Page 14 of The Prince’s Wallflower Wife (The Wallflower Academy #4)

I t was most disconcerting to wake up and not know where she was.

Daphne dived deeper into the sheets. They were soft, warm, comforting, yet somehow wrong. They didn’t have the scratchy quality that her sheets had always had. And the blankets above her; they were softer, too.

She clung to the pillow but discovered it plumper than her own. Something was wrong.

Opening a bleary eye, Daphne looked around her room at the Wallflower Academy where she had awoken every day for the last fifteen years…

She sat up abruptly in the large four-poster bed. This was not the Wallflower Academy. Her heart was hammering, her thighs sore… Thighs sore?

Daphne looked down. Her nightgown was the same but, other than it and herself, everything else was different. Her mind spun, her thoughts hurriedly attempting to recall…

The wedding. The wedding reception. The wedding night.

‘You wish to negotiate?’

‘Yes, I suppose so. Are…are there any rules you wish to propose?’

‘Oh,’ Daphne whispered, wrapping her arms around her and holding tightly round her waist. So, it was done. She had married Prince Christoph, just as her father had wanted. In doing so, she had handed him a great fortune. She had been bedded by him, too, so there was no possibility of annulment.

Not that she particularly wanted one, that was.

You are clever, and beautiful, and wise, and brave, and I’ve never wanted anyone like I’ve wanted you.

Daphne swallowed, her mouth dry. It had been…more than she had expected. More intimate. More enjoyable, certainly.

Looking around, she saw that the bedchamber she had crept to — the one next door to the one where they had been fully married, for want of a better term — was rather lovely.

There were tall, high windows with wide curtains, undrawn, because it had been midnight-black when she had slipped in here.

There was also a beautiful dresser, with a matching toilette table and stool, a longcase clock and several elegant paintings of landscapes.

Daphne swallowed hard and brought her knees to her chest, transferring her embrace from her waist to her legs.

Well, she had done it. She was a wife. And, despite all her negotiations, despite the limitations she had attempted to put on the encounter, something…something had happened.

Something she had not expected.

Please, please, yes…

Daphne closed her eyes, just for a moment, and she was back there, in that bed, with Christoph nestled between her thighs.

He had felt right there — there was no other word for it, scandalous as it may be — as though he belonged there.

As though she had been waiting for him, and now that he was here…

Her eyes snapped open. No. He would not want that, would he?

Well, we only need to make love once. To make sure. After that, there are no expectations.

Still. As Daphne rose and began to dress, tugging at the bellpull by the fireplace for some assistance, and flushing as a maid she did not know arrived, she wondered just where Christoph was that morning.

‘Anything else, miss? I mean… Your Highness?’ the maid asked quietly a little while later, when she had helped Daphne to dress.

The maid flushed and so did Daphne, hardly aware that she was now dressed. Your Highness? She, a princess? That was the sort of game one played when one was a child. One dreamt of crowns as an escape from the Wallflower Academy.

‘N-no. No, thank you.’

The maid dipped a low curtsey, something Daphne was most unaccustomed to, and slipped out of the room. Daphne remained, staring at something most odd in the looking glass: her own reflection.

Something had changed. Daphne did not know if it was sleeping in a different bed, or now having a different name, a different title or being married…fully married.

But something was altered in her expression. Was there a sharpness in her eye where there had been naught but obedience?

‘Right,’ she said aloud. ‘Breakfast.’

Precisely what hours they would keep—and her stomach gave a twist every time she thought of ‘they’, ‘we’ and ‘us’—she was not sure.

Daphne did not pass anyone as she walked down the sweeping staircase and it took her two attempts to find the breakfast room.

It was elegantly decorated, with a round table in the centre covered in a white linen tablecloth.

One place contained a dirty plate. Daphne had not expected the sudden disappointment that rushed through her.

‘His lordship has eaten and departed,’ murmured a footman who appeared out of nowhere.

‘Departed?’ she echoed, her lungs tightening.

Why was she filled with such despondency at the thought of Christoph gone? Gone where? For how long?

‘He had some urgent business come through the post, I am given to understand,’ the footman said quietly. ‘He will be returning for dinner.’

‘Oh.’ Well, what had she been expecting? This was not a love match, after all, Daphne tried to remind herself. Separate lives, that was what he had said. She smiled at the footman, wishing he were Matthews, the footman who had served at the Wallflower Academy the last ten years. ‘Thank you.’

The footman bowed and left the room.

Why was she so surprised? Why had she permitted such hope to rise, when she knew it was almost ridiculous to aspire to it?

Daphne tried to conquer the shifting tides of disappointment within her. Yes, she was always ignored, always set aside, always overlooked. That had been her life, and over the years she had learned to expect nothing more.

Until a prince had turned up at the Wallflower Academy and requested her as his bride. This could have been different. This could have been something more, and yet within four and twenty hours Daphne had once again been ignored. Once again set aside. Once again overlooked.

Daphne did her best to blink back the tears of confusion and swirling emotions as she helped herself to her favourites: scrambled eggs, potatoes and tea from the sideboard.

There was a great deal of choice for breakfast, it appeared, but at the Wallflower Academy the girls had only been permitted healthy, plain food, and her habits required her to do the same. Not everything could change.

She sat at the breakfast table and ate, her mind working rapidly.

So…she was free. Free from the Wallflower Academy, from its routines, from Miss Pike’s expectations…and she had absolutely no idea what to do. She had never lived with such freedom. She’d never been permitted to choose her own activities, eat what she wanted or go where she wanted.

What was she supposed to do?

The day passed slowly. Daphne drifted from room to room. The house was elegant, well-apportioned, but nothing in size compared to the Wallflower Academy. The pianoforte was out of tune. The books were primarily scientific treatises. There was no blanket on which to sit in the garden.

By the time the dinner hour arrived, Daphne had spoken to no one and not seen her husband all day.

‘I suppose I dress for dinner,’ she said helplessly to a maid who appeared at her side when a gong rang out from somewhere in the house.

The maid bobbed a curtsey. ‘It is the Prince’s wish.’

Daphne perked up. ‘Is he back?’

It was a foolish thing to say and her cheeks burned the moment the words were out of her mouth. Christoph lived here, she reminded herself as the maid peered curiously. Of course he had come back.

‘Come, let us select a gown,’ Daphne said as imperiously as she could to hide her momentary confusion.

Her stepmother had promised her a trousseau and Daphne had not bothered to look in the wardrobe or trunks at precisely what Lady Norbury had selected. When she did so, her heart sank. Perhaps she should have spoken to her first.

‘What an elegant gown, Your Highness,’ said the maid cheerfully.

Daphne tried to smile. ‘Yes. Elegant.’

It had more ruffles and layers than a wedding cake, and even more lace. It was extravagant, ostentatious, and swallowed Daphne once she had stepped into it.

‘I… I imagine you prefer your gowns a little simpler,’ hazarded the maid, her pink cheeks pink.

Her own must be scarlet, the temperature they were, thought Daphne. ‘Yes.’

‘Well, I’ll make some adjustments for you, and have the others sent to the modiste’s for alterations,’ said the maid, tying the last knot of the bodice.

It was impossible not to stare. ‘I… I beg your pardon?’

Now it was the maid’s turn to look confused. ‘Well, they’re your gowns, Your Highness. You can have them altered, or changed, or buy others… .can’t you?’

Could she?

Daphne considered this as she walked downstairs, the second gong still echoing in the hall. She supposed she could. She had never had any control over her gowns before. Miss Pike had been given a clothing allowance for her, and Miss Pike spent it as she wished.

It was most odd. Perhaps she should…

‘Goodness,’ said Christoph as she came into the dining room. ‘What a gown.’

Daphne briefly considered running and never being seen again, but that felt like an overreaction—even for her. ‘It is a…a bit much. I’m going to have it altered.’

‘Good,’ said her husband fervently. ‘Shall we?’

It was not, perhaps, the conversation she had expected after…well…after the last time she had seen him. After he’d been thrusting between her legs, bringing her to ecstasy, pouring himself into her.

Daphne swallowed. Her throat was dry, a knot in the middle making speech almost impossible.

Say something. Say something!

‘I… I hope your day was a successful one,’ she managed as a footman pulled out a chair. ‘Thank you.’

‘Successful?’ said Christoph vaguely as he sat opposite her.

‘A footman mentioned something about the post,’ Daphne said, trying to inject a little earnestness into her tone.

It did not appear to matter. Her husband nodded. ‘Yes. I had a letter to post.’