by Valerie Parv
Shocked understanding gripped her. He didn’t know that her feelings for him were so strong that they were scaring her. Easier to justify walking away for her own survival, when she thought he wouldn’t commit to anything lasting. Finding that he had another, caring side changed the rules. He was more than willing to commit if his heart was in it.
So his heart wasn’t in anything more than a casual fling with her. He was no different from Kevan after all. Kevan had hidden behind his marriage, and Ben had decided that she was a reckless opportunist. It wasn’t true. She hadn’t cared about money when she believed that he was only a navy pilot. Why should her feelings change because she now knew so much more about him?
Strange how heavy she felt suddenly, as if her heart was made of lead. She had to force herself to lift her head and meet his angry gaze, but pride demanded it. “You’re right,” she conceded. “I wasn’t attracted to you until I found out about your land and titles, then I set out to hook you, so I can become Duchess of Norbourg and live in the castle forever.”
It was so close to her fantasy, but for entirely different reasons, that her voice almost broke. She forced the last words out, “I thought a man who had dreamed up something as special as the Pathfinder project was someone I could care about after all, but it seems I was wrong.”
She had startled him, she saw from the sudden narrowing of his eyes. No more than she had startled herself. She hadn’t meant to confess what she knew, and it hurt to have him think his status mattered to her more than Ben himself did.
He prowled to the window and gazed out. Dusk was falling over Eden Cove and lights had come on in some of the boats, creating little islands of radiance in the gathering dark. One of them went off inside her head. Meagan got up and went to Molly.
The child looked at her in alarm. “What’s wrong, Mummy?”
She lifted Molly into her arms. “Nothing sweetheart, nothing at all. Mummy’s finally come to her senses, that’s all.”
Snatching up the teddy bear, she carried Molly back to their room and began to pack.
Chapter Eight
Molly’s small features contorted. “Don’t want to go home. I like it here. I want to go in the sea.”
The small cry tore at Meagan’s heartstrings. But she knew she would have an uphill job to convince Shane that she had returned home willingly, so the sooner they went back, the better. It was the only way she could think of to protect Molly. “I’ll take you paddling in the sea another time,” she promised. “Right now, we have to leave. Won’t it be fun being back home again?”
Molly shook her head. “Don’t want to.”
Meagan’s eyes misted, and she had to force herself to keep packing. Molly wasn’t the only one who wanted to stay. “That makes two of us, sweetheart, but some men are too stubborn to change.” Especially men who expected modern women to behave like hothouse flowers. His late fiancée hadn’t, and Meagan herself didn’t. She was used to fending for herself, and his suggestion that money or a title mattered to her was insulting.
Her fingers curled around a tiny velvet dress she had made entirely by hand, the stitches so small they were practically invisible. Tears stung her eyes but she banished them by force of will. Ben didn’t deserve her tears. “When you grow up, don’t let any man tell you there are things you can’t do because you’re female,” she told Molly. “You can be adventurous and have a career, and do anything they can do.”
“I can do lots of things.” To prove it, Molly piled her doll and a pillow from the bed into the suitcase.
Meagan retrieved the pillow. “We can’t take things that belong here.” Never mind that Ben had taken something precious to her—her heart. He didn’t want it, and she wasn’t going down that road again. Once was more than enough.
She gave a mighty sniff. “I won’t stay with a man who doesn’t know the difference between a gold digger and a woman who cares about him.”
“Perhaps it’s time somebody explained it to me.”
The quiet comment from the doorway made her spin around. How much had Ben heard? Everything, she saw from the gleam in his gaze. She looked away, mortified. Now he knew how she felt, the last thing she had wanted him to know.
She crammed the remainder of Molly’s clothes into the suitcase, dashing her hand across her eyes to stem the threat of tears. She would not cry in front of him. After Kevan, she had vowed never again to let any man hurt her to that extent. There was no need to let Ben see how successfully he had managed it.
He took her hand and kissed the back of it. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”
“Yes,” she snapped, trying unsuccessfully to reclaim her hand.
Ben’s grip tightened. “I mean it. I need you and Molly to show me how this relationship business works. I’m obviously not very good at it. First I try to wrap you in cotton wool, then I accuse you of angling for wealth and titles when it’s obvious you’re doing perfectly well without them.”
The heat from his hand traveled all the way along her arm and through her body, pooling near her heart until she could hardly breathe. She took refuge in anger. “I’m glad you realize I’m not like that.”
“I’ve realized a lot of things today. One of them is that I don’t want you to leave.”
She used her free hand to gesture around them. “There’s no reason for us to stay. If my brother or his friends did plant that device, they know where we are by now.”
“So you’re going back so Shane will think you didn’t want to leave in the first place?”
“Can you think of a better idea?”
“Taking you to the castle where you’ll be safe.”
Depended how you defined safe, she thought. She had dreamed of Ben wanting her to stay, but not like this. Not out of some misguided sense of protectiveness. She could manage alone. She’d been doing it since Cousin Maude died. She would go on doing it long after Ben had forgotten she existed. She hated to think how little time that was likely to take. “You’ve made your feelings about me quite clear. I can cope.”
“What if Shane doesn’t buy the idea that you came with me under duress?”
She knew her brother too well. “He will because he wants to believe it.”
Ben’s hands balled into fists at his sides. “I can’t believe you’d risk Molly’s safety because of wounded pride. I’ve apologized for jumping to the wrong conclusion. What more can I do?”
Accept me just as I am, she thought futilely. “It’s forgotten,” she lied.
“Then prove it. Come back to the castle with me.”
She wavered, trying to summon the will to argue with him, knowing it meant arguing with herself, as well.
He saw her hesitate. “You owe it to your child to let me protect you both.”
The little girl lay on her stomach on the floor, small arm outstretched as she tried to retrieve a shoe from beneath the bed. Watching her, Meagan felt her resistance crumble. “Very well, but only until it’s safe for us to return home.”
“We’ll leave first thing tomorrow.” At the door, he turned. “Did you mean it when you told Molly you care about me?”
She felt her throat almost close. “I never lie to Molly.”
He recrossed the room in two strides. “Yet you could walk away?”
“I don’t know.” She had intended to cross that bridge when she came to it—if she could.
“Then let me influence your decision.” He kissed her, the heat of it swirling through her, turning her bones to jelly.
When he let her come up for air, she was shaking. “That isn’t fair.”
His heated gaze lingered on her face. “All’s fair in love.”
“This isn’t love.” At least not on his side, as far as she knew. Apprehension gripped her. Could his feelings for her amount to more than she suspected?
He grazed the side of her face with his knuckles, sending a shiver of pleasure through her. “It definitely isn’t war.”
Molly popped out from under the bed, holding a s
hoe triumphantly aloft. She regarded them suspiciously. “Are you and Mummy playing Sleeping Beauty?”
His arms still tight around her, Ben turned slightly. “Yes, Molly, but I’m the one finally waking up.” His eyes were warm as he shifted his gaze back to Meagan. “The story could have a happy ending if the princess would marry me.”
As marriage proposals went, this one took the cake, Meagan thought. It wasn’t fair of Ben to include Molly. The child wasn’t to know he didn’t mean a word he said.
Molly’s eyes shone. “You’ll be a really truly princess, Mummy.”
Ben slid a finger under her chin, lifting it. “Listen to your daughter, Meagan. You might not be a princess, but you would be my duchess.”
The title meant nothing to her, but the thought of being Ben’s wife made her heart drum a frantic tattoo. Could he possibly be serious about wanting to marry her? “I thought you didn’t want to marry.”
“I didn’t want to get involved with anyone again, but this is another matter. We need one another. By helping me to escape, you’ve crossed the people who hold King Michael captive. That puts you and Molly in great danger. As my fiancée, you’d be under my personal protection from now on.”
Given the way she felt about him, could she consider accepting his proposal, knowing he didn’t return her feelings, and probably never would? For Molly’s sake, she knew there could be only one answer. “Yes.”
Molly gave a whoop of delight. “I’m telling Hannah.”
Ben swept Molly into the embrace with them. “We have to tell my aunt, Queen Josephine, first. Until she gives us her blessing, it has to be our secret. Can you keep a secret?”
Molly made a heart-crossing gesture. “I won’t even tell Mr. Snug.”
“Good. Bears are such blabbermouths,” Ben said straight-faced. He tightened his hold on Meagan. “For now, this is between the three of us.”
Within the warmth of his embrace, Meagan wished she could shake off the cold hand of fear that clutched at her heart.
Ben must find her car very different from what he was used to, Meagan thought. She corrected the car’s erratic steering so automatically that she didn’t notice until Ben commented on it. “It’s not luxurious but it does for Molly and me,” she said.
He heard the quaver she couldn’t keep out of her voice. “Are you all right? I should be driving.”
When they’d set off from his house, she had refused his offer, assuring him she was fine. Now she wasn’t so sure. “My child went missing so I thought she’d been kidnapped, someone bugged my car and there may be a traitor within the castle. Why wouldn’t I be all right?”
Her emotions were also on a roller-coaster ride since she had agreed to marry him. The closer they got to the castle, the more convinced she was that she was out of her mind.
“Stop the car now,” he insisted.
She responded to his tone of command reluctantly. She should have known he wouldn’t treat her as an equal simply because she had accepted his proposal.
When she pulled up at the edge of the forest, he came around to the driver’s side and helped her out of the car, although he had to fight her car’s contrary locking system to do so. He glanced into the back seat where Molly slept peacefully, her teddy bear in her arms, unaware of the dread that clung to Meagan like a pall. Meagan knew she would do anything to protect her precious child, even marry Ben.
A truly noble intention, if Meagan hadn’t wanted to marry him for her own sake, she thought.
When she stood up, he startled her by pulling her into his arms. It felt exactly right as she let him enfold her. She started to sniffle, hating herself for being so weak. He didn’t seem to mind. “That’s it, let it go.”
Her tears flowed in earnest and he held her, murmuring words of comfort as if he really didn’t mind that she was saturating the front of his shirt. He didn’t seem to be in any hurry to release her. “I suppose you’re used to this kind of thing,” she gulped.
He shook his head. “It’s been a while since a beautiful woman cried in my arms.”
He wanted to make her feel better, she recognized, troubled by how well he was succeeding. “I meant this cloak-and-dagger business,” she argued. “You are a military man.”
He tilted her chin up and she saw that his face was grave. “I may have chosen a military career, but I prefer to find diplomatic solutions to problems whenever possible.”
“And if you can’t?”
“I wade in with the coffeepot, just as you did on my behalf.”
Meagan’s laughter was so musical and sweet that Ben felt his insides constrict in response. Since the king’s disappearance, there hadn’t been much laughter within the royal family, and Ben had missed it. The last few days had exacted a toll on him, too. He welcomed Meagan’s warmth as a tonic he badly needed.
When the embrace changed from comforting to passionate, he wasn’t sure, but suddenly his mouth sought hers with the certainty of a ballistic missile. He had seen the way they homed in on their target with unerring accuracy, and he felt the same directional pull now, the same primal need to seek out and conquer.
As his fingers threaded through her hair, he felt the ground shift under him. She exploded like a target, returning his fire with a volley of her own that left him dazed, breathless, hungry for more.
The battle images continued to hammer at him. He felt the adrenaline rush he usually experienced flying a Sea Harrier, as he played her mouth with all the sensitivity at his command. A slight pressure here, a tilt to the left there. He invaded her mouth and she bucked under his hands, but there was no withdrawal and no surrender.
Who was conquering whom? he wondered with what remained of his sanity. He’d bet she had never flown a Harrier, but she sensed exactly which of his buttons to press to make him explode with desire.
He shouldn’t want this, he told himself. He wanted her, but it wasn’t the same thing. He didn’t want to feel so involved with a woman whose behavior reminded him so painfully of Marina’s. He didn’t want to love another woman who insisted on putting herself at risk the way his late fiancée had done. Yet Meagan was leading the formation and he couldn’t make himself break off.
She did it for both of them, pulling out of the dive and coming in for a landing about a meter away from him, her eyes blazing residual fire at him. “What exactly was that?”
“Just a kiss.”
Her breath came in heaving gulps. “That wasn’t just a kiss. It was…”
“Open warfare?” he supplied, unable to stop himself from thinking in those terms.
Meagan nodded, speech eluding her for a moment. She couldn’t condemn herself for letting him comfort her. After all that had happened she could even justify it. But she couldn’t allow herself to be swept away every time he so much as touched her.
“I’ve agreed to marry you to protect Molly, but there it has to stop.”
“It seems that Molly’s father has a lot to answer for,” he said, catching her unawares. “I will never let you down the way he did.”
His fingers burned her arms through her thin shirt. Wildfire leapt from the points where he touched, raced along her nerves and exploded somewhere around her heart. How could a touch affect her so much? It didn’t make sense. “You told me yourself you aren’t promising me a real marriage. You don’t believe in forever.”
He released her, then turned back to the car. “Perhaps not, but I am promising there will be no other in my life but you.”
Fine words, she thought, wishing with all her heart that she could rely on them.
Chapter Nine
The gulf between them had widened into a canyon by the time they reached the gates of Edenbourg Castle, she felt. An armed guard saluted crisply, operating the electronic controls to admit them to the walled citadel. If he found Ben’s mode of transport unusual or thought it odd that he should have a strange woman and a little girl on board, the guard didn’t show it by so much as a raised eyebrow.
Ben steered
the car behind a screen of bushes, and all three of them got out. Then he walked back and made a telephone call from the guard’s station. Within minutes a tall, steel-haired manservant joined them. Ben introduced him as James. The warmth she noticed between them suggested that James was a long-time family retainer. He fairly radiated trust and discretion. At Ben’s instigation, James took her keys and drove her car away.
She felt as if a lifeline had been cut. “Where is he taking my car?”
“Out of sight,” Ben said. “The same place I’m taking us. I’m keeping my return quiet until I’ve conferred with my aunt.”
He led her through an almost-invisible door in a massive stone wall. The door closed behind them, and she found herself in a tunnel lit by a narrow window high above her head. She shivered slightly in the sudden coolness after the warmth of the sunshine outside. “I’d heard the castle was honeycombed with secret passages but I never thought I’d use one.”
He picked Molly up, and took Meagan’s hand. “This takes us directly to the queen’s sitting room. I’ll report to her before reappearing as Ben Lockhart.”
“Won’t your absence cause comment?”
“I had James put it about that I was laid up with a virus.”
Meagan nodded, finding the passageways cold enough to give anybody a chill. She knew parts of the castle dated back to the tenth century, although it had changed its appearance many times over the years. The present head of state lived here now, and members of the royal family kept apartments in the vast grounds.
Could she ever feel at home in a place that boasted a history from the Middle Ages to the present? Meagan wondered. “This place is more like a community than a castle,” she observed.
“That’s exactly how it operates. Do you like the castle, Molly?”
The little girl in his arms nodded, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “Are you a real prince?”
“My mother is Princess Karenna of Wynborough, and my father is a captain in the navy. Will that do?” he asked.
