Royal Protocol

by Christine Flynn

  The bad news was that he’d be back.

  In the meantime she needed to figure out where to put the other half of his guards.

  The seating chart for the state dinner to be held Saturday evening measured four feet by six feet and was actually a map of the ballroom. Positioned on that map were cutouts to scale, representing ten long banquet tables, and five hundred small white cards on which had been written a number and the name of each guest.

  The cumbersome chart had been removed from the ladies’ office late that afternoon, and now took up most of the mahogany table.

  Her first task had been to reconstruct the whole thing.

  Ignoring the headache brewing behind her eyes, she contemplated her handiwork. The tables had been lengthened to accommodate the security personnel, and seating cards had been replaced according to the notes Mrs. Ferth had meticulously taken before Gwen had allowed the chart to be carted away. Security personnel were represented by small red squares.

  Twenty-six of those markers had been placed between guest cards. The twenty-four squares in her palm still needed a home. But noting everything she’d already noted solved nothing, she thought—and tried not to groan when she heard the click of the security latch on the door behind her.

  If it was Vancor she was going to cry. She really didn’t want to have to deal with his chauvinism anymore tonight. By comparison her father was a feminist, and Harrison had been the epitome of cooperation since day one.

  The thought of Harrison had no sooner entered her mind than the hairs on the back of her neck prickled with recognition. Even before she turned, she knew it was his glance moving over her back.

  When she did face him, she found his carved features remote despite the ease of his manner.

  “The guard told me you were still here.” Looking as if he’d rather be anywhere else, he closed the door with a muffled click. “I thought you’d be at dinner by now.”

  Her life seemed to be crawling with men destined to make her uncomfortable. The thought that this particular one had come when he figured she might be gone had her turning self-consciously back to her task.

  Of all the options she’d contemplated, she hadn’t considered that the reason she’d been working with the head of security was because Harrison had wanted to avoid working with her himself.

  “I want to get this finished. I’m expecting a call from Amira tonight and I don’t want to miss it.” She’d thought his defense of her that morning might actually have meant something. Feeling foolish because she’d actually hoped it had, she absently rubbed her temple and tried to focus on her task. “We still have twenty-four personnel to position.”

  “That’s what Vancor said. I just ran into him.” Walking up to where she stood at the table, Harrison casually picked up a lone red square that had fallen from her stack and slanted her a glance. “You must be giving him a hard time.”

  Gwen almost choked. She’d been beyond polite to the man. She’d been downright tolerant. “He told you that?”

  “Not exactly,” he conceded. “What he said was that he could have had this finished in no time if he didn’t have to work with you.”

  Harrison expected her chin to come up, her expressive eyes to flash. Instead, he was struck by the dullness in those liquid blue depths when her fingers fell from her temple.

  “I think he’s having trouble accepting that he can’t just arbitrarily seat people wherever he wants them.”

  She looked tired, he thought, and frowned back at the chart. He didn’t want to notice things like that about her. More than that, he didn’t want it to matter.

  Mostly, he really wished she hadn’t been there. Or, that he didn’t have to be.

  “I don’t doubt that. Trying to make personnel unobtrusive at an event like this always hamstrings an operation. But I’m pretty sure he was thinking more along the lines of how you’re distracting him from what he’s trying to do.”

  Give me a soldier to work with, the guy had grumbled. Give me someone in a uniform. Give me someone I can swear around, he’d groused.

  “I’m not trying to distract him from anything,” she insisted, oblivious.

  “I didn’t say you were.”

  “What I am trying to do is get him to understand that protocol is just as important as security. He’s the one who isn’t being cooperative,” she defended, praying she didn’t sound as cranky as she felt. She was as tired as everyone else. Having missed dinner, she was also hungry. Neither contributed to a placid disposition.

  Aware of the vague distance in Harrison’s manner, she wasn’t exactly feeling welcome at the moment, either.

  “The man doesn’t explain anything.”

  “That’s because he’s accustomed to issuing orders rather than taking them. The men he commands do what he says, no questions. You,” he concluded, checking out the little white cards, “ask questions.”

  “I can’t do my job without information.” Truly at a loss, she shook her head. “Unless he’s insinuating that I’m trying to interfere with placement of his people,” she ventured, trying to imagine the workings of the man’s mind, “I can’t see how he regards questions as a distraction.”

  From the corner of his eye, Harrison glanced toward her profile. She looked exasperated and bewildered, and completely innocent of how easily she could crawl under a man’s skin.

  “Is that it?” she quietly asked, apparently taking his silence for confirmation. “He thinks I’m trying to sabotage this by not letting him put someone I know nothing about between an earl and his wife?”

  “Gwen.” Harrison’s tone went as flat as the floor. He had no idea how the female mind worked, but hers was getting her farther off base by the second. “That’s not the kind of distracting I’m talking about. He’s just not accustomed to working with someone like you.” She was a beautiful, desirable woman. Interesting. Intriguing. She elicited all manner of feelings in a man, everything from lust to the need to defend. None were comfortable.

  Hesitation entered her voice. “‘Someone like me?”’

  He wasn’t about to go into detail. “He’s accustomed to dealing with his men. Not civilian women.”

  “Oh,” she murmured, and glanced back to the chart.

  Harrison frowned back at it himself. He didn’t care for the odd knot curling in his gut. He had nothing against Vancor. He just didn’t like the thought of the old goat finding her as distracting as he did. He didn’t like that he’d left her there alone with the guy for the past five hours, either.

  Possessiveness was definitely new to him.

  “I take it that these red things represent security personnel?”

  “They do.”

  “We need at least two there.”

  “That’s what the general said,” she replied, his displeased expression making her cautious. “But everyone there carries a title. I haven’t been able to figure out who we can put a stranger between or who to move to another table.”

  “They’re all couples?”

  “Not all. That’s making it a little easier to work in your personnel, but it would be a lot easier if I knew how you’re planning to explain these people. I can’t put just anyone between a crown prince and a president, but the general wouldn’t tell me a thing.”

  “They’ll all use a cover of diplomat. Their story is that they’re part of Penwyck’s diplomatic corps.”

  For the first time since he’d walked into the room, Gwen turned to look up at him. Her eyes looked as blue as a summer sky, her expression completely devoid of the caution that had been there from the first moments he’d closed the door.

  “Why couldn’t he have told me that?”

  “He doesn’t want their cover blown.”

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  He knew she wouldn’t. He also knew that standing there staring at her was not a good idea. Not as alone as they were. “He doesn’t know you the way I do,” he said, and turned back to their task.

  “Why don’t you move th
ese two?” He tipped his head to see the writing. “Lord and Lady Ashcroft,” he read. “There are open spaces at the table next to them.”

  His confidence in her had been spoken as a simple matter of fact. Something that simply was. That same practical approach marked his manner as he tried to make sense of what she was doing with all the little cards.

  Determined to be as focused as he was being, she considered the spot he was talking about. “We can’t put the Ashcrofts there. The lord likes his champagne, and the couples that would be on either side of them never touch a drop.”

  “So he needs to stay at a party table,” he concluded.

  She couldn’t help the hint of relief she felt. Partly because his considering expression removed some of the distance from his handsome features. Partly because his reaction hadn’t been a snort.

  “What are the green dots for on some of the cards?”

  “Green dot designates a vegetarian.”

  “And the blue one over there?”

  “That’s the Duke of Rothbury. He’s diabetic. They’ll replace the lemon sorbet that will be served as a palate cleanser with a sugarless version for him and leave off the chocolate-dipped strawberry to be served with the puff-pastry-and-crème-fraîche swan for dessert. It’s easier on his wife than her having to nag at him not to eat it.” She shook her head, her pity for the poor duchess evident. “He gets to visiting and will eat everything in front of him,” she confided, “including the garnishes. He’s really not very good about his diet without her.”

  “Would it be a problem moving the Ashcrofts over there?”

  “Oh, we couldn’t possibly do that. That would put them between their oldest daughter’s ex-in-laws and the parents of the baroness who stole her husband from her.”

  Beginning to understand another reason Vancor had become so frustrated, he muttered, “I see.” She’d probably defeated every change the general wanted to make. “I don’t suppose that would be politically correct.”

  “No,” she agreed, more grateful than he could imagine at his grasp of the situation. “Unfortunately, it wouldn’t. We really do need to keep them at this table.”

  “So who can you move?”

  Reaching past him, she picked up a white card and replaced it with a red one. “Now that I know what role the security personnel are playing, I can slip them in just about anywhere. Here.” She held out some of her squares. “Find Ambassador and Mrs. Bingham and Monsieur and Madame Lebeau at table three. We can put one between them. We’ll move the negotiators from Majorco in with some of the gentry from England. That should keep them from talking about the alliance all night and allow space for a security person.”

  Harrison took in her quiet assuredness as she spoke. The chart, he realized, was actually a carefully designed battle plan not at all unlike something he and his commanders would organize and strategize over during training games. As he studied the neat rows of markers, he began to appreciate the logistics behind every decision she made.

  Gwen’s understanding of the needs, personalities and personal quirks of the guests was undoubtedly indispensable to the queen. Had it not been for the way she was leaning across the table, he might have considered just how valuable it was to him at the moment, too.

  She’d reached to move a square, but he wasn’t watching where she put it. His attention had fixed on her narrow waist where her jacket stretched snug with her reach, and the gentle roundness of her hips.

  Realizing where he was staring, even more aware of what the view was doing to certain parts of his own body, he silently swore to himself.

  “What time is your daughter to call?”

  The question had her pulling back to glance at her watch. “In an hour. If you can okay the placement of your personnel, this shouldn’t take but a few more minutes.”

  He could do that. It was what he’d come to do, anyway. Get in. Get the job done. That had been his goal tonight. It still was.

  Determined to distract himself in the meantime, he located the cards he was searching for. “How is she?”

  “I’ve only talked to her once since they arrived in Scotland, but she’s so excited to be there.” Genuine pleasure slipped into her expression. It lit her face, her eyes. “It’s her first trip away,” she explained, putting another square into place. “But you probably already know that. The men who interviewed me about Prince Owen needed to account for all occupants of the palace, so where she is went into their report.”

  He hadn’t read those particular reports himself, but he’d heard where her daughter was. “You have to be relieved that she’s not here right now.”

  “Enormously. With all that’s going on, she’s much better off where she is.”

  Lifting a white marker, he arched his eyebrow to silently ask if it was okay to move. He’d never been any good at small talk. The sooner they finished, the better.

  Nodding to indicate his choice was okay, her brow pinched.

  “You don’t have a child, do you?”

  As small talk went, he couldn’t honestly say her question qualified. But with her focus back on the chart, which was where he kept his, she seemed simply to be making conversation, too.

  “No,” he told her. “I don’t.”

  “Did you ever want one?”

  “I never had reason to think about it.”

  The only real thought he had ever given to children was to prevent having any of his own. His idea of torture was to be trapped into a relationship he didn’t want. His idea of hell was to have a child he’d have no idea how to raise. The only experience he would have had to call on was his own, and he wouldn’t wish his childhood on anything with a soul. “I was in military school. Then the academy. Then the navy. I was never exposed to any.”

  “You were never around children at all?”

  “Not since I was a kid myself. My mother died when I was six. A month later, my father put me in military school.” Contemplating the lack of security near the entrance door indicated on the chart, his forehead creased in a frown. “We need four personnel at the ends of all these tables,” he muttered, indicating the problem areas. “Do you want to move everyone or just add more seatings?”

  “Add more seatings,” she replied, far more interested in him than in what they were doing. “Is your father still alive?”

  “He was the last I heard.” Satisfied, he scrutinized the area by the service entrances. “He retired as vice admiral ten years ago and moved to Belize.”

  “I take it you have no siblings.”

  “Only child.”

  “Is that why you went into our special forces?”

  “How did you know that I did?”

  “You’re wearing the ribbon.”

  She nodded to the five-inch-wide row of service ribbons on his chest. As schooled as she seemed to be with everything else, he shouldn’t be surprised that she would know what most of them represented.

  “That probably had something do with it.” Bracing his hands on the table, he scanned the chart. It was getting harder by the second to ignore the old knot of resentment beginning to churn in his gut. But ignore it he would, just as he always did. After forty-six years, a man should be over the fact that nothing he did, nothing he accomplished would make his father notice him. So what if he’d been shipped off as a kid and forgotten about? At least he didn’t have to still face that indifference the way Gwen did. “Did Vancor tell you we’re putting personnel on the kitchen staff?”

  Gwen blinked at the carved lines of his strong profile. Moments ago, there hadn’t been anything about him that didn’t seem focused on their task. Outwardly, he still was. But his hands had curled into fists against the table and, despite the ease of this tone, his features had turned to granite.

  “No. He didn’t,” she replied, struck by the enormity of what he’d revealed with such seeming indifference. It was no wonder he’d become as hard as he was, she thought. He hadn’t been able to help it. He’d had no mother. No sister. No softening fema
le influence at all as a child. He had been raised by a father far more unfeeling than hers, a man who had put a grieving, undoubtedly lost little child into a system that focused on discipline and the strict rules of the military.

  The thought of him as a motherless little boy nearly broke her heart.

  The thought of the man he had become reminded her to be wary.

  The parts of his heart that hadn’t been battered as a child would have turned to stone in his training. She’d heard that the men accepted into Penwyck’s special forces were turned into machines. They were the specialists, the men trained for covert operations. Those were the kinds of jobs given only to single men with no ties because men with ties could hesitate and jeopardize an operation if they had to think about family who depended on them.

  It was so easy now for her to see why he’d appeared to express so little sensitivity toward the queen. He’d been exposed to so little of the trait himself. Yet somehow his more redeeming qualities had survived the abandonment, the indoctrination. Over the past few days she’d seen totally unexpected hints of kindness and empathy. That empathy had been there last night when he’d told her about Alex. Again today, when he’d refused to let her father belittle her.

  “What about a wife?” she asked carefully. “Is that something you never thought about, either?”

  Incredibly, his hands relaxed. His long blunt fingers stretched out once more on the polished mahogany. As he turned his head toward her, she could even see the tension drain from the hard set of his face.

  “I wouldn’t know what to do with a wife,” he told her, his eyes holding hers. “I’m lousy at relationships, Gwen. I always have been.”

  He was warning her. She should appreciate that, she supposed. And she did. Or would, when she let herself think about it. At the moment, though, she was more drawn by his honesty than put off by it. Something about his admission had struck very close to home.

  “I don’t think I’m very good at them anymore, either,” she murmured, thinking of what Marrisa had pointed out last night. With her head bent, she absently flicked her nail along the edges of the cards she held. “I’ve been out with a few men over the past ten years. Friends of friends,” she explained. “I’m a convenient single female to pair with an extra male guest at a diplomatic function, but I haven’t gotten beyond a date or two.”