How to Love a Princess

by Claire Robyns

  “You’ve found a solution,” Gascon remarked, looking up from his own copy of the draft contracts.

  “There is only one solution out of this mess,” she said, rising to her feet. The unusual carbonised substance mined in Ophella’s hills had cursed them from the moment of its discovery by that travelling American geologist. The American government had taken an immediate interest in the small amounts of raw material that could be synthesised into energy product of atomic proportions. “I’m not disputing my mother’s wisdom in approaching Russia and offering non-exclusive contracts to both countries, but we’re effectively squashed between the two powers without an inch to move. If either America or Russia attempts to take control of Ophella and our mines, the other will retaliate by beginning a major war.”

  “Which they’d never risk, but Russia’s demands for increased supply could easily take us down that path.”

  “Our mines are running to capacity,” Catherine agreed. She slid the folder into a desk drawer and set the combination lock. “I dare not take from one to give to the other. The original contracts are non negotiable.”

  Gascon grimaced. “Russia won’t like it.”

  “They won’t like being the centre of the next world war either,” she reassured Gascon. “And now, I’m giving myself the rest of the day off to take Geoffrey riding in the woods.”

  “Is our poor Geoffrey feeling neglected?”

  Catherine quirked an eyebrow at his sarcastic tone. “I know you’re going to follow, but please keep out of sight.”

  “You’re wooing him,” Gascon grunted miserably.

  Either that, or dumping him. Catherine wasn’t sure what was black and what was white anymore. What was the point of dumping Geoffrey when she couldn’t have Nicolas? She desperately needed a husband to give Ophella its next heir. She’d already neglected that duty for far too long. Still, now that Nicolas was here, the idea of marriage to anyone else was abhorrent. What she really needed was to put Geoffrey off for another year or five, until she’d distanced herself from the Nicolas effect.

  She found Geoffrey playing a solitary game of snooker in the Billiards room. “I’ve a new Arabian stallion that will give you a run for your money,” she said, walking up to him. “Care to take me on?”

  Geoffrey dropped his stick on the table and turned a smile on her. “You know me. I can never refuse a bet.”

  They rode out the castle gates, a laughing, seemingly carefree couple and the challenge started before they reached the riverbank.

  Catherine was the better rider, but she generously acknowledged that she had the better horse as well and pulled reins frequently as they galloped through the shaded woodland track. As they charged back toward the castle, however, she dug her heels in and flattened herself low against the stallion’s sleek neck.

  Damned if I’ll let him beat him.

  As a result, when she entered the castle doors, it was with a petulant Geoffrey dragging his feet behind. Catherine stripped her coat from her shoulders and handed it to Serge, then paid the dues for her childish determination to best him. She tugged Geoffrey playfully by the arm and pulled him across the entrance hall. “We’ve both earned a brandy to warm our bones.”

  “You purposely put me on that half-breed, Dandelion,” he groused as she dragged him along.

  Glossing over the fact that he’d bought Dandelion for her a few years back, boasting its royal blood, and that he’d chosen his own mount for today’s challenge, Catherine reached up on her toes and murmured near his ear, “How am I ever supposed to beat you if I’m not allowed to cheat now and again?”

  Appeased, Geoffrey grinned and flung his arm about her shoulders.

  And that was the sight Nicolas was presented with as the couple swept inside the private living room just off the hall. He should have fled his spot by the crackling fireplace and left them to it—he’d already conceded victory to the lesser man—but Nicolas held back. Maybe it was some recessive gene dating back to his ancestors, way back, to a time when men clubbed their woman over the head and dragged them where they wanted them to be. Only, it was Geoffrey he wanted to club and he didn’t feel nearly as strong as any caveman. Only Catherine had ever had this ability to cut him down as if he were a two-day-old babe.

  “Join us for a brandy?” Geoffrey offered, untangling himself from Catherine to make his way to the corner bar.

  Catherine’s mind had numbed the moment she’d seen Nicolas watching their entry with hawk eyes, or she would have done the untangling herself. Rooted to the spot, locked in the piercing gaze that threatened to devour her, she felt guilty of everything those dark eyes accused her of.

  He has no claim on me, she thought rebelliously, but couldn’t hold it. Nicolas might not know it, but he had every claim to her heart and love. She forced her shoulders to relax and crossed the distance to the fire.

  “Brrr,” she said with a fake shudder, holding her hands out over the fire’s heat. “It’s freezing out there.”

  Nicolas said nothing. He merely took a step aside to put some distance between them and moved his gaze to the fire.

  It’s freezing inside here as well, he almost hit back with. Freezing inside my heart. But he had no right. Catherine was free to hang on any arm she wanted to.

  Instead, he worked his jaw loose and reminded himself that pride was all he had left. He might as well hang on to that.

  With that in mind, he took the glass Geoffrey brought back and even clinked glasses with the two of them before downing the vile liquid he never normally touched. As soon as his glass was empty, he marched to the bar for a shot of whiskey to get the foul taste out of his mouth, then poured another to take back with him. When he turned around, they were ensconced in a comfortable sofa near the fireplace.

  Just barely restraining from nudging a spot for himself bang in the middle of them on the sofa, Nicolas flung himself into a matching chair and stretched his legs out, balancing his glass on one thigh.

  “We went for a gallop in the woods,” Catherine said by way of breaking the awkward silence.

  “How nice.” He should do better, he knew, but it was increasingly difficult to remember why.

  Geoffrey, probably afraid Catherine would go on to mention the race and his poor performance, tapped her arm and lurched into a memory of last summer when he’d visited with his parents. “Remember the treasure hunt we had in the woods? It was the grandest thing.” He turned to Nicolas with a laugh. “We hid bits of steak and set Brutus and Caesar off against each other in a race to see who found the most pieces, following on horseback, naturally.”

  “Brutus and Caesar were two of the castle dogs,” Catherine explained for Nicolas’s benefit. For Geoffrey, she had a stiff smile, astounded that he’d bring the distasteful topic up for discussion.

  “That’s a unique variation on hunting,” Nicolas commented dryly, taking a sip from his glass.

  Actually, it sounded like innocent fun. He could well imagine how Catherine would sit a horse, her hair flying the breeze behind, her hips moving gracefully to the rhythm of her mount.

  “We should do it again,” Geoffrey declared.

  “Brutus and Caesar are dead,” Catherine reminded him coldly, wondering if he’d forgotten or if he simply didn’t care.

  Shouting out a laugh, Geoffrey slapped his knee and exclaimed, “I wasn’t suggesting we re-enact it to the last degree. We’ll use other dogs.”

  “No, we won’t.” Her mouth tightened firmly. Despite the evidence, she’d never been able to shift the blame of those deaths. The autopsies hadn’t found any evidence of rotten meat that might have poisoned. Good God.

  She paled so suddenly, Nicolas sprang to his feet. “Catherine? What is it?”

  She stared at him, her mouth hanging open, her jaw completely slack. Geoffrey sat back to look at her with a dumbfounded expression.

  Nicolas rushed to her side, dropped to his knees and felt her forehead. He was overreacting, he knew, but suspicious things seemed to happen
in this castle and the family had had more than their fair share of tragedies. He still had no inkling of the source of her mother’s poison and if Catherine….no, he couldn’t think like that.

  “Catherine,” he prompted urgently, “are you feeling ill? Is it the brandy?”

  Coming alive, she pushed his hand from her forehead. “I need to talk to you.”

  Frowning, he took her hand and straightened slowly, helping her up with him.

  “Catherine?” Geoffrey queried.

  On her feet, although not quite steady, Catherine slid her hand free. “I’m fine, Geoffrey. Please excuse us, we won’t be long.”

  As she started to walk, her knees almost gave way. When Nicolas gripped her arm, she gave in to his strength and support and allowed herself to be led. With each step, however, reason overruled weakness and a spark of excitement ignited. By the time they reached her office, she was walking on her own. She burst through the door, a little giddy from the rapid three-hundred-sixty degree spin in her emotions, from despair to hope to despair and still spinning.

  She sat down in her usual chair at the head of the oblong desk that was large enough to act as a conference table when required and waited for Nicolas to close the door and join her.

  “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.” His eyes were dark with concern, his brows wrinkled in worry.

  “I think I might have,” she said breathlessly. She blinked long, taking a deep breath, hoping she wasn’t connecting fabricated dots. Swallowing hard, she opened her eyes to find she had Nicolas’s undivided attention. “I’m so stupid. How the hell did I miss it?”

  “Miss what?” Nicolas leaned forward, folding his arms on the desk. “I have no idea what’s happening here. Are you sure that you’re okay?”

  “I’m better than okay, I think.” She leaned forward as well, folded her arms on the desk. Their heads were close to touching. “The hunt that Geoffrey was talking about. Nicolas, those two dogs died the following day. I felt terrible. I thought the meat we’d hidden had gone off in the summer heat. It was such a silly thing to do, I don’t know what we were thinking.”

  “I’m sorry, Catherine. I’m sure you couldn’t have known.”

  She shook her head. “It was still a foolish thing to do, but it wasn’t the meat, Nicolas. The veterinary surgeon did an autopsy. He agreed that it looked like poison, but his findings didn’t correspond to food poisoning. In fact, he couldn’t reach any conclusion at all. I felt so guilty about the entire episode, I called in a second opinion.”

  “Another dead end.” The impact of her words cleared the worry from his brow. “I’ll start a search of the woods first thing in the morning. It will take some time, Catherine. I’ll have to take a specimen of every plant, soil type—”

  “Not only the woods,” she interrupted. “The forest extends into the hills that we mine. The dogs were in such a frenzy of excitement, they chased down into one of the tunnels.”

  “You have mines here?”

  “We mine a slightly varied form of coal.” A sinister suspicion tugged at her conscience, then flowered into full-blown dread. Catherine shook the thought from her head. It couldn’t be. If the carbonised rock they mined was lethally poisonous, surely there’d have been related deaths before now?

  “I’m listening,” Nicolas prompted as the conversation lagged.

  “There are carbonised bands that run at least three-hundred feet deep in those hills. Ophella is the only place this unusual rock has ever been detected, and trust me, they’ve looked.”

  “Who has looked?”

  Catherine paused. She’d already said too much. Apparently her body wasn’t wired up to keep secrets from Nicolas. “We have government contracts with both America and Russia.”

  “How varied exactly is this coal?”

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she said to his sudden scowl. “The energy source engineered from the rock is clean and pure, but then the rock was not exactly meant to be digested. I’ve got a good—or maybe I should say bad feeling about this.”

  His scowl relaxed with a sigh. “No, you were right this first time. If we’ve found the source, then this is the first good news I’ve had in weeks.”

  “Oh, Nicolas.” Her lower lip twisted beneath her teeth. “What if—”

  “If we’ve found the source,” he interrupted sternly, leaving no margin for doubt, “then we’re halfway there.”

  “I want to come with you to the mines in the morning.”

  He looked at her for so long, she was convinced he was searching for a reasonable excuse. Her heart clenched when he leaned in even closer and said softly, “Wear jeans and trainers, cucciola.”

  5

  The mines were concentrated in the Black Hills bordering Ophella to the north. Nicolas was behind the wheel of the Land Rover while Catherine directed them along the twisting bends through the deep woods that forked at various intervals. As they climbed the hill, the vegetation reduced solely to Evergreen Firs that never shed their foliage, blocking out the sunlight and any warmth it might have supplied.

  “That leads to the Hunting Lodge,” she said when they passed yet another fork in the road. When he lifted an eyebrow at her, she punched his arm. “Now it’s used for nothing more sinister than guest accommodation. Do you always have to assume the worst in me?”

  “I try to,” Nicolas replied honestly. Not that it’s working.

  He grinned into her baffled stare to soften the blunt truth he should have kept to himself. A long forgotten pledge flashed inside his head. There is no secret dark enough, no crime vile enough, no discovery black enough to keep me from you, little one. He lost the grin as he realised that his heart was still holding onto that pledge and preventing him from letting go. He hadn’t expected instant recovery, but he had hadn’t even made a start.

  “Left,” she called suddenly.

  Jerked from his thoughts, Nicolas spun the wheel to take the turn and the back of the vehicle skidded recklessly.

  “Sorry,” he muttered once he had it back under control.

  “My fault,” Catherine said. She’d been distracted by his strange admission, by the shadows playing across his face as one emotion chased the other from his crossed brow to the grin that disappeared as quickly as it had formed.

  The brick buildings of the mine’s administration offices came into view as they rounded the last bend to arrive at the clearing deep inside the forest. She indicated to a reserved parking spot and leapt from the vehicle as soon as he cut the engine. “I need to have a word with the site administrator. Due to safety regulations, we won’t be allowed into the tunnels without clearance.”

  “Go ahead.” Nicolas lifted the rear door of the Land Rover to retrieve the case of equipment he’d packed.

  When she returned with clip-on badges and hard hats, he was ready to go, case in one hand, torch in the other. Catherine set her bundle down on the roof of the vehicle, stripped both her gloves to clip one badge onto the lapel of her jacket, then turned to him with the other.

  “Allow me,” she said, seeing his hands full. She took the step that brought her up close to his chest and instantly regretted the offer. Fingers suddenly clumsy, she struggled with the clip that was too small, the collar of his windbreaker that was too narrow, his overwhelming nearness that was too much. Her eyes slowly lifted, drawn against her will by a force she had no power over, and met the intensity of his gaze.

  His scent was somewhere between musky and fresh pine, all male, all familiar. Longing tightened her chest; physical longing, emotional longing, spiritual longing.

  He was more than the dark haired, stone carved male that attracted her so fiercely, he might very well have been created in the likes of her own personal Adonis, perfect planes with adoring flaws made to order for her own particular weaknesses. His jaw, square and strong, almost too hard. His nose just that little longer than classical beauty dictated. His eyes dark, deep, almond shaped, more harsh than sensual. Without those flaws, he’d be too h
andsome, he wouldn’t be the single man that set her blood on fire and tugged ruthlessly at her heartstrings.

  He was more than the man she’d fallen hopelessly in love with, the man she’d locked inside her heart and refused to release, no matter that they’d never be together.

  Nicolas was her other half.

  The brown eyes that held her captive were softened by the awareness that crackled between them, yet not without the hard edge of recriminations.

  Dropping her gaze abruptly, Catherine gripped the edge of his collar and redoubled her efforts. Her fingers brushed his throat and burned. “Why do they always make these things so fidgety?” she said to dispel the maelstrom of feelings and yearnings.

  He said nothing and she wasn’t about to look up again. Finally, she secured the badge and took a welcome step backward. And caught the bemusement dancing in the brown depths of his gaze.

  Nicolas glanced at the hard hats on the roof, then back to her. “Would you mind?”

  He was the devil stoking what was already a burning furnace, but for one more moment of her lingering touch, for one more stolen kiss, he was prepared to burn in a hell made hotter by his own hand.

  Tomorrow, he’d start un-loving and un-wanting her.

  He lowered his head a little as she reached up to fit the hat, then, before she could move away, he stole his kiss, brushing her lips with the slightest pressure that sent an immediate rush through his blood. When she didn’t jump away, he deepened the kiss, dropping the torch to slip that hand around the back of her head, threading his fingers in a knot of silky hair, moulding her mouth to his will, branding her lips with the love pouring from his heart.

  Only the sound of an engine in the distance tore them apart and he’d swear she went as unwillingly as he.

  Cazzo. He rubbed at his temples as she whirled away from him to busy herself with her own hat, to hide the clash of pleasure and confusion he’d glimpsed in those vast blue eyes, to continue the pretence that she didn’t respond helplessly to his kisses. He bent to retrieve the discarded torch, testing the on switch to check that it had survived the fall.