The Duke’s Covert Mission

by Julie Miller

  Easton stood at the edge of the carpet, watching while his grandson opened the humidor on the desk and helped himself to one of the Carradignes’ imported cigars. “Good evening, Markus.”

  He noted the subtle jerk of Markus’s shoulders. He’d startled him. Good. He didn’t like it when that boy was up to something. But when he turned around, he wore one of those charming smiles that showed off his teeth, instead of his character. He dipped his head in an informal bow. “Grandfather.”

  The king walked into the room and crossed to the desk. He sat in the leather chair, asserting that this was his space—for the moment, at least—on which Markus was trespassing. “Does Charlotte know you’re here?” Though they’d had their differences in the past, his son’s widow was a consummate hostess. “She’d have invited you to join us for dinner, I’m sure.” Enough hinting that Markus’s visit seemed suspicious, if not unwelcome. “Did you have someone on the phone before I came in?”

  Markus took the time to trim and light his cigar, puffing several times before answering. “I was expecting a business call, so I picked it up. It was a wrong number.”

  Easton’s antennae revved up to full alert. Only one person had the number to that particular phone. It was impossible for anyone else to dial into it.

  Markus unbuttoned his charcoal blazer and sat. “Where’s that mousy little frump who runs around answering the phone for you, anyway? I want to tell her to patch my calls through to here.”

  Easton gripped the arms of his chair and squeezed until his bony knuckles turned white. If there was any way he could ram that cigar down Markus’s throat and still maintain his controlled kingly status, he’d do it. “Ellie is vacationing with friends. She wanted to see some of the country before she returns to Korosol with me.”

  “And Cousin Lucia? I haven’t seen her the past few days, either.”

  “I imagine she’s with her new husband.” He couldn’t resist one fatherly dig. The boy was thirty-five years old. He needed to learn values sometime. Easton cringed as he listened to his own thought processes. Markus was spoiled enough that he still thought of him as the boy. “There are a few Carradignes who make the effort to spend time with their families.”

  The message missed its mark. “Of course.” Or maybe it hadn’t. “Just like you were always there for us growing up.” Markus stood, ignoring the etiquette of asking for permission or allowing his king to stand first. “Well, I’d better be going. I have a friend holding a box for me at the Metropolitan Opera.”

  “I thought you were expecting a call.”

  Markus smiled. It reeked of insincerity. “Maybe I just stopped by to see how my aging grandfather was feeling. You haven’t looked well lately.” He leaned forward, bracing his hands on the opposite side of the desk. Looking down on him. “How are you? Really?”

  The sniveling weasel! Easton rose, countering his grandson’s position. He would not let this boy see his weakness. He would not allow Markus to consider the notion that his grandfather’s deteriorating health meant he was one step closer to becoming king. “Your concern is touching, Markus. Now unless you have some real business to conduct here, I suggest you go play with your friends and leave a man to run the affairs of state.”

  Something willful and hurt and angry flashed in Markus’s eyes. Easton almost considered apologizing for the insult. But Markus blew out a puff of smoke, and by the time it dissipated, his expression had blanked into that mask of false charm once more.

  He pulled away from the desk and buttoned his jacket. “Grandfather.”

  There were no more pleasantries. No attempts to mend fences or reestablish trust. After Markus departed, Easton sank into his chair. The stress of the past few days was telling on him. That encounter with his grandson left him feeling light-headed and weak.

  If Ellie was here, she’d fix him tea and make him lie down. But Ellie wasn’t here. And if that call meant what he thought it did, she might never come back. His late wife Cassandra would never have forgiven him for what he’d allowed to happen to her goddaughter.

  Despite the selfish twist of his remarks, Markus was right. Just as he had so many times in the past, as king, he’d put his country before his family.

  And Ellie was family. She was every bit as dear and necessary to his life as his own granddaughters.

  God, he was an old fool.

  A sentimental, guilt-ridden old fool.

  But he was a good king.

  The game was over. He had subjects to protect.

  Responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders, but determination lightened the load.

  Easton sat up straight and reached for the secure cell phone that Markus had picked up. He punched a button and verified that the call had come through.

  Suspicious of Markus and what he might have figured out from that call, Easton picked up the Carradigne phone and contacted the captain of the Royal Guard, Devon Montcalm.

  He issued an order that was calm and succinct. “Something’s gone wrong. Tell your men to move out.”

  “I DON’T THINK I’ll ever be dry or warm again.”

  Ellie held out her hands toward the iffy source of heat, then hugged herself and rubbed her arms as the chills shivered through her body.

  Cade had ditched the boat in a shallow stand of reeds and trees along the shore, then led her through the darkness to this elegant abode. An old roadside motel whose road had deteriorated into an overgrown concrete path offered them shelter for the night. Using his knife to jimmy the lock, he’d broken into a room.

  While he’d gone outside to check the propane tank and fire up the generator, Ellie explored. The small room, with its one double bed and adjoining bathroom, looked as if the owners had simply walked away—months ago—leaving everything in its place. Though a coat of dust covered everything, she’d found soap and towels and a spare lightbulb in a drawer to fix the single lamp and give them light.

  Unfortunately there was no running water.

  Still, they’d stripped off most of their wet, mud-caked clothes and hung them in the bathroom to dry. Now she huddled in her underwear in front of the rattling, built-in space heater that smelled of burned metal and oily fumes. She’d wrapped a towel around her like a skirt and hung one over her shoulders to try to conserve body heat.

  It wasn’t working.

  “Here.”

  Cade came up behind her and draped a blanket over her shoulders. He wrapped his arms around her, blanket and all, and pulled her into his bare, solid chest. He pressed his cheek to the hair at her temple and folded himself around her, generating a furnace of warmth both inside and out. Ellie closed her eyes and sank into his embrace, willingly trapped between walls of heat.

  Cade breathed in Ellie’s sweet scent and held her until he felt her shivers subside. As the chill of her cheek warmed beneath his, he adjusted his stance so that he could feel the ripe curve of her bottom pushing against his loins. It was a decadent indulgence, he knew, but with Ellie he’d discovered that he couldn’t quite get enough of just holding a woman in his arms.

  His mother had never been a touchy-feely person. Her brand of contact had been little air kisses blown on either side of his cheeks. His father had been the hugger. The wrestler. The parent who ruffled hair and jabbed him playfully in the arm. Once Bretford was gone, he’d denied himself the unique closeness that came when two people cared enough and trusted enough to connect with simple physical contact.

  Even the women he’d known had been a series of one-or two-night stands. Good sex with little cuddling in between.

  But Ellie was different. Sure, the woman was a sexual revolution waiting to happen. But along with the smoldering sensuality of her figure and fiery spirit and soft, soft hair, there was a quietness about her. A gentle acceptance and wide-eyed faith in the world around her. That gentleness soothed his ravaged soul and gave him a sense of calm that he’d forgotten in his adult life.

  Not to say that all his thoughts centered around the serenity this woman p
rovided in the face of hit men and kidnappers and traitors.

  He smiled against her velvet-soft cheek as she reached up and adjusted her glasses on her nose in that sweetly self-conscious way of hers. But she didn’t pull away. If anything, she snuggled closer, and Cade adjusted his arms to oblige her.

  He’d pared down to just his briefs and cargo pants, leaving the top button unfastened at his waist. While they’d worked to prepare the room, he’d seen her attention wander to that unhooked buttonhole again and again. His body hummed with awareness at her shy curiosity. For propriety’s sake he should button his pants, instead of letting them sit loosely on his hips to dry out. But he didn’t feel like following propriety’s rules right now. He felt like holding Ellie.

  But like all good things in his life, this quiet intimacy couldn’t last. She was thinking now. He could tell it in the restless shifting of her body, the way her fingertips went up to her glasses a second time.

  “If you really are on the right side of the law and you’re working for King Easton, why didn’t you help me escape sooner?” He knew he wasn’t going to like where she was going with this. “Three days you kept me chained up in that dungeon like an animal. You hunted me down. You let Jerome—”

  “No. I never let—” He took a deep, steadying breath, tamping down the possessive, protective, guilty anger that flashed in his veins at the memory of Jerome Smython attacking her. “I never wanted him to touch you. But if I’d intervened at the beginning…” Oh hell. How could he really justify her suffering?

  She turned in his arms, and by necessity, so she could look up into his face, she put some unwanted distance between them. “You would have blown your cover?”

  Cade dropped his arms to his sides. That rare feeling of contentment oozed out of his body. As badly as he had needed it, and as carefully as she had given it, he didn’t deserve her trust.

  “Yeah. I needed you to stay undercover, too.”

  “Why?” Those big blue eyes expected him to give her an answer that would make everything okay.

  He didn’t have one. He crossed to the nightstand and picked up two of the granola bars he’d stolen from Tony Costa’s stockade of supplies. Food, water and ammo had been the goal of that raid. With his pockets full, he would have chalked it up as a success…if it hadn’t been for the blood-freezing sound of Ellie’s scream and the sight of her spotlighted for target practice by Korosol’s most notorious killer for hire. She was moving once she saw the danger, but he didn’t think he’d get to her in time. He couldn’t stand the thought of anyone hurting her. He couldn’t let Eleanor Standish wind up dead.

  She was too important to him.

  “I’m not going to like this answer, am I,” she prompted him. But regret and discovery left him too raw to deal with this kind of conversation right now.

  “Later, please?”

  She came up beside him and snatched one of the granola bars out of his hands. “Now.”

  Cade blinked and looked down at the determination stamped onto her lovely features that he’d once mistakenly thought plain.

  What the hell? Endangering an innocent woman wasn’t the most shameful thing he’d ever done in his life. It hurt like hell right now, but he’d lived through worse.

  He’d just give it to her hard and fast. “I needed you to be bait.”

  He saw her reaction to the unflattering word in the sudden pallor on her cheeks. But instead of telling him off or backing away, she unwrapped her snack and took a bite.

  “To trap Winston Rademacher?” she asked, munching through her words.

  “To keep the kidnapping ruse going long enough for me to find out who was behind it.”

  She swallowed. “It wasn’t a ruse to me.”

  “I know.” Cade was the one who finally had to move away. He took off half the granola bar in a single bite and put the length of the room between them.

  Ellie climbed onto the bed and sat pretzel-style near the edge. She ate with one hand and clutched the blanket around herself with the other. “Do you think the person who wanted to kidnap Lucia will try to hurt King Easton again?”

  He opened a bottle of water and took a long drink before answering. “Yeah.”

  “He’s seventy-eight years old, Cade. His health is deteriorating. And though his mind is as sharp and spry as ever, his body’s failing him. He may look like a sixty-year-old, but he gets run down easily now.”

  Her concern for the old guy touched his heart and made him turn around. He had a soft spot for his king, too. “He is almost eighty.”

  “It’s more than that. He’s sick. I think he’s dying.”

  A sudden emptiness opened inside him at the pending loss. “I didn’t realize.” He tried to make sense of his body’s breathless reaction to the news. “He’s always been accepting of me. He’s treated me with respect, like I have a right to be a member of the court, even after…” He couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

  Ellie rose to her feet and crossed to him. The gentle hand she nestled in the curling chest hair over his heart sizzled as much as it healed. “Even after your father killed himself?”

  “Yeah.” This wasn’t his best topic. But the hint of moisture that glistened in the corners of her lake-blue eyes kept him talking. “You’d be surprised how important money and land and reputation can be to people.”

  She pressed her lips together in a frown. They quivered at the intensity of the emotion she was suppressing. Anger? “They matter a lot to someone. Enough to hurt that sweet old man.”

  Okay. Business like this he could handle. His mood brightened with amusement at her ladylike display of temper. He covered her hand with his and cherished the warmth of it against his beating heart. “Not if I can help it,” he promised.

  She was equally resolute. “Not if we can help it.”

  “Ellie—”

  “No.” She pulled away, and Cade realized the mistake he’d made in underestimating her temper. “You’re not the only patriot in this room, Commander. Even if all you’ll let me do is watch your back, I’m going to help.”

  Pride surged through his veins along with his body’s vivid awareness of this shy woman’s fire. He tossed aside his snack and pulled her into his arms and kissed her. Kissed her hard. Kissed her fiercely. Kissed her with tender thanks and wolfish pride. Kissed her until she made that purring sound in her throat that made him painfully aware he was a man and she was a woman.

  An innocent woman.

  A virgin.

  A virgin who clung to him, and melted into him, and kissed him back with unabashed passion.

  But a virgin, all the same.

  As the supposed voice of rational experience in this embrace, Cade pulled back. He rubbed his hands up and down the delightfully smooth skin of her shoulders and back, trying to ease the primed tension out of her, wishing he could ease that same tension out of his own body.

  He looked beyond her to the table at the far side of the room. The black notebook. Shorthand. That was it. Keep her busy. Keep him busy. Get the job done.

  He’d find his satisfaction in getting the job done.

  He had to try, at any rate. He had to be a gentleman about this. It might not be his true nature, but Ellie deserved something better than a man who walked the line between peace and violence, whose most famous claims to fame were a worthless title and a father who had put a bullet in his own head.

  Leaving her behind, Cade crossed the room and picked up Lenny’s notebook. He tossed it to her from a distance, needing to avoid personal contact with her right now if he wanted her to stay a virgin. “Here, Sherlock.” He summoned a smile for her. “You can do more than watch my back. Translate.”

  His abrupt mood swing and shift in topic probably confused the hell out of her. Taking everything she offered one minute, pushing her away the next. But it was a matter of survival. For both of them.

  But Ellie proved to be a trooper, as always. She pulled loose a strand of hair that had tangled in her glasses and tuc
ked it behind her ear. And then something perked up in her eyes.

  “Wait. I found another notebook with Lenny’s body.” She managed to hold the blanket and towels in place while she dashed into the bathroom and came back waving a second black book triumphantly. Just as quickly as it had appeared, her smile faded. “Will somebody go back and take care of him?”

  She meant Lenny’s body. No telling what horrific condition the body had been in when she’d seen it, and she still had the heart to worry about the man’s dignity. “Yeah. I’ll see to it.”

  “You’ve done a lot of hard, horrible things in your life, haven’t you?”

  He didn’t answer that one for her. Once you’d cleaned up a room after a messy suicide, there weren’t a whole lot of things left in the world a man couldn’t handle if he had to.

  “You do them so people like me can be safe.” She walked across the room with such purpose that Cade pulled himself up to wary attention. She paused for a moment, doing nothing more profound than look up into his eyes. Then she braced her hand against his shoulder, stretched up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “Thank you.”

  He was sunk. His willpower was totaled.

  He had fallen for this virginal temptress with the unbreakable spirit and forgiving heart.

  The very idea terrified him.

  And he wasn’t a man who scared easily.

  “Ellie…” What should he say? What should he do?

  She dropped back on her heels and gave him the sort of smile that made his insides quake. “You say ‘You’re welcome,’ and I get to work.”

  He’d better do the same.

  She curled up on the bed again, near the lamp, opened up a notebook and began to read. Cade wondered why he wasn’t running as far away from her as he could get. He wondered why he wasn’t running to her.

  He wondered why a man who knew so much about the world was learning his most important lessons from a woman who knew so little about it.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, he’d learned that Lenny had spent most of his post-army career working for the Korosolan Democratic Front. What had first started as jobs for hire—bodyguard, intelligence gathering, even overseeing some of their more violent protests against the monarchy system of government—had become a calling for him. The party’s democratic movement had appealed to something in the quiet giant, and he had fought tirelessly to preserve the party’s ideals after their leader had signed an agreement with King Easton to begin a peaceful inclusion into Korosolan government and society.