by Valerie Parv
He suppressed a flash of jealousy as he thought of Nicholas’s marriage. This was possibly the first time in their lives that Ben had actually envied his royal cousin anything. Ben knew it had a lot to do with Nicholas’s happiness that had recently been blessed with the addition of an adorable baby daughter.
Was that why Ben had volunteered to take on this mission, in spite of the danger? He wanted to help end the upheaval in his country, but knew he also wanted to preserve his royal cousin’s happiness. As a bachelor himself, Ben had far less to lose than Nicholas.
All their lives, Ben’s strong resemblance to his cousin had been more of a curse than a blessing, except perhaps when Ben needed a good table at a busy restaurant. Yet when investigations into the kidnapping of Nicholas’s father, King Michael, had reached a stalemate, Ben had offered to exploit his resemblance to Nicholas.
Ben had hoped that the kidnappers would do exactly what they had done, and snatch him in mistake for Nicholas. The rest of the royal family had been against it because of the danger involved, but in the absence of a better plan, Ben had been given the go-ahead.
“Be careful what you wish for,” he thought grimly. If flirting wasn’t going to help him get information from Meagan, he would have to try another way. Deliberately, he gave a slight groan.
Instantly Meagan’s disapproval turned into concern. “What is it?”
He screwed his eyes shut. “Pain in my head. Must be the drug your friends used.”
“I’ll get something to ease it for you.”
He heard the door close behind her and opened his eyes. She returned a moment later and sat down on the side of the bed. “Shane says it’s all right to give you these.”
“Shane is?”
“My brother.” She didn’t seem to notice that she had answered his question, as she tipped two white tablets into her palm. She placed the rest of the packet on the dresser and picked up the water glass.
Ben eyed the tablets warily, the memory of being drugged still fresh. “What are they?”
“Painkillers for your headache.”
She placed a hand behind his head, helping him raise it so he could swallow the tablets with some of the water. Couldn’t hurt, he thought. His muscles ached abominably from the confinement. Once again, the touch of her palm against his neck was a welcome distraction. “Thank you,” he said as she eased him back down.
“It’s the least I can do.”
“You don’t like being part of this, do you?”
It was a stab in the dark but it hit home, he saw, as her long lashes came down over those impossibly blue eyes. She glanced back toward the door. “I have no choice.”
“You’re a prisoner, too?”
“In a way.” Her answer was barely audible.
“But isn’t this your home?”
She nodded. “That’s why Shane brought you here.”
“Because no one would suspect you of hiding a kidnapped prince?”
A little of her fire returned to her expression. “It’s hardly something I make a habit of doing.”
He was relieved to hear it, although he resisted examining his reasons too closely. “Yet you won’t help me to escape.”
“I can’t. It’s more than Molly’s life is worth.”
So her brother and whoever else was party to this scheme were threatening Meagan’s daughter. Ben nodded his understanding. “I have a daughter, too,” he said, thinking of Nicholas’s precious baby girl.
Her gaze softened. “I have an elderly friend who’s almost blind. She likes me to read the gossip magazines to her, so I know all about little Princess LeAnn. You must be very proud of her.”
He disliked the need to do it, but it was time he gave Meagan a dose of reality. “Right now I’m wondering if I’ll ever see her again.”
He felt even more of a brute as he saw horror darken her lovely features. He found he wanted to soothe the look away, and actually strained at the ropes in an effort to free his hands. What was he doing? he asked himself as the rope bit into his wrists, a sobering but timely reminder of his situation.
“You’ll see her again if I have anything to do with it,” she assured him.
“You can’t be certain you can protect your own daughter, far less make promises about mine.”
“I can try,” she said fiercely. “At least Molly is safe enough where she is for now.”
“She isn’t here?”
“I took her to stay with a friend,” she admitted. “The others think she’s at a slumber party with some little friends from her play group.”
He felt disappointment grip him. “So you were part of this scheme all along.”
“No, I…I had a disagreement with my brother yesterday, before I knew they were bringing you here. He threatened Molly, and I decided it was best to get her out of harm’s way until I knew more about what Shane had planned. Now I’m glad I did.”
“Resourceful of you.”
“Comes from fending for myself for most of my life,” she said acidly. “Not that you’d know anything about that.”
“You’d be surprised,” he said dryly. “Royal life has its share of difficulties.” His present situation being one of them, he thought.
“I’m sure you’ve always had a warm bed, and known where your next meal was coming from.”
Unlike Meagan? he wondered, reading between the lines. “I can hardly argue,” he said. “But speaking of meals…”
She turned pale. “Your food! Shane will wonder what’s kept me so long.”
“You can always say Prince Nicholas tried to sweet-talk you into letting him go, but you resisted his blandishments,” Ben suggested. “It isn’t too far from the truth.”
“It’s also likely to get you beaten.”
Ben felt his insides tighten at this idea, but kept his face impassive. “Then you’d have to minister to me some more.”
“Or Shane would, and you might not like his ministrations.”
“Then work with me. Help me, for the sake of your child and Princess LeAnn.”
“No, you don’t know what you’re asking of me.”
She stood up and paced to the window. He watched her graceful movements, feeling his throat go dry. Against all common sense, he was attracted to her, he recognized. If they had met under other circumstances, he would have taken great pleasure in doing something about the attraction.
As it was, he could do nothing. Nor should he. She was the enemy, he made himself remember. No matter how reluctantly she might have become involved, the fact remained that she was involved. She had allowed her brother to use her house as a prison for the man she believed to be the country’s prince regent. That she had done it under duress didn’t lessen her culpability.
It didn’t lessen the power of her attractiveness either, Ben thought, feeling warmth flare through him. Her beauty wasn’t the whole reason, although he didn’t mind feasting his eyes on such loveliness. But he was more attracted to the woman he sensed she was. In their short acquaintance, she had been compassionate and caring toward Ben, willing to risk her brother’s displeasure to help Ben as best she was able.
Too bad she thought he was the married Prince Nicholas.
Reluctantly he pulled himself back into the role. “As your future king, I order you to help me.”
She turned back, her acid gaze sweeping him. “You’re hardly in a position to give orders, Your Highness.”
“You would be well rewarded when this is over.”
“First flirting with me, now trying to bribe me. What will you try next? Outright seduction?”
He released a heavy sigh. “Why do I get the feeling it wouldn’t work anyway?”
“Because it wouldn’t.” As if from habit she began to tidy the small room, tweaking at the curtains to straighten them, then realigning the items on the dresser.
He watched her in fascination. She wasn’t royal but she moved with a quiet, regal grace that was also unconscious. “Are you anti-men or only anti-royalty
?”
“Neither,” she said, her hands stilling. She held the rag doll as carefully as if it were a baby, he noticed. “For what it’s worth, I’m happy living in a monarchy that has kept our country peaceful and prosperous for a thousand years.”
“Then that leaves men.”
She settled the rag doll on the dresser and turned to him, crossing her arms over her breasts in an angry gesture. “Men are what got me into this mess.”
“Surely you mean one man, Molly’s father?”
“I mean men, plural. Starting with Molly’s father and ending with my brother and his so-called associates and now you.”
Ben ached to press her for details about her brother’s associates, sensing that they were the key to all this, but he was sure nothing would make her flee faster. “Why include me?” he asked.
“Why not? If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be in this fix.”
“It’s hardly my fault,” he pointed out, feeling a slow burn of anger start. “I didn’t ask to be snatched in the middle of an official engagement, my only crime being who I am.”
“Exactly,” she said. “You’re who you are, and I’m who I am. If it wasn’t for this farce, you wouldn’t even give me the time of day.”
“I’d always give you the time of day, no matter what the situation,” he assured her, knowing it was true. She had the sort of face that would stand out in any crowd, and her innate sense of style would have caught his eye, even had she been dressed in rags.
“Really? Next you’ll be telling me it doesn’t matter that you’re the future king of the whole country and I’m a lowly seamstress with a child, barely scraping by.”
“Are these your beliefs or your brother’s?” he asked on a hunch.
“Mostly my brother’s, I suppose,” she said bitterly. “I’m not much given to ideology. The only rule I try to live by is the golden rule.”
“You can’t go far wrong in treating others as you would have them treat you,” he agreed. It had been his own philosophy for as long as he could remember. He couldn’t resist adding, “Although what you’re doing now hardly qualifies.”
Her eyes flashed fire at him. “Do you think I don’t know that? If there was any other way, believe me I’d take it.”
Then he would have to see that he found another way for her, he resolved, not sure exactly how he was supposed to achieve it. Trussed up like a chicken, he wasn’t in any position for heroics. “Do you think you could untie me, at least?” he asked.
“Not now,” she said with a nervous glance at the closed door.
He took it to mean she might consider it later, if it was safe, and was comforted by the thought. It also meant he would see her again, and he found that notion even more pleasant. He pushed it away in favor of cleansing anger. He had no business thinking of her as anything but his jailer. It was surprisingly hard to do.
Chapter Two
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Making some sandwiches. The prince is hungry.” Meagan braced herself for a blow, but was surprised to see her brother look repentant. It was a change from the sneer he usually affected. He was taller than Meagan and all the low-paying manual jobs he’d done had made him more muscular, but he stooped slightly as if he carried the world on his shoulders. She wished he didn’t look so embittered, as if the eight years between them was more like a hundred.
“Don’t flinch away from me as if I’m some kind of monster. I’m not going to hit you,” he said, sounding hurt.
“You did yesterday,” she reminded him softly.
“I know, and I’m sorry. I was under pressure, waiting for word that the kidnapping was on. This isn’t an easy time for any of us, but it will be over soon.”
She was glad that Shane was behind her, keeping watch through a window, and couldn’t see how badly her hands were shaking. Beyond the window, a large shadow moved purposefully back and forth. Shane’s friend, Dave, guarding the cottage, she knew. More of the gang members were patrolling between her garden and the edge of the forest. She jerked her head in the direction of Molly’s bedroom. “When will this be over? When you kill your prisoner?” Even saying the words made her feel sick to her stomach.
“Nobody’s killing anybody, at least not on my watch,” he insisted. “Once we get what we need from the prince, we’ll let him go.”
“Like you did the king?” she couldn’t help asking.
Shane pushed his battered Edenbourg Bears cap further back on his head. “Why are you so concerned about these parasites? We’re as good as they are. If it wasn’t for some ancient laws, and an accident of birth I could be running this country instead of them, rolling in riches and having everybody bow and scrape to me.”
“No doubt.” She’d heard similar claims from him all their lives. When she was a child she had believed her big brother’s grand assertions. She’d wanted to believe them, she knew. Shane had been seventeen when their parents were drowned after a ferry taking them to visit friends on an outer island had capsized in Edenbourg’s worst accident at sea. Left behind in Shane’s care, Meagan had been nine. After the tragedy, she had clung to her brother as to a life raft.
He’d promised to take care of her, but had been too young for them to remain together. When she was given into the care of an elderly cousin, Shane had come to see her, assuring her that he would come for her as soon as he was old enough and had made enough money to take care of them both. When Cousin Maude had died, Shane had taken the fifteen-year-old Meagan back to live with him although the promised fortune remained always just over the horizon.
Impressed by his grand-sounding dreams and schemes, she had thought him wonderful. It hadn’t taken her long to realize that they would never be more than dreams. He hadn’t finished school, telling her it was a waste of his time. When she had asked him why he didn’t study at night, he told her he didn’t need book learning. The kind of education he needed came from life.
He had supported them with one menial job after another, the latest as a kitchen hand at the castle, using his position to supply his friends with inside information.
She had gradually found out what kind of life really interested Shane. The shady kind where you got what you wanted not from honest effort, but from knowing the wrong people and being prepared to bend the law. It was only good luck that he hadn’t spent time in jail yet. He had laughed at her when she decided to use the needlework skill she had inherited from their mother to put herself through school, then gained an apprenticeship to a local dressmaker.
“That kind of progress is too slow for me,” he had insisted. “Why don’t you join me and my friends? We’ll really show you how to have a good time.”
She had succumbed just once, long enough to discover that most of Shane’s friends were people she wouldn’t want to meet in an alley on a dark night. Most of them were Free Edenbourg advocates, a lofty-sounding name for a group of misfits whose main aim was to see the monarchy overthrown.
Never mind that the same monarchy was responsible for a thousand years of peace in the island kingdom located in the North Sea. Meagan got the impression the Frees, as they called themselves, would rather see the country thrown into turmoil, and its assets squandered, than have to bow to another person because of their position.
From what she’d seen of the monarchy, they didn’t misuse their inherited power. The opposite in fact. From her studies she knew that much of the progress in the kingdom could be traced to the hard work of the royal family in encouraging tourism and trade and making the country a renowned center of international commerce.
One of Shane’s associates, Kevan Slater, a traveling salesman who had shown a brief interest in the group’s cause, had seemed different from the others. She allowed herself to think of his name, suppressing the bitterness that welled up when she did. Oh yes, he had seemed different. Until she’d told him she was expecting his child. He’d finally admitted he was married, then disappeared without a trace.
She started
when Shane’s hand crushed down on her wrist. “That’s enough. He has to eat, but you don’t have to make it gourmet.”
She had barely noticed that her hands had been as busy as her thoughts. Because it was expected of her, she had made a plateful of sandwiches for Shane’s friends, then had begun to prepare Nicholas’s food. Without conscious design, she had made his more appetizing than the rest. She saw the hungry look Shane gave her handiwork, and made a decision. “This isn’t for the prince, it’s for you. I’ll make another for him.”
Her brother gave an approving smile. “You’re finally getting your priorities right.” He took the sandwich without cutting it in half, and bit into it, smearing mustard across his mouth. “This is good,” he said around a mouthful. “Wasted on the likes of his nibs.”
Meagan made sure she wasn’t too generous this time, while managing to make Nicholas’s meal appetizing and nourishing. She had been frightened out of her wits when he was brought here unconscious. She hadn’t anticipated that. He had looked terrifyingly pale and she had wondered if he was dead. His slight moan as they dropped him unceremoniously onto Molly’s bed had reassured her, even as it alarmed her in case he was injured in some way.
“Wonder what little Molly would think of having a real live royal in her bed,” Shane mused, chewing enthusiastically.
“She’d rather have her bedroom and her toys back,” Meagan observed.
Shane gestured airily. “She will, soon enough. Provided you keep doing the right thing.”
Icy fingers played along Meagan’s spine. “You wouldn’t really harm her, would you?”
His face darkened. “I shouldn’t have said and done what I did yesterday. Trouble is, I’m not sure I can stop the others from harming her if you don’t cooperate. You’ve outsmarted them for now by spiriting her away. But make no mistake, if they want her found they’ll find her. Then I won’t be answerable for what might happen.”
She twisted her hands in despair. “Why have you let them take over your life, Shane? Can’t you see, Frees is a misnomer if ever there was one. You aren’t free. You’re a captive of the group’s will, even to threatening Molly when I know how much you love her.”