Capturing the Crown Bundle

Chapter 3

“So that’s how you got in,” Amelia finally said, finding her tongue.

Strangely enough, the air was not uncomfortable, but it had grown far too still between them. And she found herself feeling things. Things that, at any other time, she would have welcomed, would have enjoyed exploring, things she had never felt before, had only thought about. But feelings like this, if allowed to flourish, to unfold, would only get in the way of her obligations.

She suddenly felt a great deal older than her twenty-six years.

“That’s how I got in,” the tall, handsome man at her side confirmed needlessly.

They had begun to walk back to the palace, to the world where their lives were, for the most part, completely laid out for them. Where obligations constricted freedom and feelings were forced by the wayside. All that mattered were boundaries.

“I had to do a lot of stooping,” Russell continued. His mouth curved as he spared her a glance. “The passageway beneath the garden to the palace is a great deal smaller than I remembered.”

Amelia paused for a moment, reluctant to leave the shelter of the garden. Here, for a fleeting amount of time, she could pretend to be anyone she wanted to be.

Banking down her thoughts, Amelia began to walk again as she smiled at Russell. “You’re a lot bigger than you were then.” And you’ve filled out, she added silently.

“I suppose,” he allowed with a self-deprecating laugh she found endearing as well as stirring. “Funny how you never really think of yourself as changing.”

Moving to one side, he held the terrace door open for her. Amelia looked up into his face as she entered the palace. “Is that a warning?”

His eyebrows drew together over a nose that could only be described as perfect. Entering behind her, he closed the French doors. “I don’t follow.”

Amelia led the way to the rear staircase. As before, she kept her path to the shadows that pooled along the floor. The palace seemed empty, but that was just an illusion. There were more than a hundred people on the premises.

Though she sincerely doubted that Russell didn’t understand her meaning, she played along. “Should I be looking over my shoulder for water balloons?”

Cupping her elbow, he escorted her up the stairs. Perfectly capable of climbing them on her own, she still enjoyed the unconscious show of chivalry, not to mention the contact. It was hard to believe that this was the same mischievous, dark-eyed youth who’d simultaneously tortured her and filled her daydreams.

“The water balloons were never over your shoulder,” Russell pointed out as they came to the landing. “They were always dropped from overhead.” His mouth curved a little more on the right than on the left. “I’m sorry about that.”

Amelia tilted her head and looked into his eyes. They were the color of warm chocolate. How strange that she could pick up the thread so easily, as if no time had gone by at all since his last visit. As if more than twelve years had merely melted away into the mists that sometimes surrounded the island kingdom and they were children again.

“No, you’re not.”

She was rewarded with the rich sound of his laugh as it echoed down the long, winding hallway lined with portraits of her ancestors. They seemed to approve of him, she thought.

“All right, maybe I wasn’t,” Russell admitted. “Then,” he quickly qualified. “But I am now.” He saw her raise her delicate eyebrows in a silent query. And just for the tiniest of moments, he had an overwhelming urge to trace the arches with the tip of his finger. He squelched it. “I frightened you.”

“You made me jumpy,” Amelia corrected, then in case that would arouse some kind of unwanted pity, she quickly added, “You also made me strong.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

With the grace of a princess trained at putting others at ease, Amelia slipped her arm through his and urged him down the hallway. If her heart sped up just a little bit at the contact, well, that was a secret bonus she kept to herself.

“Because of you, I became disgusted with myself. With being a mouse.”

“You were thirteen.”

“I was a mouse,” she repeated, then added with the loftiness that befitted her station, “I resolved to be a tigress.”

Russell looked at her for a long moment. “A tigress, eh?” At first, he’d thought of her as too sweet, too innocent. But there was something in her eyes, something about the way she carried herself. Maybe the image was not as far-fetched as it initially seemed.

He felt his blood stirring again and this time upbraided himself. He had no business reacting like this to his future queen.

“A tigress,” she repeated with a lift of her head. “I pleaded with my father to get me trainers, not just for my mind, but for my body.”

Short on water balloons, Russell sought refuge in humor. “So that you could flip intruders who crossed your path?”

Her eyes danced. “Exactly.”

Another woman, he thought, might have taken insult just now. While he had his doubts about the kind of king Reginald would ultimately make, he was beginning to feel that at least Silvershire’s future queen was a woman who did not take herself too seriously. That spoke of a magnanimous ruler.

He laughed softly under his breath. “Judging from the way that ended up, I’d say you need a little more training.”

“I’ll work on it.”

They had come to a split in the hallway. Her rooms were on the far end at the right. The guest quarters were in the opposite direction, on another floor. It wouldn’t seem proper for her to walk him to his room, even though she found herself wanting to. Rules, always rules, she thought impatiently, chafing inwardly.

She forced a smile to her lips. “I’ll have someone show you to your quarters.”

“No need. I’ve already settled in.” Russell saw the protest rising to her lips and knew just what she was going to say. “I assumed that I would be staying in the same quarters I occupied the last time I was here.”

What had been adequate for the boy was not so for the man. She was surprised that he wouldn’t know that. “Actually, my father had left instructions for a suite of rooms to be prepared for you.”

But Russell shook his head. “The room I’m in will do just fine. I don’t need a suite of rooms,” he told her. “After all, I’m only going to be here long enough for you to gather together your entourage.” Since she’d been forewarned, he assumed that would only take her perhaps a day.

“My entourage,” she echoed. The term made her want to laugh as she imagined traveling about with an entire tribe of ladies-in-waiting trailing after her. The very idea made her feel trapped, hemmed in. And she was experiencing enough of that already without adding to it.

“You mean Madeline.” Madeline Carlyle was the Duke of Forsythe’s youngest daughter. With fiery red hair and a fiery spirit to match, Madeline was the perfect companion in her opinion. Madeline could always be counted on to tell her the truth.

Russell looked at her, mildly surprised. “Madeline? Just the one companion?”

“Just the one.”

Russell paused to regard her with deepening interest. Princess Amelia was certainly different from the man she was betrothed to, he thought. Reginald never went anywhere without at least a dozen people in tow. The prince had a hunger for an accommodating, accepting audience observing his every move.

“What about a bodyguard?”

Unconsciously rocking forward on her toes, Amelia raised her eyes to his, unaware of how terribly appealing she looked. “I expect that would be you.”

There was something about the way she looked at him that stirred things deep within him. It made him want to stand in the way of an oncoming bus just to protect her.

It also made him want to tell her to turn and flee before it was too late. Before Reginald had an opportunity to defile her.

But he couldn’t say that. Couldn’t warn her in any way. His duty, first and foremost, was to his king, to his country and to his prince. Not to a princess from another kingdom. The fact that his duty was elsewhere stuck in his throat.

After a beat he finally replied quietly, “That would be me. I suppose that means there won’t be much ‘gathering’ involved.”

“I suppose not.”

Amelia tried not to think of what she was saying. Of what her words actually meant. That she was leaving Gastonia, leaving everything she loved for a man she didn’t. For a man she didn’t even like.

With just the faintest inclination of his head, Russell bowed. It was time to take his leave before he forgot himself and misspoke. “Until the morning, then.”

“Until the morning,” she echoed.

She stood there for a long moment, watching the man who had become the Duke of Carrington, who would always be the boy who reveled in ambushing her with water balloons and bugs, walk down the hall. Away from her.

She didn’t know what to do with the emptiness inside.

“We can’t leave.”

Those were the first words Amelia uttered in greeting him the following morning as she swept into the dining room. Rather than take his breakfast in the formal dining room, Russell had chosen to take his first meal in Gastonia in the palace’s informal dining room, the one that only sat twenty people instead of fifty.

Preoccupied with his thoughts, with disturbing dreams that all centered around Amelia and the marriage that was to be, Russell hadn’t even heard her enter. He rose quickly to his feet now in acknowledgment of her presence. They might be friends of a sort, but there were traditions to honor and he had been trained long and well in them.

Taking a seat, Amelia waved for him to sit down again. Since the king had yet to arrive at the palace, she sat at the head of the table. Russell was to her right. Having him there made the room seem oddly intimate, despite its size.

Instead of exchanging obligatory small talk, Russell picked up the conversation she’d started up as she’d entered the room. “By leave, are you referring to leaving the palace, Princess?”

“No, the country,” she corrected.

He looked confused. And sweetly adorable. Did he accompany Reginald when the prince made his endless rounds at the various clubs where they knew him by sight rather than reputation? Was Russell just as eager as the prince to have women pour themselves all over him?

That’s not supposed to matter, she reminded herself sternly.

But she went on wondering.

“Madeline is ill,” she explained, “and I won’t leave without her.”

Amelia’s position seemed reasonable enough to him, seeing as his assignment had been to bring back the princess and “her entourage.” Curiosity prompted him to ask, “What’s wrong with her?”

“Madeline has always had a passion for exotic foods.” She spread the gleaming white linen napkin on her lap. “Sometimes that’s not such a good thing.” Madeline was up for anything; when they were children, Madeline was the one who could be counted on to swallow a bug whole to discover what it tasted like. “Something she ate yesterday didn’t agree with her. From what she told me, she’d been up all night, reacquainting her knees with the tile on her bathroom floor. The doctor gave her something. Depending on how she feels, she might not be able to travel for at least two, perhaps three days.” She watched his expression for signs of irritation.

But Russell took it in stride and nodded his head. “I’ll inform King Weston to have the tubas put in storage for a few days,” he deadpanned.

“Tubas?”

The somber expression vanished as he flashed a grin. She caught herself thinking that he had a delicious smile. “You didn’t think you could enter Silvershire without a parade, did you?”

A parade. Amelia groaned inwardly. “I thought you hated the spotlight.”

“I do. But it won’t be shining on me,” he pointed out. “The parade is for you.”

She would just as soon have it canceled. But she knew that was asking for too much. Fanfare was something that was required by the people. And something, she had learned, that had to be borne with quiet, resigned dignity.

On impulse, Amelia leaned in toward him, lowering her voice even though there were only the two of them in the room, not counting the man whose duty it was to serve the meal. “I’ll let you in on a secret. I don’t like fanfare, either.”

A breeze from somewhere brought just the subtlest whiff of her perfume to him, teasing his senses. Russell did his best to ignore it, succeeding only moderately.

“Must be hell for you, then,” he commented with sympathy.

“At times,” she acknowledged.

Feeling comforted by the fact that her departure was postponed for at least two days, and just a tad guilty that her unexpected boon was due to Madeline’s misery, Amelia nodded toward the palace servant who stood unobtrusively at the ready. Words were not necessary. She’d had the same thing for breakfast for the last three years. Three slices of French toast. The man slipped away to bring it to her.

Feeling progressively more cheerful by the moment, Amelia let impulse continue to guide her. “Since we’re not going away, I’ve decided to take you sightseeing.”

He was surprised by the offer. And pleased. He’d assumed that he’d be left to his own devices until departure. This promised to be a great deal more entertaining than the book he’d brought along.

“Oh, you have, have you?”

The servant returned with her plate and placed it before her before deftly standing back. Amelia offered the older man a smile of thanks before continuing. “Yes, I have.”

“Is that a royal decree?”

She couldn’t read his expression. It was completely inscrutable. Had she been too quick to judge him so favorably? Or was he just teasing her, the way he used to? “Does it have to be?”

He thought of stretching out the moment. He liked the way her eyes widened when she seemed confused. But it wasn’t fair to her and besides, he had no business placing things on anything but a respectful footing. They weren’t children anymore.

Maybe that was just the problem, he thought. They weren’t children anymore. And he was having some definitely unchildlike feelings about her.

Tread lightly here, Carrington, he cautioned himself. This is going to be your queen, not your consort.

“No,” he answered. Then, because he’d been on more than one tour during his visits here, he added, “I’d love to see your country through the eyes of an adult.”

She gave her own interpretation to his answer. “Then you have given up dropping water balloons?”

Amelia slipped the fork between her lips. Finding the action arousing, Russell forced himself to look away. “Why do you keep bringing that up?”

Slim shoulders rose and then fell again in a careless motion. “Once burnt, twice shy…”

He didn’t bother to suppress the laugh that rose in his throat. “As I remember it, it was a few more times than once.”

That it was, she thought. “Twenty-three times to be exact.”

Mild surprise highlighted his features as he looked at her. “You kept score.”

“I did.”

His eyes met hers. He saw humor there. “Should I be worried?”

She deliberately took a few bites of her breakfast before leaning in his direction and saying, “Be afraid, Carrington. Be very afraid.”

Though neither one of them had planned it initially, they wound up spending the entire day together. Acting as his guide, Amelia took him to two museums, one devoted to art, the other to history. Though neither had ever really interested him, Russell discovered that, seen through her eyes, both had a great deal to offer. In between, she took him to one of Gastonia’s many parks for an impromptu picnic lunch.

“I’m not the picnic type,” he’d protested.

And she’d laughed as if he had said something really amusing and told him with a knowing look that yes, he was, and she was going to prove it.

So he ate the healthy-size sandwiches she’d produced out of a picnic basket while sitting on a maroon-colored blanket beneath the drooping shade of a weeping willow. If asked, he couldn’t have said what, exactly, was between the two pieces of bread. It wasn’t that it was tasteless, it was just that his attention had been completely and utterly taken by his companion.

She charmed him with her wit, with her knowledge, with her laugh…with the shape of her mouth as it pulled into a smile. Over and over again, he kept thinking that Reginald should have been there, in his place, learning to appreciate this woman who had miraculously been given to him on a platter.

And secretly he was glad that he was here instead.

Russell found himself not wanting the day to end.

And in the evening, with a myriad of stars littering the sky, they returned to the palace.

The second they came through the massive double doors, they were informed by the butler that King Roman was waiting to meet with the duke.

“I’ll come with you,” Amelia offered.

“Your Highness, he asked only for the duke,” the butler said tactfully.

Russell expected Amelia to back away. Instead, she tossed her head and said, “But he will get a princess, as well.” She looked at him. “My father will undoubtedly say something that will either concern Gastonia or me. In either case, I should know.” Slipping her arm through his, she said, “This way,” and brought him to the royal study, her father’s favorite place.

Her father often retired to the study to contemplate matters of state and to partake of his evening brandy. More often than not, she would join him for the latter. His life centered around his country and his daughter, in that order. Amelia took no offense. It was just the way things were. But if she took no offense, she also did not take a back seat.

King Roman looked far from surprised that his daughter was accompanying his royal guest. Looking up from the book he had been casually perusing, he asked, “What’s this about you creeping in like a leper, Carrington?”

“The duke doesn’t care for fanfare,” Amelia said, taking the liberty to answer for the man she’d taken sightseeing.

The king nodded. “Refreshing.” Setting aside his book, he picked up his goblet of brandy. “This aversion of yours, I trust, does not extend to the reception I have arranged in your honor.”

Russell glanced at the woman beside him. He noticed that the princess had caught her bottom lip between her teeth. Obviously, she had forgotten to tell him about that. “Reception, Your Majesty?”

“The one in the royal ballroom taking place in—” the king paused to lo