Natural-Born Protector / Saved by the Monarch (20 page)

Right. Aunt Viola apparently corresponded with him and kept him up to date. An exaggerated groan was all the response she would give Miklos.

“So this princess of yours strolls around in her little labyrinth.” He seemed unwilling to let the subject drop. “Is that what you do? Move forward until you see something you’re scared of, then you move back?”

“She can move up and down, too.” So there. “And some roads are not worth going down. Roads that are obviously dead ends.” She gave a pointed glare.

“You think marrying me would be a dead end?” His gaze grew intense, with a dangerous glint in it. “Boring maybe, no more excitement, ever?”

Knowing what she knew of him now, she was
betting life with him would be the exact opposite. God help her, she wished she were the princess in her game. She could go up to her highest tower and lock herself away from the temptations of the handsome prince.

She wondered whether he would disappear if she called him by his true name.

She should be so lucky.

T
HEIR CHANCE TO ESCAPE
didn’t come until morning. They spent the night—talking and sleeping alternately—sitting back to back, the only way Judi would allow him to give some warmth to her chilled body. If Miklos hadn’t been tied, he would have hauled her onto his lap and fully against him anyway. As it was, he was forced to obey her wishes.

Frustration ate at him for more reasons than that. He hated to be stuck here when he should have been out there investigating, protecting his family.

They stood ready when the door opened this time, having heard footsteps approaching.

He leaped and had the man knocked to the ground the next second. Judi was there then, kneeling on the guy’s head, mashing his face into the floor before he could raise a shout.

“Check his pockets.” Miklos pushed the door closed with his shoulder. “We need his knife if he has one.”

Her hands were in front; she had more mobility. The man grunted as she shifted her weight and went for the pockets.

“Nothing.” She sounded as frustrated as he felt.

He kicked the man’s gun toward her then turned
enough to take off the guy’s belt. By the time he looked up, she was stuffing an old-fashioned European dinner roll into the guy’s mouth. An effective gag, although they could have probably used the food. Judging from the temperature and the length of time it had taken them to get here, they had to be fairly high up on the mountain.

He got the belt free at last. She helped him tie the guy’s hands. When they were done, they got up, leaving him grunting and squirming on the floor.

She held the gun in her hands. Gingerly.

He could tell that she was about scared out of her skin, completely out of her element, but she held up well. She knew what needed to be done, and looked determined to do it. He swore silently at their situation, at the rope that bound his hands. He wanted to be able to protect her, and it galled him more than he cared to admit that he could not promise her that he would take care of her.

That he might have to ask her to help him.

“Can you shoot?”

“No.” She flashed a small, apologetic smile before nerves pulled her soft mouth back into a tight line again.

“Above your thumb. That’s the safety. Push it forward. After that, you just aim and pull the trigger.”

She nodded.

He moved to the door first, opened it a fraction, looked out. Nobody in the short hallway. He could see two other plank doors to his left, then a larger door with a small window through which he spied snow outside.
A half dozen snowsuits hung on pegs in the hallway, all of them red, striped with black. Not the best for hiding in a snowy landscape. Apparently, the kidnappers didn’t anticipate being found and having to run.

“If anyone catches us, you get behind me,” he whispered.

Not that he would be any good except as a shield from any bullets fired, but he was willing to do that to save her. She shouldn’t have gotten involved in this. Shouldn’t have been brought here. Her life was in danger because she’d been in his company. He couldn’t forget that.

Wind howled in the mountains loud enough to cover whatever noise they made, but he proceeded with extreme care anyway. He pulled Judi behind him and waited until she closed the door. Then they stole to the window with her covering his back.

Nothing but snow and more snow outside. He opened the door an inch and stuck his head out, looked to either side. A couple of sets of skis leaned against the side of the building, the old-fashioned kind that snapped on any decent boot at hand.

He stepped back with a scowl.

“What’s out there?” she asked, breathless.

He reached awkwardly for the largest ski suit and boots, the rope around his hands slowing him down. When he had everything, with some help from her, he hurried outside. “Nothing.”

“That’s good, right?” She got what she needed for herself without having to be told, and followed him, closing the door behind them.

“I was hoping for a truck with chains on the tires.” He waited for her to dress him, which galled the hell out of him. Skiing was going to be interesting. He wondered how long it would take before he fell flat on his face. “Hurry up.” He glanced back toward the cabin, but everything there seemed quiet. He tugged on his ropes again.

They had to come across a sharp rock sooner or later, something he could use to fray their ropes. Everything would have been so much easier if they had a car. He could have shifted; she could have driven.

A vehicle would have provided a lot more protection against the weather and against their enemies as well. As it was, they would stand out against the snow in the colorful suits, easy pickings for a good rifle even from a distance.

The clouds looked black, laden with snow. The wind hurled frozen flakes in the air from what had already fallen in the last couple of days. The temperature was well below zero, the terrain treacherous. They’d had a lot of late spring snow in the mountains in recent days, putting the steep slopes at high risk for avalanches.

He examined the peaks and oriented himself as to where they were. He’d been on enough military exercises up here to know every peak and valley.

“Please tell me there’s a ski resort just around the corner somewhere,” she said as she dressed.

“The nearest village is about twenty miles from here.” As the birds flew—which they couldn’t. They would have to go around boulders, go out of their way to avoid gorges, adding extra miles over and over again.
“But it’ll be the first place they’ll look for us. They can easily catch up with us on the path. Or call in reinforcements who could be waiting for us in the village to grab us as soon as we reach it.”

He looked at Judi, who was done with her suit—as much as was possible, anyway—and was pulling boots on, ready to do whatever was required, without fussing or whining. Determination put extra sparkle in her lavender eyes.

For a moment, he wished he hadn’t made that stupid promise about not kissing her.

“The royal family is at Maltmore Castle, that way.” He gestured eastward with his head. “It’s the safest place we can go.”

“How far?”

“Thirty miles.”

She knew he needed her help without him having to ask, and he appreciated that. Appreciated it even more that she didn’t make any smart remark about it, which he’d half expected. She dragged the suit up his legs. His muscles tightened as the back of her hand dragged along his inner thigh. Under different circumstances, this could have been…interesting.

She yanked the suit up his torso, had to stop with it at chest level since he couldn’t get his arms in with his hands tied. She zipped it for him as far as she could, same as hers was. The arms of the suit dangled under their armpits.

She was scowling at the sight they presented. “Looks pretty ridiculous.”

He merely shrugged in response. “It’s about survival,
not looking pretty. We need the suits.” He shoved his feet into the boots, and she fastened the clasps for him.

He was the type who could take care of himself and was damn proud of that, so needing her didn’t sit all that well with him. He should be helping her. He was feeling less and less the valiant prince by the minute.

“I’ll find something to cut the ropes once we get out of sight of the cabin. We’ll have plenty of daytime hours,” he said brusquely.

“Let’s get going then.” She shot him a look of full-on optimism. “We can do thirty miles in a day. Easily.”

On a regular hike maybe, down in the foothills. Not up here above the snow line without a tent or any means to make a fire.

“Sure,” he said anyway, because he didn’t have the heart to tell her that it would take a miracle for them to make it off the mountain.

They weren’t free an hour before the snowstorm hit. The good news was that he’d been able to get them out of their ropes by then with the help of a sharp rock. He also knew the mountains and had found a small cave. The bad news was that the temperature had to be ten below. And even less with the windchill factored in.

So they sat as far from the cave’s entrance as possible, out of the way of the wind that had been howling for several hours now. They were both chilled to the bone, the small space not allowing for much movement.

Miklos wrapped his arms tighter around her. For once, she didn’t protest.

“Wish we had something to burn,” she said, her breath a puff of white mist in the air.

He’d been thinking the same thing, but they had nothing save the clothes on their backs. Another time, another place, he would have been happy to get rid of all their clothes and burn them, he mused for a second, then got his mind out of the gutter.

“So you never received any missives from the chancellor?”
he asked to distract her from the cold and himself from his baser instincts that seemed to come alive in her company. She was too beautiful by far, even half frozen. His active imagination readily supplied a dozen ways they could keep each other warm.

“Never,” she said with emphasis.

He blinked hard before he realized that was an answer to his question about the chancellor and not to his thoughts.

“Your social secretary must have received and answered them. I got whole folders on you. Once a year.” They had not done justice to the woman, though. Nothing in the papers had mentioned that she was feisty and vibrant and that her lavender eyes would be alive with passion—and fury—when he pressed his lips to hers.

Her head snapped up. “Folders of what?”

“Whatever you were doing. I got school report cards. Snapshots.”

“You know my grades?”

He grinned. “I know all your secrets.”

A storm gathered in her eyes.

“Fine. All I know is that you were better in English than I was. And in math. And that you tried a lot of different hairdos over the years.”

“I can’t believe Aunt Viola would do this to me. She has a lot to answer for once I get near a phone.” A violent shiver ran through her.

If and when they got near a phone, the first call would be to General Rossi, asking for help. “Your father never said anything?”

“Maybe he did and I don’t remember, or maybe he was waiting for me to get older.” She was looking at her feet, her arms wrapped around her knees, her voice softening. “He was diagnosed with leukemia when I was five, and responded badly to the chemo. Died shortly after his first treatment. I don’t think anybody expected that.”

She was silent for a long moment, then added, “He did use to call me princess. I thought all daddies called their daughters princesses.”

He tried to picture her as a little girl with her father. But the old images of her in his head had been firmly overwritten by the beauty of the woman in his arms.

Five years old.

He’d been nearly thirty when his father had died. And still it’d shaken him, shaken the whole country. His father had been king by marriage, the queen being the true monarch, the one with royal blood. And now the queen was desperately ill. He dared not think what stress would do to her if she ever found out about the plot against her eldest son. He and his brothers had tried to shelter her as much as possible over the past months. They’d been adults for a long time now, well aware of the realities of life, but still every one of them hoped for a miracle.

Judi had been just a small child when she had lost both of her parents.

“That had to be hard, to be orphaned at such a young age.” He remembered the sympathy he’d felt for her back when he’d first heard, remembered that there’d been a motion to bring her back to the country, but as
her stepmother had adopted her upon marriage to her father, she had full custody of the child. So a companion had been sent who would later become her social secretary and prepare her for her duties when she returned to Valtria to take her place in the royal family. Or so they’d thought.

Apparently the Lady Viola was not the best choice they could have made. She hadn’t prepared Judi for her role in Valtria at all. Leaving a future princess unaware all these years about what would be expected of her was nothing short of criminal negligence.

She’d been chosen because she was a distant relative to the Marezzis, not quite the aunt Judi’s affections promoted her to, but a third or fourth cousin. In hindsight, a stranger with a better grasp of what was expected of her might have served Judi better.

No wonder she had responded to the news with resistance. Still, he couldn’t help hoping that, given some time, he might succeed at convincing her to honor their parents’ agreement.

“Would you not consider the engagement for the good of the country?” he said with his arms securely around her, knowing this was neither the time nor the place but unable to stop from pushing her for an answer.

And he already knew she didn’t like to be pushed.

“Would you stop badgering me with it? You don’t even know me.” She was shivering again.

“That could be easily changed.” He was willing to spend time with her. As much as necessary.

“The answer is no. What are you going to do about it? Threaten me with beheading?” She glared.

So cold weather made her grumpy. Something to remember. “Good to see that you still have your sense of humor. This isn’t the Middle Ages.”

“You can’t want this.” Her gaze grew serious, her voice earnest. “You can’t want me. You don’t know me. You’re just worried that…” She paused to consider him. “Will there be a huge media scandal about you when I go back home?” Her face was unnaturally white from the cold.

He fought the urge to warm her skin with his lips. He was beginning to seriously worry about her, enough to let the not-wanting-her comment slide.

“Semi-huge. We’ve had what’s called in royal circles a secret engagement, although the chancellor leaked some details to the media the morning of your arrival. There’s a balance we must maintain as far as privacy goes—our public wants to feel involved with our family,” he explained. “If you leave abruptly, people will just assume that the news was only an unfounded rumor. There’ll be some Prince Jilted at First Sight headlines, too, of course,” he said just to cheer her up.

And, predictably, she did offer a shaky smile. “That’ll be the end of your reputation with the ladies.”

“I’ll die a shriveled-up old bachelor, likely.”

She laughed for the first time since they had met, a clear, bubbling sound that warmed his insides. He hoped it warmed hers as well.

The storm raged outside, an errant gust swirling snow inside the cave now and then. He wished he could be somewhere like this with her, together, out of the
cold, out of danger, just talking, the two of them. He wished he hadn’t procrastinated meeting her until the last second. Maybe years ago when they’d been younger and more flexible, the battle lines wouldn’t have been drawn so quickly between them.

“As sorry as I am about the damage to your reputation that my leaving might cause, I still would like to go back home when we get off this mountain,” she said after a few moments. “Given the circumstances, I’m sure you understand.”

He didn’t understand at all. Except the part that he was being rejected, his country—which he loved enough to die for at a moment’s notice—was being rejected. And that stung.

She couldn’t leave immediately. She had to give him time to change her mind, although he could see how the events of the last twenty-four hours might have soured her on Valtria, and he regretted that very much. She’d seen nothing but the dark side, a handful of rebels intent on destruction.

He hoped they would live long enough for him to show her the rest.

He found that he liked her company. She was independent and irreverent, and tough. And beautiful. Her lips were a temptation he was ill-equipped to resist. Especially when they were as close to his as they were at this moment.

She didn’t want to marry him. And she was not what one would call perfect princess material. She was too headstrong for that by far. But that didn’t stop him from wanting her. He was big on facing any and all
problems head-on, and didn’t see a point in denying this one, not to himself in any case.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked, then went on without waiting for his answer. “You would have just done it? Gone ahead and married a stranger because that’s what people expect you to do?”

“When we next run into the chancellor, ask him about the duties of a prince,” he said ruefully.

“How about love?” She was looking directly into his eyes.

He loved that look, the challenge in it, her strength to face down any issue and speak her mind. She employed none of the coy glances and feminine manipulations of the young ladies at court. He appreciated that even when she was asking questions he felt ill-equipped to answer. How about love?

How about it? he wanted to toss back. Or ask if they could discuss lust instead, a topic more within the area of his expertise. But she deserved more than a glib answer.

He could have fallen in love a time or two if he had allowed himself. But he was a man of discipline. “What people want most from the royal family is stability and respectability. The commoners have given their blood and sweat for this country over the centuries. The least we can contribute is doing our duty.”

“It can’t be your duty to marry a woman you don’t love.” She sounded exasperated and bewildered, scandalized by what she believed was an archaic way of life.

“My duty is to marry a daughter of nobility and
have children with her to provide successors for the throne, should anything happen to my older brother.”

A moment passed before she responded. “So you’re what, the backup prince?”

He winced. The tabloids had called him that in the past.

“But that’s so unfair,” she said, her face pale with cold.

“Everyone has their role in life.”

She seemed to think on that. “But most people get to pick their role. What they want to do for a living, where they live, who they marry.”

He simply nodded. “Well, there’s that.”

She stared at him as if expecting something more. Blinked. “Don’t you ever rebel?” she asked after a minute.

He had, when he’d been a teenager. But his mother and father had always been shining examples of monarchs who loved their people and did their duty and whatever else they could to better the common man’s life. And at one point, he’d come to understand the challenge and beauty of that.

“Lazlo is the rebel prince,” he said. “You’d like him.”

“And what are you?” she snapped. “Mother Theresa, dedicating your life to the masses?”

If she knew the thoughts he’d had while holding her in his arms, she wouldn’t have confused him with a saint. He let his gaze rake over her. Heat gathered between them slowly, tension that had nothing to do with their disagreement on the duties of a prince.

The banked fire inside him burned despite the freezing cold around them. It would have taken little to burst into an open flame. Disconcerting to say the least. A prince was, at all times, in full command of his basic needs and emotions. When it came to ladies, a prince courted, he did not ravish. A prince was not overtaken by out-of-control desires.

So he cooled the heat that had gathered inside him and loosened his arms around her. “Lazlo is the rebel of the family.” He tried to pick up their conversation but didn’t know what to say beyond this. He had to look away from her, so he looked toward the opening of the cave.

Seconds passed, endless, one after the other.

“Will I meet him?”

He knew what she was asking. Will we survive? He had no business making impossible promises, but he did anyway. “You will.”

His thoughts darkened as he wondered how his family fared. Maltmore Castle was somewhere below them.

“But why do your enemies want to harm Arpad? If anything happens to him, you would just take his place, right? Technically, there are five back-up princes. Hurting Prince Arpad wouldn’t end the monarchy.” She frowned as she tried to make sense of it.

“The Queen is very ill.” From the way her eyes widened, he knew that she understood what he meant. “Arpad could be taking the crown soon. His death would cause a disruption. Chaos, even if it’s temporary, would play into the hands of our enemies. All they need is a crack in the wall of tradition, to make people
wonder if the monarchy really is necessary. Arpad is the charismatic one. People have been preparing for him to be king for a long time now.”

“They might not swear allegiance to you as readily?” She rubbed her hands together. Their gloves were wet, so they had both taken them off.

“No. If civil war broke out…they might not accept me as their new king.”

And, God help him, he did not want to be king. He was happy as a soldier, happy to be protecting his country and his family without having to be involved in politics. But if the unthinkable happened, he would do what was expected of him.

“I haven’t spent nearly as much time in the public eye. I spend most of my time on the base. I’m a through-and-through military man.” Since it looked like she could barely bend her fingers, he took her hands between his own to warm them.

She didn’t protest. Which meant she had to be about freezing to death. Her comments in their conversation were coming increasingly slowly. He knew what that meant, along with her eyelids that were beginning to droop. Hypothermia wasn’t that far off. He held her close and prayed for the end of the storm so he could get her off the mountain.

She leaned forward, presumably to rest her head on her drawn-up knees, but it didn’t prove comfortable, he supposed, because she ended up leaning against his chest. Her hair slid aside and revealed the graceful arch of her neck.

He could feel a shiver go through her, and couldn’t
help thinking that she wouldn’t be here if not for him. She would be at the Ramada, sipping cocktails at the bar with handsome men hitting on her by now. He erased that last part from his mind when he found that it prickled. Then he dipped his head and let his lips touch her neck.