37 Her Highness and the Bodyguard Read online

  His words kept playing through her head. “I love you. I’ve always loved you....” The exact words she had so longed to hear him say on the steps of that deserted farmhouse six years ago.

  How dare he say them now? Her heart raced in sick fury at the very idea.

  Which had her bending close to the bowl all over again.

  “Ma’am?” It was Yvonne, her housekeeper, hovering in the doorway to the bedroom, her voice low with worry. “What can I do?”

  “Some crackers. A glass of water...”

  Yvonne helped her up a few minutes later. She led her to the bedroom and made her comfortable in her favorite slipper chair, with the glass of water and the plate of plain crackers on the small table beside her. Then she knelt and helped Rhia off with her sandals.

  “Thank you,” Rhia said. “Have Elda prepare me a tray. Something light, in an hour or so?”

  “I will, ma’am. Anything else for now?”

  Rhia shook her head. “No. That will do.”

  An hour later, when Yvonne brought in the tray, Rhia was able to eat most of her meal. She went to bed early but didn’t sleep well.

  She kept thinking about that look on Marcus’s face when he left her. A look of purest determination.

  The irony of the situation did not escape her. Marcus seemed as single-mindedly set on marrying her now as he’d once been determined never to speak to her again. She knew she hadn’t heard the last of this from him.

  She considered making the first move, calling him again, asking him if they might talk it over a little more in the hopes that they would manage to come to some sort of understanding between them. But she didn’t really see how more talking was going to do either of them any good. Not until she had a new approach to the problem. Not until she felt she had a way to make him see what a bad choice it would be, to marry only because there was a child on the way.

  Marcus had always been so determined to do the right thing as he saw it. He had no idea what went into a real marriage, had never seen one up close. The fact of the marriage itself seemed the main thing to him, that their child have married parents. He didn’t know there could be so much more. He didn’t understand that she wanted a chance at a real marriage, at a true partnership.

  If she couldn’t have that, she wasn’t sure she could ever bring herself to marry at all—well, not at this point in her life, anyway. She supposed in a few years, when the specter of the marriage law loomed, she might change her tune.

  Time would tell about that. What she did know was that she wasn’t marrying Marcus just because there was a baby coming. She had loved him too much once to settle for less than real, true love now.

  Chapter Seven

  Rhia went to Alice’s villa that night and told her sister everything. Allie was wonderful. She hugged Rhia good and tight and told her what she needed to hear: that everything would work out fine.

  Sunday was Father’s Day. Rhia went to the palace for dinner with her family in the sovereign’s private apartment. She gave her father a small oil painting by one of his favorite Texas artists. He thanked her with a hug and a warm, approving smile. Her father had always made her feel loved and appreciated—which for some reason brought Marcus’s cruel words of the other day to mind. He had said that she was blind and proud and thoughtless. That her parents doted on her and she took their love for granted.

  Her father tipped her chin up. “Is there something the matter, sweetheart?”

  She looked into his eyes and thought how handsome and good he was. She was almost tempted to tell him about the baby right then. But no. The family celebration of her father’s special day was hardly the time to go into all that. So she only answered, “Just a little...wistful, I guess.”

  He chuckled. “Wistful. It’s a word that might mean just about anything.”

  “Thoughtful. Pensive. Will those do?”

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  She shook her head. “Happy Father’s Day. I love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  “You’re my favorite father in the whole world.”

  “Well, considering I’m the only one you’ve got, I should certainly hope so.”

  They went in to eat shortly after that. Allie took the chair next to her. “I checked,” she teased, leaning close. “No asparagus on the menu.”

  “Whew. I just might get through this meal without bolting for the loo.”

  They laughed together.

  Overall, it was a lovely evening. Rhia watched her parents fondly—and with more of the wistfulness she’d confessed to her father. Her parents had been married for thirty-six years, yet sometimes they still behaved like newlyweds, sharing tender glances and, at least when it was only the family, touching often.

  Her brother Rule and his wife, Sydney, were the same. When they looked at each other, it was obvious to everyone that they were in perfect accord. Max had been like that with his wife, Sophia. Now, three years after Sophia’s death in a water-skiing accident, Max still seemed at loose ends without her. He had that faraway look in his eye, as though he’d lost what mattered most and didn’t know how to get along without it. Alex and his wife, Lili, and their twins were in Lili’s country, Alagonia, that night. But they were every bit as well matched and happy with each other as the other married members of Rhia’s family. The Montana newlyweds, Belle and Preston, were the same.

  No. Rhia wouldn’t settle for less than what her parents and brothers and sister had found. She refused to settle for less. Did that really make her blind and proud and thoughtless?

  Allie leaned close again. “You have that look. You know it, right?”

  “Look? What look?”

  “Stricken, sad and torn apart. Mother and Father are watching you.”

  “I’m just not ready to tell them about it yet.”

  “Then perk up and pretend you’re having a good time.”

  * * *

  Monday came. Rhia dragged herself to the museum to work. Tuesday was the same. And Wednesday, as well.

  She kept expecting to hear from Marcus. After all, he’d made it painfully clear that he did not accept her refusal to marry him. She dreaded their next meeting at the same time as she wished they might somehow get it over with.

  But he didn’t call or try to get in touch with her.

  She told herself that was good thing. Maybe he was reconsidering. Maybe he was learning to accept that a marriage between them was not going to happen.

  * * *

  By Thursday, after thinking the situation through from every angle, Marcus was deeply discouraged. He prided himself on being resourceful and focused and capable of strategizing effectively to accomplish any given goal. But every time he tried to plan how to get Rhia to see the grievous error in her decision not to marry him, he came up short.

  He had known the truth the other night, when she told him about the baby and then flatly refused his offer of marriage: she had the power. He didn’t. She had the wealth and the position and she simply didn’t care if the tabloids said hateful things about her. She wouldn’t listen to reason and she had no point of weakness he might exploit in order to further his suit.

  The situation was dire.

  And his powerlessness wore on him. It brought the truth all the more sharply home. The awful irony was not lost on him. She could refuse him now for all of the very valid reasons he had walked away from her before. She was above him and he had nothing to offer her.

  The basic questions dogged him, dragging him down. What kind of man was he, if he wasn’t going to find a way to claim his own child? If he couldn’t make certain that his child didn’t grow up a bastard like his father before him?

  The answer to those questions was simple and clear. If he couldn’t claim his child, he was not a man at all.

  Finally, by that Thursday morning, he was desperate enough to accept that he needed input. He needed someone he could trust to help him find the solution that had so far eluded him.

  He we
nt to visit his old mentor, the former captain of the Sovereign’s Guard, Sir Hector Anteros. Sir Hector, barrel-chested and gray-haired, owned a small house on a quiet cobbled street not far from the shops and open market of the Rue St. Georges. Sir Hector was an old bachelor, recently retired. But the members of the guard and even His Highness Alexander still consulted him on matters that concerned the safety and security of the princely family and of the country itself.

  Hector ushered Marcus into his tiny living room and served him bad espresso. Then he sat in his big, tattered easy chair, his feet propped on a faded ottoman, sipping, and said not a word while Marcus confessed that he’d had sex with a member of the princely family entrusted to his care—and gotten Her Highness pregnant in the process.

  “Is that everything?” Hector asked when Marcus was done.

  Marcus decided that the secrets of the past didn’t bear digging up right then. “Everything you need to know, yes.”

  Hector grunted. “Everything you’re willing to tell me, you mean.”

  “Yes. That’s right.”

  “You should probably be drummed out of the guard and the CCU.”

  “I realize that.”

  “Followed by disembowelment and a nice drawing and quartering.”

  “I agree,” Marcus bleakly replied. “But that’s not why I came to you.”

  “What is your intention?”

  “To marry her. No child of mine will grow up without my name, without the clear and certain knowledge that I claimed him in the way that matters most.”

  “Did you propose to her?”

  “I did. She won’t have me.”

  Hector found that amusing, apparently. He chuckled and sipped from his demitasse. “Why should she? What do you have to offer her?”

  “That’s the problem. Nothing but my willingness to be a husband to her and a father to the child. And my name. Such as it is.” There’d been no indication of what his birth name might be when he was discovered as a newborn on the steps of the Cathedral of Our Lady of Sorrows. So he’d been named Marcus after the priest who found him and Desmarais for one of the wealthy men who endowed St. Stephen’s Orphanage. The nuns told him that the couple who adopted him had called him by their last name, but when they gave him up, his name was changed back to Desmarais.

  “But Her Highness is having none of you, eh?” Hector’s eyes twinkled merrily.

  “Are you going to help me or not?”

  “Perhaps you ought to try courting her, showering her with flowers and expensive chocolates, with poetry and romantic evenings à deux. You ought to put your mind to convincing her of your love and undying devotion.”

  “I told her I love her. It didn’t go over well. I’m no Romeo. You know that. And so does she.”

  “Then what you need is mercy, my son. The mercy of Her Sovereign Highness and Prince Evan.”

  The light dawned. “Rhiannon cares about their good opinion. She will listen to them....”

  “If you still have your head by the time that they summon her.” There was more chuckling.

  “You’re enjoying this far too much, old man.”

  “The older I get, the more life amuses me. I have some hope that you will be allowed to keep that head of yours. After all, from the beginning, ever since you were a scrubby little urchin at St. Stephen’s, Her Sovereign Highness has had a soft spot for you and your burning desire to grow up and be a soldier for your country.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it? That Her Sovereign Highness has kept me in good regard. That could work in my favor.”

  Hector made a humphing sound. “I will contact the princess’s palace secretary on your behalf and arrange an audience for you.”

  “It must be soon. And if you could arrange for it to be a private audience...”

  Hector waved a beefy hand. “You’re hardly in a position to be making demands.”

  “They’re not demands. They are...urgent requests.”

  * * *

  The following Monday, Marcus received a call from HSH Adrienne’s secretary. He was summoned to a private audience with the sovereign the next day at ten-fifteen in the morning. Somehow, Hector had managed to get him exactly what he’d asked for—and damn swiftly, too.

  He went to see his mentor a second time to thank him.

  Hector gave him more bitter espresso and ribbed him mercilessly about the likelihood that he would end up separated from his head. Marcus tried to take heart from the teasing. He told himself that Hector would hardly be so gleeful over the situation if he believed that Marcus’s position was truly dire.

  Then again, death wasn’t the only penalty that could be considered dire. He could keep his head, but be thrown out of the guard and the CCU, thus losing everything he’d worked his whole life to gain. He could keep his head and be sent away in disgrace. There were any number of punishments short of actual death that he might be sentenced to endure. And how would he claim Rhiannon as his bride, how would he give his child his name, if he lost everything and was banished from his homeland?

  In his heart, he believed he deserved whatever he got. At the same time, he knew he would crawl through hot coals naked on his hands and knees if he could only find a way to marry Rhiannon and claim his child.

  Wearing his best dress uniform, his mouth as dry as the Sahara at midday, his belly in a thousand knots, Marcus was waiting in the luxurious anteroom to the sovereign’s office at 10:00 a.m. At ten-fifteen on the nose, Her Highness’s secretary ushered him through the gilded doors to HSH Adrienne’s private office.

  The sovereign sat behind her giant, heavily carved antique desk at the other end of the large, magnificently appointed room. The secretary announced him.

  HSH Adrienne glanced up with a warm smile. She wore a simple white dress with short sleeves and she was, as always, stunningly beautiful. With those mysterious black eyes that seemed to know all and high, proud cheekbones and a wide, full mouth that would have made a movie star proud. She was in her mid-fifties, but looked so much younger—or maybe not younger. Ageless. A goddess of a woman. The most beautiful in all the world. Or so he’d always believed.

  Until he met Rhiannon.

  His throat locked up at the sight of her. And he was eight years old again and she was wearing a dress of Christmas red, smiling down at him so kindly, calling him by his given name, asking him how he was doing and if he still planned to grow up and join the Sovereign’s Guard.

  “Oh, yes, Your Highness. I want to be a soldier. I want to guard you always and to keep you safe.”

  Her smile grew even warmer, if that was possible. “Well, we shall just have to see about that, won’t we, Marcus?”

  “Oh, yes, please, ma’am.”

  “You must be a very good boy and work hard at your studies and do what the sisters tell you to do.”

  “I will, ma’am. I vow it.”

  And then the most wonderful thing happened. So lightly, her smooth, slim hand settled on the top of his head. His heart felt as though it might explode in his chest.

  A moment later, she took her hand away and moved on.

  Now, all these years later, she spoke as kindly to him as she had when he was eight. “Captain Desmarais, how lovely to see you. You are looking well.”

  He didn’t feel especially well. His stomach gushed acid and his pulse thundered in his ears. He remained where the secretary had left him, near the door. Too late, he remembered to salute. “Your Sovereign Highness. Thank you.”

  She rose from her enormous carved chair with its lush red velvet back. “Come in. Let’s sit down.”

  She gestured at a grouping of fine antique wing chairs and a long velvet sofa near the side wall. And then she went over there.

  He realized she intended for him to sit down with her.

  Yes. All right. He could do that.

  Stiffly, he approached. He waited until she had perched on the sofa and indicated one of the wing chairs. “Have a chair.”

  His hat under his arm, he went ov
er there, slid in front of the chair and made himself sit in it, though the last thing he’d ever thought he would allow himself to do was to sit in the presence of his sovereign. “Thank you.”

  “What can I do for you, Captain? Sir Hector Anteros did tell me it was a matter of importance.”

  “Ma’am, I...” The words ran out. He had a careful speech planned and agonizingly memorized. But every last word of it had fled his panicked brain.

  She tipped her head and studied him. Even in his desperate and determined misery, he knew it for a kind and gentle regard. “Please. Do speak frankly.”

  His throat had locked up. He had to cough into his hand to clear it. And then, somehow, he managed to ask, “Ma’am, if I might stand?”

  She nodded. “Of course. If you wish.”

  He shot to his feet, locked his knees and snapped ramrod-straight. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  She nodded again. And she waited.

  For a moment, he knew absolutely that he wouldn’t be able to say what he’d come to say. But then he made himself think of the child. Of what had to be done, no matter the cost to him, no matter that this woman he revered above all would surely revile him, no matter that Rhiannon would likely never forgive him for going behind her back like this over an issue that was rightfully hers to broach to her mother at the time and place of her choosing.

  He realized it was better, it was almost bearable, now that he stood at attention. The speech he’d so painstakingly rehearsed returned to him. “Ma’am, it is with great shame and consternation that I come to you today. I have done something unforgivable and been woefully remiss in my duty to our country, to your princely person and the princely family.”

  HRH Adrienne blinked. She appeared somewhat alarmed. “My goodness. Certainly it can’t be as bad as all that.”

  “Oh, ma’am. It is. I have...that is, two months ago, when I was assigned as security to Her Highness Rhiannon for the wedding and wedding party of Her Highness Arabella...two months ago, when we were, er, stranded overnight together, we, er...” The words flew away again. He was making a complete balls-up of this interview and he knew it all too well.