Harlequin Romance Bundle: Crowns and Cowboys

by Judy Christenberry

  ‘How’s Beth?’ he asked, shifting in his seat.

  Marianne’s head came up. ‘I’d love to tell you she’s the Marchioness of Basingstoke, but unfortunately she isn’t. You see, we weren’t pretending. We were exactly what we told you we were.’

  ‘Did she become a lawyer?’

  ‘Y-yes. Yes, she did.’

  He’d remembered. He’d remembered a single throwaway comment Beth had made on the first afternoon they’d all spent together. And somehow that made the ground shift beneath her. She didn’t want to soften towards him. She wanted to keep a steel barrier between them as protection. But…

  Her voice faltered. ‘She’s married to an anaesthetist with a baby due in a couple of months.’

  ‘That’s great.’

  ‘She’s very happy.’

  The sound of footsteps brought her head round in time to see the butler walking across the rooftop courtyard with her wrap spread out over his arm. ‘Your Serene Highness. Dr Chambers,’ he said as he carefully placed it round her shoulders.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said awkwardly. Intellectually she knew it was his job, but she was uncomfortable with being at the receiving end of it. In her world she opened doors for herself, found the sleeves of her own coat…

  Marianne looked down and pleated the tassels together. The silence was punctuated by the precise step of the butler as he crossed the terrace, returning moments later. ‘Is Professor Blackwell asking for me?’ she asked, looking up, hoping for an escape route.

  ‘He’s not made any comment to me, madam,’ he replied, pouring the wine with easy, practised movements.

  This all felt so peculiar. A balmy night in a beautiful setting…with a man she used to be in love with.

  ‘I’m not drinking tonight,’ she said as soon as the butler was out of earshot once more. ‘Alcohol’s not good for a woman with a headache.’

  ‘I suppose that depends on why she has a headache,’ Seb replied, his dark eyes seeming to see so much more than she was comfortable with. Then he picked up his own glass and drank. ‘You should reconsider. This is considerably better than the paint stripper we drank together in France.’

  It was a shared memory—and a happy one. Marianne felt another crack in the shield. She didn’t want to thaw towards him. She wanted her anger to stay at the fore…But instead she felt the first stirrings of a smile.

  To hide it she picked up her glass and sipped. The chilled wine was crisp and light, with a heady scent of lemon trees. ‘It’s lovely.’

  He smiled. ‘But not as nice as our whisky?’

  Something deep inside her twisted. ‘No.’ Nothing would ever taste as nice as the whisky they’d drunk that night. The first time she’d ever tasted whisky and the first time she’d ever made love.

  ‘How long did you wait for me in Paris?’ he asked quietly.

  Marianne let her fingers curve around the glass in her hand, watching the beads of condensation. Her mind was back in the tiny bedroom they’d shared for three nights. Nothing there but a bed, a small wardrobe and the sounds of people enjoying themselves in the nearby restaurants.

  ‘Not long,’ she said, raising her eyes. ‘Madame Merchand had wanted me to start earlier so I telephoned her and said I could come immediately. It seemed sensible when you didn’t phone me.’ She took another sip of wine.

  ‘Were you unhappy with them?’

  Marianne looked up, surprised by his question.

  ‘I know you left early.’

  He did? How? Marianne stayed watching him, her eyes wide.

  His mouth twisted. ‘I did contact you. Late, I admit, but Monsieur Merchand said you’d returned home weeks before.’

  That was something she didn’t know. Marianne felt her chest become tight. Seb had contacted her. Her mind felt as if it had splintered into a billion fragments. ‘N-nine weeks…all but a couple of days.’

  ‘Did you go to another family?’

  His questions felt relentless—and she didn’t want to answer. Marianne shook her head. ‘I went home. Beth stayed in Honfleur for the full year, but I…’ She trailed off. She didn’t want to think about the reasons for her return home. Or what had happened when she got there.

  And Seb had spoken to Monsieur Merchand. When? Why? So many questions were streaming through her brain.

  ‘Were you homesick?’

  ‘I—I just needed to go home,’ she countered. Marianne took a deep breath and tried to re-group. The fact that Seb had eventually tried to contact her changed nothing. Nothing at all.

  He’d had her address in England. He could have reached her at any time. Even when she’d gone to live with the professor and his family she hadn’t been untraceable. In fact, her mother had been so desperate to know who the father of her daughter’s baby was she’d happily have passed on any man’s telephone number.

  ‘Why didn’t you contact me at home?’

  Marianne watched the muscle pulse in his cheek before he met her eyes. Saw his unwillingness to speak and braced herself for his reply.

  ‘I didn’t want the conversation we were going to have,’ he admitted, his voice more gravelly than she’d ever heard it.

  He’d rung her to finish their relationship. The thought hit Marianne with a dull thud.

  Seb shifted in his seat. ‘I felt…grateful to have been let off the hook. The fact that you’d left France…seemed to make everything easier.’

  Well, that was honest. The dispassionate part of her admired him for that even while she felt desperately hurt by what he was saying.

  ‘I should have made more effort to speak to you.’

  ‘It would have been nice if you’d written,’ Marianne suggested in a voice that sounded small in her own ears. ‘For weeks I didn’t know what had happened to you. I’d no way of contacting you—’

  Seb shook his head and his eyes seemed to be asking for understanding. ‘I was advised against that. I was told to put nothing in writing—’

  ‘Why?’ The question was out of her mouth even as the answer flooded her mind. A frown pulled at her forehead.

  ‘You thought I’d sell it? You…bastard! You pompous—’

  ‘Marianne, they don’t know you. It wasn’t based on any personal evaluation—’

  ‘You did! You knew me.’ It took every ounce of control she had not to tip what was left of her wine over him. How dared he think that about her? ‘You should have known I’d never do anything like that. I—’

  ‘I was a coward,’ Seb interrupted her. ‘I should have come to England and spoken to you about what was happening in my life. If I’d been older, felt more in control of what was happening…’

  He trailed off for the second time, but Marianne almost didn’t notice. She was incandescently angry. It felt like a bright light burning inside her.

  Everything was so much worse than she’d thought. She hadn’t believed that could be possible.

  But Seb had returned to Andovaria and turned their perfect, private little world into something sordid. He’d sat around with his advisers while they debated how best to ‘manage’ her. While she…

  Dear God.

  She felt hot tears prick insistently behind her eyelids and blinked furiously. She wouldn’t cry. Mustn’t. But the thought of their beautiful romance being talked over, discussed and dissected…

  One single tear welled up and spilled down her cheek.

  ‘Marianne.’ Seb’s voice cracked and he reached out as though to touch her.

  ‘No!’ She furiously brushed away the trail of moisture.

  ‘I’m sorry—’

  ‘So you say,’ Marianne said, standing up abruptly. ‘I think I’ve heard enough of your explanations now. You’re sorry, I’m sorry, we’re both sorry. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?’

  ‘I haven’t told you what happened when I got home. Why I—’

  Marianne laughed. It wasn’t a joyous sound, but hard and brittle. ‘What’s to understand? You forget I know practically everything about you. Y
ou’re tabloid fodder. Shortly after your marriage to Amelie of Saxe-Broden, eighteen,’ she said, her fingers moving to make speech marks in the air, ‘you were enthroned as the Sovereign Prince of Andovaria. I’ve seen the pictures!’

  She brushed again at another betraying tear that was making its way down her carefully made up face.

  ‘It wasn’t quite as you make that sound.’

  She turned on him. ‘In what way was it different, Seb?’ she said in a voice laced with sarcasm. ‘The Andovarian tourist industry fancied producing some memorabilia? Thought she’d look good on a stamp, perhaps?’

  If he’d raised his voice or moved towards her she’d have turned and walked back into the sitting room—but he did neither. His hand rubbed at his neck and he walked over to the rail. His body language seemed to convey that she’d managed to hurt him.

  Marianne felt the anger leave her like air from a balloon.

  Seb didn’t know anything about Jessica. However much she wanted to blame him for leaving her to deal with the consequence of their affair alone, she knew it hadn’t been a conscious decision.

  And she did want to know why he’d left her. The ‘why’ of it had been the thing that had prevented her from being able to truly give herself to any other relationship. The three-month cut-off, Eliana called it.

  ‘I was called back urgently because my father was ill,’ he began, his voice low and steady.

  Marianne shifted her weight from one foot back to the other. ‘I know.’ He’d told her that at the time. She’d helped him pack. Didn’t he remember?

  ‘They’d found a tumour. In his brain.’

  She knew that, too. Prince Franz-Josef’s death, poignantly just weeks before his only son’s marriage, had featured in glossy magazines across Europe…and probably beyond. She’d read all about it in double-page detail.

  ‘It was inoperable and he knew he had very little time left…to make everything safe.’ For the first time Seb’s voice betrayed real emotion.

  ‘Why couldn’t you have rung and told me that?’ she asked after a moment. ‘I would have gone to Honfleur just the same and waited until—’

  Seb shook his head. ‘You don’t understand, Marianne, it wasn’t that simple.’

  Why wasn’t it just that simple? He was right. She didn’t understand that. He might not have told her that he was the crown prince of Andovaria, but his identity hadn’t come as a surprise to him. He’d known that when he met her. When they’d first kissed. When they’d made love…

  Nothing had actually changed by his father becoming ill. Not between them.

  Marianne moved closer and he must have sensed her standing there because he turned. And his eyes were…bleak. She wasn’t prepared for how that would make her feel.

  ‘God help me, I loved my father, but the months before his death were filled with far more than concern for a dying man. My life was completely turned on its head.’

  ‘I’m sure—’

  ‘No.’ He stopped her. ‘Please. Just listen.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Not just because the father I loved was dying. The Andovarian constitution…’ He broke off. ‘As Crown Prince, I needed to be married by my twenty-first birthday—which left me seventeen months to find a suitable bride.’

  Married. To someone suitable. Marianne’s fingers curled around the metal railing and she gripped until her knuckles showed white.

  ‘Why…why do they have to be married?’

  ‘Tradition.’ His succinct answer came back at her like a bullet. ‘If you go back far enough all Andovarian crown princes were formally engaged before they were five or six, maybe even married in their absence.’

  ‘How ridiculous to have something like that in the constitution,’ she said, her voice husky.

  ‘Until recently Monaco made the same requirement of their ruling prince. In the last couple of hundred years it simply hasn’t been an issue in Andovaria because the crown prince has always been married by the time he succeeded.’

  So why didn’t you marry me? The question ricocheted around her head, even though she knew the answer. Cinderella was a fantastic fairy tale, but that was exactly what it was—a fairy tale. Crown princes didn’t marry lower-middle-class girls from Suffolk. She knew it. And he knew it. In fact, he must have known it from the very beginning of their relationship.

  Marianne made a conscious decision to let go of the railing in front of her. Of course he wouldn’t have rushed back to Paris and demanded she marry him. That didn’t happen outside romance novels and Hollywood films.

  ‘The marriage of any member of the royal family has to be approved by either the sovereign prince or, if he’s under the age of twenty-one, by the regent. Any union entered into without it is deemed invalid and any children illegitimate.’

  He said the words as though they were rehearsed. Marianne walked slowly back towards the table and sat back down. As a historian she knew this wasn’t unusual. The English constitution required the same of its royal family—and for centuries they’d duly obliged.

  How did they do that, normal, flesh and blood people…with the normal, flesh and blood desire to be loved and have someone love them? How did they make themselves marry for the good of the state?

  ‘Suddenly the question of my marriage was the number one priority.’ He hadn’t moved from the railing. ‘Everything was resting on me.’

  In the distance Marianne could hear the hum of traffic. She wasn’t really aware of anything else. In actual fact, it really wasn’t so very different from what she’d always supposed had happened. She hadn’t been good enough.

  Not even good enough for a phone call. Not safe enough for a letter.

  Slowly Marianne picked up her wine glass and sipped, then carefully she placed it back down in front of her.

  ‘And…I wouldn’t have been considered suitable?’ She forced herself to say the words.

  The slightest pause. ‘No. No, you wouldn’t. Weren’t,’ he corrected.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  NO. THE word echoed quietly in Marianne’s head. She didn’t understand why hearing Seb actually say she wasn’t ‘suitable’ should make her feel better, but it did. Almost like a wound that had been lanced.

  Years of supposition and, finally, she knew. And she’d been right all along. She was fine for a holiday romance…Fine to make love to as long as no one actually knew anything about it…

  ‘So you married Amelie of Saxe-Broden?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you love her?’

  ‘I liked her. Still do. And I was grateful that she was prepared to take me on…but no, I didn’t love her.’

  Marianne swallowed hard. ‘Did she know that when she married you?’

  ‘Amelie didn’t love me either. It was a marriage that made…sense,’ he said, pulling that word out with difficulty.

  ‘We’d been brought up in the same kind of circles, but she didn’t stand to inherit anything herself. She was the right age.’

  His was a completely different world. Hateful, actually. He’d selected Amelie as though she’d been a brood mare.

  ‘What would have happened if you hadn’t been able to find anyone suitable to marry you?’

  ‘Then I would have forfeited my right to succession and my cousin Michael would be the sovereign prince of Andovaria now.’

  ‘I see.’ Marianne shivered and pulled the wrap closely about her shoulders.

  ‘I never intended to hurt you, Marianne. And…I’m really glad your life has turned out so well…and that…you’re happy and…’

  Pride was an incredibly powerful thing, she thought. Marianne forced a smile. ‘You know, you could have told me the truth. Even as a little girl I never thought being a princess was much of a career plan.’

  Seb’s dark eyes took on a sexy glint. ‘Not even when you were five?’

  ‘I think I wanted to be an astronaut when I was five—certainly not a princess. My parents are very educationally orientated and they bought me all
the books…’ Seb laughed and her stomach flipped over.

  ‘I wish I could do it differently.’ He walked back to the table and sat down. ‘Meeting you…becoming close to you was so unexpected. I hadn’t planned any of it—’

  That was true for them both, then. Falling in love with him hadn’t been on her agenda either. Marianne picked up her wine glass and took another sip, determined that she would keep herself under tight control.

  ‘—and everything happened so fast between us. There was scarcely time to think. I was in too deep to do anything about it before I’d even realised I’d begun.’

  Marianne let her hands curve around the ball of her wineglass. Perhaps not the correct thing to do to a crisp white wine, but she liked the feel of the cold glass against her palm.

  Their relationship had ended as fast as it had begun. That bothered her far more than the speed of the start. One moment she’d been little more than a child on her first big adventure, and the next she’d been yanked into adulthood.

  It had been different for Seb. Meeting her hadn’t altered the course of his life. After he’d left her in that Paris hotel room his world had continued on its preordained trajectory.

  For her nothing had ever been the same again. If it hadn’t been for her Aunt Tia contacting Eliana she wouldn’t have survived. She’d have been pregnant and homeless. Her relationship with her parents fractured beyond repair.

  Marianne bit her lip. What would Seb have done if he’d known they’d created a baby together? No doubt his family would have been horrified if he’d presented them with a pregnant girlfriend. They’d have probably been even more convinced of her ‘unsuitability’ and brokered some suitable ‘arrangement’ to hide his ‘indiscretion’.

  ‘There’s no excuse for the way I treated you. I was young, a little rebellious, but I knew what was expected of me as the crown prince. I’d always known. I probably shouldn’t even have spoken to you that first day…and I certainly shouldn’t have persuaded you to let Nick and me join you.’