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Chapter One

Princess Carliz had never crashed a wedding before.

Not because she was opposed to the idea, in theory, but because she was normally inundated with entirely too many invitations to count. There was usually precious little impetus to go scrounging about for extra weddings to attend.

This one, of course, was different.

Her entire life depended on her ability to do what she needed to do at this wedding today, and she knew that if she was to say that to someone—anyone—they would dismiss her and call her needlessly histrionic.

But that didn’t make it any less true.

This wedding would always stand as a before and after moment in her life. It was up to her to make it either a good memory or a deeply sad one, but she knew full well she would be carrying it around forever.

“No pressure, then,” she muttered wryly to herself as she boarded the small, sleek watercraft she had hired for her purposes in the Marina di Pisa, tucked there at the mouth of the Arno some ten kilometers from the city famed for its leaning tower.

Carliz had approached this whole enterprise like a puzzle. She always had liked a good puzzle. And concentrating on the details of how to make it onto a private, tidal island with heaps of security, then into one of the most hyped-up ceremonies of the year when they would most certainly be attempting to keep everyone out, was far more interesting than other things she could have been concentrating on. Like how she felt about the fact that she was doing such a reckless, foolish, and deeply questionable thing in the first place.

But then, Valentino Bonaparte—sometimes called Vale by his friends, which was not how Carliz would describe herself—was the thorniest puzzle of all.

Her curse was that she was determined to solve him, one way or another.

It had been easy enough to secure a boat. She was a princess, the Italian seaside catered to tourists of all descriptions but especially rich ones, and it was nothing at all to whisk her across the stunning blue waters of this part of the Mediterranean Sea. Particularly on a lovely summer day like this. Somewhere between the island of Capraia, renowned for its anchovy fishery, and Elba, better known for the ten months it had housed the exiled Napoleon, sat a small, tidal island that Valentino’s family had claimed as theirs for generations.

Carliz wrapped her hair carefully in a silk scarf and sat out in the sea air as the boat cut through the waves, not afraid to imagine herself the heroine on this journey. Bravely striding forth to do what must be done no matter the cost.

It did not matter—at the moment—that she knew that Valentino would not return the favor.

His family like to claim that they were direct descendants of Napoleon himself, but no one took this seriously. She had once heard Valentino say at a party that he rather thought it was an overly imaginative goatherd who had become the first of his Bonaparte line. That was all there was on his family’s island. Goats, wild oleander, and fortresses on three sides. One belonged to the famously vile Milo Bonaparte, who had raised Valentino and his illegitimate half brother, Aristide, in well-publicized and ongoing conflict. When they had turned eighteen, their father had divided all of the island in two, save the peninsula he lived on, and told his sons to prove which one of them deserved to inherit the rest when he died. Because only one of them could have the greater share.

They had each built their own grand castle on their land. At the other.

For it was well known that the two Bonaparte sons, born on either side of the blanket, had once been great friends but were now mortal enemies. Some speculated it was all down to the inheritance they each hoped to gain, though that made little sense, as both men had made themselves fabulously wealthy in their own right.

But then, Carliz knew all too well that Valentino could exist for years in a state of conflict and feel no compulsion whatever to fix it or even address it. It was like he preferred his own misery. That was another reason that she was taking the extraordinary step she was today, she told herself when the boat landed, and her men helped her alight.

That and the fact that she did not like misery at all.

First, though, she had to find the wedding. This was not a large island, as islands went, but it was big enough to be divided into three, each third with enough space to boast its own castle. There was ample opportunity to go to the wrong bit, and then what? She doubted private islands had taxi stands.

She hadn’t thought that part through, if she was honest. If her father was still alive, he would no doubt have despaired of her recklessness. Then again, he would have done the same if Carliz had locked herself away in a convent and let the nuns lead her to a higher purpose that might well have involved less of what he’d called his younger daughter’s spiritedness.

It had never been a compliment.

But Carliz had not gone into the nunnery. Instead, while her serious sister solemnly took the throne after their father’s death and their mother had made herself into a walking, talking shrine to his memory, Carliz had done precisely what she pleased.

Because that was the point and privilege of not being the heir, to her mind.

Accordingly, she was the first member of her family to attend university in the whole of her tiny kingdom’s history. Much less in England, surrounded by commoners. And once she’d graduated with an art degree, Carliz had flirted with the idea of an appropriately bohemian lifestyle, but she soon found that she was too royal to be taken seriously in her preferred medium. She could paint all she liked, and she really did like to paint, but no one could see past her sister’s reign when they looked at her works.

Or maybe she was kidding herself, she had no talent whatever, and it was thanks entirely to her sister.

In any case, she had teased Mila—Queen Emilia to everyone else—that it was therefore her obligation and most solemn duty to become the thorn in the proverbial crown.

You can do as you like, her sister had replied in her serene way that was not a reaction to her station. She had always been calm unto her soul. I only ask that your scandals be entertaining, not embarrassing.

Carliz had promised. And she always kept her word.

And thus she had sparkled her way all across Europe, from the mountain heights of their tiny little kingdom to Spain’s warm beaches, across to the gleaming villas and attendant yachts of the Côte d’Azur. She had skied every hill in Switzerland. She had wandered around the palm trees and wide boulevards of Los Angeles, and spent a season of inner peace and vegan food—not good bedfellows, in her experience—tucked away in a mysterious Malibu canyon.

Your sister indulges you, her mother had said dourly at some point in all this cavorting about, perhaps when Carliz was beginning her first Parisian era. Or maybe it was the second Milan season. It was hard to recall, because it was all couture houses and nights that began after midnight and bled straight on through morning. But sooner or later you will need to contribute in some way to the crown.

Surely, Mother, my contribution of joie de vivre is more than sufficient, she had replied, not entirely facetiously. I make Mila laugh.

You will need to marry well, her mother had thundered at her from behind the shroud she had adopted, the better to look like an early Christian martyr midtorment. She did not laugh. Ever. Your sister is yet without child. Even you must understand what that means. You have responsibilities, Carliz, whether you like it or not.

And it was not that Carliz did not want responsibilities. Sometimes she thought she would be much better for them. But there was a restlessness in her. Not a recklessness, as her father had often claimed—it was a kind of yearning. It permeated everything. She was so good at a carefree laugh, a witty comment, the perfect story to set the whole party into gales of laughter. She was terrific at shifting the mood of any room she entered. It was her belief that it was that very restlessness that allowed her to do well at such things, because she was not all on the surface and she did not treat others as if they were, either.

But these were not considered gifts. They were only party tricks. Even though, as far she could tell, the job of the spare princess was to illuminate all the parties she could, her party tricks did not seem to be enough.

Carliz had indulged in vague thoughts about the sort of things she could do. She’d imagined that even though she couldn’t think of something intriguing off the top of her head, she could surely find some way to be useful instead of merely decorative.

Besides, though she was in no rush to find herself the sort of husband her mother would consider appropriate, Carliz could admit that she was a bit bored with sparkling about hither and yon. A friend of hers suggested charity work, the typical balm for the aimless heiress, which would at least bolster goodwill.

What Carliz had found, instead, was that she truly loved it. She had worked with orphans, at home and abroad, and for the first time in her life had gotten a glimpse—a glimmer—of what it would mean to actually live a life of purpose instead of mere pomp and occasional circumstance.

But then she had met Valentino.

She stopped as she clambered up the rocky beach and let out a breath, because even thinking about him changed the temperature. Of the air. Of the sky. Of her whole body. Even the thought of him made her…silly.

It had been like this from the moment they had met eyes. Met, then held.

Too long for comfort, composure, or anything else the least bit polite.

It had been a charity banquet in Rome. It had been a balmy night and so the banquet had been more or less outside, beneath lights strewn about in the trees and stretching between the old walls to create a ceiling in the old ruin, so that everything was cast in a warm, bright glow.

Everything except him.

He was breathtaking. Thick dark hair, a sensually stern mouth, and eyes like a faded blue sky set against his olive coloring to swoon-worthy effect.

And yet there was something ruthless in the cut of him. The blade of his nose, the slice of his cheekbones, the intense athleticism of his form that was obvious even in the exquisite bespoke suit he’d worn that night.

Carliz had felt drawn to him as surely as if he’d wrapped his arms around her and hauled her to him.

Oh, how she wished he had.

She had worn red that night. And red was how she’d felt—seared through, set alight, and made new.

She remembered catching his gaze the way she had, and then, in the next moment, finding herself in his arms. As if it had happened that way, in an instant. As if neither one of them had moved at all. As if fate had taken a hand and thrown them together, from one end of a crowded event into the center of a packed dance floor.

That was impossible. She knew that. One of them must have moved toward the other. There must have been some understanding, some communication—but if so, it was lost to her. All she recalled was that searing glance.

She could still feel it. She felt it all the time.

And then, better still, the exquisite beauty and agony of being in his arms.

They hadn’t spoken. It was too intense, too overwhelming.

And she knew this had not been in her head alone. For one, she was not given to such flights of fancy. And for another, she’d seen it on his face. That stark wonder. And something else—that same alarm she could feel in her, too, that anything could sweep through them like this.

Because things like this could not be real.

There was no such thing as love at first sight. Everyone knew it.

Tell me your name, he had said at last, and they had both reacted to that.

She had shivered, because his voice seemed to be a part of her already, moving deep within her, changing her and claiming her. And she had shivered again when his eyes had moved to track the goose bumps that rose up, then trailed down the line of her neck, then out across her bare shoulders.

Carliz, she had managed somehow, to say. Princess Carliz of the Kingdom of Las Sosegadas.

I am Valentino, he had replied.

And later, she would find herself tempted to analyze that. To suspect that he had deliberately not told her his surname and puzzle over the fact that he had also not offered her that nickname of his, but in her brighter moments she knew better. Neither one of them had been in possession of any defenses in that moment. It would have been better if they had.

It would have been easier, then and now.

After the dance had ended, he’d drawn her off the dance floor, and they had stood there, too full of each other to breathe. Too…altered.

She could remember the amazement on his face. That same wonder she could feel sparking within her. She remembered the way he’d led her through the party when he could bring himself to move, in a way that should have made a scene, given who they were, though no one afterward had remarked on it.

To her it was so obvious, this thing that had blown up between them. So blatantly sensual. So impossibly carnal.

So right.

When they reached the shadows outside the ruin, at last, he had backed her against the nearest remnant of a wall and looked down into her eyes.

Carliz, he had said, as if her name on his tongue was an anguish all its own. Carliz, this is not who I am.

She hadn’t spoken. She’d felt…almost choked by the intensity of that moment. His gaze on her. Her very real sense that she had fallen off a cliff from all that she knew and there was only this freefall, now. That there was no way out. No going back. No fixing whatever this was.

No story she could tell or witticism she could offer that would make this any less than it was.

So instead, following an urge she could hardly name, she had lifted up her hands and traced those sensually harsh lines of his stunning face. She had made a soft noise when she’d touched him, when the heat of him seemed to rush through her like its own, deep roar.

His skin was scalding to the touch. His brows were a symphony, a weapon.

And when she’d moved her fingertips over that austere, demanding mouth of his, he’d opened his lips and enveloped her fingers with all of that terrible, wonderful heat. And she had learned things about herself, then.

Dark, magical things.

Too many things to name, cascading through her all at once, and all of them lessons of heat and wonder, longing and desire.

Inexorably and not nearly fast enough, one of his hands had found its way to the nape of her neck and held her there.

And she’d known he was going to kiss her.

She had felt as if she’d been waiting the whole of her life to kiss him back.

And when he’d lowered his face to hers and claimed her mouth with his, she was certain she had waited an eternity.

For then Carliz was born anew.

Because he kissed like wonder. And with one stroke of his tongue after the next, he wrote his name indelibly on her heart. She kissed him back in the same way, the heat and marvel reaching a crescendo all its own.

When he’d pulled back, they were both shaking.

And then, as she’d watched him and panted out her need and frustration that they were not still kissing, Valentino had stepped back. He had squeezed his eyes shut. He had rubbed his hands over his face and made a sound that she could only describe as pure anguish.

She had felt it in her own gut, like a dagger thrust in deep.

This cannot happen, he had told her.

Carliz had sighed a little. I think it already has.

This cannot happen, he had said again, and he had fixed the dark world of his eyes on her. This will not happen.

And she would never understand—to this day, she could not understand—how he had turned as sharply as he did, then walked away and left her there, as if what had happened between them was a daydream. As if it had not happened at all.

She didn’t follow him that night. She couldn’t. She had stayed where she was, clutching onto that wall as if without it she might topple off the planet and lose herself amongst the stars forever.

But eventually, she had gotten her legs beneath her again.

Eventually she had learned how to breathe as if breath was new.

And when she did, she went to war.

Carliz reminded herself of that now as she made her way through a bit of a hedge and found herself on a brightly lit lane, where many exquisite-looking people in fancy dress were walking along, all headed toward the grand, sprawling house on the hill above them.

Or more precisely, she realized as she slipped into the procession as demurely as possible, toward the small chapel that sat tucked in at the foot of the hill, with a view over the sea she’d only just crossed.

A pretty place for a wedding, she thought. And then she congratulated herself on how clinical that thought was, as if everything in her body didn’t rise up to reject it. There were rooms in the house up above, with windows that looked straight down at the procession toward the chapel, and she couldn’t help but wonder if he was there now. Watching. Waiting.

Preparing to marry a woman who wasn’t her.

Carliz glanced up, then forced herself to stop. And as she walked the rest of the way, she kept her scarf as much over her face as she could and kept her gaze toward the ground, because she did not wish to be recognized. Not yet.

She had spent the past three years paparazzi-ing herself at Valentino Bonaparte. Who had not been able to avoid her entirely, though he had not touched her again. Still, every time their gazes locked it was like fireworks, and he hated her for that.

Or maybe it was that he hated that she would not let it go.

Though Carliz thought that of the two of them, she was the one who really ought to have hated him. For experiencing what she had that night, then walking away. For kissing her like that, as if no other woman would ever exist but her, and as if he could not live without her.

And then having the audacity to go ahead and do just that.

She had spent two years making the relationship she hadn’t actually had with him into one of the biggest scandals in Europe. All it took was a whisper to this tabloid, an anonymous tip to another. Making sure she was spotted leaving places he had been. Making sure that it looked as if she was trying to hide from the cameras while she did it.

After all, speculation was often better than any real story could ever be.

Then he had announced his engagement to a blameless, spotless heiress of indisputably high character.

Carliz did not like to think about that particular day. It had been a dark one.

Even her sister had called, filled with sympathy and endless concern…though more because Mila was worried about what Carliz might do, Carliz was aware. Less about the state of Carliz’s heart.

Not the Carliz could tell anyone about the actual state of her heart.

Once again, she hadn’t thought things through. Everybody thought that she and Valentino had been involved in a torrid affair. Since she was chiefly known for her sparkling and not her charitable works, the narrative had tended toward praising Valentino for keeping his side of the street scrupulously clean while offering very thinly veiled jabs at Carliz for being such a mess in public.

She had thought it was all fun and games. That, at the very least, it would inspire Valentino to confront her himself.

But he had declined.

And so she didn’t see him again until after his engagement. When they had both inadvertently turned up at the same birthday party for another European royal, who Valentino knew from his own time at university. Or perhaps it was from that desperately fancy club everyone knew he was a part of, so exclusive that people spoke of it in whispers—even when the people that they were speaking to had no idea it existed.

This time there had been no dancing. He was an engaged man and it was clear he did not intend there to be any scandal attached to him, or to his lovely, worthy intended who Carliz did her best not to loathe simply because she existed.

Nonetheless, thanks to Carliz’s antics, there were entirely too many eyes watching the two of them as they came face-to-face at that party.

I hope you are satisfied with yourself, Valentino had said, a banked storm in those faded blue eyes and censure all over his face.

As satisfied as I imagine you are with yourself, she had replied, with a smile for the onlookers. A thousand congratulations on your future happiness, Valentino.

Saying his name to him washed through him, its own wave. She could see it. She could feel its echo inside her own bones.

That storm in his gaze had intensified.

I owe you no obligation, he had shot back. I told you. Whatever this is, it cannot happen. I told you this.

It makes no sense to me, she had said, and there was too much feeling in her voice. There was too much raw emotion all over her, spilling out everywhere. She knew it but she couldn’t seem to keep it within.

We should never have met, he had told her, and then he had once again walked away.

Carliz had not even had to go out and drum up the headlines that had greeted her the next day. Because she’d created the monster and now it fed itself. The papers were full of speculation about their tense meeting. About their lost love.

About this untenable situation she had created for herself.

About this man who she knew full well felt as she did, but refused to accept it. And refused even further to do anything about it.

Carliz had resolved to get over him. To put that lightning strike of a meeting behind her and move on.

But then she’d seen him one more time.

She had not been supposed to be there. She couldn’t remember the name of the event, only that it took place in a forlorn castle somewhere in England, carefully refurbished but still little more than a lonely beacon over a remote and barren landscape. Like a lighthouse standing over a rocky shore where no ships sailed.

She had come in the night before after attempting to exhaust herself with literal whirlwinds of the sort of activities that she’d used to find such fun. She’d gone on a mad tour from the Pacific Islands to Rio de Janeiro to Barcelona, all to forget about Valentino Bonaparte. She had been sandy and salty, her ears still ringing from too much music and her whole body in need of a month’s rest after all of that dancing.

And so she had slept through the day and into the next night with the party already carrying on in the castle’s ancient keep below. When she’d woken up she’d felt inside out and in no fit state to interact with anyone.

Carliz was very good at pulling the pieces together, no matter her actual state. She had always been good at it. A little bit of makeup and she was fine. She was well. A pretty dress and she was giddy and happy, and whatever else she was required to be at any given time.

But that night, she had felt pale with exhaustion. And not simply the kind that sleeping could cure. Her heart was too heavy. She had begun to think that he was right. That they should never have met.

If they had never met, she would never have known.

If she hadn’t known, she would not have to suffer like this.

She could not, somehow, find it in her to buck up, put on her party face, and go out there where people would expect her to sparkle the way she always did.

Carliz went to her window instead to look out over the party below, and that was when she saw that he was there.

It was a glory and misery to see him, to feel that electricity—that same old lightning bolt—and yet to know that it was meaningless. She thought it was so unjust that it was possible to feel that way about someone and have it mean so little. To know, against her will, that it was possible to fall for someone like this and also to know that it was futile.

She had been so sure that she could convince him to take the chance. She had been so positive that he would come around.

Maybe the real trouble was that Carliz was not accustomed to failures. Because she did not set herself up with true challenges, perhaps. Because she did not ask much of herself. She knew that was what some would say.

Or maybe, she thought then, it was just she was heartbroken. And she would remain heartbroken. She would never be able to explain it to anyone else, because they wouldn’t believe her if she told the truth and she couldn’t bring herself to actually tell someone a lie. What the papers said, she couldn’t control. She could only insinuate, then fail to correct their assumptions, and they had drawn their own conclusions.

But now…now she was simply going to have to live with this.

So she watched him from her window, aware that he would not be pleased if he caught her at it. That he would prefer to pretend she did not exist at all, and if she did, that they did not recognize each other.

She was going to have to live with that, too. And maybe, someday, learn how to convince herself that she couldn’t recognize him after all.

Carliz told herself that it was a farewell. His wedding was in a handful of months and that would be that. Because her scandals had only ever been entertaining, as her sister had requested. They could not involve a married man. They would not.

She couldn’t even allow herself to be the fake lover of a married man. It would be too cruel to his wife. Too unnecessarily vicious when the truth was, it would only be more acrobatics around the same heartbreak.

So she stood there instead and watched him as he commanded space around him. As others flocked to him, the way they always did.

She told herself this would have to do, and then she would surrender herself to whatever her mother thought was necessary to do her duty. She saw no reason to delay the inevitable, not now.

That should have been the end of it. She was sure that it would have been.

Except as she watched, Valentino stepped away from the rest of the crowd. He stood on the edge of the keep, half in shadow, and seemed to do nothing at all but breathe.

She found herself pressed up against the window, watching him avidly, because he didn’t know she was here. No one did. He didn’t know she could see him, that in fact, she might be the only one at the party who could.

There was no way he could know that she was the only one who saw the way he let his eyes drift shut for the barest moment, as a look as close to grief as any she had ever seen crossed over his face.

It was the exact same look she had seen once before.

When he had stepped away from her after that kiss. In that moment before he told her that nothing could happen between them.

And in that moment, she knew. Valentino was not resigned to this course he had taken. He was not happy about his upcoming wedding.

This, tragically, meant that Carliz had no choice.

At first she’d thought it would be that very night. She’d pulled herself together, had gone downstairs, yet by the time she made it to the party he had already left. And later she’d read in the papers that they had planned it that way, the two of them. Ex-lovers, according to the tabloids, who clearly could not stand to be in the same room with each other.

If only, she had thought sourly. Instead, she was an ex-lover who had never been a lover at all, and how unfair was that?

That was when she’d begun planning this puzzle.

Carliz knew full well that this was her last chance. Her only chance. Even she could only beat her head against the same brick wall for so long. She slipped into the lovely, airy chapel with the rest of the guests, keeping her eyes demurely lowered as she took a seat in one of the pews toward the back.

Here, too, she hadn’t planned exactly what she would do. She was hoping the perfect solution would come to her. She knew that there was always the option of standing up in the middle of the ceremony, assuming that was something they did here. Not that she was entirely certain that her objection would count. Besides, she couldn’t help but feel that standing up like that would be seen as an act of violence, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with the fallout of such a dramatic scene.

On the other hand, waiting for Valentino to come to his senses hadn’t worked either.

It had done the exact opposite of working, in fact.

And so she sat, feeling overly warm and more than a little bit distressed, wondering if she was truly prepared to put herself beyond the pale like that. It was one thing when it was nothing but a few headlines in the outrageously and notably untrue tabloids. There were people here, however. People who would watch and witness whatever it was she did here. People who would always know that Carliz de Las Sosegadas was the sort of person who would disrupt another woman’s wedding.

Her sister would never forgive her. It was precisely the sort of embarrassing event that she had asked Carliz to avoid.

Carliz was not big on prayer, but she found herself casting a few missives upward, asking for a better option.

She waited and she waited. The people around her began to fidget in their seats, and the low murmur of speculation began to get louder.

Until, eventually, a door opened toward the front of the chapel and a man stepped in. She tensed, but knew in the next moment that it was not Valentino. This was a shorter man, rounder. He marched into the middle of the altar, and bowed slightly to the assembly.

“I regret to inform you all that the wedding will not be going forward as planned,” he said. “Please accept the deepest apologies for having come all this way. A fleet of boats has been called into ferry you all back to the mainland as the tide is yet high. Good day.”

All around, the murmurs broke into full-throated speculation. Excited whispers became nervous laughter, and Carliz was fairly certain she could hear her name in the comments—though no one had spotted her here.

She felt a bit of shame all the same, if she was honest.

But she still didn’t move, because her mind was racing. And the worst part of all was that here she was, sitting in a chapel where a wedding had just been called off and she suspected that she would be named as a reason for that decision. She couldn’t argue it. She had put herself in that position and more, she had done so all by herself.

Yet inside her, she felt the faintest, tiniest, strangest little sliver of hope.

And so, when everyone else left the chapel, she followed. She held that scarf around her face, looking around to make sure that no one was monitoring her, and as the rest of the guests made their way to the water, Carliz headed to the big house on the hill—and Valentino—instead.

End of excerpt