Page 44 of Royally Matched
Lady Silverton’s face is a study in alarm. She opens her thin lips to speak, but she’s clearly lost for words.
“I plan on submitting my ideas to the King and Queen when I have a beer with them later today.”
“Really? You drink beer with the King and Queen?”
“Lady Silverton, as if I would joke about something as important as beer?” I say conspiratorially. “And royalty,” I add for good measure.
“Quite.” She gives me an uncertain look. “Now, I’ll leave you. Have a splendid afternoon.”
“You, too, Lady Silverton.” I watch as she glides away, a stick figure in a perfectly fitted dress.
“Ah, there you are, Marco.”
I turn to see Princess Amelia smiling at me, wearing a pretty summer dress. She’s accompanied by a woman a few years older than her, with pale blonde hair and a nervous look in her eyes.
“Your Royal Highness,” I say as I bow my head.
“I told you to forget about all that. It’s stuffy and elitist and boring. This is my friend, Sigrid. Sigrid, say hello to Marco Revera, Enzo’s brother.”
“Hello,” she says and her face flushes pink.
“Hi,” I reply. She looks familiar, but I can’t pick from where.
“I brought Sigrid along today because I thought she might get along with some of the guests,” Amelia says, eyeing me pointedly.
This woman is clearly her match for Enzo. She’d messaged me that she had someone in mind, but I had noidea she would bring her to the garden party. I was meant to find a list of men who might dazzle Sofia, but so far I haven’t been able to think of anyone appropriate for someone who can be so stiff and formal and acerbic, and at times so sweet and easy to talk to. Well, until she remembers herself and stiffens right up again. It’s like she’s two people in one, only the side of her I got to see that day in the library is the one I find so very intriguing.
“It’s nice to meet you, Sigrid. Are you Scandinavian, by any chance?” I ask. With her pale skin and hair and light blue eyes, she looks like she stepped right off the streets of Stockholm.
“I’m from Sweden originally, but I’ve lived here in Ledonia for some years now. I work as an accountant at a firm in the city,” she replies, her voice so soft and quiet I need to lean in just to hear her.
“Is your favorite type of music heavy calculations?” I joke, remembering who she reminds me of. Enzo’s ex-girlfriend, Maren, also a pretty blonde from Sweden. In fact, she’s almost Maren’s spitting image, right down to her shyness.
I could applaud Amelia for doing so well.
Not that I support this idea of hers to find Sofia and Enzo’s soulmates. Let’s face it, it’s the sort of plan a tween would come up with, not a woman who’s twenty-three—and a half. I know I initially went along with it, but when I woke up the next day, I realized how unlikely it was to actually work.
People spend their entire lifetimes searching for their soulmate. How can she expect to find them for our siblings within this month’s trial period?
But now that I’m looking at Sigrid in her pale-yellow dress and Cartier watch—Enzo has always been impressed by Cartier watches—I’m second guessing myself.
“Is there a genre of music called heavy calculations? Because I’ve never heard of it before,” Sigrid replies, her eyes darting uncertainly to Amelia.
A Scandinavian accountant who doesn’t get my jokes. She couldn’t be more Maren if she tried.
When I’d given Amelia what I thought was Enzo’s “type,” I had no idea she would go out and somehow find precisely the sort of woman he’s dated in the past. Amelia may have complained about Sofia picking her husband from a checklist in a spreadsheet, but she’s gone and done pretty much the same for Enzo, using my description rather than checking a bunch of boxes.
“I think Marco’s just being silly,” Amelia replies with a spark in her eye. “He’s often quite silly. Aren’t you, Marco?”
I hold my hands up in surrender. “That’s me. Total goofball.”
“I don’t go much in for silliness, I’m afraid,” Sigrid sniffs as though the very idea is distasteful.
I pull my lips into a smile. That’s exactly what Maren would have said. “I’m sure you don’t.”
Amelia could only have done better if she’d managed to grow Enzo’s ex in a petri dish.
“Amelia, a word?” I ask, not waiting for her reply, instead leading her a couple of steps away from her friend.