by Penny Jordan
‘It is fate,’ Luc told her. ‘Fate has brought us together again, and fate always has a purpose.’
‘Please don’t pretend that you have been longing for me all the time we have been apart, Luc.’ Carrie warned him. ‘You were going to marry Maria…’
‘Were you longing for me?’ he asked her.
Wryly Carrie looked at him.
‘There were certainly times when I longed to be able to tell you how much I hated you!’ she admitted hazily.
‘So tell me, now.’ Luc murmured as he caught hold of her and bent his head to kiss the small hollow at the base of her throat. His lips were playing expertly with her body, teasing small butterfly kisses against its vulnerability whilst his hands found her breasts, savouring their responsiveness to him.
Carrie expelled her breath in a light sigh, savouring the blissful sensation of Luc’s touch. The slow stroke of his fingertips against her skin was awakening a need in her that was escalating past her control.
Gently, but oh, so determinedly, Luc took hold of her hand and guided it to his own body.
As she touched him Carrie felt him shudder openly with an intense male pleasure he made no attempt to hide.
‘Do you remember the first time you kissed me there?’ he asked her hoarsely, and continued without waiting for her reply. ‘You were so shy, so unsure, and yet so eager to give me pleasure. You ran your lips over me and it felt delicate, aching, tormenting, making me hungry for so much more. And then you touched me with your tongue, stroking, seeking…’
Carrie heard him groan. Her heart was thudding in sledgehammer blows in response to the heavy erratic beat of his.
‘It seems another lifetime ago,’ she sighed.
‘Another lifetime ago sometimes,’ Luc agreed. ‘But at others only yesterday.’
His hands left her body to cup her face and tilt it up to his own.
‘Carrie! Carrie!’ She heard him growl as her hand trembled against him and he lowered his head towards her, taking her mouth with slow, savage sweetness, the tip of his tongue thrusting past the barrier of her lips and opening up the sweetness they were protecting for his eager enjoyment.
Every touch, every kiss, was binding her even more relentlessly to him, Carrie recognised, but it was an imprisonment she gave herself up to willingly and wantonly.
When at last she lay naked on the bed, with Luc kneeling over her, she held him off for a few seconds, looking gravely into his face; his eyes were like her own, deep and dark with the strength of emotion.
‘This was meant to be between us, Carrie,’ he insisted softly. ‘This…’ He paused to kiss her slowly and tenderly. ‘Us…He kissed her again, this time deeply and intimately. ‘You and me…’
Now she was the one reaching for him, holding her hand to his jaw as she covered his mouth with her own, tasting it with eager, aching longing.
She could see the passion burning in his gaze as she released his mouth, and he bent his head to caress the peak of one breast oh, so gently that she felt as though she was melting. And then more fiercely, very much more fiercely, so that she made a small keening noise of arousal, her hand reaching out to touch his hip and then the taut male curve of his buttock as she tried to urge him down towards her.
The way he was arched over her had an almost pagan primitiveness about it, an intimacy that caught at her heart and her senses.
‘Carrie…’ Her name was a soft moan of pleasure, exhaled on the thrust that carried him so powerfully and strongly into her body.
Eagerly Carrie received him and held him, drew from him the fierce culmination her own flesh desired.
He was still with her when she woke up an hour later, teasingly responsive to the touch of her hands but far less teasingly to the touch of her lips as she caressed him with more confidence than she had done that first time several years ago.
Now, instinctively she knew how to seek out his response, and she knew how to savour the sensation of his flesh, his arousal.
The sky was lightening when he finally released her from his arms and slipped from her bed with a last lingering kiss.
CHAPTER TEN
NERVOUSLY Carrie smoothed down the fabric of her wedding gown. She and Luc had not had any chance to be together alone since the night he had come to her in the garden, but by the end of today she would be his wife!
The previous day, during the rehearsal for the wedding ceremony, he had told her that the Countess had decided to make an extended visit to her cousin in Italy. He had squeezed her hand and given her a warmly tender look in the few precious, intimate seconds before they had been called upon to play their public roles.
They were to honeymoon on Jay’s yacht, which he had put completely at their private disposal, and Carrie felt a sweet tremor of anticipatory pleasure shoot through her at the thought.
Now that their marriage was to be a ‘proper’ one, Carrie would have loved to be able to tell her family—in fact she was surprised that Harry hadn’t heard of the wedding in the press. But then he and Maria would have been on their own honeymoon in Africa when the engagement was announced. Since it was too late for them to make it in time for the ceremony, she had decided instead to wait until she and Luc had returned.
What a shock Harry was going to get when he learned that she and Luc were married! And he and Maria weren’t the only couple now planning excitedly for a future that would hopefully include children!
Luc could not have been more tender or caring about the child she—they—had lost.
‘You should have informed me,’ he had reproached her gently.
‘How could I, Luc?’ Carrie had reasoned. ‘You had dismissed me—sent me away. I was eighteen. I felt rejected, worthless, broken-hearted.’
‘I did what I believed I had to do,’ Luc had returned sombrely. ‘You were so young. I thought….was advised that your feelings were merely those of youthful infatuation, and that it would be kinder and indeed wiser for both our sakes for us to go our separate ways before we became any more involved with one another.’
‘Advised? I suppose by that you mean that the Countess told you that?’ Carrie had questioned quietly.
She had been able to see from his expression that his sense of loyalty was being strained by her question, and, respecting him for it, she had offered, ‘Perhaps you weren’t aware of it at the time, but even then your godmother was planning for you to marry Maria.’
Immediately Luc had shaken his head, reinforcing Carrie’s growing belief that he had not known of the Countess’s plans.
‘Maria was a child of ten, then,’ he had objected. ‘The Regency was on the point of coming to an end and my godmother herself, as well as my advisers, stressed that my first and most important duty was to my country and my people, that I owed it to them and to my grandfather to concentrate on that duty. No, I think you must be mistaken there, Carrie,’ he had insisted.
Carrie had not pursued the matter. Nor had she been able to bring herself to ask him why he had not explained both his position and his feelings to her himself, instead of allowing the Countess to do so for him, in such a deliberately cruel way.
Today, though, the unhappiness of the past was the last thing she wanted to think about.
The bedroom of her suite in the castle had two large windows—one with the balcony which overlooked the private courtyard garden, and another which overlooked the main public square outside the castle. This morning, from this window, she could see the finished effect of all the preparations which had been made to celebrate the Fifth Centenary and the wedding.
Extra floral displays had been added to those already put in place, and the bright early-morning sunshine sent shimmering prisms of colour dancing from the droplets of water dripping from the freshly watered flowers. The whole town had been decorated with wonderful displays in the colours of the Royal coat of arms—crimson, royal blue, gold and white—and from her window she could see the route of the short carriage drive she would be taking from the castle to th
e cathedral was a river of colour.
The tiny knot of excitement in her stomach, which had made it impossible for her to choke down anything more than a mouthful of the delicious breakfast she had been served earlier, sent out a shower of nervous bubbles of dizzy joy.
She could still barely take in what was happening—what had happened. But in the privacy of her bed at night she had rerun over and over again that precious interlude in the courtyard garden with Luc—admitting that, if anything, she was even more deeply in love with him now than she had been at eighteen. What she had felt for him then had been a girl’s adoration; what she felt for him now was a woman’s love.
Not even the thought of the relationship he had shared with Gina had the power to disturb her today, she acknowledged, as her bedroom door opened and Benita hurried in, carrying a small bouquet of cream roses and looking both excited and important. She handed them to Carrie and informed her that the hairdresser and the make-up artist were waiting for her, and that her attendants had all arrived and were being helped into their dresses by members of the design house’s staff.
Carrie wasn’t really listening to her. Instead she was touching the petals of one of the roses with a fingertip that trembled slightly, her lips curving into a tender smile as she read the message which had accompanied them.
I picked these myself this morning, from the courtyard garden. Luc.
That was all he had written—nothing more—but it was enough. In referring to the courtyard garden he was, Carrie knew, reminding her of the intimacy they had shared there, just as in telling her he had picked them himself he was telling her of his personal care for her.
Holding them up to her face, she breathed in their delicate perfume. Tonight, when she lay in his arms, she would tell him how much his gift had meant to her. Tonight…
Carrie tensed as the make-up artist flicked a final flourish of powder across her face, made sure that none of it was sprinkled on the wedding gown that Carrie was now wearing, and then stood back so that for the first time Carrie could see her reflection in the mirror.
A look of awed disbelief crossed Carrie’s face as she stared at the familiar and yet unfamiliar image looking gravely back at her. Yes, that was her face, her nose, her eyes, her lips—but the woman in the mirror possessed an ethereal beauty that Carrie had never recognised in her own reflection before. This woman, dressed in heavy cream silk damask and wearing a heavy priceless tiara to secure the equally priceless antique Brussels lace of the veil which had originally been worn by Luc’s grandmother, looked so breathtakingly, hauntingly fragile, with her huge eyes and slender body, that Carrie had to go up to the mirror and touch it to reassure herself that the delicate creature staring back was her.
Behind her, the room was crowded with her now silent attendants, standing in pairs. They comprised in the main daughters of Luc’s courtiers, all of them wearing a plainer version of her own gown. Their gowns were sashed in the colours of the S’Antander coat of arms, and each girl carried flowers to match her sash.
Carrie’s own flowers, a huge, trailing display of cream, white and green, were handed to her with careful reverence by the florist, whilst the hairdresser fussed and tweaked the already immaculate tendrils of hair which had been allowed to escape from her veil to add a modern and softening effect to the regal severity of her appearance.
When she moved her head the diamond earrings she had received from Luc this morning glittered even more fiercely than the diamonds in her tiara.
‘Come…it is time…’
The stern voice of the dress designer broke the emotional silence gripping the room. Wordlessly Carrie turned towards the door.
She had never felt more nervous—or more alone. Just this morning she had spoken to her father and her stepmother, and to Harry and Maria, at Luc’s instigation, to tell them that she was marrying Luc. Her father had been more pleased than surprised, and Harry had shocked her by telling her that he thought that she and Luc were very well suited.
‘But I thought you hated him,’ Carrie had protested.
‘Not Luc,’ Harry had assured her. ‘Just the idea of him marrying Maria.’
Two uniformed footmen had appeared, and were now standing holding open the double doors where one of Luc’s equerries, resplendent in a heavily gilt braided robe of office, waited to escort her to the state carriage in which she was to travel to the cathedral.
In keeping with tradition, as a bride she was to be kept enclosed within the carriage on her journey to the cathedral, so that no one could see her properly, but after the marriage she and Luc were to ride back to the castle in the open landau in which Luc was riding to the cathedral.
Frissons of nervous tension shook Carrie’s body as she moved slowly to the door. The sheer weight of her gown combined with the tiara made moving any faster impossible.
The coach was pulled up outside the main entrance to the castle, and as she reached the castle doors Carrie heard a fanfare of trumpets. Then the doors were flung open with a flourish and she was blinking in the dazzling sunlight streaming in, her ears ringing with the wild cheers of the crowd waiting outside.
The size of the crowd and its exuberance took Carrie by surprise. It was true that Benita had warned her how excited everyone was about the double celebration, but Carrie had told herself that her maid was erring on the flattering side! Now she could see that she had not been.
The noise of the cheers greeting her must surely be intensified by the semi-enclosed square! As she walked as steadily as she could towards the waiting carriage, escorted by the equerry, the cheering seemed to increase in volume, and people began to throw flowers in the national colours into the square.
They rained down on the carriage and on the beautifully groomed pair of horses pulling it so that the road was a carpet of colour. With the window of the carriage wound down a little, to allow in some fresh air, Carrie could smell the scent released as the carriage wheels crushed the blooms.
Barriers had been erected all along the route, behind which the crowd stood ten deep, parents holding small children on their shoulders, their excited little faces catching Carrie’s attention.
Suddenly the awesomeness and solemnity of the occasion hit her. She wasn’t simply a woman marrying the man she loved; she was marrying a prince who had a deeply historic role to play, a deeply important commitment to keep! A commitment that was more important to him than the one he would make to her today in the cathedral? Carrie shook the thought away, struggling not to feel overwhelmed and daunted by the realisation of just how much her life was going to change.
When she was just supposed to be Luc’s ‘temporary bride’, forced into an unwanted marriage with him, she had not given any thought at all to just what marriage to a man in his position would entail, what changes it would make to her own lifestyle. Why should she have done? There had been no need, as the marriage was to have been over within weeks of its beginning. And in the intensity of the intimacy which had only just developed between them she’d had neither the time nor the inclination to dwell on anything more than the fact that she and Luc were going to be together.
Now, though, she was actually aware of how much her life was going to change. When she left the cathedral today she would not be leaving it just as Luc’s wife, but as the consort of a man who was dedicated to observing and protecting centuries-old traditions, a man whose people had expectations and needs which she, as his partner, would naturally be duty bound to play her part in helping him to meet.
Duty and responsibility. In many ways they were old-fashioned words in a modern world which lived by a modern code. But Luc was a man to whom they were very important—a man who took them extremely seriously.
Today, faced with the pomp and circumstance of what was happening, Carrie felt a sharp spike of panic, a fear of becoming a mere piece of window dressing in the life of the man she loved, but then, as the carriage pulled to a halt outside the magnificent fifteenth-century cathedral, a wonderful sense of calm and
resoluteness filled her.
She would be her own person, as well as Luc’s wife, a modern woman as well as the consort of a ruling prince; her training, her expertise in her profession could surely be put to a beneficial purpose—especially in a country such as S’Antander. She would insist to Luc that she was allowed a proper role to play within the state, she told herself sturdily as the carriage doors opened and the equerry handed her out; because from today she would be pledging herself not just to Luc but to his country, to its future and to its past.
Carrie paused before taking her first step into the cathedral. Its dark coolness was a blessed oasis of calm and peace after the noisy enthusiasm of the crowd outside.
The organist was playing a piece of music which had originally been written for the marriage of Luc’s great-great-grandmother to his great-great-grandfather. She had been a Hapsburg princess!
As she entered the church Carrie could feel the rustle of excited curiosity. In the shadows the equerry stepped away from her, and another man, wearing not the brilliance of a uniform but the simple plainness of a dark suit, stepped towards her to take his place and escort her down the aisle.
As she turned to look at him Carrie’s eyes widened. ‘Dad…’ she whispered in disbelief as her father came to her side and gave her arm a warm clasp.
‘Luc arranged it. As soon as Luc contacted us on our Outback tour we knew we had to be here. We flew into Nice a couple of days ago. He wanted to keep it a surprise for you.’
Luc had brought her father here in secret, so that he could walk her down the aisle and give her away! The long, narrow path that led to where Luc was waiting for her shimmered as emotional tears filled her eyes.
‘I always knew you two had a bit of a thing for one another, but I must say I never expected this,’ she heard her father whispering to her with a big grin that told her how delighted he was as the distance between her and Luc narrowed.