The Heart of a Ruler Read online

  “Russell.” Her voice sounded hoarse to her ears.

  The smile that slipped along his lips was positively wicked. He made no effort to move or rectify the situation. “At your service, princess.”

  As if somewhere someone had magically snapped their fingers, Amelia scrambled to her feet, vainly trying to regain her composure. Not an easy feat when her entire body felt as if it were vibrating like a tuning fork struck against a goblet filled to the brim with subtly aged red wine.

  She tugged the ends of her robe together. Her insides were still trembling, but she noticed thankfully that her hands were steady enough.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  Russell rose to his feet in a fluid motion she envied. “Apparently being knocked off my feet by a blazing ball of fire.” He casually brushed himself off. Humor never left his lips. And his eyes never left hers.

  The trembling had stopped. But she couldn’t get her body to stop tingling. This was like old times, she thought. Except that instead of a water balloon, she’d been hit by Russell. Sort of.

  She was a woman now, not a child. Forming coherent words should not be an insurmountable effort for her.

  Taking a breath, Amelia managed to restore a measure of dignity to the moment. “I mean, you weren’t due until tomorrow.”

  How had he managed to sneak into the country? Just how lax was security at the airport? She made a mental note to speak to her father.

  Her father.

  Her eyes widened as she remembered. “My father had a ceremony all in place to greet you at the airport.”

  If the information was meant to evoke remorse from the tall man before her, it failed. He gave her his trademark lopsided smile. The same one that had made her adolescent heart secretly flutter.

  “Which is why,” he told her, “I came in early this evening.”

  She knew what Reginald thought of Gastonia and the crown. Did his chief political advisor and cohort share that view? Her eyes narrowed as a wave of protectiveness passed over her. “To humiliate my father?”

  He made no effort at denial. He thought her intelligent enough to know that none was needed. “To avoid attention.”

  Still smarting from Reginald’s high-handed snub, she looked for the insult in Russell’s actions. “Why? Are you ashamed to have to come to bring me back to your prince, Lord Carrington?”

  She was being formal. Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to be. He’d expected her, he supposed, to be exactly the way she’d been the last time he’d seen her. Sweet. Unassuming. And open.

  But nothing in life, Russell reminded himself, stayed the same. Things changed, they evolved or they died. There didn’t seem to be any other choice.

  He saw the way her mouth curved, saw the displeasure when she uttered Reginald’s title. It was obvious that the princess was no happier about the union than Reginald was. And in her case, Russell couldn’t blame her. At least Reginald was getting a beautiful woman. All Amelia was getting, beyond a treaty, was an egotistical, self-indulgent, power-hungry, spoiled brat of a man who seemed too besotted with his womanizing way of life to appreciate even marginally what he was being handed on a silver platter.

  “No,” he answered her question quietly, “I’m not ashamed to be the one to bring you back to Silvershire. I just don’t care for any kind of unnecessary fanfare. Unlike the prince, I never really liked being in the spotlight, however briefly.”

  The moon was full tonight and its silvery light was caressing the man standing before her. Amelia realized that she’d stopped breathing only when her lungs began to ache. As subtly as she could, she drew in a long breath.

  “Then perhaps political advisor shouldn’t have been your first choice of a career, Carrington.”

  “It wasn’t. But my father couldn’t see his way clear to his only son being a beachcomber. And I liked it better when you called me Russell. No fanfare,” he reminded her.

  “No fanfare,” she repeated with a nod, then forced her mind back on the conversation and not on the fact that somehow, during the years since she had last seen him, Russell had come into the possession of a very muscular-looking body. “Beachcomber,” she echoed. “Do they still have that sort of thing?”

  He laughed. The moonlight wove through her hair, turning it the color of pale wheat. He caught himself just before he began to raise his hand to touch it. He’d been sent to bring her back, not to familiarize himself with the packaging. “If I had anything to say about it, they would.”

  God help her, she could see him, lying on the beach, wearing the briefest of bathing suits, the tide bringing the waves just up to his toes, gently lapping his tanned skin.

  She had to swallow twice to counteract the dryness in her mouth. It was a credit to her breeding and training that she could continue without dropping the thread of the conversation.

  “Seriously, if you don’t like the attention, Russell,” she emphasized his name and he nodded with a smile in response, sending her pulse up another notch, “there had to be something else that you could have become.”

  He shook his head. He knew better. “Not with my lineage. Besides, someone needs to be there to temper the prince.”

  She looked at him for a long moment. There was more to the man than just practical jokes and devastating good looks. Or was he ultimately cut out of the same cloth as Reginald and just bragging?

  “And you can do that?”

  Russell heard the skepticism in her voice. Not that he blamed her. He had no reputation by choice. Reginald’s was international.

  “I have a modest success rate, but in comparison, it’s still better than anyone else’s.” He didn’t want to talk about Reginald. Not tonight. There was more than enough time for that later. He looked at her, thinking about what she had just done. “You thought I was an intruder.”

  “Yes, obviously.” As she moved her shoulder, the robe began to slip off. She tugged it back into place, aware that he had looked at the exposed area. That he was still looking. She felt naked. And unashamed at the same time.

  “Why didn’t you get someone from security?” Russell asked.

  Pride had her lifting her chin defiantly. She wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore. “Because I could handle it myself.”

  She hadn’t struck him as being reckless, but tackling him like that hadn’t been the act of a intelligent person. “You’re the princess,” he pointed out. “It doesn’t behoove you to take chances.”

  Amelia rolled her eyes. Was he like all the rest of them? Why wouldn’t he be? she challenged silently. He was part of Reginald’s inner circle. “Oh, please, no lectures.” And then she sighed. It was a losing battle. “Or if you feel you simply must, take a number. There are a few people ahead of you.”

  “Such as?”

  She saw his lips curving. Was he laughing at her? Having fun at her expense? Try as she might to take offense, she couldn’t. There was something about his smile…But then, there always had been.

  “Such as my father. His advisors. It seems these days, everyone feels they have to tell me what my duty is.”

  “I won’t,” he promised, dropping the subject for now. And then he looked at her, compassion filling his eyes. “You’re not having an easy time of it, are you, princess?”

  She thought of denying it, of saying everything was fine and that she had no idea what he was talking about. But everything wasn’t fine and, very possibly, never would be again. Not once she left for Silvershire and married Reginald.

  With a feeling of longing wrapped in futility, she thought of the past. “Things were a lot simpler when all I had to worry about was ducking out of the way of water balloons and checking my bed half a dozen times to make sure I didn’t find any surprises in it before I got in.”

  He laughed. He’d been a hellion back then, all right. The thing was, he couldn’t really say he regretted it. Teasing Amelia was the one way he had of making her notice him. He had no crown in his arsenal, but he had been clever an
d he’d used his wiles to his advantage. He remembered how wide those violet eyes could get.

  “These days, I’m sure the surprises in your bed are far more pleasant,” he told her. “And come with less legs.”

  The moment the words were out, he waited for the anger to gather in her eyes, the indignation to appear on her face. Without meaning to, he’d crossed a line. But he’d always had a habit of being too frank and with Amelia, he’d felt instantly too comfortable to censor himself.

  She surprised him by exhibiting no annoyance at his assumption. “The only thing my bed contains, besides sheets and blankets, is me.”

  The moment was recovered nicely. “The prince will be very happy to hear that.”

  As if she cared what made that thoughtless ape happy, Amelia thought darkly. “Speaking of the prince, why didn’t he come himself?”

  He’d expected her to ask and shrugged vaguely. “He had business to attend to.” If it were him, he added silently, nothing on heaven or earth would have kept him from coming for her.

  Amelia laughed shortly. “What is her name? Or doesn’t he know?”

  Russell looked at his prince’s intended bride for a long moment. For all his wealth and fame, he’d never envied Reginald. Until this moment. “You’re a lot more worldly than I remember.”

  “You remember a thirteen-year-old girl who was afraid of her own shadow.” Her eyes held his. “I’m not afraid of my shadow anymore.”

  He rubbed his jaw where her head had hit against it just before recognition had set in for her. For him, it had been immediate, because he’d followed the stories about her that appeared in the newspapers. Stories that were as different from the ones about Reginald as a robin was from the slug it occasionally ate. While stories about Reginald went on about his various less than tasteful escapades, hers told of her humanitarian efforts.

  “I noticed,” he replied with an appreciative, warm laugh.

  Amelia felt the laugh traveling straight to the center of her abdomen, before it seemed to spread to regions beyond, like a sunbeam landing on a rock, then widening as the sun’s intensity increased.

  She cleared her throat and looked back toward the palace. It was obvious that he had to have come through there to wind up here. “How did you get into the palace?”

  She watched as a smile entered his eyes, shadowing a memory. “Remember that old underground passage you once showed me?”

  Amelia’s eyes widened. He was referring to something that was forever burned into her memory. She’d slipped away from her nanny, leaving the poor woman to deal with Reginald, while she took it upon herself to share her secret discovery with Russell. It was the one bold incident she remembered from her childhood.

  Remembered it, too, because the episode had ended in a kiss. A soft, swift, chaste kiss that Russell had stolen from her.

  A kiss, Amelia thought, that she still remembered above all the others that had subsequently come in its wake.

  She was glad for the moonlight, fervently hoping that it offered sufficient cover for the blush that she felt creeping up her neck and onto her cheeks.

  Chapter 3

  “So that’s how you got in,” Amelia finally said, finding her tongue.

  Strangely enough, the air was not uncomfortable, but it had grown far too still between them. And she found herself feeling things. Things that, at any other time, she would have welcomed, would have enjoyed exploring, things she had never felt before, had only thought about. But feelings like this, if allowed to flourish, to unfold, would only get in the way of her obligations.

  She suddenly felt a great deal older than her twenty-six years.

  “That’s how I got in,” the tall, handsome man at her side confirmed needlessly.

  They had begun to walk back to the palace, to the world where their lives were, for the most part, completely laid out for them. Where obligations constricted freedom and feelings were forced by the wayside. All that mattered were boundaries.

  “I had to do a lot of stooping,” Russell continued. His mouth curved as he spared her a glance. “The passageway beneath the garden to the palace is a great deal smaller than I remembered.”

  Amelia paused for a moment, reluctant to leave the shelter of the garden. Here, for a fleeting amount of time, she could pretend to be anyone she wanted to be.

  Banking down her thoughts, Amelia began to walk again as she smiled at Russell. “You’re a lot bigger than you were then.” And you’ve filled out, she added silently.

  “I suppose,” he allowed with a self-deprecating laugh she found endearing as well as stirring. “Funny how you never really think of yourself as changing.”

  Moving to one side, he held the terrace door open for her. Amelia looked up into his face as she entered the palace. “Is that a warning?”

  His eyebrows drew together over a nose that could only be described as perfect. Entering behind her, he closed the French doors. “I don’t follow.”

  Amelia led the way to the rear staircase. As before, she kept her path to the shadows that pooled along the floor. The palace seemed empty, but that was just an illusion. There were more than a hundred people on the premises.

  Though she sincerely doubted that Russell didn’t understand her meaning, she played along. “Should I be looking over my shoulder for water balloons?”

  Cupping her elbow, he escorted her up the stairs. Perfectly capable of climbing them on her own, she still enjoyed the unconscious show of chivalry, not to mention the contact. It was hard to believe that this was the same mischievous, dark-eyed youth who’d simultaneously tortured her and filled her daydreams.

  “The water balloons were never over your shoulder,” Russell pointed out as they came to the landing. “They were always dropped from overhead.” His mouth curved a little more on the right than on the left. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Amelia tilted her head and looked into his eyes. They were the color of warm chocolate. How strange that she could pick up the thread so easily, as if no time had gone by at all since his last visit. As if more than twelve years had merely melted away into the mists that sometimes surrounded the island kingdom and they were children again.

  “No, you’re not.”

  She was rewarded with the rich sound of his laugh as it echoed down the long, winding hallway lined with portraits of her ancestors. They seemed to approve of him, she thought.

  “All right, maybe I wasn’t,” Russell admitted. “Then,” he quickly qualified. “But I am now.” He saw her raise her delicate eyebrows in a silent query. And just for the tiniest of moments, he had an overwhelming urge to trace the arches with the tip of his finger. He squelched it. “I frightened you.”

  “You made me jumpy,” Amelia corrected, then in case that would arouse some kind of unwanted pity, she quickly added, “You also made me strong.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

  With the grace of a princess trained at putting others at ease, Amelia slipped her arm through his and urged him down the hallway. If her heart sped up just a little bit at the contact, well, that was a secret bonus she kept to herself.

  “Because of you, I became disgusted with myself. With being a mouse.”

  “You were thirteen.”

  “I was a mouse,” she repeated, then added with the loftiness that befitted her station, “I resolved to be a tigress.”

  Russell looked at her for a long moment. “A tigress, eh?” At first, he’d thought of her as too sweet, too innocent. But there was something in her eyes, something about the way she carried herself. Maybe the image was not as far-fetched as it initially seemed.

  He felt his blood stirring again and this time upbraided himself. He had no business reacting like this to his future queen.

  “A tigress,” she repeated with a lift of her head. “I pleaded with my father to get me trainers, not just for my mind, but for my body.”

  Short on water balloons, Russell sought refuge in humor. “So that you could flip intru
ders who crossed your path?”

  Her eyes danced. “Exactly.”

  Another woman, he thought, might have taken insult just now. While he had his doubts about the kind of king Reginald would ultimately make, he was beginning to feel that at least Silvershire’s future queen was a woman who did not take herself too seriously. That spoke of a magnanimous ruler.

  He laughed softly under his breath. “Judging from the way that ended up, I’d say you need a little more training.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  They had come to a split in the hallway. Her rooms were on the far end at the right. The guest quarters were in the opposite direction, on another floor. It wouldn’t seem proper for her to walk him to his room, even though she found herself wanting to. Rules, always rules, she thought impatiently, chafing inwardly.

  She forced a smile to her lips. “I’ll have someone show you to your quarters.”

  “No need. I’ve already settled in.” Russell saw the protest rising to her lips and knew just what she was going to say. “I assumed that I would be staying in the same quarters I occupied the last time I was here.”

  What had been adequate for the boy was not so for the man. She was surprised that he wouldn’t know that. “Actually, my father had left instructions for a suite of rooms to be prepared for you.”

  But Russell shook his head. “The room I’m in will do just fine. I don’t need a suite of rooms,” he told her. “After all, I’m only going to be here long enough for you to gather together your entourage.” Since she’d been forewarned, he assumed that would only take her perhaps a day.

  “My entourage,” she echoed. The term made her want to laugh as she imagined traveling about with an entire tribe of ladies-in-waiting trailing after her. The very idea made her feel trapped, hemmed in. And she was experiencing enough of that already without adding to it.

  “You mean Madeline.” Madeline Carlyle was the Duke of Forsythe’s youngest daughter. With fiery red hair and a fiery spirit to match, Madeline was the perfect companion in her opinion. Madeline could always be counted on to tell her the truth.