How to Love a Princess (11 page)

“But—”

She put up a hand to stop
him. “I can’t think about this now, Geoffrey. There’s too much going on.”

He backed down
immediately. “I’m sorry. I just thought…”

“Thought what?” she
demanded when he stalled.

“Nothing.”

She almost rolled her eyes
at the pout on his face. “What did you think?”

He shrugged. “That you
might want your mother to attend your wedding.”

Catherine’s spine snapped
straight. “She will.”

“I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Oh, I think you did.” Her
voice echoed the chill running through her veins.

As she’d come to expect,
Geoffrey back-pedalled from the confrontation with a hasty smile as he rose to
leave. “I’m only thinking of you, darling. Don’t let us make this our first
fight.”

“No, of course not.”
Catherine shook off her anger and returned the smile. Her nerves were strung
tight on one too many tensions, but none were due to Geoffrey. She’d never been
this harsh with him and he didn’t deserve it now.

She’d make it up to him,
Catherine decided an hour later and closed the folder she’d been studying.

“You’ve found a solution,”
Gascon remarked, looking up from his own copy of the draft contracts.

“There is only one
solution out of this mess,” she said, rising to her feet. The unusual
carbonised substance mined in Ophella’s hills had cursed them from the moment
of its discovery by that travelling American geologist. The American government
had taken an immediate interest in the small amounts of raw material that could
be synthesised into energy product of atomic proportions. “I’m not disputing my
mother’s wisdom in approaching Russia and offering non-exclusive contracts to
both countries, but we’re effectively squashed between the two powers without
an inch to move. If either America or Russia attempts to take control of
Ophella and our mines, the other will retaliate by beginning a major war.”

“Which they’d never risk, but
Russia’s demands for increased supply could easily take us down that path.”

“Our mines are running to
capacity,” Catherine agreed. She slid the folder into a desk drawer and set the
combination lock. “I dare not take from one to give to the other. The original
contracts are non negotiable.”

Gascon grimaced. “Russia
won’t like it.”

“They won’t like being the
centre of the next world war either,” she reassured Gascon. “And now, I’m
giving myself the rest of the day off to take Geoffrey riding in the woods.”

“Is our poor Geoffrey
feeling neglected?”

Catherine quirked an
eyebrow at his sarcastic tone. “I know you’re going to follow, but please keep
out of sight.”

“You’re wooing him,”
Gascon grunted miserably.

Either that, or dumping
him. Catherine wasn’t sure what was black and what was white anymore. What was
the point of dumping Geoffrey when she couldn’t have Nicolas? She desperately
needed a husband to give Ophella its next heir. She’d already neglected that
duty for far too long. Still, now that Nicolas was here, the idea of marriage
to anyone else was abhorrent. What she really needed was to put Geoffrey off
for another year or five, until she’d distanced herself from the Nicolas
effect.

She found Geoffrey playing
a solitary game of snooker in the Billiards room. “I’ve a new Arabian stallion
that will give you a run for your money,” she said, walking up to him. “Care to
take me on?”

Geoffrey dropped his stick
on the table and turned a smile on her. “You know me. I can never refuse a
bet.”

They rode out the castle
gates, a laughing, seemingly carefree couple and the challenge started before
they reached the riverbank.

Catherine was the better
rider, but she generously acknowledged that she had the better horse as well
and pulled reins frequently as they galloped through the shaded woodland track.
As they charged back toward the castle, however, she dug her heels in and
flattened herself low against the stallion’s sleek neck.

Damned
if I’ll let him beat him.

As a result, when she
entered the castle doors, it was with a petulant Geoffrey dragging his feet
behind. Catherine stripped her coat from her shoulders and handed it to Serge,
then paid the dues for her childish determination to best him. She tugged
Geoffrey playfully by the arm and pulled him across the entrance hall. “We’ve
both earned a brandy to warm our bones.”

“You purposely put me on
that half-breed, Dandelion,” he groused as she dragged him along.

Glossing over the fact
that he’d bought Dandelion for her a few years back, boasting its royal blood,
and that he’d chosen his own mount for today’s challenge, Catherine reached up
on her toes and murmured near his ear, “How am I ever supposed to beat you if
I’m not allowed to cheat now and again?”

Appeased, Geoffrey grinned
and flung his arm about her shoulders.

And that was the sight
Nicolas was presented with as the couple swept inside the private living room
just off the hall. He should have fled his spot by the crackling fireplace and
left them to it—he’d already conceded victory to the lesser man—but Nicolas
held back. Maybe it was some recessive gene dating back to his ancestors, way
back, to a time when men clubbed their woman over the head and dragged them
where they wanted them to be. Only, it was Geoffrey he wanted to club and he
didn’t feel nearly as strong as any caveman. Only Catherine had ever had this
ability to cut him down as if he were a two-day-old babe.
 

“Join us for a brandy?”
Geoffrey offered, untangling himself from Catherine to make his way to the
corner bar.

Catherine’s mind had
numbed the moment she’d seen Nicolas watching their entry with hawk eyes, or
she would have done the untangling herself. Rooted to the spot, locked in the
piercing gaze that threatened to devour her, she felt guilty of everything
those dark eyes accused her of.

He has no claim on me, she
thought rebelliously, but couldn’t hold it. Nicolas might not know it, but he
had every claim to her heart and love. She forced her shoulders to relax and
crossed the distance to the fire.

“Brrr,” she said with a
fake shudder, holding her hands out over the fire’s heat. “It’s freezing out
there.”

Nicolas said nothing. He
merely took a step aside to put some distance between them and moved his gaze
to the fire.

It’s freezing inside here
as well, he almost hit back with. Freezing inside my heart. But he had no
right. Catherine was free to hang on any arm she wanted to.

Instead, he worked his jaw
loose and reminded himself that pride was all he had left. He might as well
hang
on
to that.

With that in mind, he took
the glass Geoffrey brought back and even clinked glasses with the two of them
before downing the vile liquid he never normally touched. As soon as his glass
was empty, he marched to the bar for a shot of whiskey to get the foul taste
out of his mouth, then poured another to take back with him. When he turned
around, they were ensconced in a comfortable sofa near the fireplace.

Just barely restraining
from nudging a spot for himself bang in the middle of them on the sofa, Nicolas
flung himself into a matching chair and stretched his legs out, balancing his
glass on one thigh.

“We went for a gallop in
the woods,” Catherine said by way of breaking the awkward silence.

“How nice.” He should do
better, he knew, but it was increasingly difficult to remember why.

Geoffrey, probably afraid
Catherine would go on to mention the race and his poor performance, tapped her
arm and lurched into a memory of last summer when he’d visited with his
parents. “Remember the treasure hunt we had in the woods? It was the grandest
thing.” He turned to Nicolas with a laugh. “We hid bits of steak and set Brutus
and Caesar off against each other in a race to see who found the most pieces,
following on horseback, naturally.”

“Brutus and Caesar were
two of the castle dogs,” Catherine explained for Nicolas’s benefit. For
Geoffrey, she had a stiff smile, astounded that he’d bring the distasteful
topic up for discussion.

“That’s a unique variation
on hunting,” Nicolas commented dryly, taking a sip from his glass.

Actually, it sounded like
innocent fun. He could well imagine how Catherine would sit a horse, her hair
flying the breeze behind, her hips moving gracefully to the rhythm of her
mount.

“We should do it again,”
Geoffrey declared.

“Brutus and Caesar are
dead,” Catherine reminded him coldly, wondering if he’d forgotten or if he
simply didn’t care.

Shouting out a laugh,
Geoffrey slapped his knee and exclaimed, “I wasn’t suggesting we re-enact it to
the last degree. We’ll use other dogs.”

“No, we won’t.” Her mouth
tightened firmly. Despite the evidence, she’d never been able to shift the
blame of those deaths. The autopsies hadn’t found any evidence of rotten meat
that might have poisoned. Good God.

She paled so suddenly,
Nicolas sprang to his feet. “Catherine? What is it?”

She stared at him, her mouth
hanging open, her jaw completely slack. Geoffrey sat back to look at her with a
dumbfounded expression.

Nicolas rushed to her
side, dropped to his knees and felt her forehead. He was overreacting, he knew,
but suspicious things seemed to happen in this castle and the family had had
more than their fair share of tragedies. He still had no inkling of the source
of her mother’s poison and if Catherine….no, he couldn’t think like that.

“Catherine,” he prompted
urgently, “are you feeling ill? Is it the brandy?”

Coming alive, she pushed
his hand from her forehead. “I need to talk to you.”

Frowning, he took her hand
and straightened slowly, helping her up with him.

“Catherine?” Geoffrey
queried.

On her feet, although not
quite steady, Catherine slid her hand free. “I’m fine, Geoffrey. Please excuse
us, we won’t be long.”

As she started to walk,
her knees almost gave way. When Nicolas gripped her arm, she gave in to his
strength and support and allowed herself to be led. With each step, however,
reason overruled weakness and a spark of excitement ignited. By the time they
reached her office, she was walking on her own. She burst through the door, a
little giddy from the rapid three-hundred-sixty degree spin in her emotions,
from despair to hope to despair and still spinning.

She sat down in her usual
chair at the head of the oblong desk that was large enough to act as a
conference table when required and waited for Nicolas to close the door and
join her.

“You look as if you’ve
seen a ghost.” His eyes were dark with concern, his brows wrinkled in worry.

“I think I might have,”
she said breathlessly. She blinked long, taking a deep breath, hoping she
wasn’t connecting fabricated dots. Swallowing hard, she opened her eyes to find
she had Nicolas’s undivided attention. “I’m so stupid. How the hell did I miss
it?”

“Miss what?” Nicolas
leaned forward, folding his arms on the desk. “I have no idea what’s happening
here. Are you sure that you’re okay?”

“I’m better than okay, I
think.” She leaned forward as well, folded her arms on the desk. Their heads
were close to touching. “The hunt that Geoffrey was talking about. Nicolas,
those two dogs died the following day. I felt terrible. I thought the meat we’d
hidden had gone off in the summer heat. It was such a silly thing to do, I
don’t know what we were thinking.”

“I’m sorry, Catherine. I’m
sure you couldn’t have known.”

She shook her head. “It
was still a foolish thing to do, but it wasn’t the meat, Nicolas. The
veterinary surgeon did an autopsy. He agreed that it looked like poison, but
his findings didn’t correspond to food poisoning. In fact, he couldn’t reach
any conclusion at all. I felt so guilty about the entire episode, I called in a
second opinion.”

“Another dead end.” The
impact of her words cleared the worry from his brow. “I’ll start a search of
the woods first thing in the morning. It will take some time, Catherine. I’ll
have to take a specimen of every plant, soil type—”

“Not only the woods,” she
interrupted. “The forest extends into the hills that we mine. The dogs were in
such a frenzy of excitement, they chased down into one of the tunnels.”

“You have mines here?”

“We mine a slightly varied
form of coal.” A sinister suspicion tugged at her conscience, then flowered
into full-blown dread. Catherine shook the thought from her head. It couldn’t
be. If the carbonised rock they mined was lethally poisonous, surely there’d
have been related deaths before now?

“I’m listening,” Nicolas
prompted as the conversation lagged.

“There are carbonised
bands that run at least three-hundred feet deep in those hills. Ophella is the
only place this unusual rock has ever been detected, and trust me, they’ve
looked.”

“Who has looked?”