Royal Protocol

by Christine Flynn

  She had no idea how late Harrison had stayed up with Gage and the RET the night before last. Since she hadn’t seen him at all yesterday, she assumed that the leads they’d developed had kept him swamped. She just hoped that somewhere during all of that he had found time to get a few hours of sleep. She didn’t know how long he would stay in her life. She wasn’t even going to think about it right now. She just wanted him to be all right—and hoped that they had found the prince safe.

  With a click of the latch, she opened the door. An instant later, the expectation and worry in her face met the weariness in Colonel Pierce Prescott’s.

  Expectation stuttered to disappointment.

  The worry remained.

  With his beret tucked under his arm, the head of Royal Intelligence gave a polite nod. “May I enter, my lady?”

  “Of course,” she replied, hastily masking that disappointment as she stepped back. “Please, come in. You have a message for the queen?”

  “I do.” He stopped six feet into the room, turning to face her as she closed the door. “I won’t keep you but a minute,” he said, generously overlooking the obvious fact that he’d awakened her. His manner was polite as always. It was also a bit cautious, as it tended to be when they encountered each other alone. “We thought Her Majesty would want to know that the operation was postponed until tonight.”

  “They didn’t get him?”

  “They didn’t try. As Sir Selwyn relayed to you, it was only a slight possibility last night. By the time the team got in this morning and they had their plans in place, it was too late to start the operation. They will rest today and be in place at nightfall.”

  Gwen didn’t know what time the queen had gone to her bedroom. The last she’d seen of her, she’d been sitting in the chair by the window, staring out at the blackness, waiting.

  The possibility Sir Selwyn had mentioned had been her greatest hope in days.

  “I’ll tell Her Majesty.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  He looked relieved to be going. Aware of that, knowing exactly why that was, she reached for the door. A moment later she dropped her hand.

  Harrison had told her that the conversation they’d had about the night her husband died was to remain between the two of them. She wasn’t about to break that confidence. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t let Meredith’s fiancé know in some small way that she bore him no ill will for his inability to answer the question she’d once asked of him.

  “If you’ll forgive me for bringing up the subject,” she began quietly, “there is something I need you to know.”

  Caution immediately shadowed his impossibly blue eyes. “My lady?”

  “About that night. The one you and I were never permitted to talk about to each other,” she explained, though she could tell from his expression that he was already aware of that. Every time he saw her, he seemed to be reminded of it.

  “I’m not asking you anything about that night now,” she continued. “I understand there are things you can’t say. I just want you to know how it has relieved me to know that Alex wasn’t alone when he died.” She paused, the words sounding hopelessly inadequate for the comfort the knowledge had brought. “I’ve always been grateful to you for being there.”

  For a moment the handsome young officer didn’t seem to know what to say. He just looked at her as if he would rather be anywhere else than where he was at the moment—until he slowly realized what else she was saying. She wasn’t blaming him for what he couldn’t tell her. She held nothing against him for not having been there an instant earlier to help her husband, or for not being the one to take the bullet instead.

  His shoulders rose with his deep breath, then dropped as if some awful weight had finally been lifted from them. Some of the shadows even seemed to leave his eyes.

  With a bow, he took her hand. “It was my privilege,” he said, and gallantly touched his lips to her knuckles before he stepped back.

  “Thank you, Colonel.”

  “It’s Pierce.”

  She smiled. Incredibly, with everything else he had to have on his mind, he smiled back.

  Meredith was truly a fortunate young lady, she thought, watching him depart. But thoughts of Pierce and how relieved she was to have put to rest the last ghosts of that long-ago night gave way to an entirely different sort of uneasiness within seconds of closing the door.

  It seemed that Harrison was avoiding her.

  The suspicion lodged as a hard knot under her breastbone. Since yesterday he had sent Sir Selwyn twice with updates. Today he was sending Pierce. Always before, information had come from him.

  The knot seemed to grow. Crossing her arms over it, she tried to will it away. She knew he was busy. She’d been thinking of that only moments before Pierce had arrived. But what seemed logical as fact didn’t work as well in terms of an excuse. He couldn’t be any busier than he had been all week. He wasn’t even that far away. She knew from Sir Selwyn that he’d been in the tunnel most of yesterday. Considering what Pierce had just told her, he’d undoubtedly been there most of last night, too.

  The thought that she had just become a one-night stand had her tightening her grip on herself as she started across the room. She wouldn’t go there now. The thought was too demoralizing. Aside from that, she truly didn’t have the energy to cope with the awful possibility with everything she had to do.

  She needed to deliver the RET’s update to the queen. She then had an hour to shower and get back to coax Her Majesty to try on the ball gown in case it needed adjustment before the signing. There was also a rather large state dinner planned for that evening she had to oversee—which meant she needed to run down to the ballroom after she checked on the gown to make sure the flowers had been delivered and the candelabras put in place, then get back afterward to make sure the tables were being set properly and that everything was going well in the kitchen.

  Those were the things she needed to concentrate on.

  So that was what she did.

  Within the hour, however, all of her priorities changed. She had been right on schedule, too. She’d spoken with the queen, hurried upstairs to get herself ready for the day and had come back down with her hair in a neat chignon and wearing a simple slate-gray suit. When she’d knocked on the queen’s bedroom door again, she had expected to find Marissa showered and Mrs. Westerbrook helping her with her wardrobe.

  Instead, she found that the queen had sent her wardrobe mistress away—and that the queen refused to sign the alliance.

  When she told Gwen why, Gwen didn’t even try to change her mind. She simply left the room and headed straight for the telephone on Mrs. Ferth’s desk—only to hesitate the moment she touched the receiver.

  Her first thought had been to call Harrison. She knew that duty came first, that her obligation to the Crown should outweigh any uneasiness, embarrassment, hurt or discomfort she might personally be feeling toward the head of the RET. But she had no desire to confirm that he really didn’t want to see her by telling him what was going on and having him send someone else to get the details from her.

  She called Pierce instead. Attempted to, anyway. She reached his office through the main number for Intelligence and left an urgent message asking him to call her as soon as he could.

  His secretary wasn’t nearly as accommodating as Harrison’s always was. Since Gwen couldn’t tell the woman what was so urgent or otherwise describe the nature of the call without causing possible panic in the diplomatic circles, she hung up and called the number Harrison had given her. It was his office number, and though his assistant wasn’t there on the weekend, the call patched through to a human who had no problem taking her message asking Colonel Prescott to call. If the young man thought it odd that she was leaving a message for the colonel rather than the admiral, he said nothing about it. He just said he’d get word to the colonel as soon as possible.

  It was Harrison, however, who called her back.

  “What’s urgent?” he as
ked, sounding totally uninterested in the fact that she’d called his colleague rather than him.

  “There is a problem,” was all she said. “I need to tell someone about it.”

  Harrison was heading up the colonnade for the foyer when she reached the foyer herself. Even from twenty feet away he looked better than the last time she’d seen him. The lines around his eyes were less pronounced, the weariness seemed to be gone. There was nothing at all to detract from the aura of power he radiated with every long stride.

  She had no idea what he noticed about her as he scanned her face in the moments before he stopped in front of her. “What’s the problem?” he asked, motioning her into the colonnade.

  They started back the way he’d come, walking as they talked as they so often had before. “She isn’t going to sign.”

  Harrison canceled his next step. Taking her arm, he turned her toward him, only to realize when she stiffened that touching her was not a good thing to do.

  “She what?”

  “She’s not going to sign the treaty,” Gwen repeated, her calm tone camouflaging most of her caution. “This is one thing I’m not going to be able to talk her out of, either.”

  Considering what she had just told him, what the ramifications would be if that alliance wasn’t signed, he shouldn’t even have noticed how tightly her hands were clasped, how uneasily she held his glance.

  “Did you try?” he asked, noticing anyway.

  “No.”

  His eyebrow shot up. “Why not?”

  “Because she feels as if she would be signing her son’s death warrant.”

  There should have been more concern in her eyes, more worry evident about her friend the queen. Knowing her as he did now, he knew that when she cared about something it showed. It was only when she felt threatened that she tended to mask whatever she was feeling.

  A fist of guilt caught him square in the gut. Given the wary way she watched him, that threat undoubtedly came from him.

  They needed to talk. He knew that. Now just wasn’t the time. Not with the little bombshell she’d just dropped.

  He turned on his heel. “I’ll go speak with her myself.”

  “She won’t see you.”

  He turned right back, frustration bumping into the guilt and a few other reactions he didn’t want to deal with just then. “Then, what do you suggest I do?”

  His tight demand would have had anyone else backing up. All Gwen did was unclasp her hands and cross her arms.

  “Maybe you could have Broderick sign. I was thinking about it on the way down the hall,” she said, her stance clearly protective, her manner all business. “Royals do things by proxy all the time. She won’t put a pen to the alliance during an official ceremony. It’s not a cause to celebrate for her, and that’s what it will be for everyone else. But she might agree to sign a proxy for the king’s brother to do it.” She hesitated. “Would that work?”

  The tension tightening his jaw slowly changed quality.

  “It might,” he conceded, carefully considering her suggestion. He just as carefully considered her. The concern he’d expected was finally leaking through. It entered her voice, her eyes. “What reason would we give the delegates for her not signing it herself?”

  “She truly doesn’t feel well,” she said, sending a troubled glance in the direction of the queen’s wing. “She isn’t sleeping or eating. Between that and the stress, she almost always has a headache. Just tell them the queen has a migraine.”

  He’d told himself once before that he needed her for her mind. Now he could have kissed her for the way it worked. Since there were any number of reasons that wouldn’t be a good idea at the moment, the least of which were the guards in the distance, he focused only on the disaster she could help him avert.

  “Go talk to her. Please,” he amended, not wanting it to sound like an order. “Call me when you have. All right? You don’t need to go through Pierce.”

  He watched her glance flicker from his. She’d gone through Pierce because she’d thought he didn’t want to talk to her. He was sure of that. But she was only partly right. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk. He just didn’t want to talk about how she made him feel.

  “If that’s what you want,” she replied, and started to turn.

  He caught her by the arm. He shouldn’t have. He should have just let her go and been happy with the fact that she was still cooperating. But he knew what it was like to have her on his side, and he needed her there now.

  Beneath his hand he felt her muscles tense as she slowly drew away.

  “It is what I want. We work well together,” he reminded her, focusing on that rather than the disquieting way it felt to have her pull from his touch. “And you’re our only link to the queen right now. We need you.”

  We, he’d said. Not I.

  If he’d hoped to restore the ease they’d once managed with each other, he’d failed miserably. “I’ll do my duty, Harrison,” she said quietly. “I always have.”

  He had the decency to look apologetic. “I didn’t mean to imply that you wouldn’t.”

  He was spared the chance to explain what he did mean. Pierce strode into the colonnade from the alcove and started for the foyer. Spotting them, he immediately changed direction, bearing down on them like a tank and so preoccupied with whatever it was on his mind that he didn’t notice the strain in either of their faces.

  “We just received another message from the Black Knights,” he said the moment he stopped in front of them. “The call went to Prince Broderick again, but it didn’t come from Majorco this time. It was traced to a phone kiosk in town. The gist of it is that if the alliance is signed, they’re going after another royal because the Crown didn’t take them seriously.”

  She truly envied Harrison’s ability to take such news with little more than a blink. “They’re upping the stakes,” he concluded flatly.

  “It appears so.”

  Gwen forcibly masked her alarm as her glance shot to Harrison. “Do I need to tell the queen this?”

  His response came without hesitation. “I can’t see that there would be anything to be gained by it. Security is as tight as it can get here and around Princesses Megan and Meredith. Since the queen won’t be going to the signing that actually eliminates one risk situation.”

  Pierce blanched. “She what?”

  Thinking that the RET seemed rather limited in their response to that bit of information, she offered Pierce a faint smile. “The admiral will explain it. If you’ll excuse me, I need to talk with the queen about an alternative.”

  She hurried away, aware of the hushed and fading tones of their deep voices. She was also aware of the prickling sensation of eyes on her back and the certain feeling that Harrison was watching her in the moments before she forced her thoughts from her raw nerves to the idea she needed to present to her queen.

  She truly felt that Marissa would be all right with the idea of the proxy. It would break the queen’s heart to have to sign that document herself, but Gwen knew she understood that caving in to the demands of subversives wouldn’t stop them from demanding more.

  When Gwen proposed the plan a few minutes later, Marissa remained silent for what seemed like forever—then responded with a spiritless “fine” before sending her off to make the call to Harrison.

  All Gwen had to say to him was, “She agreed,” and within the hour the proper document along with Sir Selwyn, who brought the official seal and the two ministers required as witnesses, arrived at the queen’s drawing room door. Seeing Her Majesty as pale and drawn as she was, the entourage also provided excellent witness to the reason for her failure to attend the signing herself. No one with a functioning brain would think that the woman looked well.

  Sir Selwyn whispered words to that effect to Gwen on his way out.

  He also mentioned to her after the alliance had been signed that the queen had proved less of a problem than Prince Broderick.

  Gwen was in the banquet hall
that afternoon checking the massive floral arrangements by the orchestral stage and the smaller ones lined ten to a table when the king’s secretary passed on that the king’s twin had come up with half a dozen excuses about why he shouldn’t sign—everything from the legality of it, to a last-minute claim that he would be jeopardizing the life of his beloved nephew and he couldn’t do that to either Prince Owen or the queen. Apparently, it wasn’t until he had been reminded of his public promise to help in any way he could, advised of how humiliating it would be for him to have the leaders and diplomats of three countries angry with him because he was personally responsible for the collapse of the agreements, and assured that his signature would be entirely legal and binding with the proxy, that he’d finally, reluctantly backed down.

  It seemed to her that everyone was having one of those days. As Sir Selwyn left to join the security team prowling the room and she turned to the next elaborately set table, she found that twenty place settings had the butter knife in the wrong position. Twenty on the other side had fish forks where the salad forks should go.

  Rather than track down someone to switch things around, she corrected the error herself and was surveying the results when she noticed that one of the cleaning staff at the far end of the room had stopped to pick up something. As the girl did, she balanced herself against the huge sheet of bullet-proof glass that protected a display of the crown jewels and the royal thrones.

  Certain that her hand had left a smudge, Gwen stopped another of the staff running a vacuum around the perimeter of the gold and red carpet. A smile and a request to have the window cleaned and the smudge had disappeared by the time Gwen was checking the last table.

  The details were what the queen depended on her to oversee. And Gwen tended them as best she could. But in the back of her mind the entire time was the thought that the rescue operation would begin in a matter of hours—and an unrelenting awareness of the big man in the admiral’s uniform.

  As busy as she’d been, she hadn’t seen Harrison arrive. It was only when she began to feel that telltale prickle on her neck that she realized he was there. And that he was watching her.