He ruthlessly pushed that thought from his mind. Right now he needed to focus on what was going on next door.
He stepped into his boxers and pulled on the suit trousers, aware that Eloise’s eyes never once left his body. He felt a strange heat enter his bones, lying thick in his veins, and forced back the desire that began to throb within him.
‘I won’t...’ He struggled to find words, strangely tongue-tied before his wife. ‘I won’t have much time for you today. After the press conference we’ll be moving to the airfield from where we’ll fly to Farrehed.’
* * *
If anything could cut through the fog of desire building between them, Eloise thought, that was it.
She knew it was time to put on the mask. That she would wear the dress that she had noticed hanging in the wardrobe next to the suit her husband would be wearing. A dress that had been picked out for her most probably before she’d even left Zurich.
But where once she had thought that this was the part she hated, Eloise now steeled herself. She wanted to be there, standing beside her husband when he made his announcement to the world’s press. Wanted to support him in this. So she would wear that dress the same way she would continue to wear his ring. As his bride and as his Queen.
She walked over to the closet and took out the dress covered by a protective zipped bag. Hanging on the same hanger was underwear and hosiery, and she felt a flush of embarrassment knowing that it hadn’t been Odir who had picked them out for her in a passion-fuelled desire to see her in them. It would have been some faceless member of staff—possibly someone sitting now on the other side of that door—who had picked out suitable clothes for Odir’s press conference.
The dress would have been weighed up, possibly even polled, to see what people’s reactions would be. It wouldn’t be overtly sexy. It would probably cover her arms to her wrists, with no hint of cleavage, but nor would she look like a prim Victorian matron.
The irony wasn’t lost on her. She couldn’t look too appealing, but nor could she look cold and aloof. It would be the Goldilocks of dresses and she would have to be the Goldilocks of queens.
‘I’ll get changed in the bathroom.’
‘I’ll be next door when you come out. Should I tell Hair and Make-Up—?’
‘Send them in. I’ll not be long.’
‘Eloise—’
Her name sounded strange on his tongue this time, almost regretful, and the sound tugged on her heart and turned her around.
‘It’s okay. I understand.’
She couldn’t work out why that didn’t seem to settle him. She smiled before stepping into the bathroom with the dress, hoping that might reassure him. Reassure them both, even.
In the bathroom, she slipped the towel from around her and let it fall to the floor. Oddly, it felt as if she had lost some form of protection. As if the barrier between her and the world outside was gone.
She unwrapped the brand-new underwear from its cellophane. It felt expensive and new against her skin.
She slid the zip down on the cover of the dress without looking beneath it. With her eyes on anything else in the bathroom, she pulled the dress from its hanger and stood holding it limply in her hands.
This was the moment when her life would change. No matter the decisions and the promises from earlier that evening, Eloise knew that the moment she put on this dress was the moment that she would be irrevocably his.
* * *
When she emerged Eloise thought she’d stepped into an alternative reality. When only moments before it had only been Odir in the room, now there were four people—none of whom she recognised from her life at the palace before.
She frowned. ‘Where is Victoria?’ she asked, wondering why the woman who had been her royal stylist from six months before their wedding wasn’t there.
A small blonde woman turned and in clipped, professional tones delivered the news that Victoria was back in Farrehed, having given birth two weeks earlier.
Life goes on, Eloise realised. First Anders and now Victoria.
For all the time she had been in Zurich, going to work, spending precious time with Natalia, watching the seasons change in that beautiful city, learning that she liked helping to organise her boss’s day and hating the loneliness of the nights, Eloise had never imagined time continuing in Farrehed. But it wasn’t a magical kingdom that had slept in her absence. It was a soon-to-be thriving country under Odir’s care and rule.
The small blonde who was still yet to introduce herself gestured for her to take a seat at the bedroom’s opulent dressing table. Eloise padded over to the chair, her feet separated from the plush carpet by the silk stockings covering her legs, numbing her from the touch of the mundane or the real.
‘We had to guess at your size, Your Majesty.’ The line was delivered without reproach or curiosity. ‘We chose black, as the situation demands, but allowed for the lines of the dress to highlight your femininity. It would not be done to have you looking all boxy.’
The woman sniffed, as if such a thing would be the greatest offence. It grated on Eloise’s fragile nerves.
‘It is the perfect dress for the occasion,’ she found herself responding, and it must have been the right thing to say for the woman seemed eminently pleased.
‘There are changes of clothes ready on the jet that will take you to Farrehed. These will be in the traditional style, and will match the King’s as he makes his first appearance to the public after the announcement.’
Eloise tuned out the soft litany falling from the woman’s lips as she pulled and pushed the dress about her frame to ensure that it was fitting correctly. A man bobbed up and down behind her, teasing tangles out of her hair with a brush,
