Authors: Cara Colter
“I needed to.”
She sighed and smiled, touched his cheek. “Just like you needed to try and escape from the kidnappers, needed to fight your way out of there, when a perfectly trained group of men could have rescued you.”
“I’m not Dylan,” he said, and saw that look on her face that she could never quite hide from him. A deep pleasure, now mingled with pain because his brother was gone. “I don’t always think things all the way through like he does. And you do.”
She scanned his face. “The bruises are healing well. Are you using the cream I sent?”
Of course, he wasn’t using cream on his face. He said, smiling, “I understand happiness is the greatest of healers.”
They were doing that delicate dance that would slowly move them toward the point he was here to discuss. Dylan was always so good at this sort of thing, enjoyed the preliminaries, but Owen had a more impatient nature.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Owen,” she said, and he detected caution in her tone. “I heard about the carriage, and the er, highwayman. The palace is abuzz with it today. She must be a very special girl.”
So, she wasn’t going to mention it first if she knew Jordan was the mother of his child, of her granddaughter.
Dylan would have toyed with it a while longer before getting to the point, but Owen found he did not have the patience for the verbal preliminaries. “Isn’t that why you brought them here, mother, Jordan and Whitney. To make me happy?”
She regarded him without speaking.
“How long did you know about them?” he asked her.
She sighed. “Owen, it was naive of you to believe you would be allowed to go to America without protection of any kind.”
“I realize that now,” he said stiffly.
“It was for your own protection, not as an invasion of your privacy. I hired a top American surveillance team. You never knew they were there.”
“And so did you know everything that was happening?” he asked, hating it that the most intense moments of his life had been recorded, reported, defiled.
“I’m sorry, Owen, yes I did.”
He detected that she was still sorry about something, that she still knew things he did not, things she thought were going to hurt him.
Did she think he would not be allowed to marry Jordan?
“Did you know about my daughter?”
She hesitated. “I did.”
“How could you keep that from me?”
“Owen, being naive at eighteen is forgivable. But not now. There are dangerous undercurrents in the palace, as there always are in royal life. It is my sacred mission to protect this family, and the heir to the throne. Sometimes, to do that, I have to make choices that are not going to be popular. Can you understand that?”
“You kept me from my daughter. You knew about her. You knew about Jordan trying to raise her by herself, struggling, giving up her dreams.”
“Owen, I understand your anger. On the other hand, you must see that our enemies were able to come in this very palace and get you right from under the noses of one of the most highly trained security teams in the world. Your daughter was in America, completely un
protected, a weak spot. How much better that no one, including you, knew about her?”
“If you would have told me, I could have brought them here. They would have been safe here.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But it was not the right time for the people of Penwyck to know you had fathered a child with an American girl.”
“Because it would have reduced my chances of being chosen king,” he guessed coldly, and watched something flicker in his mother’s eyes. He realized, again, uncomfortably, there were yet more secrets. “And why is the time right now? Obviously, you wouldn’t have brought Jordan and her child here if you felt it would still be damaging to the all important royal image.”
He saw her struggling, knew that she was a brilliant strategist who had survived the intrigues of court life, thrived on them, because she had always played her cards close to her chest, known precisely when to lay them on the table.
He knew he did not share that ability with her. Dylan did. He felt weary to the bone from it all, the manipulations, the intrigues, the chess games played with real human lives.
“The time was right to bring them here,” she said, not elaborating.
“And you have that right to play with my life, to make decisions like that for me?” It was the closest he had ever come to speaking disrespectfully to his mother.
“I hope you will understand someday, Owen.”
“I’ve lost four years of my daughter’s life. I missed her being born and her first steps and her first words. I left Jordan when she needed me most. I didn’t know her need, but you did.”
Again, she said, “I hope you will understand someday, my son.”
“If I were to ask your permission to marry Jordan now?” he asked.
“I would give it,” she said, without hesitation.
He tried not to show how stunned he was by this easy victory. It made him suspicious.
“Why?”
“Owen, plots that have been brewing for twenty-five years are coming to fruition. Soon, you will know how much I owe you. I hope to repay my debt to you in your happiness.”
“Though you cannot give me back that which was taken, Mother, you owe me nothing,” he said, concerned by the torment in her face.
“I owe you everything,” she said enigmatically, and then she smiled. “I am anxious to meet my granddaughter. Perhaps she and Ms. Ashbury could join me for lunch today.”
“Whitney doesn’t know yet, that I’m her father. I need to wait for the right time.”
“Trust my discretion,” his mother said.
And he realized that he could trust. His mother knew secrets—possibly all the secrets of this family and this palace. And she kept them all until the precise moment they needed to be played.
He had thought he would find it unforgivable that she had stolen the first four years of his daughter’s life from him. But looking at her, he understood the weight of responsibility she carried, saw it in the lines of her face, and the sadness in her eyes.
She had paid a price for her secrets.
And he knew he would pay his price, too, to be king.
He would hold life and death, war and peace in his hands.
He realized how totally he did not want this job.
“Owen, you are too young for such worries,” his mother said, as if she had read his mind. “Go and enjoy being in love. And for God’s sake, get that young woman of yours a gown for the upcoming ball that will show her off and make those fools at the papers see how they missed her beauty entirely.”
“A gown?” he said. “Don’t they take time to make?”
His mother smiled. “How lucky for you that you have three sisters. Try Anastasia. She’s closest in size to your Ms. Ashbury, and her closets are full to overflowing. I’m positive she’ll have something suitable.”
“Thank you, Mother.”
“By the way, Owen, I heard many stories of what your Ms. Ashbury did at the mine yesterday, as well. She possesses a quality of humility that speaks to me of uncommon and quiet strength. You have chosen well.”
He blushed at his mother’s approval. It wasn’t until he walked away, that he realized her approval had struck him as different than normal. Authentic.
He was not sure what that meant, until he realized how often her praise for him had occurred in public. It had embarrassed him at times, how she would single him out for attention, say nothing about Dylan’s accomplishments, though Dylan would have so enjoyed the praise.
He frowned, now thinking of that.
Had his mother deliberately underplayed Dylan? He loved her, but she had a gift for being calculating. She didn’t do anything by accident. Was there meaning to the fact she had never drawn attention to her other son?
He did not want to ponder palace politics and intrigues at the moment. It gave him a headache.
He went in search of his sister.
“First a tiara, and now a dress?” Anastasia said, letting him in. “What’s gotten into you, Owen?”
“Nothing,” he mumbled.
She laughed. “The whole palace is talking about you snatching the kitchen help from that carriage yesterday and bringing her to the grotto.”
“Don’t say kitchen help like that. You don’t know anything about Jordan Ashbury.”
“Owen, I was just teasing!”
“The dress?” he reminded her mulishly.
“Owen, you’re blushing! I would never have thought you could be romantic. That’s not what Charlotte Hendron told me. She wept after you’d been with her. She said you were an insensitive boor.”
“I was not! It’s just that she was a bore. I cannot stand these candidates for royal marriage that have been paraded in front of me.”
“It’s true, Charlotte never would have been caught dead in an outfit like that one within a ten mile radius of anyone with a camera—if that’s what you call boring. Besides, no one has dared parade a woman in front of you for years. You always send them home in tears.”
“Anastasia, could I just pick a dress without the lecture? Please?” He tried to remember if he’d really sent anyone home in tears.
“Tell me about the girl?” his sister pleaded. “I can’t believe things have moved this fast. I mean Owen, aside from on the polo field, you are not a fast mover.”
“Things between us haven’t exactly moved fast,” he said uncomfortably. “I knew her from before.”
“From before? That’s impossible. I know everything about you.”
“Maybe not everything. I met Jordan the summer I went to California.”
His sister looked hard at him. “I always knew you came back from there changed. Is she the reason?”
He said nothing.
“She is, isn’t she? She’s the reason poor Charlotte never had a chance, and why Suzette and Brenda and all those others were sent home in tears. My God, Owen, you’re in love with her.”
Her attitude changed instantly. “Does she return the feeling?”
“I hope so, but I’ve hurt her badly. Maybe even unforgivably.”
“Come, then. We will try and find the dress that will soften her heart to you.”
She ushered him into her bedroom. It was the second time that day he had been struck by how the richness of surroundings could seem empty, somehow.
“Here,” she said, throwing open an immense closet door, “Choose.”
“Oh, God.” There looked to be a mile of long dresses in front of him. He didn’t even want to touch them, they looked so frilly and fragile.
“They don’t bite,” his sister said. “You can touch them.”
Slowly, he began to look through the dresses. He had seen his sister in most of them, and her style was not Jordan’s. Anastasia could carry off the very flashy with great class. Many of her dresses were bright colored silks, sequined.
“This one?” his sister said, holding a black number in front of her. She twirled in the narrow space of the
closet, and knocked open a large box that had been standing in a corner.
They both stared.
Inside was a gown of creamy ivory silk. It was long and flowing with an overskirt and sleeves of film. It was simple but extraordinarily elegant.
“I’ve never worn that dress,” Anastasia said. “I bought it, but didn’t like it when I got it home. Don’t tell mother.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’ll get the spoiled little princess lecture.”
“Which you deserve,” he said. He touched the dress, and almost had to pull his fingers away. It seemed alive it was so beautiful.
“Cinderella,” he said, “get ready for the ball.”
“It is a Cinderella kind of dress,” Anastasia said with wonder. “It will look so nice with her eyes, her coloring.” She looked at her brother. “Owen,” she whispered, “are you going to ask her to marry you?”
He looked at his sister, startled. “Yes,” he said.
“Have you talked to mother?”
“Yes.”
“And what did she say?”
“That I had her blessing.”
His sister narrowed her eyes at him. “Why do I get the feeling there is a bit more to this story than you are letting on?”
He put the lid on the box, tucked it under his arm, trying to ignore the look his sister was giving him.
She drew in her breath, suddenly, and her eyes widened. “I should have seen it before.”
“What?”
“The child is yours, isn’t she? She’s the image of you, Owen.”
“Anastasia, I am trusting you not to breathe a word of this to anyone.”
“Oh, I won’t. But for how long? I’m terrible at keeping secrets.”
“I am going to propose to Jordan the night of the ball.”
“That’s so romantic. I’m so excited. And I have a niece! A beautiful niece. You’ll live here, right? With my adorable niece? Not that Mother would ever let her go, now that we’ve found her.”
“Yes. I plan to have her here on Penwyck and not miss one more moment of her growing up. I plan to be her father.”
“A
nd I have a niece! A beautiful niece. You’ll live here right? With my adorable niece? Not that Mother would ever let her go, now that we’ve found her.”
“Yes. I plan to have her here on Penwyck and not miss one more moment of her growing up. I plan to be her father.”
Jordan stood frozen in the hallway outside of the open door. How happy she had first felt when she heard the familiar tones of Owen’s voice drifting down that long hallway. Somehow she had become lost in the labyrinth of palace passageways, and though she could have eventually found her way, being lost would have been the most wonderful excuse to see him. To feel his eyes on her, to look at his lips, to maybe casually touch his arm.
It was weak and warped thinking of the worst sort, but a few seconds ago, she hadn’t cared.
Earlier, Meg had called her room in a panic and asked her to find Lady Gwendolyn for her. Since Whitney had
already been taken by Trisha to see the pony, Jordan had been at loose ends.
And a few seconds ago it had been fun being lost inside a palace, exploring, asking directions, staring in awe at priceless treasures, giggling under the stern gazes of people in portraits. A few seconds ago, hearing his voice had made her heart beat a quick tattoo of delight. A few seconds ago she had felt like the whole world had been sprinkled with glitter as she had experienced it with her brand new heart. A heart full of hope.
But now! Jordan reeled back from that open door, feeling as if she could not breathe.
Not that Mother would ever let her go, now that we’ve found her.
She stumbled down a corridor, through an unfamiliar chamber, down some steps, getting more and more lost and disoriented. Finally she found a door to the outside, and recognized she was not far from the little walled garden where Owen had invited them for lunch, that first time.
She went through the archway, and it had been stripped of the branches. The table and chairs were there, but the table covering and chair pads had been put away.
It didn’t look like a fairy-tale place at all anymore, but like a very plain garden, getting ready to die before winter.
She sat in one of the cold, hard chairs and gazed at the changes. Owen’s specialty, creating make-believe.
Why had she allowed him to overcome her first impression, that all of it was not real, that he was a master at manipulating impressions?
Why had she allowed him to overcome that distrust that lived in her, breathed in her, was her, since the day
he had left her? That attitude had protected her. Kept her and her daughter safe.
She had become victim to his dancing, blue eyes all over again! To that charming grin. To the unconscious flex of sinewy muscle, to that boyish way he had of blowing his hair out of his eyes. She had let that passion that rose in her every time she was in the same room with him cloud her reasoning. She had lost her ability to see clearly what was going on as he had pulled her deeper and deeper into his world.
This morning, when his lips had played tantalizing games with her toes, she had surrendered, finally, totally. She had allowed herself to believe.
That maybe it was true. That maybe a prince could really love a plain, frumpy girl, a kitchen assistant from Wintergreen, Connecticut. Worse, she had allowed herself to believe that she could become whole again, that she could love again.
Now she saw it all clearly. He had never loved her. If he had, he would have come back to her on his own accord way before this. A five year break in his fervor? No, he and his powerful family had found out about the child, about her Whitney.
They wanted her child!
Owen had probably been ordered to win her over, to beat down her resistance. She had seen him perform in the name of duty. Oh, he could be magnificent.
But she did not want to think of Owen at the coal mine—of the warmth and comfort he had given, of the strength and confidence he had radiated. Of course he knew how to do that. It was all part of his princely act. Those were the very moments when she had begun that slow surrender to the pull of him, to the power of him, to the seductive charisma of him.
Jordan now saw, frantically, she had to take her daughter and get away from this place. She had to be somewhere where she could think clearly, and that had to be someplace that he was not. Home.
Wintergreen. In her own bedroom, in her own life where the only one who licked at her toes was Jay-Jay and that did not make her stupidly blind to reality.
Think, she ordered herself. How was she going to get out of here? She and Whitney had to escape. She wiped angrily at a tear that slid down her cheek. She would not be a weakling! She would not.
A young man came into the garden, young and handsome, dressed in overalls, carrying a hoe. He looked surprised to see her there.
“Sorry, miss, I didn’t mean to disturb you.” He turned to leave her in privacy and then did a quick second take. “Is everything all right?”
“No,” she said, and let her lip quiver. “Do you have a car?”
“Miss?”
“Could I borrow your car? I need to go to town. Emergency supplies for the banquet. I forgot to get an ingredient for the Moose Ta-Ta. The shiitake mushrooms.” She said the first thing that came to her head. Shiitake mushrooms were not an ingredient in Moose Ta-Ta, but only two people in the world knew that, and she guessed he was not one of them. “I could be fired.”
He looked dubious, which she couldn’t blame him for, so she poured on the waterworks. As she had hoped, he had a manly aversion to tears. His car keys were out of his pocket and in her lap in a nanosecond.
“It’s the red Mini in the staff lot,” he said. “It’s a very humble car, miss.”
“Humble,” she said, beaming at him through tears,
“that’s me. Little Miss Humble.” Jordan Ashbury, the girl least suited to be besotted with a prince and least suited to have a prince besotted with her. How could she have trusted Owen again? What kind of fool was she?
Oh, the toe thing this morning had been such a nice touch. But then he knew all her weak spots, didn’t he? He had played her vulnerabilities, the soft spots he knew she had.
Could someone really take pretense that far?
She felt the smallest niggle of doubt, but reminded herself sternly she did not have time for doubts. She could entertain doubts in the safety of Wintergreen. “Your name?” she asked the boy.
She’d have to leave something on that car at the airport so it could be returned to him.
“Ralph Miller,” he said.
Trisha’s lad. Oh, may they be happy together on this cursed island where fantasy and reality blended until she had not a hope of discerning which was which.
“I hope you are taking precautions,” she said, and despite his baffled look, it made her feel good. Her old self—protector of trod-upon women, least likely to be charmed by a handsome face.
She left the garden hurriedly, went to her room. She could take hardly anything without arousing suspicion. She couldn’t take a packed suitcase with her to run into town to pick up mushrooms! In the end, she took only her purse and her and Whitney’s travel documents. Clothing could be replaced. Not so her daughter! She went into Whitney’s room and grabbed Peaknuckle.
And then, her heart in her throat, hoping she wouldn’t see anyone, she dashed for the stables.
Whitney was riding slow circles on Tubby, thrum
ming her stocky legs against his sides, trying to persuade a little faster movement out of him.
“Whitney, love, I have to go to town. Why don’t you come with me?”
“No!” Her daughter frowned, and kicked at the pony more feverishly.
“You can ride Tubby again later.” Liar, liar. Would her daughter ever forgive her for this?
“No! He has to twot! Twot, Tubby, twot.”
At any other time she might have found the pony’s complete obliviousness to her daughter’s imperious commands quite funny. But not now! Under the astonished gaze of Trisha and the young groom who was giving Whitney patient instructions, she went and picked her daughter up off the pony.
“We are going to town,” she said, sternly. “Just for a few minutes. I need you to come with me.”
“I don’t want to,” Whitney replied, trying to wriggle out of her grasp. “Put me down!”
She could see her window of opportunity closing. Whitney couldn’t create a scene. “You want to come with me because,” Jordan thought desperately and then said with wild and forced enthusiasm, “I have a surprise for you.”
“A surpwise?” Whitney asked, and stopped wriggling.
And it had better be good, better than a pony.
“An elephant,” Jordan said, in a moment of inspiration. “There’s a real live elephant where we’re going.”
Whitney became very still, and Jordan was able to set her on the ground.
“Weally, Mommy? An elephant?”
Surely she could find an elephant somewhere in Connecticut, at a zoo. Surely, at some later date she could
redeem her integrity in her daughter’s eyes, but right now she just had to get them away from here.
Jordan became aware Trisha was listening avidly, staring at her with growing astonishment.
“Why do you have Peaknuckle?” Whitney asked.
Jordan thought fast. It was horrible how quickly a person could become good at fabricating. This is what Owen had done to her. Had her fibbing to her daughter. “I knew Peaknuckle would want to see the elephant, too!”
“An elephant?” Trisha said, disbelieving.
But Whitney beamed at her mother’s sensitivity, and her hand nestled into Jordan’s. It was about the nicest thing she’d ever felt, the battle won, their leaving Penwyck quietly, with no fuss. She tried to smile casually at Trisha. “We’ll just be a little while.”
“Be back before lunch,” Trisha wailed. “I understand you’ve been invited to have lunch with the queen.”
“I have?”
“I’ve been instructed to get Whitney ready. I was sent a dress for her.”
Jordan went cold. So Whitney was scheduled to have lunch with the queen, and she was not. They were all in on it, planning on how to push her out of her daughter’s life, sending her dresses suitable for a princess to replace clothing suitable for a kitchen worker’s daughter.
“We’ll be back in plenty of time for lunch,” she lied.
She found the staff parking lot and the Mini. No car seat. And the steering wheel on the wrong side. And a stick shift!
She belted her daughter into the passenger seat, turned the key, and the little car hummed to life. She
put it into gear and stalled. Then stalled again trying to back it up.
She laid her head on the steering wheel and prayed. She glanced up to see Ralph and Trisha standing on the edge of the parking lot, looking worried, consulting with each other. Jordan forced herself to smile, gave them a jaunty wave and started the car again.
Jerkily, she headed down the road, her daughter clutching Peaknuckle on the seat beside her.
“Do you know how to dwive this caw, Mommy?”
“Oh, sure. Nothing to it.”
Her daughter clutched her elephant a little tighter, and looked doubtful.
After a few wrong turns, she finally found the road to the airport.
Almost there. Almost safe. Almost home.
Trying not to look as unglued as she felt, she parked the car, grabbed Whitney and raced into the building. She went up to the ticket counter. What to do now? Getting out of Penwyck, out of the reach of these people’s frightening power was the first priority. They’d go wherever the next flight was going and worry about how to get to America from there.
Was the girl behind the counter looking for her luggage? Never mind. There was no rule that said you had to have luggage to get on a plane to Wales. “Two,” Jordan said, casually, as if she was buying tickets to the movie, “for Wales.”
“I don’t see an elephant,” Whitney said crossly.
“That’s because we have to take the airplane to see the elephant.” The girl behind the counter was trying not to look at her as if she was deranged.
“Excuse me, Ms. Ashbury?”
She whirled, and recognized the blond hair and wholesome features of the security man she had spoken to at
the mine. She’d been worried it was going to collapse on top of the man who was conniving to take her daughter!
“I’m Peter Webster, palace security. Do you think you could come with me? Please?”
So polite. She wasn’t fooled. “No, I’m not coming with you. I’m getting on this plane.” She turned her back on him. “I need two tickets to—”
She saw the girl behind the counter looking confused, until Mr. Webster flashed a badge at her.
Then the girl, traitor, said quietly, “I’m sorry, miss,” and closed her wicket.
“Where’s the elephant?” Whitney wailed angrily.
Webster looked distressed. “Miss, I’m very sorry, but you can’t leave the island.”
“Says who?” she said, tossing her hair.
“Royal orders, miss.”
“Well, I am not a fief or serf or whatever you call people who belong to the palace.” She drew herself to her full height. “I am a citizen of the United States of America and I cannot be forced to stay here against my will. If you try to make me, I am going to sue you, and Prince Owen, and this whole island, and when I’m done with you—”
His cell phone rang, and he held up one finger, politely, as if he was simply dying to hear the rest of what she had to say.
“Yes, sir. Of course I’m with her. We’re leaving the airport now, and coming back to the palace.”
So much for the rest of what she had to say! Jordan bit her lip and glared angrily at the man. He was irritatingly unintimidated.
“Where’s the elephant?” Whitney cried, stamping her foot.
“Shush, dear.” Jordan took a deep steadying breath. Much as she wanted to make a scene, her first obligation was to keep calm for her daughter. She didn’t want Whitney frightened by all this. “We’ll have to see the elephant another day.”
“Why?” Whitney shrieked.
“Because of this gentleman right here,” Jordan said.
Whitney scowled up at the remote featured Mr. Webster, wound up, and kicked him soundly in the shin.
He winced, but was quite manly about it.
“Can I go back to Tubby?” Whitney asked her mother, her rage vented.