Expectations were power, too, if a person knew how to use them. Melody did.
“How lovely of you to worry about me,” Melody replied sweetly. “But there is no need for concern. I like to think that I’ve been training my whole life to step into this role.”
“It appears that the Skyros family took their education far more seriously than some,” came the arch reply. “I assume there were more opportunities to...ah, study than the rest of us were accorded.”
Even if Melody had not received a morning-long crash course in how to handle just that sort of elegant poison masquerading as a conversation, she would have known that she was being attacked.
“Surely it is the role of any Idyllian citizen to support the royal family.” She kept her voice friendly, as Madame had advised. Because it was always better to keep them guessing, the other woman had said. Making Fen guffaw, then pretend it was a cough. “That was how my sister and I were raised, in any event.”
The only interest Aristotle Skyros had ever had in the royal family was how to rope the previous King into marrying off Orion. To Calista, so that Aristotle might therefore wield a greater influence over King and country. But that did not fit with Melody’s performance here, of virtue masquerading as patriotism, all wrapped up in a shy smile.
“Indeed,” trilled Lady Breanna. “As were we all. But I will confess, I don’t think there’s a soul on the island who is not enchanted to discover that Prince Griffin truly has the heart of gold we always suspected he did.”
It was the same checklist that, by now, had been waved in front of Melody a thousand times today already. Her family was grasping and unworthy. She was out of her depth to a laughable degree. And, not least, Griffin himself had only condescended to stoop to taking a creature like Melody Skyros as his bride as an act of selfless charity.
Granted, that was all true. Particularly the last, but that didn’t mean Melody had to like the way these horrible women threw it in her face.
Each and every one of them. With glee.
She leaned in. “I’m not sure he was thinking with his heart, Lady Breanna.” She could feel the other woman’s bristling outrage, so she decided she might as well stick the knife in. “I suspect it was a rather different organ altogether.”
And it wasn’t until the doors closed behind Lady Breanna and her sputtering indignation—likely because she had designs on Prince Griffin’s organ herself—that Melody allowed herself a deeply inelegant cackle.
Madame would not approve.
The doors opened again and Melody tried to compose herself.
But she knew, almost instantly, that it wasn’t another insipid well-bred lady come to offer her a raft of backhanded compliments.
She could feel the sheer male power, ruthless and intoxicating, like an abrupt change in temperature. It emanated from him, so that even if she hadn’t heard the particular cadence of his steps—so familiar to her now—she would have known.
“Do not stop laughing on my account.” Griffin’s voice was low. Deep. Rough in a way that made her think of decidedly un-aristocratic things. And made her body hum in response, as if they were already doing them. “It makes you sound like a different woman altogether.”
Melody knew she should have wilted. Curled into a soft little ball in need of his care, the way she was supposed to do. But something in her rebelled.
Maybe it was all the hours she’d spent today playing princess games. Maybe it was Griffin himself, bringing all that brooding, storming maleness in with him as he flung himself onto what she knew was a frilly, feminine little settee across from her.
She tried to imagine that. A man like him, so big, so hard, so deliciously male, overpowering that frilly piece of furniture without even trying.
A shudder seemed to come from deep inside her, wrecking her.
Or it would have wrecked her, she corrected herself. But she couldn’t be wrecked. Not by hours of polite torture and not by him.
“As it happens,” she said, because she couldn’t resist, even when she knew she should have, “I believe I am a different woman, Your Royal Highness. I’ve been required to sit here for hours, smiling merrily while all your ex-lovers lined up to make sure I knew the precise length and breadth of your...”
She paused, deliberately.
He went still.
Dangerously still, but her trouble was, she liked that.
“Reputation,” Melody supplied, at last. Innocently. “Your reputation. And better still, how true it still is today.”
CHAPTER SIX
FOR A MOMENT, Griffin was certain he hadn’t heard her correctly.
Not when his Princess sat before him, looking as fresh and pure as if she had just that moment descended from the clouds above, harp in one hand and halo attached.
Melody was radiant. She had spent hours in a pit of venomous snakes, and yet she sat there before him looking sweet and virtuous and wholly unfazed.
Even as she spoke of his reputation.
He eyed her a little more closely. She was dressed in what might as well have been battle armor. Her wedding dress had been a glorious confection, a fairy tale in fabric. The casual sophistication of the night before was left to his memories—and the filthy, erotic dreams of her that had kept him up half the night, to his shame. But today’s ensemble was deceptively simple. The elegance was in the details. Not trying too hard—which the more vicious would have used as reason enough to sniff about her—and not trying too little, either, which would have branded her as haughty by some and unfit for her position by others.
Even her hair managed to look effortless yet sophisticated at once. It was tamed and swept back from her face, highlighting the perfection of her aristocratic bone structure. Her makeup was subtle, and instead of
