went the ink on the final dot.
She bit her lip and slid the card back into the envelope, glanced at Gerard.
“Seven p.m. in the dining room with the rest of your family? I’ll tell him you’re confirmed?”
The rest of her family? Yech.
He must have read her reaction. “If there are any impediments, please bring them to my attention so I may iron them away.”
She resisted asking him to squash her family flat.
“I’ll be there,” she said, not sure if she was telling the truth. At least she’d bought a new dress today, still stinging over the incident with her stepsisters. The new one wasn’t designer or flashy by their standards, but it had come from an upscale boutique and cost more than Sopi’s weekly earnings. She had planned to return it on her next trip to Jasper.
“Excellent. And would you be so kind…?” He offered his phone again.
She hesitated, then gave him her number. He tried it, smiling when a ping sounded in her pocket. “Please let me know if I can assist you in any way.”
Perhaps he could offer her some strategies on facing the prince after last night?
For the rest of the afternoon, every time she tried to think up a reason to cry off the dinner invitation, she touched the card in her pocket and could hear Rhys’s deep voice warning, “No excuses.” Why did she find his profanity-laced impatience so reassuring? It brought a secretive smile to her lips every time she thought of it.
At five fifty-five, Maude called her. “Sopi. We have a disaster in the kitchen. You’ll have to run out or breakfast won’t happen tomorrow morning.”
Here was her excuse to skip dinner, but a devilish part of her refused to seize it.
“We’re expected to dine with the prince this evening, aren’t we?” she asked with a full pound of smugness. “I had a note from him, personally inviting me. I don’t want to be rude.”
A pause that was loud enough to thunk. Maude might have swallowed. “I assumed you would decline. You tend to set yourself apart from us.”
Oh, was it was her who did that?
Actually, maybe she did. She had never forgiven Maude for keeping her father in Europe or for spending all his money. Still, Sopi pulled the phone from her ear and scowled at the screen. Maude was sounding particularly petty about a simple dinner invitation. Was she that embarrassed of her unrefined stepdaughter?
“Well, tonight I’ll join you,” Sopi said cheerfully. “Since it’s not often I get a chance to dine with royalty.” She hung up and stuck her tongue out at the phone.
Then she suffered a churning stomach for the next hour as she showered and dressed. Her hair, which she never bothered to cut because she always wore it up, was ridiculously long, falling to her waist. At least it had a hint of wave, but it tickled her lower back, where her new dress had a circular cutout.
The dress was a sleeveless knit with a high collar, but it made her look fuller in the chest than she was, which balanced hips that were a shade wider than her stepsisters’ fashion magazines told her they ought to be.
She wasn’t much for makeup, but her cheeks were pale with nerves. She gave them a swipe of blusher and painted her lips with a pink gloss. She hadn’t thought about new shoes when she’d been shopping today so she had only the plain black pumps she wore when she played hostess in the dining room.
As she went onto tiptoe in the bathroom, trying to see her bottom half in the mirror, the butterflies in her stomach turned to slithering snakes. She was kidding herself. Not only would she not measure up to Nanette and Fernanda, she would look downright foolish in everyone’s eyes, trying so hard to impress.
Just as she started to kick off her shoes, however, Gerard texted that the prince was sending an escort for her.
Sopi choked on her tongue, texted back that it was unnecessary and decided to do what she’d been doing for years now—brave things out for one more day.
She had put up with Maude’s proprietary orders and her stepsisters’ snobbery because the alternative was to cede the territory to them and wind up with nothing. Cassiopeia’s was her home. She would fight for it to the bitter end.
Which came sooner than she’d expected.
What happens when it’s over?
It would never be over. Rhys had found the woman he would marry. The knowledge should have afforded him nothing beyond a contented sense of completion. He didn’t like the gnawing sense in him that he needed to leap and snatch and hold on tight. Gerard had assured him Sopi had promised to join them for dinner, but she had become so important to him in the last few hours, Rhys feared that if she wasn’t in the dining room when he got there, he might well devolve into shedding blood.
He stalked from the elevator across the short bridge that overlooked the foyer below to the dining room reservation desk. He was as combat ready as any of his ancestral knights, vibrating with a drive to claim.
The babble inside the dining room went silent as he appeared. Everyone rose with a muted shuffle of chairs. A small pocket of women stood to the side of the reception desk. One of them was backed into a corner behind a potted palm.
The tension in their small group hit him like a battering ram, but the sight of Sopi’s drawn cheeks and bravely lifted chin reached out to claw into his chest.
“Ladies,” he greeted.
Sopi stiffened and skimmed her gaze to a distant corner, refusing to make eye contact.
“Your Highness,” the rest murmured.
So. They’d told her about the sale. And she was taking it badly.
Rhys kept an impassive expression on his face, but he wanted to catch her by the chin and force her thick lashes up, so she looked directly into his eyes. He wanted to ask how she dared let these women take advantage of her. Didn’t she realize who she was?
No. She didn’t. Steps had been taken to bury it too deeply.
He had thought to make a dramatic announcement here in the dining room, but as he read the angry hurt in her, he realized he couldn’t spring it on her like that. She would hate and blame him a little longer, but he could withstand it.
Any guilt Rhys might have experienced for his underhanded actions in buying the spa dried up, however. It was past time Sopi learned the truth about her mother and herself. He couldn’t wait for the transformation.
Maude’s younger daughter demanded his attention by stepping forward and offering a curtsy with a breathy, nervous giggle.
“Your Highness, some of my friends have just arrived.” She waved at a long table with a half dozen women down either side, all looking his way with anticipation. A few empty seats had been saved in the middle. “We wondered if you might enjoy a more lively evening? They’re anxious for a chance to meet you.”
“Another time.” He glanced impatiently at Maude.
“Of course,” Maude said smoothly. “We have a quiet table reserved at the back. Sopi?”
“This way.” Sopi didn’t smile, and her voice was cold and pointed as an icicle aimed at the middle of his chest. She led the way through the staring crowd.
Ingrained protocol nearly had him offering an arm to escort Maude and her eldest daughter, but he shunned them at the last second, moving ahead of them, all his attention on the sensual swish of loose hair across the top of a stunning, heart-shaped ass that swayed provocatively as she wound her way between the tables.
Dear God, that hair. How dare she hide such a thing from him? It