The Princess and the Duke (4 page)

“Why?”

“Because we’ve been out here for some time now.”

“Afraid it’ll mar your reputation as the immovable, untouchable colonel?”

“I’m afraid George Valdosta will fall to the ground, prostrate in grief that you’re out of sight, and he’ll be trampled to death by dancers.”

“It always surprises me that you’ve a sense of humor lurking beneath your stony exterior, Colonel Prescott.”

She didn’t have a clue what lurked beneath his exterior. It was just as well. “Gossip aside, the papers tomorrow morning will be filled with accounts of the wedding.”

“This morning,” she corrected. “It’s past midnight.”

“And the princess really should be in bed.”

“I’m not eight, Colonel. I’m twenty-eight.” She was amused. Amused and drowsy and nearly boneless against him. “What is this preoccupation you have with my sleep habits?”

“Only your welfare.”

She shook her head slightly, then tilted it to look
at him. “My father has always said you are a man of honor.”

That was debatable, Pierce thought. Where was honor when the only reason he was out on this terrace with Meredith was that he didn’t seem to have the fortitude to tear himself away?

“The speeches were lovely, don’t you think?”

“Speeches?”

“During the dinner. I thought my mother would nearly faint when the King toasted the memory of my uncle. They didn’t like one another much, you know.”

She was scrambling his brains. “His Majesty and Edwin?”

“Yes.”

His fingers flexed against her waist. Felt the seductive flare of her hips beneath the silk that wrapped her torso snugly, only to flare out in luxurious folds around her knees. “Edwin seems on your mind today.”

She lifted her shoulder, drawing his bedeviled gaze to the ivory skin left bare to the moonlight. “He seemed on the minds of many,” she said easily. “Isn’t that what families do when they gather together for weddings and christenings and funerals and such? Talk about the rest of the family? Those present and those lost?”

“Your family is a far cry from the typical.”

“Typical or not, I thought the toast was nice.”

“For the Queen’s sake,” Pierce agreed.

Her head tilted again, this time brushing against the arm he’d slid behind her shoulders. Was it his imagination that she was looking at his mouth? “Did you
know,” she said softly, “that you get this hard look around your mouth whenever you say my uncle’s name?”

“No.”

“At least you don’t deny it,” she said.

“As I have no mirror on hand to test your theory, I’ll have to take your word for it.”

“’Tis more than a theory, Colonel.” Her fingers flitted over his jaw. His cheek. “Right there,” she whispered. “You get this fierce-looking crease in your cheek. Why is that?”

He caught her fingers in his, pulling them from his face. He didn’t want Meredith pressing her lovely, aristocratic nose into his feelings, or lack of them, regarding Edwin.

Her fingers flexed against his, and he settled her hand safely on his shoulder once more. “So proper,” she murmured.

If she only knew.
“I’ll take you inside.”

She sighed faintly. “Of course.” She turned away, and only through sheer will did he let go of her as if nothing untoward had been running through his mind. “Oh. My shoes.” She looked at the ground where it was black as pitch.

Pierce knelt and felt around for the shoes until he found them. “Give me your foot.”

“What every woman dreams of hearing,” she murmured. But he heard the rustle of silk and tormented himself with images of her lifting it.

Then her foot butted his thigh. “Sorry,” she said on a soft laugh.

“Admit it. You’ve wanted to kick me since you were ten.”

She giggled.

Definitely too much champagne,
he thought as he reached for her foot. Slowly slid the shoe into place. Her ankle felt delicate. Narrow.

“Are you certain that isn’t a glass slipper there?”

He took his hand away from her ankle, aware that his hold was too lingering, and rapidly slid the other shoe on for her. “You’ve no need for fairy godmothers or glass slippers. You’re already a princess.”

“One without a prince,” she said. Then laughed lightly, as if her voice hadn’t sounded utterly melancholy. “Thank you for playing shoe man, Colonel. I’ll just have to give away this pair, I think. Beautiful as they are, they’ve been torturing my toes the entire day.”

“Your Royal Highness.”

She turned on her heel so abruptly she swayed, and he put a steadying hand on her back. Was she as startled by the appearance of Lady Gwendolyn behind her as he’d been?

“Yes?”

“Your father is asking for you.”

Meredith nodded. “Of course. Thank you.” She looked over her shoulder at Pierce. “Colonel. The dance was…delightful. If I don’t see you before you leave, I hope you’ll have a safe trip home.”

“Thank you.”

With a sweep of her skirt, Meredith glided toward the terrace doors. As she neared, the light haloed around her, glinting off her hair, her dress, her ivory skin.

Pierce was glad for the relative darkness in which he stood. Lady Gwendolyn studied him silently for a
moment. It had been a lot of years since he’d gone to Gwendolyn Corbin on the occasion of her husband’s funeral to express his condolences at her loss, only to end up having to lie to the young woman when—tears flooding her lovely blue eyes—she’d asked him the most natural of questions. What her husband’s last words had been.

Pierce still felt awkward in her presence.

The woman, with no smile whatsoever on her classically beautiful face, nodded briefly. “Good night, Your Grace.” Then she turned and glided away.

Pierce turned around and stared over the wall into the night, his hands tight on the stone ledge. He hated the noble title.

There was nothing noble about him. Nothing at all.

He stood there, drawing in the increasingly crisp, sea-scented air, until his tension abated. Until he could be sure he wouldn’t betray himself when he went into the ballroom. Only then did he turn and follow the women’s path inside.

He immediately noticed Meredith in conversation with her father. She was smiling as she greeted the people in the group surrounding the King, but Pierce could see how tired she was.

If King Morgan were any kind of father, he’d have seen it, too. But the man standing beside Meredith wasn’t any type of father. Not to Meredith. Nor to anyone else.

Because the man standing beside Meredith, foisting her off into dancing with one of the men, was not her father, King Morgan of Penwyck.

It was Morgan’s twin brother, Broderick.

And Pierce was one of a very small handful of people in the country who knew it.

A
s he circled the grand ballroom, Pierce’s attention kept straying to Meredith. She was being passed from one gentleman to the next, barely managing two minutes of dance between the lot of them.

His hands curled. It was nearing two in the morning. She was tipsy on champagne and nerves. It was none of his business with whom she danced away the hours.

She’d always been out of his reach. Never more so than now.

Even the King’s family didn’t know about the health crisis that had necessitated bringing in Broderick to act as king.

And it was
that
secret, right now, that ate most at Pierce’s conscience. He wanted to go onto that dance floor and rescue Meredith with her aching feet and
her tired body from the demands of her position in the royal family.

But she
was
out of his reach. She always had been. She always would be. Instead of heading toward the exit, Pierce headed toward the King. He was aware of the cold expression in Broderick’s eyes as he joined the small group of men cloistered around him. But he didn’t let Broderick’s expression stop him.

“Your Majesty,” he greeted respectfully. “Could we have a word?”

Broderick’s lips thinned. He waved off his crowd and, though nobody saw the reluctance but Pierce, walked with him to the terrace, then into the rose garden, passing the guard who quietly assured Pierce that the area was secure. “Spending a lot of time out of doors, Prescott,” Broderick said smoothly. “Is the moon full?”

“If you’re implying I’m a wolf under this tux, you’d be right.” Pierce didn’t like Broderick. He liked lying about this business even less. It wasn’t the first lie he’d kept secret from the rest of the royal family, but this one sat more heavily on his conscience than the other.

Probably because he was worried about the true King.

Morgan should have come out of his coma by now, yet he hadn’t. And the doctors who were privy to the truth were noticeably concerned. They were even now covertly consulting the Centers for Disease Control in the United States. Megan’s bout with encephalitis had resolved extremely rapidly. The King’s case, however, seemed another kettle of fish entirely.

Lies, Pierce thought as he watched Broderick pluck a fat bloom from a laden rosebush. He hated lies.

The last situation had been unavoidable, and even ten years later, Pierce knew he’d undoubtedly take the same actions. Now, however, this game of make-believe could make or break the delicate negotiations involved in the alliances that King Morgan had been so determined to see to fruition.

“Did you add to the guest list?” he finally asked.

Broderick barely spared him a look. “My dear Prescott, is that not the right of any father of the bride?”

“Don’t mess with me, sir.”

Broderick turned on Pierce, smiling coldly. And in that coldness, his startling resemblance to his twin brother was lost. “And don’t mess with me, old boy. I didn’t have to agree to this charade of yours, after all. The high and mighty RET. My brother’s pet team. I could have told you all to go to hell.”

The Royal Elite Team was far more than the King’s pet, and Broderick knew it. They were a group of four men, personally selected by King Morgan, to protect and serve every interest of Penwyck. If there were a modern-day musketeer, Pierce figured his associates of the RET and he would be it. Though their efforts these days rarely involved wielding the sword themselves.

He didn’t rise to Broderick’s taunt. “You could have refused. You didn’t.”

“It’s to Penwyck’s advantage that I was able to step into my sainted brother’s shoes,” Broderick said. His fingers slowly plucked the petals from the rose.

“We didn’t expect the charade to have to continue
beyond a few days. A week.” Nobody had expected the King to be indisposed for so long a time. It had them all worried.

Broderick nodded slowly, for once exhibiting a small portion of concern. “Yet my brother hasn’t rallied as expected. A terrible thing. Lying there in a coma. The man didn’t even have an opportunity to name his successor. To choose between his twin sons the way my parents had to choose between Morgan and me.”

And you hated your parents for the choice they made, didn’t you, old boy?
Pierce kept the thought to himself. Broderick had been living in relative seclusion on Majorco, thoroughly estranged from his brother, for so many years that few people even remembered his existence, but he had to admit that, so far, Broderick had been doing an admirable job of taking his brother’s place.

None of which mitigated Pierce’s concern for the King, who lay in that damnably prolonged coma, secreted from all but the most necessary and trusted of staff.

And whether or not Pierce liked it, Broderick was a member of the royal family. “Your Royal Highness—”

“Majesty,” Broderick snapped. “You will address me as you address the King, or you will not address me at all. Is that clear?”

Pierce stepped close to the King, keeping his voice low. “And you will not overstep yourself so much as an inch, or
we
will deal appropriately with you. Is that clear?”

Broderick suddenly smiled and stepped back,
breaking the tension between them. “Relax, Prescott. I swear, neither you nor Monteque have any idea how to have fun. The good admiral dogged my footsteps for most of the night before he was—hallelujah—called away.”

Admiral Harrison Monteque was the unofficial leader of the four-man Royal Elite Team. And Pierce knew Harrison was about as trusting of Broderick as he was. “Adding guests that were never run by my team is hardly what I’d describe as having fun. Yet that’s what you did, isn’t it?”

Broderick shrugged. “So, I was having a bit of fun at the family’s expense. Everyone loves a party, Prescott. What’s a few dozen people more or less?”

“It’s a few dozen people who haven’t been run through security,” Pierce said flatly. “There is no excuse for putting any member of the Penwycks at risk, yet you did just that.”

Broderick sighed heavily. “All right. All right. Relax. Everyone is safe and my…friends have nearly all departed.”

There was little Pierce could do about it without tipping his hand, and Broderick knew that. “How are things going in the private quarters? Anyone suspicious?” If Meredith had noticed anything amiss, he probably would have known by now. She was nothing if not excruciatingly honest.

He wished he were the kind of man who could be just as candid. Who could be worthy of a woman like her. But he wasn’t.

He hadn’t been for ten long years.

“Not even the Queen herself when I slipped into her bed last night has shown suspicion.”

Pierce’s stomach twisted, and his hands curled into fists. “You gave your word you would not—”

“Relax. You have no sense of humor, Prescott.”

“Not when it comes to the safety of the King or his family,” Pierce agreed flatly.

Broderick tossed aside the ruined rose. “My brother is fool enough to have separate chambers from his beautiful wife. As I’m walking in his shoes, it appears I must be the fool, as well. Now, is that all you came to discuss? To chastise me for adding a few unimportant guests?”

Pierce watched Broderick through narrowed eyes. He hated the fact that the charade had gone on this long. He particularly hated the fact that, as it had gone on this long, telling the Queen the truth had become a delicate problem. The woman would rightfully be appalled at what had been kept from her.

“Don’t forget the meeting tomorrow morning with Cole Everson and Admiral Monteque,” he said.

“It’s on my schedule,” Broderick assured smoothly.

Still, Pierce didn’t trust him. Only one other time had Broderick come through for his twin brother. But that time had saved too many lives to be discounted, so Pierce and the rest of the RET were banking on that speck of familial loyalty to continue reigning within the black sheep of the Penwyck clan. “We’ll be going over some points in the signing of the alliances,” he said.

“Yes, yes.” Clearly bored with the subject, Broderick started toward the ballroom. As soon as he passed the silent guard, Pierce knew he’d have to treat the man with all the respect due the King.

It stuck in his craw, having to do so.

King Morgan was deserving of every bit of respect he was shown. He’d earned it through his vision, his dedication, his love for his country and its people.

Broderick had earned nothing.

But he was doing them a favor, at least until the alliances so desired by King Morgan were a fact and not a dream, and it was incumbent upon Pierce to continue the odd dance in which the RET and Broderick were engaged. The one thing King Morgan had been determined to accomplish was the signing of the alliances. If the King were temporarily incapacitated, then the RET would accomplish it in the King’s stead. It was that simple.

And that complicated, Pierce thought grimly, as he followed Broderick into the ballroom where Meredith was still dancing and chatting and generally acting the gracious hostess. Anastasia and Owen were nowhere in sight, and when he asked, he learned they’d retired.

There was no basis for his reluctance to leave Meredith there. The guards were still at their posts. It may well have been heading toward dawn, but until the last guest departed or was ensconced in one of the guest rooms of the palace, the guards would remain.

Nevertheless, Pierce hung around for a while longer, sipping a coffee he’d finagled from one of the maids, and wondered how on God’s green earth people could party for so long, so late. George Valdosta, Pierce noticed, was slumped in a chair, a squat tumbler of liquor in front of him. His eyes never left Meredith.

Pierce felt a small measure of sympathy for the
man. It was all he could do to keep from openly staring at her.

Another hour slowly ticked by. Guests departed. The King retired. The band, the third one of the night, had settled into one long bluesy run after another. Heavy on bass and moaning sax, it seemed fitting for the late hour when the few remaining couples clung to each other on the dance floor, barely making any attempt at dancing.

No different than the kind of dancing he and Meredith had done on the terrace, he thought with dark humor.

Meredith was still on her feet. Surrounded, typically.

Pierce wondered how anyone could not see the weariness in her face. He wondered how she kept on. But then, she was a Penwyck. And the family was notorious for always continuing.

He was on his third cup of coffee when she finally extricated herself from the persistent guests. She walked by where he sat among a trio of decorative potted trees, then stopped and turned. “You’re still here.”

“You’re still playing hostess.” She looked like perfection, but he could see her underlying pallor. The woman was exhausted. She had been for several hours. Of course it was worse now.

“Someone needs to play hostess, don’t you think?”

“I think the people who are still here show remarkably poor manners.”

“You’re still here.”

“As I said.” He smiled faintly and drained the rest
of the coffee from his cup. It had long gone cold. “Tell the band to stop wailing, and the hangers-on will get the message quickly enough.”

She tilted her head a little, her clear green eyes curious. “Why
are
you still here, Colonel?”

“Because you’re still playing hostess.” He attributed his blunt honesty to the absurdly late hour. Better that than the fact that he’d been watching every male who came within her vicinity with some sort of caged antagonism. He hardly liked admitting it to himself.

She moistened her lips, seeming to absorb that. If she’d been tipsy earlier, now she seemed stone sober. “As it happens, I was taking my leave. Satisfied?”

Hardly. “Yes.”

She smiled faintly. “Well, then. It was nice of you to share the occasion with us, Colonel.”

He rose, and she smoothly took a step back. Putting distance between them. “Is that what you’ve been telling everyone in the room?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Her lips were a little less soft looking. “Good night, Colonel. Have a safe trip home.” She started for the rear corner of the ballroom where Pierce knew there was a nearly invisible door that led to an enclosed walkway from the public buildings to the private family quarters. But she stopped short and headed instead for one of the terrace doors.

Pierce’s gaze drifted over George, who’d been on the pathway to the interior exit. When Meredith took the other route, disappearing outside, George popped up like an eager marionette and hurried after her. With no particular reason other than annoyance with
the other man for not giving it a rest, Pierce followed George.

They were a regular parade.

Well beyond the drift of the blues band, Pierce could easily hear the click of Meredith’s heels against the footpath leading toward the formal gardens. He heard the low timbre of George’s voice. And then silence.

The back of his neck prickled, and he soundlessly continued forward. Rounding the yew maze in just enough time to see Meredith tugging her arm from George’s grip. In just enough time to see George grab her again, quickly, trying to pull her closer.

Meredith wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of the situation. Laugh, or kick George Valdosta in the leg. She wriggled away from him. “George, you’ve had too much to drink.”

Not so much that his rapid hands were slowed in the least, however, and her twisted sense of humor fled when his hands clamped on her arms. Too tight. Too eager. Too forward, as she had no desire whatsoever to have her arms clamped upon by George Valdosta regardless of how long they’d known one another. She pulled back as he pulled forward, and she was seriously considering that hard kick when she heard the scrape of a shoe. And a voice from the shadows near the maze.

“Darling, I got here as quickly as I could. Hullo, George. Better see to your car,” he suggested. “The guards are getting ready to secure the gates for the night.”

She managed to keep her jaw from hanging, just, as Pierce strolled into the dim light afforded by the
late moon. George’s hands fell away in the moment before Pierce closed his, warm and steady, over her shoulders and drew her against him, heading toward the private quarters as if he’d been doing it every day of his adult life.