Escape from the Obstinate Prince ✓

Chapter 8

Mean words can be a form of flirtation.

"Aren't you coming down, Princess?" Jack was over the edge of the boat, his feet resting on the rope ladder and his arms on the ship's side.

Ami did her best not to glare at his insolence. "Yes, but I'm waiting for you to get down and avert your eyes. I know that we're going to be married, but as of right now, we are not. So if you would kindly go down and not look."

"Why?" Jack hoisted himself up a little higher and leaned close to Ami. "Because if I recall correctly, which I do, you care nothing for being proper as I caught you," he got even closer and lowered his voice so passersbys wouldn't hear him, "kissing a strange sailor near the privy."

Anger flared through Ami. "Look here, Jacques, it was Lars who kissed me! Not the other way around! And you apparently don't care about being proper either, as you neither sent a letter informing me when you'd be here and you didn't bring any guards to protect me from your disgusting self. I don't think you should be reprimanding me, especially since you are not my mother, father or husband!"

The simple smirk on Jack's face left and contempt clouded it. "Listen, Andromeda Aurora Amélia, you are not here to make eyes at other men! You are going to marry me, not them, and I expect you to act in such a manner!"

Ami was breathing hard through her nose and her jaw was clenched. She wished she could hit him, strike him down with a stick or something! She looked down at her hands before looking at Jack and placing her hands on his shoulders. She pushed as hard as she could so that he would fall off the edge of the ship and down into the water below.

He flailed for a moment, trying to grasp the edge of the ship, the rope, or something, but failed in doing so, resulting in him cascading into the salty sea.

Ami quickly hopped over the ship's railing and climbed down the rope and into the small boat that would take her to shore.

Meanwhile two of the men in the boat tried to find Jack who had yet to surface. He finally came up sputtering like how she expected he would; helpless.

Jack swam towards the boat and the men helped him into the boat, his clothes drenching the boat with water. "What were you thinking?" he hissed. "I could have died!"

"Perhaps it never crossed your mind that maybe I wanted you to die!" Ami fizzed quietly so the others in the boat wouldn't hear.

Jack took hold of Ami's arm and dragged her to the end of the boat. "Excuse us," Jack forced the rowing men to move, "the Princess and I need to have a little talk." he waited for the sailor to leave before his top blew. "I know you don't like me and I don't like you, so can you just stop? I don't have time for your - your shenanigans!"

Ami rolled her eyes. "If you weren't so pig headed I wouldn't have pushed you!"

He glared. "I was not being pig headed!"

"You were too!" she crossed her arms and plunked down on the wooden seat, purposely not looking at him, implying that the conversation was over.

Jack's fingers twitched and he sat down in the boat on the same wooden plank as her, but facing the opposite direction. "You will regret that you ever pushed me into the water, Princess."

"I really don't think I will." she shrugged. "When a girl meets someone as annoying as you, she won't regret pushing him into the sea."

She saw his teeth clench. "When a man meets a snobby girl such as you, he can't help but antagonize her."

She turned sideways very quickly. "Ah-hah! So you admit to antagonizing me! I shall write my parents first thing in the morning and tell them that the Prince is purposely antagonizing me, trying to get me to go home, and so I should just not even bother to stay in Rhone after we're married, and instead just go back where I came from to please my husband." she smiled brightly at him.