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“Am I interrupting something?” Gordon asked, his voice hard.
Isabelle leaped up, her stomach hollowing out. “N-No. He was just—”
“I’m quite aware of what he was doing,” Gordon said drily. He held two glasses of wine in either hand, and his jaw was tight. His gaze was locked on her, but he looked like a complete stranger. “What’s going on, Princess?”
“I asked Princess Isabelle to marry me,” George said, straightening to his full height. He held out the gigantic ring like some sort of sick and twisted trophy. “She said yes.”
Gordon’s grip tightened on the cups. “I…see.”
Isabelle struggled to speak, but she was in shock. This was all too much, too fast. She didn’t know what to say or do, so she just stood there, wringing her hands and feeling foolish. “I…”
“Surely, we can all agree that it’s what’s best for Isabelle and her country.”
Why, that little jerk. She hadn’t said yes. And she wasn’t going to. That snapped her to attention and out of shock. “Stop speaking for me,” she retorted, anger making her almost speechless. “I’m so sick of people speaking for me. I’m not—”
“Aw, your first lovers quarrel. How cute.” Gordon smirked. “I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone, then, to continue this in private. Good luck with everything. Really.”
He turned on his heel.
“Wait, Gordon—”
“Don’t.” He glanced over his tense shoulder, the veins in his neck more pronounced than usual. “You have nothing to say. You told me all along that you’d do anything for the good of your country, and you did it. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
“But you were going to ask me something,” she said, her voice strained. “Ask me. Ask it.”
He looked at George, staring at the ring the prince held. Then he shrugged. “I don’t remember my question anymore. It must not have been important.”
She took a step toward him, but he was already gone.
Just like that.
“See?” George asked, stepping closer and placing a proprietary hand on her lower back. “Even he knows you’ve made the right choice. Now, let’s go.”
She jerked free, tears blurring her vision, but she refused to let them fall. “Don’t. You had no right to tell him those lies. No right to tell him I’d accepted your proposal when I clearly hadn’t.”
“You will.” He shrugged, his blue gaze not flinching from hers. “It’s the right choice, and you strike me as a woman who usually makes the right choice…aside from sleeping with the poor security guard. But I guess we all need to screw a peasant every once in a while. It reminds us how lucky we are not to be them.”
Fury rushed through her, and she slapped him as hard as she could. His head swung to the side, and the sound of her slap echoed in the box. “How dare you judge me.”
Rubbing his cheek, he grinned down at her. “I like it when you’re angry. It’s cute.”
“I will not marry you.” She grabbed her jacket off the chair, her entire body vibrating with anger. Helpless, powerful anger. “Consider yourself rejected.”
He spluttered. “But you can’t. Our people are already in talks to—”
“They can talk all they want, but it’s not happening.”
With that, she walked out of the box, her head held high the whole time. She was going to go straight to Gordon’s house and get this whole thing straightened out. Explain to him that she hadn’t actually accepted George’s proposal, nor had she intended to.
And then she was going to marry him, if he still wanted to ask her.
The rest of the world be damned.
Chapter Fourteen
Gordon unlocked the door to his office, his coat slung over his shoulder and his collar loosened. He’d gone out with the intention of asking a woman he’d just met to marry him, and she’d accepted someone else’s proposal before he could. It was like a real life version of the bachelor, only with royals.
And so fucking fucked up.