They were words of warning, well intentioned, protective. The words of a friend who cared. The doubts they nurtured were even doubts Marissa probably knew were already there. But all Gwen could think about as they continued down the hall, talking now about the soup Gwen was going to heat and Marissa was going to eat, was that the man she’d been warned about was the same one who had been totally up-front with her about what he wanted from the moment she’d walked in his door. And not once had he said he wanted anything from her beyond a truce and her cooperation.
She was still trying to figure out if there was any comfort in that fact as she walked with the queen to her meeting early the next afternoon.
The scene outside the conference room near the king’s office was far less chaotic than the press conference that had taken place only two days ago. Here, with the diplomatic business of the kingdom being conducted as usual, quiet dignity reigned.
Her father wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Ambassador Charles Worthington was the first to notice the arrival of the queen and her small entourage when they stepped into the hall from the side door leading from the tunnel entrance. Leaving the group of dignitaries and diplomats gathered outside the conference room doors, he hurried toward them, his polished Italian leather shoes silent on the royal red carpet.
Tall and trim, his snow-white hair swept back from his patrician features, he carried his sixty-five years with enviable ease. His pinstriped suit was impeccably tailored. So were his blinding white shirt, burgundy silk tie and the tuft of matching silk in his pocket.
“Your Majesty.” Every inch the dignified, distinguished diplomat, he met them halfway and bowed deeply from the waist. “I am at your service.”
With Gwen at her side and guards flanking them both, the queen offered a regal nod. “Thank you, Ambassador. Is everyone here who needs to be?”
“I will check with Admiral Monteque. It was he who made the arrangements.”
He gave another bow, stopping short of clicking his heels and finally acknowledged his daughter. “Gwendolyn,” was all he said before his forehead furrowed at the length of her skirt and he turned away.
He’d never approved of her wearing skirts above the knee. But then, after she’d embarrassed him by not marrying the man he’d chosen for her, he’d never approved of much about her, anyway. The fact that she served the queen redeemed her only on the surface, since her appointment reflected well on him. But he never asked how she was, or said it was good to see her. And heaven forbid, Gwen thought, that he should ever do anything so plebian as give her a smile.
Not that she ever expected him to do such a thing. But thinking about her father’s apathetic attitude toward her kept her mind off the man whose glance burned a path from the clip restraining her hair to the hem of the taupe suit skirt that had just earned her father’s frown.
Harrison stood tall and dignified himself among the small knot of men fifty feet away. From where she remained with the queen and their escort by an enormous potted palm, Gwen watched him dip his head to hear what her father asked him. As ambassador to the United States, her father’s role in the business taking place was as prominent as anyone’s. But it was the man in the admiral’s uniform who held her attention as he broke away from the group and accompanied her father back to them.
As her father had, Harrison immediately addressed and bowed to Her Majesty. Unlike him, he then turned to Gwen with a nod and a respectful, “My Lady.”
“Admiral,” she replied with the polite nod protocol required.
From the way Gwen’s glance suddenly faltered, Harrison suspected that his own had lingered a few moments longer than it should have. But she had never looked more like the ice maiden to him than she did at that moment. Cool, utterly poised, and with every true emotion she possessed locked beneath her exquisitely polished facade.
He’d watched that facade crystallize the moment her father had approached the queen. The ambassador had been the epitome of regard toward Her Majesty, and while Harrison had seen him warmly greet the delegation from Majorco and the United States ambassador only minutes ago, he hadn’t detected so much as a hint of warmth or affection toward his daughter. He’d acknowledged her presence almost as an afterthought.
Remembering what Gwen had told him of her parents, he suspected now that the lack of affection they’d displayed toward each other had extended to her, too.
At the thought, the unfamiliar sense of protectiveness he’d felt last night stirred inside him once more. He knew exactly how it felt to live with that cold distance. He’d just never considered how much a person could shut herself down to escape it.
Feeling something uncomfortably familiar about the phenomenon, he directed his attention to the queen. “Everyone is here except the president of Majorco and Prince Broderick. They are crossing the lower courtyard now. Do you wish to enter or wait until everyone has arrived?”
The thought of having to make small talk clearly did not appeal to the woman in the stark black coatdress. “I’ll wait.” The toll of another long night visible in her pale features, she immediately turned to the woman standing sedately beside her.
“You will come in to tell me if there is any news whatsoever of Owen.”
“Absolutely,” Gwen quietly replied. “The very moment I hear,” she promised.
The queen’s wan smile turned resigned at the murmur of voices ahead of them. Hearing them himself, Gwen’s father glanced over his shoulder to see who had arrived, then swept his hand outward with another bow. “I believe we can proceed, Your Majesty.”
Beyond them, a brawny gentleman in an ascot and the red sash of a Penwyckian dignitary emerged from the opposite end of the corridor with a guard and the black-suited president of Majorco. As the other men filed into the room after greeting him, he stopped alone outside the doors and bowed to the queen himself.
Every time Gwen saw Prince Broderick, she felt as if she were seeing a ghost.
Every time Harrison saw him he got the sense of a fox watching the henhouse. At the moment, however, he was more interested in the slender woman crossing her arms over the leather-bound notepad she carried. As the queen started forward, Gwen’s father dropped back a step and lowered his voice.
“If there is news to deliver to the queen, Gwendolyn, it will be more appropriate if you just come to the door and ask for me or Sir Selwyn to deliver the message. The matters we will be discussing in there are privileged.”
The hint of condescension in his voice made it sound as if she probably hadn’t realized that. But it was the impression he gave that she was too far beneath the importance of the others who would be present that had Harrison stepping forward the moment he noticed Gwen’s grip on her notebook. To her credit not an ounce of poise had drained from her face, but her fingers had nearly gone white.
“Of course,” she murmured, looking as if she were too focused on blocking the unpleasant emotions the man elicited to bother with anything else.
“With all due respect,” Harrison said, having no problem with that himself, “there isn’t anything that will be discussed in there that your daughter doesn’t already know about. Her security clearance is higher than yours.”
The man gave a choke of disbelief. “She’s a lady-in-waiting,” he said, as if the title itself should dispute the claim.
“As far as you know,” Harrison returned evenly.
The tips of the ambassador’s ears turned the same deep pink as the roses in the garden. But skilled as he was at saving face, his recovery was commendably quick.
Jerking his glance from the second most powerful man in the kingdom, his frosty expression fell back on his daughter. “Then, you will do as Her Majesty directed, of course.”
A muscle in Harrison’s jaw jerked. “She knows her job, sir.”
Lethal. That was the only way Gwen could possibly describe the look in Harrison’s piercing eyes as her father took an offended step away, his back ramrod straight, then turned to catch up w
ith the queen.
The guards that had accompanied Her Majesty fell into step behind them. When they reached the doors of the conference room, those guards joined the others to position themselves along the length of the hall. For a moment, the only sounds were the decisive thuds of the doors closing and the muffled thump of rifle butts hitting the floor.
Those sounds echoed to silence in the long seconds before Gwen could even begin to think what to say. Harrison had jumped to her defense like a wolf protecting its mate.
“I’ve been told I have trouble with diplomacy sometimes,” he muttered.
Incredulous, touched, grateful, she could only shake her head. “Why did you do that?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to answer that question. He wasn’t even sure if he’d done it for her or himself. Not caring to figure it out, he went for the reason that appeared the most obvious. “Because you wouldn’t.
“So how is she doing?” he asked, changing the subject with the nod of his head toward the closed doors.
He was right that she wouldn’t have said anything, she thought. She never wasted her breath on what her father wouldn’t hear or respect. But she didn’t tell him that. Harrison seemed no more interested in discussing his gallant defense than he did explaining why it mattered whether she defended herself or not. And, unlike him, she wasn’t about to push.
“Not as well as she appears,” she replied, wondering if his response hadn’t simply been instinctive. The way it had been when he’d thrown his jacket over her in the rain. “She would rather be in the chapel. Or at her husband’s side,” she continued, feeling a dangerous tug in her heart at his innate need to protect. “In the past couple of days, those are the places she’s spent all but the few hours she’s managed of sleep.”
Studying her profile, seeing the faint lines of fatigue around her own eyes, he almost asked how much sleep she’d managed herself. But the thought of her sleeping evoked an image of her restrained hair loose and spilling like spun gold over his pillow, so he let the topic go.
“Duke Logan said he told you this morning that we’re still analyzing the voice on the tape.”
“He did. And I passed that on to the queen.” Clutching her notepad like a shield, she looked up at the hard, chiseled lines of his face. “Thank you for that.”
“For the information?”
“For what you said to my father.” Even if he didn’t want to discuss it, she needed him to know that she appreciated what he done. Now that she had, she’d let it go, too.
“You’re the one running the show,” she said, nodding toward the doors as he had done. “Shouldn’t you be inside with Her Majesty and the suits?”
Dangerous. The way she looked at him, her eyes luminous with gratitude, had him thinking of her and the pillow again. And a bed. And tangled sheets. “I’m not running anything. I just got it organized.”
Holding his beret loosely by its rim at his side, not trusting the direction of his thoughts, he gestured with his free hand toward what she gripped in front of her. “What’s left on your schedule today?”
The easy way he dismissed his own importance caused her to overlook the fact the he needed something again. This was a man who commanded Penwyck’s entire navy. He headed the RET. At the moment, Penwyck’s one million citizens were at the mercy of his advice to the queen. She couldn’t imagine that he regarded all that power as simply doing a job.
Yet, that was exactly the impression she had as he waited for her reply.
“I have an appointment to check the silver for Saturday evening.”
“How long will that take?”
“Two, maybe three hours.”
“To check silver?”
“We have settings for five hundred,” she explained. “Each fork, knife and spoon, each caviar knife, every candelabra, serving platter and salt cellar has to be inspected to make sure there is no trace of silver polish or tarnish.”
“Can someone else do it?”
“The queen usually supervises herself. I promised I’d take care of everything.”
Of course she had, he thought. There wasn’t much of anything that wasn’t landing on those slender shoulders at the moment. “After that?”
“I have a meeting with the florists doing the table arrangements and one with Mrs. Ferth about the seating. And I want to stop by to congratulate Monsieur Pomier. I heard he tracked down enough champagne.”
“He was short?”
“It’s a long story.”
Part of him actually wanted to hear it. The other part, the part he was more familiar with, insisted he get to his point. “The seating is what I want to talk to you about. We need to add fifty guests.”
The look she gave him said he had to be joking.
The look he gave her back said he was dead serious.
With a slow blink, she tipped her chin. “Do you have any idea what that will do to the seating arrangements?”
“Change them, I imagine.”
“You have a gift for understatement,” she murmured dryly. “Who would these guests be?”
Other than the guards, they were the only ones there. But he wasn’t about to take any chances on being overheard. Curling his fingers around her arm, he moved her away from the huge bushy palm and farther down the hall. Beneath his hand he was aware of the quick tension in her small, supple muscles. Mostly he was aware of the freshness of her scent and the quiet breath she’d drawn when he’d reached toward her.
Lowering his hand as well as his voice, he murmured, “Security.”
She stood in front of him, her blue eyes guarded, her notebook between them. The coolness he’d seen before was gone, but not the propriety their surroundings demanded.
There was passion beneath that decorum. The thought of discovering just how deep certain of those passions might run conjured images of slowly stripping away the clip from her hair, her jacket from her shoulders, her skirt from her hips. She favored lace. He remembered that because it was the delicate fabric edging her bra that had distracted him in the queen’s drawing room only days ago.
Remembering what he’d done to conceal it, and how soft and firm her flesh had felt, he sucked in a breath of bated frustration.
“I’ll need a chart of the seating arrangements myself. We’ll have to change whatever the seating plan is now to accommodate personnel. Don’t worry,” he muttered, suspecting his voice sounded as tight as his body suddenly felt. “They’ll look like guests.”
He didn’t doubt that, a few short days ago, Gwen would have thought his request totally unacceptable and probably, promptly told him so. It was a clear indication of how far they’d come that her expression revealed little beyond concern. “We can’t just arbitrarily move the invited guests. There is an order at each table. By rank and title,” she hurried to explain.
“That’s where you come in.” The thought of having his hands on her refused to go away. But it felt safer than thinking about the empathy he still felt for her. Desire he could understand. The other simply felt dangerous. “I have no idea what that protocol is, but we know you do.” Distance, he thought. That was what he needed. “You can help with the new arrangements.”
It had taken days to put the original chart together. To rearrange the whole thing now would have given Gwen a headache of monumental proportions had she actually been thinking about the work involved. With Harrison’s focus intent on her mouth, she was having trouble thinking at all.
As his glance drifted down her body, it was almost as if he were imagining how her body would fit his.
“Admiral. Sir.” A young member of the Royal Guard bounced his self-conscious glance from her to his superior’s profile. “Pardon the interruption, but you said to let you know the moment your car arrived. It has, sir.”
Harrison’s eyes remained on hers. “Thank you, soldier. Tell my driver I’ll be right there.”
“Sir,” came the acknowledging reply.
“So,” he said, as if he hadn’t just mentally strip
ped her bare. “Do you want to set up a time now or call my assistant later?”
“I’ll have to call her later.” Her forehead pinched. “Fifty?”
“Fifty.”
“This could take all night.”
That was what he was afraid of.
Chapter Nine
Gwen had been under the impression that she would be working with the RET on the seating arrangements. With Colonel Prescott, perhaps, since he was in charge of intelligence. Or with Duke Logan, since he was a member of the Royal Guard. She thought for certain she would be working with Harrison and had found herself looking forward to the possibility with more anticipation than was probably wise—until she called his assistant and realized that nothing about the little project was as straightforward as it had seemed.
Harrison had failed to mention that the chart couldn’t remain where it was. He’d also failed to mention that she would be knocking heads with the hard-nosed and humorless General Franklin Vancor, Commander of the Royal Guard, who was in charge of all palace security.
The general had a definite problem with the concept of teamwork. It was as apparent as the annoyance in his beady brown eyes that he hated having to defer to her, a mere lady-in-waiting, when it came to where he could and could not put his personnel. He knew where he wanted his people. Yet he refused to tell her why a particular position at a table was so important. She, on the other hand, generously offered reasons for why such placement wouldn’t work—explanations that had earned her either a snort or a look of barely restrained disgust.
Mercifully, the man she’d been sentenced to work with had just left for dinner. A very late dinner, he’d pointed out, making it sound as if it were her fault the project was taking so long.
As she stood in the tunnel conference room where she had met the RET just yesterday, all she cared about at the moment was that he was gone.
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