Chosen: Gowns & Crowns, Book 7

by Jennifer Chance

  No one spoke for a moment, then Marguerite spoke in rushed English. “Queen Catherine? Can you see us?”

  The woman’s face creased into a beatific smile. Now Win could see the age, but he also was even more transfixed by the woman’s face. “Marguerite! It is you! I don’t think I’ve seen you looking so happy your entire life. How are you doing?”

  Win blinked. He’d expected her to say something about the dirt caked on Marguerite’s forehead, not this. As Marguerite managed a reply, the queen turned her gaze on Win.

  “And this is Wyndham Masters, ah, the third,” Marguerite said, seeming happy to have the queen’s focus off her. “He’s helped make this restoration possible, here at Holt House, and he—I mean I…I mean we have a situation here where we could really use your help.”

  “Of course, dear. Anything I can do, I surely will.” The queen’s gracious response was automatic, but she still stared at Win. He could see the calculation in her eyes, but he couldn’t for the life of him decide what she was pondering.

  Then his brain finally caught up with Marguerite’s words. Use the queen’s help?

  Beside him, Marguerite plunged on. “You said you were in Washington, D.C. for another few days, right? And going to New York after?”

  “Then Montreal, yes. Then a tour of Greenland, I believe. Assuming it hasn’t all melted by the time we arrive.” The queen’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

  “Would you—I mean, I’m sure your every minute is booked, but would you be able to fly to Charleston again? Um, both of you this time? I know you were just here a few weeks ago.”

  “I do feel a certain fondness for the Lowcountry that I can’t quite explain,” the queen said, tilting her head as she considered Marguerite. “May I ask what the occasion is?”

  “I…we…” Marguerite sighed again, clearly frustrated. “This isn’t going to make very much sense, I’m afraid.”

  “Your majesty,” Win said smoothly, and since both of Marguerite’s hands were busy holding the phone steady, he slid an arm around her waist and anchored her. “Tomorrow night there will be a reception at a newly renovated property west of Charleston, out into the countryside a good hour or so. There will be very few in attendance, but it’s a project that has grown very near to Marguerite’s heart. I feel…I know you would add luster to it, if you would grace us with your presence.”

  “I need you to dance with King Jasen,” Marguerite burst out, the emotion in her voice so strident that Win looked at her with as much amazement as the queen did. “The house—it’s such a beautiful house, your highness, a true jewel that Win has managed to restore in record time to the place it had been nearly a century ago. But it…well, it…” she hesitated, then soldiered on. “It has a curse on it.”

  “A curse!” The queen’s eyes flared wide and a voice called from somewhere behind her, rich and masculine and clearly worried. The queen ignored it. Instead, she leaned forward with even more animation. “What sort of curse?”

  “A curse that caused all the flowers to die because well, I think because the house no longer had love in it. Anyway, I think that if…well, if someone with the kind of love that you and King Jasen have, if you were to come and dance here—just for a little while, on this gazebo…”

  “There? Where you are now? Show me.” The queen called over someone else, presumably her husband, as Marguerite held up the phone and turned slowly in a circle, showing her the gazebo and, of course, the gardens beyond.

  “Oh, my word, it’s beautiful,” the queen breathed, and Marguerite brought the phone back to her face. “And you think a dance between me and the most breathtaking, gracious, kind, and above all gorgeous king of Garronia can help?”

  “Catherine.”

  Win focused on the camera as Marguerite steadied it. He recognized King Jasen immediately and was excruciatingly aware of his disheveled state. He’d met the king only once of course, but…

  “What in the world, Win Masters?” Jasen asked, his brows lifting high. “What happened to you? You look like you just lost a fight.”

  “Jasen!” But the queen was laughing and Jasen laughed too, the look he exchanged with his wife one of pure love. Then he fixed Marguerite with a hard gaze. “I’m not sure what you’ve just talked my wife into, but please tell me she’s not serious about the part where I need to dance. You know I hate dancing.”

  “You have to dance,” Catherine said, and she too took them both in. “We look forward to seeing you both, tomorrow night.”

  Jasen glanced at her, startled. “Tomorrow—” he began, but she silenced him with a touch on his arm.

  “Tomorrow night,” Catherine said firmly. “Text me all the details, and we’ll give you your dance, Marguerite.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Marguerite sighed deeply as the phone call disconnected, and she dropped her hands, utterly spent. “Wow.”

  “Yes, wow,” Win’s voice seemed too near hers, and she looked up, startled to realize that he’d once more wrapped his arm around her shoulders. He’d been there, rock steady, not trying to run the conversation but supporting her every step of the way. Was this the way relationships worked? She found herself wondering. Was this how Jasen and Catherine had stayed so firmly in love with each other for all these years?

  She didn’t know. She only knew that—she wanted that kind of love. The kind of affection that when it came to needing two people in love to break a century-old curse, the choice was obvious as to who to turn to.

  Speaking of…embarrassment flooded her cheeks as she peered up to Win. “Do you think I’m insane for asking them here?”

  “Not in the slightest,” he said staunchly, and she realized somewhat belatedly that he had a clod of dirt in his hair. “I think you’re insane for asking me to appear before the king of a foreign country—a country where Masters Real Estate Holdings is currently negotiating for a new hotel—with dirt all over me, but it seemed to go over remarkably well. Perhaps I’ll use this as a negotiating ploy going forward.”

  “Marguerite?” Cindy appeared at the back porch. “You ready to go or do you want me to head on back solo?”

  No. She couldn’t imagine leaving…

  Marguerite turned quickly to Win. “You’ve entertained me so often at your home. Would you mind…I mean, if you don’t have plans, would you mind coming back to Heron’s Point this evening? And, ah, staying?”

  He blinked at her. “Heron’s Point?” Then he seemed to process everything she was saying, and nodded with a smile. “I think I can do that.”

  “I know it’s a ridiculously long drive when you have to come back here in the morning—”

  “No, no, not at all,” he said. “I have business in the city, and if you don’t mind us driving separately, I’ll head home first and get what I need for that. And,” he winked, “I’ll take a shower. Then I’ll be out to the island after that—fair enough?”

  “Fair enough.” She stepped up on her tip toes to kiss him—a kiss that lingered despite the heat, their fatigue, and the fact that Cindy was waiting not twenty feet away. When they parted, Win’s grin seemed like it would be permanently attached to his face.

  “I’m going to make sure everything’s locked down, then I’ll be on my way,” he said, and she nodded hurriedly. He trotted down the back stairs of the gazebo, toward the river walk, while she turned to Cindy.

  “Oh, girl,” the woman chuckled as she approached. “You’ve got it so bad.” They turned toward the car. “And, if that boy’s willing to look at you the way he just did with your hair looking the way it does, he’s got it bad too.”

  “My hair?” Marguerite’s hands went to what was left of her ponytail. Cindy laughed and Marguerite suddenly felt another sharp trill of happiness as they rounded the house. Something whispered on the wind and she looked around sharply, but there was nothing there—only one of the clematis blossoms hanging over the last of the trellises, bright with a flash of unexpected color. She blinked—but she’d been mistaken after a
ll. Now she saw nothing but thick, glistening leaves.

  The ride home with Cindy went by in a shot, both of them taking turns making calls—Cindy to warn Rob and the children they’d be having a guest for dinner and that the kids could have anything they wanted to eat as long as they behaved, to the kids’ loud excitement, and Marguerite to the Cypress Resort—specifically, its chef. Everything was arranged by the time they made it home, and she flew up the stairs in a rush, a feeling of near desperation almost overtaking her. Why did she care so much about this dinner with Win? She wondered. She’d eaten with him a dozen times already, in far grander places than this.

  But she did, she realized, as the water from the shower pounded down on her and she went over the full meal in her head. They’d eat out on the screened porch, where the honeysuckle and magnolia trees still scented the evening, and the whisper of the sea was just over the far dunes. The kids would take their specialty pizzas and go down to the outside table or to the dock, if they wanted, or just stay with them, and they’d talk and laugh and—

  She frowned. They’d simply be themselves. Enjoying the evening for no purpose other than to share stories and deepen bonds. That was all.

  And that was enough.

  By the time the food arrived another hour had passed. The soft hooting of a horn announcing the truck’s arrival. Cindy went around to the front and came back not only with the first armful of food—other dishes carried around the house by several staff members of the resort, who looked as happy for the field trip as the kids were to see them—but also with Win.

  Marguerite couldn’t help the surge of joy she felt at seeing him. He looked impossibly handsome in his simple summer weight shirt and khakis, his hair still damp from the shower and his skin tanned from their day in the sun. He strode toward her with his own grin and caught her up in a brief kiss—breaking away just as quickly when more food arrived.

  “You’ve thought of everything, it looks like,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Marguerite laughed, feeling unreasonably useful, but couldn’t quite quell the feeling that her heart was about to burst.

  “Thank you,” she managed, hoping every shred of happiness she was feeling wasn’t as obvious as she feared it was.

  Rob joined them and they settled down to dinner, the long, quiet evening punctuated by the children’s laughter both at the table and, later, down by the dock when Rob and Cindy moved down to enjoy the sunset with the kids and the ducks, obviously allowing Win and Marguerite some space. Marguerite’s gaze lingered on their distant forms as Win watched her, but she didn’t feel self-conscious.

  “Where will you go from here?” he asked quietly, and she shrugged. Time seemed detached from the moment, from the two of them, all their cares far away on the mainland.

  “I don’t know,” she said, honestly. “I thought Europe, but the idea of traveling there doesn’t hold the same appeal it did even a few weeks ago. Probably…” she sighed. “Probably back to Garronia. There are rumors of a royal wedding in the works, and even if that’s a few months off, I suspect Vince and Edeena will elope once they see all the planning and media that the country will be swept up in, after the wedding news breaks. It seems that cameras are everywhere, anymore.” She nodded to him. “What about you?”

  “To work, in New York,” he said, with such speed she was startled. “My father’s been there for some time now, laying the groundwork for new agreements, and his summons are becoming more strident by the day.”

  She made a face. “And here you’ve been stuck renovating some mothballed mausoleum because I dragged you into it.”

  “Not at all,” Win said. “I can honestly say these past few weeks have been some of the happiest I can remember. If it weren’t for the constant barrage of work emails and calls, I wouldn’t know who I was anymore.”

  And there it was. That feeling of her heart about to burst edging closer. Where he’d say goodbye, she suddenly knew, without ever telling her why. She couldn’t face that tonight, though. Wouldn’t face it.

  Instead she turned her face up to the soft southern sky, the stars seeming particularly bright now that the haze of the evening had lifted. “Do you ever think of anything besides your job, Mr. Masters?” she asked, dropping her voice deliberately into a lazy Southern drawl. “After all, you can’t work all the time.”

  “I’ve heard that, Ms. Saleri. And yet if I didn’t work, whatever would I do with myself?”

  There gaze met over the table littered with plastic dishes and stemware, and Marguerite’s brows lifted ever so slightly. “Whatever, indeed,” she whispered.

  If the evening lasted much longer, he’d be forced to drag Marguerite off by her hair, Win decided.

  Rob and Cindy Marks had finally corralled their children and disappeared into one of the distant upper floors, leaving him and Marguerite alone on the back porch. As fond as he’d grown of Southern porches in the past few weeks he’d gotten to know Marguerite, even he had his limits. With the bodyguards—and their children—in the house, he needed a door. Preferably a reinforced one, with a sturdy lock.

  Marguerite looked absolutely relaxed, however, lying back on the porch chaise and gazing out over the back yard. Her hair lifted softly in the breeze created by the lazy ceiling fan, and he wanted to freeze the moment with something more lasting than a photograph, something he could carry with him not in his phone or his pocket, but in his heart, able to pull it out in a week or a decade—or a half century, perhaps, to look on it again.

  He forcibly shook himself, the movement catching Marguerite’s eye. She turned to him, and there was no mistaking her quick smile. “Do you think they’re distracted enough for us to make a break for it?” she asked quietly.

  He couldn’t help his return grin. “They’re three floors up. Cindy took great pains to inform me of that.” He pointed. “And all the way to the back of the wing.”

  Marguerite stood, then, holding a hand out to him, shivering a little when he took it. “We’ll have to be very quiet,” she whispered.

  “I promise, I won’t scream in Garronois if you don’t.”

  That earned him a sharp, repressive look, then Marguerite tugged him off the porch and into the living room of the old plantation house. It had been updated but not restored, but Win didn’t miss the long, clean bones of the place, the understated grace of its furnishings and details. If he could spare more brain cells from his thoughts of Marguerite…later, he promised his business instincts. Later.

  Then they were into the hallway and dog-legging to the right, a second passageway taking them deeper into the house. Here the walls were papered in a deep caramel, the baseboards trimmed in cream, perfectly accentuating the hardwood floors. The house was much larger on the inside than it had even appeared on the outside, and when Marguerite finally stepped into a room, pushing a door open, Win wondered if he’d be able to find his way out again without a map.

  The room wasn’t lit, but the curtains at the nearly floor-to-ceiling windows had been pulled back, letting in the bright southern night. Win could make out the simple, almost austere furnishings: an armoire, a dresser, a bed. He peered a little harder. A very tall bed.

  Marguerite shut the door behind her, but didn’t turn on the light. Instead, without saying a word, she pivoted, fitting herself into his arms.

  Win gathered her close, bending down to take her mouth in a kiss that summed up every moment of need, desire and frustration that he’d been feeling since they’d been separated earlier that day. The kiss in the gazebo—like all kisses in that infernal gazebo, a distant part of his mind thought—hadn’t done anything to slake his thirst for this woman. If anything, it had stoked it to a higher degree, so that through all his calls during the ride back to the Grand, and through the very long, very cold shower that followed, he’d tried unsuccessfully to think of anything else but Marguerite’s face, her lips, her body entwined with his. And now that he she was here, with him, he wondered how he’d lasted so long without her.


  She uttered a slight cry of surprise as he bent and lifted her into his arms.

  “Shh,” he said, his lips against his ears. “We’re not alone in the house, remember?”

  Marguerite stifled a laugh, but it was more of a nervous hiccup, and he closed his eyes against the surge of adrenaline in his blood. He could hear his heart—and hers—pounding, and he walked across the room to the bed in five long strides.

  He hadn’t been mistaken. It was an exceptionally tall bed.

  “Who in the world did they build this for?” he muttered, having to lift Marguerite higher before tossing her on it.

  She landed with a small bounce. “I fell in love with it the moment I saw it. I have no idea—there’s a little stair they made, do you see?” she crawled to the edge on her knees and pointed, but Win caught her hand and lifted it to his lips. In that position, her face limned with moonlight, she looked so achingly beautiful he couldn’t speak.

  “What is it—” but Marguerite was silenced as he pulled her to him once again, his hands in her hair, at her shoulders, shaking as they smoothed down her back.

  “Oh, Win,” she said, or at least—he thought she said something, but he was focusing only on her clothes—and getting her out of them, both of their movements suddenly frantic. What they lacked in efficiency they made up for in earnestness and a moment later Win had sheathed himself and was climbing into the bed as Marguerite scooted backwards, the two of them abruptly coming to a halt as she backed up against the dozen or so pillows that lined the headboard.

  “This bed,” he muttered again and she sighed, leaning backward as he followed her down to kiss her.

  “I think they made it for giants,” she agreed.

  But Win thought otherwise. In fact, he resolved to look up the manufacturers and write them a letter, as he pulled Marguerite around, settling her on his hips. With as high as the bed was, she seemed to tower above him, unusually close to the slowly turning fan high above.