The Disgraced Princess (3 page)

‘So what?' she said into the night air, fragrant with scents she didn't recognise. ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself and at least get some rest.'

She must have slept for a few hours, because she dreamed—tangled images that had faded by the time she woke—but confronting her reflection the next morning made her inhale sharply and then apply cosmetics to banish the only too obvious signs of a restless night. Breakfast was served in her room, interrupted by a visit from Hani, who eyed her with concern.

Rosie pre-empted any query by saying firmly, ‘I was too excited to sleep much last night—just like an over-wrought kid after a birthday party.'

‘Tell me about it,' Hani said in the resigned tone of a mother who'd had to deal with just that situation. ‘But it was a great day, wasn't it?'

‘It's been a fabulous week,' Rosie said in her airiest voice. ‘Like living in the Middle Ages, only with bathrooms and electricity.'

Hani laughed, but the glance she gave Rosie was shrewd. ‘You say that as though you'll be glad to get back home.'

‘I will, but I'll never forget Carathia.' Or the man who now ruled it.

Hani said, ‘I'd like to go straight to New Zealand, but Kelt has a meeting with the head honchos from Alex's firm in London, so we're going there first.' She gave a swift, lovely smile. ‘I'll be interested to see how our little Rafi enjoys big cities.'

Hani was right—the sooner she got away from here the better, Rosie thought mordantly as she waved the family party off later that morning. Then she could stop being such an idiot.

Once back home she wouldn't spend wakeful nights wondering when Gerd was going to announce his engagement to Princess Serina.

By telling herself bracingly that it was completely stupid to feel as though her life was coming to an end, she managed to give Gerd a glittering smile when they met later that morning. In her most accusing voice, she said, ‘Alex tells me you killed him while you were fencing before break fast.'

Amused, he surveyed her. ‘For a dead man he looked remarkably energetic afterwards.'

‘He's disgustingly fit.' Rosie smiled, hoping it didn't look as painful as it felt. Damn it, she'd get rid of this crush no matter what it took. ‘I didn't know he was a fencer.' In fact, she didn't know much about her half-brother at all.

Gerd understood, perhaps more than she liked. ‘He learned at university, I believe. He's good. I believe you're using today to visit the museum.'

Rosie nodded. ‘I'm looking forward to that, and afterwards I'm checking out the shopping area.'

‘Just make sure you don't lose your guide—the central part of the city is like a rabbit warren and not many of the people speak English. If you got lost I'd probably have to mount a search party.'

His smile made Rosie's foolish heart flip in her chest. He isn't being
personal
, she told herself sternly.

He went on, ‘I'd like to show you around myself, but my day is taken up. I'm meeting my First Minister and then farewelling guests.'

Including Princess Serina? Rosie concealed the humiliating question with her friendliest smile, the one that usually caused Kelt to view her with intense suspicion. ‘Rather you than me,' she said cheerfully. ‘I'm going to have a lovely day.'

She did, discovering that Carathia's national flower was actually a buttercup. New Zealand too had a mountain buttercup, and, strangely enough, it too was pristinely white.

How foolish to feel that the coincidence formed some sort of link between the two countries!

The shopping area displayed interesting boutiques and the usual big names; her guide, a pleasant woman in her thirties with an encyclopaedic knowledge of Carathia, did her best to encourage her to buy, but Rosie resisted, even the silk scarf exquisitely embroidered ‘by hand', the shopkeeper told her, pointing out the fineness of the stitches. She held it up. ‘And it suits you; you have the same delicate colouring, the soft clarity of spring.'

‘It's lovely,' Rosie said on a sigh, ‘and worth every penny, but I don't have those pennies, I'm afraid. Thank you for showing it to me, though.'

Her regret must have shown in her tone because the
woman smiled and nodded and packed the beautiful, fragile thing away without demur.

Back at the palace she found a note waiting for her. Apart from his signature on birthday and Christmas cards it was the first time she'd seen Gerd's writing; bold and full of character, it made her heart thump unnecessarily fast as she scanned the paper.

He hoped she'd had a good day, and suggested that they have dinner together at a restaurant he knew, one where they wouldn't be hounded by photographers.

And where they wouldn't be alone, she thought with a wry quirk of her lips. Perhaps the princess objected to him dining with another woman in the privacy of his palace apartment, even when the other woman was related by marriage.

It was probably only his excellent manners that stopped him pleading a previous appointment and avoiding her altogether.

Temptation warred viciously with common sense. Should she go or do the sensible thing and say she was too tired? In the end her weaker part won. What harm could a dinner with him do, chaperoned as they'd be by the other diners, not to mention the waiters?

She rang the bell and gave the servant her answer.

Now, what to wear?

Anticipation built rapidly inside her; just for tonight—just this once—she'd let herself enjoy Gerd's company.

After all, there weren't going to be any repercussions. She was adult enough to deal with the situation. She'd forget her foolish crush and treat him like…oh, like the other men she'd gone out with. She'd be friendly, inter
ested, sparkle for him, even flirt a little. It would be perfectly safe because Gerd was going to marry either Princess Serina, or someone very like her.

Someone
suitable
.

And when tonight was over Rosie would never see him again. Well, not in the flesh, she thought mordantly. He had a habit of turning up in the media—arrogantly handsome royalty was always good for a headline, especially when it came to love and marriage.

Eventually she chose a slender dress in a clear, warm colour the blue of her eyes, one of Hani's rare couture mistakes. It had been shortened, of course, but the proportions were good. And so what if she'd worn it twice since arriving in Carathia? Princess Serina might have been dressed in a completely different outfit each time she'd appeared, but Rosie couldn't compete.

Ready to go, she critically eyed herself in the huge mirror and gave a bleak nod; the soft material skimmed her body so her curves weren't too obvious and the neckline was discreetly flattering.

She'd aimed for discretion in make-up too, but her glowing reflection made her wonder uneasily if she shouldn't apply a little more foundation just to tone things down. Not that foundation would mask the sparkle in her eyes.

She hesitated, then shrugged. Who was she fooling? She was going out with Gerd because she craved a tiny interlude of privacy, of something special.

To build more dreams on?

‘No,' she said aloud, startling herself. ‘To convince myself once and forever not to dream any more, because
dreaming is a total,
useless
waste of my life and I'm over it. I'm free and twenty-one and unemployed, and I will put fairy tales behind me.'

S
TIFFENING
her shoulders, Rosie turned away from her reflection, picked up a small blue evening bag and went out.

Her composure lasted exactly as long as it took for her to set eyes on Gerd.

The previous week should have accustomed her to his magnificence in austere, perfectly tailored black and white. Only it hadn't. A wild tumult beat through her blood and she had to stop herself from dragging in a shaken breath.

Don't you dare stutter like a besotted teenager, she commanded.

That horrible prospect gave her enough energy to steady her erratic breathing and say in a voice that almost sounded normal, ‘You're an amazing family, you and Kelt and Alex. You're all gorgeous in your different ways even when you're in ordinary kit, but put you in evening clothes and you all take on a masculine glamour that should come with flashing signs to warn impressionable females. Most men look vaguely like penguins at formal occasions, but not you three. Have you ever been approached to model male cosmetics?'

‘No.'

Just the one word, but she was left in no doubt about his feelings. Laughter bubbled up inside her. ‘Alex has. He looked just like you did then.'

‘I can imagine it,' Gerd said with a half-smile. ‘If you think we men need warning signs, you should hand out sunglasses.'

Nonplussed, she stared at him. His face was unreadable, but she thought she saw a glint of amusement in his eyes, enough to give her voice an edge when she said, ‘Thank you, I think. But it's not me, it's the dress—Hani gave it to me.'

His voice deepened. ‘Nonsense, it's always been you. Hani calls you instant radiance.'

Shaken by both his words and their tone, she grabbed at her precarious poise. ‘Radiance? I haven't noticed myself glowing in the dark, so I assume I'm safe.'

His eyes narrowed a fraction. ‘Ah, yes, but what about those close to you?'

‘I don't think you need worry,' she said kindly. ‘Hani and Kelt let me play with their precious infant, and that's as good a safety recommendation as you can get.'

To her disappointment he glanced at his watch. ‘We'd better go. One of the minor irritations of life here is that it's ruled by the clock.'

‘Even when you're off-duty?' she asked on the way down.

‘Basically I'm never off-duty.'

A car waited discreetly by one of the side doors of the palace. Two men sat in front—one in uniform, one without.

Gerd stood aside to let her in first and, once settled,
she said thoughtfully, ‘I doubt if I could cope with that.'

‘I've always known I was going to have to do it.' He clicked his seat belt in and glanced across at her already fastened one. ‘When I was younger I was resentful of paparazzi, but I grew out of that.'

A grim note in the deep voice made her wonder how hard it had been for him to achieve that resignation. Something about the man sitting in front of her caught her eye. ‘Gerd, the man in the passenger seat isn't wearing a seat belt.'

Straight brows drawing together, he told her, ‘He's a body guard.'

‘Oh.' Feeling foolish and slightly uneasy, she asked, ‘Bodyguards don't?'

‘No. They need to be able to react instantly.'

Perturbed at the thought of him in danger, she said, ‘I didn't realise you'd need them here.'

Although she should have. Only a couple of years ago the Carathians had been fighting each other over his accession.

Quickly she asked, ‘Is everything all right here now?'

He said in a tone that dismissed her concern, ‘Yes, of course.'

But something his First Minister had said to him that morning echoed in Gerd's mind. ‘Things are quiet now; the discovery that the ringleaders were in the pay of MegaCorp and that the purpose of the insurrection was to take over the carathite mines horrified every Carathian. And while the people are basking in the after glow of the coronation and the harvest is on the way, no one is going
to have time to call on ancient legends to back up any lingering dissatisfaction.'

Gerd trusted his judgement; the First Minister came from the mountains, where the legend that had bedevilled his ancestors for centuries had its strongest adherents.

Before Gerd could speak the older man had added, ‘But with respect, sir, you need a wife. Further celebrations—a formal betrothal followed by a wedding and the birth of an heir as soon as possible—would almost certainly put an end to any plotting. Your plans for higher education should mean that the old legend will never have the hold over future generations that it has in the past.'

Gerd said grimly, ‘At least we don't have to worry about further problems from MegaCorp.'

He'd seen to that, using his power in the financial world to clinically and without mercy ruin the men who'd so cynically played with other men's lives.

He glanced down at the woman beside him, lovely and eminently desirable, her wide blue eyes anxiously uplifted. Concern was in them and something else, something that disappeared so quickly he barely recognised it.

Deep inside him a fierce instinct stirred. She was so young, but it wasn't hero worship he'd caught in her gold-sprinkled eyes. If she
was
still longing for Kelt, it was a total waste of a life.

And he suspected he could do something about it…

Rosie could gather nothing from his impassive, gorgeous face. Repressing a quiver deep in the pit of her stomach, she demanded, ‘What do you mean,
of course everything's all right
? I thought—'

‘Once the ringleaders of the insurrection were shown to be the pawns of a foreign company who wanted to take over the mines,' he interrupted, ‘the fighting stopped. No one in Carathia wanted that.'

‘Of course they wouldn't.' The country's prosperity was based to a large degree on carathite, a mineral necessary in electronics. ‘What happened to the people who started the rebellion?'

Gerd looked ahead. A gleam from the setting sun caught his black head, summoning a lick of blue fire. For a few seconds Rosie allowed herself to examine his profile, hungrily taking in the bold, angular outline. A potent little thrill burnt through her. His mouth should have softened his features; instead, that top lip was buttressed by a firm lower one and the cleft square of his chin.

He said calmly, ‘They are no longer in any position to cause further trouble.'

This was Gerd as she'd never seen him before, his natural authority tinged with a ruthlessness that sent a chill scudding down her spine.

He turned his head, and she flushed. His brows lifted slightly, but he said in a level voice, ‘Somehow I find it difficult to see you as an accountant.'

‘Why?'

‘As a child you adored flowers. I always assumed you'd do something with them.'

She gazed at him in astonishment. ‘I'm surprised you remember.'

‘I remember you being constantly scolded for picking flowers and arranging them,' he said drily.

‘I grew out of that eventually. Well, I grew out of
swiping them from the nearest garden! But actually, I'm seriously thinking of setting up in business as a florist as soon as I can.'

He said thoughtfully, ‘You'll need training, surely?'

Briefly she detailed the experience she had, finishing, ‘I can run a shop. I have the financial knowledge, and I was left in sole charge often enough in my friend's shop to know I can do it. I helped her with weddings, formal arrangements for exclusive dinner parties, the whole works. I can make a success of it.'

‘So how are you going to organise things financially?'

She kept her gaze resolutely fixed in front, but from the corner of her eye she sensed him examining her face. ‘I'll manage,' she said coolly.

‘Alex?'

‘No.' She hesitated, then said, ‘And before you ask, I'm not going to ask Kelt for backing, either.'

‘I refuse to believe your mother is happy about this.'

He spoke neutrally, but she knew what he meant. ‘She'll get used to it.'

He said quietly, ‘You didn't have much luck with your parents, did you.' It wasn't a question. ‘Your father didn't live in the modern world.'

‘None of us had much luck,' she returned, forcing a note of worldliness. ‘Yours died early—Alex's mother too—and mine just weren't interested in children. Still, we haven't turned out badly. Perhaps that happy home life children are supposed to need so much is just a myth.' She finished casually, ‘Like perfect love.'

‘Can you see Kelt and Hani together and believe either of those assumptions?'

‘No,' she said instantly, ashamed of her cynicism. ‘They are the real thing.'

Perhaps her envy showed in her voice because he asked rather distantly, ‘Is that what you're looking for?'

‘Aren't we all?' she parried, wary now. She loosened fingers that had tightened on each other in her lap, and gazed resolutely at the streetscape outside. Perfect, eternal, all-absorbing romance was the elusive chimera her mother searched for, restlessly flitting from lover to lover, but never succeeding.

Was Gerd hoping for that same eternal sense of fulfilment with Princess Serina?

She could ask him, but the words refused to come, and the moment passed as the car turned into a narrow alley in the older part of the city.

‘Here we are,' he said without emphasis.

The vehicle drew up outside the heavy, ancient door of an equally ancient building. People turned to look when the security man, until then a silent presence beside the chauffeur, got out. A doorman moved across the pavement to open the car's rear door.

It was all done swiftly, discreetly, yet the smooth operation sent a chill down Rosie's spine as she and Gerd went through the door and into the building. Her own life was so free, compared to Gerd's.

On the other hand, she thought with an effort at flippancy, she wasn't rich enough to dine in places like this.

As though he could read her mind, Gerd said, ‘This is the aristocratic quarter of town. In fact, right next door is the town house of the Dukes of Vamili.'

Her brow wrinkled. ‘That's Kelt's title, isn't it?'

‘Yes. It's used for the second son of the ruler now, but before the title was taken over by our family the Duke of Vamili was the second-ranking man in the Grand Duchy, with almost regal power over about a third of Carathia. About two hundred years ago the then Duke led a rebellion against the Grand Duke, and died for his treachery. He had only one child, a daughter, who was married off to the second son of the Grand Duke. The Grand Duke then transferred the title and all the estates—to him.'

‘Poor woman,' Rosie said crisply. ‘It doesn't sound like a recipe for a happy marriage.'

His smile was brief. ‘Strangely enough, it appears to have been. Of course, he might have been an excellent husband. And women, especially aristocratic women, of those days didn't have such high expectations of marriage.'

‘Unlike modern women, who have the audacity to want happiness and fulfilment,' Rosie returned sweetly, pacing up a wide sweep of shallow stairs.

Gerd cocked an ironic brow. ‘Some seem to believe that both should come without any effort on their part.'

Like my mother
, Rosie thought sombrely. Chasing rainbows all her life…

They were shown into a room that opened out through an arcade onto a stone terrace overlooking the great valley of Carathia.

Rosie sighed in involuntary appreciation, walking across to grip the stone balustrade, still warm from the sun. ‘This is so beautiful, like a bowl half-filled with light.'

Dusk was creeping across the valley, and in the growing pool of shadow all that could be seen were small
golden pin points, brave challenges to the darkness. Eastwards she could pick out groves of trees, closely planted fields of some sort of grain, clusters of red-tiled villages, the shimmer of silver-gilt that was the river and every detail on the slopes of the mountains.

Rosie felt eager and aware, her senses stirred and stimulated by the man standing beside her as he surveyed this part of his realm.

Quietly she said, ‘I know there's a lot more to Carathia than this valley, but it seems complete in itself.'

‘One of my ancestors called it a fair land set above,' Gerd told her. ‘And yes, Carathia's much bigger than the valley. The country wouldn't be nearly so prosperous without the coastal strip. It gives us easy access to the rest of the world, and makes us a very popular tourism destination. Then there are the agricultural lands further north, and the mines—all important.'

‘But this is where the capital is, where the ruler lives; the heart of the country?'

‘Its heart and its soul,' he said after a few moments. ‘This is where those original Greek soldiers fought and settled and took wives, and it's always been the centre of power.'

‘You're a real Carathian, aren't you?' she said quietly, wondering why this sudden realisation struck like a blow. ‘Kelt might be a Duke here, but he's a Kiwi really—his heart belongs to New Zealand. You spent as much time in New Zealand as he did when you were younger, yet you're Carathian.'

‘I knew from the time I was old enough to understand that this place was my destiny,' he pointed out. As though bored with the topic, he turned. ‘Where would you like
to sit? We can go inside, or they will set up a table for us out here.'

‘Out here,' she said without hesitation. ‘I want to enjoy every moment of this lovely place while I can. At home it's winter, and probably raining and a lot colder than this.'

‘It rains here too,' he said, nodding to someone behind, ‘quite often in summer. If you want a real summer you should go down to the coast. Or out to the islands. They're the true Mediterranean experience.'

Rosie said simply, ‘I can't think of anything more lovely, or more Carathian, than this.'