Virgin Princess's Marriage Debt
Autore
Pippa Roscoe
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HarlequinPROLOGUE
THEO LOOKED AT his watch again. She was late. This wasn’t the first time they’d snuck out of the impossibly expensive Swiss boarding school at night, but this time felt different. She’d said that she had a surprise for him and he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what that might have been.
Knowing Sofia, it could be anything. She was like that. Impulsive, reckless, often secretive...and most definitely alluring. It had taken Theo a good long while to believe that she wasn’t like the other kids at this school. This school that he hated.
He wasn’t naïve. He knew attending a school this reputable was a thing he could not take for granted—even if at every single turn the other students tried to make him believe that he shouldn’t be there. It hadn’t taken him long to realise that he was not wanted, the poor illegitimate scholarship kid polluting their air. He almost shrugged a shoulder at the train of his thoughts. Why should here be any different to the way he had been brought up in Greece, with his mother’s family?
The teachers were hardly any better than the students. If there was something to be blamed, it would be his fault. But they couldn’t deny his grades. At seventeen he already had scholarship offers at some of the world’s leading universities and there was nothing he’d do to jeopardise that. No, Theo Tersi was going to make damn sure that he never had to return to his mother’s family vineyards in the Peloponnese. He would be a banker, something in finance. He wanted an office, like his mother’s current employer who had paid for his education here. He would never scrabble around in the dust like his uncles and cousins—the ones who had taunted him since his birth. So, no. He wouldn’t fight back against the bullies here. He couldn’t. Not without risking everything he’d worked so hard for. Because he wanted more. For his mother, for himself. He wanted never to feel the sting of rejection and shame and hunger... And once he got out of this school, once he finished university, he would make sure that no one would taunt him again.
He looked again at his watch, the round white face gleaming in the moonlight. Where was she? Sofia was usually already waiting for him. He looked around. The night seemed almost unnaturally still, as if it were holding its breath, as if in expectation...
And he felt it too. That anticipation, the moment when he would see Sofia emerging from whatever shrub she was hiding behind. He still had to pinch himself sometimes. Never quite sure if he could really believe that someone like her would really be interested in someone like him. But tonight...he was going to tell her. Tell her that he loved her. That he wanted her to be with him when he left for university...that he wanted the life they had often talked about having in the last six months. Because somehow she’d worked her way through the anger and distrust he’d first met her with, she’d broken down the barriers all the taunts and cruel tricks the other students had thrown his way.
She had been the one bright thing in his days at school over the last few months. For so long his life had simply been about him and his mother, doing whatever it took to get through the day. He’d hated how his mother was treated by her family...because of him, because of the father he’d never met, and never wanted to. The move from Greece to Switzerland had been a fresh start for them both—the opportunity at this school one almost unimaginable for a housekeeper and her son.
And no matter what people threw at him, Theo was determined to bide his time here, knowing that it would get him to where he wanted to be. But the moment he’d first seen Sofia...the way her oceanic blue eyes had sparkled with mischief, the way his heart had kicked and thrashed, as if for the first time, when her gaze collided with his he had found something more from life than just lessons and determination. And it had never stopped, that heart thumping. He felt that same way every single time he saw her.
She had this air about her, as if nothing bad could ever touch her. And it was addictive. He leant into it every chance he could get. But he worried about her, wanted to protect her from herself even. If the school prankster was caught pulling another stunt, the headmaster had been clear—they would be expelled. He doubted they’d ever guess it was the sweet, innocent-looking blonde angel she appeared to be. But he couldn’t deny that it was exactly that strange, thrilling combination of innocence and recklessness that had first drawn him to her.
He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but there was also a deep desperation within her. Some kind of urgency that called to him, to his feelings for her...his love. She hadn’t said much about her family, dropping little breadcrumbs of information about a loving but strict home that stifled the freedom Sofia loved so much. It certainly didn’t sound like something that he would run from. But there would be time to uncover the secrets she held. There would be the rest of their lives.
That he was another of her secrets, he hated... It came far too close to the way he thought his father must have felt in order to flee from their village the same night of his birth. As if there was something about Theo that was shameful or embarrassing somehow.
A noise in the bushes off to his left startled him, his heart racing, knowing that it wouldn’t settle until he saw her.
‘Tersi. I was told I’d find you here.’
Instead of Sofia’s softly accented Iondorran tones, fear sliced through his high hopes as the voice of his headmaster cut into the night.
He didn’t move. Not a muscle. His heart dropped, sickness and nausea an instant reaction to being caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. But greater than that was his concern for Sofia.
‘What’s going on?’ Theo ventured to the man who had never liked him.
‘What’s going on is that I now have my prankster. Did you really think that I would allow my car, my car, to be put onto the roof of the sports hall and take no action?’
Theo was shaking his head. ‘I don’t know anything about that, sir, honestly.’
The grim look of determination on the older man’s face told Theo that he wasn’t believed. Not for a second. Panic began to set in then.
‘Where’s Sofia?’
‘The princess has returned to Iondorra.’
‘Princess? What are you talking about?’ Theo demanded, any hesitation overruled by his confusion.
‘She didn’t tell you?’
‘Tell me what? Sir, please—’
‘Did you really think that a princess would be interested in...?’
The man must have seen the look on Theo’s face, the one he knew had descended as quickly as the fury had whipped within his chest. If there was even a moment of pity, or hesitation from the headmaster, Theo didn’t see it.
‘Well, it’s done. She’s gone. And you, skulking around in the shadows waiting to see the effect of your handiwork, will regret the day you pulled this last prank.’
‘Mr Templeton, I didn’t do anything to your car,’ Theo said, desperately trying to hold on to his temper.
‘No? Then why is your school scarf wedged underneath the wheel arch of my Mini Cooper?’
‘I have no—’
Horror hit Theo hard and fast. The last time he’d seen his scarf he had been looping it around Sofia’s neck as she shivered in the cold winter’s sun. Sofia had lied to him? She was a princess? It was impossible. But as Theo was marched back to the headmaster’s office, his quick mind ran over the images that shifted like a kaleidoscope in his memory. Every interaction, every conversation, every kiss and his stomach turned. Each memory played to the sound of taunts he had never risen to. The cries and jibes of students belittling him for his humble beginnings—ones he had taken because this school had been his ticket out. His way to rise up, no matter what people said or did. But Sofia? She was the one who had wanted to keep their relationship a secret. She was the only one who had known where he would be that night. She was the one who had said she had a surprise for him. She was the one who had been pulling the pranks all this time, and had finally left his scarf at the site of the latest one. Had it all been a ruse? Had she spent the last six months priming him to be the patsy? The fall guy to take the blame for her pranks? Was that why he’d doubted her in the beginning, because somewhere deep down he had known it was all lies? Had she really been the cruellest of them all, to make him fall in love with her, when he should have known better?
He was going to be expelled. He was going to lose everything. Because of her.
