Royal Protocol (21 page)

Instead, she found that the queen had sent her wardrobe mistress away—and that the queen refused to sign the alliance.

When she told Gwen why, Gwen didn’t even try to change her mind. She simply left the room and headed straight for the telephone on Mrs. Ferth’s desk—only to hesitate the moment she touched the receiver.

Her first thought had been to call Harrison. She knew that duty came first, that her obligation to the Crown should outweigh any uneasiness, embarrassment, hurt or discomfort she might personally be feeling toward the head of the RET. But she had no desire to confirm that he really didn’t want to see her by telling him what was going on and having him send someone else to get the details from her.

She called Pierce instead. Attempted to, anyway. She reached his office through the main number for Intelligence and left an urgent message asking him to call her as soon as he could.

His secretary wasn’t nearly as accommodating as Harrison’s always was. Since Gwen couldn’t tell the woman what was so urgent or otherwise describe the nature of the call without causing possible panic in the diplomatic circles, she hung up and called the number Harrison had given her. It was his office number, and though his as
sistant wasn’t there on the weekend, the call patched through to a human who had no problem taking her message asking Colonel Prescott to call. If the young man thought it odd that she was leaving a message for the colonel rather than the admiral, he said nothing about it. He just said he’d get word to the colonel as soon as possible.

It was Harrison, however, who called her back.

“What’s urgent?” he asked, sounding totally uninterested in the fact that she’d called his colleague rather than him.

“There is a problem,” was all she said. “I need to tell someone about it.”

Harrison was heading up the colonnade for the foyer when she reached the foyer herself. Even from twenty feet away he looked better than the last time she’d seen him. The lines around his eyes were less pronounced, the weariness seemed to be gone. There was nothing at all to detract from the aura of power he radiated with every long stride.

She had no idea what he noticed about her as he scanned her face in the moments before he stopped in front of her. “What’s the problem?” he asked, motioning her into the colonnade.

They started back the way he’d come, walking as they talked as they so often had before. “She isn’t going to sign.”

Harrison canceled his next step. Taking her arm, he turned her toward him, only to realize when she stiffened that touching her was not a good thing to do.

“She what?”

“She’s not going to sign the treaty,” Gwen repeated, her calm tone camouflaging most of her caution. “This
is one thing I’m not going to be able to talk her out of, either.”

Considering what she had just told him, what the ramifications would be if that alliance wasn’t signed, he shouldn’t even have noticed how tightly her hands were clasped, how uneasily she held his glance.

“Did you try?” he asked, noticing anyway.

“No.”

His eyebrow shot up. “Why not?”

“Because she feels as if she would be signing her son’s death warrant.”

There should have been more concern in her eyes, more worry evident about her friend the queen. Knowing her as he did now, he knew that when she cared about something it showed. It was only when she felt threatened that she tended to mask whatever she was feeling.

A fist of guilt caught him square in the gut. Given the wary way she watched him, that threat undoubtedly came from him.

They needed to talk. He knew that. Now just wasn’t the time. Not with the little bombshell she’d just dropped.

He turned on his heel. “I’ll go speak with her myself.”

“She won’t see you.”

He turned right back, frustration bumping into the guilt and a few other reactions he didn’t want to deal with just then. “Then, what do you suggest I do?”

His tight demand would have had anyone else backing up. All Gwen did was unclasp her hands and cross her arms.

“Maybe you could have Broderick sign. I was thinking about it on the way down the hall,” she said, her stance clearly protective, her manner all business. “Royals do things by proxy all the time. She won’t put a pen to the alliance during an official ceremony. It’s not a cause to
celebrate for her, and that’s what it will be for everyone else. But she might agree to sign a proxy for the king’s brother to do it.” She hesitated. “Would that work?”

The tension tightening his jaw slowly changed quality.

“It might,” he conceded, carefully considering her suggestion. He just as carefully considered her. The concern he’d expected was finally leaking through. It entered her voice, her eyes. “What reason would we give the delegates for her not signing it herself?”

“She truly doesn’t feel well,” she said, sending a troubled glance in the direction of the queen’s wing. “She isn’t sleeping or eating. Between that and the stress, she almost always has a headache. Just tell them the queen has a migraine.”

He’d told himself once before that he needed her for her mind. Now he could have kissed her for the way it worked. Since there were any number of reasons that wouldn’t be a good idea at the moment, the least of which were the guards in the distance, he focused only on the disaster she could help him avert.

“Go talk to her. Please,” he amended, not wanting it to sound like an order. “Call me when you have. All right? You don’t need to go through Pierce.”

He watched her glance flicker from his. She’d gone through Pierce because she’d thought he didn’t want to talk to her. He was sure of that. But she was only partly right. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to talk. He just didn’t want to talk about how she made him feel.

“If that’s what you want,” she replied, and started to turn.

He caught her by the arm. He shouldn’t have. He should have just let her go and been happy with the fact that she was still cooperating. But he knew what it was like to have her on his side, and he needed her there now.

Beneath his hand he felt her muscles tense as she slowly drew away.

“It is what I want. We work well together,” he reminded her, focusing on that rather than the disquieting way it felt to have her pull from his touch. “And you’re our only link to the queen right now. We need you.”

We,
he’d said. Not
I.

If he’d hoped to restore the ease they’d once managed with each other, he’d failed miserably. “I’ll do my duty, Harrison,” she said quietly. “I always have.”

He had the decency to look apologetic. “I didn’t mean to imply that you wouldn’t.”

He was spared the chance to explain what he did mean. Pierce strode into the colonnade from the alcove and started for the foyer. Spotting them, he immediately changed direction, bearing down on them like a tank and so preoccupied with whatever it was on his mind that he didn’t notice the strain in either of their faces.

“We just received another message from the Black Knights,” he said the moment he stopped in front of them. “The call went to Prince Broderick again, but it didn’t come from Majorco this time. It was traced to a phone kiosk in town. The gist of it is that if the alliance is signed, they’re going after another royal because the Crown didn’t take them seriously.”

She truly envied Harrison’s ability to take such news with little more than a blink. “They’re upping the stakes,” he concluded flatly.

“It appears so.”

Gwen forcibly masked her alarm as her glance shot to Harrison. “Do I need to tell the queen this?”

His response came without hesitation. “I can’t see that there would be anything to be gained by it. Security is as tight as it can get here and around Princesses Megan
and Meredith. Since the queen won’t be going to the signing that actually eliminates one risk situation.”

Pierce blanched. “She what?”

Thinking that the RET seemed rather limited in their response to that bit of information, she offered Pierce a faint smile. “The admiral will explain it. If you’ll excuse me, I need to talk with the queen about an alternative.”

She hurried away, aware of the hushed and fading tones of their deep voices. She was also aware of the prickling sensation of eyes on her back and the certain feeling that Harrison was watching her in the moments before she forced her thoughts from her raw nerves to the idea she needed to present to her queen.

She truly felt that Marissa would be all right with the idea of the proxy. It would break the queen’s heart to have to sign that document herself, but Gwen knew she understood that caving in to the demands of subversives wouldn’t stop them from demanding more.

When Gwen proposed the plan a few minutes later, Marissa remained silent for what seemed like forever—then responded with a spiritless “fine” before sending her off to make the call to Harrison.

All Gwen had to say to him was, “She agreed,” and within the hour the proper document along with Sir Selwyn, who brought the official seal and the two ministers required as witnesses, arrived at the queen’s drawing room door. Seeing Her Majesty as pale and drawn as she was, the entourage also provided excellent witness to the reason for her failure to attend the signing herself. No one with a functioning brain would think that the woman looked well.

Sir Selwyn whispered words to that effect to Gwen on his way out.

He also mentioned to her after the alliance had been
signed that the queen had proved less of a problem than Prince Broderick.

Gwen was in the banquet hall that afternoon checking the massive floral arrangements by the orchestral stage and the smaller ones lined ten to a table when the king’s secretary passed on that the king’s twin had come up with half a dozen excuses about why he shouldn’t sign—everything from the legality of it, to a last-minute claim that he would be jeopardizing the life of his beloved nephew and he couldn’t do that to either Prince Owen or the queen. Apparently, it wasn’t until he had been reminded of his public promise to help in any way he could, advised of how humiliating it would be for him to have the leaders and diplomats of three countries angry with him because he was personally responsible for the collapse of the agreements, and assured that his signature would be entirely legal and binding with the proxy, that he’d finally, reluctantly backed down.

It seemed to her that everyone was having one of those days. As Sir Selwyn left to join the security team prowling the room and she turned to the next elaborately set table, she found that twenty place settings had the butter knife in the wrong position. Twenty on the other side had fish forks where the salad forks should go.

Rather than track down someone to switch things around, she corrected the error herself and was surveying the results when she noticed that one of the cleaning staff at the far end of the room had stopped to pick up something. As the girl did, she balanced herself against the huge sheet of bullet-proof glass that protected a display of the crown jewels and the royal thrones.

Certain that her hand had left a smudge, Gwen stopped another of the staff running a vacuum around the perimeter of the gold and red carpet. A smile and a request to
have the window cleaned and the smudge had disappeared by the time Gwen was checking the last table.

The details were what the queen depended on her to oversee. And Gwen tended them as best she could. But in the back of her mind the entire time was the thought that the rescue operation would begin in a matter of hours—and an unrelenting awareness of the big man in the admiral’s uniform.

As busy as she’d been, she hadn’t seen Harrison arrive. It was only when she began to feel that telltale prickle on her neck that she realized he was there. And that he was watching her.

He had obviously come to do a last-minute check of security measures with General Vancor and the members of the RET. The five of them moved from entrance to entrance, pointing this way and that. Every few minutes she felt that tingling chill.

It unnerved her to be that sensitive to him. She tried to ignore the sensation, holding out until she felt as if she were ready to crawl out of her skin. Yet each time she could no longer bear it, and she turned in his direction, he held her glance only long enough to make the knot in her stomach tighten before he deliberately glanced away. It was almost as if he were studying her, trying to figure out what she expected of him. Or maybe, he was considering which approach to take; whether he should let her down gently or be his usual blunt self and tell her it had been an interesting week and maybe they could get together again at his place sometime.

She gave up. She couldn’t take any more of his presence or her own thoughts. The minute she’d inspected the last table and decided that the queen would have been pleased with the elegant and sparkling results, she headed out the nearest door to see how Marissa was holding up.

From across the vast room with its enormous chandeliers and long tables of flowers, china and gleaming crystal, Harrison watched her go. He’d seen grown men buckle under less stress and responsibility than she’d been under lately, yet she’d moved through the huge space with quiet poise and confidence. He hadn’t been able to help being impressed by both her dignified manner and the obvious respect others had for her as she’d issued orders and requests with the calm efficiency of a fleet commander.

He couldn’t help, either, the odd tug of concern when she disappeared from his sight.

“General,” he said to the pugnacious head of the Royal Guard. “Put a bodyguard on Lady Corbin. She just left through the east entrance.”

“On the lady? Why? She wouldn’t be a target.”

“The queen holds her in regard. She’d make a good hostage if they can’t get a royal.”

The man with the ruddy jowls puffed up like a bullfrog. “No one’s getting in here tonight. Not under my command.”

“It was under your command that the prince was kidnapped. She’s all over this palace by herself, General.” Harrison’s eyes narrowed to slits, his voice dropping ominously low. “Do you have a problem putting a guard on her?”

General Vancor turned the color of the crimson roses in a nearby centerpiece and opened his mouth, only to promptly shut it when he caught the dangerous edge in Harrison’s expression. Without another word to him, he headed for one of his men to do as he’d been instructed.