Romancing the Crown Series

by Romancing the Crown Series (13-in-1 bundle) (v1. 0) (lit)

  "There's my cousin Pia.. .well, no, I suppose not. She's strong, but..."

  "Nutty," Rose said wryly. "She's blocked, too."

  "Her shields are voluntary," Gemma said chidingly. "But I suppose she wouldn't be very helpful. She doesn't process what she receives well. There's Cousin Gerald, too, but he only has a thimbleful of the Gift... and Gerald's daughter is only seven, so I don't think she..." Gemma sighed. "I'm not sure how much it would help to have another empath try to read Drew, anyway. He isn't likely to cooperate. Unless he's had some training?" she ended hopefully.

  "He's completely unaware, from what I could tell. He doesn't believe in psychic nonsense."

  "Still, you were able to get past his shields at some point. You must have, or you wouldn't know he's an empath.

  "His shield slipped." She hugged herself, thinking of the split second when he'd been unshielded. He'd been kissing her.. .such a tiny slice of time to change her world so completely. "Just for a moment, it slipped. And scared him half out of his mind.

  "I'm sure it did, since he doesn't believe in any of this. Though he can't have been so completely blocked all of his life, surely. He seems to function very well.

  Silence fell. Rose thought of all the ways an untrained empath could fail to "function well." The Water-Gifted were in danger two ways—from the deluge of emotions their Gift exposed them to, and from blocking that Gift. It was impossible to predict what damage a blocked Gift would do, but Rose thought of it like water backed up in a dam. The results varied depending on where the dam was located, but one effect was inevitable: the conscious part of the blocked empath slowly dried up, becoming parched of emotion, while behind the dam the power built. And built. Until eventually no dam—no block—could hold it.

  The solution was shields, not blocks—soft, layered shields that were flexible and porous, allowing some leakage. Shields the empath controlled. Shields that were acquired, learned, from childhood on.

  Rose didn't know an adult empath with Drew's power who hadn't been trained from childhood. Because without that training, they generally went insane.

  "There's something..." A faint wrinkle formed in Gemma's smooth, round forehead. "Something I can't quite bring to mind. I read it a long time ago..."

  "Something you read about Drew?"'

  She nodded. "Not about any of his affairs or that woman he was engaged to. This was long before that." She sighed. "Oh, well. I suppose it will come to me eventually."

  "He was engaged?" Rose asked, startled.

  "Oh, yes, years ago. It ended quite sadly—the poor thing wasn't very stable, apparently. She tried to kill herself.

  "Dear God."

  "Of course, the tabloids printed a lot of nonsense about it. You know I don't take the things they say seriously."

  "Of course not," Rose murmured.

  "And it was all very one-sided, making Lord Andrew sound like a beast. I remember feeling sorry for him. It can't be pleasant to be accused of driving your fiancee to attempt suicide—assuming, of course, he isn 't a beast, and I don't think he is."

  But she didn't sound sure, and Rose knew why. "I'm going to wash and get into my nightgown," she said abruptly.

  Gemma patted her arm. "I'll make your tea."

  All evening Rose had been calling up everything she remembered of the lore as it applied to the Water-Gifted. It wasn't encouraging. She creamed off her makeup and tried to be realistic.

  Most people had a touch of empathy, just as many were brushed lightly by the other Gifts—dreams did sometimes come true, close friends or lovers sometimes knew what the other was thinking, and nurses, mothers and doctors often did bring comfort with a touch. In small doses, the Gifts were normal and human. They didn't become troublesome until they reached a sort of critical point, when the Gift was too strong to remain unnoticed.

  Empaths were the least stable of the Gifted when the Gift was strong, for obvious reasons. A strongly empathic baby didn't distinguish between its feelings and those of others. It never developed much sense of self.

  The Gifts didn't usually show up in babies, of course. But an empathic toddler still suffered. Even the most loving of mothers had moments of anger, exhaustion, frustration, times when she just wanted her screaming or whining darling to shut up and go away. Such perfectly normal feelings didn't damage most children, and actually helped civilize the little monsters. They learned that temper fits didn't get them what they wanted.

  An empathic child, however, felt its mother's anger and knew itself to be the object of that anger. This didn't make for a healthy child, or a healthy adult.

  It all depends, Rose reminded herself as she slipped her nightgown over her head, on when Drew's Gift first appeared. The more powerful the Gift, the earlier its arrival—that was the maxim. But sometimes a Gift didn't manifest fully for years. Unfortunately her family's lore was confusing, even contradictory in places, about why or how a Gift's full strength might be delayed.

  Gemma's cousin made that point quite adequately. Poor Pia. She'd been identified as a Water-Gifted soon after she was born, thanks to Rose's mother. Elenore Giaberti had been Fire-Gifted, like her daughter, and so able to touch the baby's essere.

  The members of Pia's family had done everything they could. It hadn't been enough. Oh, Pia wasn't damaged in the way an empathic baby in an unaware family might have been. But her Gift had been so strong. Pia had never been able to process the welter of emotions she received when unshielded, so she spent most of her life cut off from her Gift—with decidedly peculiar results. She was a gentle soul, mildly paranoid and convinced she talked to aliens.

  But at least she'd been guided in developing her shields. Some empaths developed shields naturally. And those who shielded too completely, from too young an age, felt no connection with their fellow humans. They became sociopaths.

  Drew's Gift couldn't have shown up when he was still a baby, Rose thought as she sat on her bed and began brushing out her hair. If it had, he wouldn't have such a strong sense of self. And she couldn't, she wouldn't believe he was sociopathic. She'd touched his èssere...

  Her hand stilled, the brush, her hair, the room and everything else forgotten as she remembered. Such a tiny slice of time...

  "Here's your tea, dear."

  Rose stirred and put the brush down. She hadn't even noticed Gemma come in. "Yes. Thank you." The woodsy scent of chamomile soothed her. She took a sip.

  "What are you going to do?"

  She found a reassuring smile. "I'm a big, soggy, confused mess right now, but I'll be all right."

  "That wasn't what I asked." Gemma's eyes were troubled. "I know what the lore says about one way to help a Water-Gifted release his shields. But it isn't a sure thing.

  Gemma knew her too well. "I realize that."

  Like a mother checking for fever, Gemma laid her hand on Rose's forehead. "Be gentle with yourself, mia cara.

  She left. Rose took her cup and saucer over to the window and pushed the curtain back. The city sparkled at her, lively with lights in the darkness. She couldn't see the palace from her window, not even the hill it rested on. And she wanted to. If she could just look at the place where he was, maybe she wouldn't ache so badly.

  Her eyes closed. She rested her forehead against the cool glass. Ah, this was bad, worse than she'd ever thought it might be. She could reach him. She knew how to send her essere out, how to seek—

  Gasping, she straightened and turned away from the window. Had she lost all sense? Send her eèssere out, without a Ground to protect her? Send her essence out in search of Drew and encourage her Gift to grow, to strengthen? Did she want to burn?

  She shivered, put down the cup of tea, now cold, and climbed into bed.

  There were several ways that a blocked empath might be helped to release his shields. Most of them involved a long teaching process and a high level of trust on the part of the empath. Certainly the person being helped had to believe in the powers he'd blocked.

  Drew wasn't going t
o be in Montebello long. He didn't fully trust her, and he certainly didn't believe either of them was psychic. Which left only one way for her to help him.

  In sex, the barriers went down. Usually. Not always, but his shield had slipped when he was kissing her. If it went down all the way, even once, the backed-up pressure would be relieved... but with what results? If the shields went down when they made love, she'd be with him, bodies joined, esseri touching. She'd be able to help him when the flood hit, but would she be able to help enough? She wasn't a healer. That wasn't her Gift or her training.

  Rose shivered, pulled up the sheet and hugged her knees to her chest.

  What was she going to do? She didn't know. But as she sat in the bed she'd slept in since she was eleven, feeling desperately alone, she remembered once more that moment when she'd touched all that Drew was. She remembered the one word that had come to her then.

  Mine.

  * * *

  There were no windows in the bedroom Drew always used in his family's suite at the palace. The only light came from the glowing red numbers on the clock by his bed, which clicked over from 12:42 to 12:43 while he watched, keeping a methodical tally of his sleeplessness. He was nude beneath the sheet, and achingly awake.

  He hadn't reported to Lorenzo in person this time. He'd left a message on his office phone, instead. The deceit was beginning to leave a foul taste, one he had no intention of exposing to his cousin. He could no longer believe Rose had anything to do with terrorism. She must have heard something she shouldn't.

  She thought she had visions. That she could sense people's auras, pick up "emanations" from objects.

  He rolled over, turning his back on the accusing numbers on the clock. Weren't hunches the result of the unconscious mind processing bits and pieces the conscious mind missed, leaving no logical trail to follow, only a gut feeling? Maybe Rose's visions were like that. Maybe she had an extremely clever unconscious, and it had resurrected some unremembered snatch of conversation she'd overheard, giving her a dream about the bombing that was all too accurate.

  Why did it bother him, anyway, if she thought she was psychic? He'd been with women with odd notions before. That model he'd dated in Paris right after his disastrous engagement, for example. She hadn't gone to bed with him until she'd checked it out with her pet astrologer.

  She'd done everything else, though. In the limo, right after they met at a party. He'd been taking her home. Wendy had been just what he needed at the time—hungry, self-absorbed, sure to lose interest quickly —everything poor Laura hadn't been. But Rose was nothing like Wendy.

  She wasn't like Laura, either, thank God. She might not have notched her bedpost with the careless abandon of women like Wendy, but she was no fragile innocent, either. Deluded, maybe, when it came to this psychic business .. .but she'd been raised to believe as she did. And face it—compared to him, she was marvelously sane.

  Had kissing Rose for the first time brought on the spell that hadn't quite happened? Or had it somehow averted the spell? Maybe desire was an antidote of sorts. Reality had stayed firmly in place the second time he kissed her.

  His cell phone beeped. He'd left it on the table next to his bed. He picked it up without turning on a light, certain whose voice he would hear. "Yes?"

  "I'll go to the ocean with you this Sunday after Mass. If you still want to."

  Chapter 9

  The beach Drew took her to that Sunday couldn't be seen from the palace. They were more than halfway down the path before she caught a glimpse of it. The land curved one slim arm around the little cove, sheltering it from the roughness of the open sea. From this high, the water looked glassy and green.

  There was a reef, too, he'd told her. It would be a good place to snorkel.

  They each had gear to carry—swim fins, face mask, towel and snorkel. In addition, Drew had a fancy insulated backpack filled with goodies from the palace kitchen. His free hand was wrapped around hers.

  It wasn't necessary. She was surefooted and the path was well graded, not terribly steep. But she liked the idea that he wanted to hold on to her. She liked touching him. Her skin felt prickly, sensitive. The gauzy beach robe she wore over her swimsuit was long, slit up both sides, and with every step it brushed against her legs. The sun was hot, the breeze was salty and damp, and life filled her, packed down so tightly she fairly vibrated with it.

  He'd been quiet since he picked her up. She wondered if the same thoughts were churning through his system that had her heart beating so fast.

  Then he spoke and burst that bubble. "Lorenzo tells me you were able to, ah, get an impression from one of the fragments."

  "Yes."

  "He said you insisted that your aunt be present.

  "Aunt Gemma is my Ground." She flicked him a glance. He wore dark-blue swim trunks with a polo shirt in some kind of nubby blend—linen and cotton, she thought. There were buttons. He hadn't buttoned them. The deep, open V-neck gave her a beguiling glimpse of his chest. "That's psychic jargon for someone who helps me keep planted in the here and now. Fire-Gifted have a tendency to wander when in trance. We're easily distracted."

  "Is this trance business safe?"

  "A lot safer when Gemma is with me.

  The bomb had been in a metal first-aid kit. A little terrorist humor there, she supposed grimly. She'd been given a blackened piece of the handle. The traces of essere clinging to it had been slight, almost unnoticeable at first. She'd had to trance deeply to fasten on to those traces, had to resist the pull of the moment when fire had burst free. She'd succeeded, but it hadn't been easy.

  "You told him the bomb had been planted by someone who worked at the airport. Someone in a uniform." He sounded skeptical.

  Dammit, wasn't he feeling any of the excitement she felt? "Someone who belonged there," she corrected him mildly. "He might be a security guard. He might not. There was a feeling of..." She paused, groping for words. "I didn't get any sense that he was out of place, somewhere he wasn't supposed to be."

  "How could you tell? You said you didn't pick up thoughts or feelings.

  "Normally I don't. But very strong feelings do become imprinted sometimes, and the fragment they gave me is connected to fire because it went through the explosion. That makes a difference. I went to a particular moment, the last time that object was handled before fire burned everything."

  He shook his head. "You're not making much sense to me, I'm afraid."

  "Language is built on common referents. I'm trying to describe an experience that took place outside those referents."

  He didn't say anything more for a few minutes. The path curved around an outthrust portion of the cliff, and suddenly the beach lay right in front of them—a small slice of perfection nestled at the base of the cliff. The sand was pale and coarse, almost blindingly bright in the sunshine. Near the waterline it was strewn with the usual detritus of the sea—seaweed, shells. Little waves ruffled the turquoise surface of the ocean, frothing gently as they reached the shore, like soda with most of the fizz gone. It was peaceful and lovely.. .and very private. This beach was connected to the palace grounds. Drew's bodyguard hadn't followed him here.

  Her spirits lifted as she left the dusty path for hot sand.

  Rose didn't want to discourage Drew's curiosity. The closer he could come to accepting the reality of psychic abilities, the better. But the day was bright and lovely and she didn't want to be weird, different, the odd one who was tolerated, even liked, but never fully accepted. Today, she just wanted to be a woman playing in the surf and the sun with her man.

  "You could tell that the bomber was a man, though.

  She repressed a sigh. " Sex usually comes through very clearly." So did other things. She remembered the essere of the man who'd handled the bomb, the small, dark, greedy feel of him. "He isn't anyone I know. Your cousin plans to have me meet the security guards and see if I can identify one of them.

  "Your hand is cold." He stopped. "I'm upsetting you. I don't mean to doubt y
ou, but this is all pretty strange to me."

  "You're skeptical, which I understand. You're also curious, and that I'm glad about." Glad for more reasons than she could tell him or he could accept. "But it was...unpleasant, touching that man's èssere. I'd like to put it out of my mind now.

  "I didn't bring you here to interrogate you. I'm sorry." He dropped his gear, shrugged out of the backpack and touched her chin, tilting her face up. The creases beneath his eyes deepened. "You've been very patient with me."

  "I'm glad you noticed." The sensation of being filled to the brim came bubbling back. "I would have pointed it out myself, but I couldn't think of a patient way to do that."

  He grinned.

  Rose had seen many different smiles on Drew's face. Often just his eyes smiled. Sometimes only his mouth was involved and the smile never reached his eyes. A couple times his whole face had gotten into the act. But she hadn't seen him grin before. Suddenly there were deep grooves in his cheeks and his eyes were wicked and happy. Why, she thought, his face is made for big, fat, know-it-all grins.

  He bent, brushed her lips quickly with his, then stepped back. "If I don't keep my hands to myself, I'm afraid we won't make it into the water."

  "That would be a shame. I bought a new swimsuit yesterday." Smiling mischievously, she dropped her fins and snorkel, kicked off her sandals and squished her toes into the sunbaked sand. Her long beach robe snapped up the front. She took hold of the neckline and tugged, and one by one those snaps parted, letting the gauzy material settle to the ground at her feet.

  Her swimsuit wasn't daring, not by the standards he was used to. On some European beaches women went topless, with little thong bikini bottoms covering the very barest of essentials. Rose's suit was red, one-piece and smooth to the throat. But the legs were cut up to her hipbones, and the material was thin. Very thin. And stretchy.