Prince of my Panties (Royal Package 2)

I decide I like this prince—a lot.

I bet he’s a reader, too. I bet that’s why he found me in the library, because he couldn’t wait until morning to start a new book.

“Thank you.” I motion toward the burned carpet. “For helping me.”

“Of course.” His lips quirk into a smile-shape before he adds, “Let’s evaluate the damage, shall we?”

He pulls his shirt away, and I pad closer, craning my neck for a closer look. There’s definitely a black spot, and the singed smell is worse now, but it’s not nearly as bad as I thought it would be.

Jeffrey nods, apparently sharing my relief. “No problem. We’ll drag a chair on top, and no one will ever notice.”

“Really?”

“Absolutely. Why don’t you take your book and head back to your room? I’ll take care of this. No worries.” He reaches for the fallen novel, and my heart stops.

It literally stops, abandoning its work mid-beat as the horrifying realization shrieks through my head.

No! He’s going to see it! There’s no way he won’t—he’s not blind for God’s sake—but maybe he won’t notice the picture or the title.

But, of course, that’s a ridiculous hope.

Despite my fervent prayers, he doesn’t close the book and hand it over without a word. He reaches for the novel and freezes, his hand hovering over the image of the man thrusting between the woman’s legs while my entire being catches fire with embarrassment, and the horrified screeching in my head gets louder. I will the floor to open and swallow me whole, but that doesn’t happen, either.

Instead, Jeffrey clears his throat and stretches his neck to one side.

Then he clears his throat again before flipping the book closed and gathering it in one big hand.

He stands, turning stiffly to face me, making me even more keenly aware of the fact that he’s half-naked. I’m alone with a boy who isn’t wearing a shirt—an older boy who is very nice to look at, but also terrifying and mysterious in a way I’m not ready to think about outside the safety of those fictional pages I was after—and he’s holding a racy book he knows I was looking at. It’s the most desperately mortifying thing that’s happened in my entire life.

I’m about to burst into tears, or run, or run while bursting into tears, when he stretches out his arm, holding the volume between us. “I thought this one was sad. But I knew he was dying when he wrote it before I started reading, so…”

My heart jerks back into motion, but the rest of my body still can’t decide what to do. I continue to imitate a statue while Jeffrey takes a small step closer.

“It was tuberculosis,” he adds. “He knew he had it and that it was getting worse, but he rewrote Lady Chatterley three times anyway. Completely from scratch, beginning to end. It was what he wanted to do with the time he had left.”

“It must have been really important to him,” I say, a lead weight settling on my chest.

I know what it feels like to be living on a deadline.

I still have over a decade left—a generous stretch of years, it seems, especially to a girl who has only lived thirteen of them—but there are days when I feel “the end” looming large in front of me, casting a shadow I can’t escape.

Days when I worry about the legacy I’ll leave behind when I’m gone…

Will history remember me as anything but the shy and stuttering daughter of the last king and queen of Rinderland, half of a pair of identical twins, one of a set of triplets, interesting for the oddness of her circumstance, but not particularly notable in any other way? Or will I make my mark on the world? Will I leave behind something beautiful and thought-provoking—maybe a little sad—like the book I pluck from Jeffrey’s hands and hug to my chest, now desperate to read it for reasons more serious than carnal curiosity.

“You can take it with you when you leave,” Jeffrey offers generously. “Since you won’t have time to finish it tonight.”

“Thank you,” I say, meaning it with all my heart. “I’m glad I got caught by the nice prince.”

His lips quirk as he shrugs. “We’re all pretty nice.”

“Andrew put snakes in my bed,” I remind him. The first and only other time I met my fiancé, he had made it clear he wasn’t thrilled about the arrangement.

“He was eight,” Jeffrey says, holding up a hand as he continues, “I know that doesn’t excuse it, but he was a kid, too. And I think…” He rubs his palm over his close-cropped dark hair. “It’s hard for everyone. All of us, at least. Our generation. Arranged marriage isn’t a thing in our part of the world anymore. It hasn’t been for a long time. I don’t know what my parents were thinking, letting Grandfather move forward with this.”