Scandal

2019, March 4th

Caines, Terres Somnia (Zoey)

Yesterday my world came together at last. Aaron looked upon me as though nothing and no one could take him from me and regardless of all the terrible things happening in the world, I could not help being happy. I was a different person. He had opened up my heart and not just for himself, but for everyone around me.

I would mend fences with the duke, if only for the sake of the wedding. My new life has given me, among other things, a brother and a best friend.

Bart held my hand while I stumbled through every situation, good or bad, since I reached Caines. I wanted to be useful to him. I knew that this marriage would finally remove the burden of the Arden claim to the throne from Bart's shoulders.

Knowing this made me all the happier that things had worked out for Aaron and I, because marriage was a sacred thing. This union had the power to change many people's lives, but would define mine and Aaron's.

Lying on my bed, getting ready to call my mother, how was I to know that my life was about to change again? As my head hovered over the red roses Aaron had given me yesterday, I smiled my last happy smile for a while.

Bart burst into my room, shut the laptop and grabbed my phone right out of my hands.

"Hey," I complained. "I was just about to call my mom."

Those busy, ever problem-solving eyes of Bart's gave way to something unsettling.

"Pack for a few days. I have to get you out of here."

He was stern and his tone, though always somewhat imposing, held an urgency to it. I grabbed at his sleeve.

"What is it? What's wrong Bart?"

"Now Zo," he yelled, grabbing the remote to close the curtains.

I jumped up and did as I was told. As I started packing, George's footsteps could be heard marching in the hallway leading to the door of my room.

"What is this?" the duke boomed when he reached me.

George shoved his tablet into my hands, livid. I looked down at the headline.

Heated Elevator Kiss Between Prince Aaron and His Intended.

Dumbstruck, I started scrolling down frantically. Aaron and I had been careful not to be spotted whenever we were together. This couldn't be.

How could I have been so negligent? This was sure to stir up quite a bit of trouble. No wonder Bart and George were enraged. I had embarrassed them.

Then I saw it and suddenly I understood. When next I knew, I felt Bart's thumbs on my cheeks and heard the whoosh of a sigh leave his body.

"We have to go, Zo," Bart said, more gently this time.

George was up in arms. "Go? After causing such an uproar you would have her run off somewhere? She must issue a public apology for making such a spectacle—"

"She must do nothing," Bart interrupted.

Bart spoke firmly, in a tone he did not usually reserve for our father.

Realisation dawned on me. Bart wanted to buy me some time. He must know that I would not get it here. My brother knew me well. It was all over for Aaron and I, and he would not let me be persuaded otherwise. Not twice. Not when he had gone against his instincts the first time and allowed us both to be swayed. Back and forth George and Bart went about what to do. I couldn't move. Has Aaron really done this? On the night of our engagement? All I could do was fall apart. Again and again, it hit me what he had done, and I wished I could go back to being blissfully unaware.

"We're leaving. Forgive me, father," Bart said in parting, having finished the packing.

"I cannot understand you. This isn't like you at all. They are to be wed. It's the 21st century. Certainly, it may cause some embarrassment, but the people will understand. You are being too protective."

"If you do think so, then you must really not understand. She will be safe; this I promise you."

Bart took my hand and led me through the hallways I had at last become accustomed to. Down the staircase that seemed endless and past Duchess Arden, who had no doubt come to the same conclusion George had. There was no time. We would reveal the truth to them later, or someone surely would, but right now, we had to go.

Elsewhere in Caines (James)

I knew the whole of it without need of confirmation. James Beaumont was such a sort of man. Though I could hardly predict how people would behave, I was not often surprised by them.

With eyes so green they put forests to shame, jet black hair as soft as silk, a body that seemed made to look good in anything and a chiselled face curved and sharp in all the right places, such that it was difficult not to stare, I was more than handsome.

It was no wonder I was well liked, despite not liking many people and making no effort to hide it.

I could afford this luxury, as corporations from around the world knocked on my door in want of doing some or other business with Copia. Famed for being a separate entity from the crown, the city of Copia's people wanted for nothing. What we could not make ourselves, we imported. That was the extent to which Copia had allowed anything or anyone past its borders in the last five years.

Now 26, I had not long been a duke when my mother, Lady Cassandra Beaumont, became rather adamant that I marry. To her delight, I had at last agreed.

I had at last allowed myself to be confident that I might now have Lady Emily Maine as my wife and we (even with her father needing much persuasion) had at last, after seven years of friendship, gotten engaged. And this, I had convinced himself, was my due. This much I might expect from life. I was now a duke, her family's equal, and my rival had proposed to another woman. I thought this meant that we were in the clear. That I might at last love whomever I wanted. I was wrong.

As I stared at the monitor, scrutinising the photograph every noble in Terres Somnia had no doubt gawked at hours earlier when the news broke, I felt my heart break one more time.

I would know her anywhere. Caught in a compromising, passionate, crude kiss with her arms wrapped around the betrothed Prince Aaron. It was nighttime. Aaron's body and dishevelled clothes covered hers and the lighting in the elevator was poor. This was the probable reason that the writer of the article had assumed that Emily was Aaron's fiancée, Lady Zoey Arden.

Both women being blonde and it having been a masquerade ball, it wasn’t such a stretch. Besides, who could’ve imagined that they would do something so stupid in public at Aaron's engagement party?