Czytaj książkę: «The Prince and The Marriage Pact»

Chapter One

Annegret West felt a rush of anticipation as she ventured deeper into the corridors of Merrisand Castle. The sounds of the wedding reception gradually faded behind her as she told herself there was no harm in looking around. If these areas had been off-limits to visitors, surely there would have been security guards to direct her back to the reception rooms?

Considering that the groom was a key member of the Royal Protection Detail, and many of his colleagues were occupied attending the wedding, she wasn’t surprised when no one questioned her right to be here.

Her air of confidence was the key, she knew. She was well dressed, as befitted a guest at a wedding taking place in a royal castle, and she walked with the assurance of someone who knew exactly where she was going.

Passing a gold-framed mirror, she caught a glimpse of a statuesque blonde with short-cropped hair feathered around her ears. Her slender frame was skimmed by a sleeveless, navy linen dress, although she wouldn’t have minded if her tiny, cream lace cardigan had buttoned over breasts a size or two larger. She smiled at her reflection, recalling a famous duchess saying one could never be too thin or too rich. Annegret’s genes had taken care of the thin part. She was still working on the rest.

As producer of the television show, Behind Closed Doors, she had learned to trust her instincts. Right now they were leading her deeper into the castle. She was interested in the unique situation of the prince who ruled the castle, and intended to research his story for a possible program.

The show was on its summer break, allowing her to come to Carramer for the wedding of her former school friend, Donna, to the handsome security man, Kevin Jordan. With the ceremony and speeches over for the moment, and the wedding breakfast well under way, Annegret felt free to wander until she found what she was looking for.

And there it was.

She slowed as she approached a huge oil painting in an ornate gold frame. She had seen enough reproductions to recognize it on sight. Painted a hundred seventy-five years ago by a renowned Carramer artist, the Champagne Pact depicted the ancestor of the present prince sealing a bargain with a rich merchant by the name of Soral. A bargain with the devil, as history recorded it.

The painting gained its name from the goblets of champagne the figures were raising to seal their agreement. The merchant had provided a vast sum of money to finance development in the province of Taures, where Merrisand Castle was located. In return, Soral had extracted the prince’s vow that for the next two centuries, if a firstborn son of Taures married a woman not of royal blood, the crown would pass to the Soral family.

Fiendishly clever, Annegret thought. According to history, the merchant had known that the prince was madly in love with a commoner, and had assumed the crown was within his grasp. But the prince had outwitted the merchant by sacrificing his love for the good of the crown. Annegret gathered that princes of Taures had been doing much the same thing ever since.

She had long been fascinated by the Champagne Pact itself, as well as the famous painting. Knowing that at least one branch of royalty was doomed to be unlucky in love gave her enormous satisfaction.

Recognizing her own bias in this particular area, Annegret felt a twinge of conscience. While working in the Australian diplomatic service, her mother had fallen in love with an equerry to Prince Frederick of Ehrenberg, then his country’s ambassador to Australia. After promising to marry her mother and take her home to his country, the equerry had instead left Debra West alone and pregnant with his child.

Annegret lifted her shoulders in a shrug. So she wasn’t a fan of royalty. It was hardly surprising, given that she was the child the man had turned his back on. The only correspondence her mother had received from the man was a letter soon after Annegret was born, telling her that she wouldn’t be hearing from him again.

Ehrenberg’s borders had been closed to foreigners for most of Annegret’s life, so she and her mother couldn’t seek out the man to demand an explanation. Not that Annegret wanted to. She told herself that he had done her mother a favor, leaving his child to be raised in Australia. Had he taken her mother home to Ehrenberg with him, Annegret would be there still, confined within the mountain kingdom, cut off from the rest of the world. If it wasn’t for the unhappiness her father had caused her mother, Annegret would have no regrets at all.

Dismissing the thought, she studied the painting. If she hadn’t known it was so old, she would have been confused by the strong resemblance of that prince to the present-day prince of Taures, Maxim de Marigny. He had put in an appearance at the wedding to wish the couple well.

He was amazingly good-looking, a fact that hadn’t escaped her notice at the ceremony. As dark in coloring as his ancestor in the painting, Prince Maxim had the most amazing cobalt-blue eyes. As the guests left the chapel, the prince’s gaze had fixed on her for a few seconds, sending a shiver of response down her spine. Although tempted, she hadn’t looked away, and had caught a glimmer of amusement in his expression, as if he had expected her to lower her lashes, and was pleased when she met his gaze unflinchingly.

Pure fantasy, she told herself. The product of working too hard to wrap up her most recent series before leaving Australia. Still, she couldn’t deny that he had noticed her. She had certainly noticed him.

He possessed a worldly look she found herself wondering about. He hadn’t appeared overly pampered, yet his job as administrator of the Merrisand charitable trust had to be a sinecure. With a thousand years of royal tradition behind him, he obviously didn’t need to work for a living.

He hadn’t looked as inbred as she’d expected, either. His wide, strong mouth was far from effete, and his athletic build suggested he took as much care of himself as Annegret herself did. She liked that, having little patience with people who took no pride in their appearance. She didn’t care whether they were tall or short, heavy or slender, as long as they made the best of what they had.

There was no denying that Prince Maxim did so, she thought. What he had amounted to a devastatingly masculine package. Her mental assessment had included long limbs and a lithe body encased in a dark suit that was a monument to tailoring excellence.

But there was something more—a commanding quality that owed nothing to breeding or tailoring. Had he been the lowliest commoner, Maxim would still have been an impressive man, she conceded. He couldn’t have helped it.

Annoyed with her train of thought, she turned away from the painting. Having seen it, she knew she should return to the reception. But her footsteps dragged. It was so peaceful here, away from the festivities. She was in no hurry to return.

Noticing an intriguing plant in an alcove, she went to inspect it. Annegret was no gardener, but guessed it was some kind of lily. The dazzling cream flower was the size of a trumpet, and the jade-green dinner-plate-size leaves glistened as if painted. It looked too perfect to be real. She stretched out a hand.

“Don’t touch that.”

The order startled her so much that her hand closed reflexively around the plant’s fleshy stem, and she gave a cry of shock as her palm was stung by what felt like hundreds of needles. She pulled away, feeling as if she had thrust her hand into a naked flame.

She looked up into a twin of the cobalt gaze she had been contemplating in the painting only a moment before. Except this time the eyes raking her belonged to Prince Maxim himself, and fierce glints sparked in their depths.

“I only wanted to see if the plant was real, Your Highness” she said, wishing she didn’t feel like a child caught with her hand in the cookie jar. Assuming there were cookies that could make her hand feel as if it was on fire.

“The Janus lily is real, unfortunately,” he said in a clipped tone that barely disguised a voice as deep and rich as hot chocolate. “When it’s in flower, it’s particularly dangerous. I’d ordered it moved from the alcove, but evidently the staff hadn’t gotten around to it yet.” His grim tone said someone would pay for the oversight.

“It’s all right, really,” she insisted, cradling her hand against her chest. As soon as the pain subsided, she would be fine. Less easy to deal with was the way her heart had started thundering with his approach.

Only shock, she assured herself, not sure how accurately. Up close, the prince was even more prepossessing than when she’d seen him outside the chapel. He was a few inches taller than Annegret herself, and she stood five-ten without heels. His hair was as dark and glossy as a night sky, and the hand he reached out to her looked strong and capable.

She had always had a thing for men’s hands. The prince’s might not appear work-worn, but neither did they look soft. His nails were clipped to a businesslike length and he wore a beaten-silver ring on the third finger of his right hand. Nothing on his left hand, but she already knew he was unmarried. Not that she cared.

“Let me take a look.”

Before she could argue, he took her hand in his, uncurling her clenched fingers to reveal two red slashes across her palm where she had touched the plant stem. Each livid slash was impregnated with hundreds of hairlike filaments.

In as much pain as she was, she couldn’t help noticing that his grasp was gentle, for all the anger in his expression. Her swift and very physical response caught her by surprise. She told herself it was because he was holding her hand and standing close enough for her to inhale a faint trace of his aftershave lotion—a blend of citrus and herbal scents that teased her nostrils.

“The Janus lily?” she queried, very much aware of needing the distraction. And not wholly because of the pain. “Wasn’t Janus the Roman god of doorways and entrances?”

The prince nodded. “He was usually depicted wearing two faces.”

She looked at the plant with renewed respect. “Like the lily, one beautiful, one dangerous.”

“It’s a Carramer native, one of the few that isn’t benign,” he explained. “They’re only dangerous when in flower, and then only when touched.”

“If you hadn’t startled me, I wouldn’t have touched it,” she snapped, pain getting the better of her.

“If you hadn’t been wandering where you shouldn’t, I wouldn’t have startled you,” he countered mildly, but she heard a definite undercurrent of steel in his tone. Prince Maxim didn’t take kindly to being crossed, she gathered.

Well, she didn’t like being attacked by his feral plant, so they were even, she decided. She tugged her hand free, aware of a trace of regret accompanying the movement. “I wanted to see the Champagne Pact,” she said tartly. “I didn’t see any harm in it.”

“This part of the castle is not open to the public, but you could have sought permission if you wished to view the painting.”

“I hadn’t planned that far ahead. The noise of the reception was giving me a headache, so I came looking for somewhere quieter. When I realized where I was, I decided to see if I could find the painting while I was here.” Annoyance crept into her tone. She didn’t like being on the defensive, especially since the prince was right. She shouldn’t have trespassed, but she was darned if she was going to apologize. Her hand felt as if it was going to remind her of her folly for some time to come.

“Are you always so impulsive, Miss West?”

So he knew who she was. She felt a frisson of pleasure until it was overshadowed by common sense. Obviously, for a wedding held at a castle with royalty in attendance, everyone on the guest list would need security clearance. And he had probably memorized every name as a matter of course.

“Annegret,” she offered. Then added, “Recklessness is an Australian trait.” She shrugged, then wished she hadn’t as a fresh burst of discomfort radiated along her forearm.

He saw the wince she couldn’t quite conceal. “And now you’re injured as a result. Let it be a lesson to you, Annegret. I’ll have someone take you to the infirmary so your hand can be attended to.”

Furious at being dismissed so peremptorily, she stood her ground. “I don’t need medical attention. It’s only a plant, for goodness sake. The effect should wear off in a few minutes.” Maybe she was wrong about his strength, if he wanted to make this much fuss over a small mishap.

“Far from wearing off, the pain will escalate as the plant’s toxin works its way into your bloodstream,” he pointed out, sounding as if he rarely had to explain himself to anyone, and didn’t appreciate the need now. “If you aren’t given an antidote soon, within a few hours you could become seriously ill.”

Spending her first vacation in years in a Carramer hospital was hardly appealing. And despite the evidence, she wasn’t stupid. “Very well, but I can’t go anywhere until I’ve seen the bride and groom off,” she insisted. “I won’t have their honeymoon spoiled by worrying about me.” By now her friend should have finished changing into her going-away clothes. Annegret only hoped she hadn’t already missed their departure.

The prince’s eyebrows lifted as if her concern for her friends was a revelation. Whatever qualities he attributed to her evidently didn’t include such consideration. “Very well, but I’ll accompany you, then see that you get to the doctor,” he said.

“I won’t run away as soon as you turn your back. I do have some sense.”

His glance suggested he wasn’t convinced. “You might also collapse without warning.”

She was starting to feel light-headed, but had put that down to his disturbing effect on her. The plant might not be as deadly as he’d suggested, but there was no point taking unnecessary risks. No more than she had done by venturing into his private domain, she amended inwardly.

“Okay, Your Highness,” she said, with a soft exhalation of defeat. “Let’s go back to the wedding. If I collapse I’ll depend on you to catch me.”

His level gaze betrayed nothing, but she could swear she heard him murmur, “It would be a pleasure.”

Maxim knew he should be annoyed by her foray into the family’s apartments. Normally there would have been at least two members of the Royal Protection Detail patrolling these corridors. Today, however, one of their own was the groom, and most of the RPD were attending the wedding. It didn’t excuse the lapse in security, and Maxim made a mental note to ensure that someone paid for it. And that it didn’t happen again.

But he couldn’t make himself feel as angry with Annegret as he should be. He knew who she was, of course. Even without his study of the guest list, her crusade against hereditary monarchies conducted through the TV series she produced was well known. Her interest in the painting suggested she might be considering doing a similar hatchet job on his own family.

So he had absolutely no excuse for wanting to spend more time with her than he had to. In spite of her insistence on returning to the reception, it would be a simple matter to summon a footman to escort her, then take her to the infirmary before the plant’s toxin took full effect. But Maxim admired the way she stood up to him. Not many people would have dared. And he had to admit he was impressed by her insistence on putting her friends’ well-being ahead of her own.

No one had ever died from touching the Janus lily, but the symptoms could be highly unpleasant. He was probably crazy letting her return to the function, but he had a feeling nothing short of gunpoint would change her mind, and that seemed a little extreme.

He released a taut breath and took her arm. “Let’s go.”

Holding her close to him, feeling her fight the plant’s effects, produced mixed feelings of concern and something else. He told himself his interest in her was purely duty. Not good form to have her keel over on his doorstep. Certainly he would have done the same for anyone.

Anyone else, however, wouldn’t have produced the heightened sense that warned him she was trouble. And not the kind that he could leave to the RPD. As she walked beside him, her willowy grace made him catch his breath. Few women could match him in height, but she came close, although she was slender enough to put hardly any pressure on his arm. Would sliding his arm all the way around her qualify as assisting her, or himself?

As they entered the grand hall where the reception was taking place, he felt her straighten, as if arming herself for a fight. It had to be with her increasing weakness, he concluded, and did slide his arm around her then, trying not to make his support too obvious. Or his own masculine response, for that matter.

Her fiery gaze told him she didn’t like needing his help. “Donna and Kevin should be here any minute now,” she said.

He didn’t miss the tremor she fought to conceal. “You don’t have to go through this. Nobody will notice if you’re not around to catch the bouquet.”

“I’ll notice,” she snapped.

He gave her an interested look. “Planning on catching it?”

“Never,” she retorted in a fierce murmur.

His interest notched higher. “Never is a long time.”

“When it comes to romantic love, it can’t be long enough.”

Keep her talking and her mind off her symptoms, he told himself. “Sounds like you’ve had a bad experience of romance.”

“With respect, Your Highness, it’s not really any of your business.”

That settled that, he thought, her frankness rankling. It wasn’t often anyone told him to back off, and he was surprised how little he liked it. Position going to your head? he asked himself. “You’re right, it isn’t,” he conceded, striving for fairness. “I was only trying to distract you.”

“A glass of wine might do a better job.”

He shook his head. “I don’t advise mixing alcohol with the poison in your system.”

“You’re probably right.” Her breath whistled out. “What’s keeping the lovebirds?”

He wondered the same thing, but for Annegret’s sake, he said, “What’s your connection to the couple?”

“Donna and I went to school together in Australia, then interned at the same TV studio. She came here on vacation and loved it so much she got a job with Carramer National Television.”

“She and Kevin met when he accompanied me to a broadcast I was doing,” the prince said.

Annegret looked surprise that he had noticed.

“It was hard to miss the sparks flying between them,” Maxim explained. He had always wondered how it would feel to fall so hard and fast for someone. Not that he could afford to indulge his feelings. Better for his crown if he kept his distance.

The way he was doing now, came the disparaging thought. Annegret had moved closer and was leaning into his embrace. He didn’t think she was aware of how her feathery blond hair brushed his cheek, bathing him in her delicate floral scent. Distance, he reminded himself.

Fortunately, Donna returned and dealt with the business of throwing her bouquet of tropical orchids, which was caught by one of the bridesmaids. Maxim and Annegret joined the throng wishing the couple well. He was thankful that everyone was too caught up in the moment to pay attention to the apparent closeness between the prince and one of the guests.

He felt a sense of relief when the couple drove away amid much laughter, ribald comments and a shower of rose petals.

“Now will you let me escort you to the infirmary?” he asked in a lowered tone.

Annegret’s long lashes swept down over her forget-me-not blue eyes. “I don’t think so.”

She was swaying on her feet, leaning more heavily on his arm. “What do you mean? You’re in no condition to go anywhere else,” he insisted.

Her head moved in a weak arc. “I mean I don’t think I can make it.”

And she crumpled bonelessly into his arms.