want for anything.
 
The estate is once again profitable and I have already made provisions for her should anything happen to me.

Although at times I may have seemed unaffected by your renewed presence in my life, I want you to know that the few times we have spent together have meant a great deal to me.
 
I am glad that you have come home to Merveille, tragic though the circumstances are, and I hope that we can forge a friendship from our mutual loss.

Your friend,

Will

I read and reread his email time and again.
 
Jordan's betrayal had gone beyond anything I could imagine and I was beginning to see him in a whole new light.
 
His affections towards me were no doubt a duplication of what he'd tried to achieve with Pemberton.
 
If what Will said about Jordan's gambling addiction was correct, then no doubt he needed money and had set his sights on the crown's treasury this time.

It was like a stab to the heart to realise I had been so thoroughly taken in by his charm.
 
Jordan was a snake in the grass and I had blithely let him into the house.
 
I had so much to lose and if things had gone differently the other day, Jordan would be in line to become the next Head of State.
 
Which made me wonder if that hadn't been his endgame all along seeing as though it was his father that had spearheaded the attack on me in the House of Lords.
 
Had they been working together?

Jacob had known the duplicitous nature of Jordan and I now believed that the man he was investigating was none other than Jordan Wicks himself.
 
Carlos had been telling the truth when he had revealed to me the falling out Jordan had had with my brother.
 
Looking back now I can only assume that that falling out had come about because of Jordan's treatment of Will and his sister.
 
In light of that, it was only natural that when Jacob learned of Jordan's appointment to the Palace he would have tried to stop it.

But the Major General was a powerful force in Parliament and had more pull than the Crown Prince.
 
Their father would have been useless and would've bowed to the Major General's demands without a whimper, so Jacob had needed hard evidence that couldn't be disputed or explained away.
 
Had Jordan somehow become privy to Jacob's investigations?
 
The ransacking of his office suggested he had.

I stood and began pacing the office, thinking through the events that had led to this moment.
 
I would've been of no value to Jordan as the Heir Presumptive, although I would have provided him the necessary funds to finance his gambling, but there would have been no power and authority.
 
As Heir Presumptive I would have been given an allowance, but even more than that, as Heir Presumptive, I wouldn't have even returned to Merveille.
 
My future had already been determined and it didn't involve any royal duties.
 
My life as an International Relations consultant with the UN would've held no interest to a man like Jordan.

So had his plan to woo me come together in the hours following my father's and brother's deaths or had it been formed earlier?

My brain screeched to a halt before I could even think of the possibility that Jordan had had a hand in the deaths of the two most important men in my life.
 
It seemed too unreal to be true and I refused to let my mind wander down that path until I had irrefutable evidence.

Sleep did not come easy that night.
 
I was restless and fidgety, tossing and turning until the blankets were a twisted mess.
 
After a few hours of frustration, I finally got out of bed and grabbed my laptop.
 
I hadn't replied to Will's email and at least doing that small thing might shunt my brain off the singular track it seemed to be on.

My dear Will,

I am so glad of your reply, although not so happy with the subject matter.
 
I do wish you had come to me earlier and explained the situation with Jordan.
 
He has since proven himself to me to be a man of very little character and if I had known sooner, I would not have been so quick to allow his easy access to my life.
 
But I also understand your desire to protect your sister from the wagging tongues of idle gossips and that your decision was made because of your love for her and not because of any ill-will towards me.

My other regret is that perhaps our own renewing of acquaintance may have been less awkward had I known the truth about Jordan.
 
I can't help but feel that we got off on the wrong foot since that very first meeting and I dearly wish that things had gone differently.
 
Our friendship has been strained at times because of unsaid things and it is an awful lot of pressure to put on such a fledgeling relationship.
 
May I suggest we start again without all the baggage that has held us back prior to this?

Hello, Will, you may not remember me but I am Jacob's little sister Lys.
 
You used to pick on me dreadfully when we were children and I do so hope you have grown out of that.
 
I am much impressed by your success and I have to admit to being quite partial to your brie.
 
I hope I won't embarrass you by saying that it is the finest cheese I have ever tasted.
 
I also hear that you have developed a specialised breed of cow to provide the milk for your award winning cheese and I have to say how incredible that is.
 
As the future Queen of our small country, it gladdens my heart to see such innovation coming from our very own populace and if there is ever anything the crown can do to further bolster your success, know that the door will always be open to you.

There, now, is that a better introduction than the one we had?
 
I fear it may be a tad too formal and not at all in the vein I had intended.
 
I am really very bad at this and have had such little experience in communicating with normal people that I'm afraid I may just scare you off.
 
I hope I don't.
 
I have really enjoyed the very few times we have had together and I look forward to you returning so that we may have more.

If it is not too forward to say...I like you, Will.

Yours,

Lys

I fretted over sending it.
 
I wanted him to know that when he kissed me, I felt something more, something deep, something that I want to explore further.
 
I want him to kiss me again.
 
But would he laugh at my admission?
 
Would he think of me as nothing more than a child?
 
Had the kiss we shared meant as much to him as it had meant to me?

I hit the send button and then jumped up and paced frantically.
 
I may have spent four years in another country, but I had still led a sheltered existence.
 
My woeful lack of experience with the opposite sex was never more evident then in how I allowed Jordan to manipulate me.
 
All he'd had to do was show me a little kindness, flatter me with his attention and dare to kiss me and I had been putty in his hands.
 
And look how that had turned out.

I slammed the lid on the laptop and crawled back into the bed.
 
I had to believe that Will was worthy of my trust and I had to admit that he had done nothing to make me doubt him.
 
I had been grieving and alone when I had returned to Merveille and Jordan had seen the weakness and pounced.
 
Will had never tried to manipulate me or ask more of me than I could give.
 
He could have marched into the Palace and made demands on his sister's behalf, but he didn't.
 
The trappings of nobility and fame had no interest for him and I had absolutely no reason to worry that any of our private conversations might end up in the tabloids.
 
Unlike with Jordan.

I shook my head at my own stupidity.
 
Jordan had played me and I had let him.
 
The signs were there, the leaked date that meant we were inundated with paparazzi, the way he made sure to be by my side whenever a photographer was around, the leaked engagement.
 
I was pretty sure now that Jordan was the leak and everything he had engineered with me was so that he could make our relationship seem more than it was.
 
He wanted the public to think that we were a couple headed for the altar so that I would have no choice but to accept his marriage proposal.
 
But then he had tipped his hand and pushed just that little bit too far.

There was no point in beating myself up about it.
 
What was done was done and now I just needed to keep moving forward.
 
I had an appeal to win and I would not let Jordan's underhandedness rob me of my inheritance.
 
He may have thought to cower me, but instead he only made me more resolute.
 
I was going to win that damned appeal and I was going to be Queen and there was nothing he could do about it.

I was sluggish the next morning as we ran our usual track throughout the grounds.
 
I hadn't slept much and what little sleep I did have was fitful and unhelpful.
 
I suppose I could have stayed in bed and begged off, but I knew the fresh air and exercise would be good for me and help me to get through the day.

Jeanette as waiting for me when we returned and by the look on her face and the pile of newspapers in her hand, the news wasn't good.

"What is it now," I asked tiredly as I sat down at the small breakfast table.

She slapped down newspaper after newspaper and on the front page of each was a grainy photograph of me and Jordan in a very compromising position.

I stared at them in disbelief.
 
The photo had been taken from a distance with a telephoto lens, probably from one of the boats on the Lake.
 
It was grainy, but there was no doubt who the two subjects were.
 
Jordan lay on top of me, one hand holding my wrists above my head, the other disappearing under my shirt.
 
It looked like a romantic tryst, not like the near rape that it was.

I swore.
 
Loudly.
 
I used every swear word I knew in all four languages that I spoke.
 
I called Jordan every name under the sun and even made up a few of my own.
 
My tirade was so loud and so absolute that I garnered a crowd of onlookers, staff drawn to the raising of my voice and the vulgar things I was saying.
 
Eventually the spectacle brought Benjamin and Von Bartham to the room and they cleared it of all non-essential personnel so that I could have my melt down in relative privacy.