Royal Protocol (20 page)

His own breathing seemed a little ragged when he finally lifted his head and settled his hands on her shoulders.

“We both need to go,” he murmured.

Looking sorely tempted to kiss her again, he eased her back. For good measure he dropped his hands and opened the door so she would leave.

Later, he told himself, as he watched her give him a little nod and murmur, “Good night.” Later, he repeated, when she walked past the door he held and disappeared behind the one beyond. That was when he would think about what he was doing with her.

Right now he needed to find the prince.

“W
e have a profile shot of the prince through one of the windows on the cliff side. Looks like a storage room. Bars on the window. No balcony. No visible exterior access. The villa is walled and guarded by at least a dozen men. There are probably more, but that’s all we can count in the photographs.”

Pierce slid the sheets of reconnaissance photographs across the mahogany conference table. Low clouds and fog had hung over the island of Majorco all day, making recon shots impossible until the weather had finally given them a break an hour before sunset.

Harrison and Sir Selwyn stood shoulder to shoulder, studying what had come off the intelligence satellite feed only minutes ago.

“Look here.” Harrison pointed to a shot of another storage room. “This second window. You can see racks of guns and boxes of ammo.”

“Here, too.” Pierce indicated another barred window. “They have a regular arsenal.”

Harrison scanned the photos, sweeping past some, studying others more closely. “Then, we’ll take an arsenal with us, too. I’ll get an RNS team in here to go over these with you, Colonel.” The Royal Navy SEALs were the only men for the job. “They’re going to need maps of that end of the island. Land and underwater. That shoreline looks too rocky to get in close with an amphibious launch. They can scuba in from an air drop, but they won’t be able to bring him out over those boulders. Especially if he’s injured. We need to coordinate a chopper pickup or stuff a vehicle back in the trees to get them to a pickup point. It’ll depend on the weather and how the team captain sees his options.”

“Are you going to try for a rescue tonight?”

Harrison hesitated. In theory the rescue could be put together in a matter of hours. “We have good teams here we could use. But the best of the best is training off the Hebrides.” He glanced at his watch. “If I send for them now, it will be 2:00 a.m. before they can get here. It could be daybreak before they’d be ready to go. We need the cover of darkness for this.”

Pondering his colleague’s conclusions, Sir Selwyn straightened. “Are you saying you want to wait?”

“I’m saying I don’t want to blow this. The extra time will allow us to get my best team onboard and put backups in place. We have one shot to rescue the prince. The more contingencies we plan for and the more information we can gather about what’s going on in that villa, the better chance we have at success. If we can get it put together tonight and have time before dawn, then we go for it. If not, we wait.”

As if starting a mental clock, Selwyn gave a slow,
considering nod. “The treaty is being signed at the banquet. Right about eight.”

No one was more aware of the time factor than Harrison was. “Then, that means if we don’t get in there tonight, we have until just after dark tomorrow.”

He wouldn’t rush if he had a choice. Mistakes were made when an operation was thrown together. Critical points could be overlooked. Had this information not been discovered until tomorrow, then he would have had no choice but to act with what they had. But there was a choice, and whenever he had options, he inevitably chose the one guaranteed the greatest chance of success—even if success meant taking a calculated risk.

Selwyn and Pierce both knew how his mind worked. They also knew he was a master of logistics.

“I’ll get someone on those maps,” Pierce said, tacitly agreeing to the plan as he turned toward the door. “We could use some night-vision shots of the villa, too. That’s the easiest way to get a body count to see how many men our guys will be up against.”

Running through a mental check list, Harrison absently pushed his hand into his pants pocket. His knuckle rolled over a pea-size metal ball. “I’ll get a jet up.”

“Will you inform Lady Corbin?” asked Sir Selwyn.

The metal ball had a stem. Rolling it between his fingers, Harrison considered the question for all of two seconds. “I need to call in the team and scramble another plane to get those night shots,” he replied, letting the stem go. “It would be better if you do that.”

“I’ll be glad to. It was just that she asked about you when I told her that the surveillance planes had been sent up this morning. Since you’ve been working so closely together, I thought perhaps you might want to see her yourself.”

Harrison couldn’t imagine Gwen saying anything that would give the king’s secretary reason to look at him with such speculation. Unless, he thought, the curiosity was there simply because of the circumstances. The entire RET knew the two of them had been thrown together a lot lately. They also had to be aware that the initial friction between them no longer existed.

What they couldn’t possible know was that the relationship had turned into something it shouldn’t have.

Keeping his tone deceptively disinterested, he stepped toward the phone on the credenza. “She asked about me?”

“It was actually more of a comment,” the very proper gentleman admitted. “She said she hoped you’d managed to get some rest last night.”

“We could all use that.”

“Indeed. Well,” Selwyn said, his speculation fading at Harrison’s less than enlightening response. “I’d best go find her, then.”

“Thank you.”

“No thanks necessary. Speaking with Lady Corbin has been one of my more pleasant duties lately.”

His, too, Harrison thought solemnly, and watched Selwyn follow Pierce from the room.

The door closed automatically, but he didn’t pick up the telephone as he’d intended. Instead, he pulled the little gold ball from his pocket by its gold stem and held it in his palm.

He’d found the earring in the center of his desk blotter this morning. The cleaning people had obviously come across it and put it there.

It was Gwen’s. He recognized it because he’d noticed her wearing it last night. Thinking he would return it to her when he gave her an update for the queen this morn
ing, he had slipped it into his pocket. But the more he’d thought about seeing her and the more he thought about what had happened between them, the greater had become his need for distance. So, he’d sent Selwyn to see her instead.

He had no business being with her.

He had no business wanting her.

He understood sex well enough. There wasn’t anything terribly complicated about the human sex drive. It was everything else she made him feel that he didn’t comprehend. Or trust. He had never craved softness before, or felt a need like he had in the moments before he’d first reached for her in his office. He’d begun to feel that same need when he’d held her during those stolen moments in the tunnel. He’d felt it again when he’d awakened that morning.

There was something about her that seemed almost necessary to him. It felt unfamiliar to want anything that badly. Unfamiliar, and more than a little threatening.

He turned to the phone, punched in a couple of numbers. There was nothing complicated about how he dealt with threat, either. His defenses simply slammed into place. But even with the excuse of a rescue mission allowing him the distance he needed for the moment, he knew he couldn’t put off facing her forever. The problem was that when he did see her, he had no idea what he was going to say.

Gwen wasn’t the sort of woman for a quick affair. She was a lady with a reputation to protect. Yet he wasn’t prepared to offer her anything more.

Gwen had fallen asleep on the sofa in the queen’s drawing room sometime after three o’clock in the morn
ing. She awoke a little after seven to the light rap on the main door.

Her first thought was that it had to be news of Owen. Sir Selwyn had told them that he had been sighted and that there was a slight possibility of a rescue last night. Her second thought was that it would be Harrison bringing that news.

Her heart was beating a little too rapidly as she tossed off the cashmere throw blanket she’d borrowed from the queen’s salon. Anxiously pushing back her hair, she slipped on her shoes, tugged her sweater over her slacks and headed for the door.

She had no idea how late Harrison had stayed up with Gage and the RET the night before last. Since she hadn’t seen him at all yesterday, she assumed that the leads they’d developed had kept him swamped. She just hoped that somewhere during all of that he had found time to get a few hours of sleep. She didn’t know how long he would stay in her life. She wasn’t even going to think about it right now. She just wanted him to be all right—and hoped that they had found the prince safe.

With a click of the latch, she opened the door. An instant later, the expectation and worry in her face met the weariness in Colonel Pierce Prescott’s.

Expectation stuttered to disappointment.

The worry remained.

With his beret tucked under his arm, the head of Royal Intelligence gave a polite nod. “May I enter, my lady?”

“Of course,” she replied, hastily masking that disappointment as she stepped back. “Please, come in. You have a message for the queen?”

“I do.” He stopped six feet into the room, turning to face her as she closed the door. “I won’t keep you but a minute,” he said, generously overlooking the obvious
fact that he’d awakened her. His manner was polite as always. It was also a bit cautious, as it tended to be when they encountered each other alone. “We thought Her Majesty would want to know that the operation was postponed until tonight.”

“They didn’t get him?”

“They didn’t try. As Sir Selwyn relayed to you, it was only a slight possibility last night. By the time the team got in this morning and they had their plans in place, it was too late to start the operation. They will rest today and be in place at nightfall.”

Gwen didn’t know what time the queen had gone to her bedroom. The last she’d seen of her, she’d been sitting in the chair by the window, staring out at the blackness, waiting.

The possibility Sir Selwyn had mentioned had been her greatest hope in days.

“I’ll tell Her Majesty.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

He looked relieved to be going. Aware of that, knowing exactly why that was, she reached for the door. A moment later she dropped her hand.

Harrison had told her that the conversation they’d had about the night her husband died was to remain between the two of them. She wasn’t about to break that confidence. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t let Meredith’s fiancé know in some small way that she bore him no ill will for his inability to answer the question she’d once asked of him.

“If you’ll forgive me for bringing up the subject,” she began quietly, “there is something I need you to know.”

Caution immediately shadowed his impossibly blue eyes. “My lady?”

“About that night. The one you and I were never per
mitted to talk about to each other,” she explained, though she could tell from his expression that he was already aware of that. Every time he saw her, he seemed to be reminded of it.

“I’m not asking you anything about that night now,” she continued. “I understand there are things you can’t say. I just want you to know how it has relieved me to know that Alex wasn’t alone when he died.” She paused, the words sounding hopelessly inadequate for the comfort the knowledge had brought. “I’ve always been grateful to you for being there.”

For a moment the handsome young officer didn’t seem to know what to say. He just looked at her as if he would rather be anywhere else than where he was at the moment—until he slowly realized what else she was saying. She wasn’t blaming him for what he couldn’t tell her. She held nothing against him for not having been there an instant earlier to help her husband, or for not being the one to take the bullet instead.

His shoulders rose with his deep breath, then dropped as if some awful weight had finally been lifted from them. Some of the shadows even seemed to leave his eyes.

With a bow, he took her hand. “It was my privilege,” he said, and gallantly touched his lips to her knuckles before he stepped back.

“Thank you, Colonel.”

“It’s Pierce.”

She smiled. Incredibly, with everything else he had to have on his mind, he smiled back.

Meredith was truly a fortunate young lady, she thought, watching him depart. But thoughts of Pierce and how relieved she was to have put to rest the last ghosts
of that long-ago night gave way to an entirely different sort of uneasiness within seconds of closing the door.

It seemed that Harrison was avoiding her.

The suspicion lodged as a hard knot under her breastbone. Since yesterday he had sent Sir Selwyn twice with updates. Today he was sending Pierce. Always before, information had come from him.

The knot seemed to grow. Crossing her arms over it, she tried to will it away. She knew he was busy. She’d been thinking of that only moments before Pierce had arrived. But what seemed logical as fact didn’t work as well in terms of an excuse. He couldn’t be any busier than he had been all week. He wasn’t even that far away. She knew from Sir Selwyn that he’d been in the tunnel most of yesterday. Considering what Pierce had just told her, he’d undoubtedly been there most of last night, too.

The thought that she had just become a one-night stand had her tightening her grip on herself as she started across the room. She wouldn’t go there now. The thought was too demoralizing. Aside from that, she truly didn’t have the energy to cope with the awful possibility with everything she had to do.

She needed to deliver the RET’s update to the queen. She then had an hour to shower and get back to coax Her Majesty to try on the ball gown in case it needed adjustment before the signing. There was also a rather large state dinner planned for that evening she had to oversee—which meant she needed to run down to the ballroom after she checked on the gown to make sure the flowers had been delivered and the candelabras put in place, then get back afterward to make sure the tables were being set properly and that everything was going well in the kitchen.

Those were the things she needed to concentrate on.

So that was what she did.

Within the hour, however, all of her priorities changed. She had been right on schedule, too. She’d spoken with the queen, hurried upstairs to get herself ready for the day and had come back down with her hair in a neat chignon and wearing a simple slate-gray suit. When she’d knocked on the queen’s bedroom door again, she had expected to find Marissa showered and Mrs. Westerbrook helping her with her wardrobe.