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She glanced down at her hands, as if the pressure of his gaze was too much. ‘I just don’t like it. It implies something small and insignificant and…a-afraid.’
Interesting that she didn’t like that…despite the fact that shewasafraid.
‘Yet mice can scare human beings,’ he said. ‘They can also cause a lot of damage—which is why they are also thought of as pests.’
She kept her gaze on her hands. ‘I…am not a pest,’ she said finally, the words emphatic.
A silence fell again, and he let it sit there, because silence could be a useful tool. But, unlike most people, she didn’t rush to fill it with meaningless chatter. Instead, she gripped her pale hands together even tighter and stared fixedly down at the floor.
‘Then what are you?’ he asked.
She gave a little shrug. ‘No one important.’
He frowned. She’d said the words without any inflection, as if being unimportant wasn’t a bad thing, and perhaps it wasn’t. The Accorsis had a cruel streak—he knew that for a fact. His mother had died in the coup they’d staged to oust his father Giancarlo. He had been forced to leave his critically injured wife in favour of getting his baby son to safety. She’d been shot by a guard, and the Accorsis had left her to bleed to death in one of the palace hallways. They’d then sent word to his father that that would be his fate if he ever tried to reclaim the throne.
Then there was the treasury Renzo had drained—funnelling money into offshore accounts and into the military, into casinos and palaces and other buildings that no one needed or wanted, while hospitals and schools were forced to operate on less and less every year. Then there were the tax breaks for the rich, and some kind of grand plan to turn Kasimir into a tax haven, which would only be of benefit to his cronies.
A morally bankrupt, corrupt man. And, from the intelligence he’d received, the Accorsi sons had taken on their father’s moral compass. Maybe that was true of her too.
Perhaps she’d wanted to be important to them and never had been.
Or perhaps she’s lying through her teeth in an attempt to get close to you and assassinate you?
No, that wasn’t it. The fear in her eyes had been real, and he’d seen enough of it in his life to know when it was being manufactured and when it wasn’t.
Shewastruly afraid. And yet she also had courage enough to snap at him.
Curiosity caught at him along with the urge to test her courage and her fear, to see how deep they both ran. Because he had to know if he was going to make her queen. She would be merely a figurehead, it was true, but she would need to project an illusion of strength at the very least.
He moved closer. ‘You were bargaining with me,’ he said. ‘Weren’t you?’
She shook her head, still staring at the floor.
No, he needed to look into her eyes, see what was going on inside her head. He needed to see that courage again. So he reached out and put a finger under her chin, urging her head up.
Her breath caught audibly as her gaze lifted to his, revealing the deep, endless blue of her eyes.
They were beautiful, those eyes. He’d never seen a colour like it. The sky at twilight, blue darkening into a deeper, almost violet blue, so startling in her pale face. Fear was there—he could see it—but also something else. A flickering anger and a stubborn defiance that seemed to reach inside him and grip a piece of him tight.
Such stark contrasts. He found them fascinating. In fact, he wanted to explore them further, with her skin warm and very soft beneath his fingertip, her blue gaze pinned to his.
‘Weren’t you?’ he repeated softly.
Her blue gaze darkened and he was conscious of the sweet smell of jasmine and something more delicate and feminine that made his body suddenly tight.
It had been months since he’d had a woman—not since he’d put into motion his carefully laid plans for retaking the throne. He hadn’t wanted the distraction. He didn’t want it now—and certainly not with an Accorsi. But pulling away would be an admission of something he didn’t want to admit.
So he stood there, his finger beneath her chin, looking down into her eyes, willing her to reply.
She stayed where she was, though there was still tension in her. ‘I’ll marry you,’ she said at last, her clear voice husky-sounding. ‘I will serve my sentence. But at the end of it you will let me go. You will let me leave Kasimir for good.’
Interesting. So she wanted to leave the country? Was it to follow her father and brothers? Because they’d left her behind?
‘Making demands in your position is quite the choice,’ he said, even as a part of him noted the shape of her mouth and the full pout of her bottom lip. ‘You are a prisoner, Guinevere. And after what your father did to this country you should be glad I’m giving you a choice of cell.’
The flicker in her eyes looked like anger, and this time she didn’t look away. ‘I’m not making demands. I…was going to leave Kasimir. That’s all I was intending to do.’
Was that the truth? It seemed to be. Those words, softly spoken with a kind of quiet dignity, weren’t something a liar would say, he was sure.