by Cara Colter
“Two strikes,” Lancaster muttered.
“Both entirely forgivable,” Ward said. “Do you think I could bother you for another for my hungry friend?”
Maddie brought back a plate of scones and Ward asked, “So it was you who was going to have a shop in New York City?”
“If I was, it was a long way in the future. Anyway, New York City is in my past now.” She needed to move on. She had just lectured Sophie about professionalism. There was no fraternizing with the customers!
She stood there, paralyzed.
“We visited briefly, before we went to California,” Ward volunteered. “This seems preferable to me, the little piece of America everyone knows exists, but that is hard to find. I work in community-based economies. I’d be interested to learn more about your town.”
She cocked her head at him. His intelligence and genuine interest was pulling at her. He was definitely a man she would love to sit down and have a conversation with.
And of course she was not going to give in to that temptation!
“I’d love to talk to you,” she said, and unfortunately, she meant it. “Maybe we’ll get together sometime.”
That part she did not mean at all!
“Can I get you something else?” she said quickly, a reminder to all involved what kind of relationship this was.
“Tea would be wonderful.”
She brought tea and more scones to their table, but thankfully it was opening time, so she could not linger. There was a surprising number of people coming into the café. The town appeared to be benefiting already from people arriving for tomorrow’s concert.
Was it possible this was going to work?
She didn’t have time to contemplate it for long. Her life became a whirlwind as Sophie remained in the kitchen. Kettle delivered the two men breakfast, but Maddie did not interact with them again until it was time to take their money at the till.
“You know how to make tea, too,” Ward said. “That’s a rare gift in this country!”
A small thing, not worthy of a blush, and yet there she was, blushing over tea! Or maybe it was the fact that his hand had brushed hers, and she had felt the jolt of his pure presence, the same way she had when his finger had rested, ever so briefly, on the pendant at her neck.
“That English granny again,” she said.
“Somehow the last thing I think of when I look at you is an English granny,” he said, his voice a sexy rasp. Then he looked faintly taken aback, as if he had said something wildly inappropriate. He recovered quickly, though.
“I hope we do have a chance to talk about your town’s transition,” Ward said. He said it as if he was talking to someone whose opinion he would respect. She glanced at him. Small talk.
“Me, too,” she said with bright insincerity. “Enjoy your stay here.”
Then she snapped the cash register shut and whirled away from them, feeling somehow as if she had escaped some unknowable danger.
Why would such a feeling, the feeling of a near miss on a road named Catastrophe, be tinged with regret?
* * *
“That was a good breakfast,” Lancaster said, as they exited the coffee shop. “You’ve got to give it to Yanks. They know how to eat. The scones were a surprise of the best possible sort.”
“Are you saying barracks food doesn’t appeal?”
“No, Your Highness.”
Both men looked around, but no one was within hearing.
“Sorry, sir, lifetime habits are hard to break.”
They came to the car and Ward regarded it appreciatively. “Do you want to drive, Major Lancaster?” He glanced around. “You’re right about lifetime habits.”
“I was hoping for an opportunity. Where to?”
“I feel, after California and New York, I just need to stretch my legs and have some space. What about those hot pools we heard about?”
“The hotel clerk told us they were in the middle of the wilderness,” Lancaster said, appalled.
“That part of America interests me.”
“I think this is bear country,” Lancaster said doubtfully, the quandary written on his face. How to keep the Prince safest?
“I’m prepared to live dangerously.”
“I was afraid of that.” Lancaster looked less than pleased, for he was a man born into the station of guarding the royal family of the Isle of Havenhurst, and he sniffed out—and avoided—situations that might place the Prince in danger, but he also knew an order when he heard it.
“The cover story went well,” Ward said as they left Mountain Bend and took a rough road that began to twist up the mountain through thick forest.
Lancaster was silent.
“Didn’t you think so?”
“The old guy didn’t buy it.”
“What old guy?”
“He came out of the kitchen for a minute and gave us a good look over. Limping. Ex-military.”
“How can you tell that?”
Lancaster shrugged. “There are ways to tell. But it works both ways. I think he could tell a bit about us, too.”
Ward contemplated the fact he had not registered the man coming out of the kitchen. Of course, it was Lancaster’s job to notice who was around them, and Ward was confident Lancaster was probably better at his job than just about anybody in the world. But still, Ward suspected the woman, Maddie, had something to do with the fact he had not noticed the man come out of the kitchen.
There was something about her that engaged him, especially after coming from California, where the women he met all seemed very outgoing, very tall, very tanned, wrinkle-free and white-blond.
In contrast he had found Maddie’s beauty was understated and natural, as refreshing as a cool breeze on a warm day. She was lovely, with those kissed-by-the-sun curls springing around her head, her delicate features, the perfect bow of puffy lips, hazel eyes that looked green one moment and doe brown the next. Despite the faintest hint of freckles, unlike her California counterparts, her skin had been porcelain pale, as if, despite being surrounded by the outdoors, she did not get outside much. And there had been faint shadows of what—weariness? worry?—under those remarkable eyes.
In their short encounter Ward had found her both delightfully interesting and intriguingly attractive, and at the same time a painful reminder of the kind of woman and kind of life he would never have.
“I’m not concerned. Yet,” Lancaster said. “But I wouldn’t be telling anyone else your name is Edward.”
“Havenhurst is probably the least known kingdom in the entire North Atlantic, a little speck in the ocean, two hundred kilometers from the North Channel. Even the Scots, who are the most culturally linked to us, barely know who we are. So, few people know who I am.”
Ward’s publicity-averse family employed a small army to fend off the pursuit of royalty-crazed tabloids, and though the odd picture or story about him emerged, he was mostly an unknown.
Lancaster looked unconvinced.
“I’m off the radar,” Ward assured him.
“Best to keep it that way. I think your California friend, Miss O’Brian, would have loved to have milked your status for a bit of publicity.”
Ward gave Lancaster a look. “Did you give her a talking-to?”
Lancaster lifted a huge shoulder. “Laid out a few ground rules, aye.”
The road had ended. Lancaster turned off the car, and they got out. They removed day packs from the trunk and hoisted them onto shoulders.
Hours later, they returned to the car. They had hiked all day, but they had not succeeded in finding the hot pool.
“The more we didn’t find them, the more I was homesick for a dip,” Ward said. “Maybe we should take that young waitress up on her offer to show us the sights, after all.”
“Huh. With a chaperone, maybe.”
�
��Perhaps Maddie could join us, too.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lancaster offered.
Ward shot Lancaster a look. Had he guessed there was something about the gamine scone enchantress that had piqued his interest? But no, the scowl said something else entirely.
“Because the young Sophie may have been a bit smitten with you?”
Lancaster scowled. “Emphasis on young. There’s bound to be a slipup. Questions asked that can’t be answered. The cover story won’t stand up to close scrutiny.”
Ward reminded himself it was Lancaster’s job to think like this, to be on the alert for potential threats and possible dangers, real and imagined.
But he realized wanting Maddie and Sophie to join them wasn’t just about finding the hot pools. Maddie, with her curls and her tentative smile, had made him long for something he knew he could not have. Or maybe he could, not forever, but for a few moments in time. Maybe these last few final days of anonymity could give him one chance to see what it was like to have fun with an ordinary girl in an ordinary world. He felt a need to articulate it.
“Please don’t deprive me of this opportunity to do a few normal things, Lancaster. Yes, I want to drive a car like this one. But I want to laugh with a pretty lass. Dance at a concert. This may be the only opportunity I ever get to experience a normal life.”
A normal life. They got back in the car and Ward took the driver’s seat this time. Their small island home did not lend itself to a vehicle like this. In truth, he rarely drove himself anywhere. He put the car in gear and enjoyed the surge of power as he pressed down the gas. Lancaster made an unflattering grab for a bar above his door, but Edward soon found his groove and drove the car as quickly as the poor road would allow.
“I understand, Your Highness,” Lancaster said. “This is really your only taste of freedom. In a few weeks you’ll be a married man.”
“I’ve never had freedom,” Ward said quietly, “married or not. Just the same, I’ve reached a decision. I’ve decided not to marry Princess Aida.”
CHAPTER FOUR
“BUT...BUT YOUR marriage is expected,” Lancaster stammered, after a long silence.
“I’ve always understood that service comes before self, and that certain sacrifices would be expected of me.”
“Princess Aida is a beautiful woman, sir, hardly a sacrifice.”
“She doesn’t love me.”
“Love?” Lancaster shot him a distressed look. “What does that have to do with it?”
Love. Ward had never had an expectation of it in his life. His father, the King, had not loved his mother, nor she him. Their public lives had been orchestrated to be civil; privately they had been cold and distant to one another.
Ward himself had been sent away to a private school when he was six. So love was a nebulous thing to him. He had not experienced it, nor had any expectation of it.
Edward thought of Aida with affection, like one would think of a little sister. When she had come to him and told him she loved someone else, he had felt a shocking sense of envy for what was shining in her eyes.
And he’d felt the difficulty of what he needed to do. His nation wanted one thing. His family demanded one thing. His conscience commanded another. He could not be the one to kill the light that had shone from Aida when she talked about Drew Mooretown, the man on her personal guard that she now loved.
“The sacrifice would have been hers, if we married,” Edward said slowly. “I’ve no notions of love. We’ve both known, since we were children, what was expected of us and what the benefit to both of our nations is. Like me, she’ll do what’s required of her, but, Lancaster, she loves another. I cannot do this to her.”
“You’re a good man,” Lancaster said with a sigh, and Prince Edward Alexander the Fourth knew he had been paid the highest of compliments from one who rarely gave them. He could only hope it was true. “But it’s not going to be as easy to get out of it as you think. Your father—”
“Would force it, I know.”
“I don’t relish the thought of marching you down the aisle with a sword at your back.” Lancaster was only partly kidding. “What are you going to do? I’ve known this whole trip something was deeply troubling you. It seems impossible to get out of it. Unless you’re thinking of not going back?”
“Rest easy, Lancaster. You don’t have to feel a divided loyalty between your duty to your King and your duty to me. There will be no having to think of a way to wrestle me back to my kingdom. I have always known my destiny is there, and I embrace that. I love my work on economic development, bringing the island new ideas and prosperity, acting as a liaison with the people. I love listening to their ideas and concerns, involving them in the future of our island. I love Havenhurst.”
“Then what?”
“I have to set Aida free. And I think there’s only one way to do that where unbearable pressure wouldn’t be brought on her.”
“Which is?”
“I have to marry someone else. Before we return.”
“Within days, in other words?”
“Yes.”
“A kind of pretend marriage?”
“Yes, just long enough to enable Aida to go off and marry her chap without the indignation of two kingdoms being heaped on her.”
“Being heaped on you, instead.”
“I have broad shoulders. After it has all died down, a quiet annulment could be arranged.”
Lancaster was silent but then spoke. “But you would have to marry genuinely, eventually. Marriage is expected.”
Yes, it was expected that Edward would marry, and that out of that marriage would come that all-important heir to the royal legacy.
Not expected: that he would ever know the kind of love he had seen shining in Aida’s face when she had confessed to him that she had met another.
Not expected: a longing for this thing his position would probably keep him from ever knowing.
Not expected: that a man the world would see as having absolutely everything—wealth and power beyond the dreams of most mortals—would feel this odd emptiness. A sense of missing something that had increased every day they had explored America, been normal, been free of Havenhurst.
“Perhaps I won’t marry at all.”
“That sounds a lonely life.”
“Will you marry again, Lancaster?” Ward asked softly, remembering the man Lancaster used to be, a man who had radiated a kind of faith in the goodness of life.
“I don’t think so,” Lancaster said, looking off into the distance. “A man’s heart can only take so much.”
Lancaster’s wife and young baby had been killed in a cottage fire. Lancaster had been away at a training program off-island when it had happened. The whole island had mourned the loss of his family, and five years later, Lancaster still carried an aura of deep mourning about him.
Mourning, mingled with a kind of steadfast, put-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other strength.
“No, I won’t marry again,” he said. “Not while there are streams that need fishing. But you...you’ll be expected to find a wife.”
There was the weight of all those expectations again.
“My position makes it more difficult to find a partner, not less.”
Lancaster snorted. “Once you are seen as available, women will be throwing themselves at you, Your Highness.”
“Not at me,” Ward said, and could hear the weariness in his own voice. “At the fantasy of being a princess. At the role they think I play. At their impossible romantic ideas. The reality is so different. The obligations that go with the title would place an unfair burden on someone not brought up in it.”
“There is the little issue of an heir,” Lancaster reminded him. “You will be King.”
“My sister is married, and they have dear, sweet Anne. Perhaps one day she will reign.”
“She’s a girl!”
“The times are changing, Lancaster.”
Lancaster looked dubious about that, at least in the context of Havenhurst. “You’ve given this some thought.”
“I have, indeed.”
“How do you find someone to play the role of a pretend princess? It’s not as if you can put an ad in the personal section of the newspaper. Prince in search of bride.”
“I’ve asked Sea O’Brian.”
They had just spent several days with Sea at her villa in California. Ward had met the actress at a party, a long time ago, on a yacht in the Mediterranean. He had not developed a taste for such things, but he and the famous actress had kept in touch.
Lancaster was silent.
“You don’t approve?”
“It’s not my place to approve or disapprove of your choices, sir.”
“My thought was that she was an actress already. She could play it like a role. And the publicity would certainly benefit her career. I’d like whoever takes this on to benefit in some way. I think the deception of a nation—not to mention my father and mother—is a great deal to ask of an individual.”
Again, Lancaster was silent, but his brows had lowered and he was looking straight ahead with such fierce concentration that it could only mean disapproval. They had known each other so long and spent so much time together there was an unbreakable bond between them, almost as if they were brothers.
“I’m interested in your thoughts.”
Lancaster took a deep breath. “As you say, sir, she’s an actress. There always seems to be lots of drama unfolding around her. I overheard her talking to her press secretary about alerting a tabloid to your presence at her villa and had to head her off.”
Ward had not been aware of any of this, an indication of how well Lancaster did his job, and how seriously he took it.
“I don’t imagine Sea O’Brian is easy to head off,” he said mildly.
“Correct,” Lancaster said.
“How did you manage it?”
“I took her cell phone hostage,” Lancaster admitted reluctantly. “Her life, as she told me. She’d been snapping pictures of you when you weren’t aware. Anyway, all this leads me to believe that trying to extricate yourself from the situation could get very complicated.”