I sat at my table hardly able to believe that I was at a royal wedding. An Aussie bloke from the wilds of Queensland, sitting here amongst the toffs of a small country I hadn’t even heard of until a few months ago. It was a long way from the cane farm that I had grown up on, but then it had been years since I’d been back there.

I scanned the room, scarcely believing the company that I was now keeping. I may not have known who the queen of this small country was, but I did recognise some of the infamous guests who were attending the wedding. I shook my head and couldn’t help the grin cracking my face. Wait until Mum found out, she’d go nuts.

A large, firm hand clamped down on my shoulder as a huge man took the seat beside me.

“Enjoying yourself?” Brooks, my former employer and the reason I was here in Merveille, asked.

“Still trying to get my head around it,” I said.

He grinned at me. I had been working for Brooks for years, but had pretty much reached the ceiling of his organisation. We had both known it and he had begun looking for a new job for me before resentment could set in. He’d found that job in the form of CFO for a friend of his who just happened to be a real earl and the son of the current prime minister of Merveille. He was also a close personal friend to the queen and her husband. Brooks had introduced us and Lord Bingham, who insisted I call him Freddie, invited us to come and discuss the position. It had just so happened to coincide with the wedding and so here I was, with Brooks, his fiancée and his five year old daughter, in a country I knew nothing about at a wedding where I knew no one.

Not bad for an Aussie bloke. It was the ultimate in party crashing and no one at home would believe me, even with photos to prove it.

The job wasn’t set in stone yet, but it was looking good. Brooks and I had met with Freddie a few times in the last week and I had to admit that I liked the guy. He was not what I had expected when Brooks told me he was an earl. The guy knew business and after looking at what he had achieved in his business life, I was impressed. I had the preconceived notion that lords like him did nothing but sit around and twiddle their thumbs while everyone around them bowed and scraped, but Freddie wasn’t like that.

My eyes strayed to the brunette standing off to the side sipping a glass of champagne as she watched the couples on the dance floor. It didn’t matter how much I tried to ignore her, my eyes kept finding her. She wasn’t what I would call pretty, but she was striking with her regal nose and the lift of her chin. She was one of the bridesmaids and close to the queen, which put her firmly out of my league. An Aussie bloke from the tropics of Queensland may find himself in a palace at a royal wedding in a foreign country, but that didn’t mean his luck would extend so far as to dance with one of the royals.

“Go and ask her to dance,” Brooks said from beside me as if he could read my mind.

I scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no way she’d dance with me.”

Brooks smiled. “Lady Jeanette’s not a bad sort,” he said, “A bit quieter than some of the others, but nice enough to talk to. Surprising really, considering her job.”

“She works?” This surprised me. If she was a ‘lady’ then why on earth would she work?

“Of course she does. All of the queen’s ladies in waiting have jobs, they actually work for her.”

“Right,” I said, imagining some token position that really didn’t have much import.

Brooks nudged my shoulder. “Go on, go and ask her to dance. She looks like she wants to.”

I studied Lady Jeanette who did look like she would like to join the other couples as they swirled around the dance floor.

“What mischief is Brooks up to?” Freddie asked as he sat down on the other side of me.

“No mischief,” Brooks said innocently, “Just trying to encourage Drew here to take Lady Jeanette for a spin around the dance floor.”

“Oh yes, perfect. You must do that,” Freddie said, his eyes alight.

“But she’s like a duchess or something, isn’t she?”

Freddie shook his head and then glanced over to where the woman in question was standing. “Not a duchess,” he said, “Her father was a marquess, which means she gets the honorary title of lady but doesn’t hold a title of her own.”

“You said was,” I commented, “Did he lose his title?”

“No, he died. I believe the marchioness is still alive and Lady Jeanette has two older brothers, the elder of whom is the current Marquess of Astonbury.”

All these titles made my head spin. I knew what a king and queen were, even a prince and princess, but dukes and earls and all the rest, I had no idea about.

“Still,” I said, “She is too far out of my league and would probably turn me down flat.”

“Don’t be a coward,” Freddie said with a grin, “I thought all you Aussie guys were big and tough. Aren’t half the animals in your country trying to kill you? Don’t you wrestle crocodiles for sport?”

“Hardly,” I said, “And does that mean you equate Lady Jeanette with a crocodile?”

Freddie laughed, “Lady Priscilla maybe, but not Lady Jeanette. Go on, just ask. When will you ever get the chance again to say that you danced at a royal wedding with a real lady? Besides, she won’t turn you down, she’s too polite for that.”

That didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.

I don’t know how I came to be the wallflower of the group. If that honour should belong to anyone, it should be Margaret, but even the shyest one of us had managed to find a partner. Meanwhile, here I stood on the perimeter of the dance floor and looked on like a cast-off from a debutante ball. My brothers would dance with me if I asked, but I had been avoiding them. I had thought that I would at least be able to take comfort in the fact that Priscilla wouldn’t be dancing tonight, but she had disappeared, leaving me to my own devices. The Lord Chancellor was also conspicuous in his absence and if I had to be left alone I hoped that it was because they were reconciling. Priscilla deserved a man who loved her and Dom certainly did love her; it was written all over his face whenever he looked at her.

I should be so lucky to have someone look at me like that.

Unfortunately I didn’t think I would ever find ‘The One,’ especially not with the overbearing beasts that were my older brothers. They had managed to scare away any and all male suitors who had ever made overtures towards me, which is why I had left London to come to Merveille. They were suffocating in their attempt to keep me safe and after they had put the fear of the devil into Charles, it was the last straw. I had packed up and left that same day.

But coming to Merveille hadn’t solved the problem. Now I was seen as too unattainable. I worked for the queen and that was intimidating for some men. Well, all the men I had come into contact with anyway. There was also the fact that most of the men I came into contact with on a regular basis were the press and I couldn’t very well begin a liaison with a member of the press, which would not look good.

I sighed and placed my now empty champagne glass on the tray of a passing server. At least by being a wallflower, I would be able to see and hopefully prevent any scandalous behaviour before it marred the celebration. The last thing we wanted was for some foxed lord to make an inappropriate advance on some young miss while the eyes of the world were on us. The room was full of media and press photographers and it wouldn’t take much to cause a scandal.

“Excuse me,” a deep voice said and I turned to look into the tawny eyes of a tall, well-built and tanned man.

“Yes?” I asked, my cheeks pinking because of the huskiness of my voice. He really was a rather handsome devil.

“I was wondering if I could have the next dance.”

He smiled and a dimple in his cheek winked at me.

“Okay,” I said, glad that I could speak at all.

He stood beside me while we waited for the current song to end.

“My name is Drew,” he said.

“Jeanette,” I breathed.

He grinned, “Lady Jeanette,” he said. “Lord Bingham told me.”

I shot a look over to where Freddie was sitting with a giant of a man that I vaguely remember meeting once. Freddie lifted his glass in salute to me and the man beside me chuckled.

“Are you Australian?” I asked, and then berated myself for such a stupid question.

“I am,” he said, unperturbed. “And is that an English accent I hear?”

“It is,” I replied with a small smile. “I was born in London.”

His brow furrowed. “I don’t really understand how all this royal thing works,” he said. “Are you British royalty then?”

I shook my head, “No, we are Merveillian, but not all of the titled peers live in Merveille. Our country is so small that a lot of the peers have married outside of the country. My grandfather married an English woman and our family grew from that.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “I suppose that makes sense. So you grew up in London, what brought you to Merveille?”

The song ended and he held out his arm to me and led me onto the dance floor. He held me skilfully, which I didn’t expect, and led me in a beautiful quick-step.

“When the princess found herself as the next in line for the throne, a call went out for her ladies in waiting. I took it as an opportunity to get to know my native country.”

“And how do you find it?”

I couldn’t help the smile that broke across my face. “I love it.”

Drew looked down at me, seemingly mesmerised by me and for a moment everything else faded away. He leaned down towards me in slow motion and I had ample time to pull away, but I couldn’t. I wanted to know what he would do next. When his lips brushed softly across mine, a thrill raced through me, the likes of which I had never known before. Before he could repeat it, before I could fully enjoy it, he was gone, ripped out of my arms. I blinked back to reality to see my dance partner on the floor rubbing his jaw and my brother standing over him, his fist clenched.

I was supposed to ensure that no scandal marred the royal wedding and now here I was, embroiled in the very middle of one.