Stolen To Wear His Crown (Mills & Boon Modern) (The Royal Guard, Book 1)

by Marcella Bell

  Mina almost laughed. It would be some time before the security of the premises became a concern of hers. She was a scientist, not a dignitary. Or she had been.

  After a long walk, they finally stopped in front of another wooden door and Mina flinched. Her day at the palace had become a nightmare of Monty Hall problems.

  So what monstrosity lurks behind door number three? she wondered as she pushed it open.

  Only this time is wasn’t a nightmare. It was a paradise.

  The room was all wide-open ivory walls and floors and creamy marble. There were several open archways leading into other spaces, all of which encircled a large sunken sitting room that was comfortably appointed with plush furniture. The upholstery was smooth buff suede, and there were pillows and throw blankets everywhere one might want to reach for one.

  As Mina entered, d’Tierrza stopped her with a hand on the shoulder. “For the Queen’s Ball, call Roz Chastain. She’ll take you because you’re new. Let her have her way on everything.”

  She took out a pen and paper and scribbled a number down.

  Mina nodded, a sense of relief penetrating her for the first time since she had learned she had landed the Parliament interview months ago.

  “Thank you.”

  D’Tierrza grinned. “My money is on you. I’ve never seen anyone affect him like you do. He completely lost his cool—and that can only be good for him.”

  With those enigmatic words, she gently nudged Mina inside before taking her position outside the door.

  Moustafa took her position as well, leaving Mina to wander in and out of each room.

  The wing included a bedroom, a bathroom suite with a tiled hot tub, a large-windowed office with a stunning view, and an enormous balcony overlooking the sea.

  The bed was lush, and freshly made with bright linens and fluffy pillows. The towels were the thickest she had ever felt, and a gorgeous robe and slipper set was hanging outside the double-headed waterfall shower.

  Interestingly, while the suite was stunning—indeed, the most elegant accommodation Mina had ever been in—there were signs that the wing had not been updated in at least a few decades. Rotary phones graced the side tables in the bedroom and the sitting room, three nineteen-fifties era television sets that Mina was sure would not connect to Cyrano’s digital cable network rested on sideboards in multiple places, and there wasn’t a computer in sight.

  All it needed was a laptop and decent Wi-Fi signal, though, and it would make the perfect location for a research sabbatical.

  Not for her, of course.

  After the fiasco of her arrest and then her firing, her career was ruined. Academia was quick to condemn and slow to forgive. The only thing for her to do was fade into the shadows quietly.

  A feat that would be more challenging now that she was apparently Queen.

  Her academic reputation was tarnished.

  She was Queen of Cyrano.

  It was her wedding day.

  She was alone.

  Walking into the bedroom, weary in a way she never imagined she could be, she collapsed on the bed without taking her clothes off or loosening her braid. The SWAT team had done a good enough job of that last bit.

  She hadn’t harbored many of the fantasies common to young girls. Weddings, babies—none of that—but she had still vaguely imagined that she’d marry. Probably not until the autumn of her life, and likely only then to a warmly regarded colleague. But she’d pictured it. Even in that tame picture, though, she hadn’t gone to bed alone on her wedding night.

  Rolling over onto her back, she stared at the bright ceiling, no longer able to hold back the wave of emotion.

  She was the Queen of Cyrano and her greatest dream was a warm pile of smoking ash.

  For the first time since her father died, Mina cried herself to sleep.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SOME MEN WERE driven by passion, acting on their instincts without thought or strategy. Much to his late father’s chagrin, Zayn Darius d’Argonia, the youngest ever King of Cyrano, was not that kind of man.

  It was the old man’s own fault, though. After all, he had been the one to raise a young prince with an ironclad sense of self-reliance and an unwavering commitment to forging his own path. Early on in his life, he had decided that his was the path of careful study and planning.

  To give his father credit, he had, on most issues, steadfastly supported Zayn in whatever approach he chose, saying, “Each man is his own. It does the world no good to try to walk the path of another.”

  His father had believed this self-reliance was a vital characteristic for a king. Of course, neither of them had imagined that Zayn would become King so soon. Nor that, in that transition, his inner compass would be the only thing that saved the country from near governmental collapse, economic depression, and an attempted coup in the immediate and ugly aftermath of the King’s assassination and the ascendance of a young, inexperienced monarch to the throne.

  But any self-flagellation for lack of foresight on the matter was a pointless waste of time—a luxury a working king could not afford.

  Some believed that Parliament ran things. They were mistaken.

  Cyrano’s monarchy had given its people a powerful voice through their elected officials, and more power still through the Parliament-selected advisory council, but the royal family had retained control and rule of the country—through centuries and countless plots against them.

  Zayn would not be the one to jeopardize that—not through poor planning, not through acting rashly, and not through marriage.

  And that was just one of the many reasons the shock of his betrothal still stung.

  Filling the position of Queen was to have been one of his most potent bargaining chips—a lucrative lure to play to Cyrano’s strategic advantage.

  The woman who would be Queen had to be cut from a particular cloth—intelligent, quick-thinking, compassionate, determined, unflappable, steel-coated, perfectly presented, and always poised. And she needed to bring something of real value to the Crown—money, trade, connections...something tangible.

  She could not be common. She could not be unfashionable. She couldn’t let her feelings show in her beautiful green-gold eyes every time someone was frank with her.

  His greatest bargaining chip was now a virtual throwaway, offering nothing advantageous to the nation and burdening him with a softhearted academic unprepared for the sharp edges of public life in the process. That his father had been the one to hamstring him like this made it all the worse.

  It didn’t make any sense. Up to the very end, his father had done everything he could to support him.

  Zayn had already considered the obvious—that Mina’s family had somehow blackmailed the late King—but it didn’t pan out.

  While his father had been no angel, Zayn was sure there were no skeletons in his closet so monstrous that he would sacrifice his son. Nothing had mattered more to King Alden than his family. It didn’t add up—especially given the old King’s feelings on marriage.

  While he was alive, marriage had been the one point of disagreement between them.

  Never one to keep his opinions to himself, Alden had tried his damnedest to turn his son around to his thinking.

  “Your Queen will be your greatest helpmeet and partner. She will be the difference between a legacy of success or failure. Finding her, falling in love—and soon—that is your most important duty.”

  Fresh from his second year at university, and riding high on the thrill of finding his passion in the philosophy and study of governance, Zayn had merely rolled his eyes at his father’s hyperbole.

  His father had persisted. “I’m serious, son. I don’t want to hear any more of this ‘strategic alliance once you take the throne’ nonsense. I want you to fall in love, and fast.”

  “Regardless of this mystery woman’s status
or fitness to rule?” Zayn had replied, not bothering to rein in the sarcasm in his voice.

  King Alden’s eyes had briefly darted away that day, and Zayn had counted the point as his victory, but now he knew better. His father hadn’t met his eyes that day because he had been playing the hypocrite.

  And therein lay the rub.

  Why go to the trouble to wax on about love and marriage when he’d already given his son away?

  Perhaps his father had been more strategic than Zayn had given him credit. Maybe he’d owed someone a favor for his good fortune, and Zayn had been the repayment. That kind of quid pro quo was the norm amongst the ruling set. The logic was clean.

  But Zayn didn’t believe it for a minute.

  Logical though it might be, the idea was uncharitable to the man his father had been, and about as far out of character and respect to the relationship they’d shared as this whole betrothal fiasco was in the first place.

  Whatever the circumstances had been, his father had not conned his way onto the throne. King Alden and Queen Barbara’s had been a great love. The intensity of it had gone so far as to be a frequent distraction from rule, in Zayn’s opinion. But his father had insisted that their passion set the tone for the nation, energizing its transition from a European backwater into the next most-desired off-the-beaten-path destination.

  It was hard to believe that the same man would—either strategically, or under threat—bargain his son away.

  So how in God’s name had he ended up married to a stranger? And why had his father kept the betrothal from him?

  The betrothal agreement was dated just weeks before Zayn’s birth, witnessed by the former Archbishop, Henry Innocence, and signed by both Zayn’s and Mina’s fathers. Curiously, their mothers’ signatures were absent.

  With nothing more to offer than that, the current Archbishop, Samuel, had raised his palms pacifyingly and said, “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. The late Archbishop made no note about the betrothal in his diary entries. I scoured the entire year’s worth myself.”

  Nothing about the situation made sense, and no one could explain. Indeed, logic had taken its leave of the situation from the moment Zayn had approached Archbishop Samuel with his list of prospective brides.

  Each of those women would have brought something of advantage to Cyrano.

  Daphne Xianopolis came with access to excellent Mediterranean Sea trade routes. Françoise La Guerre was a princess in her own right, and marriage to her would have opened up the potential for stronger diplomatic ties to continental Europe. And Yu Yan Ma would have been the most fabulous prize. Connection to her father would have given him power enough to propel Cyrano into the world of international trade.

  Zayn had merely intended the Archbishop to vet the list for any potential religious challenges before he made began making approaches. Instead, he’d learned that he was otherwise engaged.

  “What do you mean, I’m ‘already taken?’” Zayn had demanded.

  The Archbishop had smiled, as if the situation were a delightful joke, and repeated, “You are affianced, Your Majesty. You have been since before you were born.”

  “That’s impossible!”

  But it had not been impossible. The archbishop had shown him the official document, signed, witnessed, and filed—binding in every way—and Zayn had been forced to acknowledge the truth.

  Dr. Amina Aldaba would bring nothing of value to Cyrano. As far as he could discern, she was nobody. She came from simple people of Moorish descent. Her father had been eighth generation Cyranese and had first a soldier, then a farmer—not the kind of man who entered his unborn child into a royal betrothal.

  Like all natural-born Cyranese men, her father had served in the military for mandatory service at eighteen. Unlike most, he had re-enlisted for another three terms of service, earning enough money to purchase a small villa at the edge of the city. City permit records showed that he had then converted two courtyards into farm plots and taken to life as a vendor at the city’s famous daily market. A few years later he’d married Elke Meyer—a woman who had arrived in Cyrano on a student visa.

  The couple had married in the courthouse and had one child. They’d lived as a family until the father’s death thirteen years later. Nowhere in that timeline was there any record of their family’s path crossing with the royal line. Not in service, not in friendship—nothing that would suggest a closeness that might brook the future joining of their families that was constitutionally binding.

  And so Zayn had Dr. Amina Aldaba for his Queen—a woman who had spent her life absorbed in academia, developing no practical skills for queenship.

  She would need to learn everything from scratch, and there was no way he could keep her out of the limelight long enough for her to master the ins and outs of public life. Undoubtedly, she would embarrass the Crown along the way.

  With her over-starched headmistress aesthetic and easily ruffled feathers, it was obvious she was better suited to that scientific advisory position on the council than the throne. At least in that role she would have had something to recommend her. Zayn had scoured her research and found her work insightful. He could see why Parliament had approved her interview.

  In the role of scientific advisor, she would have been perfect.

  There was nothing to recommend her for the role of Queen.

  A protest against the thought rose from some vague, primal part of his mind. She didn’t exactly have nothing to recommend her. That much was clear, even with the atrocious packaging.

  Her eyes were astonishing—a shade of green that Zayn had never seen before, falling somewhere between that of the sage that grew in the dry upper reaches of Cyrano’s hills and the new spring grasses that grew in the meadowlands.

  And her gaze had depth—enough that it was easy to fall into it, like a moss-lined crevasse in a mountain forest.

  Her skin, too—a satiny brown that glowed warm and bright wherever the light touched it—was notable. Smooth and clear, it virtually demanded to be caressed.

  Like her skin, her hair, too, hinted at softness, even shellacked and tightly braided as it had been. The color of her hair had reminded Zayn of the brown beaches of the island palace, its chocolatey brown and natural highlights calling to his mind the island’s long stretches of pristine coastline, dappled with dancing ribbons of sunlight streaming through the woods.

  Her eyebrows were a shade darker than her hair, thick and fierce over her magnificent eyes.

  Her coloring was that of the Mediterranean landscape, come to vibrant life in the form of woman. He sensed that the rest of her—everything she hid beneath her over-sized and over-starched office wear—would be just as vibrant and bountiful.

  There were hints of it even with the camouflage. Her lips were full and defined even naked of lipstick, as they had been. They were naturally rose-colored, lending her mouth a naughty allure that she didn’t even bother to hide.

  Her utter lack of effort to accentuate her beauty only seemed to emphasize the truth of it.

  Her nose was straight-bridged, with a rounded tip, lending her expressive face an element of forthrightness that offset any urge to write her off as merely pretty.

  Instead, she was earnest. Pure. Untasted.

  That last thought was unlike him.

  And, at thirty-six years old, it was highly unlikely that she remained untasted.

  But, shoving that thought to the side, he was willing to acknowledge that it wasn’t fair to say she brought nothing the table. She would be lovely when adequately dressed.

  Unfortunately, “lovely” was usually only as exciting and useful as the time it took to secure a taste of it. “Lovely” wasn’t reason enough for most common men to marry, let alone a king.

  Zayn glanced up at the wall clock in his office to note that she was five minutes late. She didn’t even have the sense to respect the demands
on his time. They had a great deal they needed to discuss concerning the terms of their marriage and he didn’t have all day.

  He watched the ticking passage of another two minutes before she walked in, head high.

  As it had been the day before, her armor—or, more accurately, her schoolmarm disguise—was in place: controlled braid, no-nonsense posture, and a direct stare. Though by now, day two, her suit was beginning to lose its crisp edges. This morning she looked more like a wilting librarian than a roughed-up rigid professor.

  Zayn gave her a once-over before saying, “Your clothing is ridiculous. You’ll need to work on that.”

  Hurt flickered across her gaze, but she schooled her expression.

  She’ll need to work on that, too, he thought.

  A queen needed thick skin.

  Taking her in, he mentally sighed. Her eyes were slightly puffy and swollen—a telltale sign that she had cried the night before. A queen needed to be prepared for long, thankless days and constant smiling, for being bombarded with hate and never revealing whether she was hurt, tired, ill, or angry. Mina might as well have been a projector screen for the way she broadcasted her feelings to the world.

  Zayn added, “As Queen, you are expected to dress at the height of fashion and always be well presented. You have a budget for that express purpose, as it is considered part and parcel of your royal duties.”

  Her cheeks darkened but she made no comment to his remark, so he gestured for her to sit down at the desk across from him. The desk had been his father’s before his, and his grandfather’s before that. The very room itself had been the King’s office since the palace’s construction.

  And now it was his.

  Mina sat, looking around the office as she did so. For once, her expression did not give away her thoughts. Her posture was ramrod-straight as she sat at the edge of the chair, legs primly pressed together, hands in her lap.