Cordina's Royal Family Collection

by Nora Roberts

And he looked to Del more like a soldier than any farmer he’d ever come across.

  “I doubt it,” Del decided. “You want to do it here, or somewhere more secluded where you can dump me in a shallow grave?”

  Reeve’s smile was thin. “Let’s take a ride. You make a habit out of taking stray young women into your house, Caine?”

  “No. She was the first. I can promise she’ll be the last.”

  The day was warm, but breezy. Del hated the fact that he was sweating. The man had eyes like lasers.

  “You want me to believe you took her in out of the goodness of your heart. You had no idea who she was—even though her face is plastered on magazine covers, in newspapers, on television screens all over the world. You had no intention of exploiting her, of using her influence for your own gain. Or of trading off the press with stories about how you took her to bed.”

  “Just a damn minute.” Del reined to a stop, and now it was his gaze that bored heat. “I don’t use women. I sure as hell couldn’t have used her if I’d tried because she’d have kicked me in the teeth for it. I don’t have time for gossip magazines or television, and I wasn’t expecting to find some runaway princess stranded on the side of the road in a storm. She said she was low on funds so I gave her a place to stay and a job. I didn’t ask her a lot of questions or pay much attention.”

  “Well, enough attention, apparently, to take her to bed.”

  “That’s right. And that’s nobody’s business but ours. You want to kick my ass over that, you go ahead. But you start accusing me of taking what we had between us and turning it into some cheap splash for the media, I’m kicking yours right back.”

  Right answer, Reeve thought. Exactly right. He shifted in the saddle. The boy had guts, he decided, pleased. But that was no reason not to torture him. “What are your intentions toward my daughter?”

  The angry flush faded until Del was sheet pale. “My—my—What?”

  “You heard the question, son. Roll your tongue back in your mouth and answer it.”

  “I don’t have any. She won’t even speak to me. I’m staying out of her way.”

  “Just when I was beginning to think you weren’t a complete jackass after all.” Reeve swung his mount around again. “Give that horse a good gallop,” he advised. “And don’t fall off and break your stiff neck.”

  As he rode back to the stables, Reeve thought the conversation might not have been precisely what his wife had meant when she’d asked him to have a man-to-man talk with Del. But it had certainly been satisfying.

  * * *

  Camilla would have enjoyed a good gallop herself. But the ladies’ tea required her attention and her presence. As the weather was fine, the party was spread over the south terrace and the rose garden so that guests could enjoy the views of the Mediterranean and the fragrance of flowers.

  Her aunt had opted for casual elegance so the pretty tables were covered with warm peach cloths and set with glass dishes of deep cobalt. More flowers, cheerful tropical blooms, spilled out of shallow bowls while white-coated staff poured flutes of champagne as well as cups of tea. Each lady was presented with a silver compact etched with the royal seal.

  A harpist plucked strings quietly in the shade of an arbor tumbled with white roses.

  Her aunt Eve, Camilla thought, knew how to set her stage.

  Women in floaty dresses wandered the garden or gathered in groups. Knowing her duty, Camilla moved through the guests while she nursed a single glass of champagne. She smiled, exchanged pleasantries, chatted, and shoved all thoughts of Del into a corner of her mind, then ruthlessly locked it.

  “I’ve barely had a moment with you.” Eve slid an arm through Camilla’s and drew her aside.

  She was a small woman with a lovely tumble of raven hair that provided an exquisite frame for her diamond-shaped face. Her eyes, a deep and bold blue, sparkled as she nudged Camilla toward the terrace wall.

  “Not enough time now,” she said in a voice that still carried a hint of her native Texas drawl, “but later I want to hear about your adventure. Every little detail.”

  “Mother’s already told you.”

  “Of course.” With a laugh, Eve kissed Camilla’s cheek. Gabriella had done more than tell her—she had enlisted Eve’s help in the matter of prying and poking. “But that’s secondhand information. I like going to the source.”

  “I’ve been waiting for Uncle Alex to call me out on the carpet.”

  Eve lifted an eyebrow. “That worries you?”

  “I hate upsetting him.”

  “If I worried about that, I’d spend my life biting my nails.” Lips pursed, Eve glanced at her perfect manicure. “Nope. He has to be what he is,” she added more soberly, and looked out to the sea that lay blue against the edges of her adopted country. “So much responsibility. He was born for it—and bred for it. As you’ve been, honey. But he trusts you—completely. And he’s very interested in your young man.”

  “He’s not my young man.”

  “Ah. Well.” She remembered, very well, when she’d tried to convince herself Alex, heir to Cordina, wasn’t hers. “Let’s say he’s interested in Lord Delaney’s work—and your interest in that work.”

  “Aunt Chris was a tremendous help,” Camilla added, glancing over toward Eve’s older sister. She wasn’t technically Camilla’s aunt, but their family was a very inclusive one.

  “Nothing she likes better than a good campaign. That comes from marrying the Gentleman from Texas. The senator was very pleased to discuss the Bardville Research Project with his associates in Florida.”

  “After Aunt Chris talked him into it, and I’m very grateful to her. She looks wonderful, by the way.”

  “Like a newlywed,” Eve agreed. “After five years of marriage. She always said she was holding out for the perfect man. I’m glad she found him. Whether it takes fifty years or five minutes,” she said, giving Camilla’s hand a quick squeeze, “when it’s right, you know it. And when you know it and you’re smart, you don’t take no for an answer. Something like that is worth fighting for. Well, back to work.”

  Camilla stopped by the tables, found a precious three minutes to speak with her young cousin Marissa. She watched her sister, Adrienne, sit and with apparently good cheer, talk with an elderly Italian countess who was deaf as a post.

  Hannah, her uncle Bennett’s wife, gestured her over to a shady table where she sat enjoying tea and scones with Del’s mother.

  “Lady Brigston and I have a number of mutual acquaintances,” Hannah explained. “I’ve been badgering her about her work, and now I’m dreaming about running off to dig for dinosaur bones.”

  There had been a time when, as a British agent, adventure had been Hannah’s lifework. But as a princess, and mother of two active sons, she’d traded one kind of adventure for another.

  As an agent, she’d had to deliberately downplay her looks and bury her love of fashion, now she could indulge them. Her dark blond hair was sleeked back in a twist. Her sleeveless tea dress showed off athletic arms and was the same vivid green as her eyes.

  “I’d like that myself.” Smiling, Camilla obeyed Hannah’s signal and sat. “Though I imagine it’s hard, tedious work. You must love it,” she said to Alice.

  “It’s what I always wanted to do—even as a child. Other girls collected dolls. I collected fossils.”

  “It’s so rewarding,” Camilla commented, “to know, always, what you want, and be able to work toward it.”

  “Indeed.” Alice inclined her head. “And tremendously exciting, I’d think, to discover an advocation along the way—and work toward it.”

  “Oh. Would you excuse me a moment?” Recognizing her cue, Hannah rose. “I need to speak with Mrs. Cartwright.” She exchanged a quick and telling look with Alice—and got out of the way.

  “Your family, if I may say so, Your Highness, is wonderful.”

  “Thank you. I agree with you.”

  “I’m, as a rule, more comfortable in the company of me
n. Simply don’t have much in common with females. So fussy about the oddest things, to my mind.”

  The hand she waved had nails that were short and unpainted. She wore only a simple gold band on her ring finger. “But I feel very much at home with your mother, your aunts,” she went on. “It’s no wonder I’m already so fond of you.”

  “Thank you,” Camilla said again, a little flustered. “That’s very kind.”

  “Are you very angry with my son?”

  “I—”

  “Not that I blame you,” Alice went on before Camilla could formulate a diplomatic answer. “He can be such a … what’s the word I’m looking for? Oh, yes. Bonehead. Such a bonehead. He gets it from his father, so he really can’t help it. He must’ve given you a terrible time.”

  “No. Not at all.”

  “No need to be tactful.” She patted Camilla’s hand. “It’s just we two, and I know my boy in and out. Terrible manners—partially my fault, I can’t deny it. I never was one to bother about the niceties. Outrageous temper—that’s his father’s—always booming around. Forgets why half the time after the explosion—which is annoying and frustrating to the other party. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes—” With a half laugh, Camilla shook her head. “Lady Brigston, you’re putting me in an awkward position. Let me say I admire your son’s work—his approach to it and his passion for it. On a personal level, we have what you might call a conflict in styles.”

  “You have been well raised, haven’t you?” Gabriella had warned her it wouldn’t be easy to chip through the composure. “Do you mind if I tell you a little story? There was once a young American girl, barely twenty-one with her college degree hot in her hand. She had a fire in her belly, one burning ambition. Paleontology. Most thought her mad,” she added with a twinkle. “After all what was a young woman doing fiddling around with dinosaur bones? She wheedled her way onto a dig—this particular dig because the man in charge was someone who’s work—his approach to it and his passion for it—she admired.”

  She paused, smiled and sipped her tea. “She read his books, read articles on or by him. He was, to her, a great hero. Imagine her reaction when he turned out to be this big, irritable, impatient man who barely acknowledged her existence—and then mostly to complain about it.”

  “He is like his father,” Camilla murmured.

  “Oh, the spitting image,” Alice acknowledged with some pride. “They sniped at each other, this rude man and this brash young woman. She did most of the sniping as he was so thickheaded most of her best shots just bounced off his skull. It was utterly infuriating.”

  “Yes,” Camilla said almost to herself. “Infuriating.”

  “He was fascinating. So brilliant, so handsome, so—apparently—disinterested in her. Though he began to soften, just a little, toward her as she was damn good at the work and had a sharp, seeking mind. Caine men admire a sharp, seeking mind.”

  “Apparently.”

  “She fell madly in love with him, and after getting over being annoyed with herself over that, she put that sharp mind to work. She pursued him, which flustered him. He found all manner of reasons why this shouldn’t be. He was fifteen years older, he didn’t have time for females and so on. She had a few quibbles herself. This Earl of Brigston business just didn’t fit into her Yankee system very well. It might have discouraged her, but she was stubborn—and she knew, in her heart, he had feelings for her. And since the title came with the man, and she wanted the man, she decided she could live with it. So what could she do but seduce him?”

  Because Alice looked at Camilla for agreement, Camilla nodded obediently. “Naturally.”

  “He stammered and stuttered and looked, for a delightful few moments, like a panicked horse caught in a stable fire. But she had her way with him. And three weeks later, they were married. It seems to be working out well,” she added with a little smile.

  “She was an admirable young woman.”

  “Yes, she was. And she gave birth to an admirable, if knotheaded son. Do you love him?”

  “Lady Brigston—”

  “Oh, please, call me Alice. I look at you, and I see a young woman, so bright, so fresh, so unhappy. I know my place, but I’m looking at Camilla, not Her Royal Highness.”

  “He sees the title, and forgets the woman who holds it.”

  “If you want him, don’t let him forget. You put flowers in his house,” she said, quietly now. “I never remember to do that sort of thing myself. You know he kept them, after you’d gone.”

  Tears swam into her eyes. “He just didn’t notice them.”

  “Yes. He did. Part of him wants to step away from you and bury himself in his work again. I imagine both of you—being strong, capable young people—will do very well if you go your separate ways. But I wonder what the two of you might do, might make, if you break through this barrier of pride and hurt and come together. Don’t you?”

  Yes, Camilla thought. Constantly. “I told him I loved him,” she murmured, “and he turned me away.”

  With a hiss of breath, Alice sat back. “What an ass. Well then, I have one piece of advice. Camilla. Make him crawl a little—it’ll be good for him—before he tells you the same. I have no doubt you can manage it.”

  * * *

  Del suffered through a formal, and to his mind interminable, dinner party. He was seated between the deaf Italian countess and Camilla’s sister, Adrienne. The single advantage was that Camilla’s father was seated well across the enormous dining room.

  It would, he decided, be more difficult for her dad to stab him with his dinner knife that way.

  By the time the main course was served, he’d reversed his initial impression of Adrienne as a vapid if ornamental girl. She was, he realized, simply an incredibly sweet-natured woman who was both blissfully happy and quietly charming.

  Her help with the countess saved his sanity. And when Adrienne glanced at him, a quick sparkle in her eyes, he saw some of Camilla’s sly humor.

  He found himself telling her about some of his work as she asked questions specifically designed to encourage it. It didn’t occur to him until later that her talent was in drawing people out.

  “No wonder Camilla’s so fascinated.” Adrienne smiled. She had, he’d noted, her mother’s soothing voice and her father’s sizzling blue eyes. “She always enjoyed puzzles—and that’s your work, really, isn’t it? A complex puzzle. I was never very good at them. Will you go back to Florida soon?”

  “Yes, very soon.” He shouldn’t be here at all, he told himself.

  “When my children are a bit older, we’ll take them there. To Disney World.” She looked across the table at her husband.

  It was that look he’d think of later as well. The sheer contentment in it. The look that had been missing from Camilla’s face, he thought, except for the briefest of times.

  It had been there. He remembered it being there, when she’d stretched out on the bank of his pond. Camilla Content, he’d called her. And then she’d been gone.

  Chapter 11

  For a princess she worked like a horse. It made it difficult for a man to manage five minutes alone with her to apologize.

  Del wasn’t sure exactly what he was apologizing for, but he was beginning to think she had one coming.

  Guilt—a taste he didn’t care for—had been stuck in his throat since he’d seen that tear run down her cheek. Adding to it were various members of her family who were so bloody friendly, or gracious—or both at the same time—he was beginning to feel like a jackass.

  Even her mother had cornered him. If that was an acceptable definition of being taken gently aside to be given a warm and graceful expression of her gratitude for opening his home to her daughter.

  “I know she’s a grown woman,” Gabriella said as she stood with him on a rise overlooking the gem-blue waters of the Mediterranean. “And a capable one. But I’m a mother, and we tend to worry.”

  “Yes, madam.” He agreed, though he’d never consid
ered his mother much of a worrier.

  “I worried less when I knew she was with someone trustworthy and kind—who she obviously respected.” Gabriella continued to smile, even when he—quite visibly—winced. “I’d been concerned about her for some time.”

  “Concerned?”

  “She’d been working too hard for too long. Since the death of my father, and her own blossoming, you could say, there have been more demands on her time, her energies.”

  “Your daughter has considerable energy.”

  “Yes, as a rule. I’m afraid she’s been more exposed to the appetites of the media in the last year or two than anyone could be prepared for.”

  Could he understand? Gabriella wondered. Could anyone who hadn’t lived it? She hoped he could.

  “She’s lovely, as you know, and vibrant—as well as the oldest female of her generation of the family. The media’s pursuit of her has been voracious, and I’m afraid it cost her, emotionally. Even physically. I know what it’s like. I used to slip away myself. There are times the need to be away, even from something dear to your heart, is overwhelming. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes. I have Vermont.”

  Her face went soft, and bright. Yes, she thought, he could understand. “And I had my little farm. Until, I think, very recently, Camilla hadn’t found her place to be away. To be quiet, even if it was just inside her mind. Thank you.” She rose up and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for helping her find it.”

  He might have felt lower, Del thought when they parted, if he crawled on his belly and left a slimy trail behind him.

  He had to talk to Camilla. Reasonably. Rationally. There were questions now, and he wanted them answered. It seemed only right a man should have some answers before he did that crawling.

  But every time he made some subtle inquiry about her, he was told she was in a meeting, taking an appointment, engaged with her personal assistant.

  He wanted to think all this meant manicures or shopping or whatnot, until Adrienne corrected him. “I’m sorry, were you looking for Camilla?”

  “No.” It felt awkward lying to that soft, pretty smile. “Not exactly, madam. I haven’t seen her this morning.”