“Hell, yes. There are more than letters. There are pictures, too. They are ugly, Rachel.”
“So is life, sometimes. I won’t be shielded from that ugliness, Peter. I’ll stand on my own two feet.”
There had been a time when she’d tried to hide from the uncomfortable and the unpleasant. Not that many years ago, her feelings of inadequacy, her terrible lack of self-esteem had drawn her to the wrong people. The acceptance of strangers had fed a need in her. Even as she allowed herself to be wooed by those people, she’d known it was wrong. That those friends could be, in fact, her enemies had never occurred to her. They cared no more for her feelings, for her well-being, than she thought her family did. In the end, she discovered the truth of her misconceptions. But the price had been too dear.
The overdose they’d fed her would have killed her if Philip hadn’t found her in time. She would never let ignorance blindside her again.
“All right.” Peter said as he opened a file folder that sat on his desk. Picking up the item on top, he offered the plastic-covered document to her.
Inhaling deeply, Rachel sat back down and took it.
“Here’s the first one, mailed slightly more than a month ago, from Toulouse.”
“Before Philip and Catharine even met.”
“Yes.”
His tone caught her attention. She looked up at him. “You didn’t think to mention it
then
?”
“Receiving anonymous threats against a member of the royal family isn’t that unusual. We’ve received them in the past, usually only one threat per wacko. That’s why this threat, though handled in the regular, cautious way, didn’t raise any red flags at the time.”
She wasn’t certain how she felt about her family being the target of threats because of who they were. Then her gaze fell on the photo of herself, and her thoughts scattered.
It was, she mused, one of the more celebrated shots that had been taken of her by the paparazzi. Someone had used a zoom lens—likely from a boat in the harbor—and had snapped a shot of her on the balcony of her suite. The bikini was one she’d never worn in public, but used to sunbathe in private. This picture, however, featured something the original and countless reproductions had not. A giant, red
X
was drawn right through her face.
“The runt of the litter is a whore, a disgrace. She should have been euthanized at birth. For too long, she has escaped punishment. But soon, soon, she will be executed.”
“Runt?” she repeated, lacing the word with distain.
Peter’s laugh sounded harsh.
“Somehow, I suspected that would be the word that would get your back up.”
“Well, ‘whore’ is such a common insult these days.”
“And shows a total lack of imagination.”
“Precisely.” She grinned at him, grateful he’d somehow understood her need to control the moment with humor. “That photo is one that was published in newspapers and magazines all over Europe about a year and a half ago.”
“Yes, I remember. You were mad as hell that someone had dared to play Peeping Tom. This is the second one,” he said, handing her the next page, “received two weeks after the first and mailed, this time, from Durban.”
“Closer. Closer to the border between France and Boisdemer than the first.”
“Yes.”
This photo made Rachel’s stomach lurch.
“We know where the picture came from,” Peter said quietly. “It appeared about three months ago in an American news magazine that enjoys fairly wide circulation in France. It’s from a story about a massacre on the African subcontinent. The investigative team came upon a village whose inhabitants had been executed, mutilated, and left to nature’s scavengers.”
Beneath the photo, in the same block script, the words once more looked as if they had been printed with a ruler or straightedge underneath.
“Rachel the runt. Soon, now. You will be expunged from the record of humanity, exterminated,
écorché
, where the vultures and the rats will eat your discarded flesh, and I will exult in your suffering. Soon.”
“There seems to be a lot more hate here. ‘
Écorché’
. Not a common word. I’ve seen a drawing in the Museum of Interpretive Art, in Paris, that was an
écorché
—depicting a human form with no flesh, only muscle and sinew.” She couldn’t help but shiver.
“Are you all right?” Peter’s tone was gentler than she’d ever heard it.
“You were right. These are very ugly. However, I’m not a fragile flower, Peter. I won’t crawl into a corner and whimper like a child.” She froze, an echo of memory slithering across her mind. A flash, insubstantial and then gone. She caught the narrowing of Peter’s eyes and forced herself to smile. “I’m fine. It’s disconcerting to be hated like this. I wonder what I did to deserve it?”
“Get that thought right out of your head!”
“Not even you can order me not to think about something, Peter.”
He didn’t so much as blink when she wryly tossed his own words back at him. “Let me rephrase that, then. This has nothing to do with you, Rachel. The person who wrote these letters is sick—sick and twisted.”
“So it is the same person.”
“We’re pretty certain of that. One more. Ready?”
“Yes.”
“This one arrived two days ago, mailed right here in Cardinia.”
“Which is why Father freaked?”
“I don’t know of any parent who wouldn’t.”
The third picture wasn’t a photograph, exactly. It was a collage, of sorts, and looked like a child’s cut-and-paste artwork. Rachel’s face, the image from another copy of the first photograph, had been pasted on top of the photo of a nude woman who had been eviscerated.
“Each evening ebbs, closer to the day of your eradication. No one will weep for you, no one will come for you. I will be effusive in my gift of pain to you. This is what I’m going to do to you. I’ll eviscerate you and scatter your entrails for the vermin. I’m close, so close, and you can’t even see me. But I see you. I see you, and I’m waiting.”
She handed the letters back to Peter, relieved when he turned them face-down on the file folder.
“You’re investigating?”
“Of course, in conjunction with Interpol and the French authorities, we’ve a list of known terrorists, stalkers, and the like. We’re tracking and eliminating the ones we can. No prints could be detected on the pages or the envelopes. So far, no DNA on the glue strip. The magazine pictures could have come from any of hundreds of outlets. The stationery in the third sample and the envelopes are all common stock. Our borders with France and Spain have been put on alert, the border guards have been sent an electronic file of names with photos—people to be watching out for. Beyond that, there’s precious little we can do. Is there anyone you can think of who would want to hurt you, anyone loopy enough to send these letters?”
“Your opinion of the people with whom I choose to consort is so noted. The truth is that I have few friends.”
Not since becoming clean and sober.
She hadn’t trusted herself enough to make new friends. Catharine was the first person Rachel had approached in a long time. She must have sensed, somehow, the young woman’s connection to Peter. “I don’t go out much. You’re going to be bored with your guard-dog duty.”
“You don’t bore me.”
“Well,” Rachel said, getting to her feet.
Off-balance again
. The man could teach a course at the university on the subject. Deciding two could play that game, she ignored his comment. “Knowing that there is really nothing you can do about this nutcase certainly makes me feel
much
better.”
Peter closed the folder, then stood and moved around his desk, stopping directly in front of her.
“No one is going to touch you, Rachel. You have my word on that.”
He looked fierce, like a warrior defending the princess in the tower. She smiled, the only way she knew to reassure him that whoever sent these hateful letters didn’t really frighten her.
But the sudden image of Peter being hurt defending her did.
* * * *
Alex’s joy soared so intensely within him he didn’t know if he could contain it.
Only the muted sounds from the palace grounds filtering through the partially opened window disturbed the silence. He couldn’t see the clock beside the bed, but judging from the light outside, he knew it to be late afternoon.
Snuggled close to him, Hannah lay sound asleep. To have the woman he loved in his bed,
finally
, was beyond wonderful.
He’d promised her he would never lie to her again, and he wouldn’t. But he hadn’t yet told her he loved her. He needed the right moment, the right setting for that.
Stroking her hair, he let his mind wander over the last two weeks. They’d been hell. Loving Hannah and not having her had been the worst thing he’d ever endured. Today, when she forgave him, he felt as if he’d been given the greatest of gifts. Oh, he was quite certain he knew how her mind worked. That little tidbit about being sorry for wasting time told him everything he needed to know. Hannah believed that they had only a few weeks left to be together.
He had decided never to be without her again.
So that gave him about three more weeks—until Philip and Catharine’s wedding—to convince the woman he loved that she should be his queen.
Alex considered himself a fair man. He couldn’t ask her to marry him until she had an idea of what she’d be taking on with him. Although he had met and bedded Hannah under the guise of being an ordinary man, of course he was not one. Being a king meant he had more than four grown children to look after. He had an entire nation, small though it may be. As his queen, Hannah would be by his side. They would have their love and their families, but they would also have their duties.
He already knew Hannah to be a woman with a keen sense of duty. Another woman would have divorced a husband who had proven so much less than a full partner. No one, himself included, would have thought less of her if she’d done so. But Hannah had held to her vows, had readily admitted to him that had her husband not died, she’d be married to him still.
In his mind, that attitude was queenly.
But he wouldn’t ask until she’d had a taste of royal life. Placing a kiss on her head, it came to him how this could be arranged. He would put things in motion this very evening, at dinner.
“What time is it?”
The lush, not-quite-awake sound of her voice brought a smile to his face. He shifted gently, laying her flat on her back, arranging himself above her. Smoothing the hair from her face, he said, “Time for me to ravish you again.”
The feel of her hand gently caressing his face stirred him. “I’m hungry.”
“So am I.”
“Hmm. For food. I think we missed lunch.”
“So we did. Though I could have sworn I gorged myself on dessert.” He kissed her, taking his time to sample and savor, enjoying the luxury of having her in his bed and under him. Because he could, he bared her to her waist and put his tongue and teeth to the task of turning her pretty coral-colored nipples hard and needy.
“You have to have something more substantial for nourishment than dessert.”
Her teasing smile delighted him. He spared a glance for the bedside clock, visible to him now in this position.
“I fear you are right. It’s after three. Dinner won’t be ready until seven. As much as I hate the thought of leaving this bed, I want to give you a tour of my home. We can have a proper English tea if you like, or simply ask the kitchen staff to bring us something to nibble on.”
“You’re already nibbling.”
“So I am.” He gave each breast a chaste kiss then covered her again. “We’ll remember where we left off after dinner, when we make our excuses and come right back here.”
“That sounds like a plan. I have to unpack, then shower and dress.”
“Oh, likely by now the unpacking has already been done.”
“I see.”
“Do you remember how you told me you found your maid at the Resort terrifying?”
“Yes.”
“The ones here can be even more so.”
The sound of her laughter warmed his heart while the sight of her gloriously nude body, when she rose from the bed, hardened his sex.
Her smile told him she’d not taken him seriously.
A shame
, he mused while throwing off the covers and getting up. He’d only been partly joking.
“Shower with me?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
Peter had to admit he was impressed.
The building Rachel had chosen to house her fledgling business stood in an older part of the city, about a kilometer from the palace. White stucco, two floors, the structure appeared to be in good shape.
Peter kept himself on full alert when he alighted from the car. He’d insisted they take one of the chauffeur-driven Lincolns. Rachel had looked mutinous for a moment, but relented. Upon their arrival, he left her to sit inside the bulletproof vehicle while he had a look around. Now, motioning for her to get out of the car, he braced for a sting from her habitually sharp tongue. And he didn’t know what to think when she kept silent.
The building owner, Monsieur
Ducharme,
greeted them at the door. Looking across the street, Peter made brief eye contact with Edward, who’d been on site since early that morning. He already knew the man and his team had found no problems when they’d conducted a thorough search of the property and surrounding area before dawn. Now the man’s almost imperceptible nod assured Peter nothing had changed.
Once inside, Rachel became all business. Only half listening while she went over the terms of the lease with the man, he couldn’t help but notice she knew what she wanted. The questions she asked had the middle-aged entrepreneur searching through his notes and, at one point, putting a hurried call in to his lawyer. She never once raised her voice, batted her eyelashes, or stomped her foot, but in short order, Monsieur
Ducharme
had a signed lease, and Rachel held a set of keys and the obvious respect of her landlord.