Finally, he ran a jerky hand through his hair, as if her incessant flirting was flustering him, and said, in a low voice, “I have archery first period.”

“Me too!” Jaya widened her eyes in mock surprise. “But I don’t know the first thing about archery. I’m a little worried about that class.” She crinkled her nose, partly to play the role of innocent ingenue and partly because it rankled her to lie about this. She was actually an incredible archer. Grey Emerson, on the other hand, was probably terrible. Just look at those gigantic hands. As if they could handle a bow and arrow with the gentle finesse the instruments demanded. But there was no point complaining now. She’d known the price when she’d enrolled in his archery class. “Can I sit with you?”

It hadn’t been hard to find out what classes Grey had. One phone call from Jaya in her dorm room, pretending to be the Duke of Westborough’s secretary to the administrative staff at St. Rosetta’s was all it had taken. She’d requested that the family’s dear friend, Jaya Rao, be placed in all the same classes as Grey Emerson, and since she’d been able to give them all of her identifying information, it had been rather simple.

“Sure,” Grey said gruffly, after a pause, looking up at Jaya from under his eyelashes. His blue eyes lit briefly on her rose necklace and then flitted away.

Jaya touched him lightly on his bare forearm. Wow. She hadn’t realized it was possible to have such a muscular forearm. “Thank you! That’s so nice. I’ll feel so much better having someone to guide me.”

Grey lifted his arm from under her hand to scratch at his chest, so her fingers were left suspended in midair. He couldn’t even conceal his dislike of the Rao family to endure some light flirting. No matter. She’d wear him down eventually. She had lots of practice being nice to people she hated and who hated her, thanks to her royal training. “Here’s my schedule,” she said, pulling it out of her backpack and setting it on the table between them. “I wonder if we have any other classes together.”

Jaya watched his eyes run down the piece of paper. “Huh. We’ll be together the entire semester. Every class.” He said it abruptly and kind of shiftily, as if he couldn’t quite make her out. “What’s your deal?” he asked after a pause.

Jaya raised her eyebrows. “I beg your pardon? My deal?”

He waved a hand impatiently. “Raos don’t like Emersons. Emersons hate Raos. So why are you being so nice? What’s your angle?”