This morning Angus was in a mood to be irritated, Siobhan knew, and there was nothing better than breakfast with his mother to suit Angus’s dark mood all too well.

She hated him for what he’d asked of her, for forcing her to be a part of this mad play, but at the same time, she understood him. Siobhan knew better than most what desperation and unrequited love drove one to do.

The Dowager Princess set her cup down with the finality of a mason slapping bricks in mortar and looked at him. The clinking china interrupted a silence that seemed weighed down by a hundred conversations mother and son never had.

“I suppose you’re angry about what I did,” she said, tilting her chin in the air, like the Queen of Sheba upon her throne, “but you must know I had your best interests in mind.”

He simply folded his arms and looked at her. She would try a saint on Sunday.

“Did you hear what I said?” Catriona asked louder.

At the other side of the long and formal table, Angus closed his eyes briefly and prayed for patience; a marvel in and of itself, as he’d never been the praying sort, and certainly not religious.

I heard you, all right. Even as he wished he hadn’t, or that he’d misheard or mistaken her. “I won’t let you do it again,” he said. “I won’t let you drive another away.”

Another? Siobhan inhaled sharply.

“And we get to the heart of it,” Catriona said, waving a footman forward for more tea. “Your precious, silly love.” Then she turned to Siobhan. “Not you, of course.”

She turned back to Angus who, despite his silence, revealed more than he should have.

She had wondered at the way he’d spoken of love weeks earlier: It is not the stuff of poems and fairy tales.

And while she’d kept from asking if Catriona had hurt the girl he’d once loved, he’d answered her nonetheless: As though she’d held a pistol to her head.

“And this one?” Catriona prompted, waving a hand in Siobhan’s direction, oblivious to her thoughts, and only focused on goading her son. “Do you love her as well?”

This is a mistake. Siobhan stiffened with silent realization. She didn’t want this. Any of it. She didn’t want him to fabricate a love, didn’t want to play-act it. When his confession came, she wanted it to be for real, freely offered, never lied for the sake of others.

She looked to Angus, recognizing the silent fury on his face, knowing that he cared a bit for her, but love?

She already knew why he couldn’t give her his love. All the little moments of laughter and caring and undeniable lust, probably paled in comparison to his love for another, long gone.

“Don’t leave the poor girl wondering, Angus Augustus,” Catriona fairly drawled. “She is a royal, after all.”

Angus looked to Siobhan and time seemed to slow.

Siobhan could hear her heart beating, knowing she could not believe the words he said, whatever they might be.

She did not want him to say he loved her. She didn’t think she could bear hearing the words for the first time and know they weren’t true.

And, somehow, strangely, she did not want him to not say that he loved her. She didn’t wish to be the means to his end, the royal broodmare.

“Siobhan knows precisely how I feel about her.”

It was the faintest praise she’d ever received, and it stung more harshly than all the aristocratic scorn she’d ever heard. With those simple words, Siobhan was through.

She wanted to be more than that. She wanted to be more than he offered. She no longer cared about any politeness—not in the face of this moment. Not in the face of her desire for something else. For more.

She didn’t want to be a part of this back-and-forth, this battle between powerful, wealthy people who didn’t know a thing about what was really important in the world.

She folded her napkin into a perfect square and stood.

Angus stood with her, his ridiculous manners seeming to somehow matter in this, but not in the rest.

Siobhan bit back a laugh at that, turning to Catriona and inclining her head, she said, “I find I’ve lost my appetite, Your Royal Highness.”

“No doubt,” she replied in a voice devoid of surprise.

“I shall take my leave,” Siobhan replied.

“I shall come with you,” Angus said, already moving around the table. “We can have breakfast in our rooms.”

He looked positively gleeful that his mother could not accept her. So, this is the entire point of this breakfast. Even if I’m royal, I am not acceptable. Not to mother. But not even to the son?

“No,” she said, the single word sounding like a gunshot in the room.

Angus stopped, halfway around the foot of the table.

“I shall take my leave,” she repeated, glad for Ewan’s lessons. “Alone.”

He moved once more, his long legs eating the distance between them with speed and purpose.

“You needn’t be alone,” he said, the words firm and strangely forthright before he added, softly, “She needn’t come between us, Lieben.”

The endearment did her in. What a terrible lie he told. What a terrible mistake she’d made.

She lifted one hand, staying him again.

“She’s not between us,” she said, her voice calm and cool and filled with truth. “She is not the problem.”

“It certainly isn’t you who is the problem.”

“I’m quite aware of who the problem is.”

He looked as though he’d been struck, but Siobhan took no pleasure in the moment.

She was too busy keeping her back straight and her tears at bay as she turned and left the room.

* * *

Siobhan was turning out to be very good at making scandalous exits and absolute rubbish at knowing what to do next.

She couldn’t return to her rooms, as she did not wish to be found, and she couldn’t leave the house, because she had nowhere to go.

She did not think Angus would take well to her appropriating one of his cars, either way. He’d likely consider it stealing.

And it went without saying, her bodyguards would follow.

It wasn’t much fun snooping around Lenox Palace with a dozen SAS type men trailing along behind her, but Siobhan managed.

After a while she pretended they weren’t there, just as she pretended His Royal Pain-in-the-Ass was nothing more than an annoying brat that could be taught, and went to her jewelry floor.

Siobhan sighed wistfully as she paused by a vaulted window on the bridge which linked one wing to another to savor the view of the tranquil snowcapped mountains.

At that very moment, as if summoned by her wayward thoughts, Angus walked into her line of vision in the bailey below, leading one of the largest black chargers she’d ever seen.

Siobhan started to turn away, but her feet would no more walk her away from the window than her eyes would avert themselves, and in spite of her best intentions to ignore him, she stood watching him.

Love certainly was not at all the rapturous emotion portrayed by poets. So far it had brought her only jealousy, doubt, fear, and pain. No, it was much more like a dire illness complete with unpleasant aches in the pit of her stomach and the hot flush of fever.

No, love was not at all as it was represented. A falsehood no doubt perpetuated by others in love who knew the true nature of this plague and wanted the rest of the world to be as miserable as they were. Unfortunately, discovering the truth meant one were already beyond hope.

It was such a simple truth: unrequited love reeked.