Pure Princess, Bartered Bride Read online

  “But our wedding night should be commemorated, should it not?” he asked.

  “I don’t—”

  But he wasn’t really asking.

  His mouth came down on hers as uncompromising and hard as she remembered, as he had been since she’d met him so few hours before. This time he tasted her lips only briefly, before moving across her jaw, her temple, learning the shape of her. His mouth was hot. Gabrielle felt her own fall open in shock—in response. She felt feverish. Outside herself.

  Something in her thrilled to it—to him—even as the rest of her balked at such a naked display of ownership. Her hands flew to his shoulders, though it was like pushing against stone.

  Then, as suddenly, he set her away from him, a very masculine triumph written across his face.

  “You are mine,” he said, claiming her.

  Bride on Approval

  She’s got no choice but to say I do!

  Sold, bought, bargained for or bartered…

  He’ll take his

  Bride on Approval

  Whether there’s a debt to be paid, a will to be obeyed or a business to be saved…she’s got no choice but to say I do!

  Look out for more titles in this thrilling miniseries—coming soon!

  Caitlin Crews

  PURE PRINCESS, BARTERED BRIDE

  All about the author…

  Caitlin Crews

  CAITLIN CREWS discovered her first romance novel at the age of twelve in a bargain bin at the local five-and-dime. It involved swashbuckling pirates, grand adventures, a heroine with rustling skirts and a mind of her own, and a seriously mouthwatering and masterful hero. The book (the title of which remains lost in the mists of time) made a serious impression. Caitlin was immediately smitten with romances and romance heroes, to the detriment of her middle-school social life. And so began her lifelong love affair with romance novels, many of which she insists on keeping near her at all times, thus creating a fire hazard of love wherever she lives.

  Caitlin has made her home in places as far-flung as York, England, and Atlanta, Georgia. She was raised near New York City, and fell in love with London on her first visit when she was a teenager. She has backpacked in Zimbabwe, been on safari in Botswana, and visited tiny villages in Namibia. She has, while visiting the place in question, declared her intention to live in Prague, Dublin, Paris, Athens, Nice, the Greek Islands, Rome, Venice and/or any of the Hawaiian islands. Writing about exotic places seems like the next best thing to moving to them.

  She currently lives in California with her animator/comic-book–artist husband and their menagerie of ridiculous animals.

  To Jane Porter: inspiration, mentor,

  and the big sister I always wanted.

  Thank you, for everything.

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  PROLOGUE

  LUC GARNIER did not believe in love.

  Love was madness. Agony, despair and crockery hurled against walls. Luc believed in facts. In proof. In ironclad contracts and the implacable truth of money. He had been relentless and focused all his life and as a result, wildly successful. He did not believe this was a matter of luck or chance. Emotion played no part in it.

  Just as emotion played no part in picking out his future bride.

  The Côte d’Azur preened itself in the warm afternoon sun as Luc strode down a side street in Nice, headed for the Promenade des Anglais, where the famously luxurious Hotel Negresco sat in gracious Victorian splendor, looking out onto the sparkling blue waters of the Baie des Anges and the Mediterranean Sea beyond. The Hotel Negresco was one of Luc’s favorite hotels in France, and thus the world, overflowing as it was with museum-quality art and a famously accommodating staff—but he had a far more pressing reason for visiting Nice’s landmark hotel today.

  Luc had flown in that morning from his Paris headquarters, determined to see for himself if the latest potential bride—who looked so good on paper—looked even half as good in person. But then, they all looked good on paper, as they had to be of a noble family to so much as make his list. The last woman he had considered for the position had seemed like a perfect match on paper—but a few days spent tailing Lady Emma around her London society life had quickly revealed that the young noblewoman had a secret penchant for late nights with rough gentlemen.

  It wasn’t that Luc necessarily minded that his wife might have a past—he simply preferred that, whatever the past was, it had involved the sort of people who would not make interesting headlines should the tabloids catch wind of them. Lady Emma Prefers Goths to Garnier. He could imagine it all too well.

  “That’s the way modern women are these days,” his number two man had told him, after Luc had discovered Lady Emma’s late-night bar-crawling. Alessandro was the closest thing Luc had to a friend, but even so, he’d thrown his hands up in the air when Luc had glared at him across his opulent Paris office.

  “Modern women may be as loose as they like,” he’d snapped. “But my wife will not be. Is this so much to ask?”

  “This is not all you ask!” Alessandro had replied with a laugh. He’d begun to tick off the necessary items on his fingers. “She must be noble, if not royal, to honor your bloodline. She must be pure in word and deed. She must never have been young or stupid, as no scandal can ever have touched her.” He’d shaken his head sadly. “I do not think this woman exists.”

  “She may not,” Luc had agreed, closing the dossier he had compiled on Lady Emma and setting it aside with distaste. “My mother taught me long ago that beauty is too often a mask for dishonor and betrayal. One cannot depend on it—only on an irreproachable reputation.” He had smiled at Alessandro. “If she does exist, I will find her.”

  “And what if this paragon does not wish to marry you when you have hunted her down?” Alessandro had asked dryly. “What then?”

  Luc had laughed. “Please.” He’d sat back in his chair and gazed at his friend, crooking his brow in amusement. “That is not very likely, is it? What woman would not benefit from becoming my wife? What can any woman possibly want that I cannot give her? I will place all of my wealth and power at the disposal of whatever woman can fill the position.”

  Alessandro had sighed heavily, his romantic Italian soul no doubt mortally wounded at the prospect of filling the position of wife. “Women like romance and fairy tales,” he’d said. Luc rather thought Alessandro was the one who preferred such fripperies, but had not said so. “They do not want marriage to be conducted as a business proposition.”

  “But that is what it is,” Luc had said, shrugging again. “The correct woman must understand this as well.”

  “I fear you will be looking for a very long time, my friend,” Alessandro had said, shaking his head.

  But Luc had never been afraid of hard, seemingly fruitless work, he reflected as he turned the corner and saw the famous façade of the Hotel Negresco before him. In fact, he thrived on it. His famous parents had died when he was barely twenty-three, and he had had to make his own way in the world in their considerable shadows. Even before their deaths in a boating accident he had been more or less on his own—his parents having been far more interested in each other an
d their endless romantic complications than in their son.

  Luc could not bring himself to regret his unorthodox upbringing, no matter how many people seemed to think it pointed to some lack in him—something no one had dared say to his face in some time. Growing up in such a way, surrounded by so much heightened emotion mixed with jealousy and betrayal and avid outside interest, had stripped him of many of the needs that ruled other men. It had also made him that much more successful, which was all he cared about—for what else was there? He did not need the emotions that other men did. He was not interested in love, and all the upheaval and agony it brought. He wanted a wife in the most traditional sense, for the most traditional reasons. He was nearing forty now, and it was time he created a family to carry on his legacy and his mother’s royal Italian bloodline. The wife he chose would have to be from an equally august bloodline—noble for centuries, at the very least, as his family was. It was tradition. It was his duty.

  He needed a wife who knew her duty.

  He strode into the elegant old hotel, past the white-gloved doormen, and did not bother to gape like a tourist at the sparkling lobby that emanated old French charm and elegance all around him. He had seen it many times before. The Hotel Negresco prided itself on its luxuriousness. Luc made his way toward the Salon Royal, with its Gustave Eiffel-designed dome and Baccarat chandeliers sparkling over a crowd of some of the world’s foremost philanthropists. He ignored the well-dressed and genteel throng, as well as the priceless art that graced the walls. He searched the room until his eyes fell on the woman he’d been looking for—Princess Gabrielle of Miravakia.

  She stood out from the crowd in a good way, he was pleased to note. She did not call attention to herself. She did not display her chest in an inappropriate manner or hang all over the men who competed for her attention. She seemed cool and elegant, refined and royal, as she stood in the center of a knot of extremely well-dressed patrons.

  She was lovely—but then, she should be. She was a royal princess, after all—the heir to her country’s throne. He ignored her looks and concentrated on the way she presented herself: her public persona, which was by all accounts completely without blemish.

  Her hair was swept back into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, and she wore a simple cocktail dress with restrained hints of jewelry at her ears and one wrist. Nothing flashy or gauche. She was all sophistication and class, presiding over this great reception for one of her pet charities with all the grace for which she was known. She was every inch the perfect princess.

  He liked what he saw. But he couldn’t trust what she showed the world at a reception for six hundred. Could a woman really be as above reproach as this one appeared to be?

  Luc signaled a passing waiter and requested a drink, then moved to the outskirts of the crowd, from where he could watch her without being observed in return. She was in Nice for the week, he knew, and was expected to make a number of appearances—which interested him less than what she got up to in her free time.

  He was sure that, like Lady Emma before her, Princess Gabrielle would eventually show herself to him. He had only to wait, and watch.

  But as Luc watched the perfect-looking princess make her rounds, he allowed himself a moment of cautious optimism as he sampled his drink.

  If she proved to be as perfect as she looked, he had done it. He had finally found his bride.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “DO YOUR duty,” her father ordered her only moments before the organ burst into life—his version of an encouraging speech. He frowned at her. “Make me proud.”

  That was the entirety of his fatherly pre-wedding advice.

  The words swam in Princess Gabrielle’s head even as the heavy weight of her silk taffeta wedding gown tugged at her and slowed her down. The long train swept back from her dress, extending almost ten feet behind her as befitted a royal princess on her wedding day. Gabrielle only knew that it was hard to walk with ten feet of fabric to pull along with her, though she kept her spine erect and her head high—as always.

  Thank God for the veil that covered her face, hiding the expression she was afraid she couldn’t control for the first time in her twenty-five years—to say nothing of the prickly heat flooding her eyes.

  She could not cry. Not here. Not now.

  Not as she walked down the aisle of her kingdom’s holiest of cathedrals, holding fast to her father’s arm. Her father—King Josef of Miravakia. The man she had spent her life trying—and failing—to please.

  Even at university she had been too determined to win her father’s elusive approval to do anything but study hard. While her peers had partied and explored all that London had to offer, Gabrielle had lost herself in her books and her research. After university, despite the degree she’d obtained in Economics, she had dedicated herself to charity work, according to her father’s expectations of the Crown Princess of Miravakia.

  Anything and everything to curry her father’s favor. It was the mantra of Gabrielle’s life.

  Even this. Marriage to a perfect stranger of his choosing.

  Why was she going through with this? Hers was not some ancient feudal kingdom—and she was no chattel. But if there was a way to go against her father’s wishes without incurring his wrath she did not know what it was. She knew that she could have said no. Couldn’t she? Or was she simply too desperate to prove to her father that she was worthy of his approval—even when the stakes were so high?

  “I have accepted a marriage proposal,” King Josef had told her one morning, barely three months ago, jolting Gabrielle from her contemplation of the day’s schedule. He had not glanced up from his breakfast as he spoke. It had surprised Gabrielle that he’d spoken at all—he generally preferred to breakfast in silence, with only his newspapers spread around him, though he insisted that she join him every morning.

  “A marriage proposal?” Gabrielle had been amazed—her father had shown no interest in remarrying, not in all the long years since Gabrielle’s mother had died of cancer when Gabrielle was barely five.

  “I found the combination of a royal bloodline and near-limitless wealth sufficiently attractive,” the King had said, almost thoughtfully. “And it will certainly bolster the standing of the Miravakian throne.”

  It had been as if he was discussing the purchase of a vehicle. But Gabrielle’s thoughts had raced ahead anyway. Was she really to have a stepmother? She rather thought it might be fun to have someone else around the palazzo. Much as she loved her father and tried to please him, he was not an easy man.

  “There will be no tedious long engagement,” he had continued, touching his thin, disapproving lips with his linen napkin and signaling one of the hovering footmen for more coffee. Finally, he’d looked at her. “I’ve no patience for such things.”

  “No, of course not,” Gabrielle had agreed. Her mind had been racing wildly. Who on earth could possibly meet her father’s high standards? He had a universally low opinion of almost every woman he’d ever encountered, as far as she knew—and then again, as King of Miravakia, he would only consider a bride from a select class of royals. And how like him to keep his intentions a secret, she’d thought, almost amused.

  “I expect you to conduct yourself well,” he’d said, sipping at his coffee. “None of the hysterics that seem to afflict your sex when they come into contact with a wedding ceremony, thank you.”

  Gabrielle had known better than to respond to that.

  He’d sniffed. “I have confidence that you can put everything together quickly and efficiently, with as little disruption as possible.”

  “Of course, Father,” Gabrielle had said at once. She had never planned a wedding before, but how different could it be from the state events she’d put together in the past? She had a marvelous staff whom she already knew could perform miracles. And who knew? Perhaps a new wife would bring out the softer side of her stern father. She’d give quite a bit to see that.

  Lost in her reverie, she had been startled when her fathe
r had pushed back his chair and stood. He’d moved toward the door without another word—the subject closed. Gabrielle had almost laughed. How typical of him. She’d felt a surge of affection for his brusque ways—because clearly something romantic lurked beneath the cold exterior.

  “Father,” she had called, stopping him before he quit the room. He’d turned back to face her, a slight frown between his eyebrows.

  “What is it?” he had asked impatiently.

  “Am I to know the bride’s name?” she had asked, biting back an indulgent smile.

  He’d stared at her. “You need to pay closer attention, Gabrielle, if you are to succeed me without running this country into the ground,” he’d snapped, his arctic tone making her wince. His frown had deepened as he’d glared at her. “You, obviously, are the bride.”

  And then he’d turned on his heel and strode from the room, without a backward glance.

  In the cathedral, Gabrielle felt her breath catch in her throat as the memory of that morning washed over her, while her pulse fluttered wildly. Panic was setting in, as heavy around her as the veil she wore and the train she trailed behind her. She fought to pull air into her lungs—ordered herself to stay calm.

  Her father would never forgive her if she made a scene. If she showed anything but docile acceptance—even gratitude—for the way he’d chosen to manage her affairs. Her life.

  Her marriage.

  Gabrielle felt the crisp, heavy sleeve of her father’s ornamental coat beneath her trembling fingers as he led her down the long aisle, his measured steps bringing her closer and closer to her fate.

  She couldn’t think of it. Couldn’t think of him—her groom. Soon to be her husband. A man she had never even met, and yet he would be her spouse. Her mate. King of her people when she became their queen. Gabrielle’s lips parted on a sound that was far too close to a sob—though it was thankfully hidden in the swirl of music that surrounded her.