His Convenient Royal Bride

by Cara Colter

  “The carpets of pale purple around the pools?” Ward pointed out. “Those are wild lupines.”

  They flew over three villages, which he named, but when she tried to repeat the names after him, they both ended up laughing. She could see thatch on the stone cottage roofs and winding cobblestoned streets.

  “This is the main city, Breckenworth,” Ward said. Maddie pressed her nose against the window and looked down at a place out of a fairy tale. A thick stone wall surrounded a town with soaring church spires and Gothic-style buildings, interspersed with neat pastel painted cottages and row houses and shops. The greenish slate tile roofs shone from a recent rain. Narrow streets wove, with seeming randomness, through the city.

  “It’s absolutely charming,” Maddie said.

  And then, the plane swooped upward, and she drew her eyes away from the town. On what appeared to be a rock with a sheer cliff face, overlooking the town was a magnificent Gothic-style castle. The closest she’d ever been to a castle was the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland. This one looked remarkably similar with its soaring towers and spires, its intricate maze of walls and interconnecting buildings.

  “If you look closely,” Ward said, “you can see a staircase carved into the stone cliff from the castle to the town below.”

  “Oh my gosh, I hope that’s not how the groceries are brought in!”

  He laughed as they flew up and over the castle, revealing stables and car parks, fields and forests, stretched out on a plateau behind it.

  She could also see the airfield they were landing on. She gasped. It was surrounded by people!

  “How many people did you say are on the island?” she asked.

  “A million.”

  “Are they all here?”

  “Possibly,” he said, wryly. “They’ll be wanting to catch a glimpse of their new Princess.”

  “Word traveled fast.”

  “For a place with little internet, you’d be amazed.”

  She looked down at her now-travel-rumpled suit. “I’m changing,” she said, and tried to get up.

  “You’ll have to wait until we’ve landed.” Ward’s hand slipped into hers. She took a deep breath and felt the reassuring pressure of it.

  She wasn’t sure if she should feel this way, because really, what had he done to earn her trust? In fact, he had dismissed her just a short time ago!

  But then she thought of all the effort he had made to make her wedding day perfect, despite the pretense, and she thought of how gamely he had played poker, and she let herself relax a tiny bit. He was a strong man; it was okay to rely on that when meeting a million people!

  Maddie was shown to where her things were: an opulent bedroom across the hall from Ward’s office. Her suitcases were there, and suddenly she was grateful for the quiet assistant, Glenrich, who took her choice of dress and quickly steamed the wrinkles out of it. It was a very simple burgundy dress with a matching short jacket. Even though the low heels were brand-new, Glenrich quickly swiped them with a cloth that brought out a deep shine in them.

  Maddie went and stood by Ward at the door of the plane. He too had changed. And shaved. He was wearing a navy blue suit with a white shirt, that made him look powerful and calm and confident and as though he owned the earth.

  But of course, he did own this earth!

  “Ready?” he asked.

  Lancaster was there, behind her, and spoke in her ear, “The Prince will descend the staircase first. He’ll stop at the bottom and take your hand. He will hold hands with you, and you’ll go left to the fence that holds people back. Shake a few hands, one light pump and withdraw, or your hand will ache for a week. Exchange a word or two, keep moving. If you accept flowers, hand them off to Glenrich after you’ve admired them. Watch the Prince. When he makes his way to the car, follow.”

  “Is everything this choreographed?”

  “It’s not all eating bonbons and attending balls,” Lancaster said mildly. “Glenrich will be putting together a protocol book for you, which should prevent any major gaffes. It remains to be seen if the people will take to you more or less because you’re an American.”

  The door of the plane opened, and Ward stepped out. A roar of approval shook the ground as he raised his hand.

  Maddie realized this was the last time he would feel like Ward to her. He was their Prince, and everything about him, from his stance, to his raised hand, made him Edward Alexander the Fourth, the future King of this small island.

  As they went down the stairs, a chant began to build.

  She was stunned to hear what it was.

  “Princess Madeline! Princess Madeline!”

  It was as if one huge voice called her name. It made her want to shrink behind Ward, to turn and run back up the steps to the plane. But the way was blocked with Lancaster and staff coming behind her.

  Ward stepped to the right, exposing her for the first time. He took her hand.

  A great, approving cheer went up from the crowd, his abandonment of Aida apparently already forgiven in favor of a love story.

  The chant changed. “Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!”

  He turned to her. Their eyes met. They had promised each other no more of this, but it was evident the crowd was hungry for romance. His eyes asked the question.

  She nodded, her heart beating harder than it had when she had seen how large the crowds were.

  He dropped his head over hers, and the crowd went wild.

  The kiss was not as lingering as the wedding kiss had been, but still Maddie was so aware of how she loved the taste of him, how it filled her with a sense of a rightness in the world. And that was what she carried with her as they went forward to the crowds that pressed against a steel, waist-high fence.

  She shook hands, she accepted flowers, which she buried her nose in, before handing them to Glenrich. She could not stop smiling as the love and approval washed over her. They welcomed her. They congratulated her. They wished her the best. They said how they loved their Prince and wanted a happy life for him.

  She didn’t really need any words, beyond thank you.

  The experience was so lovely it was actually very difficult to remember this was not real: that she was not his bride in the sense any of them thought she was.

  Maddie and Ward, finally, made their way to a waiting car, a beautifully restored Rolls-Royce. A uniformed driver held the door for her, saluted the Prince. They turned, as a couple, and waved one last time.

  One tiny old lady was holding a baby over the fence, and Ward dropped Maddie’s hand, ran over, scooped the baby from her and kissed it on the cheek. The crowd roared their approval as Ward handed the baby back.

  Maddie noticed Lancaster, watchful, but relaxed as Ward came back toward them.

  “I am a little overwhelmed,” she confided to him, in a quiet aside. “I don’t know what to do with this kind of adoration.”

  “You do what he does.”

  “Which is?”

  “You earn it, every single day.”

  That single statement gave her a very different perspective of the man who was walking back toward her.

  They drove away from the airport, leaving the crowds behind them. Then the car was on a road, lined with mature trees that formed a canopy of green over it. At the end of that tree-lined roadway was a courtyard, a wide staircase, and the main entrance to the castle.

  A spectacular fountain shot geysers of water into the air in the center of the courtyard. The car floated to a stop at the bottom of the stairs. Staff, dressed mostly in white uniforms, lined both sides of the steps, and at the top stood a man and a woman.

  “Your father and mother?” Maddie asked with a gulp.

  “King Edward the Third and Queen Penelope.”

  “I guess I don’t refer to them as Mom and Dad?”

  The Prince hid a smile.

 
Lancaster was at her ear. “When you reach the top of the stairs, drop the Prince’s hand, curtsy and address them—first His Majesty the King, and then Her Majesty the Queen.”

  “I don’t know how to curtsy,” she whispered.

  “Maybe poker-playing time could have been better used, Your Highness,” Lancaster suggested drily.

  “I’m afraid I wouldn’t trade that time for anything—not even making a perfect first impression on my new in-laws.”

  Lancaster eyed her sternly, but she could see laughter behind his expression. “Do not offer your hand. If either of them offers theirs, you may take it.”

  Ward’s hand tightened on hers as they walked up the steps. Unlike the warmth that had radiated from the people who had greeted the plane, there was a definite chill in the air here.

  At the wide platform at the top of the steps, Maddie offered an awkward curtsy, and the acknowledgment of their titles. Neither offered their hand. Ward’s mother was extraordinarily beautiful, but her eyes were remote, and her mouth had the downturn of perpetual bad humor about it. His father radiated a kind of power that was not like the kind of power Ward radiated, but his eyes seemed cold as they assessed her, and it was everything she could do to prevent herself from shivering.

  Though of course they would be irritated with Edward going against their plans for him and choosing his own bride in America, Maddie found their greeting to him to be stunningly chilly.

  And then the King and Queen turned their backs on them and swept away, the doors of the castle opened by two servants in matching livery, and then closed behind them.

  “I take it we haven’t been invited for tea?” Maddie said in a low voice. She was scanning Ward’s face.

  There was a look on it as remote as the look on his mother’s had been, as if he had not been hurt by the remoteness of the interchange and by the total lack of welcome for his new bride.

  “Come,” he said, his tone crisp and level, “I’ll show you our suite.”

  “Are they always like that?” Maddie asked, as they descended the stairs.

  “Always like that? No. Usually, they’re worse.”

  She stared at his face. It was cast in cool lines. She had hoped he was kidding, but she could see he was not.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, she ached for this man who was her husband. She had already seen that he lived a life constantly surrounded by people, who clearly worshipped the ground he walked on. And yet none of them were his friends, though obviously he was as close to Lancaster as anyone. Still, his station in life separated him from others. He’d grown up with that, accepted it, and as far as Maddie could see, had no expectation of anything else.

  But somehow she had assumed that he had family who loved and supported him, who formed his clan, his safe place, his soft place to fall.

  She thought of the remoteness of the couple she had just met, and she could clearly see nothing was further from the truth.

  She touched the beautiful warm gold stone on her neck.

  Another woman might have wondered if she had impulsively allowed herself to be dropped into a nest of rattlesnakes.

  But that was not how Maddie felt. Not at all. Audacious as it was, Maddie thought perhaps she wasn’t here to save her town. Or to have an adventure.

  Perhaps she was here on Havenhurst to rescue a prince.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WARD LED HER around the side of the castle and through a lush garden. It was filled with early roses, and well-kept beds of rich, dark loam. There was a stone bench and an exquisite fountain that bubbled happily. But what was the point of a happy fountain and gloriously blooming roses—what was the point of all this beauty—if everyone was miserable?

  His suite was past the gardens, and under an arch that dripped with purple-flower-laden wisteria. She craned her neck to see the plant went up over the arch and climbed the castle walls. It seemed it must be nearly as old as the castle.

  He went through a door and held it for her.

  “Welcome,” Ward said, watching her face.

  They had entered a vestibule with carved wooden wainscoting that gleamed from polishing. Beyond that was the living room, and she stepped into it as if she was a guest looking at a roped-off room in a museum.

  It was gorgeous, of course, with high ceilings, a glorious chandelier, an enormous fireplace and tufted silk sofas facing each other over a low glass table that sported a huge vase of fresh flowers. All of this sat on a large square Turkish rug that was probably priceless. Everything in the entire room looked very elegant and very old.

  “But where do you curl up with a book and a cup of tea?” she asked.

  “I want you to do whatever you need to do to feel at home.”

  She wondered if there might be a garden shed somewhere she could make into a little reading spot. She could not ever imagine feeling at home in this expansive room.

  Over the fireplace hung a portrait of an extremely stern-looking ancestor. He was positively glaring at her from his gilded frame.

  “Good grief,” she said. “Is this a relative?”

  “Great-grandfather—King Edward the First.”

  “Is everyone in your entire family miserable?”

  He laughed with surprised enjoyment. “Is it that obvious we aren’t exactly—” he paused, obviously searching for a reference, and then brightened as he found it “—the Brady Bunch?”

  “No one’s the Brady Bunch,” Maddie said. “But a family is supposed to be—how should I put this?—your safe place, in all the world. The place where it’s okay to be yourself, and to make mistakes, and people get mad at each other from time to time, but underneath all that it flows like a river that will never stop.”

  “It?” he said quietly.

  “Love,” she whispered, and somehow she was afraid to even say that word in such close proximity to him.

  She barely knew him. They barely knew each other. But they were going to. And love had a way of finding its path, of always breaking rules and refusing to be defined, because when she looked at him, her heart felt something.

  Something sweet and pure and lovely that wanted desperately to rescue him from his loneliness. If she followed these impulses, they were going to lead her to a place where the potential for hurt was enormous.

  But also to a world that felt brighter and more hopeful than it had before. A world that made her over into something different than she was now: someone more complete, more connected. More everything.

  Ward’s laugh was so world-weary it made her heart ache.

  “Love?” he said cynically. “Love would be seen as a weakness in this family.”

  So it was true. Maybe she was here to rescue him. But at what risk to herself? The thing about love was it was so brave. So darned brave. It didn’t care if you’d been wounded before. It threw itself down at the feet of possible catastrophe and it said Stomp on me, tear me up. I don’t care. It’s worth it to feel this way.

  Love beckoned; it whispered I am stronger than that imagined catastrophe. I am stronger than anything. Give me a chance and I will win.

  She turned hastily away from him. One day into her marriage of convenience and she was already in the thrall of something that felt much larger than herself.

  Maddie shamelessly explored every inch of the suite. It wasn’t huge, though it was obviously way more than two people needed. Besides the living room there was a formal dining room with a table that could sit sixteen, a homey kitchen with a table in it. She took a quick look in four luxurious bedrooms, but didn’t explore too deeply because one of them must be his, even though they all looked equally unlived-in.

  After she had finished looking around, she found Ward in a book-lined study. It was possibly her favorite room!

  “Well?” Ward asked. “What do you think? Can you feel at home here?”

  “Can I really do wh
at I want?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’d like to get rid of the grim paintings of old men glaring down. The fixture with the dragon in the entry has to go. It could give nightmares. And the curtains are awful. So dark and heavy. They cut the light dreadfully.”

  “And keep out drafts in the colder weather,” he said. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to keep a castle warm October to March.”

  “Hmmm. I bet there’s a lot of babies born here May to September,” she said and then laughed at the surprise on his face. Was he blushing, ever so faintly? Devilishly, she liked that!

  “It’s obvious there’s staff, but I’ll have to kick them out to feel at home.”

  “Of course,” he said, but she heard a trace of doubtfulness in his voice. “Whatever you need to do to feel comfortable.”

  Her eyes slid to his lips. And she could have sworn he was blushing again, but he turned away from her quickly.

  “Which bedroom should I take?”

  “Let me show you.” He got up from his desk and led her down the hall.

  “See if this room suits,” he said, opening the door of one of the bedrooms she had only glanced at earlier.

  The room was like something out of a movie, particularly the huge four-poster bed in the middle of it. It looked as if a family of eight could sleep comfortably. Still, there was a faint heaviness to the room. She would get rid of the dusty tapestry that lay heavily across the bed, and she’d have to put the delicate porcelain figurines away. She’d live in fear of breaking one if she didn’t.

  She hated the painting on the wall above the bed, a dour woman whose eyes seemed to be following her with pure malice. She shivered. “Another relative?”

  “That would be a great-great-great-aunt—Mary. She’s said to have been rather nasty. Ran her husband through with a sword while he slept.”

  “She is leaving right now!” Maddie went right over to the bed, jumped up on it and lifted the framed canvas above it off the wall.

  It was heavier than she had thought it would be, and once it was in her hands she found it hard to get her footing on the soft bed.