Royally Unprepared: Prince of Pout (Part 1) (Royal Misadventures Book 5) Read online

  Royal Misadventures #5

  Royally Unprepared

  Prince of Pout (Part 1)

  ALSO BY ELIZABETH STEVENS

  unvamped

  Netherfield Prep

  the Trouble with Hate is…

  Accidentally Perfect

  Keeping Up Appearances

  Love, Lust & Friendship

  Valiant Valerie

  Being Not Good

  The Stand-In

  No More Maybes Books

  No More Maybes

  Gray’s Blade

  Royal Misadventures

  Now Presenting

  Lady in Training

  Three of a Kind

  Some Proposal

  Royally Unprepared

  Royal Misadventures Omnibus

  I’m No Princess: The Collection (Parts 1-4)

  Royal Misadventures #5

  Royally Unprepared

  Prince of Pout (Part 1)

  Elizabeth Stevens

  Sleeping Dragon Books

  Royally Unprepared

  by Elizabeth Stevens

  Print ISBN: 978-1925928099

  Digital ISBN: 978-1925928082

  Cover art by: Izzie Duffield

  Copyright 2019 Elizabeth Stevens

  Worldwide Electronic & Digital Rights

  Worldwide English Language Print Rights

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any form, including digital and electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the Publisher, except for brief quotes for use in reviews. This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  To that day I apparently made up,

  thanks for nothing, June 29.5.

  Contents

  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

  Royally Unprepared

  Thanks

  My Books

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  A Gallyrian monarch was strong, proud, humble, and wise. That was what my father had always taught me, as his father had taught him, and his father before him, the whole way back to the first king so it was said.

  But I didn’t feel strong, proud, humble, or wise.

  I felt lost.

  I had a decision to make. One that affected the future of my whole country. One that affected every person I was responsible for. One that affected me.

  There was only one choice I wanted to make, but I had to be sure it was the right one. I had to be sure it was right for her, for me and for the country. I’d decided to go after Bronkala instead of announce my engagement to a woman I didn’t want, to give us the time to make the choice I wanted to be the right one. But that had backfired and now I had to hope that three days were enough time.

  After dismissing Tati’s guard for the night, the silence between us was suffocating. But what I wanted to say to her would not do to be discussed in public.

  My heart beat uncomfortably fast in my chest and, for a man who had been trained since birth to be cool and collected, I was anything but. I thought I’d known what I was going to say to her. Now all I felt was panic.

  She opened her door and “Can we talk?” burst out of me. Not that she’d have noticed, because I was the perfect picture of in control on the outside.

  “Sure,” she said as she indicated I precede her in. She closed the door behind us. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve had time to think…” I started, feeling it barely sufficient for what I was feeling.

  “Okay…?” Tati looked at me strangely and my heart thudded in my chest again.

  I was very close to messing this up and that was definitely the opposite of my intention. It was now or never.

  “I said nothing before because of your words to me – you could not ask me to give up the true parts of myself and expect me to be happy. Well I could not either. I could not ask you to stand beside me when I knew how you felt about this life, my life. I could not ask you to put on that mask every day, to hide your true nature and become someone you are not.”

  I took a brief pause to breathe deeply and stick to the plan. “I told you once I could understand what it was to put someone else’s needs before my own, that I could put the needs of a whole country before my own for the sake of love. But if I have to give anyone my family’s ring on Thursday, I would prefer it be to a woman I wanted to marry. I needed to know I took the chance. I chose to go to war instead of announce my engagement to a woman I do not want. And all that achieved was my little brother being injured and I still have to face the country and give someone a ring.

  “I understand if you cannot accept…” I went down on one knee before her, not realising until that moment I had pinned all my future happiness on her shoulders. But it was too late to take it back, and I would regret it if I did. “Tatiana Bethany Penrose, you captured my heart the moment I saw you trip over that rug and ideally I would have waited for us to know each other better, to actually court you, if I had the time. But we both of us have our obligations and I do not have the luxury. Unfortunate timing or not, I would be honoured if you would be my wife.”

  She said nothing as she looked at me in what I could only describe as horror. Her mouth opened and closed a few times until she breathed out a simple, “Dmitri…” and I felt like an utter fool. A fool and a bully.

  I stood up swiftly, not wanting to make her any more uncomfortable. “I understand, my–”

  “Do you?” she snapped. “It’s just a lot to process. I–”

  “I do understand. It was not fair of me to ask this of you. You said time and again we only had these weeks and I did not respect your decision. Forgive me.”

  I turned and left, wanting to give her space and to drown my shame in the bottom of a bottle where I could forget it temporarily. I stormed passed Neil, sparing him little more than a nod. I was too angry with myself to care what impression he had of me as I thundered down the stairs, heading for my office.

  Of course she would have said no. She had been warning me this whole time that she would always say no. Time and again. And the idiot I was, I didn’t listen. I’d decided to listen to my heart instead of my head. Which I had never done. Not once in my life.

  Tatiana Penrose did something to me.

  We may have only known each other for less than four months, but I hadn’t been exaggerating in the heat of the moment. Since I’d first seen her walk into the room back in November, I’d been interested in her. She looked so much like her sister – so familiar – and yet there was nothing of the courtier about her –so foreign.

  Her hair had been a mess, she’d had dark circles under her eyes, her clothes were wrinkled. But she’d been tantalising, beautiful, fierce, an enigma. I hadn’t needed to know her to know she was real, she was honest, she was tangible. She’d been this piece of what had fel
t like literal fresh air at the time, stumbling her way into my life and into my heart before I even knew to fortify the gates against her.

  I hadn’t cared that she’d been travelling for a day, I’d wanted to know more about her. I’d needed to know more about her. From that moment, it had been nothing but me fighting against my growing feelings for her. Trying to hide every response I had to her sass, her smile, her defiance, her clumsiness, her laugh.

  The moment I’d seen her walking down the stairs with Max before the state dinner, I’d been floored by the change. Even though she and Natalia had looked like twins, I knew which was my Tatiana. And not just by the scowl that hit her face when she saw me. I’d been as disappointed as I had been stunned by her transformation. So I’d felt more thankful than I’d had any right to when it became obvious to me that she wasn’t losing any of her personality just because she’d changed her clothes.

  It had taken everything I’d had to train myself to seem indifferent to her, to not laugh every time she knocked something over, tripped, said something inappropriate, or set something on fire. And it was much easier said than done. Though if I’d known then what I knew now, then I would not have bothered. I would not have wasted so much effort trying to hide my reactions and my feelings for her if I’d known we had a definite expiry date. Perhaps if I had not, we would not have. If I had not, she would be my future wife.

  Because everything I’d seen of her since she’d doused fire in her hands and faced the table with a joke had only further cemented in my mind that she would only ever be the one for me. She was strong, she was a fighter, she was kind, she was funny, she was beautiful. She was everything I’d have wanted in my partner if I’d known I’d be able to find it in one person.

  And I’d been too stupid or stubborn or proud to notice until it was too late.

  I’d told myself I was doing us both a favour. I’d told myself she wasn’t queen material. I’d told myself I wasn’t proper husband material to be worth her. I’d told myself she didn’t want to be thrust into the spotlight being my wife would shine on her. I’d told myself everything I thought I’d needed to hear to stop myself admitting I loved her and that I believed she at least could love me. And everything I’d told myself had ensured I lost her.

  Now I was staring down the barrel of an engagement announcement in three days and the only woman I wanted had flatly refused me.

  Nothing about the situation was ideal. And quite frankly I was wondering if it was too late to sneak out and get myself captured by Bronkala’s men again. I lacked just enough care for my own future at that moment that Bronkala would make sure I wasn’t in any state to be announcing anything on Thursday.

  But heartbroken – by mainly my own fault – or not, I had an ingrained sense to do the right thing in me.

  So I pushed into the ante-room to my office, sincerely thankful I’d already dismissed Samson for the night under the insanely misguided assumption I wouldn’t be going back to work that night.

  I wrenched my tie off and threw it aimlessly as I flung open my office door and made straight for the sideboard to pour myself a stiff drink. I’d already come close to my limit for maintaining any decorum in my pre-proposition nervousness. So the rather large tumbler I filled before striding over to my desk was undoubtedly going to hinder my review of the eastern trade agreements. Although it would probably help me get through the finalised guest list for the Valentine’s Day ball.

  I dropped into my chair, more unenthusiastically than I ever had before, and stared at the pile in my in-tray. All I could think of was the time Tati had come down and sat in my lap as I’d talked her through the wheat negotiations. The negotiations that were now sitting on my desk waiting for a final review.

  I ran one hand over my chin as I reached for my tumbler.

  “How did you not see it?” I muttered to myself as I sat back in my chair. “She’s perfect.”

  She’d caught onto the nuances of the negotiations quicker than even I had when Father first took me through them. She’d understood how different years created different demand and provided different supply. She’d understood how the shift in demand and supply created different tensions between trade partners. I’d barely explained half of it to her before she was piecing the rest of it together.

  And I was the arse who’d continued to tell myself all sorts of nonsense instead of properly court her in the time we had together. And now I’d completely messed up.

  Tati and Natalia had been incredibly lucky to have Max and their mother. I no longer saw any reason why co-parenting in the right situation could ever be worse than the nuclear family. Tati and Natalia, while they both had very different strengths, were two incredibly intelligent and capable young women. Looking at them and my sisters, I was struggling to see how Faith and Lina would ever be as capable. I was also struggling to see why I’d missed the fact that Tati would have easily excelled at any task being my wife would have thrown at her.

  “Because you’re an idiot, obviously,” I grumbled before I threw back the rest of my whiskey.

  I leant my hand on the table and looked over at the sideboard. I willed the decanter to come to me, despite every single fibre of me knowing it would do no good.

  My head swam with nothing but Tati and a conflicting desire to both wallow in thoughts of her and forget them entirely.

  I let go a very uncharacteristic yell of frustration and threw my tumbler across the room. It very satisfactorily smashed on the corner of the still flickering fireplace, the shards tinkling as they rained to the hearth.

  I rubbed my fingers agitatedly through my hair and pulled the trade agreement towards me, determined to focus on anything but the woman of my dreams slipping through my fingers as easily as those shards of glass had fallen to the ground.

  Chapter Two

  I woke on Tuesday with an impressive headache and, for one blissful moment, no recollection as to why I should feel such a way. But it all came flooding back as Samson nodded at me with a rather caged expression on his face from the end of my bed.

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, Samson,” I replied, my throat scratchy.

  “Might I ask is everything is all right, sir?”

  “You may.” I hauled myself out of bed. “Whether I answer or not depends upon why you’re asking.”

  I looked at him expectantly and he knew me too well by now to cower, but he did look apologetic. “I merely saw you had an…accident in your office last night, sir. I just wanted to check you were all right,” he said quickly and my eyebrow rose in question. “The glass, sir. I noticed the broken glass.”

  I nodded. “I am fine. It…slipped from my grasp.”

  I could read all over Samson’s face that he knew exactly what had happened with the glass. After all, we’d been working together for almost five years. He’d been with me through good moments and bad, he’d seen me at my best and my (very nearly) worst. We maintained a professional relationship, but he was one of the people closest to me. It hadn’t taken him long to understand my nuances and work out how best to manage me.

  Now he knew my mood by simply looking at me and taking in my exact word choice. From there it was a matter of discerning if anything needed to be done about it before we could go about our day. In most other instances, I would have straight out told him what had happened, but the wound was still raw and I was not ready for his sympathy, no matter how well he concealed it.

  So I got up, stretching my neck, and headed for the bathroom. “The press conference is in an hour?”

  “Yes, sir.” I knew by his tone of voice that he’d drop the issue of whatever had led me to break a glass. For now.

  I showered and dressed as quickly as usual. Samson had brought me a tray of breakfast and as I ate, we talked through the plan for the press conference. At no point did he make a mention of the fact I’d woken later than usual.

  “Naturally, they’re going to ask about Prince Domi
nic’s injury,” Samson said as I sat back down after brushing my teeth.

  I glowered over the rim of my coffee cup, distracted enough about my youngest brother to not be overly bothered by the way the toothpaste ruined my coffee. “The flesh wound.”

  Samson’s lip twitched, but he did remarkably well at hiding his smile. “Indeed, sir. Nevertheless, there will be questions.”

  “And I am not supposed to tell them that he was caught on a branch as we were running with our tails between our legs?”

  Samson hid his laugh behind a cough, then took a sip of coffee before he replied, “Probably best to stick to the truth, sir.”

  I nodded, annoyed but knowing he was right. “All right. He was shot by one of Bronkala’s men trying to shield me, then.”

  Samson paused and looked me over for a moment. I wasn’t sure if it was because I’d let something else slip in my tone or if it was because he – like everyone who knew the truth – was wondering why on earth Nico was trying to shield me. I was the seasoned soldier, the major in the King’s Army, the battle-trained brother. And yet circumstances had arisen such that Nico needed to save me. In many ways, it had been the least he could do. In many ways, I’d had a duty to protect him. None of which Samson needed to know right now.

  Finally, Samson nodded. “Indeed, sir. Now, the conference is mainly going to include the mainstream media, war correspondents and such. However, you know there will be…other questions asked.”

  I barely managed to supress my eye roll as I stretched out my neck again. “Then we will direct them back to the appropriate line of questioning,” I answered roughly.

  Samson nodded. “Yes. But giving them no answer will just keep them asking, sir. You know this.”