by Cara Colter
He went in, and stood for a moment, stunned by the transformation in the room. It was brightness itself, rich jewel tones on the bedding, on the new curtains that hung on the brightly painted walls. He wanted to stand here forever, breathing it—breathing her—in, as if he could never get enough.
But the sound of her muffled sobs drew him deeper into the room.
Where was she? And then he saw her. Lying on the bathroom floor. He thought his heart would stop beating at the fear he felt.
And then he raced to her.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MADDIE FOUND HERSELF lifted off the floor. Ward sank down onto the edge of the tub with her cradled against his body. She felt the comforting heat of him, and drank in his scent. It was like homecoming and it made her cry harder.
“What have you done?” he asked. “I suppose you’ve fallen off one of your damned ladders?”
His voice was so harsh. But his touch was so tender. She turned her face into his chest and wept.
“What is it?” he insisted. “Are you hurt? Maddie, talk to me.”
“Your mother invited me for tea,” she finally choked out.
“If she’s done something to you, I’ll—”
“Done something to me? Oh no, it wasn’t like that at all.”
“What was it like then?”
“She served these awful things. She called them sausages, but they looked like pickles. They were even green.”
“Blarneycockles,” Ward said. “A local delicacy. But not for the uninitiated. Surely, you’re not crying over blarneycockles, love?”
Love. She savored it. She let it wrap around her.
“Glenrich has been helping me with protocol. I knew I should just follow her lead. She took two and I took two. The smell was dreadful, but I couldn’t refuse to eat what she was eating. So, I took a bite. Nowhere in the protocol book does it tell you what to do if you feel a desire to heave while lunching with the Queen.”
“Over a blarneycockle? They’re not that bad!”
“They are! I didn’t know what to do, and then one of the horrid dogs started creating a ruckus. I put one down my skirt, and pretended to nibble away on the other and then the horrid dog attacked the little one, and while your mother was distracted by that, I disposed of the other one. The second blarneycockle.”
“Down your skirt?”
“Please don’t laugh. It’s not a laughing matter.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t know what to do with them. I wanted to just put them in the garbage, but I thought what if somebody notices and reports to the Queen I didn’t eat them?”
“It’s hardly a hanging offense, even in Havenhurst.”
“I felt as if we were getting along famously.”
“You and my mother?” he said incredulously.
“I understand her,” she said softly. “I know I haven’t been here long, but I understand her loneliness. Everyone is eager to please. Everyone does whatever you ask them to do. But nobody is honest with you. No one would tell you if you had spinach on your teeth. No one feels they can be your friend. It’s kind of this awful awe and fear mixed, and you can’t overcome it, no matter what you do.”
“You’re crying because you’re lonely?” he asked, stricken.
“I guess partly. Partly because of something else your mother said.”
“What?” What had his mother said?
“I asked your mother about the kind of little boy you were—”
“And she knew?” he asked, amazed.
“Of course, she knew. She talked about the time you fell off your pony, and you were crying, and your father told you to man up, and you did. And then later they found out your arm was broken. She teared up, telling that story.”
“My mother? Teared up?”
“Yes. And so did I.”
He felt something clog his own throat at the thought of these two women feeling such compassion for him.
“It wasn’t that big a deal,” he said stiffly, staving off what the compassion in her eyes was making him feel.
She looked at him long and hard, but she must have learned her lesson about trying to connect with him, because she brushed at her tearstained face and turned her attention back to the toilet.
“I’ve plugged the toilet with the blasted blarneycockles, and I can’t get it apart.”
“You’re trying to get the toilet apart?” he asked with horror.
“Well, I can’t call anyone. I’d be the laughingstock of the whole palace, wouldn’t I? And then word would get back to your mother, and she would think I was sneaky and deceitful, and maybe I am.”
“You are not!”
“Look at our marriage, Ward,” she said softly.
Apparently he would rather look at blarneycockles plugging the toilet, than at their marriage, because he set her down firmly and went and flipped open the lid.
“I don’t see anything,” he said.
“That’s because they’re caught in the trap.”
“The what?”
“The trap, the curve where the pipe bends around.”
“Oh.”
“Do you see why I’m lonely, Ward?” she asked him softly. “I’m a logger’s daughter who comes from a place where we had to be self-sufficient and self-reliant. The only people in this castle who are like that won’t talk to me, at least not as a friend.”
“I can fix this,” he said, with determination, and when he lifted his eyes and looked at her, she saw something new in them.
And she saw he was not talking about just the toilet.
“Why don’t we fix it together?” she asked. And she wasn’t talking about the toilet, either.
But that was where they started, prying the rusty bolts off the bowl and lifting it off the seal and screaming with laughter as water went everywhere.
With as much bravery as she had ever seen in a man, he donned the rubber gloves and stuck his hand in there, and came up with first one and then the other blarneycockle.
“Damn slippery,” he said as one slid through his hand. She chased it across the bathroom floor, but then couldn’t bring herself to touch it. He picked it up and wagged his eyebrows fiendishly at her, thrusting the disgusting blarneycockle toward her.
She took off running, and shrieking with laughter, they chased each other through every room of that apartment until both of them were breathless with exertion.
Still laughing, they wrapped the horrid green sausages in newspapers, and then in plastic bags, and then put them in a box.
They cleaned up all the water and washed to the elbow at least a dozen times, when he finally admitted he still didn’t feel clean.
“Me, either.”
“I know a secret place,” he said.
And she did, too. And she knew, finally, they were heading straight toward it, the secret guarded fortress of Prince Edward’s heart.
And if they got there by way of the palace garbage dumpster, muffling their laughter in pitch blackness as they got rid of the blarneycockle box, so be it.
Ward shouldered a pack he had brought. The palace grounds were extremely dark, but he knew his way perfectly. As they circled around the dark ramparts of the castle, Maddie felt as if they were explorers embarking on a great adventure. They came to a place in the wall where there was a large, prickly hawthorne.
“Careful,” he said, as he shoved it aside and protected her from the worst of the prickles. Behind the thick shrub was a hole in the wall. He paused and fished around in the pack until he found a flashlight.
He lit it and she saw a tunnel stretched before them until it dipped suddenly, steeply out of sight.
With her hand in his, ducking in places because the tunnel was so narrow, they went where it led. She could smell it before they arrived. It felt like homecoming.
“Hot springs!”
“Underground. I found them when I was a boy. I don’t think anyone else knows about them. When I was a child, it felt so lovely to have a secret. I would tell my nanny I was reading in my room, and then I would slip out the window. And, for a few hours I would be free.”
She felt the deep honor of his sharing this place with her.
The tunnel gave way to a cave, the ceiling dripping with stalactites. The cave was open to a sheltered bay of the sea, and stars winked through an opening in the cave ceiling. Small waterfalls cascaded down the sides of the cliff and into a deeply turquoise pool with steam rising off the water.
“Here we are,” she said huskily, “back at hot pools. It’s like a full circle, isn’t it?”
“It’s a chance to start again,” he said quietly. He opened the pack and pulled two thick towels from it. He turned off the flashlight. She heard his clothes whisper to the floor. Surely he had something on? Surely he had brought suits?
“No clothes allowed,” he told her, from the darkness of the pool. “For me, it was part of being free. No rules, at all. No one watching.”
“But you’re watching!” she whispered.
“I can’t even see my hand in front of my face.”
That was true. The darkness inside the cave was the pitch-black variety. She hesitated, but only for a second. And then she let her clothes fall in a puddle at her feet. Wearing only her gold chain, and the nugget that dangled from it, Maddie stepped toward the water, feeling her way along the slippery floor with her toe. There it was. She stepped in, gingerly, and felt the water close on her naked skin.
It was truly the most sensual thing she had ever felt. Until Ward reached for her in the darkness, until his hand found hers. Her eyes adjusted, slowly, to the darkness, but the water cloaked both of them. Save for his face, the drops of water on his lashes, the line of his nose, the fullness of his lower lip, the cleft of his chin, illuminated by starlight.
She leaned toward him, but he let her go, gave a gentle teasing splash and moved away from her. They played tag in the darkness, just as they had when they first met. They played tag and laughed and discovered the joy of each other. Because the water hid them, she didn’t feel shy.
But then, unexpectedly, Ward hefted himself from the pool and raced for the sea. For a moment she was totally hypnotized by his perfect form, by the poetry of the faint starlight cascading off his wet body, by his sureness and his freedom. He threw himself into the cold water and his shout of pure exhilaration echoed through the cave.
Elation such as she had never felt shivered along her spine.
This magnificent man was her husband.
Maddie stood for a moment, knowing he was watching her, and then went into the sea behind him. The cold water embraced her heated flesh.
And then Ward was beside her, and his hands were in the wet tangle of her hair, and his body was hot and smooth against hers, taking the chill from the water.
His lips claimed hers. In them was everything that love was: power and freedom and something completely untamable, unconquerable, the force that was life itself.
Her lips opened to the command of his, and her heart opened to his need.
She became his wife, and she knew, gladly, with a tremulous song in her heart, that her life would never be the same again.
* * *
Losing control, Ward discovered, was like letting a dragon out of a box. It would not go back in again. It did not obey orders. It scorned efforts to dominate it.
The fire in him was a dragon that had tasted something foreign and forbidden and could now not get enough.
Ward fell in love with his wife. He fell in love with the secrets of her body and the intricacies of her mind. He fell in love with her laughter. And the way she looked sitting with her feet up on the sofa reading a book.
He fell in love with her fearlessness as he taught her to dive. He fell in love with her endless baking. He fell in love with her delight as he revealed to her all the secrets of his island—the patches of wild lupines that grew by the hot springs, and the secret paths and groves that led to old ruins, and churches and crumbling castles. To Lancaster’s rather tolerant dismay they became experts at giving him the slip.
He fell in love with her quiet as he revealed all his own secrets and fears.
He fell in love with her as he watched her blossom into a true princess. She started her bakery with her girls.
His mother adored her. Even his father seemed amazed by this force of love and light that had been brought to their island.
In her, in Maddie, in his beautiful wife, he had found the place his heart had always longed for, the place he wanted so badly he feared it.
Not that he planned to jinx it by saying it out loud!
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MADDIE WOKE WITH a start. It was midafternoon. Why was she so tired all the time? Her stomach rolled. Not a blarneycockle in sight. In fact, she’d had a cheese sandwich for lunch. Her stomach rolled again, and she raced for the bathroom.
The flu, she thought after, as she wiped her mouth. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror above the sink.
She stared at herself. Her hair had grown quite a bit, wild curls softening into waves that framed her face. Gone were the worry lines that had looked back at her such a short time ago. Her face looked more than relaxed—it looked radiant.
“You don’t look like a woman with the flu,” she told herself.
And then the truth hit her.
It was not possible. They had only been unprotected that once, the first time they had gone to the secret underground pools. After that, Ward was always prepared.
And it was a good thing, too, because they seemed intent on exploring every secret of each other in every secluded enclave and hot spring on the whole island. They had become experts at ditching Lancaster, though he didn’t seem to mind.
Maddie walked out of her bathroom in a daze and sank down on her bed. She counted on her fingers. And then counted again.
A baby.
The joy that rose in her was quickly overtaken by doubt. She was no more prepared to have a baby now than she had been when she had experienced that pregnancy scare in her past.
The situation even had similarities! She was besotted, and he was... What?
Not certain of his feelings, obviously, since he had never spoken of them. Maybe, just like that boy from long ago, he had taken what was offered but thought there were no strings attached. Their marriage was not supposed to be a real one.
For all the intimacy they enjoyed, Ward had never once said he wanted to change the terms of their agreement.
In fact, thinking back on it, just like that other boy, he had never once said he loved her. Didn’t the fact he had always, always been prepared after that first time, speak volumes to the complication to their relationship that he did not want?
Oh, he would do the honorable thing! Of course he would. How horrible to have the man you loved so madly, whose baby you were almost certain you carried, do his duty by you.
To be the one who trapped him, exactly as he had been trapped by circumstances his entire life.
Maddie felt she was not a person who had trouble making decisions. Look how quickly she had decided to become Ward’s wife!
And yet, suddenly, she did not know what to do. She was acutely aware she had no one, aside from Ward, to take into her confidence. His mother had warmed to her, but in this circumstance, how could she trust her?
Or him for that matter.
Lancaster adored her, but his first loyalty was not to her.
Carrying the royal baby was probably a very serious matter, indeed.
They would think the baby belonged to them. Her child was the heir to the island kingdom of Havenhurst.
Maddie felt such a rush of fierce protectiven
ess it nearly knocked her over. She needed some space. She had to figure out, and quickly—if the count she had just done on her fingers was correct—what to do. She had to figure out what to do, not just for herself, but for the ultimate good of the child.
You didn’t just leave Havenhurst. There was one flight out once a week. And there were three boats every week. If she said she had to leave, questions would be asked. Though she had become accustomed to it, Maddie was not allowed to travel anywhere by herself. A guard always followed discreetly. She did not think that love of her scones would be enough for any one of them to overcome their sense of duty and smuggle her out of the country.
Duty, she thought angrily.
But she had no time to indulge her thoughts. Only action counted now. If she used a phone in the palace, they would trace it when she was missing. They would know who she had called.
Grabbing her cloak, aware as never before of the guard that dogged her, she walked quickly to town.
The bakery was bustling. The girls smiled and nodded at her, but it was very crowded. Hardly anybody noticed her slip into the back room and take the phone off its hook. She was trembling so badly it took her three times to remember how to dial an international number, even though she had been checking in with Kettle and Sophie regularly.
Thankfully, despite the differences in time, Kettle answered. He’d obviously been sleeping, but came awake with that alertness that anyone who had served active duty never quite lost.
“I need your help,” she said. “Kettle, I’m in trouble.”
Kettle did not say he had told her so. Every time she had talked to him since her hasty marriage to the Prince, he was no closer to forgiving her for bailing him out, and for saving the Black Kettle. In fact he was furious about it.
But this was the thing about family—about the families you were born to and the ones that you chose—the love was always there.
And that was all she heard in his gruff voice. The love.
“Tell me what you need.”
She did. It seemed she was making an impossible request.
But he only said, “You did the right thing to call. I’ll be there for you as quickly as I can.”
