Royal Marriage Of Convenience

by Marion Lennox

  And Nick had him, hauling him round, bringing his knee up, fighting foul as he’d learned to fight with six brothers. Ruby had hated their fighting, but they’d all been brought up tough and they knew the ways of the world. They’d practised constantly. Every single one of Ruby’s boys had learned the hard way that you could never depend on others to defend you.

  But the man whirled and smashed back. Nick was too close to raise the poker again. He punched with all the power he had.

  ‘Rose!’ Nick roared as the man staggered against the wall, and he powered in again. ‘Get the gun.’

  ‘Wha…?’ Wakened from deep sleep, it took Rose all of two seconds to snap to wakefulness. ‘The gun?’ she said blankly.

  ‘Under the bed, your side!’ Nick yelled, and hit the guy again. If this guy knew any martial arts, Nick was in big trouble. Nick was a lawyer. Yeah, he’d learned to fight, but he hadn’t fought for years. But he wasn’t giving the guy room to do anything, punching him against the wall, hitting him, hitting him until the guy lashed out again…

  ‘Move one muscle and I’ll shoot.’ Rose’s voice rang out clearly over the moonlit room. The nightlight snapped on.

  She must have been brought up in the same school as him, Nick thought approvingly, for she’d flicked the bed-lamp on and moved away up to the back of the bed so she could see but was in the shadows.

  All the same, he could see enough to know she had the gun.

  He moved back, which was a mistake. The guy lurched forward and his hand suddenly glinted in the light.

  A knife…

  The gun fired, a heavy, dull pop into the stillness. And everyone froze. For a moment.

  The black figure cursed, grabbed his shoulder and lurched backwards. The knife, a wicked-looking stiletto, clattered onto the bedroom floor and slid harmlessly away.

  ‘I’ll shoot again,’ Rose said in a voice devoid of all inflection. ‘I’d advise you to keep very still indeed.’

  The guy did. So did Nick. This seemed dream-like. Like a game with his brothers. But it was no dream. He was wide awake now and he felt sick.

  Hell, she’d shot the man…

  ‘Back against the wall,’ Rose said, still in that cold, dead tone, and she jumped lightly from the bed and flicked the overhead light on. Nick grabbed the huge gold tassel of the bell-pull and pulled for all he was worth.

  The bell pealed out so loudly that you could have heard it in the middle of next week. Not a nice, discreet, ‘hear it only in the butlers pantry’ bell. If the old Prince had wanted something he’d wanted the whole castle to know about it. The man made an involuntary lurch towards the door.

  ‘Still,’ she snapped. ‘I will shoot.’

  ‘Rose…’

  ‘Get right away from him,’ Rose said.

  He couldn’t believe it. She was standing in her chemise, barefoot, her hair tousled from sleep, her face deathly pale. She was holding the gun in both hands and she was aiming it straight at the intruder.

  The intruder had frozen. And why wouldn’t he? The man was young, thickset, dressed all in black with a balaclava covering his face. He was holding his arm, and blood was dripping slowly onto the polished floor.

  And then there were people in the doorway. An elderly liveried manservant. A couple of dignitaries who were staying in the castle, in their nightwear. And behind them, blessedly, one of the castle security-guards. The man edged through the crowded doorway and stopped dead in astonishment.

  ‘He came to kill us,’ Nick said.

  Rose hadn’t moved. She was still pointing the gun directly at the man before her. ‘Can I put it down?’ she whispered.

  ‘Let’s get back-up first,’ Nick said, and looked expectantly at the security guard, and the guard took a shocked look at Rose and moved into action. He spoke urgently into his radio.

  And suddenly things were out of their hands.

  The next hour passed in a blur. The security guards took their intruder down to one of the main sitting-rooms, where those who had no direct cause to be present could be closed out.

  Nick called Erhard. The old man was a guest this night in the castle. Nick didn’t want to disturb him, but faced with what might have happened, faced with the evil he’d seen tonight, he needed to be sure who he could trust.

  Erhard arrived in bathrobe and carpet slippers, looking pale, old and shaken to the core, but still retaining the aura of dignity that he’d carried from the first.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he told Rose, his voice trembling. ‘I would never have asked you if…’

  ‘It’s alright,’ Rose said, but she wasn’t moving from where she was. Which was tight against Nick. From the moment Nick had lifted the pistol out of her hands, she’d started trembling and the trembling hadn’t stopped. Nick had wanted her to be put to bed, for the doctors here to give her something to help her sleep, but she’d reacted with anger, and momentarily the trembling had stopped.

  ‘Someone tried to shoot me, so I’m supposed to take a sleeping tablet and go calmly to sleep without getting it sorted? You must be out of your collective minds.’ Then as Nick had held her she’d subsided against him and let him do the supporting. ‘I have a husband,’ she said with dignity. ‘When he goes to bed, I go to bed, and not before.’

  She’d held to that line, as more onlookers had spilled from the surrounding bedrooms, as every member of the castle staff had seemed to find some excuse to see for themselves what was happening.

  Little was happening. The security guards had held their prisoner until Erhard had arrived.

  ‘These men can be trusted,’ Erhard told Nick, nodding to each of the four security-guards. ‘I know each of them. But I don’t understand how-’

  ‘There was a disturbance on the far side of the castle grounds,’ one of the guards told Erhard, sounding appalled and apologetic at the same time. ‘The fence was slashed and a group of youths tried to break in. They were young and drunk and foolish, but we all attended.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s only been the old Prince here for so long,’ he said. ‘There’s been no interest in the castle. My officers have been lax.’

  ‘There’s been little need for security in the past,’ Erhard said gravely. ‘But there is now. What chance these youths were paid to make a distraction?’

  ‘I’ll find out,’ the senior guard said grimly. He looked at the man they were holding. Rose’s bullet had clipped his skin, a surface wound. One of the guards had roughly bandaged it to stop it bleeding. The man stood now between two guards, grim-faced, silent. ‘As we’ll find out who this is.’

  ‘And who’s paying him,’ Erhard said heavily. ‘Can you triple your numbers here tonight, using trusted people only? I want people outside and in the corridors.’ Then he turned to Rose. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said again. ‘We weren’t prepared. You’ll be safe now.’

  ‘I had Nick,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’ The old man’s eyes met Nick’s. ‘Without you…’

  ‘It was Rose who did the shooting.’

  ‘Thank you both,’ he said grimly. ‘My two…’He hesitated, and appeared to think better of what he’d been about to say. ‘We’ll keep you safe,’ he said roughly, and turned and walked away, signalling the guards and their prisoner to follow.

  They were left alone.

  ‘I think we should go fetch Hoppy,’ Nick said, and as they walked out of the sitting-room door they had to walk past two burly security guards.

  Two more appeared from nowhere and escorted them to the kitchens.

  They retrieved Hoppy. Their guards followed at a respectable distance as they made their way upstairs again.

  ‘Not your room,’ Rose said urgently, hugging Hoppy close, and Nick nodded.

  ‘Okay, sweetheart,’ he said. There’d still be blood on the floor. He could understand. ‘But I’ll walk you to your door.’

  ‘Not…’ She took a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I meant both of us not to your bedroom. I thought maybe you’d come to mine?’

  The securi
ty guards behind them had paused. They stayed, impassive. Maybe they didn’t follow English, Nick thought hopefully.

  ‘Of course,’ he said. It was totally understandable that she didn’t want to stay in the bedroom by herself, he thought. So why his heart should lurch…

  ‘Thank you,’ she said simply, and they didn’t say another word until they were in her suite with the door locked behind them. Securely, with a key, and the key stayed on the inside of the door, with a bolt besides.

  Rose placed Hoppy on the floor. Hoppy looked up at his mistress, and gave a sleepy wag of his tail; it was four in the morning, after all, and a dog had need of beauty sleep. He hopped through to the big bed in the next room, leaped lightly up onto the pillows and proceeded to go back to sleep.

  ‘Great watchdog,’ Nick said, and smiled.

  ‘I think we’re safe tonight,’ she said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’ll have been Jacques.’

  ‘Probably,’ he said.

  ‘And Julianna.’ She was still deathly pale. Dressed only in her chemise, she was shivering. It was warm enough, and the fire made it more so, but still she shook. ‘Julianna’s my sister,’ she said, distressed. ‘I never dreamed…’ She shuddered. ‘She must hate me. I never thought. Back home this seemed so simple, but how did we ever think we could do it, take over a throne just like that? You know, somehow, because Julianna was planning to do it herself, it seemed possible. Feasible, even. Marry you. Have the great adventure. Save a country. It’s the stuff of storybooks where there are happy endings and everything’s resolved by…I don’t know kissing a frog.’

  She hiccupped on a sob and he reached for her and tugged her against him, holding her, simply holding her as she sobbed and sobbed. The front of his shirt grew wet from her weeping, but still she wept, great, shuddering sobs that wracked her whole body.

  He held her for as long as it took. But finally she cried herself out. He felt her body go limp. He was half-supporting her. She felt so…So…

  So much his wife.

  That was what it felt like. It felt like he had all the time in the world. It felt that indeed this was his wedding night, or more, that this was his wedding moment. He’d sworn never to fall in love, but he had, he had. If she’d been killed tonight…

  He kissed her gently, wonderingly, on the top of her head, and maybe he shuddered himself for she drew back a little and looked up at him in the firelight.

  ‘I’m s-sorry,’ she said, hiccupping slightly as she tried to find her voice. ‘I don’t cry.’

  ‘I can see that about you.’

  ‘No, really,’ she said, and somehow she made her voice firm. ‘I don’t. I don’t know what I’m about tonight.’

  ‘You shot a man,’ he said gently. ‘How you did that…’He felt his gut clench at the thought of what she’d done. ‘How the hell did you do it?’ he asked, thinking it through. ‘To wake up and get the gun and actually fire the thing?’

  ‘I’m a vet,’ she said simply.

  ‘I’m not sure that that explains it fully.’ He tugged her close again, not because he needed to-oh, fine, yes, he needed to-but not for comfort. Just because this was Rose.

  His wife!

  ‘I deal with big animals,’ she said.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And I had to learn to deal with firearms. The first time I ever needed to…Well, there was an injured bull. There was no way I could get near it, but I couldn’t leave it. The farmer handed me his gun and expected me to use it.’

  ‘He handed you the gun?’ What sort of wimp had this guy been?

  ‘Farmers get attached to their animals. It’s hard to put them down.’

  ‘So you did.’

  ‘Not that time,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t. I…Well, the farmer had to do it, and it took him two shots and he cried. I went home that night and said I couldn’t do it, and my father-in-law said he’d take the practice back over for a week while I did a firearms course.’

  ‘He what?’ Hell. ‘Where was Max in all this?’

  ‘Ill. He was only well for a short time.’

  ‘So you had to do the shooting?’

  ‘Not often.’ But he could hear it in her voice-too often.

  ‘Did you want to do big-animal stuff?’

  ‘I’d started vet school wanting to look after dogs,’ she said, and sniffed. ‘And cats and canaries and kids’ tortoises. Cases where sheer strength isn’t an issue when an animal’s in pain.’ She was hugged against him as naturally as if she belonged there. ‘But the family needed me.’

  ‘Max’s family. And now your family’s trying to kill you,’ he said. ‘You’ve had a rum deal.’

  ‘No.’ She hugged him a bit closer while she thought about it. Which was fine with him. More than fine. ‘I asked for this,’ she said at last. ‘But it’s been a shock…that Julianna would…’ She hesitated. ‘Maybe she didn’t know.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t. Maybe it wasn’t even Jacques.’

  ‘Do you think whoever it was really meant to kill us?’

  ‘Yes.’ There was no point in lying to her. The man behind the gun hadn’t hesitated, he had aimed at the figure in the bed with one thought in mind. He’d have been expecting there to be two in the bed. Maybe the far side of the bed had been in shadow, but he’d had six bullets in the chamber. He’d come to kill. He’d even brought a knife as a back-up, to finish the job if he had to.

  Rose knew it as well as he did. He felt her shudder and held her tighter.

  ‘Julianna’s my sister,’ she whispered bleakly. ‘My family. There’s no one else.’

  He couldn’t bear it. ‘There is someone else,’ he said, pulling her hard against him so strongly that he could feel her heartbeat against his. ‘You have a husband. As of today. It’s time someone took care of you. It’s time.’

  ‘You’re only here for four weeks or so.’

  ‘I’ll stay for as long as you need me.’

  ‘I don’t…I don’t think…’

  ‘You don’t need to think. Leave thinking for the morning, sweetheart,’ he told her. ‘You’re done.’

  ‘I am.’ She hesitated. ‘Hoppy’s asleep on the bed.’

  ‘So he is. You want me to shift him to the settee?’

  ‘I…No. It seems a shame to shift him.’

  Right. Rose’s suite was the same as his. A living room with fire. Bedroom through the farther door. From where he stood her bed looked vast. Far too big for one. There was plenty of room for Rose to sleep and not disturb the dog. But…

  ‘Nick?’

  ‘Mmm?’

  ‘You wouldn’t like to share the settee with me?’

  There was a moment’s pause while he thought about it. Her heartbeat was synchronised with his, he thought, and it felt fine. It felt right.

  Share the settee. To sleep. But the way he was thinking of her…‘If we did that,’ he said cautiously, ‘we might just…’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and it was an answer to a question he hadn’t asked.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said again, and she smiled.

  He put her at arm’s length, searching her face in the moonlight. Astounded. ‘Rose, are you sure?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you were so sure we shouldn’t.’

  ‘Yes, but things have changed,’ she whispered. ‘For tonight, it’s not the same. I don’t want to be an adventurer for tonight. What I’d really like is to be a wife.’

  ‘You are my wife,’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re sure?’

  ‘Yes.’ And she smiled again.

  He kissed her then, softly, sweetly. Wonderously. She melted into his kiss, and her arms wound round his neck and held.

  ‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘Nick, I need you. Please, I need you in my bed. You’re my husband, Nick, and I want to be your wife.’

  And then, suddenly, before any more of these stupid scruples could get in the way, she tugged her chemise over her he
ad. Underneath she was wearing scant lacy knickers. Nothing more. With her eyes not leaving his face, she slipped them down and let them fall, stepping out of them and taking a step back.

  Standing before him in the firelight. Gloriously naked.

  His wife.

  Her auburn curls, loose and floating round her shoulders, almost seemed to be dancing in the firelight. Her eyes were too big in her too-pale face. Yet she smiled, tremulously, as if she wasn’t sure what she was offering was wanted.

  How could she doubt that?

  He caught her hands and held her out from him, glorying in her nakedness. Glorying in the fact that this could be happening. That such a woman could want him.

  That such a woman could be his wife.

  The words he’d spoken this afternoon came back to him, and they seemed so right. How could he ever have thought he’d never marry? He hadn’t understood until tonight what it was. Marriage. The joining of man and woman, making one.

  But he needed to be sure. He wouldn’t take this woman unless she understood…

  ‘Rose, there’s the contraceptive thing.’

  ‘There’s condoms in my toiletries bag,’ she told him, and he almost gasped.

  ‘But you said…’

  ‘I know what I said,’ she told him. ‘But I was coming here to be married to the world’s sexiest man, and a girl would have to be crazy not to plan for all eventualities.’

  The world’s sexiest man…

  He needed to put that aside. ‘But if there’s a baby?’

  ‘There won’t be.’

  ‘Rose…’

  ‘Okay, there might be,’ she said. ‘Slight chance. I’m risking it.’

  ‘Earlier tonight you wouldn’t.’

  ‘Earlier tonight I was ten years younger than I am now. Nick, I need you. Are you saying no?’

  ‘Not just for sex, Rose.’ He shook his head, confused, but at some deep level understanding that he was in uncharted territory. This was important. A voice in the back of his head was hammering with dogged insistence, get this right.

  He’d never felt like this about a woman, and he wouldn’t mess with it for want of patience, or for want of restraint, no matter how much that restraint might cost. He wouldn’t risk her waking in the morning and reacting with horror at what they’d done. ‘This needs to be an act of love,’ he said, and as he said it he knew that it was right. Something was changing inside him. Something he hadn’t been aware could be changed.