Phillip leafed through the papers. Hobbies are knitting and painting, she’d scribbled across one girl’s picture. Phillip needs someone more adventurous. He picked up another page. Not a good match, this one said, according to her tax returns she never gives to charities. Phillip is never stingy—he needs someone more generous. Yet another proclaimed This one is nice. A little too nice. Phillip needs a queen with a backbone, a spitfire, a woman as strong as he is.
He spread the pages across the counter. Not a single one of the women, not even her own stepsisters, had Ella deemed good enough for Phillip.
“There was a time when I would have agreed with her,” the Queen Mother said as he stared down at the pages. “That none of the women were good enough for you. I wanted you to find the happiness you deserved—and after a while, I thought Ella would be the one to give that to you. But now I’ve changed my mind.”
His hand fisted in his lap. Even though Ella had deserted him, he couldn’t bear to let his mother speak ill of her. “She’s not—”
But her voice cracked across his like a whip. “If you’re the kind of man who treats his wife like an employee, like a servant at that, then you don’t deserve her. You deserve to let the law lapse, and allow Eric to take over as king.”
Eric choked on his cognac. “Surely it needn’t come to that,” he sputtered.
Not knowing how to respond, Phillip looked back down at the rubric he’d been examining a moment ago. Was this really the way Ella had seen him, as someone so good that not even the best ladies the kingdom could offer measured up? And the things she’d said about the kind of woman he needed—someone adventurous, generous, strong…
It was her. She’d been describing herself the whole time, and she hadn’t even seen it. But then, neither had he. He’d had his true love, his impossibly perfect match, an amazing, regal spitfire he wanted to spend both his public and private life with—
And he’d tossed her away over a pair of shoes.
He’d been so concerned with trying to mold her into a queen that he hadn’t realized she’d already been a perfect one. She’d spent her life constantly coming in last place in her family, and he’d treated her exactly the same as her stepmother had instead of cherishing her the way she deserved.
“I,” he announced, “am an ass.”
Eric held up his glass in a toast. “I knew you’d get there.”
The Queen Mother gave him a frosty look, but before she could reprimand him, one of her guards stuck his head in. She paced over to listen to his whispered message, and Phillip took advantage of her preoccupation.
“I need your help,” he said to his brother in a low tone. “I have to go catch a flight. Can you cause a distraction?”
Eric grinned wide, hefting his bottle. “Can I ever,” he replied.
17
Starting a career training horses was harder than becoming Queen.
Ella blew a strand of hair out of her eyes and paused, leaning against her pitchfork. She had ten minutes before her next riding lesson showed up, and that big draft stallion had picked just now to dump a huge load in the middle of the aisle for her to clean up. She knew it was part of the gig, and a month or two ago she would have attacked even the dirty parts of her new job at her friend’s stables with joy, but now all she could think about was whether it was too late to buy a one-way ticket back to Danovar.
She’d been working so hard to change herself into a Queen—and now that she’d succeeded, now that her old dreams no longer held their luster in comparison, she was condemned to a lifetime of them. She’d never get to help anyone on the global stage. Never get to fund Anna’s research, never get to save her home country’s natural resources.
Never get to stand at Phillip’s side again.
She bent back to her task and attacked the manure with new vigor. Best she not think about him. It was too late to buy a ticket back anyway—after she’d left him high and dry this close to his birthday, he’d have no reason to marry her. Plus, after the way he’d betrayed her she knew she would never come first with him, and she’d already lived that life and wanted no more of it.
But oh, Phillip. If only he’d been able to see her, understand that she needed to be important to him too. If only he’d come to her when that reporter confronted him, instead of making the decision for her. She scrubbed a hand across her face to get the hair out of her eyes, and was dismayed when her hand came back wet with tears. She didn’t even know what she was crying for. Phillip? Her lost life as Queen? Her new dreams, vanished to dust?
“Ella, your twelve o’clock is here!” the stable manager called. “Brand-new rider, I believe.” Grateful for the distraction, Ella stowed the pitchfork and went to retrieve the horses for today’s lesson. For the new rider, she chose their rock-solid old mare who never moved faster than a sedate walk and wouldn’t spook if a bomb blew up in her face. She walked out to the ring, mare in one hand and her assigned gelding in the other. The new rider in the middle of the arena turned. It took a moment for her brain to put together the puzzle pieces of him and assign a name.
Long, godlike blond hair. Smoky eyes. Broad, square, strong hands that had done delicious things to her—and then handed her letters over to a reporter to protect someone else.
Phillip.
Shocked by seeing him in the last place she’d expected, she turned, thinking only that she’d need to trade out the mare. Her twelve o’clock was, in fact, not a new rider.
A hand curled around her shoulder. “Please, wait,” he said in that accent she’d been longing for, and it was like taking a long drink in the desert. “Don’t walk away from me again.”
She stopped and turned.
He scanned her face like she, too, was an oasis in the hot sands. “I kno
w what I did was terrible,” he said. He took a deep breath like he had to steel himself for whatever he was about to say. “And I can only plead my own arrogance. I never dreamed I’d be so lucky as to fall for one of the eligible maidens, but even after I did, I don’t think I ever shook the notion that my wife would be a state employee—because that was the way I’d been treating myself, too. Like my only function in life was to fulfill duties and be whatever my people needed me to be. It was only after you left that I realized what you’d been trying to teach me. Serving my country doesn’t always have to be a burden. The way you served your stepfamily—out of love and a genuine desire to help, with such kindness and generosity even when they overlooked you—that was what finally showed me that there is room in my life for both duty and love, and that serving my country can be even more fulfilling when it’s done with joy, and with someone I love at my side. I learned that I am more than a king. I’m a man. One who has made terrible mistakes, and one who is now begging your forgiveness, and promising to put you first for as long as we both shall live. If you’ll still have me.”