A princess on the run, Briar Aldrich has no choice but to take on the role of scullery maid when Lord Sterling Huntington stumbles upon her in the woods and doesn't recognize her. But how safe is she actually in his home? And how safe is her heart?
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He stood in the center of his study for a few moments, letting the weight of the knowledge he had just been entrusted with sink in. How could he have ever believed her to be a spy? He knelt and picked up the dagger from its place on the floor and stared at it. The significance of the pledge he had made fresh in his mind. He had chosen a side. It was official. And, though he had chosen the side that he had always known he would, the decision felt no less monumental.
But he had promised her a vow of silence and so now he was expected to return to his daily routine and attend to his business while ignoring the pervasive fact that there was a princess bustling away in his kitchens. He made a move to sit behind his desk and do some work but there were too many thoughts racing through his mind so he decided to read. He pulled a book from the shelf at random and flipped it open. He read the first paragraph.
Why was he feeling so restless? Sure, the events of the morning had frayed his nerves but they were over now and he knew the truth. Perhaps his mind was at rest but his heart was not.
He cleared his throat and read the first paragraph again, having been unable to focus on it the first time.
Had he imagined that spark of unexplained electricity that surged between them whenever they so much as lightly brushed against each other? Was he alone in the feeling that it had never been so easy nor so exhilarating to simply speak to someone? She had given inkling indications that she felt it too. The pulling away when his hand brushed hers after lingering there perhaps a bit too long, the way she smiled at him when he addressed her. Had she been anyone else, he would have been nearly certain of her affections. But she was an enigma to him, so vexingly perplexing and yet she was a mystery that he felt both that he desperately needed to solve and that he could spend the rest of his life trying to and never would. But there was so much keeping them apart. She had been a servant. Now she was a princess. In all honesty, Sterling wasn't so sure which of those created the biggest impossibility.
He scanned the words of the paragraph before him for a third time.
What would she do if he simply threw caution to the wind and expressed those confusing feelings that hid themselves so well in his heart that he could not decipher them himself? What would she say? Whether or not she felt the same way, would it matter? Did either of them even truly have any control over their individual fates?
He shut the book and slammed it onto the desk in front of him, refusing to attempt the paragraph for the fourth time. He sighed, stood from his chair, and walked to his window, lost in thought.
She was the princess of Isalovia. It was widely known and accepted throughout the country that she was to be married to Prince Lucien to bond their two countries in peace. No doubt Baliene had been her intended destination on the night that her wagon was ambushed and she was sent running through the woods to find him. She was a princess practically betrothed and he was a country lord. He was being foolish to even consider action upon his feelings, whatever they might be. He turned to go back to his desk to attempt some work but something caught his eye and he stopped.
