McKinnon's Royal Mission (18 page)

Curious, he asked, “What did you do?”

A stillness settled over the king in a way that reminded Trace of Mara when her father was mentioned. “Even before my mother’s death the monarchy was nearly everything to my father—Marianescus have ruled Zakhar in an unbroken line for more than five hundred years. After her death it became his all-consuming passion. I told my father if he forced Mara into marriage he would have no heir—the unbroken line would be broken.” He smiled coldly. “There is one thing about leverage—or blackmail—you
must
be willing to follow through on your threat. My father knew me. And so he let Mara go.”

Trace let out the breath he was holding. Though his expression didn’t change, his opinion of Mara’s brother—already high—ratcheted up several notches.

“I sent Mara to university in England. I hoped that once she was away from my father’s debilitating influence she would... But no.” The king sighed. “She came back to Zakhar after she obtained her doctorate and taught at university here in Drago. Two years, and the man did not appear, the one who could break the chains my father placed on Mara’s heart.”

The king glanced away, as if seeing something in the past only he could see, something that pained him to remember. Then his eyes moved to the family portrait for a few seconds before his gaze met Trace’s again, and Trace sensed the steely determination in the other man. “I could not let things continue that way. And so I magnified a small crisis here in Zakhar into a major one, and used that excuse to send Mara to your country.”

“You sent her there on purpose?” Trace asked. The king nodded. “Why?”

After a minute’s reflection the king said, “I hoped something might happen there that could not happen here, and it did.” His eyes softened. “Two months ago Mara called me. She told me she had met a man...a man like no other. A man who understood. A man who made her believe she could be loved the way she had never believed before.”

The unexpected, gut-wrenching words stabbed through Trace like a knife thrust, a near mortal wound that left him mentally gasping for air.

“At first I was...concerned. Concerned enough to send men to America to check on this man, to make sure I had not made a terrible mistake sending Mara there. I had to be
sure
she would not be hurt.” His gaze was direct. “I will be honest. The men I sent had orders to quietly eliminate this man to protect Mara...if necessary.”

“So that’s who they were,” Trace said softly. “I thought they were related to another case, one from years ago. But
you
sent them. Keira was right when she said—”

“Yes.” The king cut him off. “They reported back to me that the man was exactly what he seemed to be. And despite how Mara feels about photographs I had no choice—my agents sent me pictures of Mara with him. In all of them it is obvious Mara is in love, the kind of love I have prayed she would someday come to know. But the man...the pictures showed a man who did not betray his emotions. A man who shielded them from the eyes of the world. A man after my own heart.” The faint smile had returned. “Except for one picture. One picture, and then I knew almost all there was to know of this man and how he felt about Mara.”

Trace’s voice was husky when he said, “I’m surprised you didn’t eliminate him then and there.”

The king’s brows drew together in a frown. “Is that what you truly think? Can you honestly believe
anything
is more important to me than Mara’s happiness?”

Trace’s jaw tightened, and he took a step forward, his stance a challenge. “You don’t give a damn about your blue-blooded sister taking up with an American bastard who doesn’t even know his father’s name?” he threw at Mara’s brother.

“I knew that about you even before Mara told me she loved you. I knew that about you as soon as you were assigned to guard her.”

“And it didn’t
matter
?”

The king shook his head. “Once upon a time that may have been important. But there is one thing that trumps where you came from and who your father is or is not.” His eyes bored into Trace with intensity. “You would give the blood from your veins to keep Mara safe.
Not
because it is your job, but because she is your world. Yes?”

Trace swallowed hard. He didn’t want to answer, but he couldn’t help it. “Yes.”

“That is the
only
way to judge a man’s worth where a woman is concerned.” The king was breathing harder now with the force of his emotions held sternly in check. He didn’t say anything more until he had regained his iron control. His next words shocked Trace.

“But I had to be sure, for Mara’s sake. I could not trust in just that picture, not with Mara’s whole future at stake. I had to test you.”

Comprehension dawned swiftly. “You son of a bitch,” Trace said, anger flaring. “
You
were behind the kidnapping attempt.” The king inclined his head. “You sent men... What if something had gone wrong? What if—”

The king interrupted him. “I could not take the chance that something would go wrong. So I did not send men. I led them.”

Trace stared in disbelief, but then the meaning of the soft curse the assailant had uttered when the princess was injured sank in.
It is Andre’s favorite curse,
the princess had said long ago. Now it made sense. “
You
led them? You did that to your own sister? You terrorized her? You risked her life by having someone hold a gun to her head?”

“There were no bullets in the gun—she was never in danger.” A muscle twitched in the king’s jaw. “That is, she would not have been if she had not tried to save
you.
” He shook his head. “I did not expect that—not from Mara. She took me by surprise when she jumped for the knife—
that
is how she was injured. I had no intention of killing you, but she did not know that. I had not expected that kind of bravery from my little sister.” His face softened again, and a smile of admiration played over his lips. “When that happened I knew she loved you more than I had ever imagined.”

Trace had known, too. Wasn’t that when he’d realized he
had
to break it off with her, before it was too late? And
not
just because he’d thought he was a target, but because she was willing to risk her life for him?

“But just as she did not know the truth, you were not to know she was never in danger,” the king continued, “That would have defeated the purpose. I deliberately planned the attack for a night when the other two bodyguards were away, so only you were there to rescue her. But did you not question why the two active alarm systems were so effectively disabled, yet the passive alarm system was left activated?”

“Not at the time,” Trace admitted. “Not until afterward, when I had time to think it over and assess everything. You wanted me to know she was in danger.”

The king nodded. “I tested you the only way I could, and then I knew for sure you were the man for Mara.” His smile faded. “So I will ask you again. Why is Mara here alone? Why is she grieving as if you are dead?”

Trace was still trying to come to terms with everything the king had just told him, trying to put all the pieces into their new places in his mind. Trying to comprehend the single-mindedness, the ruthlessness that could put Mara through that ordeal.
Love that is cruel to be kind,
he thought.
No matter the cost. Because the end result is worth any price.
He steeled himself to answer the king’s question. “If she’s grieving,” he said, “it’s because I sent her away. Because I told her...” His throat ached. “I told her I didn’t love her.”

“I see. You lied to her.”

“Yes.”

“And she believed you.” It wasn’t a question, but Trace nodded anyway. “I should kill you for that,” the king said softly, his chest heaving suddenly, and Trace knew he wasn’t talking about having him killed; he
literally
wanted to kill Trace with his own hands.

But Mara’s brother couldn’t hate him any more than he already hated himself. He would never forget the expression on Mara’s face when he told her... “There’s more,” he said, holding himself straight, meeting the sharp accusation in the king’s eyes. “She knew me too well. She wouldn’t believe I didn’t love her. She thought I was trying to be noble. So I had to tell her...” He couldn’t say the words.

“Ahhh. I see it now. Seducing her? Was that also part of your assignment?”

“I never seduced her!” The harsh words echoed through the vast room.

“There is seduction...and then there is seduction,” the king said softly. “Perhaps you did not seduce her into your bed, but you seduced her into loving you, did you not?”

“That was
never
part of my assignment,” Trace rasped. “That was...” Mara’s face rose before him, her lovely green eyes smiling shyly at him as she offered him the gift of her body...and her heart. As she offered him her trust. The fierceness in her eyes and her voice as she said,
there is no such thing as a bastard child.
“That was...”
Inevitable,
a little voice whispered in his skull.
To know her...really know her sweet and loving heart...is to love her unconditionally.

“If you love her, can you not see you have wounded her far worse than my father ever did?”

The words scourged Trace and the blood drained away from his face, leaving him cold and light-headed. “No,” he said, shaking his head slowly, even though he knew it was the truth. Wasn’t that why he’d gone back to the estate before Christmas, only to find her gone? Wasn’t that why he’d booked his flight here even before he’d been kidnapped? To try to undo the damage he’d caused? “No.”

“I tell you yes. You have killed her as surely as if you had stabbed her, but not quickly, not cleanly. She will go on living, dying by inches, her heart already dead inside her. If you could have seen her as I saw her when she stepped off the plane...” A muscle twitched in the king’s jaw. “I could have killed you for that alone.”

Chapter 17

T
race tried to defend himself. “I
had
to push her away. I thought I was putting her in danger.” The king’s brows drew together in a questioning frown. “Those men following me—
your
men—I thought they were stalking me from a case I worked on a while back. I can’t give you the details, but they were stone-cold killers. I knew damned well if they tried to take me out she might get caught in the crossfire. I wasn’t about to risk that. No way in
hell
was I going to let anything happen to her because of me.”

The king cursed long and fluently in Zakharan, but the words and the expression on his face told Trace the curse was internally directed. “I did not think of that,” the king whispered finally, more to himself than to Trace. Then his lips tightened as he went back on the offensive. “But you did not tell her that was the reason, did you?” he said shrewdly, his words clipped and precise. “If you had, it would not have broken her heart. Wounded her, yes. But not crushed her soul as you have done.”

Trace shook his head, facing the bitter truth. “I thought I had to find a way to kill her love,” he insisted. “I wanted to free her. Free her to find a better man than me.”

“
Free
her?” The king stared at him in disbelief. Then one hand made a sharp gesture of denial. “You are not Zakharian, no matter how fluent you are in our language, so perhaps you do not know. Marianescus mate for life. It started with the founder of our house, and that character trait has flowed through our blood for more than five centuries.” Pain slashed across his face for a moment before he controlled it. “We love once,” he said softly, his eyes looking beyond Trace at a long ago memory, and Trace sensed he wasn’t just talking about Mara. “Then never again.”

The king’s eyes sought the portrait on the wall beside them. “Even my father could not escape that fate. I have often wondered if he could have married again after my mother died, perhaps he would not have blamed Mara for her death. Perhaps he would not have hated her so completely.”

The king’s mouth hardened and his eyes turned to stone as he faced Trace again. “My father could never admit it was
he
who caused my mother’s death by insisting on another child, another son to secure the Marianescu legacy.” His eyes looked nothing like Mara’s at this moment, and Trace saw the same implacable hatred for the old king that he himself felt. “But it is too late for that. What my father started, you have nearly finished.”

Trace shook his head, unable to speak, but Mara’s brother wasn’t done. “I cannot reach her. I cannot heal her. I can only take a desperate chance and kidnap the man she loves, praying you can somehow undo the damage you have done to someone who never deserved such cruelty. Not from my father. Not from you.”

“That wasn’t what I intend—”

The king cut him off. “Perhaps not. But do they not say the road to hell is paved with good intentions?” He looked at Trace, his face hard and implacable. “You have put her in hell. What are you going to do about it?”

The two men stared at each other for endless seconds. “Where is she?” Trace asked finally, the words rasping in his dry throat.

“Stay here. I will send her to you.” The king turned on his heel and strode toward the side door. He glanced back with his hand on the knob. “Do not tell her I brought you here by force. Let her think you came to her of your own free will. I will not contradict you.” Then he was gone.

Trace moved to one of the long windows on the east side of the room, staring unseeingly out into the garden. He had no idea what he was going to say to the princess; he only knew her brother was right. If he loved her—and he did, so much so that life had not seemed worth living once he had driven her away—he somehow had to find the words to undo the damage he’d done. What had he intended to say to her when he’d booked his flight to Drago for New Year’s Eve? He hadn’t known then, just that he
had
to see her. Had to explain. He’d thought he would have time to think of what to say. But now he had mere seconds to find the words.

The hell with protecting myself,
he told himself.
The hell with that. I don’t know what I’ll say to her, but every word will be the truth, even if it damns me.

* * *

Andre dismissed his bodyguard and walked into the little library on the second floor, where he’d been told he would find his sister. She was sitting at the large table in the middle of the room where she and her best friend in high school, Juliana Richardson, had studied long ago. Textbooks were strewn haphazardly across the polished surface, some faceup, some facedown, others with strips of paper marking pages. Mara was busy scribbling in a notebook, and Andre heaved a sigh of profound relief. For the first time since she’d returned home she was showing an interest in her work, the work that had once been the cornerstone of her life. And that meant she was no longer completely devastated by what had happened to her at Trace McKinnon’s hands.

Mara looked up as the door closed behind Andre, and smiled. A real smile, the first one she’d given him since her return. The smile didn’t banish the shadows from her eyes, nor did it return the roses to her cheeks. But it gave Andre hope that his sister was moving beyond the pain, to a place where—even if McKinnon weren’t waiting downstairs—Mara would be able to return to something akin to a normal life.

“What are you working on,
dernya
?” he asked her curiously.

“I was going to surprise you,” she told him. “I was going to wait until I was finished, but I can tell you now.”

“Tell me what?” He came to stand by her side, looking at the incomprehensible notations on the page in front of her and laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

“I have been working on a textbook. Differential equations. I started on it when I began teaching at the University of Colorado.” Her smile faded for a moment before she pasted it back in place. “The dean was most encouraging. And I let the head of the mathematics department critique the first few chapters. He was impressed.”

“Why am I not surprised?” he teased her, tucking a wisp of hair behind her ear. “My little sister is a genius. Anyone would be impressed. Anyone who understands differential equations, that is. It is merely Greek to me.”

She laughed, as he had intended. “It
is
Greek,” she averred. “The symbols, at least. The text is in English. I told Liam it would be easier if I could write it in Zakharan, because it is not always easy to find the right English words for what I want to say.” This time when her smile faded it didn’t return.

“But you will not give up, will you,
dernya
? How many times have I heard you say you do not like half measures?”

Andre watched as Mara’s eyes went blank for a moment. Then her lips tightened. “No, I do not like half measures,” she whispered, almost as if to herself. She raised her face to Andre’s, a new light in her eyes. “You are right, of course,” she told him. “I cannot run away like this. I must go back.” She drew a deep, trembling breath. “I must finish out the school year. My students are depending on me.” She glanced at her notebook. “I will not let him make me a coward again,” she vowed, and she didn’t have to say his name for Andre to know to whom she was referring. “If nothing else, I will at least finish what I started.”

Andre smiled his faint smile. “That is the sister I know and love,” he said, letting his pride in her reflect in his tone. “The sister who could throw her heart over any fence and land safely.” He tilted her chin up so she was forced to look at him. “You are not a coward,
dernya.
You never were.”

She shook her head in denial. “I was,” she insisted. “You know I was. I could never stand up to our father. You always had to fight my battles for me with him—I could never fight my own. Not even for something I have always loved.” She swallowed hard.

“Love makes cowards of us all,” Andre said, paraphrasing Shakespeare. “The longing to be loved for ourselves makes us afraid. And that fear makes us weak. Ahhh,” he said when she gave him a wondering look. “Did you think I was immune?”

Mara hesitated. “Juliana?” she asked after a pregnant pause.

Andre closed his eyes for a second and breathed deeply. He let a self-derogatory smile play over his lips, then nodded. “Juliana,” he acknowledged. The word was soft as a sigh.

“Still? After all these years?”

“I am a Marianescu,” he said simply. “As are you.”

“Yes,” she agreed after a moment. “We are Marianescus, first and last. That is our fate.” Andre watched her face, watched her expression morph into determination, as if she were drawing strength from the knowledge he understood there could never be another man for her, the same way there could never be another woman for him. But that didn’t mean her life was over. She could build a life of purpose for herself just as he had done. Alone. “We never get everything we want in life,” she said softly. “But we cannot give up, can we?”

“Never.” They shared a smile of commiseration, then Andre said, “Would you do something for me,
dernya
?”

“Anything.”

“There is an envoy waiting in the Hall of Mirrors. I have spoken with him but he also insists on seeing you about an important matter.”

Mara touched fingertips to her cheeks, emphasizing the shadows under her eyes, and said, “I...I do not think... I am not quite ready to see anyone other than you.”

“As a favor to me, yes?”

“What does he want? Why does he need to see me?”

“He will tell you that,
dernya.
But I promise you will not regret seeing him.”

* * *

A door opened behind Trace, reluctant footsteps tapped across the marble tiles, and a voice as familiar to him as his own heartbeat said in Zakharan, “My brother, the king, says you insist on seeing me. I do not understand, but I—”

Trace turned around. “Hello, Princess.”

“Trace!”

She caught her breath and her eyes widened until they were huge in her pale face, and for just an instant the intense light of joy shone there. But then she flinched, agony wiping away the joy, and her hand came up to cover her eyes. Her breath came in little pants and her mouth moved soundlessly. Then she crumpled.

Trace caught her as she fell, lifting her into his arms and carrying her swiftly to one of the antique sofas that lined the room. He laid her on the sofa and knelt beside it, his hand checking her pulse. It was far too rapid, and her breath fluttered in her throat.

He’d known she’d cut off her hair, but it was still a shock seeing her without it. After the first shock, though, it barely registered. Feathery wisps of golden brown hair framed her face, giving it a gamin look even more appealing than the sophisticated chignon she’d usually worn before. But the knowledge that he’d caused her such devastating pain she’d felt she had no choice but to do what she’d done made him bleed inside as he’d bled the night he’d seen her discarded tresses strewn across his bed.

“Princess,” he said, caressing her cheek with a hand that trembled. “Open those green eyes for me. Come on, Princess. Curse me, slap me, yell at me. Do anything you want to me, but please open your eyes.”

Mara came back to consciousness slowly, fighting it every step of the way. Someone was calling her, but not by name.
Trace,
she thought, smiling. Only Trace called her
Princess
in just that way, like a loving caress. Only Trace...

Then she remembered...and whimpered. “No...” Trace didn’t love her. He didn’t need her. He didn’t even want her. He had just been doing his job. When he had touched her body, made her feel those incredible, indescribable things, he had just been doing his job. When he had made her believe in him, when he had made her believe herself loved, he had just been doing his job.

Mara opened her eyes. Trace was there, bending over her, his bluer-than-blue eyes dark with concern. One hand was holding her wrist, feeling for the pulse there. The other hand was caressing her cheek with the exquisite gentleness that had once convinced her she was loved...but not anymore.

“Do not touch me—I do not need your help,” she told him coldly, struggling to sit up, to escape those lying hands. Although she’d just decided she had to return to the US to finish out the school year, she would never have sought Trace out, and would have done everything she could to avoid seeing him again. Courage was one thing. Masochism was another. Humiliation coiled inside her now as she remembered how she’d trusted herself to this man. How he’d seduced her into wanting him, loving him, all the while he was just doing his job.

And somewhere there were explicit photographs of the two of them.

Mara went hot and cold now just thinking about it. She had not been ashamed to let Trace touch her intimately when she thought he loved her. She had not been ashamed to touch him in ways she had never imagined she would want to touch any man, because she had loved him. Loving him, being loved by him, had made her feel blessed. Until he had told her there were photographs...

She closed her eyes as if she could blot out the memories by refusing to look at him, but she knew that couldn’t happen. She couldn’t escape her memories any more than she could escape this moment. When she had viciously hacked off her hair she had sworn no man would ever make her weep again. No man would ever make her ashamed again. And yet that was exactly what she was feeling now—scorching shame that made her want to weep and weep, until the shame was washed away. “Do
not
,” she said again, pulling away sharply from his hands.

Trace let her go and sat back on his heels. This close to her he could see the visible signs of her suffering, the ones her brother had also seen. Her green eyes could never be anything but lovely to him, but there was a bruised look around the skin there that told its own tale. And her face was somehow thinner than he remembered, little hollows beneath her delicate cheekbones. But it was her mouth that hurt him the most. Those lips that had once smiled lovingly at him were tightly compressed, as if guarding her from further pain. Guarding her from him.