Royal Protocol

by Christine Flynn

  He had obviously come to do a last-minute check of security measures with General Vancor and the members of the RET. The five of them moved from entrance to entrance, pointing this way and that. Every few minutes she felt that tingling chill.

  It unnerved her to be that sensitive to him. She tried to ignore the sensation, holding out until she felt as if she were ready to crawl out of her skin. Yet each time she could no longer bear it, and she turned in his direction, he held her glance only long enough to make the knot in her stomach tighten before he deliberately glanced away. It was almost as if he were studying her, trying to figure out what she expected of him. Or maybe, he was considering which approach to take; whether he should let her down gently or be his usual blunt self and tell her it had been an interesting week and maybe they could get together again at his place sometime.

  She gave up. She couldn’t take any more of his presence or her own thoughts. The minute she’d inspected the last table and decided that the queen would have been pleased with the elegant and sparkling results, she headed out the nearest door to see how Marissa was holding up.

  From across the vast room with its enormous chandeliers and long tables of flowers, china and gleaming crystal, Harrison watched her go. He’d seen grown men buckle under less stress and responsibility than she’d been under lately, yet she’d moved through the huge space with quiet poise and confidence. He hadn’t been able to help being impressed by both her dignified manner and the obvious respect others had for her as she’d issued orders and requests with the calm efficiency of a fleet commander.

  He couldn’t help, either, the odd tug of concern when she disappeared from his sight.

  “General,” he said to the pugnacious head of the Royal Guard. “Put a bodyguard on Lady Corbin. She just left through the east entrance.”

  “On the lady? Why? She wouldn’t be a target.”

  “The queen holds her in regard. She’d make a good hostage if they can’t get a royal.”

  The man with the ruddy jowls puffed up like a bullfrog. “No one’s getting in here tonight. Not under my command.”

  “It was under your command that the prince was kidnapped. She’s all over this palace by herself, General.” Harrison’s eyes narrowed to slits, his voice dropping ominously low. “Do you have a problem putting a guard on her?”

  General Vancor turned the color of the crimson roses in a nearby centerpiece and opened his mouth, only to promptly shut it when he caught the dangerous edge in Harrison’s expression. Without another word to him, he headed for one of his men to do as he’d been instructed.

  Harrison didn’t bother to consider what he’d done. Or why. He was feeling torn and guilty and he needed to bury anything he thought or felt about the woman who’d distracted him from the moment he’d walked into the room. There were too many details to concentrate on right now, and he didn’t want her wrecking his concentration. In an hour he would meet with his special forces team for a weather update and to go over the contingency plans once more. In two hours the operation to rescue the prince would be set in motion—just as the guests for the dinner were scheduled to arrive.

  Dusk was slowly giving way to darkness when Gwen made her final trip from the ballroom to the residence. She had wanted to take one last peek from the balcony as the guests arrived to make sure the string quartet was playing, that champagne was flowing, that the tapers on the tables had been lit.

  When she’d seen Prince Broderick arrive in all his finery amid the elegantly gowned and tuxedoed guests, she had slipped out of the ballroom complex. He would be the only Penwyckian royalty present. He was the only one the RET would allow.

  There was nothing more for her to do now.

  Nothing but wait.

  Her footsteps echoed lightly on the ancient travertine. A heavier beat echoed six feet behind her. The square-jawed hulk in the Royal Guard uniform had followed her everywhere for the past couple of hours.

  “I was ordered to protect you,” was the only explanation the young corporal could give her. That, and that his orders had come from General Vancor.

  Figuring it was just part of the heightened security, silently grateful for the reassurance it provided about the safety of the royal family tonight, she moved into the quite corridor leading to the chapel.

  The queen’s guards flanked the arched chapel door. Princess Ana’s bodyguard stood opposite them.

  Her own guard joined the ranks as Gwen slipped inside the dimly lit and peaceful space. Ahead of her the queen knelt on a narrow kneeling bench in front of the small altar, her head bent and her hands clasped. Princess Ana knelt on the bench beside her.

  In the flickering candlelight, Gwen quietly slipped into the last pew and knelt down herself.

  They all knew that the team Harrison had sent to rescue Owen would be positioning themselves right now. In a matter of hours the rescue would be over. One way or another.

  Adrenaline flowed like an electric current beneath the professional calm in the tunnel’s command center. On the large electronic wall screen, concentric circles were superimposed over an outline of Majorco’s northern shore. Little pea-green dots indicated the six members of the Royal Navy SEAL team.

  The men had just been dropped into the ocean a quarter of a mile from Gunther Westbury’s villa with its protective wall of cliffs and boulders. Night-vision photos had revealed dogs and armed men patroling the front borders of the property. Entering from the road or forest would have been suicide. Getting out wasn’t going to be a walk in the park, either.

  Monitors beeped. A technician spoke into a phone. Another called off coordinates in a quiet monotone. As Harrison stood like the commander he was in the sea of sophisticated electronics and the military personnel monitoring them, the only thing that should have been on his mind were the dots on the screen and how those dots were progressing. But standing there willing everything to go as planned wasn’t going to make it happen. At this point his faith had to be in his men, not his own will.

  The problem was that the moment he stopped thinking about the mission, thoughts of Gwen crept in.

  He stuffed his hand into his slacks pocket, absently toying with her earring. He knew she had a guard. He knew as well as anyone involved that every possible measure had been taken to ensure the safety of everyone inside the palace walls. He would even concede that Vancor had a point, that she probably wouldn’t be a target herself. But simply being with the queen could put her in harm’s way.

  As he had off and on for the past couple of hours, he tried to divorce himself from that knowledge, to compartmentalize it as he did the 101 other worrisome details shifting through his mind. He had men bobbing around in the ocean. He had troops on training exercises in submarines powered by nuclear reactors. On any given day he had people in danger simply because they were using heavy equipment, learning to fly at supersonic speeds or working with all manner of explosives.

  She was safe. He knew that. But try as he might, he couldn’t seem to separate himself from the person and the situation. He could do it with anyone else. He always had. As he stood watching the impersonal dots move closer to shore, he realized that he just couldn’t seem to do it with Gwen.

  He couldn’t bear the thought of anything happening to her.

  At the admission, something oddly painful squeezed his heart. The unfamiliar sensation stilled his fingers in his pocket, drew his brow low beneath his navy-blue beret.

  Sir Selwyn walked up beside him. “How long will it be before the team reaches the storage room where the prince is being held?”

  “At least half an hour.”

  “Would you like me to tell Lady Corbin the operation is underway?”

  Twenty four hours ago, Harrison would have told him to go ahead. He had a mission to oversee. But with the announcement from beside them that the team had just made landfall and that radio communication was going to silence, he knew the present situation was now completely out of his hands.

  There was another, how
ever, he needed to salvage.

  “I’ll go.”

  Though the smartly dressed nobleman’s focus remained on the large circular screen, his eyebrow arched ever so slightly. “They’re not in the queen’s apartments,” he advised, clearly wondering at his colleague’s inconsistency where the lady was concerned. “They’re in the chapel.”

  Gwen had no idea that large men could move so silently. The big hand that lightly touched her shoulder caused her to jump an instant before she realized it was Harrison drawing back to press his finger to his lips.

  Holding out his hand to help her up, he tipped his bare head toward the door for her to follow him.

  She hadn’t even heard the door open. Apparently, neither had the queen, who was still kneeling. Or Ana, who was now reading from her prayer book in the first pew.

  Since Harrison’s actions clearly indicated that he didn’t want the queen to know he was there, Gwen moved as quietly as he did, her heart still knocking against her ribs, and slipped out of the chapel behind him.

  He held the door with one hand, guided it silently closed with his other and nodded to the guards. “Which one of you is responsible for Lady Corbin?” he asked.

  The hulk stepped forward, saluted as he and the others undoubtedly had done when they’d first seen the admiral, and said, “I am, sir.”

  “I need to speak with her alone. Follow us as far as the colonnade. If anyone comes looking for either of us, we’ll be in the rose garden.”

  With the polite touch of his hand to her elbow, he nudged her forward. As he did, the corporal executed another smart salute and fell into step behind them. She didn’t know if he’d come with a progress report, or if something had gone wrong. Though his expression remained carefully guarded, tension coiled around him like smoke.

  He didn’t say a word as they moved down the corridor into the colonnade. She could understand his reticence with the guard so close. But even when he pushed open the nearest door to the garden and they stepped into the cool evening air, all he said was, “Let’s go over there.”

  He guided her from the light spilling from the tall arched windows, away from the building and into the shadows of a rose arbor. In the distance, the faint strains of a Viennese waltz drifted from the ballroom.

  “What’s happening with the rescue?” she asked, growing more uneasy by the second.

  He stopped in front of her, his broad shoulders blocking her view of the distant floodlit walls, his face a study of hard angles in the faint light.

  “The team is below the villa and moving into position. There won’t be any more contact with them until the operation is over.”

  A breeze rustled the leaves around them. Slipping her arms around the middle of her jacket, she shivered, partly from the chill, mostly from nerves.

  “How long will that be?”

  “It’ll take them a while to get up there. If all goes well, I’m hoping we’ll hear within the hour that the chopper has picked them up.”

  “I’ll tell Her Majesty.”

  “I’m sure she’ll want to know.”

  “Is there anything else?”

  She thought he might tell her that was all for now, and that he would let them know as soon as he heard anything else. As she shivered again, she also considered that he could have told her all of this inside, where it was warmer, but the thought got lost in the sudden silence.

  In that quick and disturbing quiet, the tension radiating from his body snaked around her, making it hard to breathe. She knew part of that tension grew from the huge responsibility he bore at that moment, and from all the other problems he was dealing with because the king had still failed to show any sign of improvement.

  She also suspected part of it was because, to him, she had become a problem, too.

  Her heart hurt at the thought. There was no doubt in her mind how she felt about him. They were so alike in so many ways. In so many ways they completed each other. It wouldn’t have made sense to anyone else that she would fall so hard and so fast. But she had. She had been in love twice her entire life, and both times she had fallen in less than week.

  Next time, she swore she would take longer. At least with Harrison, she didn’t have years worth of memories to make the parting worse. All she had to do was see him at some official function every once in a while and face the reminder that she had meant nothing to him.

  Marissa had warned her. Harrison had warned her himself.

  The lengthening silence grew awkward. His jaw working, he glanced at his watch and took a step back.

  She stepped with him, stopping him before he could turn. She couldn’t make him care about her, but she could try to make their future encounters a little less uncomfortable.

  “Harrison, please. I can’t stand this.” Her glance barely met his eyes before it fell to the double row of buttons on his jacket. “Would it help if you knew that I don’t expect anything from you? Because of what happened the other night,” she clarified, her surge of courage failing her. Her voice dropped. “In case you were afraid I did.”

  She’d obviously thought he was about to leave. What he’d been about to do was pace, because what he was feeling had him agitated and uncertain and half a dozen other things he wasn’t accustomed to dealing with.

  Now he froze, caution creeping over him as he studied her face in the shadows. He should have taken her where there was light, where he could see what she was trying to hide. But his only thought when he’d left the operations room had been to get her away from everyone, and the garden had been the nearest place.

  “Is that really what you want from me, Gwen? Nothing?”

  Even in the dim light, he could see her sudden uncertainty.

  “If it is,” he said, “then we can end it right here.”

  “Isn’t that what you want?”

  “No.”

  The utter conviction in his reply had her drawing a deep breath.

  “No,” he repeated, feeling more certain of that by the second. “I thought it was,” he admitted, wanting to touch her, afraid she’d pull back. “You threw me, Gwen. I’ve never felt…I mean, I don’t want…”

  He shook his head as his voice trailed off, his eyes searching her face, looking for hope, looking for help. He could command a navy. He could express exactly what he wanted when it came to any aspect of his duties. Yet, he had no idea how he was supposed to tell her how he felt. He’d never expressed such things in his entire life. All he knew was that the threat he’d felt with his need for her was nothing compared to what he felt at the thought of her no longer being part of his life.

  “You don’t want what?” she asked cautiously.

  That was easy. “To lose you.”

  For a moment Gwen could have sworn everything around them went still. The words hung in the air between them, the admission seeming to strip him bare of defense. She held his earnest glance, afraid to believe what she was hearing, wanting desperately to believe it. Harrison wasn’t a man to make himself vulnerable. Yet, he just had. He was admitting she mattered to him. That he cared.

  The few defenses of hers that he hadn’t already destroyed turned to dust. “Maybe you don’t have to.”

  Something shifted in his expression, something that made his eyes glitter on hers as he slowly lifted his hand to her cheek. His touch was almost tentative, as if he didn’t quite believe what he was hearing, either.

  “I don’t?”

  “No,” she murmured, touching her fingers to the back of his hand. “You don’t. I just didn’t think that what I wanted mattered.”

  “What is it you want?” he asked, drawing closer.

  “I think I’m afraid to say.”

  With a touch as light as air he brushed her cheek with his other hand, then slipped it to the back of her neck. “Don’t be.” He moved closer still. Lowering his head, he brushed his lips over hers. “What is it you want?”

  He already knew what she wanted. She was as certain of that as she was of the plea in his eye
s when he raised his head.

  “You,” she murmured.

  The plea turned to relief, then to something vaguely feral in the moments before his head came down once more and he claimed her mouth with his.

  Harrison drank her sigh, gathering her closer as her body melted against him. He couldn’t believe how badly he’d wanted to hold her, or the strength of the need he’d felt so compelled to deny. Breathing in her scent, filling himself with the taste of her, he had no idea how he thought he’d be better off letting her go.

  She’d once asked him if he’d ever been sick at the thought of what a person might be going through, or what his life would be like without that person in it. He’d told her, and himself, that he didn’t let himself get involved that way, just as he’d told himself all week that he was simply using her to get a job done. He hadn’t realized, until he’d thought of his life without her, that he’d been falling in love with her since the moment she’d first tipped her chin up at him in the queen’s drawing room.

  Feeling as if he’d just run a marathon, he kissed her cheek, her temple and pressed her head to his shoulder.

  “I told you I was lousy at relationships,” he reminded her.

  “I think you just need practice.”

  “Practice would be good.”

  She tipped her head back, her eyes smiling into his, her voice a little breathless. “Can I help?”

  “How long are you available?”

  He saw her smile falter. She was still wary of him, he realized. Hating that, needing her not to be, he edged her back and dipped his hand into the pocket of his uniform slacks. Pulling out her earring, he lifted her palm and placed the small gold ball in it.

  “I want to replace these with diamonds. It seems like an appropriate engagement present,” he explained, watching her eyes as she lifted her head. “When this is all over, I’m going to ask you to marry me. I love you, Gwen.” He hesitated, realizing the absolute truth to the words. She’d shown him that he needed more than duty in his life. She made him realize that he wanted more. That he wanted her. “I really do.”