Royal Protocol

by Christine Flynn

  Caution crept through her. His first instinct had been to shelter and protect.

  “You’re soaked,” she murmured.

  “So it would seem.”

  His easy command with the soldiers gave way to distance as he folded his jacket over his arm, then stuffed his hands in the pockets of his trousers.

  That distance increased with each passing second. Moments before the rain had damped their discussion, she’d been busy letting him know that she didn’t appreciate his lack of trust—and that she fully comprehended his methods. At the moment she didn’t much care if he’d grasped her message or not. She felt more dismayed with the way she’d gone off about the man she’d married. She hadn’t intended to share anything so personal.

  “Admiral—”

  “Lady Gwendolyn—”

  He watched her eyes meet his as they both spoke. Mercifully, the sadness that had slipped into them as she’d spoken of her husband was no longer there. Neither was the bewilderment. Or the defense. But it was clear from the uneasy way her glance fell to the scarf she threaded through her fingers that their interrupted discussion remained on both of their minds.

  The topic of that discussion had his defenses locked firmly into place.

  There were things he knew about her husband that she couldn’t. Whether she realized that or not, he didn’t know. He just knew he didn’t trust the tug of empathy he’d felt for her. He wasn’t accustomed to feeling empathy with any woman.

  A peculiar sense of self-protection had him seeking more familiar ground.

  “Is there anything else I can answer for Her Majesty?”

  Willing herself to stick to their task, she quickly shook her head. “I believe you’ve covered everything,” she replied, looking from his shirt. “I’ll tell her what you said…about how you need the captors to contact you again.” Sounding as distracted as she suddenly looked, a faint frown pinched her brow.

  “What?” he prompted, recognizing disagreement when he saw it.

  Thinking he did, anyway.

  The frown deepened as if she were considering whether or not to reply. “You’re going to catch pneumonia as wet as you are,” she finally said. Her glance skimmed his shoulders and chest, then promptly jerked back up when it slipped to his thighs. “Duke Logan is about your size. Would you like me to send someone to borrow a shirt from him?”

  She looked a little damp herself. Not bedraggled, the way she could have. She had suffered most from her shapely calves down. But she didn’t seem to care at all that she was standing in wet shoes and stockings. She actually seemed more concerned about him.

  That she would feel concern for him at all threw him completely. Not wanting it to matter, he drew a breath—and felt it stall in his chest. Her delicate scent drifted from his jacket.

  “It’s only five minutes to the Admiralty,” he finally said, unwillingly touched, anyway. “I have another in my office.”

  Gwen gave a restrained little nod. The Admiralty was the navy’s headquarters at the base of the hill. His car would be heated. He could take his shirt off in it, she supposed, only to call her thoughts to a halt before they could go any further.

  He was a big boy. He could take care of himself. Aside from that, thinking of him without a shirt didn’t seem terribly wise with him staring at her mouth.

  The thought remained, anyway. “Good,” she murmured, repeating her vow to get out more when this was over. The last she’d heard, Sir Michael Tynley was still available. She’d served with him on the queen’s library restoration council and they’d gotten along quite well.

  He also had a clammy handshake, she remembered, and stifled a shiver at the thought of him touching her as Harrison had.

  “I’ll…ah…I’ll let you know what she says.”

  Refusing to meet his glance again, on the off chance that he could read her thoughts, she turned away.

  She’d taken a single step when his deep voice stopped her cold.

  “Make sure she says yes, Gwen. That dinner is the best thing we have going for us right now.”

  With her back still to him, she turned her head, looking at him over her shoulder. He’d never called her by her first name before. Aware of the odd way her heart had skipped at the deep sound of it, she murmured, “I understand.”

  Harrison watched her turn away from him then, her bearing unconsciously graceful, her smile ready when she passed the guards who had intercepted them a while ago.

  For a moment he simply stared after her.

  He’d forgotten about her husband. Rather, he hadn’t connected the loss of that unsung hero to the woman he’d thought of only as an attendant to the queen. He knew of Major Corbin. Everyone on the RET did. As he recalled, Pierce Prescott had even served with him on that fateful night.

  Neither he nor Pierce had been members of the RET at the time. It hadn’t even existed then. The group had been formed afterward by the king as a direct result of the event. But the major’s sacrifice was well-known to a privileged few. And those few knew that the major had stopped the last man anyone would have suspected from assassinating the entire royal family.

  Harrison had compartmentalized the incident. Just as he’d done with countless other sensitive situations and nightmarishly close calls he’d been told about, or had to deal with himself over the years. He’d analyzed those events, learned from them as commanders throughout history had done. But he never dwelled on them. He couldn’t, and still survive himself. Contrary to what Gwen obviously thought, he constantly weighed the human factor in his actions. Everything he did was about people and protecting their rights, their freedoms. It was just that emotion clouded issues best handled by cool logic. Aside from that, the sense of idealism that had carried him through the first promotions of his career had died long ago. Without it, he wondered why he’d ever wanted that career at all.

  His jaw locked at his last thought. He knew exactly why he did what he did. It was only because of the way Gwen seemed to constantly challenge him that he was even thinking about this.

  Ignoring the cold seeping into his skin, he headed opposite the direction she had gone. He was an analytical man. A practical, pragmatic man. He knew how to deal with men like himself who understood duty, strategy and acceptable risk…not with cultured and stubborn females. Especially one particularly stubborn female who wasn’t proving nearly as unexposed to his realities as he’d thought her to be. A woman who had the disturbing habit of reminding him every time he was with her of just how long it had been since he’d had a woman in bed.

  “Oh, Lady Gwendolyn, I’m so glad you’re here. The main switchboard has been absolutely jammed with calls about the king’s health. And Princess Anne and the archbishop got disconnected while I was talking with them because every call is being monitored and there aren’t enough tapes or whatever it is they’re monitoring calls with to get them all and I don’t know what to tell anyone about the dinner.”

  Mrs. Anne Ferth ran out of air. Wringing her hands, which wasn’t like her at all, she peered at Gwen over the top of her half-rimmed glasses, took a deep breath and started to plunge in again.

  Gwen beat her to it. “Princess Anne and His Eminence called Her Majesty?”

  Mrs. Ferth’s gray bob bounced as she nodded. “And both were disconnected while I was telling them that she was resting. I pray they’ll realize things are a bit confused here at the moment,” she hurried on, her ruddy complexion even more so in her distress, “but I’m truly at a loss as to what to say about the dinner. Five hundred guests have been invited and everyone from secretaries of dignitaries to the royal pastry chef wants to know if it’s being postponed because of the king’s illness. The queen has given me no instruction. All she has said is that the only calls she’ll take are those regarding her husband and her children and that she wants to see you as soon as you return.”

  “Do you know if she actually is resting right now?”

  “I doubt it. Mrs. McDougal was in a bit ago to make up her room and s
aid she was sitting on the settee in her salon staring out her window.”

  “Did she say anything else?” Gwen asked, speaking of the middle-aged chambermaid.

  “No,” Mrs. Ferth murmured. The woman favored cardigan sets and tweeds. Always with a silver chain and a single pearl. Today’s set was mud brown. “But I took it upon myself to cancel her appearance at the Children’s Hospital this afternoon. Oh, and she refused lunch.”

  The older woman’s pale-blue eyes suddenly narrowed on Gwen’s somewhat flattened French roll. “You got caught without an umbrella.”

  “I did,” Gwen murmured, not bothering to share how that had come to be. Before she’d come into the drawing room, she had hurried upstairs, changed her stockings and shoes and retucked her scarf. There had been little to do with Roberto’s handiwork other than smooth the slightly damp strands back into place.

  Had it not been for Harrison, she might well have been soaked to the skin.

  “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” she said, grateful when the quiet ring of the telephone drew Mrs. Ferth’s attention. “I’ll try to get some answers for you.”

  The queen’s private secretary gave her a relieved nod as she headed for her desk.

  The beleaguered woman was still there, explaining to whomever she was speaking with that she would have to get back to them, when Gwen returned from the queen’s salon five minutes later.

  Expectation lit Mrs. Ferth’s face as she hung up and added the phone memo she’d written to the three-inch high stack of pink slips piled on her desk.

  “The dinner will be held. That means we need to continue with the preparations,” Gwen told her, as concerned about the queen as she was the decision she had finally, reluctantly made. “Rather than have Lady Brigham and Lady Galbraith answering Her Majesty’s mail today,” which was the usual task of those particular ladies-in-waiting, “you might ask them to assist you in returning calls. With so many guests, it might also be a good idea to have the press secretary mention to the media that the preparations are continuing. That should cut down on inquiries from those who haven’t called yet.”

  Mrs. Ferth never questioned her instructions, never hesitated to follow through. She simply, efficiently, did what the queen needed to be done.

  Sitting as straight as a pillar, she pulled her note pad toward her. “How does Her Majesty wish the statement handled? Will she be drafting it herself or does she wish to have it drafted by someone else for her approval?”

  “I believe it will be best to let the RET handle it. I’ll speak with Admiral Monteque.”

  The impact of the morning’s news about the king appeared to finally hit the sixty-something grandmother of four as she blinked down at her pad. Despite the assurances made to the world that morning that it was business as usual at the palace, it most definitely was not. “Yes. Of course,” she murmured. “And what of Her Majesty’s schedule?”

  “That will have to be changed. I think all she had today was the luncheon at the Children’s Hospital. There was nothing this evening.” Mentally envisioning her photocopy of Mrs. Ferth’s calendar, Gwen paced toward the window. “Tomorrow morning is the opening of the new Queen Marissa Library in Sterling. We could ask Princess Meredith to represent her mother, but she is as distressed about her father and brother as the queen. It might be best to ask Lady Colwood if she will represent Her Majesty. The speech is already written. All she has to do is read it.”

  “What about the tour of the gardens she was to give afterward?”

  “If this weather continues, I doubt anyone will mind if it’s canceled.”

  Pushing back one of the filmy curtains, Gwen toyed with the top button of her jacket as she looked out at the gray. Rain still fell, merging sky and sea in shades of pewter and slate.

  “What does she have the day after?” she asked, wondering how much time Harrison had spent out on those turbulent waters. He commanded the navy. To reach that position, he could well have spent an accumulation of years out there, riding the waves, fighting the elements.

  “A meeting with the royal chef to confirm the menu for the dinner Saturday evening. An appointment with her couturier for the final fitting of her gown. The symphony, followed by a reception for the guest violinist.”

  “I’ll take the meeting with the chef. The rest we’ll take as it comes.” She let the curtain fall. Her idea of adventure was a short sail around the harbor. The only time she’d been beyond the breakwater of the cove was to fly over it. “Hopefully, by then they will have found the prince and the king will be showing some improvement.”

  “Do you really think that will be?”

  Tightening her hold on the button, she faced the concern in the dedicated secretary’s angular face. “I can’t honestly say I know what to think,” she murmured, wishing she possessed the bold confidence of the man she’d left a little over half an hour ago. She doubted he ever questioned himself, ever felt uncertainty or fear.

  “I just know we have a lot to do in the next several days,” she concluded with a sigh.

  “Where would Her Majesty like me to begin?”

  “By calling Admiral Monteque.” Her hand fell. “Her Majesty wishes to see him here at his earliest convenience.”

  Chapter Five

  Gwen was a worrier. She always had been. She stewed over details. Fretted over decisions. As a child, she’d feared constantly that she wouldn’t do well enough in school, that she wouldn’t be ladylike enough to suit her parents, that she might break one of her father’s rules about decorum or her mother’s about appearances. She’d lived her life in embassies and cut her teeth on protocol. Appearance was everything.

  She had also spent much of her youth wishing she had the guts to go wading in the Trevi Fountain or climb onto the memorial in Trafalgar Square.

  Had she done that, however, her mother would have had apoplexy. And her father would probably have sent her off to live with Tibetan nuns. Having no desire to ruin her mother’s health or live in seclusion, she’d remained the dutiful daughter—until she’d met and married a man who’d made her realize that she didn’t have to be perfect for someone to care about her. Not that she had ever even come close. But Alex Corbin had, among so many other things, given her the courage to break the familial chains.

  She was still working on getting up the nerve to climb a statue.

  And she still worried. Only, now she worried about her friends and her family. At the moment her concern was for the queen and the queen’s daughters. The three princesses had arrived nearly an hour ago, and promptly disappeared into their mother’s salon.

  From the chair behind Mrs. Ferth’s desk, she hung up the phone and fished around with her foot for her shoe. She had just canceled her own appointment with the Marlestone Library Restoration Committee that afternoon and rescheduled a meeting with the cellarmaster.

  The afternoon had passed in a blur of telephone calls and more interviews with security personnel about who had been where in the palace when the prince had been kidnapped. In between, she had helped the queen’s secretary prioritize the earlier inquiries about the state dinner. Mrs. Ferth was now in the ladies’ office downstairs where she had enlisted the aid of Ladies Brigham and Galbraith in the effort of returning the 116 calls regarding the status of that event. As of half an hour ago, the switchboard was taking all other messages. Only internal calls were coming straight through.

  “Gwen. I’m glad you’re still here.” Princess Meredith stepped through the salon door, stylish in a sage-green Armani pantsuit and with her lovely brown hair caught low at her nape. At twenty-eight, she was the oldest of the king and queen’s children, and considered by many to be one of the most intelligent women in Europe. To Gwen, her charming and outgoing personality also suited her perfectly for her work as a liaison between the royal family and the Royal Intelligence Institute. “When was the last time you saw Owen?”

  Having found her shoe, Gwen slipped on the low pump and rose, smoothing her skirt. “I saw him the nig
ht before last. A little before seven.” The security team who’d interviewed her—twice, now—had asked the same question. “I was taking the main staircase up to my room and passed him on his way down. He said he was on his way to dinner with all of you.”

  “But you didn’t see him after that? Or hear him go back up?”

  “I was in my room. As I told the gentlemen from security, as far as Amira’s and my rooms are from everyone else, all I could ever hear from there would be you and your sisters giggling when a night was warm enough to leave a window open.”

  It had been years since she’d had that experience. Those young girls were young women now. Lovely young women, Gwen thought as Princess Anastasia slipped past her sister and gave her halfhearted smile. The willowy Princess Ana, dressed in her riding clothes, possessed her father’s great love of the outdoors. She could also be every inch as opinionated as he was, but her fair coloring and striking blues eyes were definitely inherited from her mother.

  “The security people keep asking questions, but no one is giving us any answers. We’re just trying to figure out the sequence of events ourselves,” Ana explained, looking less weary but just as strained as her mother—who walked in behind her. “Meredith and Pierce left first, and Mum and Meg and I left a bit after. Owen was finishing a brandy and said he’d be up shortly.

  “When he didn’t come down to breakfast yesterday,” Ana continued, pacing restlessly toward the marble fireplace, “we all thought he’d decided to go out and do a little partying of his own with his friends. To celebrate Meredith’s engagement to Pierce,” she explained, since the dinner the night before had turned into an impromptu engagement party of sorts. “I thought maybe he’d gotten himself stewed and was sleeping in.”

  “His bed apparently wasn’t even slept in,” Meredith expanded. “And there were signs of a struggle. A door to his bureau was open, and the things atop it had fallen over or onto the floor. It was as if someone had been thrown against it.” She pulled in a deep breath, remaining stoic for her mother. “That is absolutely all we know. The only reason we know that much is because Owen’s valet told my chambermaid.”