Or maybe they’d been sent to make sure the ‘gods’ didn’t try to steal anything when they left?
Thankfully, they clearly had no desire to go on the ship. When she got off the beast and told them to wait for her there, they took up guard positions.
The crew was busy getting the ship ready for take-off when she was allowed on board—by the ship’s computer, which meant they’d overlooked the need to remove her from the data banks, she supposed. There was certainly nothing about their attitudes to suggest they’d done it as a courtesy.
Ignoring the stares, she headed to her private cabin, grabbed a duffle from storage and began to gather up her belongings.
There wasn’t a hell of a lot that she’d brought with her.
She had more back at base, but she thought she probably wouldn’t be seeing that again.
Thankfully, the service didn’t encourage personnel to collect a lot of ‘things’.
Neal appeared in the doorway as she was finishing up.
He startled the fuck out of her!
He was standing in the doorway surveying the room when she turned around.
She fell back a step.
The motion caught his attention. She couldn’t tell anything about his expression, but he didn’t look as hostile as he had the last time she’d seen him.
“Collecting your stuff, I see,” he said neutrally.
Charly glanced around, mostly because she was uncomfortable, but also to give the place one last look for anything she might have missed.
It sucked that all her worldly possessions fit in one—honestly huge—duffle, but it fit.
“I think I got everything. I didn’t actually bring a lot. Weight limits, you know.”
He didn’t respond to that and after a moment she headed to the door.
He moved aside and allowed her to leave, but, to her surprise, he followed her to the outer door.
“You’re seriously going to stay … here?”
His voice was tight that time with controlled anger. Charly paused on the gang plank and looked back at him. “Yes.”
His lips tightened. “So, basically, what you’re saying is all I would’ve had to do was kidnap you, haul you off and rape you, and you would have noticed I existed?”
Charly’s jaw slid to half mast in shock—and it wasn’t just his assessment or his judgment. Anger swiftly followed. “I don’t even know how to answer that,” she snapped. “But Galen didn’t rape me, FYI.”
Neal reddened, clearly struggling with his anger. “I don’t understand … any of this.”
She did—finally—but it did nothing to mitigate her anger. “Don’t blame me for your failings, Neal! I thought we were friends. We’ve worked together for years. If you had ever made any attempt to convince me you felt more than friendship …. Well, maybe it would’ve worked out and maybe not, but it damned well isn’t my fault that you didn’t even try to take it to the next level!”
Honestly, there was no chemistry. But she might have settled for that kind of relationship before she’d met Galen.
Any less, now, would just be pathetic—not worth the effort.
He looked furious for several moments. “I thought you were focused on your career.”
“I was.”
“You couldn’t have been very focused or you wouldn’t have been so ready to throw it down the shitter!”
“I was completely dedicated. It was all I wanted. Until I met Galen. Now I want this more than I ever wanted the military career.”
She ended the conversation then and headed back to the beast she’d ridden out to the landing site. The leader of the group slid from his beast and took her duffle and then helped her up onto her beast.
She didn’t need the help, but she thanked him and held her hand out for the duffle.
He looked conflicted—like he really didn’t want to give it to her—but he handed it over, finally, reluctantly.
Charly immediately suspected that he’d wanted to go through it and report back to Galen. It seemed to be what the country ran on—information gathered like gossip—except that it was vital to them that they get it absolutely correct.
Then again, they had no electronics. They couldn’t do scans to learn these things—use computers and cameras and listening devices and trackers. They had to do it the old fashioned way.
* * * *
Even over such an immense distance, it was no great strain to pick Charlotte out of the group. She was nearly as tall as the men he’d sent to guard her, but it was the way she carried herself that really made her stand out in his mind.
That and her beautiful hair.
Enough tension slipped from Galen as he watched her mount the beast to return to the castle that he felt almost faint.
He gripped the stone parapet where he stood watching hard, welcoming the pain that poured into him through his fingertips when it jolted him back to a sense of his surroundings, pushed back the shock that had made him feel weak and ill.
The woman was going to kill him, he thought angrily.
He had not believed that she had changed her mind when she had seemed so set in what she did and did not want. Even when she had accompanied his father upon his return, he had thought she had been sent, that she was merely performing her duty.
His father had told him that she had come back to him, but he did not trust that.
His father had changed since he had fallen ill.
He had become sentimental.
He supposed that was what standing at the gates of death did to one, particularly when one had made their way there through a prolonged illness.
A swift death left no time for reflection or regrets.
He was not ready to believe and trust even now, he realized.
He had never experienced such pain in his life before and it had made a coward of him.
He could not bring himself to open his heart again to the possibility of another such a wound.
“But if you do not,” his father had said, “then there is no hope for you and none for Goddess Charlotte.”
That statement tore at him—tore at his desires and his doubts.
Mayhap, he thought in self disgust, he should find his balls and give her the chance to finish what she’d begun?
If he was not willing to take the risk, then he was condemning all of them to a life of unhappiness.
Chapter Fifteen
Charly wasn’t used to suffering ‘girly’ emotions. She’d pretty much set those aside once she’d finished going through puberty because she hadn’t had the good fortune to be born beautiful, thin, tiny and feminine—in other words, perfect.
She’d had crushes in school like every other young girl, and she’d run the full gamut of emotions from fantasies that had arisen from those crushes. But the boys had pretty much ‘beat’ that out of her with their cruel concepts of humor.
By graduation, she’d turned her focus to other things out of a sense of self-preservation.
And then she’d decided to join the Star-Troopers and see the universe and, once that decision had been made, she’d just focused on being a soldier.
That was ok.
Because just being ok was acceptable for a soldier.
It didn’t matter that she was half a head taller than most of the other female recruits—even than some of the males.
It didn’t matter that she was a little on the doughy side. She’d just barely squeezed in with her weight, but she’d made it!
And now—if she’d been back on Earth—she was actually a good size.
Still not perfect, but she wasn’t doughy anymore. She was athletic.
She didn’t have a fantastic self-image, but she’d certainly developed a healthier one since she’d joined.
But no crushes.
She hadn’t avoided men.
She just hadn’t allowed herself to think in terms of attachment, or relationship. And that had spared her the emotional roller coasters she’d ridden for years.
Until Galen.
/> As unreal as it still felt, it seemed that he had looked at her as a man and seen a woman he desired.
And just like the snap of fingers, he’d opened the door to the things she thought she’d shut away forever.
Staring at her reflection, she sighed a sigh of disgust.
“I should just wear my uniform,” she muttered. That at least looked ‘right’. The gown she’d bought and had modified to fit looked like hell and she looked like shit in it.
“This will really catch his attention,” she said dryly, wondering, now, if it was even possible.
She damned well wasn’t a quitter, though!
He couldn’t like her as much as it had seemed—not just to her, but also to his father—and then just stop.
Just because they’d had a little difference of opinion!
Resentment rose up to harden her resolve.
He had no right to get pissed off with her and stay mad when he’d done such an underhanded thing, damn it!
She supposed, given the fact that she’d drank that damned wine and had diarrhea of the mouth and gone on and on about how sexy he was, that he’d gotten ‘mixed signals’ there about her willingness to participate.
But, damn it! He had to know she didn’t know he could understand! He should have realized that she was just mouthing off.
Ok. So she really did think he was the sexiest man alive!
If he’d manhandled her right then and dragged her to his room to have his way with her she wouldn’t have objected and she wouldn’t have regretted a minute of it.
But she also wouldn’t have flushed her career down the toilet.
She might have been sad to go and leave the wonder wand and the beautiful man attached to it, but she would’ve gone … with probably few backward glances.
Because she’d had no expectation of more, damn it!
She shook the thoughts.
They weren’t helping her prepare herself for the ‘battle’ she had in front of her.
And neither was the damned gown.
It looked like a frigging sack!
It started with an under dress that was basically shapeless and then there was the over dress—also pretty much shapeless. And finally there was the Nansen, which basically looked like an over the shoulder sleeveless apron and provided the only shape to the damned outfit by way of the under the tit sewn in sash that was attached in front and loose and tied at the back.
The woven fabric it was made of was actually very nice. The under gown was a plain ‘sort of’ white—she supposed because the laundry was done by people labor. The over gown was heavy with an all over design created with some kind of beads that must have taken forty forevers to achieve given they were sewn on one at the time. And the Nansen was died to match the primary color of the under-gown—a rich, dark red that, she thought, looked absolutely stunning with her coloring.
The overall effect, though, was of a begowned man.
Because her damned hair was cut in a military cut and shorter even that Galen’s—way shorter.
And she was damned near as tall as the Oloote men.
“Don’t think about it,” she cautioned herself. “Just do it.”
Turning away from the reflecting glass, her gaze ‘hung’ for several seconds on the panel that hid the secret passage.
She’d been given the same room she’d occupied before. She’d had way more time on her hands than she was used to, but she hadn’t spent it examining the room from top to bottom. It had flickered through her mind, several times since, to wonder how Galen had managed to get into her room with no one discovering it. But in her wildest imaginings, it hadn’t occurred to her that there might be a secret passage!
She would never have found it if whoever had used it last had closed it properly, but it looked as if they’d left quickly and the panel hadn’t caught.
She was actually surprised she’d even noticed it, because it had been closed. It just hadn’t been completely, smoothly aligned. It had stuck out just enough that her eyes had caught the ‘bump’.
It had surprised and intrigued her when she went over to it and discovered a narrow passage behind it.
So naturally, she’d explored it.
That was when she’d discovered it connected with the king’s chamber and one chamber between hers and the king’s—Galen’s.
It was old.
The whole castle was ancient.
There was no telling what the original design had been for, but she was instantly certain that was how Galen had gotten into her room the night he took her.
And just as convinced that he’d come in while she was gone, that it was Galen that had not completely closed the door to the passage.
Either because he wanted her to know it was there or because something had prompted him to hurry away and he hadn’t been careful when he’d closed it.
She was leaning toward the former theory, though.
She doubted many knew about it and it was even less likely that someone had gone into Galen’s room, or the king’s, to access the secret passage and gone into her room.
She thought.
It didn’t unnerve her out to think Galen might have been watching, or that he’d thought about sneaking into her bed.
It gave her hope.
But days passed and there was no Galen surprising her and slipping into her bed at night.
So she’d moved a piece of furniture in front of the panel.
Well, she’d actually done that immediately. She’d just moved it when it occurred to her that Galen might slip into her bed.
It occurred to her that the passage went both ways.
Maybe it had been intentional?
Maybe he had only come down the passage and left it so she could find it … And maybe find her way to his room?
Because she had rejected him and his offer and it was up to her to make up?
The thought caused an instant leap in her pulse.
But did she dare?
What if she’d made up the entire scenario in her head and it was nothing more than … maybe a shift in the building that had caused the door to pop open by itself?
Shaking her head at herself, she left the room and headed to the Great Hall where the festivities, by the sounds, were just gearing up.
She turned heads.
She wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing, but, thankfully, it was something she didn’t noticed until she was more than halfway down the stairs or she might have rolled to the bottom. As it was, she stepped slowly and carefully from one stair to the next, holding the gown out of the way so it couldn’t trip her and it wasn’t until she paused to look out over the hall to discover, if she could, where Galen was that she discovered instead that she had the attention of the entire room.
Fuck!
In the sea of faces, she finally made eye contact with Galen and it was suddenly as if the two of them were the only people there.
It was for her, anyway.
She couldn’t tell anything about his thoughts, but after a brief hesitation, he parted the crowd and headed straight toward her.
All she had to do was make it the rest of the way down the stairs without tripping and rolling to the bottom!
Girding herself, she clutched the railing in a white knuckled fist and her skirts with the other and looked down at the next step, and then the next.
Galen was standing at the bottom, his hand lifted in a gesture of welcome when she reached it. Feeling as if she was floating on a cloud, she reached for his hand, placed hers in the comforting warmth.
He carried her hand to his elbow, tucked it there, and escorted her back across the room.
She was more grateful for that than besotted at that point, feeling weak and dizzy from the breathlessness that assailed her the moment she met his gaze.
They’d reached the dais where the table was set for the royal family before she realized that he hadn’t said a word to her, that he was stiffly formal.
Her ‘high’ c
rashed.
She took a deep breath as he helped her into her seat and adjusted the chair, undecided of whether to be glad or deeply sorry when he settled right beside her.
This was going to be damned uncomfortable, she realized in dismay.
They were on display, elevated above the rest of the people like they were on a stage.
So if they didn’t get along, or had a dispute, it was going to be fodder for the castle gossip—which she was sure was no worse than the gossip vine onboard a ship or at a base, but she hadn’t found herself the center of any salacious scandals … previously.
Of course, they would speculate anyway if they were cold to one another—probably already were since she was a captive bride, she realized unhappily.
There was worse to come.
She discovered that Prince Damek had come to join the festivities to celebrate his father’s return. It made sense, of course, that he would, but he’d left the castle after Galen was appointed Prince Regent and been absent when she’d escorted the king home.
She hadn’t expected to see him and she hadn’t had the chance to brace herself for the uncomfortable first meeting since he’d told everyone he would take her as his bride.
Chapter Sixteen
Charly managed to drink just enough of the wine to bolster her courage to execute the plan she’d devised over of the course of the celebration without, she hoped, compromising her judgment. She paced the room when she got back to her chamber, waiting for the sounds in the castle to slowly grow quiet as the occupants settled for the night one by one. Finally, when she couldn’t stand the suspense of waiting anymore, she discarded her clothing down to the panties and t-shirt she’d worn beneath the party dress, moved the furniture she’d parked in front of the secret door and tiptoed down the corridor to the door to Galen’s room. She paused there, listening.
There were no sounds.
At all.
The room might have been completely unoccupied and that in itself gave her pause.
Not that she was could say that she was intimately acquainted with many men, but those she’d been around tended to snore in their sleep. Some made almost no noise at all, but breathed ‘heavily’ and others sounded like a grizzly bear, but she didn’t remember any that just quietly slept.
The Barbarians: Stolen Bride Page 9