by Cara Colter
Was it unfortunate that they both had to appear because Ward did not normally have to do things for himself—not even fill out his own application—or unfortunate from a security standpoint?
“We should be there by noon,” Lancaster went on. “You can marry immediately after being issued the license but I booked an Officiant of the State of Nevada for 4:00 p.m. I’ve arranged a suite at the Estate Hotel where the ceremony can be conducted. I thought it might be best if the two of you spent the night there.”
Maddie could feel a deep blush darkening her cheeks. Good grief, the deception began. It was being made to look as if they consummated their marriage.
Ward nodded, then leaned forward and whispered something in Lancaster’s ear.
“Yes, sir, my pleasure.”
“Am I supposed to call you Your Highness?” she whispered when Lancaster had moved away and was out of earshot.
“I’ll make sure you are fully briefed on proper protocol, but for now, there’s no rush. I like it when you call me Ward.”
And even though she was in a strange new world, those simple words made Maddie feel more at ease, a faint hope that maybe what she had agreed to wasn’t complete insanity.
CHAPTER TWELVE
A REAL LIVE prince caused something of a stir, even in Vegas, where the marriage bureau saw everything and everyone from celebrities to Elvis look-alikes.
Despite an awestruck clerk, the license was issued quickly and efficiently. Then they were back in the stretch limo. Even in Vegas, where such vehicles were common, people were straining their necks trying to catch a glimpse of who might be inside.
The hotel, which looked like a Southern mansion, was an oasis of calm in the middle of that bustling, crazy city. They entered through a secluded garden and check-in was private and seamless, all handled by the Prince’s unflappable staff.
The private plane should have prepared Maddie for the opulence of the hotel, but it did not. She explored the suite shamelessly. It was four thousand feet of pure luxury, and included two master suites, which given the real nature of their wedding night, was a relief to see. There was an indoor lap pool, a waterfall cascading down one wall and a huge fireplace, lit, even though the air-conditioning was on. There was a huge private deck.
Tables were covered with fresh flowers and pricey confections.
“I don’t think I can get used to this,” she confessed finally, meaning all of it—private planes and staff and VIP treatment and places like this. “Is your...er...home like this?”
“The palace is quite grand.”
She gulped. His home was a palace. Her home for the next year was going to be a palace, too. It made her feel quite dizzy.
“But the palace is grand in a different way than this. This all seems quite new and glittery, the palace is more steeped in history and refinement. For instance, the table in the dining room is six hundred years old.”
“I guess you wouldn’t want to be spilling your red wine on that,” she said.
He laughed. “I guess not. I think some of the table coverings are as old as the table.”
She was beginning to feel like pressure was building up behind her eyes. On a good day, she wasn’t even sure what fork to use!
Her drop into a new lifestyle was nearly immediate because the thing Ward had whispered to Lancaster about was apparently some serious pampering for her before her wedding. A whole team of professional pampering people arrived at the suite door and she was ushered into the smaller of the two master suites.
A massage table was set up, and before she knew it, modesty was cast aside, and she was under a sheet completely naked, being slathered in warm mud. The mud slathering was followed with her being wrapped in a thick white terry cloth robe and given a facial and pedicure and a manicure.
And then the door rocketed open, and a man swept in, pushing a clothes rack in front of him.
“Frederique is here,” he called officiously. He abandoned the clothes rack and strode over to her. He took her chin in his hands and forced her head this way and that.
“Who are you?” she asked, pulling away from his hand.
“You don’t know who I am?” he asked, aghast.
“I do not.”
“Frederique, stylist to the stars.” Then he smiled. “But also a long, long time ago, a young man who grew up on a little-known island called Havenhurst. Lancaster and I are childhood friends.”
Somehow that was hard to imagine.
“I understand you are about to become our Princess.” He said this with a certain frightening reverence, which, thankfully, was negated by his next words. “I see I have my work cut out for me.”
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“First, the hair. Did you cut it yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s dreadful.”
Maddie glared at him.
“So much to do, so little time.” He lifted a lock of her hair and looked at it like a worm had attached itself to his fingers. “Maybe hair extensions,” he muttered. “Except they take so long. A hair extension is a commitment,” he told her sternly. “Are you prepared for that?”
“I think getting married is enough of a commitment for me for one day.”
“Argh,” he cried, throwing up his hands in frustration. But despite a rather major attitude, Frederique turned out to know what he was doing, and to be quite fun. He had “preshopped” for her and all the clothing on the rack he had wheeled in was for her to try on.
“How can you preshop for someone you know nothing about?”
“Five foot four and a half, approximately one hundred and eighteen pounds. What else would I need to know?”
Maddie gaped at him. How could he know that? Had Ward watched her that carefully? He had seen her in a bathing suit! She had seen him in one, too, but guess his weight? Accurately?
Frederique clapped his hands. “No time for lollygagging, love. Off you go. Start with underwear.”
“I have my own!”
“I’m sure you do, and if it goes with that cheap little yellow dress, you will be needing new. I don’t suppose you bought new for your wedding night?”
Maddie’s mouth moved, but not a sound came out. See? This was where deception led you, straight into a more and more complicated web. What bride did not have new underwear for her wedding night?
“It’s rather sudden,” she said. “I guess I didn’t think.”
“Thank God for that. You would have ended up with precisely the wrong thing, I can tell by looking at you—sports bras and T-shirts. Gag me.”
Happily, she thought.
“You do have potential, though. And I’d kill for the little bauble on your neck.” Frederique reached out and touched her pendant, and then withdrew his hand. “Oh, how odd! It’s warm.”
Maddie touched it, too. The pendant was indeed warm, as if it was radiating.
“Here. Try this. And this and this.” He tossed tiny pairs of lingerie at her, constructed primarily of silk thread spiderwebs. She retreated into the powder room and put on the lacy delicate items.
She stared at herself. She actually did have potential! The bra worked miracles with her modest bustline, and the scanty panties made her feel gloriously sexy. Had she ever allowed herself to feel that way before? Wasn’t this bad timing? To be feeling sexy for a mock wedding night?
Still, she could not resist looking so feminine and pretty, and so she surrendered. Each outfit he passed her, she tried on. She saw the good underwear made the clothes look even more exquisite than they already were. She started to look forward to each outfit—a pretty cocktail dress, a colorful summer frock, a beautifully tailored pantsuit—and to twirling in front of Frederique’s critical eye. He divided the bed into accept and reject piles and a large number of items were accumulating in both.
“That’s way too many,” she final
ly protested, surveying the growing stack of items to keep.
“Seriously, there is no such thing, but we are in a bit of a time crunch,” he said, checking his watch.
Maddie was aware of feeling both exhilarated and exhausted, a thousand miles, literally and figuratively, from the girl she had been this morning.
“It’s three, wedding is at four. A man could have a heart attack from this kind of pressure. Chop, chop, wedding dresses.”
He opened the door and another rack awaited outside. On it were several selections of gorgeous dresses. He wheeled it in, took one off and put it aside. “I think it will be this one, but we’ll try some others first.”
“It’s just a little private ceremony,” she cried. Those dresses were something out of a dream, the kind of dress every girl longed for on her day of being a princess.
“Well, I understand there will be photos after, exclusive to three well-known media outlets. My reputation is at stake here.”
Feeling trepidation, Maddie put on the first dress. Trying on wedding dresses was something every girl dreamed of. She had anticipated that day when Derek had proposed. Now, looking at herself in the floor-length white chiffon mermaid dress, she felt nothing, like an actress playing a role. Frederique walked around her, tapping his lip thoughtfully.
“No,” he decided. “It doesn’t work. Next.”
He handed her another dress. It was a gorgeous champagne-colored ball dress. It didn’t fit properly, and he had to pin the back of it. Again he circled her tapping his lip and squinting his eyes.
“No,” he said. “Maybe for an evening wedding. Ach, as I thought, out of time. No more dillydallying!”
She could clearly see there was absolutely no point in addressing the fact she was not the one dillydallying!
He took the dress he’d put aside. “This one,” he said.
She slipped into the washroom. The dress was white, the top fitted with laser-cut lace, dropping to a small belt, adorned with a silk bow. At the waist, the dress fanned out, an overlay of lace over an underlay of silk. The dress was tea length, and as Maddie looked at herself in the mirror, her eyes filmed over.
This was a dress for the girl she used to be: filled with hope, a believer in love. This was exactly the dress she might have once chosen for herself.
She suddenly felt sick that this was all fake, like a giant stage set. Had she really become so cynical she had accepted this instead of love.
Had Kettle been right? This, though it seemed crazy and bold, was really quite a safe choice? A fake marriage did not risk your heart, after all.
Unless you did something really dumb.
Like fall in love with him.
Meanwhile, it was a business arrangement. Help Kettle, help her town, maybe have an adventure in the process.
But all that made this perfect dress so bittersweet she wanted to weep. She took a deep breath and marched out of the bathroom. Frederique kissed his own fingertips and blew them at her. “Perfection. Now go take it off so it doesn’t get rumpled.” When she reemerged in the robe, he pulled out the chair at the dressing table. “Sit. Sit.”
Maddie sat, sat.
And she watched the most amazing transformation happen. He started with her hair, each of the curls coaxed into good behavior until her hair was a soft wave around her face. And then he began with makeup: mascara and shadow, eyeliner, which she had never in her life used. Her eyes became astonishing: huge and green as a moss-covered forest floor. A sweep of blush here, and a sweep of blush there, and her cheekbones emerged, high and proud. He got out little pots of color, and with a look of furious concentration on his face, he painted her lips with a brush. Once, twice, three times.
She stared in disbelief as her lips became a shimmering, sensual invitation that said, without a shred of a doubt, kiss me.
As if in a dream, she stood and let the robe fall, while Frederique dropped the dress over her head, fussed with the bow and the hooks in the back. He knelt before her and inserted her feet into tiny white silk slippers.
And then he took a carved wooden box that she had not noticed on the bottom of the clothes rack.
“This,” he said, bowing to her slightly, “is Prince Edward’s wedding gift to you.”
With shaking hands, she took the box from him and opened the lid. It was a tiara, encrusted in diamonds that shot blue flame into the room as the light caught in them.
“May I?” he asked softly. His own hands were shaking as he removed the tiara from the box and settled it on her curls.
She had expected it might feel heavy. Or silly. But it felt neither. It felt as if it fit her perfectly in every way.
Maddie regarded herself with astonishment. Dangerously, it suddenly did not feel as if she was playing a role at all. She felt as if, indeed, the magic wand had been waved.
She was Cinderella, turned into a princess for the night.
Frederique smiled. “May I be the first to congratulate you, Princess Madeline?” And then he bowed to her.
Without waiting for her answer, he went to the door and opened it.
Lancaster waited for her, in a full dress uniform of navy blue, resplendent with gold braiding and medals.
“I would be honored, Miss Nelson, if you would allow me to escort you.”
She was so grateful for his solid strength, for his arm to slip her own through. She felt as if she was walking on air, as she and Lancaster made their way down the long hallway and into the main room, Frederique trailing them like a flower girl.
The room was empty, save for Ward and a woman in a gray business suit. They were chatting beside a desk, and Ward turned and looked at her.
Like Lancaster, he was in uniform, his jacket red with gold braiding, his pants navy and fitted. She looked into his face.
His handsome face was so familiar to her after such a short time. She remembered his shout of laughter as they hit the hot pools, and she remembered dancing with him at the concert, a man who had not been allowed to delight in small things.
But most of all, she remembered waking in his arms after she had fainted, the heat of his kiss still on her forehead, and looking into the deep blue of his eyes and seeing something there that a woman could hold on to.
That look was in his eyes now, as she walked—no, floated—toward him. He was looking at her, astounded by her transformation. He was looking at her as if he was a real groom and felt like the luckiest man in the world.
She shouldn’t be feeling this way! And neither should he.
She drew up beside him. And then she turned slowly to face her future, and the man who would be her husband, Edward Alexander the Fourth, Prince of Havenhurst.
Briefly, she wondered if she would faint again, so huge was the welling of her heart. But then his fingers slipped under her wrists, and her hands were being cupped in his, and it felt as if he was coaxing every bit of strength in her to come forward.
And so Maddie heard her name and felt stronger and more certain than she had ever felt in her entire life.
“Madeline Elizabeth Nelson, please repeat after me.”
She heard her voice, strong, confident, saying, “I, Madeline Elizabeth Nelson, take thee, Edward Alexander, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.”
And then, his voice somber, made richer for the accent, he said those same words to her.
They were pronounced husband and wife, and they stood staring at each other in stunned silence.
“You may kiss the bride,” the officiate said.
They stared at each other. What now? Lancaster cleared his throat when the silence dragged too long.
It was their first performance. Obviously both the official and Frederique believed this to be real. Both wou
ld probably talk about their experience.
Was that what Ward was thinking as he drew her closer? He stared at her as if asking her permission. She nodded.
He claimed her lips without hesitation, with mastery, with power, with passion.
Her first kiss from him—not counting the one on her forehead—did not disappoint. Everything faded save for the exquisite softness of his lips on hers. Everything faded save for the taste of him, which was as pure as forest dew. Everything faded save for the way she felt, which was on fire with life, which was as if every moment before this one had existed only to make way for this.
Connection.
Completion.
Ward broke the kiss and took a startled step back from Maddie, and she one back from him. She could tell he was as stunned by what he had just experienced as she was.
It was as if two souls intended for each other had met. The kiss had spoken in a language they, so new to each other, had not arrived at yet. That language was a language deeper than words, a language that shimmered along the skin, and charged the air they breathed with electrical current, and filled every space around them with the pure power and magic of possibility.
After it seemed as if they may have looked at each other with frightened wonder for way too long, she followed Ward’s lead and turned to Lancaster and Frederique. The latter was wiping at tears.
Ward’s hand found hers, and the language of his caressing her palm with his thumb was nearly as dizzying as that kiss.
Lancaster popped the cork out of a very expensive-looking bottle of champagne. Maddie felt as if she had already consumed the glass of champagne that was passed to her.
“A few members of the press have been invited,” Ward said quietly, for her ears only. “They are waiting in the outer room. I thought it would be best if news of our marriage preceded our arrival in Havenhurst tomorrow. Would it be all right if they came in now?”
Maddie nodded, though she was stunned to be brought back down to earth with this reminder it was a pretense. This was what it was for: for show, for the cameras, and to save Aida, a girl Maddie did not know, a girl who was a real princess.