Romancing the Crown Series

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

  When she shook the prince's hand, his essere met hers. She had a quick impression of strength—a large soul, one that wouldn't easily be trapped by pettiness. Compassionate. Stubborn. And, at the moment, troubled, though it was the subtle tension in his stance and the darkness in his eyes that spoke to her of unquiet emotions, not any empathic connection.

  "Where did you get the ring?" Lorenzo asked.

  "A woman brought it to the shop a week ago, wanting to sell it. I was at police headquarters. Captain Mylonas, the sneaky son of a gun, was trying to trick me into confessing by asking me the same questions over and over. My aunt bought the ring from her.

  He managed to look profoundly skeptical without disarranging his polite expression. "You have documentation for this purchase?

  "Just the receipt my aunt had the woman sign, which may not be much help." She opened her purse. All three men watched her as closely as if they expected her to pull out a viper. She held out the slip of paper. "I'm afraid Aunt Gemma didn't ask for ID."

  "That's a shame." It was Lorenzo who took the receipt. "We'll want to talk to your aunt."

  "She's at the shop." Rose faced the prince. "You'll have been told that I'm psychic, Your Highness. Or that I claim to be," she added dryly. "I don't usually worry about whether people believe that, but in this case it's important that you accept what I tell you.

  His eyes were intent on hers. "Drew said you'd had a vision. About a woman."

  "Not a vision, exactly. I performed a seeking, using the ring." She spread her hands. "Never mind. The difference between a vision and a seeking is mostly technical. The point is, I was able to see the woman who used to own the ring.

  "And?"

  "She has long blond hair—very long, down to here." She touched a place by her bottom rib. "Her eyes are blue and rather wide-set. She's tanned, under thirty, I think, with a heart-shaped face. She was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, and I saw a lantern, an old-fashioned oil lantern." Rose took a deep breath. "She's trapped somehow. And I believe she's in danger."

  "What kind of danger?" he demanded. "And how is she trapped?"

  "I don't know. It was the impression I had." Her Gift was often stingy with details. "I think she's far away. Reaching her was difficult.

  Lucas's gaze flew to Drew, standing behind Rose and to her left. He didn't speak, but seemed to be asking some wordless question.

  "I didn't tell her," Drew said.

  Lorenzo Sebastiani's cynical voice broke the silence. "This is all very interesting and dramatic, Signorina, but conveniently vague. A ring, a mysterious woman in danger..." He shrugged. "You'll need to give us more than that. A name would help."

  "It's Jessica." The prince's voice was low, raw. "The woman.. .that I worked for while my memory was gone. That's her ring, and she fits the description." He stopped and swallowed.

  Lorenzo's eyes narrowed. "There's no way she could know about Ms. Chambers. Not unless—"

  "I've been trying to contact her. God." Lucas began to pace, taking quick, jerky steps that destroyed his usual grace. "I haven't been able to reach her. I knew something was wrong." He stopped in front of Rose and gripped her arms in hard hands. "She's all right, though? She's in danger, but she isn't...hurt?"

  "I can't be sure," Rose said reluctantly. "She's hurting, but it seems to be emotional, not physical."

  "You must have some idea of what the danger is."

  "I don't know for sure there is danger. I'm not a telepath. I saw her—I can describe the room she was in —and I felt she was threatened by someone, but I don't know who or how. I can't say whether the threat is physical or emotional. I did pick up some of her feelings, and.. .a face. I saw a face. She's..." Rose took a shaky breath. The next part was so personal for him, and so painful. "Your Highness, I believe she's grieving for you. And your baby.

  All the color drained out of his face.

  There was the sound of some small, hasty motion from behind her. Drew. But he didn't speak.

  Lorenzo Sebastiani did. "You are under arrest, Signorina Giaberti."

  The words circled around her mind like dizzy birds. Under arrest.. .under arrest? The first trickle of alarm whirled her around, instinctively seeking Drew.

  His face was stony. His eyes were a dull, cold green. Something equally cold jerked inside her, rising to her throat, then plummeting to her stomach like a yoyo.

  Drew wasn't going to help her. He was going to let his cousin arrest her. For what? Wrapping one arm around her middle where the cold had settled, she turned back to face the man who had arrested her. She made her voice hard. "On what grounds?"

  "Material witness will do for now. I imagine when the ransom demand arrives, I can find something that will stick better."

  Ransom demand? She shook her head, not understanding.

  "You overplayed your hand," he said, sounding almost affable. "Coincidence can only be stretched so far before it snaps back on you, Signorina. Did you really believe you'd convinced us you saw visions? That was the purpose of letting you play with that piece of the bomb, of course, but I'm surprised you bought into our game so easily. The first rule of a good con is to fool the marks, not yourself.

  "Wait a minute," Lucas said suddenly. "What are you talking about?"

  "Lucas, I'm sorry." There was compassion in the man's dark eyes now. "The only way she could know about Ms. Chambers in such detail is if someone fed her the information. Just as someone had to give her that ring. The most likely explanation is a kidnapping.

  Rose had both arms around her waist now, but it wasn't helping. The cold was spreading.

  Lorenzo continued to explain things to the prince. "We thought at first she had to be connected to the Brothers or to a cell of them that's still hanging around. I told you about that. But there were problems with that assumption. The Brothers don't usually work with women, and she's the wrong religion. The wrong everything, from their point of view."

  Drew didn't say anything. He didn't argue, didn't contradict his cousin.

  "I think now she's working with some other group that's strictly profit-oriented. Somehow she or someone she's working with stumbled on the information about the bombing. She used that to establish her bona fides as a psychic. Now the idea is to bleed you two ways—once through ransom and again by having her use her 'powers' to lead you to Ms. Chambers."

  Could Drew actually believe all this? Rose hugged herself tightly. Tiny, barely noticeable, a flicker of anger awoke.

  "Assuming all of that's true," Lucas said, "is it wise to let her know how much you know?"

  "Oh, I think so. I think she'll start seeing the benefit in cooperating when she realizes how little choice she has. She's been watched constantly since the bombing. Her phone is tapped.

  Rose turned her back on the other two so she could face the silent man behind her. "Drew." Her voice was scratchy. " Do you believe all this?

  He met her eyes. His were blank, empty.

  "She won't wiggle out of this," Lorenzo was saying. "Whoever her confederates are..."

  Drew's throat moved once, as if he preferred swallowing his words to speaking them.

  The flicker of anger in her grew. She was feeling much warmer now. "Well?" she demanded. "Don't deserve any answers at all?"

  At last he spoke. "I don't know what to say. I don't know what to think."

  Lorenzo was saying, "She'll want to cut a deal as quickly as possible. The one thing she has to bargain with is Ms. Chambers's whereabouts—and her safety."

  Rose ignored him, speaking to Drew as if no one else was there. "It's easier to think I might kidnap a woman, frighten and endanger her—easier to believe I would lie to you and everyone else and try to trick money out of the prince—than that I really have visions, isn't it?" Rose's hands fell to her sides, balled into fists. Her anger blazed into a rich, roaring fury. The force of it vibrated through her. "The hell with you, then. The hell with all of you!"

  She turned on her heel. Drawing on that interior blaze, she calle
d fire.

  It answered. She balled the essere of fire up hard and tightly with her Gift and hurled it, throwing her arm out as if pitching a ball. Hurled it straight at those waiting logs in the fireplace across the room.

  With a whoosh, they ignited. And burned.

  And the fire called her back...

  Dizzy, emptied, she fought the quick, hard tug from without, the yearning that rose from within. Always, always,part of her wanted to answer that call. Rose dug her fingernails into her palms and used the pain to try to cut off the call. Then she looked at the three men.

  They were staring at the fire, at her. All three faces showed some blend of horror, disbelief, shock. Drew's face had gone paper-pale, as if he might faint.

  Good. She hoped he fell on his face and bloodied his nose. Propping her hands on her hips, she said, "Fit that into all your clever little theories, Your Grace.

  Chapter 12

  Drew had been fighting nausea. As he listened to Lorenzo's reasoning, so damningly clear and logical, the sickness had spread from the pit of his stomach until he wondered if he was going to disgrace himself.

  Then she cracked reality wide open.

  Nausea vanished. So did thought. She spoke, but he didn't hear what she said. After several blank seconds, he realized he'd finally gone completely around the bend.

  But his head didn't hurt. Reality hadn't slipped into the terrible sensory dislocation of one of his spells. Except for the fire. There was a fire burning where there couldn't be a fire. She hadn't been anywhere near the fireplace, hadn't thrown any kind of device at it. She'd pointed, and the wood had ignited.

  He lifted one of his hands and looked at it. His body was obeying him.

  He wasn't crazy. And she wasn't deluded or a terrorist or a kidnapper. What was she?

  "Son of a bitch," Lorenzo said reverently.

  She was staring at the fire. No, she was leaning toward it, her body rigid and unmoving. Sweat beaded her brow. Her hands, spread wide at her sides, were as still and taut as the rest of her—yet they made him think of someone scrabbling for purchase on a steep slope. A chill went up his spine. "Rose?"

  "Put it out." Her voice was hoarse. "Put the fire out."

  Drew reacted instinctively to her voice, grabbing a tall vase that held gladiola and racing across the room with it. The fire was blazing now, higher than seemed possible from the modest pile of wood. Heat hit him in the face as he dashed the contents of the vase on the blaze.

  There was a hiss, a sputter, but the water from the vase wasn't enough. He glanced around, saw Lorenzo running into the bedroom with Lucas right behind. The bathroom was off the bedroom.

  Rose was swaying. Her eyes were dark and fixed in her pallid face.

  The others could take care of the fire. Rose needed him. An irrational conviction seized him that the fire was dangerous to her. He didn't stop to analyze, but ran back to her and pulled her against him, turning them both so that he stood between her and the fire. He brought her head down into his shoulder. "Don't look at it," he said fiercely.

  Her hands gripped his shirt and she burrowed into him, holding on as if she stood in a gale and he was all that anchored her. He heard water running, and a second later glimpsed Lorenzo with a huge, dripping bath sheet. He flung it over the fire and was answered with an angry hissing. A moment later Lucas emerged at a run, carrying a metal waste basket. Water sloshed over the rim and he dumped it onto the towel.

  The fire was out.

  Rose's body relaxed against Drew's, her hands sliding down his chest to rest at his waist. And Drew realized he was completely hard, with heat of a different sort pulsing through his body.

  Fortunately she didn't seem to notice. Probably in shock, he decided, and eased her away enough to make his condition less obvious. "Come on. You need to sit down."

  She let him steer her to the couch. He sat beside her, keeping one arm around her shoulders. Her face was still pale.

  Lorenzo appeared in front of them with a glass in his hand.

  "Brandy," he said. "It should put a little color back in your face."

  Her lips quirked up as she took the glass. "Do you treat all your prisoners this well?"

  "Consider yourself unarrested." He glanced over his shoulder at the smoldering fireplace, back at her. "That...was amazing."

  Lucas stood in front of the fireplace, his back to them, his hands thrust in his pockets. "If you're ministering to those in danger of fainting, I'll take whiskey. Neat." He turned slowly and walked across the room, stopping in front of Rose. Drew had the impression that his cousin wasn't aware of much except her at that moment, that even the sudden reality of magic, so dramatically demonstrated, was mainly important because it meant Rose had been telling the truth about the woman Lucas had loved.

  Rose sighed and straightened, pulling away from Drew. "Sorry about the mess. I'm better at starting fires than putting them out.

  Drew exchanged a glance with Lorenzo. Lucas, however, was more single-minded. "You believe everything you told me. That Jessica is trapped somewhere. That she's in danger. And.. .you said there was a baby."

  Rose nodded. "I'm sorry, Your Highness. I don't know what happened to the baby, just that she lost it."

  Lorenzo had moved over to the small bar, where he was filling glasses. "I take it you have reason to think a baby is possible," he said carefully.

  Lucas looked haggard. "I've always been careful. Lord knows how many times my father drummed that into me—use protection. Mustn't catch nasty bugs or let the royal sperm wander around loose and confuse the succession." His laugh was hard and short. "But I wasn't myself for several months. I was a drifter named Joe. Joe was a pretty nice guy in some ways, but he wasn't always careful.

  Lorenzo brought the glasses over, handing one to Lucas, one to Drew and keeping one for himself. "How much time do we have to find her?" he asked Rose.

  "Time gets funny in fire-trance. What I saw could be happening now, in the recent past or near future.

  Lorenzo got a pained look on his face. He glanced down, shook his head slightly and pulled a little notebook out of the inner pocket of his suit jacket.

  Drew knew how he felt. It was hard to take what she said as the literal truth. She saw things she couldn't possibly see, but they were real. She started fires with a gesture. Yet she couldn't tell the difference between present, past and future?

  Rose had no idea what was going through Drew's mind. They questioned her for some time, of course— once they persuaded the prince he couldn't fly to the U.S. immediately. That argument waxed fierce for a while. Lucas was unimpressed when Lorenzo said that if there was danger—which was by no means certain— the prince had no business stepping into it. He listened more patiently when Drew mentioned the strain his father had been under and the duties Lucas had recently assumed to ease that strain. He scowled when Lorenzo pointed out the need of the people to see the succession secure. But Rose didn't get the impression he'd resigned himself to staying in Montebello, though he did fall silent.

  Lorenzo asked her all kinds of questions then, jotting things down in his notebook. Lucas paced restlessly. While Lorenzo took Rose over her story again and again, the prince drank more than a medicinal amount of whiskey.

  Drew didn't contribute much.

  Outside, unseen, the storm hit. Here, in this interior room insulated by thick walls and other chambers, even the sound of the rain on the roof was barely noticeable. She'd long since taken her hair down, and it hung in messy waves along her shoulders and back.

  Lorenzo asked her to describe the room where she'd seen Jessica—for about the fifth time. She leaned forward, her elbows propped on her knees, and massaged her temples. She was tired all the way down to her bones. "I want to help. I came here to help. But I don't think I can tell you anything more.

  "Can you try again?" Lucas stopped his pacing to crouch down in front of her. "I've got the ring. Maybe if you did this seeking thing a second time, you could learn more."

 
A little spurt of fear had her straightening. "I can't. I'm sorry. Not tonight."

  "You're exhausted." The words came from Drew, the first he'd spoken in some time. "Lucas, she'll need to stay here tonight. She's too tired to see straight.

  "Tomorrow, then?" Lucas persisted. "Whatever you need to do this, you'll have."

  "I don't know." She tossed her hair back out of her face. "If you want the truth, I'm scared to try. I had to go very deep to reach Jessica the first time, and my control isn't that great. You saw what happened with the fire."

  It had claimed too much of her. A relatively small fire like that one didn't exert the pull of a big one, yet she'd been unable to cut the connection, to stop feeding it. She didn't know why. Exhaustion, she supposed. And, of course, she hadn't had Gemma to be her Ground.

  Yet when Drew had stepped between her and the fire, the call had ended. As if his big body was glass, a shield, impervious. That had never happened before. She glanced at him, wondering.

  "What does this seeking business have to do with the way you played Puff the Magic Dragon earlier? Lorenzo asked. He looked sour, as if offended by his own question.

  For some people, she knew, the very existence of the irrational was an affront. She suspected Lorenzo Sebastiani would have preferred to deny the evidence of his senses, but he had a core of honesty that wouldn't let him.

  "They're not entirely separate abilities. It's like the difference between walking, dancing and running. You need legs for all of them, right? Well, to call fire, see visions or enter a fire-trance, you need to be touched by the Fire Gift. Each Gift has its own dangers," she ended neutrally. "If my control is shaky with fire right now, my control in trance is apt to be nonexistent.

  Drew closed a hand around her arm. His eyes were clear again, sharp, his expression intent. "What does that mean? What happens if you don't control it?"

  She shrugged. "I might forget how to come back."

  "That's out, then." His eyes narrowed. "You said it was hard to reach her. That there seemed to be a great distance between you. Does distance make it more dangerous?