by Valerie Parv
He decided not to press his luck too hard right away. When he uncoiled from the tiny bed, he was careful not to move too fast, frightening her into calling for help. He had seen a large shadow pass the window at regular intervals.
He dropped to the floor and drove himself into a quick set of push-ups to get his blood circulating again, irritated to find he enjoyed the gasp of admiration they elicited from Meagan.
When he finally stood up, he felt much better. She looked thunderstruck. “Haven’t you seen a man do push-ups before?”
“Not like those.”
“Doesn’t your brother work out?” he asked.
“I wouldn’t know. He doesn’t live here.”
Another piece of useful information to be filed for later use. “Is there anywhere I can get some air?” he asked. A glimpse of the outside might give him a clue to his whereabouts.
She tilted her head to one side, thinking. “No one will see you in the courtyard. This way.”
She opened the second door, not into a closet as he’d thought, but into a stone-walled outdoor area about three meters long in each direction. Violets grew between silvered cobblestones underfoot, and ivy softened the high stone walls. In the center stood a wrought-iron love seat also entwined with ivy. “This is Molly’s secret garden,” Meagan said. “It’s the reason I fell in love with this house.”
“A child’s imagination would work overtime in a place like this,” he agreed, stepping into the courtyard. The fresh air filled his lungs, invigorating him. The sun’s position told him it was late afternoon, so he’d been here for about six hours. Conscious for three, therefore out cold for three. He remembered being bundled into a car before the drug claimed him completely, giving him a radius of a hundred or so kilometers from his starting point that morning. Not much help.
“You’re on the outskirts of Old Stanbury, near the forest,” she second-guessed him. “The house is fairly isolated so there’s no point calling for help.”
He had already worked that out for himself. There was no gate but he had sized up the stone wall as being easier to climb than the pitching ratlines of a ship in a storm-tossed sea, which he’d done many times while indulging in his hobby of sailing old vessels.
He wondered if Meagan’s unseen brother and his friends knew what an unsuitable prison his sister’s house made. Luckily for them, escape wasn’t on Ben’s agenda just yet. Not until he’d learned a lot more.
He dropped his hands to her slender shoulders. “I know you want to help me, Meagan. Why stop at hints? Why not follow your heart and help rescue your prince?”
Meagan felt the heat of his hands like a brand through her thin dress, yet his touch was light, leaving her free to move away if she wanted to. She didn’t. His hands on her shoulders reminded her of how long it had been since any man had touched her, making her ache for more.
He was her ruler, she reminded herself. But she found herself responding to him more as a man, and a very attractive man at that.
She did twist free then, shocked at her thoughts. Nicholas was married with a child. That he was willing to use his masculinity to try to manipulate her made him no better than Molly’s father.
“I want to help you, Your Highness, but you mustn’t touch me,” she said, knowing she sounded stupidly prim, but unable to help it.
“I won’t unless you want me to,” he promised, his voice low and reassuring.
“How can I want you to? You’re acting for the king and you’re a married man.”
A shadow tinged his eyes, making her wonder if he felt as drawn to her as she did to him, in spite of the inappropriateness of it. “You’re right,” he said heavily. He passed a hand across the lower half of his face. “I’ve heard about the bond that forms between kidnapper and captive, but I didn’t think it happened so quickly.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.” She was aware of sounding as if she wanted to believe it. “You’d better come back inside before Shane returns.”
He hadn’t learned anything useful, Ben thought in frustration. He knew roughly where he was, but not where his uncle, King Michael, was being held. Ben didn’t like it, but he would have to take advantage of the attraction between him and Meagan to try to learn more. That he might want to for his own sake, he resisted examining. He turned as if to walk back inside, steering her until she was between himself and the iron bench.
Meagan recognized that she was trapped. She felt her heartbeat gather speed as the prince left no more than a handspan of space between them. Oddly enough she wasn’t afraid, although she probably should have been. Nicholas was large enough and fit enough to overpower her if he chose to. But the nerves scrambling inside her felt less like fear, and more like the response of a woman to an attractive man.
Reminding herself that he was, first and foremost, her ruler, failed to subdue the tremors gripping her. Neither did telling herself that her feelings were only a product of having him captive in her house. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t even acknowledge her existence, far less look at her in the desirous way he was doing now, she felt sure.
Had she been a fool to release him, accepting his word that he wouldn’t try anything untoward? She should know better than to trust any man’s word by now. Yet reminding herself of her earlier foolishness with Molly’s father didn’t stop Meagan’s lips from drying as she imagined the prince’s mobile mouth on hers. Picturing herself in his arms was easier still, and her own arms ached with the need to be held, to be caressed, to be loved.
By him?
What was it about Prince Nicholas that put such thoughts in her head? Meagan tried to cool the heat surging through her. Kevan had also been married, she had discovered when she’d told him she was expecting his child. When he had turned her away, she had vowed never again to allow a man to use her so cruelly. Yet here she was, gripped by a desire so strong that she could hardly breathe.
Her imagination insisted on picturing herself alone with Nicholas, not under duress with guards a shout away, but truly alone. Butterflies danced in her stomach. She felt frightened now, but not of him. Of herself and what he made her feel.
Ben had seen the flames ignite in her eyes, and was convinced that she felt as tormented as he did by the firestorm of attraction raging between them. He wished he could trust her enough to reveal his real identity. Then there would be nothing to stop him from taking her in his arms and drinking his fill of her sweetness.
He imagined shaping her mouth to his and parting her lips gently to taste the honey within, and a fist of longing slammed through him.
Her sigh sounded loud in the quiet space, firing him with needs and desires he had barely acknowledged since Marina died. Instead, he had plunged into work, gaining a reputation as a hotshot who could pilot anything. That was a laugh. Right now it was all he could do to pilot himself through the treacherous shoals of one woman’s attraction.
Meagan wanted him as much as he wanted her, he realized in some astonishment. She looked as if she had completely forgotten that she was his jailer. And she made him want to forget.
He restrained himself from taking her into his arms and instead, pulled her down with him onto the bench, keeping a careful heartbeat of distance between them. He wished he could tell her it was all right, he wasn’t who she thought he was. He was free to give her everything in his power, taking only what she was willing to give in return. He sensed it would be a great deal.
What was he thinking about? The very reason he was free to give her so much argued against giving her anything at all. She was on the other side, no matter how reluctantly. He had a job to do and this was hardly the way to do it. The reminder had little effect on the flames leaping inside him. Knowing he couldn’t have her only made him want her more.
He told himself he could learn more by deception than by outright confrontation, but knew he wasn’t being honest with himself. He didn’t want to kiss Meagan out of duty, but purely for his own satisfaction, and the pleasure he knew they could give e
ach other.
She angled her body slightly away from him, signaling her rejection of what they both knew had nearly happened between them. “You’re royalty and you have a family waiting for you.” She sounded as regretful as he felt.
Honor and duty could be a curse, he thought on an inward sigh, intrigued by the dusting of rose his closeness had placed on her cheeks, and the bedroom look he had stirred in her eyes. Why couldn’t they have met under different circumstances, when he wouldn’t have had to work so hard to resist that look? After Marina, he had thought he would never feel this way again. Too bad it had to happen with the last woman in Edenbourg who should interest him.
“We must go in,” she prompted. “I have to tie you up again before Shane finds out I let you go.”
Ben caught her shoulders and made her look at him. “You don’t have to do this, Meagan. You can help me. Think of your little girl.”
He recoiled from the bleakness that invaded her gaze, recognizing that the moment of closeness was over. He should have taken advantage of it while he had the chance, he told himself, but couldn’t make himself regret his inaction. He would find some other way to complete his mission, without using a woman who deserved better.
“I am thinking of her. Will you come in, or do I have to call for help?”
He went in.
“Can I at least use your bathroom first?” he asked when she gestured toward the bed.
She took him through the first door into a passageway. The whitewashed walls and polished wooden floor gave him no more clues, and she barred his way when he would have explored further. “The bathroom’s in there.”
He could have forced his way past her, but wasn’t ready for that yet. He didn’t want to put her or her child at further risk unless he had to. “Sure you don’t want to come in and bathe me?”
He was pleased to see that her association with her brother’s friends hadn’t hardened her so much that she couldn’t still blush. “You’re big enough to manage on your own.” Her color heightened further as it dawned on her there were different ways he could take this.
He decided not to push it, but couldn’t resist asking, “How do you know I won’t slip through the window?”
“You won’t.”
He soon saw why. The mullioned window was far too small to accommodate his wide shoulders. He did what he needed to, then skimmed a quick look through her bathroom cabinet. Beyond an assortment of toile-tries and baby-care items, he found no new clues to his beautiful jailer. But he did find the source of the wonderful rose scent—a small laboratory of essential oils and floral fragrances.
He picked up a bottle with a hand-written label, removed the glass stopper and inhaled deeply. Definitely Meagan’s scent. It would be a long time before he could smell roses again without thinking of her.
She was waiting when he returned to the hall. On the wall behind her was a framed photograph of Meagan and a toddler who looked so like a miniature version of her mother that she had to be Molly. “Your daughter looks a lot like you,” he commented.
“People say she takes after me.”
“Not her father?”
Meagan shook her head, her expression shuttered as she opened the door into the bedroom again.
Lying down and letting her tie his hands again took a lot of self-discipline. She didn’t do as professional a job as whoever had done it the first time, he noted, worried that her amateur effort might be harder to undo than the more skilled version which at least had followed a predictable pattern.
There was nothing he could do about it now except try to stop himself from responding to the feel of her moving against him as she tested the ropes. “Do they look all right to you?” she asked.
Considering that when she leaned across him, stretching out her arms to adjust his bonds, her full breasts were aligned with his mouth, he could only give a strangled affirmative. He knew she wasn’t as innocent as she looked, yet she seemed unaware of the effect she had on him every time she brushed so intimately against him.
“Comfortable?” she asked.
He almost choked. He was glad she had thrown a light coverlet over him so she couldn’t see that he was far from comfortable. He didn’t know if it was being bound like this, helpless in her hands, but he had never felt so aroused in his life. The remembered closeness between them in the courtyard vibrated through him, making him strain automatically to free his arms so he could bring them around her. Just as well he couldn’t. He didn’t think he could keep up the white knight act and maintain his distance in the face of such temptation.
“They’ll do,” she pronounced, standing up. “I have to go. Shane will be back soon.”
“Will you come and feed me again?” Ben asked hopefully.
She shook her head. “One of the others will do it. I have to go out.”
“To see Molly?”
“Yesterday I took her away in such a hurry that I forgot her favourite teddy bear, Mr. Snug. She won’t sleep without him.”
Ben cocked his head at the threadbare toy sitting on the pillow near his head. “Mr. Snug, I presume.”
She nodded and tucked the bear into the crook of her arm. “If Shane misses me, I’ll tell him I had to go to the store for groceries.”
“How can you be certain you won’t be followed?”
“I took the precaution of flushing some milk and other foodstuffs down the sink, so it looks as if we’ve run out of a few things. It’s the only plan I can think of that has a chance of working. But I can’t stand the thought of Molly crying herself to sleep tonight. This is the longest she’s been away from me.”
Harder for Meagan herself, he suspected. He was tempted to ask her to send a message to the castle for him, but knew she’d be lucky to get away without being stopped as it was. Another thought occurred to him. “Why didn’t you go now, instead of coming to me?”
“I…I didn’t want the others to see which way I was really going.”
She had also wanted to help him, Ben read into her hesitation, unwillingly gratified by the thought, although he told himself she believed she was helping the crown prince. “Thank you for sticking around anyway,” he said gruffly.
Her expression confirmed his suspicion, but he saw her mask it quickly. “I was only thinking of Molly,” she said.
He hadn’t been thinking of her daughter when he wanted to kiss the mother, Ben thought when he was alone again. He hadn’t been thinking of anything except how pleasurable it would be to hold Meagan in his arms. He ached to have it become a reality.
Except that it wasn’t going to happen. When this was over, she could well go to jail for her part in the king’s abduction. Ben would testify to her kindness toward him, but would it be enough? He had only her word that she was in this against her will.
He dismissed the doubt as quickly as it arose. The fear he had seen in her eyes was genuine, he would swear to it. She was as much a victim as the king was. Ben hoped it would convince a judge not to send her to prison, but he wouldn’t like to count on it. What would become of little Molly then?
Ben forced his mind away from that question. He had more pressing worries, like how to free himself. Meagan’s ham-fisted attempt at knot-tying was proving as great a challenge as he’d feared. As he worked away at the rope, trying to loosen his bonds while ignoring the growing pain in his wrists where the rope bit into him, he reviewed the few details he had gleaned so far.
He was in a modest cottage on the edge of the forest near the old part of the city. The king was still alive but in poor health and being held in another part of the city. The group Meagan’s brother belonged to was behind the whole thing, but Ben was becoming convinced that they were acting under orders from someone at the palace.
Ben didn’t like to think of a member of the royal family being involved, but it had to be faced. Who? Jake Stanbury had been exonerated. There was King Michael’s brother, Edward, and his son, Luke, back in Edenbourg after years of estrangement. Ben could see how much E
dward loved Michael, despite their long separation. And his eldest son Luke had worked hard to bring about a reconciliation between the brothers. So who did that leave? Ben knew he wasn’t likely to solve the riddle tonight.
He was brought a mug of soup by a hulking brute of a man he guessed was the guard whose shadow he had seen passing the window at regular intervals. Of Shane himself, Ben had seen nothing but he guessed he would soon, and wasn’t looking forward to it. Any man who would threaten his own sister and niece was unlikely to be pleasant company.
“Do you have a name?” he asked the guard without much hope of a helpful answer.
To Ben’s surprise, the man stammered, “D-d-dave.”
“What’s your involvement in this business, Dave?”
The man merely snarled and lifted Ben’s head so he could drink the soup. It wasn’t nearly as much fun as when Meagan did the same thing, Ben thought, gagging as some of the soup went down too fast. He made himself swallow as much as he could, knowing he needed to keep his strength up. But he managed to learn nothing more from the inarticulate giant who swabbed his mouth with a none-too-clean cloth. That would have been the end of their interaction, but Ben protested that he’d better be escorted to the bathroom. Grunting, Dave complied, then tied Ben up again and left him alone.
He tried to sleep without much success. Too uncomfortable. But thinking of Meagan made him even more uncomfortable. He was afraid it was going to be a long night.
Chapter Four
Meagan wondered if she looked as terrible as she felt. Last night she had barely slept at all. Seeing Molly had lifted her spirits immeasurably, but had made returning to the house alone so much harder to bear.
Bad though her night had been, the prince’s must have been much less pleasant, Meagan thought. This morning she had almost stopped by Molly’s room to assure herself that Nicholas was all right, but had resisted. She’d told herself she hadn’t wanted to anger her brother, but suspected she wasn’t prepared to deal with Nicholas’s effect on her.
Last night, as she’d tossed and turned, he had haunted her thoughts, and when she had dropped into moments of fitful sleep, he had been in her dreams. He was her prince regent and he was in dire trouble, so she should be concerned, she told herself. But nowhere in that concern should she feel the desire that accompanied thoughts of him.