The Perfect Temptation (57 page)

enough sense to leave him alone for a while.
He wasn't

quite sure whether hitting someone would make
him better

or not, but if Barrett offered the chance to
find out, he'd

take it.

He had managed to get halfway back to the
Blue Elephant,

through anger, through dismay and
disappointment,

and all the way to a burning mixture of
self-loathing and

burgeoning panic before Barrett trotted up
beside him.

''Talk
to me," his
friend said without preamble. "What are

you thinking?"

Aiden didn't slow his stride or look over at
him. "Not

much beyond your basic 'Good God Almighty!
I've bedded

a princess!' "

"You didn't know at the time that she
was a princess."

"And that makes it all right? That takes
away all the ugly

consequences for her?" he demanded,
thinking that perhaps

he wasn't quite done with the anger after
all. "When it

comes to doing the worst possible, most
outrageously wrong

thing, p.o man picks them better than I do.
No man! Hell, I

can do it without even trying. All I have to
do is breathe and

think to myself, 'What could be the harm?'
Jesus!"

Barrett didn't say anything more until they
reached the

front door of Alex's shop. Aiden was fishing
the key out of

his pocket when Barrett caught his arm and
asked, ''What

are you going to do?"

"I don't know," he admitted hotly.
"Do you have any

pearls of wisdom you'd like to cast my
way?"

Barrett let go of him and with a sigh looked
back the way

they'd come. "It's too late for the only
one I could have offered

you."

Way too late. And suddenly he was plunging '
back into

despair, his chest tightening and the tears
clawing their way

up his throat. Ramming his fingers through
his hair, he

closed his eyes and snarled, "What a
goddamn disaster."

"It could be worse," Barrett
offered weakly. .

"You're right," he agreed, his
anguish and despair evaporating

in the heated surge of returning anger.
"Deflowered

Indian princesses might
be
expected to kill themselves."

Barrett expelled a hard breath and squared
his stance.

"Don't give her the letter right away;
John Aiden. Hold on to

it for a few days. Give yourself time to
think. Give both of

you time to come back to ground."

"In a few days Sarah could
be
walking in the door of the

Blue Elephant;' he countered through bared
teeth. "What am I

supposed to say then? 'Excuse me a moment,
your highness.

If
we could possibly
delay the reunion, there's a little something

I've been neglecting to tell my lover, your
niece'?"

"Aiden, don't do anything gallant
tonight," his friend

replied, trying, Aiden knew, to be the voice
of calm and reason.

"You'll regret it in the morning."

And that mistake would
be
bigger, more significant than

the one he'd already made? What was one more
regret?

''Thank you for coming along, Barrett,"
he said tersely, stepping

up to the door and inserting the key in the
lock. "We

wanted answers to the questions and we got
them. God-awful

as they are."

He had crossed to the other side of the
threshold when

Barrett quietly asked, "Are you going to
be all right?"

Aiden slipped the key into the lock on his
side. "It's Alex

you need to be worrying about."

"Alexandra Radford isn't my
friend."

He looked up to meet the other's gaze. 'That,
Barrett;' he

said, "is your great loss. Good night.
Thank you again."

Then, before Barrett could say one more word,
before he

could shove his foot in the door and persist
in angering him,

Aiden closed the door and locked it.

Alone in the dark on the other side, he gazed
up the stairs,

knowing she was waiting for him. His
beautiful, breathtaking,

passionate Indian princess. His mistake had
been committed

unwittingly, but committed it he had. He'd do
right

by Alex. Whatever he had to do to shield her,
he'd see it

done.

Chapter 18

Alex opened her eyes, listening for the
sound that had awakened

her.
It
came again, from over by the windows,
part

groan, part sigh. She moved her head on the
pillow just

enough to see. Aiden sat on the trunk,
dressed as he'd been

when he'd left her, his elbows on his
knees, his face buried in

his hands.

''Aiden?'' she called softly, sitting up,
holding the sheet

over her breasts.

He looked up, clearly startled. He took a
quick breath and

offered her a fragile, stiff smile. "I
didn't mean to wake you,

darling. Go back to sleep."

When he was in obvious agony? ''Aiden,
what's wrong?"

Dropping the sheet and gaining her feet,
she crossed the

short distance and then knelt at his feet, her
hand on his knee

as she gazed up at him. "What's
happened?"

He closed his eyes and fell back against
the wall. Softly,

quietly, he asked, "Who is
Sarad?"

Her heart skipped a beat. "Mohan's
uncle," she supplied,

her mind frantically racing. "Kedar's
younger brother. He's

the one who sends me the things for the
Blue Elephant.

How-"

"Do you trust him?"

"Kedar trusts him," she answered,
her stomach growing

colder with every beat of her heart.
"How do you know

about Sarad? I never told you his
name."

His eyes still closed, he cleared his
throat and asked

"Have you ever heard of a man called
Vadeen?" ,

"It's a fairly common name,
Aiden."

''This one is Sarad's bodyguard. Do you
know him?"

''The last time I actually saw Sarad,"
she replied, desperation

welling up inside her, "I was a child
not much older

than Mohan. I certainly wouldn't know his
bodyguards."

"Have you ever met Hanuman? Would you
know him if

he walked up to you?"

Hanuman? Dh, God. Certainty slammed down
over her.

"Yes and yes. Is he here in-"

"If
a man walked
into the store and told you he was

Sarad, how would you know if he was lying
or not?"

She was at the end of patience, at the end
of endurance.

"I'm not answering another one of your
questions until you

answer mine, Aiden. What happened
tonight?"

He opened his eyes with a sigh and sat away
from the

wall. From his pocket he took a parchment
packet. Handing

it to her, he whispered sadly, ''The bottom
fell out of the

world."

She took it from him and flipped it over.
And then

dropped back onto her heels, her heart
skittering madly and

her stomach frozen with dread. Kedar's
seal. Her name, in

Hindi, scrawled over the face.
Possibilities flooded over her.

Kedar was summoning them back to India. The
messenger,

the man named Vadeen that Aiden had asked
about, was

downstairs, waiting. Kedar was writing to
say that he'd been

taken prisoner and it would never be safe
for them to return'

she should take Mohan far away and keep him
safe. That
he

was dying. That Mohan's mother was dying.

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath,
willed her

mind to still and her panic to ease. With
trembling fingers,

she broke the wax and opened the folds.
Then opened her

eyes. And began to read.

The first words were an instant comfort.
Kedar was well.

All in his house were well. His enemies had
been defeated.

Alex sagged in relief and read on, hearing
the richness of his

voice in each and every word. And the
whispers that had followed

her all of her life in the palace. She
reached the end

and stared at the closing salutation, at
the call for divine

blessings upon his daughter.
Daughter.
She had a father. A

living, breathing, loving father. Kedar.
The man her mother

had loved with all her heart.

"Is it Kedar's seal?"

She blinked and looked up from the letter,
up into Aiden's

sad eyes. "Yes," she answered,
wondering why he considered

this to be bad news. The bottom hadn't
fallen out of the world

at all.
If
anything, it had come wondrously right. "And the

pen of his scribe. I recognize both."

“You didn't know, did you?"

She shook her head, marveling at the web of
deceit that

had always been her life. "When I was
a child, I secretly

hoped and pretended. And then I put it away
and accepted

what my mother said was the truth."

"What happens now?"

Alex looked back at the letter. Yes, she'd
read it correctly.

"Vadeen dispatches Hanuman and Sarad
comes for Mohan

and me within the week and we return to
India."

"And what happens in India when your
father learns that