by Jane Porter
“I like the water, remember?”
“Yes, you have gills and fins, I believe.”
She laughed as he lifted her from the boat and carried her through the rushing surf to relatively dry, packed sand. Once there, he put her on her feet and together they faced the boat and the view of the sea.
Open water everywhere.
Gorgeous blue sky, a turquoise sea, pale rocks standing sentry at the mouth of the cove, and nothing and no one else for miles until you reached the mainland.
“It’s perfect,” she said, nodding. “I love it. Is there any place to pitch a tent? Because this is most definitely off grid.”
“I thought of that, too. Let me show you what is here and we can see if you think it has potential.”
He took her hand and led her toward the back of the beach where it butted against the rocky cliff, and there at the back was a little path carved from the boulders, which actually tunneled back through the rocks.
Josephine felt like she was on a grand adventure as they walked up the path through the small tunnel. She reached out and touched the wall. It was surprisingly smooth. Her lips quirked, wondering at the feat of nature required to make such a tunnel out of what was most likely volcanic rock, and then they emerged into the light, and they’d come to a protected clearing. But it wasn’t a true clearing at all as right in the middle sat a small stone house virtually identical to the one she’d called home on Khronos. Josephine’s jaw dropped and she looked from the cottage to Alexander and back again.
Same stone. Same shape. Same placement of windows and doors.
She walked quickly to the house, and as she crossed the threshold she felt a jolt of recognition—rough-hewn beams across the ceiling, a big stone hearth dominating the center room, and two bedrooms, although as she inspected both, she discovered that the master bedroom was the one at the front, where Jo’s had been, and the one at the back had been divided into two, with a cradle and bunk beds, as if anticipating quite a brood.
“This is my house,” she said, doing a slow circle, trying to take it all in.
“I had it copied as closely as I could,” he said, arms folded across his chest, a faint smile curving his lips. “The contractor and builders wanted to add more amenities but I refused. I told them it was meant to be rustic and an escape from civilization as we know it.”
“You gave me my home back,” she whispered, her voice breaking.
“With all the solar-efficient technology we could find,” he said, exiting the house and heading to the back where a pretty trellis concealed a tidy grid of solar panels, tubing, and equipment. “Solar power for heating and electricity. Solar-powered communication. Enough energy to run your own little lab of computers as well, if you should so desire. And last but not least, your own desalination system for as much fresh water as you, and your future garden, desire.”
She shook her head, incredibly touched and overwhelmed by the thought and effort that had gone into creating this world for her.
From the beach, this was a deserted island, and yet tucked behind the safety of the rocks was a little house ready for her to come play house. “You make me feel like Marie Antoinette with her little farm.”
“The Hameau de la Reine,” he said, blue eyes creasing as he smiled. “The thought crossed my mind, too, but it’s not quite so extravagant. We left out the farm, the mill, the Temple of Love, the belvedere, and the grotto.”
“Tell me you didn’t import all those stones for the house.”
“No. Thankfully the island has an abundance of stone, and we were able to use all local stone, cutting them here, which made it far easier physically, as well as more affordable.”
“And yet this is still extremely costly.”
“Can I not give my bride a wedding gift?”
“Will your people want my head?”
“My people are your people, and they will want you and our children happy.” He drew her into his arms, kissing her, oh, so slowly and tenderly, and when he raised his head, his blue eyes were bright and warm and filled with conviction and love. “You will have more children, cara. It will all work out. It might just take time—”
“I know,” she interrupted, standing on tiptoe to kiss him back. “And it will work out, always, as long as you and I are together and we stick together. Friends, lovers, partners.” She felt the secret rise in her, the joy overwhelming. “Parents.”
“Yes, we will be parents,” he agreed firmly, sounding like the man who’d served his country in the Royal Navy.
“In just six months,” she said, kissing him again. “And next week, we can find out the sex, if you want. Or we can both go and just look at the ultrasound and watch the baby’s lovely little heart.”
Alexander’s jaw worked and he blinked hard, clearing the sheen gathering there. “A baby.”
“Our baby.”
“You’ve seen the doctor?”
She nodded. “I have, and I’ve seen the ultrasound and everything looks good. There should be no problems. I just can’t go racing up and down steep stairs.”
He glanced toward the water. “Or riding in bumpy speedboats. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“The boat ride was fine. Trust me. And I was going to tell you this weekend. I had a special reveal planned, but this was actually so much better.”
“I’m calling for the helicopter to take us home.”
“Alexander.”
“I’m taking no chances.”
“Alexander!” she protested, laughing.
“I’m taking no chances at all. I love you, Josephine. I love you more than you’ll ever know.”
* * *
If you enjoyed The Prince’s Scandalous Wedding Vow you’re sure to enjoy these other stories by Jane Porter!
Bought to Carry His Heir
Her Sinful Secret
His Merciless Marriage Bargain
Kidnapped for His Royal Duty
Available now!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Untouched Queen by Royal Command by Kelly Hunter.
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Untouched Queen by Royal Command
by Kelly Hunter
PROLOGUE
Augustus
THEY WEREN’T SUPPOSED to be in this part of the palace. Fourteen-year-old Augustus, Crown Prince of Arun, had been looking for the round room with the domed glass roof for at least six years. He could see that roof from the helicopter every time they
flew in or out, but he’d never been able to find the room and no adult had ever been willing to help him out.
His father said that those quarters had been mothballed over a hundred years ago.
His mother said it was out of bounds because the roof was unsafe.
Didn’t stop him and his sister looking for it, even if they never had much luck. It was like a treasure hunt.
They wouldn’t have found it this time either, without the help of a map.
The floor was made of moon-coloured marble, and so too were the columns and archways surrounding the central room. The remaining furniture had been covered with dusty drapes that had probably once been white. Above all, it felt warm in a way that the main castle living areas were never warm.
‘Why do we not live in this part of the palace?’ asked his sister from somewhere not far behind him. She’d taken to opening every door of every room that circled the main area. ‘These look like bedrooms. I could live here.’
‘You want fifty bedrooms all to yourself?’
‘I want to curl up like a cat in the sunlight. Show me one other place in the palace where you can do that.’
‘Mother would kill you if you took to lounging about in the sun. You’d lose your milky-white complexion.’
‘Augustus, I don’t have a milky-white complexion—no matter what our mother might want. I have black hair, black eyes and olive skin—just like you and Father do. My skin likes the sun. It needs the sun, it craves the sun. Oh, wow.’ She’d disappeared through another marble archway and her voice echoed faintly. ‘Indoor pool.’
‘What?’ He backtracked and headed for the archway, bumping into his sister, who was backing up fast.
‘Something rustled in the corner,’ she muttered by way of explanation.
‘Still want to live here?’ He couldn’t decide whether the hole in the ground was big enough to be called a pool or small enough to be called a bath. All he knew was that he’d never seen mosaic floor tiles with such elaborate patterns before, and he’d never seen exactly that shade of blue.
‘I still want to look around,’ his sister offered. ‘But you can go first.’
He rolled his eyes, even as pride demanded he take the lead. He’d been born to rule a country one day, after all. A rustling sound would not defeat him. He swaggered past his sister and turned to the right. There was a sink for washing hands carved into the wall beside the archway, and taps that gleamed with a dull silver glow. He reached for one and, with some effort, got it to turn but there was no water. Not a gurgle, a splutter or even the clank of old pipes.
‘What is this place? What are all these stone benches and alcoves for?’ his sister asked as she followed him into the room. She kept a wary eye on the shadowy corners but eventually turned her attention to other parts of the room.
It was an old map of the palace that had guided them here. That and a history teacher who preferred giving his two royal students books to read so that he could then nap his way through afternoon lessons. Their loss. And sometimes their freedom. If they got caught in here, he could probably even spin it that they were continuing their history lesson hands-on.
‘Maybe it was built for a company of warrior knights who slept in the rooms and came here to bathe. They could have practised sword-fighting in the round room,’ his sister suggested.
‘Maybe.’
Kings had ruled from this palace stronghold for centuries. It was why the place looked so formidable from the outside and had relatively few creature comforts on the inside, no matter how many generations of royals had tried to make it more liveable. There was something about it that resisted softening. Except for in here. There was something soft and strangely beautiful about this part of the palace. Augustus plucked at a scrap of golden silk hanging from a peg on a wall and watched it fall in rotting pieces to the floor. ‘Did knights wear embroidered silk bathrobes?’
His sister glanced over and gasped. ‘Did you just destroy that?’
‘No, I moved it. Time destroyed it.’ Rational argument was his friend.
‘Can I have some?’
Without waiting for permission, she scooped the rotting cloth from the floor, bunched it in her hand and began to rub at a nearby tile.
‘It’s going to take a little more than that to get this place clean.’
‘I just want to see the pictures,’ his sister grumbled, and then, ‘Oh.’ She stopped cleaning.
He looked, and...oh. ‘Congratulations. You found the ancient tile porn.’
‘It’s art, you moron.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I wish we could see better in here,’ his sister said.
‘For that we would need electricity. Or burning torches for all the holders in the walls.’ He closed his eyes and a picture came to mind, clear as day. Not knights and warriors living in this part of the palace and bathing in this room, but women, bound in service to the reigning King.
Augustus had never read about any of his ancestors having a harem, but then, as their eighty-year-old history teacher was fond of telling them, not all facts made it into their history books. ‘So, bedrooms, communal bathing room, big gathering room...what else?’
There were more rooms leading from the centre dome. An ancient kitchen, storage rooms with bare shelves, larger rooms with fireplaces, smaller rooms with candle stubs still sitting in carved-out hollows in the walls. They found chests of drawers and sideboards beneath heavy canvas cloth, long mirrors that his sister swore made her look thinner, and even an old hairbrush.
‘I don’t think people even know this stuff is here,’ Moriana said as she put the brush gently back into place. ‘I don’t know why they’re ignoring it. Some of it’s really old. Museum-old. The back of this brush looks like ivory, inlaid with silver, and it’s just been abandoned. Maybe we should bring the history prof down here. He’d have a ball.’
‘No.’ His voice came out sharper than he meant it to. ‘This is a private place. He doesn’t get to come here.’
Moriana glanced at him warily but made no comment as they left the side room they’d been exploring.
All doorways and arches led back to the main room. It was like a mini town square—or town circle. He looked up at the almost magical glass ceiling. ‘Maybe our forefathers studied the stars from here. Mapped them.’ Perhaps he could come back one night and do the same. And if he took another look at those naked people tiles in the room with the empty pool, so be it. Even future kings had to get their information from somewhere. ‘Maybe they hung a big telescope from the ropes up there and moved it around. Maybe if they climbed the stairs over there...’ He gestured towards the stairs that ran halfway up the wall and ended in a stone landing with not a railing in sight. ‘Maybe they had pulleys and ropes that shifted stuff. Maybe this was a place for astronomers.’
‘Augustus, that’s a circus trapeze.’
‘You think they kept a circus in here?’
‘I think this is a harem.’
So much for his innocent little sister not guessing what this place had once been. ‘I’m going up the stairs. Coming?’
Moriana followed him. She didn’t always agree with him but she could always be counted on to be there for him at the pointy end of things. It didn’t help that their mother praised Augustus to the skies for his sharp mind and impeccable self-control, and never failed to criticise Moriana’s emotional excesses. As far as Augustus could tell, he was just as fiery as his sister, maybe more so. He was just better at turning hot temper into icy, impenetrable regard.
A king must always put the needs of his people before his own desires.
His father’s words. Words to live by. Words to rule by.
A king must never lose control.
Words to be ruled by, whether he wanted to be ruled by them or not.
They made it to the ledge and he made his sister sit rather than
stand. He sat too, his back to the wall as he looked up to the roof and then down at the intricately patterned marble floor.
‘I feel like a bird in a cage,’ said Moriana. ‘Wonder what the women who once lived here felt like?’
‘Sounds about right.’ He wasn’t a woman but he knew what being trapped by duty felt like.
‘We could practise our archery from up here.’ Moriana made fists out in front of her and drew back one arm as if pulling back an imaginary arrow. ‘Set up targets down below. Pfft. Practise our aim.’
‘Bloodthirsty. I like it.’ Bottled-up anger had to go somewhere. He could use this place at other times too. Get away from the eyes that watched and judged his every move. ‘Swear to me you won’t tell anyone that we’ve been here.’
‘I swear.’ Her eyes gleamed.
‘And that you won’t come here by yourself.’
‘Why not? You’re going to.’
Sometimes his sister was a mind-reader.
‘What are you going to do here all by yourself?’ she wanted to know.
Roar. Weep. Let everything out that he felt compelled to keep in. ‘Don’t you ever want to be some place where no one’s watching and judging your every move? Sit in the sun if you want to sit in the sun. Lose your temper and finally say all those things you want to say, even if no one’s listening. Especially because no one’s listening.’ Strip back the layers of caution and restraint he clothed himself in and see what was underneath. Even if it was all selfish and ugly and wrong. ‘I need somewhere to go where I’m free to be myself. This could be that place.’
His sister brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around her legs. The gaze she turned on him was troubled. ‘We shouldn’t have to hide our real selves from everyone, Augustus. I know we’re figureheads but surely we can let some people see what’s underneath.’
‘Yeah, well.’ He thought back to the hour-long lecture on selfishness he’d received for daring to tell his father that he didn’t want to attend yet another state funeral for a king he’d never met. ‘You’re not me.’