Authors: Christine Flynn
“Only a couple of hours.”
Shaking her head again, looking as if she thought them quite a pair, the queen started walking once more.
“Considering how late it is, I assume the admiral badgered you into asking me this tonight?”
“He was actually quite flexible about that. He was rather civil about all of it,” she conceded, grateful for her friend’s understanding. “He even served me a very nice wine.”
For the first time in days, a spark of light entered the eyes of the woman who ruled Penwyck. “Of course he did,” she murmured.
Dismissing what she clearly thought a joke, that light died in the next blink. “All they need is my assurance that the agreements will go through?”
“That’s what he said.”
A fair amount of resistance remained visible beneath
the weariness. “You know that I will do what I must. If there is anything I understand, it’s duty. But please tell him that I will not be drawn into a negotiating session. I will continue to rely on you to act as my intermediary, if you will allow me. Especially when it comes to dealing with the admiral.”
“You know I’ll do whatever you wish.”
“You weren’t serious about the wine, were you?”
Still confused by the earlier events of the evening, Gwen slowly nodded. “He had me taken to his home. He called it his ‘quarters.”’ As hard as he so often seemed, she wasn’t sure the concept of home was one with which he was even familiar. “I had the feeling he was fitting me in between a meeting and before a telephone conference.”
“He’s behaving himself, I hope.”
“He’s my problem, Marissa. Don’t worry about it.”
“That can only mean he’s not.”
“No. He is,” Gwen insisted “He’s…”
Her automatic defense put the spark of interest back in the queen’s keen eyes. “He’s what?” she asked when Gwen’s voice trailed off.
“Confusing,” she finally decided to say. Confusing because there seemed to be a true sense of compassion beneath his hardness, a sense of compassion she wondered if he even realized he possessed. Confusing because he looked at her, touched her, as if he wanted her. Yet, he clearly didn’t want the attraction his own actions encouraged.
Disquiet for her friend momentarily overrode all else that troubled the queen. “Are you attracted to him?”
Absolutely, Gwen thought. “Maybe,” she murmured, a little disturbed by the immediacy of her mental re
sponse. “I don’t think he’s as ruthless as he wants everyone to believe.”
“Or maybe he truly is,” the queen pointed out, caution heavy in her quiet tone, “and whatever he’s doing with you just proves it.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the reasons the king always sought his advice is because Monteque inevitably knows how to control a situation. He’ll do what he must to best serve his purpose.”
In other words, Gwen thought, he’d do what he had to do to make her easier to work with. The thought had occurred to her, too. She’d even called him on it after he’d shared the details surrounding her husband’s death.
“Do you think he’s trying to manipulate me?”
“I wouldn’t presume to speak for him. But unless you’re interested in something quick and discreet, I do think he is a man a woman needs to be careful around. He’s the first man you’ve shown any interest in, in all the years I’ve known you,” she reminded her, sounding as bewildered as she was impressed by that fact. Of all the eligible and interesting men her friend had been exposed to, Harrison was clearly not one she would have considered a match. “I just hope you’ll be careful, Gwen. I don’t know that any woman could ever get a commitment out of our admiral. He’s escaped far too long.”
They were words of warning, well intentioned, protective. The words of a friend who cared. The doubts they nurtured were even doubts Marissa probably knew were already there. But all Gwen could think about as they continued down the hall, talking now about the soup Gwen was going to heat and Marissa was going to eat, was that the man she’d been warned about was the same one who had been totally up-front with her about what
he wanted from the moment she’d walked in his door. And not once had he said he wanted anything from her beyond a truce and her cooperation.
She was still trying to figure out if there was any comfort in that fact as she walked with the queen to her meeting early the next afternoon.
The scene outside the conference room near the king’s office was far less chaotic than the press conference that had taken place only two days ago. Here, with the diplomatic business of the kingdom being conducted as usual, quiet dignity reigned.
Her father wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Ambassador Charles Worthington was the first to notice the arrival of the queen and her small entourage when they stepped into the hall from the side door leading from the tunnel entrance. Leaving the group of dignitaries and diplomats gathered outside the conference room doors, he hurried toward them, his polished Italian leather shoes silent on the royal red carpet.
Tall and trim, his snow-white hair swept back from his patrician features, he carried his sixty-five years with enviable ease. His pinstriped suit was impeccably tailored. So were his blinding white shirt, burgundy silk tie and the tuft of matching silk in his pocket.
“Your Majesty.” Every inch the dignified, distinguished diplomat, he met them halfway and bowed deeply from the waist. “I am at your service.”
With Gwen at her side and guards flanking them both, the queen offered a regal nod. “Thank you, Ambassador. Is everyone here who needs to be?”
“I will check with Admiral Monteque. It was he who made the arrangements.”
He gave another bow, stopping short of clicking his
heels and finally acknowledged his daughter. “Gwendolyn,” was all he said before his forehead furrowed at the length of her skirt and he turned away.
He’d never approved of her wearing skirts above the knee. But then, after she’d embarrassed him by not marrying the man he’d chosen for her, he’d never approved of much about her, anyway. The fact that she served the queen redeemed her only on the surface, since her appointment reflected well on him. But he never asked how she was, or said it was good to see her. And heaven forbid, Gwen thought, that he should ever do anything so plebian as give her a smile.
Not that she ever expected him to do such a thing. But thinking about her father’s apathetic attitude toward her kept her mind off the man whose glance burned a path from the clip restraining her hair to the hem of the taupe suit skirt that had just earned her father’s frown.
Harrison stood tall and dignified himself among the small knot of men fifty feet away. From where she remained with the queen and their escort by an enormous potted palm, Gwen watched him dip his head to hear what her father asked him. As ambassador to the United States, her father’s role in the business taking place was as prominent as anyone’s. But it was the man in the admiral’s uniform who held her attention as he broke away from the group and accompanied her father back to them.
As her father had, Harrison immediately addressed and bowed to Her Majesty. Unlike him, he then turned to Gwen with a nod and a respectful, “My Lady.”
“Admiral,” she replied with the polite nod protocol required.
From the way Gwen’s glance suddenly faltered, Harrison suspected that his own had lingered a few moments longer than it should have. But she had never looked
more like the ice maiden to him than she did at that moment. Cool, utterly poised, and with every true emotion she possessed locked beneath her exquisitely polished facade.
He’d watched that facade crystallize the moment her father had approached the queen. The ambassador had been the epitome of regard toward Her Majesty, and while Harrison had seen him warmly greet the delegation from Majorco and the United States ambassador only minutes ago, he hadn’t detected so much as a hint of warmth or affection toward his daughter. He’d acknowledged her presence almost as an afterthought.
Remembering what Gwen had told him of her parents, he suspected now that the lack of affection they’d displayed toward each other had extended to her, too.
At the thought, the unfamiliar sense of protectiveness he’d felt last night stirred inside him once more. He knew exactly how it felt to live with that cold distance. He’d just never considered how much a person could shut herself down to escape it.
Feeling something uncomfortably familiar about the phenomenon, he directed his attention to the queen. “Everyone is here except the president of Majorco and Prince Broderick. They are crossing the lower courtyard now. Do you wish to enter or wait until everyone has arrived?”
The thought of having to make small talk clearly did not appeal to the woman in the stark black coatdress. “I’ll wait.” The toll of another long night visible in her pale features, she immediately turned to the woman standing sedately beside her.
“You will come in to tell me if there is any news whatsoever of Owen.”
“Absolutely,” Gwen quietly replied. “The very moment I hear,” she promised.
The queen’s wan smile turned resigned at the murmur of voices ahead of them. Hearing them himself, Gwen’s father glanced over his shoulder to see who had arrived, then swept his hand outward with another bow. “I believe we can proceed, Your Majesty.”
Beyond them, a brawny gentleman in an ascot and the red sash of a Penwyckian dignitary emerged from the opposite end of the corridor with a guard and the black-suited president of Majorco. As the other men filed into the room after greeting him, he stopped alone outside the doors and bowed to the queen himself.
Every time Gwen saw Prince Broderick, she felt as if she were seeing a ghost.
Every time Harrison saw him he got the sense of a fox watching the henhouse. At the moment, however, he was more interested in the slender woman crossing her arms over the leather-bound notepad she carried. As the queen started forward, Gwen’s father dropped back a step and lowered his voice.
“If there is news to deliver to the queen, Gwendolyn, it will be more appropriate if you just come to the door and ask for me or Sir Selwyn to deliver the message. The matters we will be discussing in there are privileged.”
The hint of condescension in his voice made it sound as if she probably hadn’t realized that. But it was the impression he gave that she was too far beneath the importance of the others who would be present that had Harrison stepping forward the moment he noticed Gwen’s grip on her notebook. To her credit not an ounce of poise had drained from her face, but her fingers had nearly gone white.
“Of course,” she murmured, looking as if she were
too focused on blocking the unpleasant emotions the man elicited to bother with anything else.
“With all due respect,” Harrison said, having no problem with that himself, “there isn’t anything that will be discussed in there that your daughter doesn’t already know about. Her security clearance is higher than yours.”
The man gave a choke of disbelief. “She’s a lady-in-waiting,” he said, as if the title itself should dispute the claim.
“As far as you know,” Harrison returned evenly.
The tips of the ambassador’s ears turned the same deep pink as the roses in the garden. But skilled as he was at saving face, his recovery was commendably quick.
Jerking his glance from the second most powerful man in the kingdom, his frosty expression fell back on his daughter. “Then, you will do as Her Majesty directed, of course.”
A muscle in Harrison’s jaw jerked. “She knows her job, sir.”
Lethal. That was the only way Gwen could possibly describe the look in Harrison’s piercing eyes as her father took an offended step away, his back ramrod straight, then turned to catch up with the queen.
The guards that had accompanied Her Majesty fell into step behind them. When they reached the doors of the conference room, those guards joined the others to position themselves along the length of the hall. For a moment, the only sounds were the decisive thuds of the doors closing and the muffled thump of rifle butts hitting the floor.
Those sounds echoed to silence in the long seconds before Gwen could even begin to think what to say. Harrison had jumped to her defense like a wolf protecting its mate.
“I’ve been told I have trouble with diplomacy sometimes,” he muttered.
Incredulous, touched, grateful, she could only shake her head. “Why did you do that?”
He wasn’t sure he wanted to answer that question. He wasn’t even sure if he’d done it for her or himself. Not caring to figure it out, he went for the reason that appeared the most obvious. “Because you wouldn’t.
“So how is she doing?” he asked, changing the subject with the nod of his head toward the closed doors.
He was right that she wouldn’t have said anything, she thought. She never wasted her breath on what her father wouldn’t hear or respect. But she didn’t tell him that. Harrison seemed no more interested in discussing his gallant defense than he did explaining why it mattered whether she defended herself or not. And, unlike him, she wasn’t about to push.
“Not as well as she appears,” she replied, wondering if his response hadn’t simply been instinctive. The way it had been when he’d thrown his jacket over her in the rain. “She would rather be in the chapel. Or at her husband’s side,” she continued, feeling a dangerous tug in her heart at his innate need to protect. “In the past couple of days, those are the places she’s spent all but the few hours she’s managed of sleep.”
Studying her profile, seeing the faint lines of fatigue around her own eyes, he almost asked how much sleep she’d managed herself. But the thought of her sleeping evoked an image of her restrained hair loose and spilling like spun gold over his pillow, so he let the topic go.
“Duke Logan said he told you this morning that we’re still analyzing the voice on the tape.”
“He did. And I passed that on to the queen.” Clutch
ing her notepad like a shield, she looked up at the hard, chiseled lines of his face. “Thank you for that.”
“For the information?”
“For what you said to my father.” Even if he didn’t want to discuss it, she needed him to know that she appreciated what he done. Now that she had, she’d let it go, too.