Affaire Royale (10 page)

“But when it does something, it’s worth the headache, isn’t it? AHC is a good organization. It doesn’t just preach. It helps. All that equipment in the pediatric ward, the new wing. The wheelchairs, walkers, hearing aids, tutors. They cost money, and we get the money.” She glanced down at the glitter of diamonds and sapphires on her finger. “It makes me feel justified.”

“Do you need to be?”

“Yes. Just because I was born to something doesn’t mean I don’t have to earn the right to it. Especially now when …”

“You can’t remember being born to it.”

“I don’t know how I felt before,” she murmured, staring down at the elegant little leather purse she carried.
“I only know how I feel now. I’ve been given a title, but it doesn’t come without a price, that I know.”

He started the car. “You learn fast.”

“I have to.” Weariness was there, but she didn’t relax. She couldn’t. “Reeve, I don’t want to go back just yet. Can we drive? Anywhere, it doesn’t matter. I just need to be out.”

“All right.” He understood the need to be away from walls, from restrictions. He’d grown up with them, as well. He’d rebelled against them, as well. Without thinking, he headed toward the sea.

There were places just outside the capital where the road stretched and curved along the seawall. There were places before Cordina’s port, Lebarre, where the land was wild and free and open. Reeve pulled up beside a clump of pitted rocks where the trees grew slanted, leaning away from the wind.

Brie got out of the car and drank the scene in. Somehow she knew the scent and taste of the sea. She couldn’t be certain she’d been to this spot before, yet it soothed her. Letting the need to know slip away, she walked toward the old, sturdy seawall.

Tiny springy purple flowers crowded their way up through the cracks, determined to have the sun. She reached to touch one but didn’t pick it. It would die too quickly. Unmindful of her skirt, she sat on the wall and looked down.

The sea was single-mindedly blue. If it had had its way, it would have consumed the land. The wall prevented that, but didn’t tame it. Farther out she could see ships, big freighters that were on their way to or from the port, sleek sailing boats with their canvas taut. She thought her hands had known the feel of rope, her body the sway of the sea. Perhaps soon she’d test it.

“Some things are comfortable right away. Familiar, I mean. This is one of them.”

“You couldn’t grow up near the sea and not find spots like this.” The wind whipped her hair back, tossing it up and away from her face. Its color was nearly gold in this light, with small flames licking through it. He sat beside her, but not too close.

“I think I’d come to a place like this, just to breathe when the protocol became too tedious to stand.” She sighed, closing her eyes as she lifted her face to the wind. “I wonder if I always felt that way.”

“You could ask your father.”

She lowered her head. When their eyes met, he saw the weariness she’d been so careful to hide. She wasn’t back on full power yet, he reflected. And he wasn’t immune to vulnerability.

“It’s difficult.” Anger and annoyance, strain and tension were forgotten as she felt herself drawn to him again. She could talk to him, say whatever was on her mind, without consequences. “I don’t want to hurt him. I feel such intense love, such fierce protection from him it disturbs me. I know he’s waiting for me to remember everything.”

“Aren’t you?”

She looked back out to sea, silent.

“Brie, don’t you want to remember?”

It was the sea she continued to look at, not him. “Part of me does—desperately. And then another part pushes away, as if it’s all just too much. If I remember the good, won’t I remember the bad?”

“You’re not a coward.”

“I wonder. Reeve, I remember running. The rain, the wind. I remember running until I thought I’d die from it. Most of all, I remember the fear, a fear so great that I would have preferred dying to stopping. I’m not sure that part of me will allow the memory to come back.”

He understood what she described. The knowledge ate at him, something he couldn’t allow. Something he couldn’t prevent. “When you’re strong enough, you won’t give yourself a choice.”

“Something inside of me is afraid of that, too. At a time like this”—she shook her hair back and enjoyed the feel of it lifting off her neck—“it would be so easy to relax and let it go, to just allow things to happen. If I weren’t what I am I could do that. No one would care.”

“You are what you are.”

“You don’t dream?” she asked with a half smile. “You don’t ever ask yourself, what if? I could sit here now and pretend I had a cottage in the hills and a garden. Perhaps my husband’s a farmer and I’m carrying our first child. Life is simple and very sweet.”

“And the woman in the cottage could pretend she was a princess who lived in a palace.” He touched a strand of her hair that danced in the wind. “Life’s full of dreams, Brie. It’s never simple, but it can be sweet.”

“What do you dream?”

He curled her hair around the tip of his finger, then set it free. “Of tilling my own land, watching my crops grow. Being away from the streets.”

“You have land in America? A farm?”

“Yeah.” He thought of it waiting for him. Next year, he promised himself. He’d waited this long.

“But I thought you were a policeman—no, a detective now, working for yourself. A kind of adventurer.”

He laughed at the term, not bitter, just amused. “People outside the business tend to think of dark alleys and forget the paperwork.”

“But you’ve seen the dark alleys.”

He gave her a look, one hard and calm enough to make her swallow. “I’ve seen them, maybe too many of them.”

She thought she understood. She knew, without knowing, that she’d traveled a dark alley herself. For a moment she looked at the sea and sky. It wasn’t the time to think of the dark. “What will you grow on your farm?”

He thought of it. At times like this he almost believed it would happen. “Corn, hay, some apples.”

“And you have a house.” Caught up, she twisted around to face him more directly. “A farmhouse?”

“It needs some work.”

“It has a front porch? A big front porch?”

He laughed, pleasing her. “It’s big enough. After I’ve replaced a few boards it might even be safe.”

“On warm nights you’d sit out on a rocker and listen to the wind.”

He tugged her hair. “The grass is always greener.”

“So they say. Still, I think I could deal with fifty weeks of demands, of being on display, if only I had two weeks to sit on a rocker and listen to the wind. So you have land, a farmhouse, but no wife. Why?”

“An odd question from one’s fiancée.”

“You only say that to annoy me and evade answering.”

“You’re perceptive, Brie.” He dropped off the wall and held out his hand. “We should be getting back.”

“It only seems fair that I know more of your life when you know so much of mine.” But she gave him her hand. “Have you ever been in love?”

“No.”

“I wonder sometimes if I have.” Her voice was wistful as she looked back out to sea. “That’s why I goaded you into kissing me last night. I thought perhaps it might remind me.”

He saw the humor in her statement, but he wasn’t amused. “And did it?”

“No. It wasn’t as though I’d never been kissed before, but it didn’t bring anyone to mind.”

Was she deliberately challenging him again, or was she just that artless? It didn’t seem to matter. His hand slipped to her wrist. “No one?”

She heard the change, that gentle, dangerous tone. It was a tone a woman would be wise to be wary of. But she wasn’t just a woman, Brie reminded herself as she lifted her head. She was a princess. “No one. It makes me think no man’s been important to me before.”

“You responded like a woman who knows what it is to want.”

She didn’t back away, though he was closer now. His face, she thought, wasn’t one a woman would be comfortable with on long, rainy evenings. It would excite continually. His hands, large, elegant, strong, wouldn’t make a woman dream softly. They’d make her pulse, even in sleep. She already knew it.

“Perhaps I am. After all, I’m not a child.”

“No.” He closed the gap. The wind whipped between them as he stepped forward. “Neither of us is.”

Her mouth was soft, but it wasn’t hesitant. It answered his, as it had the night before. No, life was never simple, he thought as he drew her closer. But God, it could be sweet.

She gave herself to him. Somehow she needed to just then with the sea thrashing below and the wind moaning. They were so alone it seemed right that they come together, body to body, mouth to mouth. She felt his
hand slide up to her hair, firm, strong. As his fingers tangled in it, she let her head fall back. It wasn’t surrender, but temptation.

His heartbeat was as hard and quick as hers. She could feel it pound against her. The sun was strong, so she kept her eyes closed until the light was red and warm. He tasted … enticing. Male, dark, not quite safe. She felt as if she were walking along the top of a wall, above the rock and water. It was frightening. Wonderful. She ran her hands up over his back. There was muscle there. Security. Danger. She wanted both. Just for a moment, this moment, she could be any woman. Even royalty bows to passion.

She was soft, but she wasn’t safe. He knew it. He’d known it before he’d let himself be driven to touch her. Just as he knew he’d be driven to touch again and again what he was beginning to crave. The scent she wore seemed to swim around him, lighter than the air, darker than the sea.

Did she know? Even as he submerged himself deeper in her, he wondered if she knew what she did. The eyes of a sorceress, the face of an angel. What man wouldn’t be on his knees to her? Yet her sigh, quiet, low, was that of a woman. Flesh and blood or fairy tale, she was bound to tempt him. She wasn’t meant to be resisted.

But he had no choice.

He drew her away much as he had the night before—slowly, reluctantly, but inevitably. Her eyes remained closed for just a moment longer, as if she were savoring the moment. But when they opened, her look was direct and level. Perhaps both of them knew they had to step back from the edge.

“Your family will wonder where you are.”

She nodded, taking the final step back. “Yes. Obligations come first, don’t they?”

He didn’t answer, but they walked back to the car together.

“Brie! Brie, wait a minute.”

Turning, Brie shielded her eyes from the sun and watched Bennett step into the gardens with two Russian wolfhounds fretting at his heels.

His Royal Highness Prince Bennett de Cordina was dressed like a stablehand—worn jeans tucked into the tops of grimy boots, a shirt with a streak of dirt down one sleeve. As he drew closer, she caught the earthy smell of horses and hay on him. Like the dogs that fretted around his legs, he seemed to hold great stores of energy just under control.

“You’re alone.” He gave her a quick grin as he put one hand on the head of one dog and slipped another under the collar of the second. “Easy, Boris,” he said offhandedly as the dog tried to slobber over Brie’s shoes.

Boris and … Natasha, she thought, flipping back in her mental files for the names Reeve had given her. Even dogs couldn’t be ignored. They’d been a present to Bennett from the Russian ambassador, and with his penchant for irony, Bennett had named them after characters in an American cartoon show—inept Russian spies who found it difficult to outwit a squirrel and a moose.

Bennett controlled his dogs—barely. “It’s the first morning I’ve seen you out.”

“It’s the first morning this week I haven’t had meetings.” She smiled, not certain if she was guilty or pleased. “Have you been riding?”

Did she ride? Her mind worked at the quick double pace that was becoming familiar. She thought she knew how to sit a horse, how to groom one. Brie struggled for the sensation even while she smiled easily at her brother.

“Early. There was some work to do in the stables.” They stood awkwardly a moment as they both wondered what should be said. “You don’t have your American shadow,” Bennett blurted out, then grinned a little sheepishly when Brie only lifted a brow. “Alex’s nickname for Reeve,” he said, and shrugged off any embarrassment. He generally found it a waste of time. “I like him, actually. I think Alex does, too, or he’d be more frigidly polite and pompous. It’s just harder for him to accept an outsider right now.”

“None of us were consulted about it, were we?”

“Well, he seems okay.” Bennett let Boris rub up against him, not noticing or caring about the transfer of dog hair. “Not stuffy, anyway. I’ve been meaning to ask him where he gets his clothes.”

She felt both tolerance and amusement, and wondered if this was habitual. “So the man might not be easily accepted, but his clothes are?”

“He certainly has an eye for them,” Bennett commented as he pushed aside one of the dogs’ heads. “Does it bother you to have him around?”

Did it? Brie plucked a blossom from a creamy white azalea. It had been a week since she’d returned to the palace. A week since she’d returned to the life that wasn’t yet her life. Feelings were something she had to re-explore every day.

She supposed she was nearly used to having Reeve there, at her side almost every waking moment. Yet she felt no less a stranger to him, to her family. To herself.

“No, but there are times when …” She looked out over the lush, blooming garden. Looked beyond. “Bennett, did I always have this need to get away? Everyone’s so kind, so attentive, but I feel that if I could just go somewhere where I could breathe. Somewhere where I could lie on my back in the grass and leave everything behind.”

“That’s why you bought the little farm.”

She turned back, brows knit. “Little farm?”

“We called it that, though it’s really just a few acres of ground no one’s ever done anything with. You threaten to build a house there from time to time.”

A farmhouse, she mused. Perhaps that was why she’d felt so in tune with Reeve when they’d talked of his. “Is that where I was going when I …”

“Yes.” The dogs were restless, so he let them go sniff around the bases of bushes and beat each other with their tails. “I wasn’t here. I was at school. If father has his way, I’ll be back at Oxford next week.” Suddenly he looked as he was—a boy on the edge of manhood who had to bow to his father’s wishes even as he strained against them. From somewhere inside Brie rose up an understanding and an affection. On impulse she linked her arm through his, and they began to walk.