The Heart of a Ruler

by Marie Ferrarella

  The words burned on his tongue. Russell couldn’t allow himself just to stand by and say nothing. But he knew the path was one that was lined with mines. He picked his way carefully.

  “Perhaps, Your Majesty, you might reconsider the coronation ceremony,” Russell suggested tactfully. “Postpone the official shift of power for a little while until such time as—”

  The king wouldn’t let him finish. He raised his hand, stopping Russell. “I understand what you are saying, Carrington, and believe me, I have had the same thoughts. More than once,” he added heavily. “But I can’t go against tradition. I can’t simply break rules when it suits me and expect others not to.”

  Russell knew that by “others” the king was referring to the troublesome Union for Democracy. There had been efforts, ever since the group had organized five years ago, to suppress it, to try as subtly as possible to force the members to disband. But instead, it had only grown. Not by any large degree, but enough to deserve further close surveillance. They called themselves a peaceful group, but more than one so-called peaceful group had been known to become the center of violent eruptions. No one wanted to see that happen in Silvershire.

  Russell found himself wondering if perhaps having the Union of Democracy take over might not, in the final analysis, be preferable to having Reginald ascend to the throne.

  But he kept this to himself as he inclined his head, symbolizing his acquiescing to his ruler’s wishes. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “Go find my son and tell him…tell him…” It was on the tip of Weston’s tongue to instruct Russell to say to Reginald that he was a disappointment to him. But that was between him and his son. No one else, not even Russell, as familiar as he was with the scene, was allowed to be privy to that. “Just tell the prince to hurry back to the palace and live up to his responsibilities,” he concluded.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Russell paused, reading between the lines. The gala was still going on, but he had no real desire to remain. He would rather be busy than standing around, left to his own thoughts. Thoughts he found difficult to deal with at the moment. “Do you want me to go this evening?”

  “Yes, if you would. Now,” Weston emphasized. And then he confided, “I have this dreadful feeling that every moment matters.”

  Russell thought of telling the king that he had no need to worry. That Reginald was just being Reginald, shallow and thoughtless and self-involved. That he was most likely in some estate, sleeping off a drinking spree, or availing himself of any one of a number of willing women who wanted to be able to boast to their friends that they had slept with an authentic prince.

  But in the end, he decided that perhaps discretion was the better road to take. So he bowed and withdrew. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  Russell sighed, relieved to have an excuse to go home and change out of the tuxedo that fit him like a dark glove. He didn’t care that he looked good in it, it was stiff and uncomfortable. He’d never liked formal attire. His rank in life called for it, so he put up with it when it was called for, but he was far happier wearing jeans and a sweater. He had the soul of a commoner, his father used to chide him. He suspected that his father was right.

  As he turned the corner on his way out of the palace, he almost walked directly into Amelia. The unexpected contact was quick and sharp, as were the pins and needles that shot all through his body.

  Without thinking, he’d reached to grab for her, to steady her in case she was going to fall. Reflexes had him doing it even before he realized who it was that he had bumped into, although his body immediately recognized the familiar feel of the impact. All it took, he thought, was once, and the feel of her body had been indelibly pressed onto the pages of his memory.

  God, but he was waxing poetic. At another time, it would have been enough to turn his own stomach. Was this what love did to you? Turned you into someone you wouldn’t normally associate with if you had a choice? He had no answer to that. No answer to anything, except that he was being turned inside out.

  Did it get better with time? He could only fervently hope so.

  But something told him that he was hoping in vain.

  Attempting to collect himself, he retreated to the shelter of formal decorum and released Amelia.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that, but I was afraid you’d fall. Are you lost, Princess?” He congratulated himself on his formal tone. One never knew who might be listening in the palace and he wanted no hint of a stain upon her reputation.

  She raised her eyes to his. “Yes,” she answered quietly, “I’m afraid I am lost.” After a beat, she added, “Very lost.”

  As her eyes held his, Russell knew she wasn’t talking about finding her way through the palace.

  Chapter 8

  He was a man who prided himself on remaining cool under fire. And although standing in the hallway with the Princess of Gastonia could hardly be designated as being under fire, Russell felt himself growing more than a little warm.

  As was she, he thought. Her cheeks were flushed and the temperature within the palace was moderate at best. The king liked it brisk. He maintained that it got the blood moving.

  His blood, Russell thought, was having no trouble moving. Close proximity to the Princess Amelia had seen to that.

  He realized that several seconds had passed and he hadn’t responded to her words yet. His brain felt as if it had been taken hostage. It took effort and concentration in order to free it.

  “It’s a little overwhelming until you get used to it,” Russell finally managed. “The palace,” he added in case the princess misunderstood his meaning.

  Damn, he sounded like some thick-tongued fool. He’d never possessed Reginald’s silver tongue, but he’d never been a babbling idiot, either. Not until now.

  But then, he’d never slept with a princess before. That changed things.

  He had to put that behind him, Russell insisted silently. And what’s more, they couldn’t just stand in the corridor, exchanging nonsense like this. There was no telling who might see them and misconstrue things.

  Or construe them correctly, he thought ruefully.

  The lighting in the corridor was sufficiently bright, yet it paled in comparison to her, he thought. Everything paled in comparison to her.

  He felt the long, slender fingers of temptation reaching for him. Threatening to ensnare him again. He couldn’t pretend that he didn’t want her; he did. All he could do was struggle for control.

  But a man’s control only went so far and not nearly enough time had gone by for the embers of the fire that had been lit between them to have cooled.

  Not enough time had gone by for him to have cooled, either.

  Just looking at her made him long for a different place, a different time. A different life.

  “I just wanted to get a little air.” She touched his arm as she spoke and he could literally feel the heat flaring through him. He did his best to bank it down and ignore it.

  “There isn’t much to be had in the corridor,” he pointed out with amusement.

  “More than there is in there.” She nodded in the general direction of the ballroom she had just left. “Too many questions, too many people,” she explained and then looked up at him. “Too many doubts.”

  He tried to focus on something other than her lips. On something other than the way he wanted to taste them again. “Princess—”

  Second-guessing his response, she held up her hand to stop him.

  “Oh, I know what my duty is,” she said quickly and with resignation. “I’ve known what my duty was since before I could adequately understand what the word itself really meant. But the doubts I have are about the prince himself. He seems neither to know, nor to care what his obligations are as far as maintaining at least a civil relationship with his future wife.” She pressed her lips together, digging deep for courage and resolve in order to get through this. “I’m not sure I can face marriage to a man who has so little regard for me that he does no
t even attend a ceremony meant to welcome me to his kingdom. A ceremony meant to honor us as a royal couple.”

  Were those tears he saw in her eyes? God, he hoped not. He had no idea what to do when faced with a woman’s tears. He would much rather have spent an entire day arguing with the prince than five seconds in the company of a tearful woman.

  All the more so because he was left with the odious job of having to defend the errant royal. “I’m sure he was unavoidably detained.”

  To his surprise, Amelia laughed shortly. “Handcuffed to a bed?”

  Only supreme control kept his jaw from dropping. “Princess—”

  And then she laughed, really laughed. That light, airy sound that had already won a place in his heart. The same heart that had pledged its loyalty to the crown, to the prince. He felt guilty as hell and torn in two diametrically opposed directions.

  “Don’t look so shocked, Carrington. I wasn’t raised in an eighteenth-century cloister.” She lowered her voice and seemed to draw closer, even though she didn’t move a muscle. “You, more than anyone, should know that.”

  Was that the sound of approaching footsteps he heard? Russell looked around. He had no thought about himself, but there was the princess’s honor to be concerned about. “We really shouldn’t be seen talking like this—” he began to warn her.

  A smattering of impatience crossed her brow. It occurred to him that Amelia was undoubtedly one of those types who looked magnificent when she was angry.

  “Who shall I talk to? Madeline seems to have been charmed out of her shoes by one of the young dukes and the king is not exactly the person I can turn to with concerns about his son. The poor man looks put upon enough without having to listen to me voice my misgivings. Besides,” she confided, “I haven’t seen the king in more than half an hour.”

  “That’s because he’s in his study.” He indicated the area just beyond the corner. “I just came from there. His Majesty requested that I find and bring back the prince.” Russell saw an odd expression filter across her face. He was unable to fathom it. Had he said something wrong? “What is it?”

  This, Amelia thought, had to be the definition of irony. “I find myself in a very precarious position. I don’t know whether to hope that you do find him, or hope that you don’t. For me, it seems to be the epitome of a lose-lose situation.” But, because she was a princess and raised by her father to put her country before her own needs, Amelia rallied and then offered Russell a smile. “Of course I hope you find him. One should never misplace a prince. It’s bad for the country.”

  As well Reginald might be, Russell couldn’t help thinking. He really wished that Weston could continue as king for years to come.

  And then Amelia stepped back, as if to re-enter the ballroom. “I shouldn’t be detaining you, Carrington. Good luck.”

  The way she’d said it, he wasn’t quite sure if she meant with his assignment, or something else. “With finding the prince?”

  “With whatever it is you want to happen,” she corrected.

  With that, Amelia turned on her heel and returned to the ballroom and to the mountain of responsibilities that were waiting for her just inside the door.

  It was the last place Russell would have thought to look. It was the last place he did look, because it had seemed so improbable. So tame.

  For the last twelve hours, Russell had gone from one club to another, methodically working his way from the more prestigious ones down to the clubs that no one willingly admitted, at least in public, that they frequented. The ones for which the phrase den of iniquity had originally been fashioned.

  But no matter where he went, the story always seemed to be the same. Yes, the prince had been there, but no one had seen the prince within the last two days. When he questioned the men who were often with the prince about his whereabouts, they all claimed to believe that he was at some other place, with another set of cohorts.

  Russell had to bank down the intense desire to shout at the men to sober up and do something meaningful with their lives. But that, he knew, was merely displacement. The words were meant for the prince.

  Russell shook his head as he left the last establishment. At the prince’s present pace, Reginald would probably wind up bedding or at least propositioning every woman in Silvershire under the age of eighty by summer’s end.

  He got back behind the wheel of his vehicle and slammed the door. Funny, he hadn’t realized how much he loathed the man until this very moment. Even animals in the wild were more monogamous than Reginald was, and he wasn’t even thinking of the ones who mated for life. Reginald mated for an hour, then went on, amnesia clouding his brain.

  And this was going to be their future ruler.

  God had to have one hell of a sense of humor, Russell thought darkly, starting the car again.

  He was out of places. Out of glitzy clubs and rundown holes-in-the-wall. He’d already checked with the airports and the harbor. The prince had not left the country by means public or private. Since Silvershire was seabound on all sides, that meant that he was here.

  But where?

  Deciding that when he reported to the king, he wanted to have been utterly thorough, Russell could only think of one more place to try. A place where he was fairly certain the prince wasn’t: his country estate. The king had given him the deed to the property on his twenty-first birthday. When the novelty of owning a country estate had still been fresh, Reginald had thrown there more than a few of what could only be politely referred to as orgies.

  He himself had begun drawing the line then, Russell recalled. The very thought of what went on there turned his stomach. But Reginald seemed to thrive on those decadent gatherings. The more participants, the better.

  Angry for the princess, for the country, Russell’s mood was black by the time he reached the estate.

  As he’d expected, there was no one there. The only time there was any staff at the estate, aside from the gardener who was dispatched once a month and the housekeeper who cleaned on a weekly basis, was when the prince was in residence there.

  He recalled that, just before he’d left for Gastonia, Reginald had told him that he would be visiting the estate. He’d thought Reginald was joking, but this was no time to leave any stone unturned.

  The estate was shrouded in silence as the last rays of late-afternoon light receded. Russell disarmed the alarm and unlocked the front door. The prince had entrusted him with the code and a key to the estate as a token of their friendship.

  A friendship, Russell thought as he closed the door behind him, that had long since lost its luster—if it had ever had any to begin with.

  The house absorbed darkness with the thirst of a sponge. Russell turned on the light that illuminated the foyer and hallway beyond.

  “Hello, is anyone here?”

  His voice echoed back, mocking him as he crossed the marble foyer. The heels of his shoes meeting the stone was the only sound he heard.

  This was useless. The Black Prince was probably holed up in some woman’s bedroom, waiting for his fourth or fifth wind. When it came to making love, Reginald was tireless. Too bad he wasn’t like that when it came to matters of state.

  Russell paused, debating going back to the palace. And then he shrugged. He was here. He might as well check the bedrooms and the kitchen. That way, he could tell the king that he had looked everywhere he could possibly think of for the prince.

  “Why don’t you just grow up, Reginald?” Russell said out loud in exasperation. “The princess is a beautiful woman. She’ll make you happy. And you, you should drop down on your knees and thank God that you, with your black soul, were still lucky enough to get such a woman.”

  On the second floor, Russell marched up and down the hall, pushing open one door after another as he spoke, venting his frustration. “Your father’s right. It’s time for you to grow up and be a man for once in your life, not just some—”

  The words caught in Russell’s throat.

  The bedroom wasn
’t empty. There was someone in the bed.

  He hadn’t really expected to find the prince. At best this was just an exercise in futility to cover all the bases. But there he was, in bed, stark naked from all appearances, with a sheet draped over his loins, and sound asleep as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Damn it, Reginald,” he said in the familiar voice of a man who had been a friend for more years than he should have, “how can you just lie there like that? Don’t you know that everyone’s been waiting for you to turn up for the last two days? You didn’t come to the airport, you didn’t come to the gala. You’re supposed to be getting married in two days. How can you be—”

  Exasperated, Russell abruptly halted what he felt was a well-deserved tirade. The prince was sleeping through it all, anyway.

  With a weary sigh, Russell crossed to the bed and took hold of the prince’s shoulder, shaking it. Reginald was a sounder sleeper than most, especially when he’d been drinking, so Russell shook him again. There was still no response, no indication that the prince was waking up. His expression remained unchanged.

  “Sleeping the sleep of the dead?” Russell mocked with no trace of humor. “Because it certainly isn’t the sleep of the just. Well, I don’t care how drunk you are, the king sent me to find you and find you I did, so come on, get up. Get up and get dressed, your father’s waiting. You’ve really done it this time with those ‘wild oats’ of yours and it’s going to take a lot to reverse all the bad press you’ve been getting.”

  The prince remained inert.

  Russell looked at him. Something wasn’t right.

  He could feel it in his bones. Feel it just the way he had when he had been away at school and had suddenly sensed that his father had fallen ill. That his father needed him. He had no idea how he’d known, he just had. He’d come home just in time to be at his side when his father had died.

  A gut feeling had prompted him then. And now he was experiencing another one.

  Russell dropped down to one knee beside the bed, staring at the prince. “Reginald?”