“Catherine?”
The familiar baritone brought her attention to the door. She’d done her best to keep their contact to a minimum in the three weeks he’d been here and their conversation on her mother. Too often, however, she’d found herself observing Nicolas from the doorway of his makeshift laboratory, or watching from the castle walls as he took a brisk walk by the stream. Too often, she’d caught herself wishing for what could never be and had had to shut down her thoughts abruptly.
As usual, her heart pounded a little faster as she met his dark, sombre eyes and recalled a time when they’d reflected love instead of disdain. One would think that by now she’d be accustomed to seeing him in her world. One would think that by now she’d have put away regret and managed to bring her emotions under control.
She retaliated by raising a brow. “Have you never heard of knocking?”
“Am I interrupting?”
She countered with her own question, “Is there a problem? Is it my mother?”
He came inside, tapping the door closed behind him with the heel of his boot. His gaze rested briefly on Gascon, but passed on without so much as a nod. The poor man was still not forgiven for the part he’d played in those events so long ago. Then again, neither was she. Catherine pushed the seating schedule aside and rose to stand behind her desk.
Nicolas ambled across the lush wool carpet to the window, looking out into the distance. “Your mother’s condition has not changed.”
A mix of relief and frustration plagued her as she waited, watching him. He wore his favourite uniform of denims that fit snug and comfortably and a softly ribbed jumper, a rich maroon today. His broad shoulders were curved slightly forward and she knew he’d folded his arms. His back was slender, but she remembered the solid muscles that flexed when he moved and the chords pulled tight across his lean abdomen. He was only half a foot taller than her own five-foot-six, but his lithe body contained so much power, his personality so incredibly potent, at times she felt positively dwarfed.
“Come walk with me outside,” he said suddenly, turning from the window.
She was rocked off-guard by the lazy grin that didn’t quite warm his eyes. Rocked back to a time and place when she’d been the recipient of the real thing more often than not. He hadn’t grinned, smiled, laughed or teased once since coming here. Until now.
“The rain has finally cleared,” Nicolas insisted at her hesitation. She’d skittered around him like a nervous kitten for weeks and he’d had enough. Then again, he had been acting like a dog. “Your cheeks are sallow and your eyes dull. As one of your resident experts, I advise a good dose of sunshine.” When her lips parted in protest, he held up a hand. “I’m not criticising your beauty, merely stating the obvious. Your worries are taking their toll.”
Catherine eyed him cautiously, not trusting this sudden truce after been subjected to his abrupt shoulder, persistent adversity and curt dismissal for weeks.
His gaze remained cool, but the hard edge softened. “I promise not to bite.”
“Oh, very well,” Catherine relented, wondering what on earth she was doing. What he was doing. But if he were up to something, she’d be better off finding out what it was. As she passed Gascon, she said loudly for Nicolas’s benefit, “I won’t be long.”
“Give us a couple of hours,” Nicolas counter ordered as he swept past her to hold open the door.
“Do you always have to do that?”
He shrugged. “I’m a gentleman and you are, after all, royalty.”
She glared at him. He was well aware that she wasn’t talking about him holding the door open for her. She crossed the hall, muttering beneath her breath, but waited until they were outside before confronting him. “You cross my orders for the sheer hell of it.”
“Not so.” He jumped down the steps without further elaboration.
Catherine rolled her eyes, but said nothing more. She feared the day when she’d be compelled to counter his counter orders. It would come. It always did. At some point, as arrogant and accustomed to getting his own way as men like him were, she’d be driven to override him. Her word was law. She was obeyed without question within the castle. That day would come, as it had come for her father, grandfather and great-grandfather. And Nicolas would know the humiliation of living beneath a woman’s thumb. No matter how vehemently she might vow to always defer to him. Relationships, marriage didn’t work that way. There would be conflict, a show of temper, and then that day would come.
She relied greatly on council in matters relating to the country, but her decision was ultimate. And even if – even when her mother was well enough to retake power, one day in the future the crown would revert to her. In any point of argument, she would win. Always.
No, she could never take so much from him, she reminded herself yet again of why she’d let him go.
Lost in her own thoughts, unaware that they’d reached the stream in utter silence, Nicolas was content to walk a little behind and let her be. Her trousers were elegantly tailored while remaining soft and feminine. The pale grey shade suited her colouring, yet he missed the bright colours she’d preferred when he’d first known her. Even her turtleneck sweater was a severe navy rather than vivid blue. Still, the colour complimented her eyes and suited her mood.
He ground his teeth and fell a little more behind. He was not made of iron. His heart had clamped shut, but the rest of him was male enough to appreciate the way she stirred fire through his veins. Once his embittered rage had dimmed sufficiently, his body had come alive to her every movement, every look, to the memory of her touch, taste, scent. The moment Catherine entered a room, she aroused his senses and every instinct tugged at him to go to her side. He resisted, but continual resistance was wearying and he was suddenly exhausted.
But there was more to this walk than his physical urgings and memories. He’d been worried about her for a while. Whatever she’d done to him, he could not be completely dispassionate when it came to suffering of any kind. He wished he had some answers for her, but in truth, this time, those answers were eluding him.
“Catherine,” he called.
Startled from her musings, she jerked about to face him.
He was pleased to see some colour on her cheeks from the brisk air. He drew level with her, then matched her stride as they strolled along the bank. “Do you recall anything unusual at all about the time your mother first fell ill?”
She wrinkled her nose at him on a frown. “Unusual, as in?”
“My tests are inconclusive, yet it seems strange that I’ve discovered nothing useful at all. I’ve tested for every known virus and allergy, even poisons.”
“Poison?” Catherine gasped.
He raised a brow. “Assassination in your family is not such a long stretch of the imagination.”
“No, of course not.” She paled at the implication. They’d never caught the original perpetrators, never uncovered any plot. But it had been so long ago and no new attempts had been made since. “Is it possible?” she asked, at the same time excited at the prospect of finally finding the cause and therefore a cure, even if it was as terrible as poison.
“I’m not ruling out anything at this point. Although I’ve detected no trace of any known poisons and even so, I should tell you that the effects of certain types of poisoning are not fully reversible.”
“Oh.”
Drawn by the despondency in that single word, he reached for her hand without thought. “Never give up hope.”
“I know.”
Her hand was small and warm in his, so familiar even after all these years, the protective instincts he’d always felt for her reared to the fore. “Let’s sit a while.”
She stared at the muddy ground.
“Surely a princess has enough clothes to not worry about dirtying one set?”
Catherine gave a small shake of her head, but Nicolas won himself a smile as she plonked her backside on a tuft of old, mouldy leaves and drew her knees up. “A lifetime of dri
lling on proper etiquette is hard to let go of.”
He crossed his legs beside her, not too close, not too far. “Then you must have had amnesia in London,” he said, recalling a particularly invigorating romp in Hyde Park.
Catherine shrugged. “Another time, another person.”
She lifted her chin at him.
Sweet, tempting lips. Another time, maybe, but not another person. Nicolas didn’t stop to think. Too many memories collided with the present and the soft, inviting picture she made. He brought his mouth down. The taste of her fired through his blood and overtook his senses. He wanted her. Needed her.
Dear God, Catherine, how have I lived without you?
Gently, he reached across her with one arm and eased her to the ground. Her brief resistance held no substance. The momentary stiffness melted. Not once releasing her lips, he stretched out beside her, nudging one leg between hers, threading her hair between his fingers, stroking her cheek with his other hand, losing himself to her touch, her warmth, her body, her taste. At some point he realised that she was kissing him back, devouring as much as he devoured. He felt her fingers slide down his back, then grip at his hips with urgency. Her body arched into him as a tiny moan escaped through their kiss.
“Mi fai impazzire,” he groaned, deepening the kiss. You drive me crazy.
And the first rip came at the wall around his heart.
With that rip, he flung himself off Catherine, too aware of how loudly his heart was pounding, how quickly his pulse raced, how swiftly he’d regressed into the past.
It could not be allowed.
At all costs, the last three weeks had to override the four years he’d loved a ghost. That ghost was gone. That Catherine had never existed. She hadn’t returned to him; she’d never been.
The Catherine he’d taken so easily into his arms now was the woman who’d deceived him, who’d stolen his love and then slipped out into the night, worse than any thief, for she had taken something that could not be replaced. How could he forget, even for these few moments?
Catherine lay perfectly still until she regained control of her breathing.
What had Nicolas done?
What had she done?
“Why?” His accusation was as ragged as a hurt beast’s growl.
She glanced his way to find his hard stare on her. “Why?” she repeated dully, pulling herself up and wrapping her arms around her knees.
“Why did you leave me?”
She couldn’t look at him. Her pulse slowed down, lethargic as the winter stream she gazed on. The trees down here by the river were bare, stripped from their glorious canopies by the turn of a season, as her heart had been stripped by the turn of a single event.
With two older brothers, there’d been no chance of her ever having to rule.
She’d been free.
And then in one exploding moment, she’d lost both her brothers and her freedom. And Nicolas.
Still, the sun shone down, struggling to heat the day, a promise that spring would come again. Nicolas’s hard gaze would still be looking down on her, she knew, struggling in his own way to find some neat conclusion, dark and stormy from her broken promises.
But there was no promise for her heart. It would always be locked in winter.
“I told you why I had to leave,” she said at last.
“Answer me, Catherine.”
She jerked her head and set her eyes on him. The dark, brown depths told her that she was out of time. He wanted answers and he was determined to get them. “We were not meant to be.”
“You used me.”
“No, Nicolas, it wasn’t like—”
“You used me to experience life. I was just another stop on your world tour.” Not a question. The underlying storm broke after all these weeks of riding a wave of repressed emotion. “Why did you agree to marry me?”
Catherine sucked in a staggered breath at the bitterness in his voice. She’d take anger over that any day. “I wanted to—”
“I know exactly what you wanted, Catherine. You wanted to experience the pleasures of my bed. You knew my price and so you accepted my proposal with no intention of ever marrying me at all.”
“If you know all the answers,” she retaliated, jumping up, dusting herself off with shaky fingers, “then why bother asking at all?”
He flew to his feet and gripped her wrist. His other hand came to her chin, forcing her eyes to meet his. “There’s one answer I do not know. Why? Why did you choose me?”
Her eyes closed. Every breath Catherine took brought his masculine scent into her. I fell in love with you. I’m still in love with you. She licked her suddenly dry lips and tasted him. His touch was still with her. She could not bear this. She could not be with him every day, see him, talk to him, love him. She was not this strong.
“Once you’d chosen me, once you’d had me,” he continued in that brittle voice, “how could you let me go?”
Her eyes snapped open and a drop of the sorrow in her heart leaked to roll down her cheek. “I had to.”
“Cazzo.” He flung her chin from him and stood back.
“You don’t understand, Nicolas. I never deceived you intentionally. I would have married you, but then my brothers…”
“You became the heir apparent,” he finished when she could not. The emotion in his eyes changed: deeper, darker, hotter. “The difference between us, Catherine, is that I would have given up a kingdom for you.”
“Oh, Nicolas—”
“Ah, yes, that’s right,” he said with a grimace. “I don’t have a kingdom to give up.” His shoulders heaved in a sigh filled with frustrated fury. “But if forced to make a choice, I would have given up my research, my life, my soul.”
The weary thread at the end told her that he meant every word. Is that what she should have done? But for Catherine, there’d never been a choice. Her responsibilities came at birth and there was nothing selfish about them. For herself, she’d have given up all and everything. But what right had she to give up on behalf of her country? To give up on her people? She was the last remaining heir. Yes, she might have done it. After all, who was to stop her? But what would have happened when she sat in London and watched her country fall apart, crushed between two powers poised for the first sign of weakness?
“And would you have been content once you’d given up everything?” she asked, just as wearily.
“I don’t know,” he answered quietly. “Maybe I would have grown resentful with time. Maybe I would have regretted it in the end. But that is a chance I would have been willing to take. I loved you enough to risk everything.”
“I am a princess of Ophella. I do not have the luxury of risking everything.”
“Was marrying me such a terrifying risk?”
Catherine rubbed her forehead at the pain of confusion building there. How could she possibly make him see that the risk was to himself and not to her? Not easily. He’d brush her reasons aside as a sorry excuse. The fear she lived with was not something that could be explained with mere words.
“I was not good enough to marry, is that it? I was not good enough to be a prince of Ophella.”
“No,” she cried out. You were too good to be a prince of Ophella. “Please, Nicolas, you must believe me.”
“I believed in you before,” he bit out, “and I don’t like where it took me. But don’t worry, Catherine, I realise now that you spared us both by running away. I almost married a woman that I now realise was a complete stranger.”
“Nicolas,” she called when he turned to walk away. He spun back to face her, but she didn’t know what else to say. As he started turning again, she panicked at how badly this kiss had ended. “You won’t leave, will you? My mother…you’re her only hope.”
His face darkened in contempt. “What kind of man do you take me for?”
The fear and panic lifted. He wouldn’t go. She should have known. She did know. “A better man than I’m a woman.”
He didn’t hear. He’d al
ready stalked off down the river path, away from the castle. She was relieved. That admission was not meant for his ears, but for herself. Because she was already wondering where the courage would come from to let him go once his job here was done. To not beg him to stay. She had to find the courage. And if she couldn’t find any, she’d have to create some from scratch. She loved him too much to see him self-destruct.
Then again, she told herself furiously as she stomped up the castle driveway, what would begging achieve except shame?
He was done with her.
He’d never trust her again.
Her feelings—courage, strength and weakness—were all moot, including this sudden and useless anger at his rejection. Nicolas Vecca would never allow himself to rekindle his love for her.
He’d kissed her to prove a point. To once more counter her silent commands to keep his distance. He threw questions and accusations at her that meant nothing, because his mind was made up all along.
What he didn’t know, was that he had the power to break her. He’d push and push until she broke and then he’d walk away without a backward glance.
But she wouldn’t break. She couldn’t even afford to bend.
The long table in the formal dinning hall was set with elaborate silver, china and crystal. Wild blossoms imported from the height of summer in Cape Town added the finishing touch.
“Everything looks lovely,” Catherine complimented her staff. “Sophia, spray the flowers with cool water every hour to keep them fresh.” She turned to Jonnal. “Have the pineapples arrived from Brazil?”
Jonnal bobbed. “Claustaud has everything in hand.”
“Wonderful.” Smiling, Catherine whirled about, her sharp gaze searching for anything left undone and came stuck at the doorjamb where Nicolas was leaning a casual hip and observing with folded arms. His cheeks were still stung with the winter chill and she realised he’d only just returned from their walk.
How to Love a Princess Page 4