A Royal Marriage
Cara Colter
Fan-favorite Royally Wed miniseries originally launched with Susan Mallery and continues with Cara Colter's beloved story, A Royal Marriage.Prince Damon Montague needed a wife. And there was no better candidate than Rachel Rockford…a single mom with a baby connected to the Montague Royal Family…a woman who needed a prince to sweep her off her feet!Damon would do his duty as a husband and father…and even help Rachel search for her missing sister. But scarred by the pain–and loss–of his past, that was all he could offer. He couldn't risk loving anyone ever again.But his princess bride and her baby just saw this as a challenge: if anyone could melt this prince's frozen heart, they could!The Royally Wed miniseries also featured the following titles:A Royal Marriage by Susan MalleryUndercover Princess by Suzanne BrockmannThe Princess's White Knight by Carla CassidyThe Pregnant Princess by Anne Marie WinstonMan…Mercenary…Monarch by Joan Elliott PickartA Royal Masquerade by Arlene JamesA Royal Mission by Elizabeth AugustThe Expectant Princess by Stella BagwellThe Blacksheep Prince's Bride by Martha ShieldsCode Name: Prince by Valerie ParvAn Officer and a Princess by Carla Cassidy
Fan-favorite Royally Wed miniseries originally launched with Susan Mallery and continues with Cara Colter’s beloved story, A Royal Marriage.
Prince Damon Montague needed a wife. And there was no better candidate than Rachel Rockford…a single mom with a baby connected to the Montague Royal Family…a woman who needed a prince to sweep her off her feet!
Damon would do his duty as a husband and father…and even help Rachel search for her missing sister. But scarred by the pain—and loss—of his past, that was all he could offer. He couldn’t risk loving anyone ever again.
But his princess bride and her baby just saw this as a challenge: if anyone could melt this prince’s frozen heart, they could!
A Royal Marriage
Cara Colter
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Contents
Cover (#u10fe5d4c-aa5c-5f63-abd4-5d93efdfce26)
Back Cover Text (#u067332f3-c15f-51b3-879a-6bf8c4feb240)
Title Page (#u59f4fcbf-70ad-5192-b49f-6044a2b0fc7c)
Chapter One (#ufe485299-0509-597d-9916-2eab3a562bc4)
Chapter Two (#u87595379-dabf-56da-a938-a875ea069812)
Chapter Three (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_f1913b3b-95f7-5bd6-a351-f4acbc016aa3)
“And I think she’s—”
“Excuse me, miss.” The bland-faced young police officer behind the counter picked up an incessantly ringing phone. “A brawl? At where? Sorry, I can’t hear you. Yes. Yes...”
Rachel Rockford listened, and bit back a sigh of frustration. There was boredom and impatience in his voice. How could she possibly make him understand that this was important? Urgent?
“McAllistar’s Pub? On Fourth, is it?”
She tucked a stray strand of her shoulder-length auburn hair behind an ear, and looked over his broad, uniformed shoulder at the police office. She found it a depressing place. The lights were too harsh, the walls too white, the desk and chairs old and scarred. Stacks of paper leaned in drunken piles off the desk. A big bulletin board behind that desk featured posters of wanted men and missing children. Incongruously, a colorful ad, featuring two people dipping in silhouette, heralded the upcoming Policeman’s Ball.
No wonder the young police officer seemed so indifferent to what she was trying to tell him. He lived in a world she probably didn’t even want to think about.
“He said that? Well, it’s little wonder a fight started then.”
Rachel turned from the counter, gathering her thoughts. Absently she tightened the belt of her navy blue trench coat, chosen, along with a mid-length full white skirt, to make her appear respectable, someone to be taken seriously. It didn’t appear to have worked. So that left her with words. She rehearsed them in her mind, putting together the sentences that would make him understand.
This outer room of the precinct was every bit as bleak as what was behind the counter. Vinyl chairs, the color of pea soup, had been repaired with electrical tape. The tile floors were scuffed, the pattern long since faded. The walls were badly in need of fresh paint.
Her eyes rested on a man, in worn work clothes, slumped in one of the chairs. He was studying the grooves of his palms as if he could see his future written there and what he saw was not good. He looked as though whatever his complaint was, he had not received any satisfaction.
Rachel had a panicky sensation of wanting out of here. She did not want to be relegated to one of those chairs. She took a deep and steadying breath, prayed for patience. She must make a report about Victoria.
The constable hung up the phone. Just as she turned back to him, it began to ring again.
“Friday night,” he explained, somewhat unapologetically. He picked up the phone.
She actually had to turn away again and swallow a scream of utter frustration. The last thing she wanted was to appear hysterical. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, and when she opened her eyes a man was coming up the wide outer precinct steps. A man who did not belong here.
She had dressed to be respected, to be heard, and though he had done no such thing, would not have even given such a matter a thought, she knew this man would be given what she had come here for.
Full attention. Respect. Yes, even deference.
There was something in the way he carried himself that would command all that. Something that went far beyond the obvious expense of the knee-length black overcoat, the white silk scarf draped carelessly under the collar, the gloved hands.
It was something more than his substantial height, the breadth of his shoulders, and impeccably groomed brown hair that shone like silk under the harsh precinct lights.
It was in the cut of his features, whatever that “something” was. He was not handsome in the traditional sense of the word. His features were too strong for that. His cheekbones, in particular, were high and prominent. His nose straight, his chin jutting.
If it was arrogance she saw in him, she might have resented the fact that he was going to get what she was not—the undivided attention of the man behind the counter. But it was not arrogance, but rather a self-confidence that went to the bone, that radiated outward as he opened the door and came through it with a masculine kind of grace and strength that was entirely without self-consciousness.
His eyes swept the precinct, pausing for a moment on the man who sat in the chair, then coming to rest on her. She found his eyes the most astonishing color.
Only hazel, Rachel admonished herself. But that didn’t quite capture all the nuances of gold and green in those eyes. He smiled briefly, a smile that lit his eyes from within and was somehow reassuring after the professional coldness of the man behind the counter. His eyes, she decided, were kind. The smile, a little upward quirk at the corner of his mouth, made her heart race unaccountably.
She turned quickly from him, reminding herself brutally about the last time she had reacted to an attractive man. Carly, twenty months old yesterday, was with the sitter now, living proof of her foolishness.
Not, she decided, that she could ever regret Carly.
The young officer hung up the phone. Anxious to get in her two cents worth before his attention was distracted by the awe-inspiring figure in the overcoat, Rachel started to speak, her rehearsed lines tumbling out. The officer held up a finger, asking her for a moment, and then pressed down the radio control in front of him and called some incomprehensible code into a large silver microphone.
“Now,” he said pleasantly as if they were discussing the wonderful spring weather, “you were saying your sister is missing. When did you last see her?”
“I haven’t actually seen her for some time,” Rachel said. “But we talk on the phone from time to time, and write. I haven’t been able to reach her. I feel like something’s wrong.”
“Oh,” he said. “A feeling.”
Rachel glanced over her shoulder to see if the well-dressed man was waiting impatiently for his turn at the counter. She was surprised to see he had taken a chair right next to the desolate-looking chap in the work clothes, and was talking to him in a low tone.
A lawyer, then, she thought. But the lines of his face had softened with unmistakable compassion. Surely one who dealt with human tragedy all the time would not be able to manage that. The young man in front of her seemed a perfect example. Still, the compassion on that attractive stranger’s face was like a ray of light in this bleak place, and it gave her the courage to go on. She turned back to the counter as the man in the dark overcoat was sliding a cell phone from his inner pocket.
“I’ve written her,” Rachel said. “I’ve been trying to call her for weeks. I came back to Thortonburg to see why I couldn’t get in touch with her, and she’s not at her apartment. The papers were all stacked on her porch, her mail was overflowing out of her box. A neighbor came by to collect them and said she thought Victoria was due home last week.”
“Due home? So she has been away? Did you know about that?”
“Actually, I didn’t, but—”
“Your sister is probably just having a good time somewhere and extended her holiday. Isn’t that a possibility?”
“Why isn’t it a possibility that I’m right and she’s missing?” Rachel asked with a bit of heat. Still, that was exactly what her father had said when she had talked to him about her concerns. That he vaguely recalled Victoria saying she was going on holiday.
“What would make you think she’s missing? I mean, besides your feeling?”
“Rachel? Is that you?”
Rachel’s heart fell. Though her father had suggested if she had to be silly enough to report her sister’s supposed disappearance, she should go to Lloyd Crenshaw, his old pal in the police department, she had resisted the idea. But there was Lloyd, having come through an outer door directly into the office. The papers on the desk tilted more dramatically, but did not topple, as he bulldozed by them.
A bulldozer, she thought. He had always reminded her of a bulldozer, and the police uniform did nothing at all to improve his short, squat stature.
“Lloyd,” she said weakly, trying to hide the fact that he was the one person she hadn’t wanted to see. “How are you?”
“Fine. My, if you don’t look just the same! I thought you might have thickened up a bit. You know, with the baby and all.”
Rachel smiled tightly. Lloyd Crenshaw and her father had been friends for as long as she could remember. Still, she had resisted the idea of making a report to him, not just because Lloyd had always made her uneasy, but because Victoria had always detested him.
“Are you going to look after this?” the young constable asked, making no attempt to hide his eagerness to be free of her and her intuitions.
“Look after what exactly? You don’t have a problem, do you, my dear Rachel? Surely you just got home!”
There seemed to be something fake about his joviality, but then there had always been something a bit fake about him. A smile that touched his lips, but never quite made it to his crafty little brown eyes.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the well-dressed man was now beside her at the counter.
“My sister is missing,” she told Crenshaw. She could hear the strain in her own voice.
“Sir?” she overheard the young constable. “How may I help you?” His tone, as she had known it would be, was brimming with both deference and eagerness to be of service.
“Good evening,” the man said. His voice was deep and pleasing, the confidence he exuded appearing again in his tone. “My name is Damon Montague.”
He spoke softly, but Rachel lost Lloyd Crenshaw’s attention immediately. His gaze swiveled to the taller man. “Prince Damon Montague?” he asked.
“That’s correct.” He nodded briefly at Crenshaw, and then looked back to the young constable. “I’ve had a slight problem. My—”
“A problem, sir?” Crenshaw asked. “We’ll get on it right away. Let me get the report form and—”
“Please.” A gloved hand was raised, and Rachel found herself once again caught in the light of those eyes. They held both apology and sympathy, and his glance told her he found Crenshaw’s obsequiousness amusing.
Rachel, how can you see all that in a glance? she chastised herself.
“I couldn’t help but overhear the young lady’s sister is missing. She seems to be feeling some distress. I think that warrants your attention far more than an antenna broken off my vehicle. Constable—” he squinted at the young man’s name tag “—Constable Burke looks more than capable of taking my complaint.”
“Yes sir,” Constable Burke said with such enthusiasm, Rachel felt a strong desire to smack him.
“So, your sister is missing? Victoria?” Crenshaw said loudly, turning back to her with a great show of concern that was, she suspected cynically, more for Prince Montague’s benefit than hers. “What makes you think that? Your father hasn’t mentioned it to me.”
“He’s never exactly made Victoria one of his priorities,” Rachel said. Certainly not when they were children, so why would he bother now?
“Don’t be silly. He always loved you both madly.”
She took a deep breath. She had not come here to be called silly, or to be mocked for her feelings. Though Lloyd Crenshaw and her father had been friends, no one could ever say with such certainty what went on in another’s home, behind closed doors. And behind closed doors, her father had been hostile to her sister, a fact that had caused Rachel to feel bewildered and guilty and caught in the middle because he had favored her so markedly.
“In fact, now that I think about it, I’m sure your father said Vicky was going away on a holiday.”
Another thing her sister detested was being called Vicky.
“I think there’s something wrong,” Rachel said. “Victoria usually tells me when she’s going away. Her neighbor said she had gone away, but that she should have been back by now. I’m telling you, my sister is missing.”
She was not happy that the last came out with a squeak that showed how very close to tears she was.
“What would you like me to do then, dear?”
“Whatever it is you usually do when someone goes missing,” she said, her voice raw.
“Well, if you insist then, we’ll do a missing person’s report, but really, Rachel, Vicky has always been a bit of a wild one.”
She stared at him, flabbergasted. She could feel tears of frustration and fear building pressure behind her eyes. Her sister was not “wild.” Not in the least. Headstrong, yes. Adventurous, maybe. Spirited, definitely.
But wild, and all the things that implied?
“She is not!” she snapped with such vehemence even she was taken aback. She met Crenshaw’s eyes, and the flatness in them filled her with a feeling of defeat. She looked down at her trembling hands. “Please,” she said, “please help me.”
And help came. From the most unexpected of sources. Suddenly she felt the brush of that expensive overcoat against her shoulder, and saw a glove quickly slipped from the strong and warm hand that covered hers.
The sensation was shocking, unexpectedly delightful, like coming to a place of warmth and comfort after a long and lonely trek through the cold.
How long since anyone had offered her such a simple human gesture of support? How long since she had been touched?
Far too long. All the stresses and strains of single motherhood now seemed to be pushing from behind her eyes, too, this tenderness from a stranger breaking the dam of control she had built around her heart.
She felt the first tear slip down her cheek, and yanked her hand out from under the weight of his to brush it away.
“Really, Corporal,” her defender said with annoyance.
“Sergeant,” Crenshaw corrected him.
“Sergeant, I think just a little sensitivity would not be out of line here.”
Crenshaw looked mutinous, like a little boy who had been reprimanded, but he dutifully took papers out of a drawer and began to fill them out. Rachel noticed his stubby fingers were nicotine-stained above the class ring he wore. She fished desperately in her pocket for a tissue. Her fingers felt a baby soother, and a crushed bonnet. Desperately, she considered blowing her nose in that, when a handkerchief was pressed into her hand.
She looked up at him. The gentle kindness in his eyes made her want to weep anew.
“Thank you,” she said, and dabbed at her running nose, and eyes. The handkerchief was gloriously soft, and held a scent so powerful and compelling, she wanted to leave her nose in it forever.
“Rachel,” said Crenshaw, “what is your second name? And your full street address?”
The pure monotony of being asked such routine questions as her correct street address, and Victoria’s, and watching Crenshaw write them out with a painfully slow hand helped Rachel regain her composure.
“I’m fine now,” she said quietly to the man beside her. She stared at the now used handkerchief, uncertain what to do with it. She certainly didn’t want to return it to him in this condition.
“Keep it,” he said, reading her mind.
“Thank you.” Two thank-yous in two minutes. If he did not go soon, she’d end up owing her life to him. That was the game she and Victoria used to play. If one did the other a kind turn three times in a row, then the other would say jokingly, “Now I owe you my life.” It was one of those funny, tender things that only they understood—their kindnesses to each other had been the life raft they both clung to in the turbulent waters of their growing up.
Prince Montague did not leave, and she was glad for that. She suspected Crenshaw’s cooperative manner would disappear when he did. But he did not disappear, a fact not lost on Crenshaw, either.
“Sir, is your report completed?” Crenshaw asked pointedly.
“It is,” Montague replied, deliberately not taking the point.
“We’ll do everything we can to find who vandalized your vehicle. One of those Thortons, most likely. You’re on their territory now.” He chuckled at his own humor. “Perhaps the Duke hisself. The tabs say there’s no love lost between your two families.”
“I’m sure the Grand Duke of Thortonburg has a little more to do than to follow me around breaking antennas off my vehicles,” Montague said, a thread of irritation appearing in that well-modulated voice.
“Just attempting a little levity, sir,” Crenshaw said. “Would be funny if it was him, wouldn’t it?”
“I don’t think so, particularly. Now what are you going to do for this young lady?”
“I done the report!”
“And then?”
“I’ll post it, naturally.”
“Perhaps it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you to stop by—did you say Victoria—Victoria’s place of residence and ask a few questions. Her landlady, her friends, might know something.”
That mutinous expression appeared on Crenshaw’s face again.
“Well?” Montague prodded, his voice so low that Rachel glanced up at him. There was no kindness in those eyes now. They were cold and hard. He was a man obviously very used to authority, to diffidence, to obedience.
And he got them now, though reluctantly. Crenshaw lowered his eyes and said, “We’ll do whatever we can.”
“Thank you,” Montague said. He turned to her, and his eyes were warm again, sympathetic. “Now, are you all right?”
“Yes, I’m fine.” But to her horror, just as she said the words she began to shake like a fall leaf in a breeze. She looked away from him, looked frantically at her watch. “Good grief, I’m late. I must go.”
“You aren’t driving anywhere in this condition,” he informed her levelly. “I’ll take you where you need to go.”
“No, I couldn’t. Not possibly. My car—”
“I’ll have one of my staff return the car to you.”
“Really, no.”
“Is it because I’m a stranger to you?” he asked.
She wanted to tell him she felt as though she had known him always, especially when his voice became so gentle as it was right now. She shook her head, unable to speak.
“Don’t worry,” Crenshaw said, eavesdropping shamelessly. “I seen you together. If you turn up missing, his Royal Highness will be my primary suspect.”
“I don’t find that amusing,” Montague snapped.
Crenshaw looked sulky. “Just trying to add a little levity, sir.”
“Quit trying! Her sister is missing. I have a sister, too, whom I love dearly, whom I would lay down my life for, if I had to. I know how I would feel if she was missing, and there is absolutely nothing funny about it.”
“Well, I guess I’ve been shown my place,” Crenshaw said. A rat-like glint of malice appeared in the darkness of his eyes.
Montague ignored him and turned back to Rachel. “Please. Allow me to see you home.”
“He don’t have the right of primae noctis in Thortonburg, Rachel,” Crenshaw said.
Rachel gasped at this reference to the feudal custom of the lord of the land having first union with its young maidens. Not, she thought ridiculously, that she qualified.
She watched as Montague turned slowly and deliberately back to Crenshaw. “I beg your pardon?”
“Besides, the tabs all say that the womenfolks are pretty safe since the prince’s wife died. Grieving, he is. But I understand the bookies are taking odds on who your parents are going to match you up with. Sir.”
Montague leaned his expensively clad elbows on the counter and leaned across it, almost casually.
But Rachel was not fooled and neither was Crenshaw who took a wary half step back.
“I told you once before I don’t find you amusing. I don’t often find it necessary to repeat myself,” Montague said, his tone quiet but nonetheless low and lethal.
Crenshaw shot Rachel a look that somehow made this all her fault before he looked thoughtfully at his feet and said, “I’ve known Rachel since she was a baby. We’re practically family. That’s why I was kidding with her.”
Rachel looked hard at him. Practically family?
“In fact, Rachel, your father said you might be wanting a job. Clerical, right? I’m pretty sure I could dig up something here for you.”
How like her father, she thought, not to mention that she was a technical writer. He’d been angry when she had not followed through on her teaching degree, ignored the fact she had obtained at least a little success in her chosen field. Now he’d told Crenshaw any old clerical position would do. She didn’t want to think about the fact if she did not turn up a contract soon that might be true. She hoped she would never be desperate enough to work in this bleak place.
“No thanks,” she said firmly.
Crenshaw looked insulted, shot Montague one more look loaded with resentment, and then said, “Well, excuse me, Your Royal Holiness. If that’s all, I have business elsewhere.”
“Good,” Damon Montague said evenly, not rising to the bait of being addressed with such officious incorrectness. “I thought you might.” He did not turn away from the counter until Crenshaw had scuttled away, and closed the door behind himself. “How unfortunate that a man like that ends up a police officer. He needs to be reminded he has taken an oath to protect and serve, not bully and insult.”
He turned back to Rachel with a wry smile that gave lie to the lethal anger she had seen in his eyes only moments ago.
“He’s always been somewhat disagreeable,” she said.
“He said he was a family friend.”
“I think our definitions of friendship differ,” she said. “He was a student of my father’s many years ago. My father is the headmaster at Thortonburg Academy. They’ve been friends for many years.”
He nodded, then said softly, “Will you allow me to see you home? Please?”
It really seemed too ludicrous that Prince Damon Montague, eldest child of Prince Charles Montague of Roxbury, was begging to take her home.
It was a gift, really. A page pulled out of a fairy tale and dropped at her feet, humbly clad, no glass slippers. Only a fool would say no.
“No,” she said. Even Cinderella had the good sense to run.
“I really can’t allow you to drive in the condition you’re in.”
“I’m not in bad condition!”
He laced his fingers through hers, briefly, and they both felt the trembling. Only one of them knew that she was no longer trembling out of shock and fear, but from the awakening of a heart, long left sleeping, now shaking off its slumber.
As if she’d been kissed by a prince.
You are mixing your fairy tales, Rachel, she told herself sternly.
“Do you have any authority in Thortonburg?” she asked, hiding in her teasing note the quaking of her heart, ordering herself fiercely not to overreact to a random act of kindness from a stranger.
He laughed, and the sound of it was rich and warm, and made her very aware that her life, aside from the pure joy of Carly, had become bleak and worry-filled. At times the drudgery of working and caring for a baby, trying to stretch limited funds and even more limited time, made her feel strung as tight as a bow string about to launch an arrow.
“I don’t think so. I just want to play knight to your damsel in distress. What do you say?”
No wonder this encounter was catching her so off guard. She was vulnerable. Still, she could not say no again. It had taken too much to do it the first time, used every ounce of her will power. She surrendered. “I’d like a ride home very much, Prince Montague.”
“My friends call me Damon.”
“I don’t think we qualify as friends.”
“Maybe not yet. But we will.”
He said this so easily that she felt the warmth rush up her cheeks. Really, she was just a common girl. She was not spectacular to look at, nor wildly witty and outgoing. There was nothing about her that was going to interest royalty, to make him want to be her friend, even casually. She needed to remember that.
She went ahead of him. As they passed the man who still sat slumped in the chair, Prince Montague reached out a hand and squeezed that defeated shoulder for an instant. The man sat up straighter, managed a smile. Then the prince placed one hand on her shoulder. The fabric of her coat was light, and she could feel the heat from his hand, the utter strength of the man reflected in the sureness of his grip. He guided her down the steps and to the sleek black Jaguar parked at the meters right outside the police station. A white notice was tucked under the windshield wipers.
“What do you want to bet our friend lost no time in running right out here to give this to me?” he asked, slipping it into his pocket without looking at it.
She shot a worried look across the street at her little red Volkswagen. How much was a parking ticket these days? Her budget was already stretched to breaking with the move back here to Thortonburg, and the fact she had not yet found a contract. But there was no telltale white slip on her windshield.
“I should just go put some change in my meter,” she said. “I—”
“Never mind,” he said. “I’ll look after it.”
Rachel took fierce pride in her independence. In the fact she had never asked anyone for help since Carly was born. Why did it feel so good to have someone say that? They would look after it?
For once, she would swallow her foolish pride and accept. Just for tonight, she would let herself believe in the fairy tale.
“Thank you,” she said. There. Three times. Now she owed him her life.
She wondered what it was like to be born into a family that had more money than several generations of them could spend. She wondered, as he held the door open for her and she slid into the deep leather luxury of the seats, what it felt like never to worry about money, to have as much to spend on a car as it would take to buy the small cottage that she dreamed of for herself and Carly. She had been squirreling away tiny amounts of cash toward that end since Carly had been born. But it suddenly occurred to her Carly could be a mother of three herself before she could save enough on her tight budget.
The car started with a rich purr that became a throaty growl as he put it in gear and pulled smoothly into traffic.
* * *
He found her utterly beautiful, the woman who sat beside him. Her hair, shoulder length, cut perfectly to frame the loveliness of her face, was a rich blend of colors that he did not think the term auburn did justice. Her eyes were the spectacular color of the purest jade. Her nose was small and neat and her mouth was sweet and vulnerable. There was a hint of stubbornness in the tilt of her chin.
She wore hardly a trace of makeup and the scent that wafted his way was clean and pure—soap, rather than perfume.
Her clothing, a navy blue trench coat over a white skirt and matching pumps, was plain and yet tasteful. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and there were little white drops that matched the skirt attached to tiny earlobes.
Earlobes that begged a man’s lips to nuzzle them.
The thought shocked Damon Montague. Sergeant Crenshaw might not have been delicate about it, but he was right. Since the death of Damon’s wife just over a year ago, he’d been walking in a fog, held in the grip of a grief so deep, he was convinced it would never heal. Of course, it wasn’t just the loss of his wife.
Sharon had died bearing their first child, a son. The infant, perfectly formed, a tiny, angelic replica of Sharon, had died, too.
He knew that people thought he had everything. And once that might have been true. But the fact was, tragedy had made him long to be the most ordinary of men. Because money, position, prestige—none of it could buy him out of this place he was in. A place of feelings so raw and overwhelming, he did not know what to do with them. All his position had done was put his grief in a harsh spotlight, for viewing by the likes of Crenshaw. And now his position was making demands on him to get better. Get over it. Get on with life. Do his duty.
Even tonight, he’d come by private ferry from his island home of Roxbury to this neighboring island of Thortonburg to squire one of the many beautiful young women his well-meaning mother kept putting in his path. An unusually tall, if attractive girl, well-educated, from the best of families. Eligible, in other words.
When he’d come out of the opera to find his antenna broken, he’d felt relief, not anger. It was the perfect excuse to put the blond titan on his arm in a cab with his assistant, Phillip, and bid her adieu on the Opera Hall steps. No awkward moment when he had to try and escape kisses he had no heart for, conversation he could not stir interest in.
Other men’s stations would not demand that they remarry before their hearts had fully healed. Other men would not have to endure such pressure to put their feelings aside and produce an heir.
An heir. No, he did not think so. He spent many quiet hours locked in a nursery that would never have a baby in it now, no matter what his station demanded.
A nursery where Sharon was, still. In that silent room, sunshine-yellow, white lace at the windows, teddy bears everywhere, he could see his wife, her head thrown back in laughter, her eyes bright with the excitement of the coming baby, of the future. She could have had a staff of a dozen in there painting and decorating, but there she would be, alone, in a paint smock that stretched ever tighter over the beautiful mound of her belly, paintbrush in hand, her tongue caught between her teeth as she painted the bumblebee on the end of Pooh’s nose.
“Is something wrong?” the woman beside him asked softly.
He came back to the present with a jolt. “No,” he lied, and then realized he had wasted an opportunity. His offer to drive her home was motivated not just by a sense of wanting to help her, but a desire to know more about her missing sister.
Just recently Damon had found Prince Roland Thorton in a most compromising position with his sister, Lillian. Roland had given him some story about his own sister, an illegitimate daughter of Victor the Grand Duke of Thortonburg, having been kidnapped. Roland had come to Roxbury to investigate, to see if the Thortons’ arch enemies, the Montagues, were behind the kidnapping.
Even through his fury about Roland’s behavior with Lillian, and even through the insult of being seen as a suspect, Damon had sensed the truth in Roland’s story.
What kind of coincidence was it that Rachel’s sister, a young woman from Thortonburg, had gone missing in the very same time frame? This small group of islands in the North Atlantic were known the world over for their lack of violent crime.
Of course, the Thortons’ dilemma was top secret, and so Damon felt he couldn’t come right out and ask Rachel the questions he wanted to ask her.
“Did you know that man back there?” she asked him quietly. “The one in the police station waiting room? I thought you were a lawyer at first.”
A harder question than she knew. Damon did not know the man, but he had recognized his pain. If something good had come out of the terrible tragedy of his wife’s death, it was this: he had become a man of compassion. He recognized pain in others, and could not walk away from it.
It made him ashamed that once he had been so full of himself that he didn’t even recognize when others were hurting, let alone would have taken any steps to stop it.
“No,” he said, “I didn’t know him.”
“He seemed very lost,” she ventured.
“His son had been arrested. He didn’t know what to do. He was a simple man. A coal miner.”
“Oh, dear.”
He didn’t tell her that he had used his cell phone right there in the police station, and that his own lawyer was on his way from Roxbury to help the man. He just said, “I think it’s going to be all right.”
She smiled at him, and he liked her smile, and felt he wanted to make her do it often.
There it was again. That urge to help people in pain. Maybe because he was so helpless in the face of his own.
And yet Damon knew he must help, if it was within his power. He’d learned that life was too short to spend it engaged in ridiculous feuds. The whole world looked at, and up to the Thortons and the Montagues. Maybe they could use the prestige they had been born to, to do something really noble. Maybe they could become models of how to make the world a better place. Maybe they could actually earn some of that adoration and awe that was heaped on them at every turn.
Love one another.
He shook his head slightly, smiled wryly at himself.
A little more than a year ago he had been a man whose life was full—he managed the family’s business interests, golfed, played polo and squash, swam. He attended elaborate dinners and balls and galas with his beautiful wife, went on glorious jaunts on their yacht to places in the sun.
What in that was about making the world a better place?
An old monk, Brother Raymond, whom Damon had begun to visit regularly since his wife and son’s deaths kept telling him to look for the miracle. Kept claiming eventually there would be good coming out of this tragedy. Told him, so emphatically, with such enviable faith, that nothing, nothing, in God’s world ever happened by accident.
Damon had not believed it.
And yet tonight, sitting with this quiet woman he did not know, he felt it for the first time. Not quite a premonition. More like a glimmer. Yes, a glimmer of his becoming a man bigger and deeper than the man he was before. And even more oddly, a glimmer that the future held promise. And hope. And that somehow both would be connected to this beautiful and shy stranger who sat with such quiet composure beside him as his car pierced the night.
Chapter Two (#ulink_4fb5bbc1-edf4-5811-8beb-f53b59bdb8cd)
“This reminds me of the cottage in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the prince commented as he pulled into her driveway, and his headlights glanced off the white stucco, paned windows and heavy wooden door of her tiny home.
More fairy tales, she thought, and then smiled. “You are about to meet the head dwarf,” she murmured.
Rachel loved the little house she had found to rent, at such a reasonable price, just hours after arriving in Thortonburg. At one time it must have been a gardener’s cottage. It was in a wonderful neighborhood of regal old mansions, large yards and towering trees. Prince Damon was right. It did look like the cozy little cottage Snow White found refuge in.
It surprised her that a man who looked so pragmatic, so in charge, so all male, would make such a whimsical reference. Surprised her, and pleased her. Carly’s father, Bryan, probably would have thought Snow White was laundry detergent. Or worse, an illegal drug.
She reached for her car door handle, and then blushed when he stayed her with a hand on her sleeve, got out, came around and opened the door for her.
The gesture should have made her feel like a queen, but it didn’t. It made her feel as if she was out of her league entirely.
She went up the curving, cobblestone walk in front of him, and fumbled in her purse for her key. With gentle firmness he removed the key from her grasp and inserted it in the door. Again, the old world courtesy was not something she was accustomed to.
She remembered when she had dated Bryan, he hadn’t even come to the door for her. He’d sit out on his polished motor bike revving the engine and honking until she came out.
Which, of course, should have told her something.
“I’ll take the car key off now, if you want,” he said. “That way I can have someone return your car to you right away.”
“That’s really not necessary. I’ll go back for it tomorrow.”
“No, you won’t. I persuaded you to leave it there, and I’ll have it returned to you.”
“Thank you then. It’s the red Volkswagen Bug just across the street from where you were parked.”
“I’ll look after it.”
She thought, wistfully, that a person could really get used to this. Being looked after. Having life unfold at the snap of fingers.
Prince Damon gave the door a slight push, and the sound of Carly’s robust laughter burst out the open door. The sound never failed to make happiness curl around Rachel. She was determined that, despite the bad start of being born illegitimate, of being abandoned by her father, her child was going to have a better upbringing than her own had been. Full of laughter, and warmth, and love.
Not the kind of childhood Rachel had, that made her so ripe for someone like Bryan. Looking for something she had never had, and yet had believed with her whole heart and soul must exist. Rachel had made the age-old error of mistaking the impostor passion for love.
Did she believe in romance anymore? Did she long for the love that seemed so genuine that others seemed to find but not her? She no longer knew.
Once burned, after all.
Besides, who had the time? The emotional energy? Carly deserved more than that. She deserved not to have daddy candidates trotted in and out of her life. The two of them could take on the world all by themselves.
She beckoned the prince into her tiny entryway, but he did not follow immediately, instead looked beyond her with something like wariness.
“You have a child?” he asked.
She thought he must have known. To her, it had sounded like Crenshaw’s crude remark about her waistline had gone out over a loudspeaker.
A number of times since Carly was born, this had happened to her. A man showed unmistakable interest, until he found out she had a baby. It had made her pretty much lose interest in men, in dating. In some part of herself she realized she had decided, secretly and quietly, that she would never marry if it seemed it might take away from what she could give to Carly.
Of course, her own taste in men, if Bryan was any example, had thrown a scare into Rachel, too.
“A baby girl. She’s twenty months old.”
She reminded herself that Prince Damon of Roxbury’s interest in her was quite different, anyway. Rescuing a damsel in distress, he had called it. She would be foolish to read any more into his interest than that. Theirs were worlds apart.
She was not a sleeping princess about to be kissed.
She was a single mom trying to do the best for her baby.
And then Carly bumped, on her padded rump, sleeper-encased feet first, down the narrow staircase, her blond curls scattered around cheeks flushed from the exertion and delight she attacked life with.
Rachel went down on one knee, and threw open wide her arms.
“Mommeee!”
Carly barreled across the floor, arms flung wide, balance precarious. She slid on the oval rag rug, tilted and then fell into Rachel’s arms with such force that Rachel was nearly knocked over. Laughing, forgetting her dignified visitor, losing herself to the exuberance of her daughter’s greeting, Rachel hugged Carly to her, buried her nose in the child’s silky hair, rose and swung the baby around until she shrieked with delight.
She froze mid-swing. He was too still. She tucked Carly in tight and looked at him. Prince Damon Montague was ashen.
It reminded her of that moment in the car, when he had so definitely gone away, and the place where he had gone had caused him terrible sadness. “What is it?” she asked.
He shook himself, as a man coming out of a dream. Carly leaned toward him, her arms widespread, nearly wriggling out of Rachel’s arms.
It was an invitation to be held that only the hardest heart would have been able to refuse. Damon hesitated, looked amazingly as though he was going to bolt. Instead, he smiled, though it looked as if it cost him.
“The head dwarf, I presume?” he said with complete composure. He did not take Carly, but leaned instead and touched her cheek with his hand. “Hello. Which one are you? Surely not Grumpy? Definitely not Sleepy. Or Doc. Or Dopey. You must be Happy.”
Carly chortled at this, caught his hand and chomped on one of his fingers. He extricated his finger from her mouth with good grace. “Jaws wasn’t one of the seven, was he?”
“No biting,” Rachel admonished sternly. “Your Highness, my daughter, Carly.”
“I really do want you to call me Damon,” he said, and then he bowed, deep at the waist, which charmed Carly completely. Not to mention her mother. “The pleasure is all mine,” he said.
Rachel realized that in her mind he was already Damon, that there was a feeling of having always known him that made formality between them seem stiff and ridiculous.
When he straightened, Carly regarded him solemnly for a minute, ran her plump fingers over the planes of his face, tugged his nose experimentally. Then she nodded her approval, and ordered loudly, “Down.”
Rachel set her down, and Carly plummeted across the floor, arms out like a tightrope walker, always teetering on the very edge of a spill. She made it without hazard, however, to her overflowing toy basket, the contents of which she dumped unceremoniously on the floor. With a sigh, she plopped down on the floor beside her heap of treasures.
“Do you find yourself holding your breath a lot?” Damon asked.
“I think it’s called motherhood. I’ll be holding my breath until her eighteenth birthday.” She thought of her missing sister, who was twenty-seven, and her recent worries, and added woefully, “And probably beyond.”
“She’s an unusually beautiful child,” Damon said, watching with a small smile at the energy with which Carly’s possessions were now being thrust back in the basket.
Of course he would know all the right things to say. They probably taught him that at prince training school, or wherever young royals went to learn to be gracious and courteous and sophisticated.
“Thank you.”
He hesitated. “Her father?”
“The last I heard, running a ski lift in Canada.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not. We’re both better off without him.” She said this with a trace of defiance. She did not want his pity. His gaze had drifted from the baby, and he was scanning her small living room with casual interest.
Though he kept his expression deliberately blank, no doubt he parked his car in a larger space.
And she knew the furnishings of the cottage were humble; most of them had come with it. But she had delighted at the cozy atmosphere she had created with a few plaid throws, jugs of dried flowers, bright paintings, small wicker baskets containing books and apples and papers, and the larger basket, the only one Carly could reach, which held her toys.
In one corner was the only thing in the room that qualified as state of the art, the computer that she did her writing on.
The sitter, the elderly lady who lived in the manor house on the property, came down the steps. A few strands of her gray hair had fallen out of her tidy bun, her glasses were askew, her sweater was tugged out of shape at the hem, and she was not looking nearly as sprightly as when she had come in the door several hours ago.
“My goodness,” Mrs. Brumble said with weary graciousness, “she has so much energy. I’ve never seen a baby that age quite so energetic.”
“Mrs. Brumble, was she awful?” Rachel asked, wide-eyed at her dignified landlady’s disheveled appearance.
“Not awful. No, no. Demanding. Inquisitive. Into everything.” The old lady paused, sighed and smiled. “Awful,” she said. “But I meant it. I adore children, and I’ll look after her whenever you have to be away.”
“That’s so kind,” Rachel said, and meant it. Life since Carly seemed to have gotten somewhat harder. Bryan had made it clear he wanted no part of her life, and nothing to do with his child. And then her mother had died. And now her sister was missing.
And yet it almost seemed the harder life got, the more kind people were put in her path, as if to help her through it. Gifts from heaven.
Mrs. Brumble was squinting at Damon with interest. “My, my. Aren’t you that Montague boy?”
Rachel did not think this was a very suitable way to address a prince, but he didn’t seem to mind at all.
He grinned. “That would be me, all right. That Montague boy.”
Mrs. Brumble offered her hand, and he took it in his, covered it with his other one for a brief moment, a gesture that Rachel could tell pleased Mrs. Brumble to no end. “I’m Eileen Brumble. I’ve had tea with your mother, Princess Nora, several times when I’ve been over to Roxbury. We have the Cancer Society in common. I met your lovely wife on one occasion, as well. I was so distressed by her death. Such a tragedy.”
Rachel thought Damon’s smile had become somewhat fixed, but he said pleasantly enough, “I’ll remember you to my mother.”
Rachel realized her little old landlady moved in the same circles as him, among dukes and duchesses, marquises and earls. Perhaps the huge manor house that shared the same property as this humble cottage should have given her a clue. Imagine asking someone of that stature to baby-sit!
“Thank you! That would be a darling thing for you to do.”
The entryway was too small for all of them, so Damon slipped into the living room while Mrs. Brumble got organized, and Rachel shed her jacket. Underneath, she was wearing a white sweater that matched her skirt, an outfit that had failed her at the police station, and which she felt failed her now because it was decidedly “blah,” a selection an old-maid librarian might have made to wear to the church tea.
Maybe she did know life was not a fairy tale, maybe she had taken a vow of celibacy until Carly was safely grown-up, but she also knew there was not a woman alive who could be alone with an attractive man and not want to look her absolute best.
When the door finally closed behind the unlikely nanny, Rachel turned to find Damon studying a painting on her wall that suddenly struck her as tacky and cheap, not fun and bright.
Mrs. Brumble popped her head back in the door and called in a whisper that must have carried nearly to the Thorton estate, “This one’s a keeper, child. Don’t let him get away.”
It was an embarrassing remark, but a kind one, too. It made Rachel feel as though the social barriers between them were not so important these days as they once had been—probably far larger in her mind than they were in either Damon’s or Mrs. Brumble’s.
The door closed again.
Since Rachel had expected Damon would drop her off and go, she stared at his big back with some vexation, and then said, “Would you like tea?”
Of course he wasn’t going to want tea. He was waiting for an opportunity to say goodbye, and take his leave.
And they’d never see each other again.
Which was not a good ending for a fairy tale, but a far more realistic one for the way life really was, something she should be well-versed in by now.
Still, the thought of never seeing him again filled Rachel with an ache that felt oddly like sadness. Regardless of his station, he seemed like the rarest of finds.
A nice guy.
“I’d love some tea.” He turned and looked at her, and the light in his green-gold eyes confirmed that. A nice guy. Not at all above sharing tea with a distressed woman in her humble hovel, despite the fact he must be used to grander things, and grander company.
“I’ll take your coat then.” He shrugged out of it, and for a moment she just stared at him with the coat suspended in the air between them.
The coat had really hidden a great deal of his masculine potency. She wasn’t so sure about the nice guy definition anymore. Didn’t nice guys generally have freckles and eyeglasses and arms the size of toothpicks?
But Damon Montague exuded an almost electrical sensuality. He had on a white shirt, pristine, definitely silk, but at sometime during the evening he had abandoned both the tie and jacket that must have gone with it. Now it was unbuttoned at the throat, showing enticing whorls of dark hair, and rolled up at the cuff, revealing forearms that looked powerful and sinewy.
The passionate part of her that had raised its ugly head so swiftly and powerfully in her past made its presence known again. Just when she thought she had successfully laid it to rest, there it was, that sensation of a fist tightening in her tummy, that sensation of wanting that made her mouth go dry, and her hands curl into the rich fabric of his coat. She yanked it out of his grasp, and spun away from him. She could feel the heat in her cheeks. She took a great deal of time arranging the coat on its hanger. Even when that was done she stayed behind the open door of her coat closet for a moment, afraid to come back out, afraid everything she was feeling would show in her face.
“This painting is quite good. Where did you get it?”
“At the thrift store,” she said bluntly, shutting the closet door with a snap. There. A nice reminder of the chasms between their worlds.
“A good find,” he said and then turned and regarded her solemnly. “Tell me if I’m being too personal, but is it very difficult? Being a single mother?”
“At least it’s anonymous,” she said.
He looked startled and then he grinned. It erased years from his face, and made him look roguish and even more handsome than before.
The fist did that thing in her stomach again.
“You’re right. It’s not as much fun as one might think being recognized everywhere you go, having your family’s private affairs brought up for discussion by every Sergeant Crenshaw and Mrs. Brumble you meet.”
His smile reappeared, boyish and charming. “On the other hand, if being royal is my biggest problem, you should come over and give me a slap for complaining.”
“I don’t think my life’s as difficult as you imagine,” she said with dignity. “I’ve enjoyed some success as a technical writer. And I’ve written a children’s book that I have currently submitted. If that were published, it would mean a great deal of freedom for me.” She found herself blushing wildly. Why on earth had she told him about the book? She hadn’t told another soul in the whole world—except for Carly. She hurried on, “Of course, parts of bringing up a baby alone are hard. But parts of it are absolutely heavenly, and they far outweigh any challenges I face.”
He looked at the baby, busy once again dumping the basket she had just refilled. “I don’t have to ask about the heavenly part, do I?” he asked. “And the hard parts?”
“Really, I think they’re the same difficulties anyone has. Never enough time or money.” She realized everyone but him would have those kinds of problems. He was still looking at Carly, a look on his face she could not quite decipher.
“Do you have children?” she asked.
He looked at her shrewdly. “My wife, Sharon, was pregnant with our first child. A boy. They both died.”
“Oh, Damon!” His name came off her lips as though she had always spoken it, always known him so familiarly. “I’m so terribly sorry.” Still emotionally vulnerable from her visit at the police station, her eyes filled with tears again. “I shouldn’t have asked.”
“Quite frankly, it’s refreshing when someone genuinely doesn’t know. As I said, the world seems to know everything about me. Sometimes I catch a line in one of the trash papers that announces to the world something I didn’t even know about myself.”
“I don’t read them. I don’t have a television, either. I don’t know one single thing about you that you don’t know about yourself.”
He laughed at that. “Go make tea. And then I want to ask you some questions about your sister.”
She left the room and he took his cell phone out of his pocket and called Phillip to see what had become of him after he had dropped off Lady Beatrice Sheffield. He told Phillip where he was and asked him to come and get the key for Rachel’s car.
When he lowered the antenna and folded up the phone, he turned back into the room and nearly fell over the plump pink-clad baby.
“You shouldn’t sneak up on people,” he admonished her.
She cooed at him, batted thick eyelashes over eyes the exact shade of green as her mother’s. The little outfit she was wearing was fuzzy and made her look like a teddy bear.
“Quit trying to charm me,” he told her. “It won’t work. Some of the greatest in the world have given it their best shot.”
She gurgled at this, tilted her head at him, and said, “Uppie.”
“Yuppie? I think they call them something else now. And since I was born where most people want to be, I don’t qualify as upwardly mobile. A few notches down would suit me most days.”
“Uppie,” she said again, and something dangerous was happening to her mouth. It was turning down. And the brows over her eyes were furrowing downward, too.
“Puppy?” he said. He scanned the room, saw a plush purple dog sticking out of the toy box, and strode over to it, snagged it and brought it back to her. “Puppy,” he said, handing it to her.
She grabbed the dog by his long floppy ear and threw it across the room with astonishing force. “Uppie,” she shrieked.
He could hear the kettle whistling in the kitchen. Was that why Rachel wasn’t coming to his rescue? How could this huge voice be coming from such a small scrap of humanity?
“Uppie!”
Maybe it was a good thing Rachel couldn’t hear. She would think he was killing her daughter!
“Suppie?” he asked frantically. “You’re hungry, right? Your mother can fix that for you.” He began to edge his way toward the closed kitchen door. “I’ll just get her.”
A small fist tangled in his trouser leg.
He shook his leg a little, but the fist remained firm. As did the voice.
He bent over and tried to undo the little fingers, surprisingly powerful, one finger at a time.
Sweat was beginning to bead on his brow. He undid the fist, but it reattached itself to his shirt collar. Now he was caught in a most undignified position, anchored bent over, to a squalling baby.
Then, using his shirt collar, the baby pulled herself to standing. For a moment she looked gleeful, and then her arms began to windmill, and she staggered back a step. She pitched forward and wound surprisingly strong arms around his neck.
“Uppie.”
“I’m not your uppie. Or your auntie,” he told her. And then a light went on in his head. He got it, and it was so simple, he had to smile at himself for not getting it sooner. “Oh, up. Up.”
The squalling stopped, but the pause was expectant.
So he had to choose. Pick her up or run to her mother for help.
He picked her up, rather than admit there was nothing in twenty-nine years of preparing to take command of a small kingdom that had prepared him, even remotely, for a few minutes alone with twenty-five or so pounds of baby.
Somehow, when picturing his own impending fatherhood, he had only pictured magical moments. Reading baby a story while Sharon held him. Having the baby lie across his chest in front of a warm fire. Kissing him in his cradle. Teaching him to ride a pony. It had not even occurred to him how much later that step came.
Of course, with a large staff, neither he nor Sharon would have ever had to deal with shrieking.
Never mind that rather pungent odor he now noticed was coming from Miss Adorable Pink Fluff.
It occurred to him that he and Sharon, considered golden and blessed, might have missed something very, very important.
He picked the baby up, gingerly, expecting the grief inside him would shatter like glass. Expecting he would feel the bottomless sadness that he would never hold the lively weight of his own little child in his arms.
But that was not what he felt.
Instead, he took strange comfort from the solid weight of the baby, the warmth of her—even the smell of her seemed to be making his heart feel. Not broken. Whole.
She leaned her head into his shoulder, thrust her thumb in her mouth. She pulled it out, pronounced him a good boy, and her eyes fluttered closed. In seconds, she was sleeping.
Just like that. From shrieking instructions to sleeping in the blink of an eye.
He stood there like stone, not quite sure what to do, not sure what he had done to deserve such exquisite trust, and not quite sure about the great ball of tenderness that seemed to be unfurling in the center of his chest.
He glanced down at the shining gold of her curls, at the sweep of her lashes, at the roundness of her cheeks.
She was like her mother. He guessed her hair would eventually darken to that exact shade of auburn.
She nestled into him, sighed, and blew a few little bubbles out parted lips, and he found himself relaxing. When he was positive that neither he nor she was going to break, he dared look around again, and was again amazed by how compact this space was.
How did two people live in a space so tiny?
He marveled, too, at how Rachel had managed to make it look so lovely with nothing more than her own sense of style. Nothing in the room was expensive—there was no crystal, no beautiful carpets, no priceless paintings. And yet the room seemed more warm and inviting than any he had ever been in.
With the exception of the yellow nursery at home.
A thought came into his head, so preposterous that he dismissed it.
But the kettle had stopped wailing, and the child had stopped wailing and now he could hear Rachel humming in the other room, and the thought would not be chased away.
Marry her.
It was, of course, a ridiculous notion. A spell being cast on him by the little minx who was now drooling down the front of his silk shirt.
And yet, was it so ridiculous?
His parents were putting unbelievable pressure on him to find a new partner.
He liked this woman as much as any they had shoved his way. In a very short time she had earned his respect. She seemed to him to be courageous, capable and kind.
And it was a chance for him to do someone a good turn. Who would be more deserving than Rachel to be given a brand-new life? One where she could have all the time and money she needed, where she could pamper this little girl to her heart’s delight?
It would be a marriage in name only.
His heart was not into anything else. But his parents wouldn’t know that. Or his countrymen. They would just see what they wanted to see. If he provided the beautiful bride, they would provide the fairy tale.
Rachel came back into the room with tea things on a lovely, rustic tray. She looked at him holding the sleeping baby, and shook her head wryly.
“She couldn’t do that for poor Mrs. Brumble, could she?”
She set down the tea things, and took the baby from him. Her nose wrinkled. “Don’t you know how to make a great first impression?” she scolded the sleeping baby. Sending a wry look his way, she disappeared through another door.
His arms felt strangely empty when Carly was gone, his chest suddenly cold where her warmth had puddled against him. Rachel came back a few minutes later, the baby still sleeping, the wonderful aroma of baby powder coming into the room with them. She set her daughter gently in a playpen on one side of the room, tucked a little blanket around her.
He wondered if that was the baby’s bed, and thought of the empty crib at home, a beautiful piece of furniture not being used.
“Sit down,” she said. He sat on the sofa. She eyed the spot beside him for a moment and then, to his regret, took the chair at right angles from it. She poured tea in lovely, if mismatched, teacups. Probably from the thrift store, too.
He glanced at the sleeping baby, and was shocked to find that having just met her, he wanted things for her. No, more accurately, did not want certain things for her. Did not want her to grow up wearing hand-me-downs and thrift store clothes, did not want her sleeping in a playpen instead of a crib.
And there were certain things he did not want for Rachel, either. Crenshaw’s offer of a job bothered him. Despite what she had said about writing, she would obviously need to get reestablished here. He did not want her to be getting up early in the morning, kissing her baby goodbye to go spend a day doing God knew what. Being at someone like Crenshaw’s beck and call.
It blasted through his mind again. Marry Rachel.
Though, of course, there were all kinds of other things he could do if he wanted to help Rachel and Carly. He could have the crib packed up and sent to them, anonymously, along with a nice check.
Yes, that was what he would do. Very sensible.
He reminded himself sternly, when he found his eyes fastened on the fullness of Rachel’s bottom lip, why he had come here.
He wondered how he could ask her delicately if she and her sister were full sisters. If they were, naturally the missing girl could not be the Grand Duke of Thortonburg’s illegitimate daughter.
How to probe?
“Tell me about your sister,” he suggested. “What makes you think she’s missing?”
Rachel sighed, and tucked her feet under her. The floor was cold. He tried not to think of the baby playing on a cold floor. He tried not to think of Rachel opening her heating bill with dread.
“We aren’t as close as we once were,” she admitted. “Victoria didn’t like Bryan, Carly’s father, and it drove a wedge between us. Maybe even more so, when she was proved right. Still, we have always exchanged letters and calls, though maybe not as regularly as we once did. I guess I understand why the police are skeptical. It really is only a feeling I have. A feeling that something is wrong and my sister is in trouble. We’ve always been like that—very in tune with each other.”
He listened carefully as she talked about her sister. Nothing she said indicated they were anything other than full sisters. Was it possible she might not know the truth? Because he heard unspoken threads that struck him as odd. Subtle hints in her conversation told him her father favored Rachel over Victoria, and her mother Victoria over Rachel. Why?
He asked, on a hunch, to see a picture of Victoria, and Rachel went and plucked one off the top of a bookshelf. She looked at it with a tender smile, wiped a fleck of dust off it with her sleeve before she passed it to him.
He struggled to keep his face impassive. Victoria was fire compared to Rachel’s earth. She was beautiful, with cascading dark hair, and vibrant blue eyes that danced and sparkled. Her smile held a certain devilment.
Because he had just had close contact with Roland Thorton, he saw immediately the similarity. It wasn’t just her coloring, either. It was the way her lips slanted upward, the way she cocked her eyebrow, the way she tilted her head. It was in the straight line of her nose and the angle of her cheekbones. Her resemblance to this island’s most famous family was so striking, he wondered that people had not stopped in the streets to stare at her.
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