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

by Marcella Bell

  She was the force of gravity at the center of the universe.

  And she was walking the red carpet early.

  Without him.

  He pulled out his phone at the same time as its buzzing began in earnest. Alert after alert—curated courtesy of the fact that he’d set a news alert to monitor mentions of the Queen—popped up on his screen.

  As images of her loaded, blood rushed in his ears, and he acknowledged to himself that he was not going to finish the trade agreements.

  Pushing his chair away from his desk, he stood and stepped around the heavy furniture.

  His assistant, still scrolling through images himself, started at the King’s sudden movement, but quickly followed as Zayn strode out of his office.

  As they walked, Zayn instructed him to have his closet man prepare his clothes and his barber meet him in his parlor.

  It was time to get ready for the ball.

  His clothing arrived in his room at the same time as he did and he dressed quickly, appreciating the ease of perfect tailoring. One never had to worry how one looked when one’s clothes were made for one’s body.

  Commissioned for the event, the tuxedo was entirely black, made from thick Chinese silk. Each element of his attire, from the jacket to the butter-smooth button-down shirt, was perfectly coordinated and fitted to his body alone. Nothing about anything he wore spoke of it being a costume, and yet when he placed the midnight domino mask on his face there was no mistaking him for anything other than the King of the night himself.

  The unforgiving black of the silk absorbed all light that touched it, calling to mind a dark moonless night in the dead of winter.

  How convenient that Mina was the sun personified.

  Ten minutes later he was in his car, on his way.

  His driver pulled up and cameras flashed as he stepped out onto the red carpet.

  His arrival had disrupted the flow of other prominent citizens, but he didn’t slow for photos, reaching the entrance stairs quickly and taking them two at a time.

  The lobby of the grand theater had been transformed, though he had little attention for its grandeur as he cut through the parting crowd.

  Inside, all of the seats had been removed and temporary flooring installed, creating the impression of walking upon a vast expanse of space. In fact the entire lower half of the large room had become the night sky, brought indoors. Taking advantage of the theater’s classic gilded ceilings, the upper half of the room was an homage to daylight. Balconies had become starbursts and sunbeams. And the stage was the meeting of day and night—a twilight alcove, romantically furnished, clearly the resting place for the stars of the evening: the King and the Queen.

  But she was not there.

  Instead, she stood across the room, engrossed in conversation with the French ambassador.

  Zayn’s brow crinkled in irritation. The ambassador was a lecherous middle-aged man who had no business standing so close to the Queen of Cyrano—especially not with that appreciative light in his eyes.

  Not that he could blame him.

  She was divine. And she was the true meaning of the word “radiant” as a petite woman dressed all in black led her along the outer edge of the ballroom.

  Moustafa and d’Tierrza followed at a close distance behind them.

  The theater was crowded, with barely enough room to move around. Even this early in the evening elegantly costumed couples spun around the dance floor in the center of the room, while other partygoers milled about anywhere there was room. Wait staff carrying trays laden with champagne flutes and hors d’oeuvres wove through the crowd, handing out their wares.

  For a moment, Zayn simply watched her.

  Awareness of his presence, however, soon spread through the crowd, bringing a hush to the group despite the fact that the music continued.

  Slowly the people parted, opening a pathway between Mina and himself. She did not notice—perhaps because she had moved on from the French ambassador and was now involved in what looked like an intense conversation with the Minister of Agriculture.

  Zayn approached her without her knowing, observing as he neared that the lines of her back, revealed and accentuated as they were by her astonishing gown, were obviously the shared creation of heaven and hell.

  Her spine was a graceful indentation that slid and flowed between her slim shoulder blades, drawing his gaze to the generous swell of her hips. If there was ever a reason to burn all the trousers in the country, it would be because Mina had once used them to commit the sacrilege of hiding her glorious backside.

  The dress did sinful things to her legs, too. Seeing her clothed in garments that actually fit, he could now see that her legs were the true source of her above average height. And tonight she was even taller than usual—a tall golden bouquet of curves and curls.

  And there was another surprise.

  Freed from the severe braid, her hair was riotous—sensual, soft, and mesmerizing. He fought the urge to thrust his hand into the vibrant cloud of her hair, palm the back of her hand, and bend her face back towards his. Instead, he curled his fingers around the soft exposed flesh of her upper arm, running his thumb along the buttery-soft smoothness of her skin.

  Up close, the thin film of her dress seemed so viscerally alive it was as if he felt it shiver along with the rest of her body at his touch. His senses zeroed in on her further, taking in the flush beneath the glow that hadn’t been there moments before.

  The music still continued, but all eyes in the room were on the King and his unknown Queen.

  She turned slowly, forcing him to release her arm.

  His eyes burned over her body like a grassland fire as she rotated, taking in the curve of her hips and indentation of her waist.

  The front of the dress was even more of a revelation.

  A full-grown woman had been hiding beneath all that oversized clothing.

  He felt her with his gaze as he raked it upwards, spending extra time on her proud breasts before finally letting it make its way up to meet the wide-stretched green eyes behind the mask—eyes that had haunted him since the moment he’d seen them in the chapel.

  Her breath caught, but she held her composure, giving a small vertical curtsy and murmuring, “Your Majesty.” Her voice was cool, but as taut as the rest of her body.

  He inclined his head, addressing her with the same cool tone. “Your Majesty.”

  Mina opened her mouth to speak again and Zayn felt his pulse quicken, waiting for what she would say, but the petite woman in black had stepped from behind her, holding a milky stone circlet out to him.

  Her voice cracked out like a dry whip. “You’re late, Your Majesty. Put this on.”

  Zayn’s spine straightened at the familiar rasp, his hand automatically reaching out to accept the offering—obedience to this particular individual had been drilled into him since childhood.

  “Roz.” He inclined his head to her respectfully, before looking at what he held. It was a black circlet inlaid with moonstone. He put it on without comment.

  Roz had been his royal etiquette instructor throughout his childhood. Now she was the most sought-after event-planner in the kingdom. She was also his godmother.

  A number of things about the evening made abrupt sense.

  “Please join us in making the rounds, Your Majesty,” Roz said.

  Beside her, Mina stiffened.

  Roz’s request had been more order than invitation, but she was one of the few people the King still deferred to.

  “It would be my honor, Roz.”

  He reached an arm out to the older woman, but she gave a small shake of her head. Telling himself he was doing as he was told because it was Roz, rather than because he wanted to get his hands on the silk that was Mina, he smoothly took her arm in his.

  As their skin touched her scent rose up and wrapped a
round him—fresh and floral, with just a hint of something wicked. He closed his eyes, resisting the urge to bend his head to her neck and breathe deep.

  Her flush deepened and he felt the heat of it emanating from her body. Rather than stop himself, he leaned in a fraction of an inch closer to her and breathed in her heat and her scent. Her eyes widened into mossy pools beneath her mask and her mouth opened slightly in surprise, her body frozen by his gaze.

  His impact on her was obvious. The power and thrill that came with it, however, was unexpected. He was used to power. He was the King, with power over millions of souls. And yet this power... He had a feeling his power to affect this woman was somehow singular.

  Roz cleared her throat loudly, saying, “If we may...?” And the moment evaporated.

  Like good little soldiers, he and Mina turned at attention, in unison, but out of the corner of his eye he could see that wherever there was skin visible Mina had blushed a deep red.

  Fixing him with a long stare, Roz led their trio toward another diplomat—this one from the United Kingdom.

  A distinguished older man, Charles William Henry was a minor aristocrat in his home country. As its official ambassador to Cyrano, however, he held a high enough status to warrant a personal greeting from the King and Queen—Zayn credited that fact with his seeking of the position in the first place.

  “Your Majesty...” The man oozed over Mina’s hand with an enthusiasm that grated on Zayn’s ears. “It is truly a pleasure to finally make your acquaintance. I must say it was worth the wait, however. You are more radiant than the sun. Apollo must bow when you enter a room.”

  Zayn didn’t know which was more grating on his nerves: the man’s abysmal poetry or the way he extended every syllable in his exaggerated posh accent.

  Below her mask, however, Mina smiled. It was the first true smile Zayn had ever seen her wear, and it spread across the lower portion of her face, showing too many teeth for a proper queen’s smile, but all the more bright and breathtaking for it. It cut through him as if he were a storm cloud and she a literal ray of sunshine.

  Only the fact that it had been a rain of asinine compliments that had somehow managed to make her glow kept him from falling under the spell of the smile himself.

  “You are too kind, sir. I understand your family owns property in the South of England? I have always heard the country there is lovely.”

  Both men started when she spoke. Her English was clear and understandable, if slightly North-American-accented, and Zayn found himself perversely pleased that, wherever she had learned the language, it had not been Britain.

  “You speak English, Your Majesty!” the ambassador exclaimed. “When I learned you were native to Cyrano, I did not expect it—most citizens don’t, as you know,” he said, insulting their country with mock abashment. “Indeed, Your Majesty, I am from the south of England. Thank you for noticing. And, yes, there is nothing quite like it. It would be my honor to host you there. I am certain I could give you a proper English time.”

  A muscle in the back of Zayn’s neck twitched as the man’s words grew bolder with each passing moment. Establishing a bond between the two kingdoms had been one of Zayn’s many coups. Great Britain was a global power. The fact that it would acknowledge Cyrano as anything more than a Mediterranean backwater had been unprecedented.

  However, now, as the ambassador undressed the Queen with his eyes, his voice dripping with suggestion, Zayn found himself wondering how necessary that diplomatic relationship really was.

  Resisting the urge to put the question to the test, Zayn simply put himself between the other man and the Queen, responding for her, his voice as soft as velvet as it wrapped around the English words.

  “Of course there will be tours in the future. However, I plan to keep my new bride to myself for as long as possible. Newlyweds—I’m sure you understand.”

  He guided Mina away from the man with Roz following.

  “Very subtle and diplomatic, Zayn,” she observed.

  The humor in Roz’s voice eased the tension in his neck as if he were slipping into well-worn leather boot, gently reminding him that he was acting like a fool.

  Rather than respond to that, though, he said, “I assume you’re behind Mina’s transformation?”

  “Well, hello to you too, Your Royal Majesty.”

  Mina’s voice matched Roz’s for dryness. Zayn shuddered to think what else she might have picked up from her time with the older woman.

  “You were late,” Roz observed.

  They were ganging up on him.

  Zayn smiled, “And I thought you were early.”

  Again, Roz snorted. “A queen is never early.”

  She started to guide their group forward again—Zayn imagined to make more introductions. But he found he did not care to continue the rounds, filing away the name of each and every single man who stared overlong at the Queen, when he could have the golden star of the night all to himself.

  Roz pointed them toward a cluster of popular musicians, but Zayn shook his head. “The Queen is wilting.” He nodded toward Mina who, if anything, glowed with her own inner light.

  “I’m fine, thank you,” she said, irritation threading through her voice.

  He shook his head distinctly, negating her statement. “You are a dimming sun. It’s time for you to set. You can’t be used to standing in heels for so long.”

  Mina’s mouth dropped into the O of outrage he was so familiar with and he smiled. Roz lifted her eyebrow at being crossed, but gave a short nod, watching their interaction closely. She could add it to the list of transgressions he was sure he would hear about from her later.

  Leaving her to act as hostess, he led Mina to the stage and helped her into the seat that had clearly been designed for her dress. She didn’t sit, exactly, as much as recline regally. A subtle golden spotlight beamed down on her where she rested, maintaining her haloed image even as a very human sigh escaped her.

  At her side, of the same height as her unique chair, was a dark, high-backed throne, obviously intended for him. She would look like a celestial sphinx stretched out next to a dark midnight king. Even sitting, the royal couple would remain the center of attention—and conversation—for the night.

  Roz had considered every detail.

  Rather than simply letting the old devil have her way, though, he remained standing. Mina stared up at him, her eyes glowing especially green in the light, and he had to fight the urge to dive into their mossy depths. This close, he was caught in the web of her scent and temperature, mesmerized by the thin silk of her dress, which seemed to reveal more and more to delight his eyes the longer he was near her.

  He sucked in a deep breath.

  The effect she was having on him was a manufactured thing, created by Roz, and yet knowing that did nothing to dampen it.

  Pulling his attention away from her, he lifted his hand in a signal for refreshments.

  In an instant a quintet of servers arrived, their heavy platters laden, offering each option on the floor.

  He reached for two flutes of champagne and offered her the first selection. Taking the glass, she thanked him before choosing a small cracker dressed with some kind of cheese and slivers of tomato and basil from one of the trays. She ate delicately, for all that her morsel disappeared in one bite, and he watched her do it, arrested by the series of movements in her eating, from the parting of her full lips to the contraction of her throat muscles as she swallowed.

  He shook his head lightly. He needed to get away from her. He would leave immediately after the unmasking. Until then, he would remain in the place Roz had clearly assigned him, as a king on full display.

  “Roz outdid herself tonight,” he commented.

  “She did.” Her words were clipped and close.

  He felt irritation rising in his blood. She was wary. Of him.

 
“Admirable of you to admit it,” he said dryly.

  Instead of rising to his bait, Mina smiled. “It would have been a disaster without Roz.” She waved her hand toward the room, adding, “Instead, it’s the sun and the moon.”

  “She knows how to throw a party,” he agreed.

  This time Mina laughed, and the honest clarity of the sound went straight into his blood, as energizing as it was agitating.

  “That’s quite the understatement,” she said, when she could speak.

  The corners of his own lips lifted of their own accord, and behind her mask her eyes widened.

  His chest heated with pure male satisfaction. He wasn’t the only one caught up in Roz’s mirage.

  With a nod, he said, “The woman is a force of nature.”

  As if sensing their conversation, Roz appeared on the stage, accompanied by a tall, slender older woman in an elegant blue gown and a peacock feather mask.

  Zayn rose and gave the woman a bow. “Aunt Seraphina.”

  The woman nodded to him with a smile, “It’s supposed to be a mystery, Your Majesty.”

  “My apologies. You look lovely.”

  Seraphina d’Tierrza, his maternal aunt, shook her head with a mild reprimand. “Flattering an old woman when you have your beautiful Queen beside you?”

  Her voice was as warm and as gently teasing as it had been when he was a little boy, caught climbing trees with her daughter.

  Zayn offered Mina a hand, their fingers exchanging a mild electric shock upon contact, and when she stood her scent once again wrapped around him, capturing his complete attention, even if for only a moment.

  Mina reached a hand out to Seraphina. “It’s so wonderful to finally meet you. Your daughter has been heaven-sent.”

  Her voice followed the model of her scent, its warm tones enveloping him in her spell.

  “I’m glad you think so, Your Majesty. Not everyone has the sense to appreciate her as you do. We are very proud of her being a member of your guard.”

  “More than that.” Mina smiled. “She is a friend.”

  His aunt beamed beneath the new young Queen’s words and Zayn frowned.