Royally Claimed (17 page)

“Yes, you could have.”

He shrugged helplessly.

“I was about a week pregnant, looking at two little pink stripes on the dipstick, and you put your hand on my shoulder and told me we would get married in the fall.”

“Obviously! I couldn't leave you to face it all alone. Did you think I would just jet back to New York to school and let you explain everything to your parents without me to support you?”

She'd been careful to keep her miscarriage secret from her parents at first but had broken down and told them later in the year after they'd found her sobbing in her room one day. “I was your obligation, and you never once mentioned love, just marriage and duty.”

“But you
were
my duty.”

“And I was scared to death. To drop out of school, to marry you, to become a mother. I would have been the nineteen-year-old pregnant Duchess of Aguas Santas.
I'm sure your mother would have loved planning our shotgun wedding.”

“She would have loved it, because I loved you. And now we are older and hopefully wiser.”

“I don't know about wiser, Frank. We seem to be repeating the same pattern.”

He looked down at her, his expression ironic. “Well, I don't want to break up again. That part doesn't bear repeating. If you didn't realize I loved you eleven years ago, I'll say it again—I love you still. And I hope you love me, too.”

“Oh, Franco.” She cupped his smooth jaw. What was she going to do? At least she could tell him the truth, no matter what she decided. “I don't think I've ever stopped loving you.”

He wrapped his arms around her. “I'm so glad to hear that. If I hadn't been such a fool, we would have been settled at my estate long ago, and you never would have been put in such a dangerous position. Forced to take a life to save your own.”

“Of course I regret that, but I don't regret the other parts of my life.” She regretted that he had never knocked at her dorm room door, that she hadn't taken the train to New York to find him at his apartment.

“Not at all?” He raised a black brow.

It had been a second-best option, but the best one she'd had at the time. “I got to finish my education, get my nursing license. I graduated from graduate school with high honors. I've met so many patients and their families, had the chance to help them live, and some of them, to help them die. I don't regret that at all.”

“It doesn't seem like a fair trade,” he informed her.
“Losing our baby and a happy life with me for sick people you don't even know.”

She pushed out of his arms. “I don't need reminding about the baby, Frank. I cried every day for months and had to go to grief counseling to even function. I don't think it was a fair trade because life is not fair. We don't get a certain number of points to redeem, and if we lose the tickets, we aren't given another packet. Why me? Why not me? Do you know how many young people and even children I've seen die? They have parents, too, and none of us is spared pain and suffering. Not in this life.” The cold, damp wind blew strands of hair across her face, temporarily blinding her. She brushed them out of the way.

His jaw jumped. “Then forget about that. I insist you come to Portugal and marry me. I can give you another baby—I can give you as many as we can manage. You don't have to waste your emotions on strangers.”

He still didn't understand. Her schooling and career was the only thing that had saved her from despair and paralysis. And his second proposal of marriage was about as grim as the first. She told him so.

“Well, excuse me if I am doing this wrong,” he replied sarcastically. “But I have only done this once before and it seems that I'm not doing any better this time.”

“We don't have to get married. Why don't we just get together in Boston or I could even come to Portugal to visit? Maybe not right away since I have to go back to work next month and I've been on disability leave.”

“What? You're going back to work?”

“My work means a lot to me.”

“So come work in Portugal. You would learn the language easily and there are plenty of hospitals.”

“It would take me months, if not years to pick up Portuguese well enough to function in a high-pressure work situation.” And then what? Date Frank on her days off? Live with him at the
fazenda?
Marry him and be the Duchess of Santas Aguas, hobnobbing with royalty and presiding over a huge estate?

“I think I know what is going on. When you work at the hospital, you can be the most caring person around—but only temporarily, and only on the surface.”

“What?”

He nodded. “I understand why, because you would not be able to function if you cared deeply and permanently about your patients. Maybe you are carrying that over to me—to us.”

She frowned at him.

“Julia, this is our life. You don't have to protect yourself from me.”

“Yes, I do.” She spoke without thinking, but it was true.

“Why? I know I hurt you before without meaning to, but now things are different.”

“No.” She backed away from him. “You love me too much and you want too much from me.”

“What?” He ran a hand through his damp black curls in frustration. “Why is that a bad thing? I don't understand.”

“I can control things at my job—or at least deal with them better.”

He gave a bitter laugh. “Oh, yes, things are so much under control that you had to shoot a murderer in your
emergency department. And you would rather go back there than stay with me?”

“Yes, because that was just physical pain. If my heart broke again, I wouldn't be able to survive.” If she lost another baby, that would be the end of her. Guess that grief counseling hadn't worked so well after all.

He dropped his hands to his sides. “And that is that, eh?”

“Yes.” Julia tipped her face to the sky, hoping the rain would disguise her wet cheeks. She'd been a fool to think she could spend so much time with Frank, spend so much time making love with him, and not encounter heartbreak. But maybe she could minimize it if she got away from him. “When can you take me back to São Miguel?”

His shoulders slumped. “Back to your parents' apartment?”

She nodded, and he looked out to sea. “After the storm. Unless you want to get away badly enough to risk the weather.” He sounded bitter, and she didn't blame him.

“I'll pack and we can leave when it clears.” She turned to leave him. “I am sorry, Frank.”

He faced her, his eyes shocking in their desolation. “Don't apologize, Julia. I actually feel sorry for you—that you would give up a second chance at our love just because of fear. I have never known you to be a coward, but people do change. I know I have.” He looked over the ocean again, and she left him. Left him to pack, left him to go back to her predictably unpredictable life of long hours at the emergency department and long hours alone at home.

Maybe that would sound better once she got back
into her usual routine. And once again, she would never drive to the Azorean enclave south of Boston. Because the locals there would wonder why the sight of Portuguese pastries and smoked sausage made the American girl cry her eyes out.

 

B
ENEDITO HUNG UP THE PHONE
in the main kitchen of the estate of Santas Aguas, his lovely wife Leonor chopping vegetables for dinner.

“Well?” She selected a potato and diced it like a machine. Leonor with a knife was slightly frightening, but Benedito knew how to keep on her good side.

“The duke has royally messed up.”

She snorted. “He let that girl get away from him?”

“Again.” Benedito nodded. “And he wants me on the next flight to São Miguel to help him finish the renovations.”

Leonor pointed the wicked-looking blade at him. “That boy will never marry anyone but that American girl. And he will never marry her unless he sees her again. Don't you want little Duartes running around the estate? Putting them on their first ponies, teaching them about the long, proud traditions of our land and our people?”

“Of course, woman!” he barked. “I did my best to bring them together this last time, but now the Duke will throw himself into this renovation, and then it will be time for Stefania's wedding. He will be in Italy, for goodness' sake.”

Leonor stopped slicing, her gaze faraway. “The wedding. Invite her to the wedding.”

“But I don't have the power to do that.” He spread
his hands wide. “You and I are going, but we can't take her as a guest.”

“Not us,
idiota.
Call little Stefania. She will do anything to make Franco happy.”

“Ah.” A wide grin spread over his face. “
Meu bem,
you are a genius.” Making sure the knife was set down, he threw his arms around his wife and kissed her. “As always, you know exactly what to do.” He lowered one hand to her ample bottom and gave her a pinch.

She squealed, but all that did was press her delightfully full bosom against his chest. He wiggled his brows. “Hurry up with that chopping. As soon as I get off the phone, I will show you my appreciation.”

“Oh, you.” She shoved him away, but her face was flushed. Benedito cackled and found the battered phone book with Stefania's private number and dialed. First, the phone call. And if dinner was a little late, too bad. He had to make the most of his time with his voluptuous wife before answering the ducal command to return to the Azores.

“J
ULIA, YOU HAVE MAIL
.” A peculiar tone in her mother's voice made her get up from the couch where she was pretending to read an old mystery novel she'd found in the island's English bookstore. No more romances for her, novel or otherwise.

It had been two weeks since she had seen Frank. Julia had returned to her parents' apartment in São Miguel, and they had very kindly not barraged her with questions about what she'd been up to while they were gone. The neighbors had surely filled them in. She'd caught her parents giving her concerned looks, but she'd been careful to cry quietly at night or to just let the tears run down her cheeks while in the shower.

Frank was back at his
fazenda
on the mainland. She missed him terribly. He hadn't told her he was leaving. A much-improved
Senhor
de Sousa had said the Duke had stopped at the hospital to wish him well before he returned to the mainland.

The Duke hadn't stopped to wish Julia well. She'd caused enough turmoil in his life—again—that he prob
ably just wanted to get the hell away from her. She really needed to get her head on straight.

And she was supposed to be back in Boston in another week or so—back to the craziness of the emergency room and the boredom of single life.

“What is it?” She padded into the kitchen and saw her mother holding a large ivory envelope.

“For you. The return address says, ‘His Majesty Crown Prince Giorgio of Vinciguerra.'”

Her dad got up from his chair to peer at the envelope through his wire-rimmed reading glasses. “No street address, though. I suppose when you rule a whole country, people know where to send your mail.”

“Why would the Crown Prince of Vinciguerra send you mail?” Her mother held on to the packet with a death grip as she practically fondled the expensive paper.

“Let her open it, Evelyn, and then we'll all know the answer to that question.”

Julia didn't want to take the envelope. Prince Giorgio was Frank's best friend and the brother of the bride. It sure wasn't an invitation to a royal wedding shower. She couldn't even afford a cloth napkin off that bridal registry.

Dad tugged it out of Mother's hands and passed it to her. “Open it before your poor mom passes out from curiosity.”

Julia slid her finger under the flap and pulled out a smaller, but no less exquisite envelope, this one addressed in beautiful calligraphy to “Miss Julia Cooper.”

Inside was an invitation to the wedding of the decade, Princess Stefania to the star German soccer player Dieter Thalberg. And Julia had painted their
honeymoon bedroom a nice relaxing taupe color. They could thank her later.

She handed the invitation to her mother, who gasped as she read. “How on earth did you get invited? Have you ever met any of these people?”

“Evelyn, it's because of that Portuguese boy. The one who turned out to be some upperclass dilettante.”

“Frank is not a dilettante. He is well-educated and a hard worker,” she told her father more sharply than she intended.

He gave her a satisfied half-smile, as if she had confirmed some hypothesis he'd been mulling.

She glared at him for tripping her up.

“Julia, you should go,” her mother announced. “It's the opportunity of a lifetime, something you can tell your children about.”

Fat chance of her ever having children. She didn't even want to look at another man who wasn't Frank.

“Don't be silly,” her father scoffed. “Julia, at a royal wedding?”

The women both rounded on him. “What does that mean?” Julia demanded.

“Come on, now. We're regular people. They're royalty. All those fancy outfits and us in our T-shirts and shorts. Julia would probably curtsey to the butler—they have several apiece, you know.”

Her mother was turning the color of a pomegranate. “Bob, that is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. You act as if we're some know-nothings who eat cold pork and beans straight from the can. That we think toilet water swirls around in a bowl. In all your years in the Air Force, did we ever embarrass you at formal functions? Did you ever see me with my skirt tucked
into the back of my pantyhose or with my finger up my nose?”

“Now, Evelyn…” He held up his hands in placation.

“Good going, Dad,” she muttered. Of all the things to bait her mother with—her mother came from a poor family and had worked hard to learn proper etiquette for all situations.

“Don't you ‘now, Evelyn' me!” She waggled her finger at him. “Julia is going to this royal wedding and she will know exactly how to behave and you—you are treating her to a fabulous dress.”

“But what if I don't want to go? I have to get back to Boston,” she complained, sounding like a whiny teenager. She was just starting to come to terms with the idea of not seeing Frank again, and now her mother was tossing her at him.

Her mother put her hands on her hips. “Julia, you can just call up the hospital and tell them you're not ready to come back. You're still having headaches and you toss and turn at night.”

She didn't realize her mother knew that. “I'm just tired,” she said feebly.

“A good reason to delay your return to work. After all, you deserve a medal for being wounded in the line of duty. Your spot is as good as reserved,” Dad informed her. The twinkle in his eye made her wonder if he had purposely goaded both of them.

“And you're paying for her plane ticket!” Mother announced. “And mine, too, because she and I are going shopping—in London.”

 

J
ULIA CLUTCHED HER INVITATION
as she stood in the guest line at the massive Vinciguerran cathedral. The facade
was a warm ivory color with a huge stained glass circular window over the wide doors. A spire climbed upward, and Julia could see tiny figures moving around in its bell tower. They were probably preparing to ring the bells after the ceremony.

Most of the guests around her were obviously the rich and wealthy from all over Europe. But there were a few regular people like her wearing wide-eyed expressions of excitement mixed with terror at being so far out of their usual setting. She wondered if they were friends of the family or maybe former nannies or teachers.

Julia didn't feel any more comfortable, but at least she looked the part. Her mother had taken her to Harrod's and several other boutiques in London to find just the right outfit. She had fallen in love with a peach-colored hat with a slightly rounded crown and turned up brim. For decoration, it had a lighter-peach satin ribbon band and satin roses on one side. They had found a matching peach-colored suit with a low-cut V-neck and a skirt that hit right above her knees. Her mother had suggested in front of the saleslady that Julia might want to wear a lace camisole underneath, but had received such a look of horror from the clerk that she had immediately dropped the idea.

Julia wasn't interested in covering anything up. She wanted to rub Frank's nose in what he was missing. The peach color made her lightly tanned complexion glow and aside from feeling desperately miserable at not being with him, she looked great.

She was next in line, and got wanded by the security guard, her purse searched and discreetly sniffed by the police dog. Once that was done, she was directed to the cathedral entrance.

She climbed the white marble steps and blinked as she entered the church. Once her eyes adjusted to the lower light, her jaw dropped. Fairy-tale wedding didn't even come close—this was heavenly. The altar was pure ivory marble with large golden candelabras. Big swags of cream and yellow roses draped over every available surface, with smaller bundles of blooms attached to each pew.

“Bride or groom?” Julia looked up into the face of a Germanic god—not Odin, one that had both his eyes. This guy was blond, blue-eyed perfection and didn't even make her stomach quiver one teensy bit. She sighed and told him she was there for the bride. He checked her name and his eyes widened.

He extended his arm and she took the impressive appendage. Again, nothing. She didn't even wonder about any other appendages he might have as they walked down the aisle.

She hummed the bridal march under her breath and he gave her a mischievous look.

“Ah, the march from
Lohengrin
.”

“Good job.” Of course, he would know Wagner's greatest operatic hits.

“I'll see you at the reception?” His blue gaze traveled to her un-camisoled neckline.

“Me and nineteen hundred other people.” She was just weary, too weary to even flirt with Handsome Hans.

He stopped at a pew close to the front and ushered her in. “Until then.”

“Thank you.” She sank into the gold cushioned seat next to a middle-aged couple that was practically quiv
ering with joy. “Exciting day, isn't it?” It was time to get over herself and stop being such a hermit.

“But of course!” the man said. He was wearing what looked like a brand-new suit, his plump, pretty wife in a beautiful dress that had to be of French design. “We 'ave known the bride since she was small. I am Jean-Claude and this is my wife Marthe-Louise. How do you know Stefania?”

“I'm, um, actually a friend of Frank. The bride's Portuguese friend.”

He translated for his wife, who'd suddenly become quite animated. “My wife, she says François is a wonderful man and is a brother to Stefania, her brother Giorgio and our own Jacques.”

“Frank, George and Jack,” Julia murmured to herself.

“Ah,
oui!
” Jean-Claude let out a laugh. “And Steevee, too.”

She had been put in the family pew.

Then she saw him. He was walking down the aisle with an elderly woman wearing a tiara and perfectly draped silver silk formal gown that matched her hair.

He matched his pace to the older woman, so Julia had plenty of time to stare at him and try to keep her heart from beating out of her chest.

All the men were impeccable, but Frank was stunning. He wore what looked like a black military uniform, complete with medals and tons of gold braid. A red-and-white ribbon sash went diagonally from one broad shoulder to his opposite hip, where he wore a ceremonial sword with a jewel-crusted, cross-shaped hilt. His black hair was slicked back from his strong face and he looked solemn and serious, as befitted the
occasion. But when he finally guided his charge to the front pew, she said something to him. He patted her hand and smiled, his joyous expression lighting his face.

Julia remembered that expression—saw it almost every night before she fell asleep. More and more, her nightmares were disappearing, replaced by dreams of being with Frank.

He returned to the front of the cathedral and took his place standing next to a tall, chestnut-haired man in equally elaborate regalia—probably his French friend the Count, the one with a baby on the way. She waited for the usual stab of pain, but it was only a slight twinge. Maybe she had been able to put more of that grief behind her than she thought.

A minute later, the handsome blond groom filed out from the side of the church to stand at the front of the aisle, his equally handsome blond groomsman at his side. The bishop and his assistants proceeded from the back of the altar. The bishop was regal in his pointed hat, shepherd's crook staff and white-and-gold vestments. He murmured briefly to the groom, who gave a nervous smile.

Music boomed from the organ and a pretty blonde flower girl started down the aisle, stopping on the opposite side from the groom.

The organist shifted pedals and started the bridal march. Everyone in the cathedral turned to face the entrance. A pretty, petite brunette smiled up at her brother, Frank's friend Giorgio. He was dark-haired and handsome, and even from the distance, Julia could tell he was fighting back powerful emotions of love and happiness for his sister.

The bride was so beautiful, Julia wanted to weep.
Sure, she had a wonderful ivory-and-gold satin dress and an antique lace veil streaming down her back. But the love in her face as she saw her groom was what made her radiant. The groom was dazzled by her beauty, his eyes wide and his mouth falling slightly open before he broke into a huge grin.

Giorgio safely delivered his sister to her fiancé and kissed her on both cheeks. She cupped his face in her small hands and said something to him that made him blink rapidly and swallow hard.

He nodded and kissed her again before standing next to Frank and their friend Jack.

The wedding was long and ceremonious, with several hymns sung by the local boys' choir and a hearty sermon from the bishop. Unfortunately, Julia didn't understand much Italian, but she understood the parts about love and making babies. Jean-Claude grinned and elbowed his wife at that part. Everyone was obviously thrilled about that aspect, looking forward to having babies to spoil.

What if she could have a baby with Frank?
Another
baby with Frank, she mentally corrected. She'd done her best to push the memory of the first one, the lost one, out of her mind for the past eleven years, but she'd come to see that was futile and unnecessary. She still loved that baby, just as she had always loved Frank.

If she'd learned anything about the human mind, she'd learned it was like a closet. Oh sure, you could cram all sorts of broken and damaged things in its depths, but eventually the closet door wouldn't close and everything would come bursting out.

She'd needed to stuff her grief into the closet in order to survive at first, but Frank had yanked open the door
and insisted she clean it out. And he had grieved, too, poor Frank, with his tender heart and sweet nature.

Someone pressed a soft cloth into her hand, and Julia realized with a start that she was crying, streams of tears running down her cheeks.

The round face of Frank's friend Marthe-Louise creased in concern as she patted her arm. She seemed to know Julia was crying for more than just a beautiful wedding.