Czytaj książkę: «The Princess's Proposal»

Chapter One

“Would you like a balloon, miss? Souvenir of the Nuee Fair.”

Adrienne tensed involuntarily as the fairground hawker approached her, then told herself that he couldn’t possibly know who she was, far less that he was trying to sell one of his metallic silver creations to Her Highness, Princess Adrienne de Marigny, daughter of the ruling house of Carramer.

Her simply cut navy pants and white hand-knit shell had been chosen to ensure that she blended in with the thousands of people attending Nuee’s annual Fair and Horse Show. Her straw sunhat and dark glasses not only disguised her much-photographed features and waterfall of glossy raven hair, they protected her delicate skin from the hot afternoon sun, as well.

A sense of adventure caught hold of her and she smiled at the hawker. The last time she was offered a balloon, she had been eight years old and a nanny had purchased and carried it for her. Adrienne had attended other fairs since then, but always in an official role. Today there was no one to tell her how unseemly it was for a princess to carry such a frivolous toy. “I’d love one, thank you.”

The hawker grinned back. “Choose any one you like. Of course, a pretty girl like you should let the man in your life buy it for you.”

“He might if there was one,” she said. The man probably called every woman under a hundred a pretty girl, unaware that, as a princess, Adrienne was as restricted in her choice of men as she was in where she went and what she did.

If her brothers, Lorne and Michel, knew she was out in disguise and unescorted, they’d have a fit, especially her older brother Lorne, she thought, picturing his frown of disapproval. Their parents had died when she was much younger, so Lorne considered himself her guardian as well as her monarch. She knew her brother only wanted what was best for her, but she felt that at twenty-three years old she was capable of taking care of herself.

With both her brothers safely married now, her role as royal hostess was much reduced, too. At last she could shake off the yoke of public service she had worn all her life and just be herself, at least sometimes.

Today was one of those times. With a precious few hours all to herself before she had to turn back into a princess in time to host a gala charity dinner tonight, she had decided to join most of the city’s population at the annual agricultural fair and show. At the top of her must-see list of things were the equestrian events, starting with a demonstration by the roughriders, for which the island was renowned.

The hawker held out a silver balloon emblazoned with a bloodred rose. “I’d guess you’re a rose kind of girl.”

“It’s pretty, but I’m more of a horse person,” she said, indicating one painted with the head of a stallion. Wild of eye and mane, the picture reminded her of the native horses that roamed the hills of Nuee. The roughriders caught and tamed them for use in their daredevil performances.

“I’ll make you a present of it,” the hawker said on impulse. “Then you can say a man gave it to you.”

She saw only sincerity in his expression. “It’s kind of you, but I can’t do you out of your livelihood,” she insisted, fumbling in her purse for a coin. She so rarely paid for anything in cash that she knew she handled the gesture with little grace and felt annoyed with herself.

His callused hand closed around hers. “Save your money for the rest of the show. This is my treat.”

“Well…thank you.” She felt herself flush as she accepted the balloon, wondering why such a small gesture should touch her so deeply. If he had known who she was, she would have suspected him of trying to curry favor, but he was simply a kindly old man, spreading a bit of happiness around.

It made her even more sure that she was justified in slipping away from the palace to attend the show as an ordinary person. As a princess she rarely experienced the simple human interactions other people took for granted. When she attended events like this in her official capacity, she was escorted to the head of every line and the way was cleared for her through the crowd. She would have missed meeting the hawker altogether. Looking satisfied with his good deed, he moved away, his bouquet of balloons bobbing above his head.

“Careful, you’re about to lose that.”

Lost in thought, she started as another man’s hand closed around hers, this time stopping her helium-filled balloon from heading skyward. The man’s touch was so firm, warm and undeniably masculine that she felt herself jerk away as if strung.

“Easy, easy,” he said as if he was talking to a shying horse. He let his hand drop to his side. “You seemed to be about a million miles away.”

She looked at him more closely. A dark-brown jacket skimmed wide shoulders and a fit-looking body, an open-necked shirt the man’s main concession to the heat. He was as tall as Adrienne’s brothers, an irritant in itself, since she had always resented having to look up to meet their eyes. When she did so with the stranger, she encountered a gaze of startling blue flecked with gold and fringed by luxuriant dark lashes.

Although he was dressed as a businessman, his tanned face and hands suggested he spent a lot of time out of doors. Rugged was the best word to describe him, she thought, adding to herself, ruggedly handsome. His accent identified him as an American, and she wondered what brought him to the Nuee Fair as she said, “Thanks for saving my balloon.”

“Why don’t you try this?” Without waiting for a response, he tied the string of the balloon around her wrist. For an instant his strong fingers with their trim oval nails closed around the slender bones as if he was measuring her for a bracelet, and she felt an unaccustomed warmth surge through her. It lasted only until he released her, but she found the intensity of it oddly disquieting.

He looked up at the toy waving in the air over her head, noting the distinctive design. “You like horses, or balloons?”

“Both,” she conceded, wondering why the fine hairs on the back of her neck lifted at the sound of his voice. It reminded her of dark chocolate and the stroke of velvet against her skin. Foolish, she chided herself. It must be because she was so seldom touched by anyone other than her staff that she was having such fanciful thoughts.

Above their heads a loudspeaker crackled to life with the news that the roughrider demonstration was about to start. “Are you going to watch the show?” she asked, somehow sure that he would say yes. It came to her that he looked as if he belonged in the show, rather than in the audience.

He nodded, then hesitated, as if considering an option that he wasn’t sure was a good idea. “I have a pass to the members’ pavilion. Would you like to see the show from there?” he asked in a rush. For some reason she felt sure that had he given himself time to think he wouldn’t have issued the invitation.

As the show’s royal patron she had access to any part of the fairgrounds including the members’ pavilion. At least Princess Adrienne did, she reminded herself. Her alter ego, plain ordinary Dee, had no such privileges.

She was strongly tempted to accept, perhaps for the same reason that prompted him to suggest it. The sparks of awareness arcing between them were intriguing enough to warrant investigation. But it was too risky. In the members’ pavilion she might run into someone she knew and her disguise was far from foolproof.

“I can’t,” she said, unable to conceal her reluctance. “I’m…meeting someone.”

The hesitation in her voice betrayed the hastily invented excuse for what it was, and she saw his eyes take on a shuttered look. “In that case I hope you enjoy the show.” He touched two fingers to his forehead in a sketchy salute and melted into the crowd.

When he had gone, she was stricken with a sudden, inexplicable sense of regret. He was only being polite in offering her the hospitality of the pavilion, she thought, and was probably thankful not to be taken up on it. All the same, she suspected she would have found the experience interesting. She sighed as she turned toward the public part of the arena.

He must be crazy, Hugh told himself as he followed the signs to the members’ stand. Didn’t he have enough to worry about, working with Prince Michel to establish a counterpart of his American ranch on Nuee? Hugh knew that his plans were rock solid and good for Carramer’s economy, but until the ranch was a reality, he had no business letting anything sidetrack him, even a woman as intriguing as the one he’d just left.

He glanced over his shoulder. The silver balloon bobbing in the air marked her passage through the crowd surging toward the arena. She wasn’t the only woman wearing a hat and dark glasses, but she was the only one who looked as if she wore them to hide behind, he thought.

Against his better judgment, he felt his curiosity stir. From her cultivated voice, she was an aristocrat, speaking English with the same refined accent as Prince Michel, as if she was a product of the best education that money could buy.

Instinct told him that her excuse about meeting someone was a brush-off. He probably wasn’t to her taste, but she was too well-bred to say so. The term soured his thoughts, reminding him uncomfortably of his ex-wife. He grinned wryly to himself. If anyone had taught him the futility of chasing the unattainable, it should have been Jemima Huntly-Jordan.

He’d known when they met that Jemima Huntly was as far outside his class as diamonds were to cut glass. He should have heeded the warning signs when she lectured him on proper behavior on their first dates. But he had been a few years younger, although not enough to excuse his foolishness, and madly in love with her. He had to admit he had also been flattered that a woman like her—daughter of an ambassador, and “old money” from head to toe—could love a rancher with no family background and money so new it crackled.

What a fool he’d been, he thought. Later she’d admitted to being bored with her own social set and attracted by his no-frills attitude to life. The novelty had started to wear off almost as soon as they were married, particularly when he tried to rein in her reckless spending habits.

He hadn’t expected her to live like a pauper, only to moderate her spending once in a while. Asking her to limit herself to one clothes-shopping trip to Europe a season had seemed reasonable to Hugh, but evidently not to Jemima, who acted as if he had asked her to wear rags.

“I’m a rancher, not an oil sheik,” he’d reminded her, his hands full of accounts emblazoned with the crests of foreign fashion houses.

“You resent me spending money but you’ll squander millions on that horse—Caravan, or whatever its name is.”

“Carazzan Liberte,” he’d supplied, knowing it was useless to try to explain the horse’s importance to their future. Ever since his last foster father had dragged him outside and challenged him to a fist fight that had settled once and for all that Hugh wasn’t as tough as he pretended, he had finally found out what he was—a rancher who belonged to the land as he belonged nowhere else.

Hugh would always be grateful to Big Dan Jordan for showing him that, and for recognizing the potential in a kid nobody else wanted. Until Dan took him in hand, Hugh had been thrown out of a string of foster homes for being uncontrollable. He bitterly regretted Dan’s premature death from a heart attack and had set out to justify the faith Dan had shown in him by leaving him the land that gave him his start.

Dan had passed on to Hugh his dream of breeding the world’s best riding horses. He’d known that Carazzan was the key after seeing a news story about an old horse trainer who had spotted the young stallion leading a wild herd on Nuee and had come out of retirement to catch and tame this one fantastic horse. Hugh knew how the man must have felt. He had wanted Carazzan from the moment he saw the story.

He had hardly been able to contain his excitement on hearing that Carazzan was for sale. But Jemima had drained their account of the money Hugh had set aside to buy the horse and took off to Paris with it. As a result Carazzan was bought by a member of the Carramer royal family. Maybe trying to buy the horse from them was a fool’s errand, but Hugh had been a fool before and would be again. He only knew he wouldn’t rest until the horse was where it belonged, in his possession.

Even so, he could have forgiven Jemima for taking the money. What he couldn’t forgive was her taking another man with her then flaunting it when friends mentioned to him having seen them in each other’s arms.

“It was a fling with an old flame. It means nothing,” she had said when he confronted her.

It meant a lot to Hugh. Having lost the first person in the world he’d been able to trust, he couldn’t believe his own wife could betray his trust without realizing the damage she’d done. He had quietly asked for a divorce, offering to take all the blame himself and to give her whatever she required for a comfortable life without him.

He had reckoned without her fury at being, as she put it, cast aside. Jemima had set out to spread rumors that his finances were in trouble, he was about to lose the ranch and he was impotent to boot. He could laugh about it now, but eighteen months ago she had nearly achieved her aim and finished him. As the baseless rumors spread, business associates began to avoid him, his credit dried up, and land he needed for expansion became mysteriously unavailable.

It had taken every ounce of street-cunning he possessed to ride out the crisis and to show the world that, not only was he not in trouble, he was prospering. Little by little, confidence in him was reestablished and he could get back to business-as-usual.

About the slurs to his manhood he could do nothing, but he had never cared what others thought of him and didn’t plan to start now. After his experience with Jemima, he wasn’t about to get tangled up with another woman, especially the pedigreed kind who lived in a different world from the one he inhabited.

Like the woman with the balloon, he told himself as his thoughts came full circle. He was no expert on fashion, but Jemima had taught him to recognize couture when he saw it. Although her clothes were ordinary enough, the woman with the balloon yelled couture from the top of her designer sun hat to the manicured toes of her sandal-clad feet.

She was also trouble with a capital T, he sensed. What was behind those big dark glasses? Every one of his survival instincts, honed while growing up in foster homes and institutions, told him she was hiding something. He would give a lot to know what it was.

He had no business even wondering, he told himself as he flashed his pass at the entrance to the members’ pavilion and was ushered inside. Until that brief encounter, he’d come to the show only to check out the Nuee horses. Found nowhere else on earth, they were a spectacular hybrid of the Lipizzans that the Spaniards had brought to the island long ago and a hardy native breed. The combination had proved extraordinary, and the most extraordinary of them all was Carazzan Liberte, a stallion capable of siring the perfect riding horses Hugh dreamed of breeding.

Carazzan wasn’t on show here, but he hadn’t expected it any more than he would expect to run into the stallion’s royal owner in the crowd. Later would do for that, when he attended a gala charity affair at the palace. He wasn’t looking forward to overdosing on so much pomp and ceremony, a legacy of his misfit youth, he supposed. But attending was the only way he could get close enough to the princess to convince her that Carazzan belonged at the centerpiece of Hugh’s new ranch.

A cheer went up from the crowd, and Hugh focused his attention on the arena, seeing the roughriders surge in at full gallop, stirring up clouds of dust and filling the air with their bloodcurdling cries. This was what Hugh had come to see.

Adrienne’s heart picked up speed as the roughriders galloped past, crossing and recrossing one another’s paths in impossibly tight formation. She knew the routines were inspired by centuries-old scenes depicted on cave walls throughout Nuee. The Mayat, ancestors of the modern-day Carramer people, had been legendary riders, training their wild horses to perform feats such as leaping from a cliff into the seething surf with a rider aboard, then carrying them safely back to the shore.

What she wouldn’t give to have seen that, Adrienne admitted. The riders supposedly had no other obligations but to ride to the glory of the gods. According to legend, they had lived with their horses and sometimes died with them. Then some of the famous Lipizzans had been brought to Nuee by their Spanish owners, the native horses interbreeding with the Lipizzans over time to produce horses of spectacular beauty as well as high intelligence and ready trainability.

The proof was in the demonstration in front of her. Fast, furious and exacting, the mock battle routines demanded split-second timing and hair-trigger reflexes. But the rough-riders and their mounts lived up to their name, and although a couple of carefully executed near-misses brought the crowd to their feet, there were no mishaps. By the time the thrilling display ended, Adrienne felt wrung out, as if she had ridden the course instead of watching it.

From force of habit she turned left out of the arena, toward the stables, which she made a point of visiting whenever she attended an event at the showground in her official capacity. She realized her mistake when she rounded a corner and found herself in a side alley with a cowboy barring her path. He wore a roughrider costume, but she hadn’t seen him in the show. And he was drunk, she discovered as soon as he opened his mouth.

“This area’s off-limits to the gen’l public,” he mumbled, swaying slightly.

“My mistake,” she said, backing away.

He followed her. “I’d be glad to give you a private tour.”

“No, thank you, I’ll just go back the way I came.”

He closed the distance between them. “No hurry. Nobody here but us. You like cowboys, little lady?”

His beefy hand closed around her arm, and he yanked her roughly toward him. The smell of alcohol bloomed on his breath, making her gag. “Please let me go,” she said as calmly as she could, although her heart was pounding.

“Inna minute. The name’s Kye. What’s yours?”

“Dee,” she said, still hoping she could make him see reason. The last thing she wanted was to be involved in a scene and risk having her identity discovered. “I didn’t see you in the show, Kye.”

“I was on this morn’n. Come on, whadda ’bout that tour? My horse is back here.”

His grip on her arm was like iron as he began to tow her toward the stables. As the balloon tied to her wrist broke free and drifted away, she struggled not to panic. “I can’t go with you, Kye. Someone will be looking for me soon.” She lifted her voice. “I’m back here, near the stables.”

The man squinted the way she’d come. “Nobody comin’.”

“I’m over here,” she tried again, louder this time.

“Stop that.” The cowboy’s free hand clamped over her mouth, reducing her cries to muffled protests. Lack of oxygen made her head start to swim. Keep calm, she willed herself. There has to be a way out of this.

Her legs almost buckled with relief when another man walked around the corner into the alley. Even more amazingly, she recognized him as the man she’d spoken to before the show. Desperately she bit down on the cowboy’s hand. He yelped and loosened his grip long enough for her to say, “Over here,” before her air was cut off again.

Without appearing to hurry, the man closed the distance between them, and she saw him size up the situation at a glance. But he didn’t wrest her assailant off her. He simply said quietly, “What’s the problem?”

“Just a little dis’greement between me and my girl,” the cowboy mumbled. “Nothin’ to do with anybody else.”

“How about you let the lady go so she can speak for herself,” the American said in the same low, controlled tone. There was no hint of threat in it, but his stance altered marginally, his assured body language suggesting that he was more than ready to back up his words with action if required.

She saw the cowboy read the same message, but he drew himself up belligerently, keeping a firm grip on his prize. “It’s none of your business. She’s with me.” But he did remove the beefy hand covering her mouth.

Hugh glanced at her. Surely this wasn’t the man she had claimed to be meeting? They seemed as ill-matched as chalk and cheese. Then he thought of himself and Jemima. “Are you with him?”

The disgusted set of her mouth gave him his answer. “I never saw him before, and if I never see him again it will be too soon.”

Once again Hugh was stricken by her porcelain-doll looks. What he could see of her skin was a flawless honey-gold, and there was a hint of glossy black hair under the sun hat. It had stayed on throughout the struggle. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the dark glasses but he imagined they would be as striking as what he could see. What in blue blazes was a woman of her apparent breeding doing, wandering around the stables of a fairground? Didn’t she know it only took a few too many drinks before these cowboys fancied themselves as Don Juan?

Despite his vow not to concern himself with her, it wasn’t in his nature to abandon someone who needed his help. “I said let her go.” His tone suggested that he wouldn’t like to have to say it a third time.

The cowboy’s certainty wavered visibly. Hugh was as tall as he was, although more compactly built. Balancing lightly on the balls of his feet, he let his stance suggest—accurately—that he could take care of himself. He could almost read the cowboy’s dilemma: give up the female companionship he’d anticipated or take on a fight he wasn’t sure of winning. Given the woman’s seductive appeal, Hugh wasn’t sure which decision he would make if it were up to him. It came to him that the woman looked worth fighting for. He braced himself instinctively.

Before the cowboy could resolve his dilemma, the woman brought her knee up between his legs and connected with her target with a crunch that made Hugh wince inwardly in sympathy. With a befuddled screech, the man dropped into a spinning crouch, giving vent to a torrent of Carramer words that Hugh would bet shouldn’t be used in polite company, before hobbling away toward the stables.

“I’ll call security.”

She couldn’t let him call the authorities. It would mean too much explaining she didn’t want to do. Her hand on his arm stayed him. “There’s no need to call anyone, I’m all right.”

“But that drunken oaf attacked you.”

“Drunken is the right word. He didn’t know what he was doing.”

“And if he tries it with some other woman?”

Another woman might not have a white knight handy to help her, the princess admitted to herself. “I’ll…I’ll report it when I get home,” she conceded. “He isn’t going far in that condition.”

“You’re probably right.”

He sounded reluctant to leave it there, and she got the impression he was a man who liked to see justice done. It would be, but not right now. “Thanks for coming to my rescue,” she said. “How did you know I was here?”

“That silly balloon of yours. I saw it jerking around in the air from the other side of the wall.”

That silly balloon as he called it just might have saved her life, she thought, and shuddered. He noticed her shudder and asked again, “Are you sure you’re all right?”

She wasn’t, but she made herself nod.

Hugh noticed the way her lovely long-fingered hands were clenched together, the gesture not quite concealing how much she was trembling. He took her arm. “Come on, we’re going to get you a drink.”

It was a measure of her agitation that she didn’t argue this time, he thought as he led her out of the alleyway and through the crowd to the members’ pavilion. In the lounge, he found a quiet table in a corner and pulled out a chair for her. “What would you like to drink?”

She sank into it and rested her head on her hands. “Just coffee, thank you. I…I can’t stay long.”

He corralled a waiter to bring them steaming cups of the wonderfully aromatic local coffee. When it arrived, his companion seemed content to cup her hands around it, drawing comfort from the warmth.