by Cara Colter
Jordan forced herself to take a deep and steadying breath. She whipped off her apron.
Her aunt peered up from the pot she was stirring, which was emitting strange clouds of green steam. “I wish you’d think of the Dancing Chocolate Ecstasy. A mistake at this phase, and it’s ruined!”
Jordan glared at her, and turned back to the quivering nanny. “Where were you exactly when you noticed her gone? Take me there.”
For the first time, Jordan entered the main part of the castle. Despite her worry for Whitney, she could not help but notice the richness all around her. Thick muted carpets covered stone floors. Richly colored tapestries and stern oil paintings covered the stone walls. The furniture was all antique, glowing beautifully from hours of elbow grease. Intricate crystal chandeliers hung from ceilings. Oak had been used extensively on bannisters and window casings and doorways. All in all, the opulence was somewhat overwhelming.
“We were right here, ma’am,” the girl finally said, stopping in a quiet hallway on the second floor. The carpet under their feet looked priceless. A muted tapestry, obviously silk and obviously ancient hung on one wall, a portrait of a fierce-looking man mounted on a horse hung on the opposite wall.
Jordan could see nothing here that would fascinate her daughter.
“I had just paused for a moment, to talk to Ralphie, one of the gardeners, and when I looked at where she had been, Whitney was gone!”
Jordan decided not to pursue what Ralphie-the-gardener might have been doing on the second floor of the palace.
There only seemed to be one place Whitney could have gone. “And this door goes where?” Jordan asked.
“That’s Prince Owen’s suite, ma’am.”
“Did you tell her that? My daughter? That a real live prince resided behind those doors?”
Trisha looked painfully thoughtful. “Well, yes I might have mentioned it.”
Jordan pushed down the handle, but the young nanny flung herself in front of her, wide-eyed with disbelief.
“You can’t just enter his suite,” she whispered.
“My daughter might be in there!”
“Surely not.” The girl looked terrified.
“What is the prince? Why are you so afraid? Is he some sort of old ogre?”
A blush crept charmingly up the girl’s cheeks. “Oh, no, ma’am. Not in the least. I mean nothing further from an ogre. He’s not old for one thing. And he’s the most handsome man who ever lived. And so wonderfully kind. He’s very, oh, just the best. But you can’t just enter his quarters.”
So much for Ralphie, Jordan thought, grimly amused by the girl’s obvious crush.
“I could never presume to knock on his door,” the girl whispered. “If he finds out I’ve lost a child in my charge, I’ll never live with the shame of it. He’s going to be king some day!”
“What nonsense,” Jordan said, and hammered on the door. Despite the nanny’s gasp of dismay, she pushed down the handle before there was an answer. Prince or not her child was lost and royal protocol came a long way down the list from that.
“Excuse me—” she stopped dead in her tracks, and felt the blood drain from her face.
Whitney was there after all, sitting happily at a huge table, manipulating chessmen that appeared to be made of crystal.
But the discovery of her daughter brought none of the expected relief. Instead, Jordan felt close to panic.
She tried to tell herself her mind was playing tricks on her.
Of course it was.
A man sat at a polished table with her daughter. Not the prince, obviously. He was dressed in faded jeans, and a denim shirt with a smudge of dirt on the elbow. He had the build of a prizefighter, all sinewy muscle, and the look of one, too, his face bruised, his lip split. This must be the famous Ralphie-the-gardener. Obviously those distortions to his facial features had momentarily made her think the impossible.
And yet she could not deny his resemblance to the man she had loved so many years ago, when once before she had said yes to adventure.
No, it wasn’t him.
Ben had been blond. This man’s hair was dark as fresh-turned loam. Besides, he was broader through the shoulders, and the chest than Ben had been. It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be.
She reminded herself that this happened to her from time to time—a glimpse at a stranger set her heart to beating wildly, filled her with the joyous thought, it’s him, before she had a chance to remind herself seeing him again would be nothing to be joyous about.
He glanced up. The way his hair, just a touch too long, fell over his brow, made her take a step back, and then his eyes met hers.
Deep, cool, the exact color of sapphires. The exact color of the little girl’s who sat across from him.
This was a dream. No, a nightmare, that she imagined her daughter sitting across the table from the man who bore such a frightening resemblance to the man who had fathered her.
But if she could have convinced herself it wasn’t him, the look on his face shattered that.
Stunned recognition washed over his features before he scrambled to his feet.
“Leave us,” he said to the flustered nanny, sending only the briefest glance her way.
“You do not have to leave us,” Jordan snapped. “I’m sure your duties do not include taking instructions from Ralphie-the-gardener.”
Trisha looked like she was going to faint. “No ma’am,” she whispered, standing like a deer caught in headlights, “but this is not Ralph.”
“Leave,” he said again, curtly.
The girl actually curtsied, and flushed to a shade of purple that reminded Jordan of the fresh beets lined up for the Blushing Beet Borscht they were preparing in the kitchen.
“Yes, Your Royal Highness,” Trisha squeaked, and backed out of the room, tripping over herself in her haste to get out of the door.
Your Royal Highness. Jordan let the shock of it wash over her. The man who had loved her was a prince. A living, breathing, gorgeous prince.
He was still the man who had left her, she reminded herself. That meant he was still a cad.
The silence was electric as she regarded him. She wanted him to flinch away from the fury in her look, but instead she could feel the familiar intensity of his gaze, could feel it threatening to melt in an instant what it had taken her five long hard years to build.
“Hi, Mommy,” Whitney said, looking up, breaking the silence.
She saw the shock cross his features.
“Mommy?” he said, almost accusingly, as if he had a right to know what had transpired in her life in the past years—as if he was shocked she had the audacity to have a life without him.
“Your Royal Highness?” she shot back, just as accusingly.
“Pwince Owen,” Whitney filled in helpfully.
“Oh my,” Jordan said, allowing a faint hint of sarcasm into her voice, “and I thought it was Prince Ben. Or was that Ben Prince?”
“It was Blond Boy, wasn’t it?” The faintest twinkle appearing in his eye.
How could he be trying to make this light? She hated that twinkle. It was part of his easy charm, his great big lying charming self. There had probably been dozens after her, who felt the very same weakness she had felt when he gazed at her with those amazing passionate seductive eyes.
The bruises, the marks of the beating on his face only added to his pull—the almost irresistible desire to touch him with tender fingertips. Traitor fingers!
“Of course, you feel passionate about him,” Jordan would tell those sobbing girls who came to her house late in the night, “that’s what got you into this mess in the first place. But there’s no need to be a weak ninny about it.”
Here she was, being given an opportunity to practice what she preached. She was not going to forgive the betrayal that had nearly torn her soul from her body five years ago, the betrayal that had turned her from an innocent and idealistic child to a cynical and wounded woman in the blink of an eye, just because he had the mos
t mesmerizing eyes of any male on the planet.
“Well, Your Royal—” she hesitated, tempted to call him Your Royal Muck-muck, to show his title did not impress her in the least, did not make up for his great failings in character, but she thought he might think she was playfully referring to their shared past, so she bit her tongue and called him Highness. “I guess your identity explains a great deal, up to and including this dream contract of my aunt’s.”
“Jordan,” he said quietly, “my identity explains nothing, least of all the abysmal way I treated you. Obviously seeing you again has come as a shock to me. I don’t know your aunt, or anything about her contract.”
“Well, whatever,” she said, trying to shrug carelessly, knowing she could not allow that sincere tone to disarm her.
“Jordan, why are you in Penwyck?” he asked.
How dearly she would have loved to tell him she was here for a meeting of municipalities. That she was the best mayor in the world and she had come to receive a medal.
Childish to want to build herself up like that, just because he was a prince and she was a kitchen assistant. “I’m working with my aunt on the banquet preparations for next Saturday. Whitney, we have to leave.” This room, this castle, this island.
Whitney gave her an amazed look. “I not leaving. You leave.”
Not now, she begged inwardly. This would be the worst possible timing for that stubborn streak to put in an appearance. “Whitney,” Jordan said, using her sternest mother voice, “we are leaving right now.” She held out her hand.
Whitney ignored it, studying the chess players with single-minded intensity.
“Don’t you dare laugh,” Jordan warned Ben. Owen. The prince. His Royal Highness. She had to get out of here.
“I’m not laughing,” he denied. “Whitney, please do as your mother asks.”
“I’m Princess Whitney,” the tyke decided.
“All right by me,” Owen said easily. “Princess Whitney, I think you should go with your mother.”
Jordan wondered uneasily if her daughter really was a princess since her father really appeared to be a prince.
She didn’t like how his gaze lingered on the child, and then a frown creased his forehead.
“Whitney—” she said.
A sudden light came on in his eyes, and with breathtaking swiftness he had crossed the distance between himself and Jordan. His fingers bit into her elbow and he looked straight into her eyes.
“My God, is she mine?” His tone was quiet, intense, loaded with that same princely authority that had made the young nanny quake.
Jordan felt both frightened and furious. “If you were that interested, you should have taken a miss on the melodrama with your middle-of-the-night departure all those years ago.”
How could it be, after all he had done to her, and all he had put her through, his hand on her elbow made lightning bolts go off inside of her, made her nearly dizzy with wanting him.
She would not be the same weak, romantic ninny she had been before. She had an example to set!
He dropped her elbow. “We need to talk.”
“You know what? Maybe I don’t think so. And unlike that poor frightened girl who bowed out of here pulling on her forelock, I don’t have to do what you order.”
“Jordan, it wasn’t an order.” But at close quarters like this, she could see the changes in him. He was not the boy he had been. He carried himself with that I-own-the-earth quality of a man, one who expected to be obeyed, who commanded people with the ease of one who accepted it as his God-given right. But she also detected the loneliness of a man with that kind of power. There was an aloofness in his eyes that hadn’t been there before.
“Whitney, we need to leave.” They needed to leave before she asked herself about that aloofness, before she cared about it.
Her daughter sent her a mutinous look, but thankfully got down off the chair and took a few reluctant steps toward her mother. Then, giggling she took off and ran the other way, through an open door.
She closed her eyes, and then took a deep breath. Deliberately not looking at the man who would be king, Jordan followed her daughter.
She stopped in the doorway.
It was his bedroom. It couldn’t have been more different than the monklike cell of the basement bedroom they had shared all those years ago.
The bed was huge, the four wooden posters reaching nearly to the ceiling. All the furniture was dark, heavy, forbiddingly masculine.
It might have been intimidating, except for one thing.
His scent hung in the air, sweetly intoxicating, richly male.
Jordan spotted the little black heel of one of Whitney’s shoes protruding from under the bed. She went and grabbed it, but with surprising strength Whitney yanked it away from her and disappeared deeper underneath.
Jordan was humiliated. She was in a skirt, and not even an attractive one at that. She couldn’t very well get down on her hands and knees and pull her daughter out from there.
“I’ll get her,” Owen said with infuriating confidence.
Jordan folded her arms over her chest, tapped her foot, bowed slightly. “Be my guest.”
Owen went and sat by the bed. “Princess Whitney?”
“Yes, Pwince Owen?” she answered with amazing sweetness.
“I was wondering if you might do me the honor of having tea with me tomorrow?”
“Tea?” Whitney responded uncertainly. “I’m not old enough to dwink tea.”
“In Penwyck we call it having tea but it’s really like, um, snack time. You don’t have to have tea, though you might like the strawberry flavor with cream.”
“Stwawbewwy with cweam,” Whitney contemplated from under the bed.
“And, there are always treats. Scones are my favorites.”
“I don’t like those,” Whitney decided, though Jordan knew for a fact her daughter wouldn’t know what a scone was if it bit her on the nose.
“Sometimes the palace chef—we call her Cookie—makes cupcakes shaped like clowns when we have small guests for tea.”
“Does she put flowews in her cupcakes?” Whitney asked.
“Flour? I think so.”
“No, flowers,” Jordan told him testily.
“Who would put flowers in their cupcakes?” he asked, incredulous.
“The caterer of your big returned-home-safely celebration.”
“Oh.” He looked dark. “I didn’t really want a celebration. My father’s ill and my brother’s away, and it just seems like the timing is off. On the other hand, is that what brought you here?”
She nodded.
“Ah, something to celebrate after all.” He bent over and lifted the bed skirt. “Princess Whitney?”
“Yes, Pwince Owen?” This said ever-so-sweetly.
“If you come out from under the bed you and your mother can have tea with me tomorrow in the garden with clown cupcakes.”
Silence.
“I understand there might be a pony there, as well.”
Jordan’s charming daughter shot out from under the bed, and into the prince’s arms. She kissed him messily on the cheek, and danced over to her mother, caught her hand.
“See you tommowow, Pwince Owen.”
Jordan refused to look into his face, not sure she could have prevented herself from smacking him if a smug, superior look was there. There were probably penalties for smacking a prince. There was probably a dungeon here!
So, she took her daughter’s proffered hand and marched from the room with her dignity barely intact. He might very well be lord and master of everything on this island, but he could not force her to have tea with him!
Chapter Three
“With all due respect, Your Royal Highness, you don’t seem to be with us today.”
Owen, who had been trying to decide if he liked Jordan’s hair bobbed just below her ears, the way it was now, or long, the way it had been back then, came back to the here and now abruptly.
They were in th
e Royal Elite Team’s briefing office. It had the look of a military staging area, walls covered in maps and bulletins and photos. Men, some in uniforms, some in white shirts rolled up at the cuffs, all armed, were gathered around an oval table, taking notes, asking questions, consulting files.
These people, to a man—Gage Weston, Cole Everson, Harrison Monteque—had that way about them that inspired confidence. They were men who radiated strength, and calm, a certain steely resolve. They carried themselves with the innate confidence and grace of men whose strength had been tried, and tested, whose strength had won.
Owen looked at Admiral Monteque who had addressed him. “My apologies, Harrison. Really, I can’t remember anything else. We’ve gone over this a dozen times. I only saw the one man’s face, and that unusual tattoo on his forearm. I’ve described it as much as I can.”
“And due to that description we’ve confirmed who at least one of the major players is,” the Admiral said. “Gunther Westbury.”
Yesterday, Owen thought, he would have cared, and might have tried to pry more information out of these men, though if they had decided not to tell him, no amount of pulling rank would ever persuade them otherwise.
“Tell us once more, please, about the reference to diamonds.”
Owen found he had more important things on his mind. A tea party. Clown cupcakes. A suitable pony. Blond hair.
“I only spoke to Westbury for moments.” He stole a look at his watch. “As I’ve said, he seemed to think he had plenty of time to interrogate me later, and that I was going to tell him about diamonds. I wonder if he’s like the children of Penwyck, who grow up believing there might be diamonds in the old abandoned coal mines near their homes.”
The Admiral got up from his chair, came over and clapped Owen on the shoulder, a gesture of familiarity that few people would have had the confidence to pull off.
But one of the things Owen admired about the Admiral and all of these men, was that they were respectful, but never subservient. In their company, he felt he was with equals.
The admiral said, “Your memory is remarkable, Prince Owen. I guess that’s why I keep prying, hoping there might be one more detail in there that would help us find these criminals. I want you to know if you were ever in court, I’d want you on my side as a witness.”