Stay with me

✧Matchmaking ✧

Jane's eyes went wide before her brain even caught up with what she was seeing. Then her arms were around his waist and she was holding on like he might vanish if she let go, which, given everything, wasn't an unreasonable fear. He looked better than she remembered, more handsome, even, in a grey waistcoat that fit him too well, his blond hair doing the thing it always did when he'd been riding, tousled in exactly the way she'd once told him she liked. He'd been gone weeks. Germany, some diplomatic errand his father had dressed up as important. It had felt longer than weeks.

"When did you get back?" she asked, still not quite letting go.

"A week ago." He said it like an apology. "I haven't had the chance to come by. My father wanted me back immediately — no explanation, just orders."

She already knew what that meant. She'd known before he said it, honestly, the second she heard he'd been summoned home early. It was time for him to start acting like a prince instead of a person which, in Beaumont, meant it was time for him to marry a noblewoman he'd probably never met before the wedding invitations went out.

She felt her expression slip before she could stop it, and he noticed immediately, the way he always did. He straightened, something gentler moving across his face, and reached for her hands like they were the only steady thing in the room.

"Hey." His voice dropped, quiet and certain. "Look at me."

"It's time, isn't it?" Her voice wobbled despite every effort not to let it. "Time for you to be king."

"Jane, listen to me. Nothing's changed. We do this the way we always planned, we wait, and when it's over, we leave together. You have to trust me on this."

"Because I wasn't born into the right family?" The words cracked halfway through, tears building faster than she could blink them back. "Because some noblewoman with the right last name gets to stand next to you and I have to hide in the back of a crowd and pretend I don't know you?"

He didn't answer with words. He pulled her in instead, arms wrapping around her like he could physically hold the fear out of her, and she let herself sink into it, into the warmth of him, into the small, stupid hope that maybe this time the promise would actually hold.

"We're going to be okay, my love," he murmured against her hair. "I promise you that."

She wanted so badly to believe him. Most days, she almost did.

---

Across the city, in a room that couldn't have felt more different, Danica sat rigid at a long oak table while her parents hosted yet another gathering of local nobility — the kind of evening where wine flowed freely and futures got decided over dessert without anyone bothering to ask the person whose future it actually was. Her presence had been required, as it always was. The Earl and Countess Robbins were well-liked in Beaumont, close with the royal family, and endlessly aware of exactly how valuable that closeness was.

Her parents hadn't built their name by accident. They'd clawed it together, generation by generation, and they believed — genuinely, unshakably — that a family without wealth was a family already halfway to disappearing. Danielle had married well, married a noble, married exactly the kind of match their parents had always dreamed of. Now it was Danica's turn to complete the set.

And Danica felt like she was drowning in plain sight.

It wasn't that she didn't want love, didn't want a life, didn't want a ring on her finger someday. She did. Desperately, even. But not like this — not measured out like a business transaction, not tied to bloodlines and land and which family's name would look best stitched next to hers. She wanted something that had nothing to do with status. She wanted to actually *feel* something before she promised someone the rest of her life.

But nobody at that table cared what she wanted. To them she was still "little Dani," the girl with ribbons in her hair who needed her choices made for her, gently but firmly, for her own good. She'd spent years trying to prove she was more than that. It never seemed to land.

The pressure of it all sat on her chest like something physical. She needed air. She needed out. Staying in that house, in that role, felt like slowly disappearing in front of people who wouldn't even notice until she was gone.

She tuned the room out entirely, the voices around her blurring into a low, meaningless hum. She wound a piece of dark hair around one finger and stared at nothing, and didn't even register her father calling her name until his fist came down on the table.

"Danica." Sharp. Final. "I've been calling you for a full minute. What is it?"

"Nothing, Father. Sorry, I didn't hear you." She sat up fast, straightened her spine, caught her mother's silent, withering look from across the table.

"Duke Bruchet has offered his son for your hand." Her father said it like he was reading off a grocery list. "Do you accept?"

The table went quiet.

"No, Father. I don't know him. We've never so much as spoken. I can't agree to that." She lifted her teacup and took a slow sip, like her whole world hadn't just been laid out on a table in front of strangers.

The Duke's face went dark. "How dare you speak of my son that way. You haven't even met him, and you reject him outright? Insulting."

"With respect, my lord" — Danica's voice stayed level, polite, unbothered on the surface — "I didn't insult your son. I simply told the truth."

Her parents shifted in their seats. Under the table, Danielle's fists curled tight, her glare fixed on the Duke like she was one wrong word away from launching across the china.

"And who told you your opinion mattered?" the Duke snapped, voice climbing.

The air in the room went taut. Before Danica could open her mouth, her father's palm hit the table hard enough to rattle the glasses.

"That's enough, Duke Bruchet." His voice filled the room like thunder rolling in. "You will not disrespect my daughter under my own roof. The deal is off."

Dead silence.

The Duke blinked, caught completely off guard. Nobody turned him down. Not like this, not in front of an audience. He opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again — and found nothing worth saying.

"Very well." He rose stiffly, jaw tight. "I'll look forward to seeing what kind of wedding your daughter manages without my son." And with that, he swept out of the room, leaving a trail of stunned silence behind him.

Danica didn't stick around to see how the rest played out. She bolted for her room, heart hammering, and the second the door shut behind her she grabbed her sketchpad and let the pencil do what words never could.

Fashion was hers. The one thing in her life nobody else had picked out for her. She'd built her own small line from nothing, piece by piece, and she was determined to grow it — properly, in the U.S., far from oak tables and arranged futures. She drew what she dreamed and sold what she made, and it was the only thing that made any of this bearable.

A knock came at the door.

"Can I come in?" A voice she knew immediately.

Danica rolled her eyes, though a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth despite herself. "If you're here to lecture me, don't bother. I'm not in the mood."

"Wrong, actually." Danielle stepped inside and shut the door behind her. "I'm proud of you. I'm your big sister and we all love you. And I couldn't stand watching that man talk down to you like you were nothing."

Danica turned to face her, the smile finally breaking through. "Okay, but why are you *really* here? You don't show up with pep talks for no reason. You're either about to guilt-trip me into one of Mom and Dad's plans, which — for the record — still won't work."

Danielle laughed, delighted. "Look at you, reading me like a book. Okay, fine. What if I told you this plan is different? Mom and Dad didn't know how to bring it up themselves."

Danica's eyes narrowed. "Tell me what?"

Danielle's grin widened, mischief lighting up her whole face. "What I'm trying to say, little sis, is—are you ready to meet the royal family? For a bit of matchmakingggggg?"

"*What?!*" Danica shot up off the bed.