The Prince's Royal Dilemma

by Brenda Harlen

  It was time to let her go.

  Lara glanced from the clock to the window. It was 2:00 a.m. and the light was still on in Rowan’s office. Obviously he wasn’t going to come to her tonight.

  Though less than five weeks had passed since the first night they’d made love, he’d been with her more often than not during that time. And on the occasions that he did have to work late or was unavailable because of other duties, he’d made a point of letting her know in advance—and telling her that he’d be thinking of her.

  But she hadn’t seen or heard from him at all in three days, and now she couldn’t help but wonder if there was some kind of crisis that was keeping him away—or if he’d simply grown bored with her.

  She’d known from the beginning that their relationship couldn’t last. He was the prince regent, after all, and she was illegitimate and untitled and an employee of the royal household. Yes, she’d accepted that there was no future for them together, but her heart wasn’t ready to give him up just yet. She wouldn’t accept that it was over until she heard those words from Rowan.

  The knots in her belly tightened with every step she took as she made her way through the maze of corridors to his office.

  She heard the music first. He’d introduced her to the works of several classical composers, and she recognized the piece playing in the background as one of Bach’s violin concertos. Then she saw him.

  He was seated at his desk, but his chair had been turned to the side and his gaze was focused somewhere outside the window. Her heart sank further as her suspicions were confirmed—the only work Rowan was doing in here tonight was avoiding her.

  She was tempted to go, to leave before he knew she was there. Though her heart wanted to run and hide, her pride wouldn’t let her be so easily dismissed.

  “Were you afraid that I’d make a scene?” She was pleased that her voice was calm, giving no indication of the emotions that were churning her up inside. “Or am I so insignificant that I don’t deserve the courtesy of a personal breakup?”

  Something flashed across his face—guilt? Regret? Yearning? Whatever it was, it was quickly masked and she found herself confronting the impenetrable facade of the prince regent.

  “You were never insignificant,” he told her.

  Her throat was tight. “Wasn’t I?”

  A muscle flexed in his jaw. “It had to end sometime—we both knew that.”

  Yes, they had both known it. But that didn’t make the reality of it any easier. And after everything they’d shared—the passion, the camaraderie, the laughter—this distant politeness was unbearable.

  “I guess my mistake was in thinking we would both decide when ‘sometime’ came.”

  “I never made you any promises,” he reminded her.

  “I never asked for any.”

  “No, you didn’t,” he acknowledged. “But the people of Tesoro del Mar do have certain expectations, and I need to fulfill them.”

  She wanted to say it before he did—before he shattered her heart with the words. “You’ve chosen a bride.”

  “I’ve invited Lady Victoria Barrow to come to the palace for dinner Friday night to meet the children.”

  It wasn’t precisely a confirmation, but she knew that meeting the children was a necessary formality before he asked Victoria to marry him. Not certain she could trust her voice, she merely nodded in response to his announcement.

  He stood now and came around his desk, but didn’t move any closer to her. She told herself she was glad for that. If he touched her, if he showed the slightest hint of compassion, she would fall apart, and she didn’t want to do that. At least not until she was alone.

  “I was going to tell you,” he said. “I didn’t want you to hear about it from anyone else.”

  She’d honestly believed she could accept the inevitability of his marriage to someone else, but her shattered heart proved otherwise. She’d loved him and she’d lost him, and the pain of that loss was unbearable.

  She grasped at the fraying threads that were all that remained of her composure. “Well, thank you for that, anyway.” She turned away from him. “I’ll let you get back to your work now.”

  Blinded by the tears that filled her eyes, she fumbled for the knob.

  “Lara—”

  She heard the emotion in his voice now—both longing and regret. But she walked out, pretending she didn’t hear him at all.

  Rowan knew he’d made the right decision in ending his relationship with Lara. It wasn’t fair to continue sharing her bed while planning his wedding to someone else. But she remained in his thoughts and in his heart.

  And though he’d decided that Lady Victoria Barrow was the most suitable choice for his bride, he knew he would never love her as much as he loved Lara.

  It didn’t matter, of course. He wasn’t expected to marry for love, but only as a means of securing his position and his nephew’s entitlement to the throne. Thankfully, Victoria didn’t seem to expect any declaration of affection. She was an eminently practical woman, which was one of the reasons he’d decided she’d be an appropriate wife for him.

  He didn’t want a woman who expected more than he could give, and he couldn’t give any woman his heart.

  That belonged to Lara.

  It had been his intention to propose to Victoria after dinner with the children Friday night. He hadn’t bought a ring because he didn’t know her well enough to guess what she would like, but he figured she could pick out whatever she wanted after their engagement was official.

  Dinner had gone smoothly enough and as they’d lingered over dessert and coffee after the children had been dismissed, he’d learned a fair bit about the British woman—her family background, her education, her goals for the future. But every time he’d thought of asking her to marry him, he’d felt something like panic rising into his throat rather than the words he needed to say.

  It was as if the more time he spent with her, the more he realized she was exactly the kind of woman he should want to marry, but she wasn’t at all the woman he wanted. He was still pondering his indecision Saturday morning when his nephew walked into his office.

  “Are you going to marry Lady Victoria Barrow?” Christian asked without preamble.

  He should have answered the question with an assertive and enthusiastic “yes.” Instead, he heard himself respond, “I haven’t made any final decision.”

  “But you don’t love her.”

  He frowned, wondering how his nephew could be so certain of that fact but unable to deny it himself. “There are a lot of factors a man must consider before deciding to marry—love is only one of them.”

  “Isn’t it the most important one?”

  Rowan didn’t know how to begin to explain the conflict between duty and desire, but he also couldn’t ignore the issue when it was a dilemma his nephew might also have to face some day. “Yes,” he finally said. “Love is—or should be for most people—the primary consideration for marrying. But a political figure or national leader—like us—must consider other factors, as well, such as a potential bride’s suitability for the responsibilities she will need to fulfill.”

  “My dad loved my mom.”

  Rowan heard the question within the statement and felt the familiar pang for everything that had been lost when Julian and Catherine died, but he nodded. “Yes, he did. He loved your mom more than anything else, except maybe you and your brother and sister.”

  “He would have wanted the same thing for you.”

  “He also knew that a prince sometimes has to put the needs of his country ahead of his own.”

  “Okay—so you have to get married,” Christian acknowledged. “But you don’t have to marry Lady Victoria Barrow.”

  “You seemed to get on well enough with Lady Victoria at dinner,” he noted.

  Christian’s gaze dropped. “She seemed nice enough at dinner.”

  “What happened to change your opinion?”

  “I overheard her talking to Lara,�
� he admitted. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but then I heard her mention us—me and Lexi and Damon.”

  Rowan frowned. Though he felt he should reprimand his nephew for listening to a conversation that wasn’t intended for his ears, he was more curious about the content of that conversation. “What did she say?”

  “She said that we were ill-mannered and undisciplined.”

  And Rowan had thought they’d come a long way in the past couple of months, since that first disastrous dinner shortly after Lara had returned to the palace.

  “Lady Victoria doesn’t have a lot of experience with children,” he told his nephew. “She just needs a chance to get to know you better.”

  “She doesn’t want to know us better. She wants to send us to military school.”

  “Military school,” Marcus repeated, stepping into the room. “Why would you send the kid to military school?”

  “I’m not sending anyone to military school,” Rowan said firmly.

  “That’s what you say now,” his nephew said, sounding resigned to his fate. “But who knows what will happen after you’re married to her?”

  “Who is the ‘her’ your uncle is planning to marry?”

  “Lady Victoria Barrow.” The boy’s tone was filled with resignation and regret.

  Rowan wanted to reassure him, but he wasn’t sure how to do so and his mind was still reeling from Christian’s revelation.

  “Thank you for sharing your concerns with me,” he said. “But if you don’t mind, I have some business to discuss with Marcus right now.”

  Christian opened his mouth as if there was something else he wanted to say, but then he snapped it shut again and slipped out of the room.

  “Lady Victoria Barrow?” Marcus asked.

  “She’s attractive and well educated, and she has distant familial connections to both the British monarchy and the American president. And she never said anything to me about military school.”

  “She’s probably waiting for the ring on her finger before she starts making demands.”

  “I thought she was the best choice, but now…”

  “Now you need to take another look at your options.”

  “Apparently.”

  “When I saw you and Lara having coffee together in the parlor after dinner the other night, I thought—” Marcus shook his head. “Never mind. Obviously I misinterpreted the situation.”

  Rowan sighed as he thought fleetingly—and regretfully—of the woman who had come to mean so much to him. “No, you probably didn’t.”

  “Then you are involved with her?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “That certainly clarifies things.”

  “We were involved,” Rowan admitted. “Now we’re not.”

  “You didn’t look at her like a man who was uninvolved.”

  “Thanks for the insight, king of one-night relationships.”

  Marcus just shrugged, not offended by the sarcasm. “I have dated a lot of women, which is why I can assure you there aren’t many out there like Lara. You’ve been worrying about this impending six-month deadline, but I promise if you let her go, you’ll spend the rest of your life regretting it.”

  “If I defy the law to be with Lara—” and the thought had been hammering at his mind, the possibility tempting his aching heart with the promise of something even greater than he could dream “—our family could lose the throne. And personally, I couldn’t care less, but it’s not really mine to lose. It should be Christian’s when he is of age to rule, and I won’t do anything to jeopardize his birthright.”

  Marcus tossed a folder onto his brother’s desk. “There might be another option.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Lara knew an official announcement of the prince’s engagement would come from the palace’s PR department, but she suspected that if Rowan had proposed to Victoria the previous night, the woman wouldn’t be able to contain her excitement. She would have told someone, and that someone would have told someone else, and soon the media would be crawling all over the story.

  So she was surprised that there was no mention of an impending engagement announcement in the paper, but not surprised when a call came through to her room from a man who identified himself as Alex Girard, a society reporter with La Noticia, the local paper. She didn’t know how he’d got her number or why he thought she might be willing to share inside information, but she understood the “no comment” policy of palace officials and was prepared to use it when he asked about the prince’s engagement.

  She wasn’t prepared for the reporter to ask about her.

  “Is it true that you got the job as the royal nanny because of a family connection?”

  The question seemed benevolent enough, so she responded, “It’s true that I met Princess Catherine through a distant family connection.”

  “When the princess hired you to care for her children, did she know about your family history?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Did she know that your mother was never married to your father? Or that your mother wasn’t even sure of the identity of your father?”

  Even after so many years she was ashamed by the fact, and she was grateful the reporter couldn’t see the hot color she could feel in her cheeks. “The princess knew everything she needed to know about my family and my past.”

  “And what about the present?” he continued. “What can you tell me about the rumors that you are personally involved with the prince regent?”

  She didn’t know what to say, how to respond, so she said, “No comment,” realizing too late that her failure to deny the allegation would be taken as an admission.

  Alex Girard knew it, too, because she heard the smug satisfaction in his voice when he said, “Thank you for your time, Miss Brennan.”

  Then he hung up before she could undo the damage.

  Even before Lara replaced the receiver, she knew that she had to tell Rowan about the reporter’s call. He needed a chance to prepare a response to the accusations that would be splashed across the headlines. Or maybe he could contact Girard personally to talk about his engagement so that everything else would be forgotten.

  She wasn’t worried for herself. She’d lived without knowing who her father was for twenty-five years, but she did worry that the public would object to a bastard nanny working for the royal children and that Rowan wouldn’t appreciate finding her at the center of another scandal. And she worried even more that the truth about her affair with Rowan, though over, would destroy his plans to marry Lady Victoria.

  Which would be less of a concern, she realized, if he’d already proposed. If the other woman had a ring on her finger, Lara trusted that she’d be less likely to try to wiggle out of their engagement because of a relationship, however scandalous, that had ended before Rowan proposed. The revelation would still result in friction and distrust, and Lara knew she would have to leave the palace and the children to alleviate that.

  She felt confident that the children would adapt to her absence more easily this time because of the bonds they’d formed with their uncle over the past few months. Christian rode with him at least twice a week now, Lexi had conquered her fear of the water and was letting him teach her to dive, and Damon just loved getting down on the carpet with him and racing his toy cars. If she had to leave, she would be a mess, but Rowan would make sure the children were okay.

  She pushed the thought out of her mind, arriving at Rowan’s office as he was leaving.

  “I was on my way to find you,” he said.

  She knew he couldn’t have spoken with Girard—if he had, he wouldn’t be smiling. But she couldn’t imagine what else would cause him to seek her out when their paths had barely crossed throughout the past week.

  “I thought your engagement would be announced in the paper today.” She wasn’t sure why she blurted the words out, except maybe as an excuse or an explanation for what she needed to tell him.

  “Actually, that’s why I wanted to talk to
you. There’s been a change of plans.” He carried a folder in one hand, but reached out with the other, taking her hand and linking their fingers together. “Will you take a walk with me?”

  It was a simple touch, and yet the skin-on-skin contact—even if it was only hand in hand—stirred up all the feelings she’d tried so hard to tamp down. She didn’t want to break the contact, but she also knew she couldn’t be seen holding hands with the prince regent in the hall—especially not with rumors of an affair circulating—so she tugged her own away. “You want to walk?”

  “I have been known to do so on occasion,” he said lightly.

  “I don’t doubt it, Your Highness.” As he started toward the wide curving staircase, she fell into step behind him.

  “You’ve just never wanted to walk with me before.”

  “A definite oversight on my part.” He lowered his voice as they passed a couple of servants on the stairs. “It seems we missed out on sharing too many of the everyday things.”

  The intimacy of both his tone and the words made her heart bump in her chest. “Where are we going?”

  “To the rose garden.”

  It was one of her favorite spots on the grounds, and she wondered if he knew that and why he had chosen it as their destination. But she didn’t dare ask. In fact, neither of them spoke again until they were in the privacy of the yard where the sun was starting to dip in the sky and the air was rich with the scent of imported flowers.

  “The windows on the west side of my office overlook this spot,” he told her. “I’ve seen you here, sometimes by yourself, sometimes with the children, and I watched you, wishing I could be with you—as we are now.”

  She wondered why he was telling her this, what difference his revelation could possibly make, and tried not to be distracted by his quiet words and lingering glances. She had to stay focused on what was important—the truth that could tear all of their lives apart.

  “Do you know Alex Girard from La Noticia?” she asked him.