One

      “She’s the perfect choice for you,” Gabriel Alessandro’s brother joked, nudging his shoulder.

      The two princes were standing at the edge of the dance floor watching their father, the king, sweep Gabriel’s future bride through a series of elegant turns while their mother concentrated on keeping her toes from beneath the prime minister’s clumsy feet.

      Gabriel released an audible sigh. With his future bride’s father building a high-tech manufacturing plant just outside the capital, Sherdana’s economy would receive the boost it badly needed. “Of course she is.”

      Lady Olivia Darcy, daughter of a wealthy British earl, was just a little too perfect. While she exuded poise and warmth in public, in private she never relaxed, never let down her guard. This hadn’t bothered him at all in the days leading up to their engagement. From the moment he’d begun looking for a wife he’d decided to listen to his head and not his heart. Past experience had demonstrated losing himself in passion led to nothing but heartache and disappointment.

      “Then why are you looking so grim?”

      Why indeed? Even though Gabriel didn’t have to pretend to be besotted with his fiancée in front of his brother, he wasn’t about to admit his regret that his personal life would have less passion and drama once he was married.