Harlequin Romance Bundle: Crowns and Cowboys

by Judy Christenberry

  She knew what was there. In that narrow side-pocket. It came with her everywhere she went. Always. But it felt more difficult to look at it now. Her fingers shook slightly as she pulled out the red box and pushed in the tiny catch that held it shut.

  The white gold heart Seb had given her nestled against the black velvet. It was a beautiful thing but, more than that, what it represented had been beautiful. Marianne lifted it out and let the links of the chain run through her fingers.

  Seb had loved her when he’d given her this. She honestly believed that. She might have been naïve and foolish…and young, but she was sure he had loved her. Maybe not with the depth of passion she felt for him, but there’d been something…

  She had to cling to that. Because otherwise everything was a lie. The first time he’d held her hand pretending to search for her life line. The time he’d cradled her face in his hands and kissed her. When they’d nervously hired that first room and shut the door…

  Marianne felt the first hot tear burn her cheek. She didn’t attempt to wipe it away, but sat there letting it, and the ones that followed, scald her skin like acid.

  She loved him.

  She still loved him. And she loved the baby they’d made together. If Jessica had lived she would have given her entire life to make everything perfect for her.

  Marianne’s shaking fingers felt for the fragile catch and carefully opened the locket. Inside was a tiny photograph of a perfect little girl. Eyes shut. Looking more like a china doll than a real baby.

  Her baby. Hers and Seb’s.

  The pain sliced through her like a chef’s knife. The speed and the freshness of it always came as a surprise to her.

  And she knew, looking down at the tiny picture, that the pain would never go away. Not even if she lived into very old age. Always she’d carry the grief of losing her child…

  Doubly painful because she’d not even had the chance to know her. She’d held Jessica just the once. Tiny, perfect and still warm.

  Just the once…

  The sound of a car startled her and Marianne flicked the locket shut. She closed her hand over it protectively and went to look out of the window. It was barely six in the morning and yet there were any number of people standing in the forecourt. All in formal suits and standing beside sleek black cars with smoky windows.

  Marianne turned away and went to put the locket carefully in its case. She was no clearer now about what she should do than before, but crying had helped a little. She had so much to mourn. The loss of a daughter…and of a dream.

  She left the suitcase open on the bed and walked over to re-boil the kettle. If Eliana had seen her do it she’d have objected on the grounds that it concentrated the minerals in the water, but Marianne didn’t care. Her hands went through the practised procedure of making tea and then she stood, with her hands cradled around its warmth, and watched the commotion outside.

  Commotion was the wrong word. There was no sense of pandemonium, just a calm sense of procedure. There were three cars parked in an orderly row, the distance between each of them exact. And they were flanked by riders on motorbikes in a precise formation.

  Marianne hid behind the window dressing and watched with a quiet fascination. In the time she’d been at Poltenbrunn Castle she’d not seen anything quite like this. There was a noticeable shift in the posture of the men. They stood a little straighter, looked a little more alert. Marianne took a sip of tea, her attention captured by what was happening outside her window.

  Her breath caught in her throat as Seb stepped into the picture frame of her window. He was dressed in a sharp black suit and he was flanked by Alois von Dietrich on his right and two grey-suited men either side of them both.

  Marianne shrank back further into the folds of the curtain. He looked exactly like the photographs she’d seen in so many publications. The complete personification of what a modern royal should look like.

  He stopped and said something to Alois before ducking down inside one of the cars. Marianne continued to watch as the door was shut and Alois walked round to sit next to him.

  Only then did everyone move. It was as though they were working through practised procedures—which they probably were. Then the montage moved off as though it were one. Safe from detection, Marianne stepped out from behind the curtain and watched more openly as the cars and outriders snaked their way towards the private exit.

  Marianne gripped her mug convulsively. She hadn’t needed anything else to confirm how completely different his life was from hers, but this was a visual illustration of the gulf that separated them.

  She’d hoped that coming to Andovaria would finally give her ‘closure’ and it seemed that someone somewhere had been listening.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE professor pushed hiS glasses higher on his nose and frowned. ‘Can’t make this out at all. Marianne, what do you think?’

  She picked up the neatly typed sheets the professor had given up on and quickly skimmed the contents. ‘It’s suggesting there was a second castle in Andovaria owned by Ulrich von Liechtenstein.’

  ‘Does it pinpoint where?’

  Marianne shook her head and reached for the pencil she had tucked in her pony-tail, putting a tiny note in the margin. ‘Doesn’t say. But, since he died in 1278, it’s the right time frame.’

  ‘Interesting.’ The professor pulled off his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. ‘I’ve had enough for today. I think I’m going to go and have supper with Eliana. How about you?’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I’ll finish looking over these, then I’ll have a shower and head for my bed. I’m tired.’

  He nodded and Marianne reached for a jumper and pulled it over her head. She liked it in the open-plan office when everyone else had gone home. She felt safer there, more cut off from what Seb was doing than when she was in the guest wing. And she found it was better if she actively tried not to know where he was.

  Today there’d been the sound of a helicopter taking off and returning and that had been bad enough. Her imagination had immediately started to picture where he’d been going.

  Even the little information she’d unavoidably picked up about his life had begun to alter her perception of him. He worked hard. Long, long hours. Leaving early and returning late most days.

  Marianne spotted another mistake in the translation the professor had been given so she made a small note in the margin and returned the pencil to her pony-tail for safekeeping. She kept working systematically through it, sheet after sheet, even when the last of the team had long gone.

  It was all so fascinating. Names she vaguely recognised from other sources were becoming three-dimensional human beings with every paragraph. She rubbed a tired hand over her eyes and pushed herself to continue. One thing she’d learnt over the past two weeks was that it was better not to go back to the guest wing until she was ready to fall into bed. Sleep only came when she was completely exhausted.

  Seb didn’t feel tired. A visit to support an inter-racial community project in the north of Andovaria, followed by the royal opening of the largest neonatal unit in central Europe hadn’t done anything to use up his restless energy.

  He stood at the window and looked down at the guest suite. Everything was in darkness—which meant Marianne was sleeping. He glanced down at his watch. Five minutes after two in the morning. What the hell was he doing? He’d got the annual diplomatic reception in something like eighteen hours. He ought to try and get some sleep himself.

  But…he knew there was little point. He simply wasn’t tired.

  And he’d thought about Marianne all day. He’d had a spectacular view of the keep as he’d flown out today and it had started his mind wondering, yet again, what she was doing. Whether she was still excited by what they were discovering.

  And he’d wondered how long she intended to stay. Just knowing she was there was difficult. Particularly when he’d determined not to ask Viktoria anything about the project. This was her ‘baby’ and she
would leap to a million and one conclusions if he expressed too much interest in it.

  Seb opened the door of his private apartment and wandered out along the corridor, nodding at the security guard who was patrolling along it. He’d no particular destination in mind, just a desire to be doing something. The four walls of his private sitting room had begun to feel as though they were closing in on him.

  He walked down the curving marble stairs and along the west gallery, past the state dining room and on into the north drawing room. Lights were low and the castle was quiet except for the ticking of clocks and the creak of old floorboards.

  During the day this was a bustling hive of activity, but at night it was eerily quiet. And, perhaps, more beautiful. On the nineteenth-century walnut table was a novel by Nicholas Sparks. Seb picked it up and turned it over in his hand. Something Viktoria must have been reading and had left out.

  He idly read the back cover and laid it carefully down, exactly as she’d left it. Seb glanced again at his watch. Twenty past two. It seemed as if the whole castle was sleeping except him….

  Which meant it couldn’t do any harm if he went to look at what was happening in the keep storerooms. He quickly walked through the interconnecting rooms that led to the panel that provided the only access to the keep’s lower storage area.

  Light glimmered under the almost closed doorway. He pushed it open, expecting to find someone had left the office light on—but found Marianne. Seb hesitated, his hand on the door handle.

  A wise man would walk away.

  She was asleep, her head resting on her arms and her drink cold beside her. He smiled and let go of the handle. ‘Marianne,’ he said softly, not wanting to startle her.

  The only response was a sort of snuffling sound that made his smile stretch further. He moved her coffee out of harm’s way and touched her lightly on the arm. ‘Marianne. Wake up. It’s the middle of the night.’

  She emerged rather as he’d always imagined the dormouse did in Alice in Wonderland but her first word wasn’t ‘treacle’. Marianne frowned and stared at him wide-eyed. ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Curiosity.’ He smiled because he couldn’t help it. She looked so delightfully rumpled. Most of her naturally wavy hair was still pinned in its pony-tail, but there was enough that had escaped to make the look anything but tidy and she was wearing a green pencil like a stick in a cocktail drink.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked, rubbing at her neck. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’

  She most certainly had fallen asleep. There were red squares across her cheek where the texture of her wool jumper had left its mark. Seb glanced down at his watch. ‘Twenty-five minutes past two.’

  Marianne frowned. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked again.

  ‘I told you. Curiosity.’

  ‘In the middle of the night?’

  Seb fought the desire to laugh. He loved being with her. Just talking, being close to her, and he felt the pressures of his day lift away. ‘It is my castle,’ he protested. And then, ‘I can’t sleep.’

  ‘You ought to work harder,’ she said, still rubbing at her neck. ‘I must have been here hours. Is it really twenty-five minutes past two?’

  Seb held out his watch so she could see.

  ‘Jeepers.’

  ‘What’s that mean?’

  Marianne looked up questioningly.

  ‘Jeepers? It’s not a word I know.’

  ‘It means…Oh, I don’t know. It means it’s twenty-five past two and I ought to be in bed.’

  Seb smiled as she tried to ease out her body. ‘Stiff?’

  ‘Like you wouldn’t believe.’ She reached out for her coffee. ‘This is stone cold.’

  ‘Not incredibly surprising, is it? You probably made it hours ago.’ Seb took the mug from her fingers and walked over to tip the contents away in the nearby sink. ‘Why are you still here? Is Professor Blackwell a hard taskmaster?’

  Marianne shook her head. ‘I stayed on a bit later to finish reading this.’

  ‘Is it that interesting?’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to say that she was only reading it because the professor hadn’t been able to, but she stopped herself in time. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘Noncommittal,’ Seb said with a glance over his shoulder, his hand reaching for the kettle. ‘Do you want another coffee?’

  ‘You’re going to make me coffee?’

  His smile twisted. ‘I do know how.’

  ‘Yes, I know you do,’ she began, stopping abruptly when she noticed the deep glint of amusement in his eyes. ‘I suppose you’d better, since you probably don’t get much practice.’

  Seb laughed and it was as though someone had popped a bottle of champagne inside her stomach. She rubbed at her arms in an effort to distract herself.

  ‘Cold?’

  ‘Yes, I am.’ Though why, she didn’t know. She was wrapped up warmly in a thick hand-kitted sweater, whereas Seb was in a fine wool jumper and dark black moleskin trousers. He looked good in black. Almost Italian with his dark hair and dark eyes.

  ‘Probably because you’ve not been moving around.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Do you still have your coffee with just the one sugar?’ he asked, with a quick glance over his shoulder.

  Marianne nodded. Still. He’d made coffee for her before.

  He came over to the table and handed her a mug, before sitting down with his own. ‘Tell me what you’ve found.’

  ‘In this?’

  He nodded.

  ‘This is just a translation of one of the documents we found last week.’ Marianne took a sip of her steaming coffee.

  ‘And?’ he prompted.

  ‘And…’ Marianne put her mug down on the table and pulled one of the sheets towards her. ‘It’s possible that Ulrich von Liechtenstein built a castle in Andovaria.’

  Seb smiled across the top of his mug. ‘Should I know his name?’

  ‘Possibly not,’ Marianne conceded, fighting the smile that was tugging at her mouth. ‘Unless you’ve been nurturing a secret passion for knights in the thirteenth century. It’s not conclusive, though, but a possibility.’

  ‘Is he a well-known knight?’

  ‘Not particularly,’ Marianne said, tapping the papers on her desk. ‘I had a pencil here somewhere—’

  ‘It’s in your hair.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  Seb leant forward and pulled the green pencil out of her pony-tail. ‘In your hair.’

  ‘Oh,’ Marianne said, accepting the pencil and tapping at her head. ‘I do that sometimes.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’

  And that was the trouble, he did know. Just being near him made her feel tingly and slightly edgy. He knew so much about her.

  She pulled her eyes away and fiddled with the papers on the desk. ‘Ulrich was born in 1200 and knighted by Duke Leopold VI of Austria in 1223. There’s very little known about his life, but we do know he owned a castle in Liechtenstein—’

  ‘Makes sense. Him being a von Liechtenstein.’

  Seb’s voice was teasing and Marianne ignored him as she added, ‘As well as two others. One of which might have been somewhere in Andovaria.’ She wrote another note in the margin.

  ‘Stop now.’ He laid his hand over hers. ‘It’s late.’

  His hand was warm and his touch sent shivers coursing through her spine. ‘You’re right. I ought to go to bed.’ As soon as the word ‘bed’ left her mouth images poured through her heightened imagination. Marianne picked up her coffee. ‘I want to make an early start in the morning.’

  ‘Why?’ Seb’s dark eyes were watching her, making her feel uncomfortable. Making her feel as if she were comprised of nothing but hormones.

  And there was no ‘why’. She’d only said it because she’d wanted to cover up the ‘bed’ thing. Marianne took another quick sip of coffee. ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

  Seb smiled. ‘Today,’ he corrected.

  ‘Today, then.’

&n
bsp; ‘At ten fifteen I have a meeting with my mother—’

  ‘With your mother?’ she echoed, not quite sure he’d heard him correctly.

  Seb nodded. ‘The summer ball is in honour of her birthday, so I think she should have some say in what happens.’

  ‘Yes, but…’ She looked up to see his eyes laughing wickedly. Marianne gripped her mug a little tighter. ‘Do you often have “meetings” with your mother?’

  He grinned across at her. ‘Not usually. When she’s at Poltenbrunn we meet over dinner.’

  Of course they did. Marianne wasn’t sure how she felt about being teased by Seb. She was trying so hard to keep herself aloof, to remember all the reasons why she had to keep some distance between them. But it felt good…

  Seb took a final sip of coffee and put his empty mug down on the table. ‘And in the evening it’s the diplomatic reception.’

  ‘Oh.’ Marianne finished her own coffee and quickly stood up. She’d absolutely no idea what a diplomatic reception was, other than it sounded as if it might be one of those state dinners she’d seen on fly-on-the-wall documentaries made about the British royal family. ‘Shall I wash your mug?’

  Seb hand it across to her. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Is it fun?’ she asked. ‘The diplomatic reception.’

  ‘Not often.’ Seb stood up and moved closer. Marianne could feel his eyes watching her even though she had her back turned towards him. ‘It’s very formal. There’s a guest list of around nine hundred people and I get to speak to them all.’ He smiled. ‘At least it feels that way.’

  Marianne looked over her shoulder. ‘So not fun?’

  ‘More like an endless wedding reception. The first three hours are the worst,’ he replied wickedly. ‘But it’s only annual, thank God.’ He paused. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Leave here,’ he repeated. ‘You’re right, it’s cold. We must do something about getting some heaters in here.’

  ‘Th-this part is fine. It’s only cold now because the heating is off.’ She knew she was rambling, but her stomach had started fluttering. ‘Go where? It’s the middle of the night.’