by Cara Colter
Maddie went to the same seat she had had yesterday and looked around. Already the awe factor was wearing off, already she felt less intimidated by the whole experience.
Ward boarded, acknowledged her with a faint salute and disappeared down a corridor toward the back of the plane. Did he intend to ignore her for the duration of the flight? Maybe for the duration of the marriage, except for public appearances? She frowned.
“What’s back there?” she asked, when Lancaster returned.
“Prince Edward’s office and private quarters.”
“Hmmm.”
He produced a deck of cards. “Solitaire?” he asked.
“That’s a funny question to ask a newly married woman,” she said. “No, I have other plans for these cards. Thank you for finding them. Which door is his office?”
Lancaster cocked his head at her. “Would you like me to ask when he can see you?”
“I’m not asking for permission to see my husband.”
Lancaster regarded her thoughtfully for a moment, and then a faint smile played across his lips. “Yes, Your Highness,” he said.
And she waited until he had taken his own seat some distance away from her to have a giggle at her own audacity. She could lose courage, though, and so as soon as the plane had leveled and the very subtle seat belt sign at the front of the cabin went off, she undid her seat belt, and holding her cards tight, she went down the same hallway that Ward had gone down.
She guessed at the door since Lancaster had not divulged that. Lancaster was watching her, but didn’t try to stop her.
She had chosen the right door. It looked like the office of a successful executive anywhere: walnut paneling, a beautiful desk, a painting, no doubt priceless, hanging on the wall. It parted company with any executive office, because a door was slightly ajar, and through that was a bedroom, every bit as well-appointed as the bedrooms in the hotel they had just left.
Ward looked up, surprised, possibly a trifle wary.
“Hello.”
She held up the cards. “Do you know what these are?”
“Playing cards?”
“Have you ever played cards?”
He frowned. “I don’t believe I have.”
“Well, it’s going to be a long, boring flight for me, so I guess I’d better teach you.”
He looked uncomfortable. As she had guessed, few people called the shots with him. “I was going to do some work, but—”
“What kind of work does a prince do?” she asked, taking the seat across from him at his desk, sliding the cards from their cardboard box and dividing the cards into two even piles, one in each hand.
“The island has many business concerns. I’m CEO of two crown corporations and a primary shareholder in several others. I also am the honorary head of several charities and the leader of our military.”
She did a riffle shuffle—dovetailing the cards into a D-on-its-side shape—so that they cascaded down like a waterfall. “Military?”
“Mostly palace and personal security, but we also possess valuable resources that we protect, so we liaise and do exchange programs with other organizations, like the British SAS, Special Air Service.”
She performed the same shuffle again.
“You’re very good at that,” he said, watching her hands on the cards.
“Yes, I am. That’s what happens when you grow up a logger’s daughter in a town with long winters. You learn to play cards. Have you ever played poker?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Oh good,” she said, “that improves my chances of winning.”
“Isn’t it a game of chance?”
“Some of it. Some of it is skill. I’ll show you.” She pulled her phone out of her pocket and went through her photos to a screen. “These are the hands and the values of each of the hands. So, clearly a royal flush takes all. Just like in your real life.
“So this is a simple form—I’m going to deal you five cards, and then you’ll have three opportunities to discard and get new ones to build a winning hand. Here, we’ll do a few dummy hands.”
The Prince was intrigued, and caught on very quickly. As they played, she asked questions and found out as much as she could about Havenhurst: the population, the industry, the climate. She was learning and he was learning—and there was lots of laughter in between.
A staff member came in and put coffee and biscuits on the desk between them, then left. It made it hard to believe they were on an airplane!
“Does that happen all the time?”
“Coffee?” he asked.
“People sliding in and out, anticipating your every need.”
“Oh.” He looked surprised by the question. “I guess it does.”
“Where will we be living?” she asked.
“I have a suite in the palace.”
“Two bedrooms or one?”
“Four, actually.”
“If anybody is going to believe this, Ward, there can’t be people sliding in and out all the time. They’d figure out pretty quickly that our marriage isn’t a real one.”
He looked perplexed. “I think I can trust my staff for discretion.”
“Is that another way of saying who is going to change the toilet paper roll?”
He stared at her, and then he threw back his head and laughed. “That hadn’t actually occurred to me. But I have a valet who briefs me in the morning.”
“Well, he’ll have to brief you somewhere else, because there isn’t going to be any staff in our suite.”
The laughter was still twinkling in his eyes. “Are you telling me how it’s going to be?”
“I am. You can tell your staff it’s a weird American thing. We don’t like people hovering about, doing things for us that we are quite capable of doing for ourselves.”
“The cook?” he said, hopefully.
“Your Highness, get used to scrambled eggs for dinner.”
The hands went back and forth for a bit, and then she said, “Are you ready to play for real?”
“What does that mean?” he asked, a bit warily.
“Let’s place a bet. Whoever wins ten hands is the winner.”
“What’s the bet?” he asked.
“I don’t really have much of value. My necklace?”
“I couldn’t take your necklace,” he sputtered.
“You probably, literally, couldn’t. You’re not going to win.”
He winced. “Still—”
“If you win it, I’ll win it back from you next time we play.”
It was in the air between them. Next time. This could be what their lives together were like, this casual banter, these easy conversations, this sense of building trust and friendship.
“No,” he said, “if I win, I keep the cook.”
“Okay.”
“And what would you want from me?”
She smiled at him. “Diving lessons.”
“Seriously?”
“Something wrong with that?”
* * *
Ward eyed his new wife warily. She had some surprises in store for him. The towel thing this morning had been a clear indicator of that.
“Choose something else,” he told her firmly. “It’s dangerous. For every dive you see that looks like the ones Lancaster and I did at the pools that day, there are a dozen or a hundred that didn’t look like that. That have bruised and beat up the body. Lancaster has broken his nose and several ribs.”
She looked properly frightened. He hoped that was the end of this conversation.
“Then why does he do it?” she asked. “Why do you?”
He hesitated. “I suppose there is a feeling of being alive that can’t quite be replicated in other activities.”
Wrong thing to say, apparently. She got that stubborn look about he
r that he was already beginning to recognize.
“That’s exactly how I want to feel.”
He saw he had walked himself into a trap. He had already said other activities did not quite replicate that feeling of falling through the air.
“Choose something else,” he said firmly.
“Nope,” she said, just as firmly. “Diving lessons. I’m sure you don’t start on a ledge fifty feet above the pool.”
He sighed. She could have asked for anything. The necklace she had offered him—the one that had deep sentimental value to her—also was probably worth several thousand dollars. She could have asked him for something in kind—a shopping trip, a bauble, an expensive perfume.
But she had not, and it told him a great deal about her. It also told him a great deal about her that she was not prepared to back down. People had been backing down from him for his entire life! If he said no, they acquiesced, immediately.
“Okay,” he said. “Diving lessons. But starting very, very small.”
She grinned at him, impish in her easy victory. Ward watched, fascinated, at Maddie’s competence with those cards. He felt pressure to work—his in-box after his time off was overflowing—and yet he could not draw himself away from this fun time with her.
Even though she was exquisitely dressed today, and had done some awful thing to tame her hair, she was what he had seen least often in his life.
Real.
Genuine.
Normal.
And maybe most importantly, unintimidated by him. After their awful start last night, tears and slammed doors, he felt something like hope unfolding ever so softly within him.
They weren’t going to be man and wife. He would not do that to her. He could not imagine any role stealing her lovely freshness, her ability to be genuine, more quickly than that one.
But maybe, just maybe they were going to be friends.
And most certainly, for a reason he did not understand, but felt grateful for nonetheless, she was going to give him little glimpses into normal, into a life he had missed and had given up hope of ever having. Though he hoped that meant his future wasn’t full of toilet paper rolls, and that they were going to eat something beyond scrambled eggs.
The poker hands unfolding proved that they were both fiercely competitive. They shared laughs. He noticed how she was using this time to casually coax details about Havenhurst and his life from him.
He found out more about her growing up in Mountain Bend. They were, it would seem, getting to know each other. It was backward as could be to get to know each other after the wedding, but he was still enjoying it immensely.
He was not sure how, but the cards always seemed to land in her favor.
“Are you cheating?” he asked, throwing down his cards in disgust after she had taken six games in a row and there was no chance of him winning.
“Ah! The losers always ask that! When you’re a little more certain around the cards, you’ll be able to tell.”
“You didn’t answer the question,” he pointed out drily.
“I can’t wait to learn to dive!”
“Well, that should be a first. I’ve never heard of a girl diving on Havenhurst.”
“Tell me about that, then. About the culture, about why a girl wouldn’t dive on Havenhurst.”
“It’s probably because we don’t have any swimming pools, and the rocky outcrops and high perches can be dangerous to dive from.”
What had she let herself in for?
* * *
“Despite some changes because of the internet and television, we remain quite a traditional society,” he said. “With quite traditional male and female roles. For instance, women tend to stay home with the children, while the men go out to work. The older people resist change.”
“And you, are you traditional? Do you resist change?”
“I’m traditional in some ways.” He didn’t want her to dive, for one thing! “But in other ways, I feel it’s my responsibility to shepherd Havenhurst into this century. The firstborn male son, at the moment, has more rights, say for inheriting land, than older siblings who are female. Even our monarchy is geared to a son taking the crown, not a daughter. I hope to change that in my lifetime.”
“Are you that son?”
“Yes, I’ll be King one day.”
“It seems from another world,” she said. “Like a fairy tale.”
“It is another world,” he agreed. “I’m not sure about the fairy-tale part.”
“Is it at least charming?” she asked, leaning toward him, her chin cupped in her hands, so earnest.
“Charming. Aggravating.”
“What do people do for fun?”
Fun. Not that that had been a big component in his life.
“We have a theater of sorts, and it’s a big deal when we can entice the occasional live production to come in. The last one was Beauty and the Beast.”
“Does the theater have popcorn, like an American theater?”
“No.”
“That’s something I’ll have to change,” she said.
“Ah, your first royal proclamation.”
He didn’t tell her if they did get popcorn, he and she probably would not eat it, because the people had a certain expectation. And it was not to look up to the royal balcony to see a greasy-fingered prince and princess munching contentedly on popcorn.
“What else do people do for fun?”
“Well, we have hot pools literally everywhere, and so that’s a big part of island life—taking a picnic to one of the pools. But mostly entertainment is the party, the ceilidh, gatherings of people in kitchens and pubs, where they play homemade instruments, and games. Singing and dancing and lots of imbibing.”
She looked at him, hearing something he hadn’t said.
“You don’t do that, do you?”
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“No.”
“Are you a lonely man, Prince Edward?” she asked.
He stared at her. Just like that, she had cut through to the emptiness in his heart. Just like that, she had uncovered a longing in him that could not be met.
“You ache to belong, don’t you?”
“It’s not what I was born to,” he said, deliberately hardening his voice.
This would be the problem with her: she would ask questions of him that he did not want to answer, she would stir longings in him that were best left sinking way below the surface.
Even this: playing poker, having a normal conversation, he could not give in to it. It would only lead to more wanting.
Wanting more from her than he could ever ask her to give him.
Now was the time to set limits, to remind her how it was going to be: a business arrangement between them.
He could not afford to indulge in more than that. To let his weakness out, his secret hopes, his longing.
To have a lass look at him, just the way Maddie was looking at him now.
“This has been great fun,” he said, his voice firm, “but having lost my shirt at poker, I must now get back to work. Duty calls.”
She looked slighted.
She looked hurt.
It was what he had promised Kettle he would not do. But here was the question: hurt her a little now, or a lot later?
Because that’s all that could come of it if he let down his guard around her, let her behind the closed doors of his world.
Yes, there would be riches. The baubles and the privileges, the jets and the yachts.
But Maddie had already shown she had little taste for those things.
And if he drew her into his world—if what they had pretended ever became real between them—every other door would be closed to her.
She would stand on the outside, as he did, listening to the laughter and the musi
c of the ceilidh without ever being invited in to experience its warmth.
There was no sense her not knowing the absolute truth of his life: duty always called.
She only looked hurt for a moment. And then she touched that gold nugget necklace that never left her neck, smiled, stuck out her tongue at him and flounced from the room.
Stuck out her tongue at him.
Did she not know he was a prince?
Of course she knew. And it was so refreshing that she didn’t care. But he could not allow himself the weakness of dipping into that pool of freshness that her guileless eyes offered. Really, this all would have been so much easier if Sea had not let him down.
He sighed heavily, turned to his work. As if to affirm his decision to distance himself from Maddie, there was a scathing email from his father, who had just heard the news of his marriage and berated him soundly for his betrayal of his duty.
It was this world that Ward needed to protect Maddie from. He had promised.
Ward put his head in his hands? Who would ever invite a woman they actually liked to share this kind of life? If Aida married quickly, he would find a way to release Maddie before a year was up.
Because he felt more strongly for her with each passing moment, with each encounter. His heart sank when he thought what he might feel like after a year. He had to keep his distance or he was never going to be able to let her go.
And even having made that vow, when the jet began its descent toward Havenhurst, he found himself going to be with Maddie. Somehow, he did not want to miss her first reaction to his island home.
* * *
“It’s beautiful,” Maddie breathed as Ward materialized at her side and buckled himself in, in preparation for landing.
As she watched out the window, the jet circled her new home.
“I’ve asked them to fly low and circle, so that you can see it from this perspective,” Ward told her.
From the air, the island of Havenhurst was absolutely gorgeous: lusciously green from its neat fields, to forests, to carpeted mountains. From the air, she could see it was dotted with turquoise pools and cascading waterfalls.