How to Love a Princess (2 page)

“Good morning—”

“What are you doing here?”
she cut through his greeting. “How did you find me?”

The six-foot-five bear of
a man, completely bald shaven, his black eyes even more sombre than was usual
for him, attempted to step past her. “Can I come in?”

Her hesitation was
minimal. Accepting that she was beaten, Catherine threw her hands up and stood
back.

“Is Nicolas here?”

She turned on him with
flashing eyes. “What do you know of Nicolas? How did you know I’d be here? I
was promised—”

“Whatever the
circumstances, you are Princess Amelia Catherine Theresa of Ophella. Did you
honestly think your movements would not be monitored?” He sounded both
reprimanding and regretful.

Catherine closed the door
and sighed. Gascon was her closest friend; he loved her as a father, he
respected her as any other subject of Ophella, he abetted her in any way he
could. But not even for her would he neglect his duty to the crown. He’d been
appointed her bodyguard on the day she’d been born and she should have known
that, above all, he watched over her and protected.

“Catherine…” he started,
using the middle name she’d always preferred.

“Don’t Catherine me,” she
muttered. “I’m furious with you and you’d better leave before Nicolas returns.
He doesn’t know…yet. Arrange a place and we can meet tomorrow.”

Gascon lifted a thick
black brow, then gave her a half smile that seemed more sad than stern. “That
isn’t possible, Catherine. Please, sit down. I would not have disturbed you,
but I have distressing news.”

Catherine frowned as
unease gripped her heart. She took a deep breath. “What is it? My mother? Not
problems at the mines, I hope.”

He shook his head, waiting
a long beat, waiting until it became apparent that she was not going to sit.
“Jevron and Alexander were returning from New York on a late night flight,
Catherine. The plane went down.”

Her lips parted on a ‘No’
but not a sound released from her instantly parched throat.

Gascon saw the blood drain
from her face and held his arms out to gather her into himself as her knees
gave way. He carried her to a sofa and sat down, cradling her on his lap.

Suddenly she sat up, her
eyes shimmering into his. “They’re alive. They must be. What have the search
parties—”

“The plane was tracked and
easily found.” He pushed her cheek to his chest and stroked her hair. “Their
bodies have been retrieved.”

No, screamed Catherine’s
heart.

Dear God, please…no!

She gave in to the terror
for a few long minutes, drawing comfort from Gascon’s arms, the man who’d
always been more father to her than her own. And then she sucked in a deep,
unsteady breath and pushed out of his arms. “I must…I must go home.”

Whatever her burdens,
whatever her sorrow, she’d been raised a royal princess and duty came before
else. She couldn’t lose herself to grief now. She couldn’t crawl into a corner
and damn the world for taking more than its due. She couldn’t drop to her knees
and scream the thousand curses storming her head at such a cruel fate that
would take her brothers.

Her mother needed her.

Her country needed her.

There’d be time to fall
apart after she’d stood at her mother’s side and addressed their mourning
nation.

Gascon rose as well and,
in his eyes, she saw that there was more even before he spoke. “They were
assassinated, Catherine. Someone got through our security and placed plastic
explosives aboard the royal jet.”

She pinched her eyes to
keep the tears at bay, to drown the petrified cries and close the black hole
that threatened to open in her heart.

Alex and Jev, her
wonderful, brave, handsome, loving, laughing brothers. The Black Princes of
Ophella, they’d being lovingly dubbed by all, for their dark complexions and
peat black hair, not for their hearts which were whiter than most.

They could
not
be
gone. This could not be happening.

She opened her eyes.

This
was
happening.

Her eyes were open, yet
still it felt as if she were walking blindly, groping for her purse where it
lay on a side table, stumbling towards this door. “I must get home, Gascon. My
mother needs me.”

“What of Nicolas?”

Her heart jumped. Nicolas!
She could not think of him now. That would have to come later. She rubbed her
eyes as another kind of grief overwhelmed her strength and courage. She
had
to
think of him. There would be no later. “Nicolas…”

“He should know,” Gascon
said.

Catherine shook her head
slowly, sadly. “Whatever we had is…past.” She choked on the words, but they had
to be said.
 
Acknowledged. The deep
breath she needed to continue staggered from her lungs. “I’m now heir to the
throne. The curse has not been broken after all.”

“Maybe he is different.”

She stared into Gascon’s
black, worried eyes. Nicolas Vecca was a power in his own right. Dominant and
aggressive in the field of medical research, having already achieved many
breakthroughs in the mysteries of blood disorders that had stumped the world
for years. He was proud and arrogant, a product of both his Italian father and
all that he’d already achieved at the impossibly young age of twenty-eight. He
was a genius, applauded for his brilliant work. He was the strongest of strong
men.

The curse that she’d
inherited ate strong men. The stronger they were, the more furiously it
corroded.

She’d lived through the
proof with her absent father, the memory of a man who’d faded from an
overwhelming, larger-than-life figure to a ghostly shadow with each passing,
infrequent visit. She’d once thought that if the world ended, her father would
somehow survive to create a whole new world; she’d grown up to learn first hand
that “the bigger they are, the harder they fall,” was more than a careless
saying.

She’d buried her
grandmother beside the eroded tomb of her husband, who’d taken his own life
after a mere two years of marriage.

The curse broke strong
men, wheedled and whittled them until they were but a fraction of their former
self and then it either sent them running off across the ocean or jumping from
the North Tower. Or, as in the case of her great-grandfather, drove them to
drink and recklessness that ended in a fatal car crash.

Catherine changed
direction, hurrying to the kitchen and pulling out the drawer that held
stationery. With trembling fingers, she jotted down her goodbye, then pushed
the paper beneath the whisk. Her fingers might be trembling, but her heart was
shattering into a million pieces. She didn’t want to be this strong. She
wasn’t
this strong.

Slowly, she twisted the
ring on her fourth finger. Love fortified her weakness.

Forgive
me Nicolas. This is the only way I know of to save you. Think kindly of me and
then move on with your life. Be happy, my darling. Find someone to love you as
much as I do.

The silent goodbye was
punctuated with tears. Words she dare not write down, lest he tried to find
her, lest he continued to love her.

“Let us go,” she called
through blind sobs, running for the door. “Please, let’s just go…”

Nicolas strolled down the
path lined with the cherry and apple blossoms of spring, breathing in the fresh
air and feeling rather foolish at his heart that seemed as light and breezy as
the air blowing in from the Thames and threatening to take flight.
Romantic
fool. No one would believe you were a scientist at this moment.

He turned the corner,
about to walk up the street that led to his Chelsea home, when a wisp of blue
caught his eye. He stopped, frowning at the couple further up the bank for a
minute as he watched them step aboard the motorised boat, a sleek yacht with a
large front cabin and no sails, the type that relied solely on the motors at
the rear. Such yachts were not common in this part of the Thames. One was more
likely to see barges, tourist ferries and the entertainment boats that hosted
parties and candlelight suppers on the river.

But it wasn’t the boat
that held his attention.

The woman’s vivid blue
sundress and long, dark auburn hair clutched at his heart and he was unable to
breathe for a moment. From this distance, he didn’t recognise the bald-headed
man helping her into the boat before.

Nicolas groaned aloud at
his ridiculous insecurities and cursed himself yet again for a fool. Catherine
was not the only auburn haired woman in London who owned a blue sundress.
Catherine was at home, in his kitchen, waiting. He continued abruptly on his
way, refusing to glance over his shoulder, angry at the unsettling feeling in
his gut. Weakness of any nature was foreign to him. As wonderful as love was,
he’d never felt so vulnerable.

Deal
with it.

He was grinning again as
he unlocked his front door, remembering the love in Catherine’s eyes, the
passion awakened in his arms, his own assertion that nothing would ever come
between them.

He found the note even
before he had a chance to call or look for her. The white paper attracted his attention
as he hung the keys on the peg.

Curiosity aroused, he
tugged it free from beneath the whisk and gave the words a precursory scan.
Then the faint feeling of unease in his gut turned foul and his expression
blackened. His jaw tensed as he held the note closer, quite willing to doubt
his twenty-twenty vision.

Thank
you for last night. I’ll always treasure what we shared.

The words had the power to
crack his heart more easily than the fragile eggs they’d cracked earlier. But
maybe it wasn’t what he thought, maybe it didn’t mean…and then he saw what he’d
missed, what had remained behind when he’d tugged the note from beneath the
whisk. He picked up the sapphire ring and balanced it in his palm, staring at
the gleaming stone, refusing to believe, unable not to anymore.

Cazzo.
He dropped the ring onto the counter and
ripped the note into a hundred pieces.

And then he raced out the
door and down the street, not stopping until he came in view of the Thames. The
yacht had already lifted anchor, the powerful engines growling deep as it
sliced waves in the water to turn and head in the direction of Greenwich and
the river mouth.

He zipped across the
street, mindless of the car that bleated a warning at him, charging down the
walkway along the Thames, not knowing what he hoped to achieve, not capable of
rational thought.

The engines roared and the
yacht gathered speed, leaving a frothy rippled trail in its wake as it sped
away from him.

Panting, Nicolas forced
himself to stop. The smaller the boat became, the smaller his heart shrunk.

What? Why? If it took him
the rest of his life, so help him God, he’d find the answers.

The explosion rocked the
Sunday morning calm, carrying thunder and lightening and all the wrath of the
God he, in that instance, doubted out of existence.

In stupefied pain, he
watched the yacht rip apart at the seams, shooting wood and steel and glass
into the air in a burst of flames. The inferno tormented him, taking him to the
edge of insanity, skittering a dull ache up his arm and into his heart. He
thumped his chest, knowing well that he was in excellent health and not
suffering any heart attack. Still, it felt as if his heart was under attack,
would succumb and be held a prisoner forever.

His legs started to move,
no longer running, the fog of pain blocking out the world and reality as he
walked up the bank.

The sirens came long
before he reached the burning wreck.

His heart died long before
the rescue workers salvaged what was left of the bodies, not even enough parts
to make one whole person, let alone two.

1

C
atherine
descended the elegant stairway with a heavy heart. So lost was she in her
thoughts, she failed to see Gascon step out to greet her at the bottom and
walked straight into his massive chest.

He caught her in his
strong arms and set her aside. “Any improvement with the Queen?”

Her stricken blue gaze
went to him and held, begging an answer none seemed to have. “What are we going
to do, Gascon? How is it possible that in this day and age of science, they
can’t even tell us what is wrong?”

“We wait and pray,” he
replied.

“She grows weaker every
day.” Catherine shook her head wearily. This could not continue. It had been
fourteen long weeks already. She would not watch the life ebb from her mother
another day. Her chin went up, her shoulders squared back and some of the blue
fire that had been missing for these last months returned to her eyes. “No more
waiting. I know what I must do.”

From the way she held
herself, Gascon knew at once. She’d mentioned this option a few times. He also
knew how much courage her decision took. “I’ve summoned another leading expert
from Switzerland. He arrives tomorrow. Maybe he can tell—”