Up for Heir - Stella Starling Page 0,2

Highness,” Hugo said, pulling out his pocket notebook and flipping through it rapidly. “Now, about the library appearance this afternoon…”

Leo tuned Hugo out as he droned on, dressing himself quickly. Unsurprisingly, he wasn’t going to get any help with the Treble issue—he never did—and as for his civic duty at the library, he honestly didn’t care… not any more than he’d cared about the rumors that had been circulating about the upcoming Royal Ball.

Hadn’t cared about the rumors before last night, that was.

Leo ground his teeth together, then forced himself to relax. Getting worked up about it wasn’t doing any favors for his lingering hangover. The ball was just a month away, and it had the whole country in a titter. Invitations were more coveted than the Crown Jewels, and given that the ball was ostensibly a celebration of Rosavia’s five-hundredth anniversary—an official state event—Leo and his brothers would all be required to attend in those damn rose-covered trousers.

He paused in the act of buttoning up his shirt to scowl down at Treble again. She was oh-so-innocently playing with the tassels that dangled off the bedding and pretending to ignore him now, the sly little pest. Why she shredded every bespoke piece of clothing she could get her claws on and yet never touched his formal state attire was beyond him. Clearly, she’d been trained by someone devious… which made no sense, since she belonged to Ben. Not only was his younger brother Benedict, eight years Leo’s junior and the fourth-born prince, supremely lazy—he could never be fussed to make an effort for anything, and, despite technically holding rank in the Army, turning the little ball of adorable fluff into a covert, cunningly disguised attack cat was certainly beyond him—but he hated the ridiculous rose trousers as much as Leo did.

The trousers were, however, par for the course at state events… as were the rumors that the real reason for the ball would be the long-awaited announcement of the crown prince’s engagement, and the resulting rabid curiosity and rampant speculation about the identity of Leo’s supposed fiancée.

Leo had been putting up with similar rumors and speculation for his entire adult life, and they’d only ramped up after he’d realized just how well suited his next-in-line brother was to the throne and taken that as implicit permission to shrug off as many of his responsibilities as possible.

It wasn’t that Leo didn’t care about Rosavia, because he did, it was just that the way Sander constantly stepped up and so neatly filled the shoes of royal responsibility that had always felt far too tight on Leo’s feet seemed serendipitous. Fated. Almost ordained. Living up to the bad-boy image that the press so loved to label Leo with was a much better fit, as far as he was concerned…. even if, at thirty, a night like the last one was starting to feel like a bit much.

Leo grimaced, pinching the bridge of his nose. Why was it that being seen as the “rebel bad-boy prince” seemed to make the entire country want to marry him off even more? Wasn’t it obvious to everyone that he would be shit at it? That settling down with just one woman for the rest of his life would chafe just as much as the idea of one day assuming the crown?

The answer to that was clearly a resounding no, given that, this time, the king and queen had confirmed that the rumors about his impending doom—well, his impending engagement, if one wanted to be diplomatic about it—were true.

“Let me fetch you some aspirin, Your Highness,” Hugo said, not unsympathetically.

“Fine,” Leo snapped, even though aspirin wasn’t going to get him out of fulfilling the duty he’d literally been born for. Then, slightly more graciously since the end of Leo’s freedom wasn’t Hugo’s fault, after all, he added a begrudging, “Thank you.”

He sank down onto one of the silk-upholstered chairs near the armoire that held his hated tie collection, idly tracing the ubiquitous rose pattern on the fabric with one finger while he considered his options. Was there actually any point in talking to the king and queen and trying to get out of whatever this afternoon’s appearance was? The unquenchably rebellious part of Leo that had always insisted in marching to his own drum was screaming yes, but the silent assessment Hugo had made about Leo’s chances might, in this instance, be more correct.

Leo needed to pick his battles, and if there was one thing he’d learned in