by Sherry Gloag
Not “trigger-happy.”
Intentional.
The rebels had found the fourth and youngest son of Jean-Phillipe Gasquet, ruler of the tiny kingdom adjacent to the Swiss border. When had they discovered his whereabouts?
With a reluctant sigh, he faced the truth of it. They hadn’t found him at all. They’d followed him. For the last three years he’d buried his head in the sand while travelling around the world, assuming his stab at anonymity would keep him safe from the insurgents hopeful of removing his family as rulers of the country.
To the sound of more gunshots, he flung himself towards the nearest cover, horses stampeding across the nearby paddock. Wedging himself behind the scrawny gorse bush wouldn’t deter anyone with a powerful rifle sight for long, but he prayed it would buy him a few more seconds. He weighed his options between the short distance to the solid stone farmhouse, or trying to make it back to the barn. Why did the spaces between suddenly take on the semblance of a full-blown marathon?
Another shot from close behind him had him rolling over for a view of the newest threat.
Melanie!
Beloved, stupid, brave, gun-toting Melanie stood in the farmhouse doorway reloading her weapon.
“Get back!” Fear strangled his attempted roar, which sounded more like a whimper.
“Instead of issuing stupid orders, you’d do better to get your butt over here and behind solid cover.” She studied the landscape and honed in on the nearby road. “Unless of course,” she added, “you intend to bleed out where you’re lying.”
He wasn’t sure whether he imagined the flicker of fear in her eyes, or heard it in her voice. But he noted her determined stance within the cover of the building.
“Start moving,” she ordered. “I have your butt covered.” Her attention remained focused on a cruising vehicle in the distance.
Before he could follow up on her instructions, a shower of stone shards flew off the edge of the wall next to his lover. His friend. His wife.
Unfurling his six-foot-five-inch frame, he scrambled to his feet. More dirt flew up around his shoes. He raced for the house, dove through the aperture and rolled beneath the solid pine table in the centre of the room.
Sunlight—bright, golden, offering false promises—cut a path across the floor to his sanctuary. “Shut the freaking door,” he snapped.
Stillness replaced the sound of gunfire. Even the birds, outraged by the disturbance of their tranquillity, fell silent.
Expectancy hung in the air.
What would their attackers do next?
The view from beneath the kitchen table changed the dimensions of the room. Chair legs, square and curving away from him, still managed to crowd his refuge.
The frayed hem of Mel’s jeans brushed her sun-kissed bare feet. Her sandals lay where she’d abandoned them beneath one of the chairs. A rogue ray of sunlight stroked the surface of the faceted coloured glass adorning her sandal-straps and shot rainbow beams of tinted light across the surfaces of the cupboards and nearby walls. Who would have thought the owner of those girly sandals could tote a gun as though it was second nature to her?
****
So! It began.
In his usual no-nonsense manner, Paxman, her boss, had updated her on events in the phone call she’d received just over ten minutes ago. It hadn’t given her time to warn Liam to get back inside, let alone for her to make any moves towards vacating the farm. As the head of palace security, Paxman focused on the job at hand and kept his missives brief. As her surrogate father—well, she owed him everything.
“Our man inside the British Embassy says Drake Guillespie, and his son deBonet, the rebel leader, are heading north and expected to pick up company on the way. Contact the Caretaker.”
In other words leave the farmhouse immediately. Brevity notwithstanding, from his information she’d assumed they’d have time to evacuate the place safely, instead of being embroiled in the middle of a gun battle.
A mistake. Not her first. Probably not her last, but still, a mistake.
Melanie aimed her weapon, fired, and took satisfaction from the distant bellow of pain. She shifted the gun from one hand to the other, flung the door open, and yelled for Liam to take cover.
She loved this place. The place she’d converted into a riding school for disabled children. Children who, for different reasons, experienced some of her same childhood fears and insecurities. Children who, when sitting on their ponies, transformed before her eyes from frustrated and frightened to delighted smiling little beings, at one with their mounts.
A sadness swept through her as she dialled her business partner’s number and informed her she’d be gone for an indefinite period. Melanie took mental snapshots of her surroundings to carry her through the uncertainty ahead.
For her, the farmhouse and riding school she’d set up five years ago represented security and home. Something she’d never experienced as a child.
A grim smile twitched her lips.
Security!
Even her job guaranteed none of that.
She dialled again, updated her boss then let the memories in, while she searched for the gunmen.
She’d spent the last three years trailing the youngest son of the ruler of a largely unknown kingdom that held more wealth within its boundaries than many of the largest nations in the world. Some claimed its wealth rivalled, if not exceeded, Switzerland. And she’d spent the last six months married to him.
“How am I supposed to keep the prince here?” Melanie had asked her boss several months earlier.
“You do whatever it takes.” His succinct reply left little room for interpretation, but she doubted he meant for her to tumble into love with the prince, let alone marry him.
By falling in love with and marrying Liam, she’d crossed the line from professional to personal.
Another mistake.
She sighed. Possibly not, she acknowledged. He’d failed to fill in his complete name on the special licence application and she’d omitted any reference to her widowhood.
But, whichever way she looked at it, it was still a mistake that could and probably would, cost her far more than her job if anyone found out.
****
She’d seen his eyes settle on her when she entered the Glasgow restaurant favoured by many celebrities eight months ago, and taken satisfaction when his reflection in the darkened window revealed he’d followed her progress to the table she’d booked for two.
Pinpricks of light, like starlight in the ceiling, enhanced the elite atmosphere of the room, absorbed by the scrubbed pine floor beneath the white-covered tables. Snippets of conversation ebbed and flowed around her as she followed the maître d’ to her table. The overture of cutlery against china scarcely clashed with the barely-there background music.
Melanie glanced up when the waiter drew out her chair, and ‘happened’ to meet and hold Liam’s gaze for a moment too long. His companion’s scowl didn’t go unnoticed either. She reined in the satisfied smile tugging at her lips, consulted the proffered wine list and chose a glass of light, white wine.
Several large fish tanks glowed in their settings, the backdrop of white walls emphasizing the different coloured lights in each tank. Two rows of solid floor-to-ceiling pillars of polished wood substituted the expected black metalwork usually interwoven with ivy or some other kind of creeper. She approved their clean-cut lines, their message of solidarity and purpose. Their rich, almost copper hues, contrasted vividly against the wear of years that dulled the planked flooring.
“I’ll have a roll before ordering.” Mel handed the offered menu back to the waiter. “But tell me what you think of the Arzak Inspired Local Duck Egg with Garlic Bouillon, Crispy Migas and Sherry Vinegar Jelly for a starter?”
She enjoyed a leisurely discussion on the merits of everything offered, and agreed to be guided by his suggestions before sitting back to wait for her non-existent escort.
Twenty minutes later, upholding her role of deserted pa
rtner, Mel delayed ordering her meal for another ten minutes while studying the other diners. If every time she glanced in the direction of the prince’s table she found herself drowning in the molten feral gleam in his eyes, it was hardly her fault. Politeness dictated she return his smile, while his companion pushed a lettuce leaf around her plate. Strategy demanded she make a show of glancing at her watch on several occasions.
The telephone call to her home number, her apparent disappointment, all added to the illusion of abandonment.
A stir at the prince’s table attracted the attention of several diners when the woman rose, planted her hands on the table, leaned into Prince Liam’s face, and cursed him roundly in language better fitted to the gutter, before flouncing out of the establishment.
Pinning a rueful smile on her face, Melanie caught the prince’s eye. With the lift of one eyebrow she watched him cross the room and, without permission, seat himself in the vacant chair.
Something happened in that second. Something she hadn’t anticipated, hadn’t allowed for, and hadn’t wanted.
The other occupants of the room faded away; the sound of her heartbeat replaced the elegantly subdued music and the click and swish of the restaurant. She’d known love, experienced the highs of it and the devastation when it was shot to oblivion. But she’d never experienced this instantaneous sense of connection and oneness with another person. And she didn’t need it now, especially with Prince Liam.
He held her gaze as firmly as he held her hand. She tugged it away and leaned back in her chair. When had she leaned forward? When had she allowed him to take her hand in that possessive grip? When would she retrieve her heart? A heart seemingly intent on destroying three years of careful surveillance and protection of the man now guilty of causing her such personal mayhem.
A movement to her left broke the spell, and the waiter placed the prince’s unfinished meal in front of him.
The prince dropped her hand, took up his fork and speared a tiny wedge of steak and offered it to her. His fork trembled against her bottom lip. His eyes darkened when she leaned forward and took the offering into her mouth, closing her lips over the prongs of his fork, her eyes now demanding and holding his gaze. Her heart hammered in her chest, her pulse pounded in her ears. Her hand came up and clamped his wrist. Whether in challenge for more or a demand for less she had no idea.
“Come.” His fingers curled round hers, peeling them away. He stood, query in his eyes, waiting, giving her the choice. Lost in his dark blue eyes, deep as a woodland lake, she followed her heart and rose. A part of her—the one that shunned public appearances–balked at the fascinated attention of the other diners, while another revelled in the awareness that thrummed in the air between them.
Also from Astraea Press:
Chapter One
Henry Westmoreland, the new Duke of Salle, had returned to England.
The servants had whispered about it all day. Emma tried to ignore them, but the guilty way they jumped apart from each other every time she happened upon a group of them didn’t make it easy. After running into gossiping servants in the kitchen, the dining room, and the drawing room, she finally took a novel and found a quiet corner in the library.
However, she soon found that while she could escape the household’s mutterings, she could not escape her own thoughts.
“Foolishness,” she admonished herself. “He didn’t return for you. You wouldn’t want him if he did.”
With a self-satisfied nod of her head, she turned her attention back to her book, and reread the page in front of her for the eighth time. After the tenth time, she put the novel aside with a heavy sigh. Perhaps she should go for a walk.
“Lady Emmaline,” the butler said from the doorway. “You have a caller.”
A caller? She hadn’t had a caller in over five years. Not since he left.
She stood and tried to cover her excitement. “Who is it?”
“His grace, the Duke of Salle.”
Her knees grew weak. Henry? Here? At her home? Her heart raced as she imagined what he wanted.
From the doorway, the servant watched her with barely concealed curiosity. Summoning all the inner strength she had, Emma sat back down.
“Oh.” She took her book off the table and opened it to a random page. “Please inform his grace I am indisposed.”
“My humblest apologies, my lady, but he has already conversed with your mother.”
“Of course he has,” she muttered under her breath. Whatever he was, Henry wasn’t a fool. He knew the quickest way to a single woman was through a desperate mother. Looking up at the butler, she replied, “Very well. Tell his grace I will be in shortly.”
She walked to the morning room, her mind occupied with deciding upon a plan. She would welcome him back to England. She would murmur niceties about the weather and how delighted she was to see him again. Then she would be overcome with a headache and excuse herself. She would not stare at him. She would not let his smile wipe every bit of sense out of her head. Most importantly, she would not forgive him.
He was talking with her mother, his back to the door, when she entered. Her presence remained unnoticed until her mother spied her over his shoulder.
“Emmaline. Do come in.”
Henry turned and their eyes met for the first time in over five years. Those years had been kind to him. He had grown into a man. Gone was the gangly boyishness she remembered. His eyes searched hers and she wondered what he saw. How she appeared to him since the last time they were in each other’s company.
He approached her, running a hand through his tousled blond hair, and an unsure smile on his face. His voice was thick and coarse when he spoke, nothing at all as she remembered him sounding. “Lady Emmaline.”
She dropped into a curtsy. “Your grace.” Her voice sounded calm to her ears and she lifted a silent prayer of thanks. She waved in the general direction of the couches. “Would you care to sit?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He followed and sat down once she did. Emma saw from the corner of her eye that her mother had taken a seat near the door to sew.
“Welcome back to England, your grace,” Emma said.
Over the last five years, she had played over and over in her mind what would happen if Henry ever returned from the Continent and they found themselves together. Now that it was actually happening, all her memorized lines flew straight out of her head. The only things remaining were nonsensical pleasantries.
“Thank you. It’s nice to be back.”
He had grown into an imposing man. Now that she saw him more fully, she could tell. With broad shoulders, wide chest, and head held high, he was every inch a duke.
“I was sorry to hear of your father’s passing.” She felt certain if his father hadn’t died, Henry would have remained far away from England.
“He lived a full life.”
They had become strangers over the last five years. She no longer knew him. This man who had once been her close confidant, and later her downfall, was now a stranger. It was rather sad if she thought about it long enough.
“Pleasant weather today,” she said.
“Yes, quite.”
A silence followed, so complete she thought if she listened hard enough, she could hear her mother’s needle push through the cloth.
It wasn’t just sad, though, it was painful. Sitting with him, so close yet so distant, was a mockery of all she had lost.
They spoke at the same time.
“Your grace–”
“Emmaline–”
She waved at him. “You go.”
Uncertainty crossed his expression and she wondered if he felt guilty. “I wanted to… I suppose ‘apologize’ is an understatement. I came to see how you fared. How life has been for you.”
She narrowed her eyes. The ever-present anger at her situation, the anger she usually kept under lock and key, buried deep inside her soul, started to boil.
“How do you think I fared? Was there any
doubt in your mind how life has been for me?” She leaned closer, spoke low so her mother wouldn’t hear. “I am most well, your grace. As you noticed when you entered this morning, I am not sure what to do with myself, what with all these suitors hanging around. I receive so many party and ball invitations, I’m busy every night of the week. Of course, once there, my dance card is always filled. You mustn’t concern yourself with how I’ve been.”
“Emma, I–”
“Lady Emmaline. To call me anything else would be gravely inappropriate. I wouldn’t know what to do if my reputation were to be sullied.”
“Emma. There is nothing I can do to come close to making up for what I did all those years ago. If you would allow it, though, I would like to try.”
“What would be the reason? So you can feel better about yourself? I will not allow you to use me like that.”
“I don’t wish to use you. I wish–”
“I don’t care to hear what you wish.” The anger coursed through her now.
Her mother glanced up from her sewing.
Emma took a deep breath and lowered her voice. “You may go back to your townhouse knowing I am quite well. I have accepted my place and station as a disgraced spinster. You should do the same.”
“Will you go for a ride with me tomorrow?”
She blinked several times. “What?”
“You. Me. Ride. Tomorrow.” The hint of a smile played on his mouth.
“I heard you.”
“Then why did you ask ‘what?’”
“No.”
“No, you didn’t ask me what I said?” His smile was bigger, reaching his eyes and brightening his entire face. This, this was the Henry she remembered. The light-hearted teasing one. The one she had fallen in love with.
The one who had broken her heart.
She would not allow it to happen again.
“No, I won’t go on a ride with you tomorrow.” To do so would be to open herself up, to allow herself to be vulnerable. She had done that once and look how it turned out. She was two and twenty, alone, and disgraced.