Princess in the Iron Mask by Victoria Parker Page B

temper visibly morphing into sheer panic. ‘Could we circle a few more times?’
    Her fingers fumbled with the metal buckle and after a few seconds he pushed her hands away and clicked it shut.
    ‘No, we cannot. What is wrong with you?’
    Amber eyes locked on his. ‘I’m not too good with people.’
    ‘ Qué? Do I look stupid to you, Claudia? Within ten minutes of our meeting you were chewing my head off, and you were perfectly at ease with Armande and Bailey.’
    ‘I’ve known Bailey for months. She’s a child. And how would you know how I was with Armande? You left me! So much for your personal protection.’
    Indignity was a slap in his face. ‘I was dealing with the rep—’ He broke off. She didn’t need to know about the reporter. He still had a hard time believing he could have been so negligent. This was what she did to him. Threw him so far off course it was like navigating the jungle without a compass.
    ‘Reporter?’ Her hand curled up her chest to wrap around her throat, where her pulse beat erratically. ‘The man outside my flat? You found him?’
    ‘ Sí. Not a figment of my imagination after all.’
    She sucked her bottom lip into her mouth. ‘Did he take pictures?’
    ‘Yes. I destroyed them.’
    Her eyes turned stormy, frantic. ‘This is what it’s going to be like. I’m going to be watched. Stared at. Photographed. Basically put under the microscope.’ Her words trailed to a panicked whisper.
    A coil of unease snaked through his guts. That was the problem, he realised. Without camouflage, with her identity known, she couldn’t hide. Neither from the paparazzi nor in a ballroom full to bursting with people.
    Bracing himself for landing, he waited for the inevitable crash.
    ‘I can’t do it, Lucas. I’m sorry,’ she said, shaking her head, her amber eyes brimming with tears. Tears that tore at his heart. ‘You have to turn this plane around and take me home.’
    Lucas rejected the imminent threat of a memory ready to suck him under. ‘Impossible. I cannot. It is too late.’
    He had to get her home. Her true home. Not some dingy flat in central London. She needed to be with her family, surrounded by the dense, protective barrier of the palace walls. Where she could finally do her duty and take responsibility for that part of her life.
    Long fingers gripped his forearm, bit into his flesh, frenzied...wild. ‘You can do anything you want to, Lucas. I know that now.’
    ‘No, I—’ He broke off, steely dread making his limbs feel heavy as he sank down, down, suffocating under the sudden image of another time, another place, another woman. Begging him to hide her, desperate fear in her eyes for what was to come.
    A woman who hid from the world while vulnerability ruled her every waking moment.
    The truth slammed into him.
    This was the real Claudia Verbault. She too hid her tender vulnerabilities, her secrets from the world—just as his mother had. A woman who’d needed him. A woman he’d failed.
    ‘Please. I’m begging you, Lucas. Take me home.’
    * * *
    Claudia was way past the point of no return. Lucas had been so distracting she’d never even given herself time to consider what arriving in Arunthia would feel like. Now she knew. It felt as if the world was about to quake, slash open to form a gigantic crater and swallow her whole.
    Buried deep, her memories began to scramble to the surface, hitting her with one deft punch after another.
    It was quite possible that at the back of her mind she’d hoped her parents wanted to see her again so desperately they would do anything. Like send a towering brute to give her three and a half million pounds to make her happy. She was such a fool. They wanted Claudine the Princess, and she was anything but. She wasn’t ready. Nowhere near ready. She wanted to go home and wrap herself in a warm cocoon. To think of work—the only thing she knew, the only thing she was good at. To be alone and safe. Just for a little while longer.
    The