Cordinas Crown Jewel (23 page)

“No problem.”

She slid an arm through his as they walked off the dance floor. “My brothers tell me you ride very well. I hope you’ll continue to enjoy the stables while you’re here.” She kept up the casual chatter as he lifted a flute of champagne from a silver tray and offered it.

“Do you ride, Madam?”

“Certainly.” She sipped, strolled toward the open terrace doors. “My father breeds horses on his farm. I’ve ridden all my life.”

A number of other guests had spilled out onto the terrace. Before Camilla could walk to the rail, Del simply tugged her arm, the wine sloshing to the rim of her glass as he steered her briskly toward the wide stone steps.

“Slow down.” She paused at the top. “I can’t jog down stairs in this dress. I’ll break my neck.”

He took her glass from her, then stood restlessly by as she gracefully lifted her billowing skirts with her free hand. At the base of the steps, he set the champagne—barely touched—on the closest table, then continued to pull her down one of the garden paths.

“Stop dragging me along,” she hissed. “People will—”

“Oh, lighten up,” he snapped.

She grit her teeth as she struggled to maintain her dignity. “See how light you are when gossipmongers in ten countries are tossing your name around tomorrow. In any case, I’m wearing three-inch heels and five miles of skirt. Just slow down.”

“I don’t listen to gossip, so I won’t hear them tossing my name around. And if I slow down too long, somebody’s going to jump out of some corner with something for you to do. Or to fawn and scrape. Or just say something so they can say they’ve spoken to you. I want five damn minutes alone with you.”

The retort that rose to her lips faded away.

Sparkling silver luminaries lighted a path that was already streamed with moonlight. She could smell the
romance of night jasmine and roses, hear it in the pulse and pound of the sea. And her own heart.

Her lover wanted to be alone with her.

He didn’t stop until the music was barely more than a murmur in the distance. “Camilla.”

She held her breath. “Delaney.”

“I wanted to—” She wore moonlight like pearls, he thought, too dazzled to be astonished by the poetic turn of mind. Her skin was sheened with it. Her eyes glowed. The diamonds in her hair sparked, reminding him there was heat inside the elegance.

He tried again. “I wanted to apologize for … To tell you—”

She didn’t know who moved first. It didn’t seem to matter. All that mattered was they were in each other’s arms. Their mouths met, once, twice. Frantically. Then a third time, long and deep.

“I missed you.” He pulled her closer, rocking when she was locked against him. “God, I missed you.”

The words seemed to pour into her. “Don’t let go. Don’t let me go.”

“I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.” He turned his head to race kisses over her face. “I didn’t mean to ever see you again.”

“I wasn’t ever going to see you again first,” she said with a laugh. “Oh, I was so angry when I got that letter. That stiff, formal, nasty letter: ‘We of the Bardville Research Project wish to express our sincere appreciation.’ I could’ve murdered you.”

“You should’ve seen the first draft.” He eased back enough to grin at her. “It was a lot … pithier.”

“I’d probably have preferred it.” She threw her arms around his neck. “Oh, I’m so happy. I’ve been trying to figure out how to live without you. Now I won’t have to. After we’re married, you can teach me how to read one of those lab reports with all those symbols. I never could …”

She trailed off because he’d gone so completely still. Her soaring heart fell back to earth with a rude and painful thud. “You don’t love me.” Her voice was quiet, scrupulously calm as she eased out of his arms. “You don’t want to marry me.”

“Let’s just slow down, okay? Marriage—” His throat closed up on the word. “Let’s be sensible, Camilla.”

“Of course. All right, let’s.” Now her tone was terrifyingly pleasant. “Why don’t you go first?”

“There are … There are issues here,” he began, frantically trying to clear his jumbled brain long enough to think.

“Very well.” She folded her hands. “Issue number one?”

“Cut that out. You just cut that out.” He paced down the path, back again. “I have a very demanding, time-consuming profession.”

“Yes.”

“When I’m in the field, I usually live in a trailer that makes the cabin look like a five-star hotel.”

“Yes?”

He bared his teeth, but snagged his temper back at the last minute. “You can’t stand there, with that palace at your back while you’re wearing a damn crown and tell me you don’t see there’s a problem.”

“So, issue one is our different lifestyles and separate responsibilities.”

“In a nutshell. And neatly glossing over the tiaras and glass slippers. Yeah.”

“Glass slippers?” That snapped it. “Is that how you see me, and my life—as one ball after the next, one magic pumpkin ride? I have just as vital a role in the world in my glass slippers as you do in your work boots.”

“I’m not saying you don’t. That’s the whole point.” He tugged his formal tie loose and dragged it off. “This isn’t what I do. I can’t strap myself up like a penguin every time I turn around because you have a social obligation. But you should have someone who would. And I’m not asking you to chuck your diamonds to live in camp in the middle of nowhere. It’s ridiculous. It would never work.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. My father was a cop who wanted to farm. Who wanted, more than anything, peace and quiet and to work on the land. My mother was—is—a princess. When they met she was the chatelaine of this place. She had taken up the responsibility as hostess, as ambassador, as symbolic female head of this country when her mother died. But you see, they loved each other so they found a way to give to each other what they needed, to accept the responsibilities and obligations each brought with them, and to make a life together.”

Her chin was up now, her eyes glittering. “They make me proud. And I’m determined to be every bit the woman my mother is. But you, you with your excuses and your pitiful issues, you’re not half the man my father is.
He
had courage and spine and romance. He isn’t intimidated by a crown because he respects and understands the woman who wears it.”

She swept up her skirts again. “I would have lived in your trailer and still have been a princess. My duty to my name—and yours—would never be shirked. It’s you who doubt you could live in this palace and still be a man.”

He hated one single fact the most. She was right. Under all the issues and trappings and complications, he’d been … well, he didn’t like the term intimidated. Leery, he decided as he stalked around the gardens as he was wont to stalk around his forest in Vermont. He was leery of linking himself with the princess.

He’d been paying attention in the weeks they’d been apart. He’d seen her face and name splashed over the media. He’d read the stories about her personal life, the speculations about her romantic liaisons.

He knew damn well she wasn’t and hadn’t been having some hot affair with a French actor as all the articles had trumpeted. She’d been too busy having one with a half-American archaeologist.

Besides, anyone who knew her could see the actor wasn’t her type. Too smooth for Camilla.

And that was part of it. The stories, the innuendoes, the outright fabrications were, for the most part, written by people who didn’t know her. Who didn’t understand how hard she was willing to work, or her devotion to her mother’s country. Her great love of her family, and theirs for her.

They saw an image. The same one he’d let himself be blinded by.

But damn it all to hell and back, the woman had leaped from possible, tentative relationship into marriage so quickly it had been like a sucker punch to the jaw. She didn’t give a guy a chance to test his footing.

All or nothing with her, he thought darkly as he jammed his hands into his pockets and reviewed the situation.

First, he finally figures out he’s in love with her, then he gets poked in the eye with the fact she’s been lying to him. Before he can clear his vision on that, she’s long gone. So what that he’d told her to go.

Now, after he’d realized the whole situation was totally impossible, she had to stand there looking like something out of a dream and make him see just how much he’d be losing. And just when he’d started to think
maybe, maybe, with time and effort, they could get back what they’d had, she kicked him square in the teeth with marriage.

Yeah, give her a month in a trailer in Florida, toss in a few tropical storms, knee-deep mud, bugs the size of baseballs, and …

She’d be great. He stopped dead in his tracks. She’d be fantastic. She was the kind of woman you could plunk down anywhere, in any situation and she’d find a way. She just kept hacking and prodding and fiddling until she found the way.

Because that was Camilla.

He’d fallen for that, he realized. Before he’d fallen for the looks, the style, the heat, he’d lost his head over her sheer determination to find the answers.

And he was letting a minor detail like royal blood stand in his way.

He wanted the woman, and the princess came along with her. Not half the man her father was? Oh, she’d tried to slice him up with that one. He didn’t have courage, backbone. He had no romance?

He’d give her some romance that would knock her out of her glass slippers.

He turned, stormed halfway back to the ballroom before he stopped himself. That, he realized, was just the sort of thing he was going to have to avoid. If this relationship was going to have a chance in hell of working he was going to have to think ahead. A man went charging into a palace ball, tossed a princess over his shoulder and started carting her off, he was going to get them both exactly the sort of press she hated.

And likely end up tossed in some dark, damp dungeon for his trouble.

What a man had to do was work out a clear, rational plan—and carry it out where there were no witnesses.

So he sat down on a marble bench and began to do precisely that.

*  *  *

He got rope at the stables. There were times, he was forced to admit, where being a viscount came in handy.
Stable hands were too polite to question the eccentricities of Lord Delaney.

He had to wait until the last waltz was over, and guests were tucked in to bed or were on the other side of the palace gates. That only gave him more time to work out logistics—and to wonder what his parents would do if he ended up breaking his idiotic neck.

He knew where her room was now. That had been a simple matter of subtly pumping Adrienne. He could only be grateful her windows overlooked the gardens where there were plenty of shadows. Though he doubted any guards who patrolled the area would be looking for a man dangling several stories up by a rope.

Even when that man swore bitterly when he swung, nearly face-first, into those white stone walls. Rappelling down from the parapet had seemed a lot easier in theory than in fact. He was fairly proficient at it from his work, but climbing down a building at night was considerably different. The cold reality had him swinging in the wind with scraped knuckles and strained temper.

He didn’t mind the height so much, unless he thought about the possibility of it being his last view. And all, he mused as he tried for a foothold on a stone balcony rail, because she’d pinched at his ego.

Just couldn’t wait until morning. Oh, no, he thought as his foot skidded and he went swinging again. That would’ve been too easy, too ordinary. Too sane. Why have a civilized conversation in broad daylight and tell a woman you love her and want to marry her when you can do something really
stupid
like commit suicide on the bricks below her bedroom window?

That made a statement.

He managed to settle his weight on the rail, and catch his breath. And the rising wind swept in a brisk September rain.

“Perfect.” He glanced up to the heavens. “That just caps it.”

While the sudden downpour had rain streaming into his eyes, he swung out again, kicked lightly off the wall, and worked his way down to Camilla’s private terrace.

The first bolt of lightning crashed over the sea as he dropped down, thankfully, to solid stone. He fought with the knot of the thoroughly wet rope he’d looped around. It took him two drenching minutes to free himself.
Dumping the rope, he pushed his sopping hair out of his eyes and marched to her terrace doors.

Found them locked.

For a moment he only stood, staring at them. What the hell did she lock the balcony doors for? he wondered with rising irritation. She was three stories up, in a damn palace with guards everywhere.

How often did she have some idiot climb down the wall and drop on her terrace?

She’d drawn the curtains, too, so he couldn’t see a bloody thing. He considered, with a spurt of cheerfulness, the satisfaction of kicking in the doors.

There was a certain style to that, he thought. A certain panache. However, that would likely be squashed when alarms started to scream.

Here he was, wet as a drowned rat, on her terrace. And the only way to get in was to knock.

It was mortifying.

So he didn’t knock so much as hammer.

*  *  *

Inside, Camilla was using a book as an excuse not to sleep. Every fifteen minutes or so, she actually read a sentence. For the most part, one single fact played over and over in her head.

She’d handled everything badly.

There was no way, around it. When she stepped back to look at the big picture, Del had reacted exactly as she’d expect him to react. She had leaped, heart first, into an assumption of marriage.

She’d have been insulted if he’d been the one doing the assuming.

Did love make everyone stupid and careless, or was it just her?

She sighed, turned a page in the book without particular interest. She’d bungled everything, she decided, right from the beginning. Oh, he’d helped. He was such a … what had his mother said? Bonehead. Yes, he was such a bonehead—but she
loved
that about him.