The Princess and the Duke

by ALLISON LEIGH,

  She lowered her chin, doing everything but dropping into a curtsey. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty.” Her voice was husky. Strangled. “I know the alliances are coming to critical junctures. I shouldn’t have disturbed you with anything so unimportant.”

  He glared at her. Then smiled suddenly, releasing her wrist. “That’s better.” He seemed to consciously relax, and the hard look left his eyes. “I can always count on you to understand.”

  Meredith watched him walk away, rubbing her wrist gingerly. She’d started out with some vague curiosity about her uncle’s death. But the longer it went, the more people refused to speak about it, the more she began wondering. She was no longer merely curious. She was determined.

  “I don’t understand anything,” she murmured softly to the empty breakfast room. “Not you. Nor Pierce. But I will.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “Hello again, Mrs. Ferth.” Meredith kept her tone deliberately breezy as she greeted her mother’s secretary. “Is it all right if I go on in?”

  “Of course.”

  Meredith tapped her knuckles once on her mother’s office door then entered.

  Marissa was seated at her desk, and she set down her pen and folded her hands neatly atop her desk when Meredith crossed the spacious office. “I understand you spent the day yesterday with Colonel Prescott.”

  “Two in one day.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Father already took me to task,” Meredith said flatly.

  “He…did?”

  “Quite.” She was a grown woman. She wouldn’t run crying to her mother because her father had been in a foul humor.

  Marissa seemed to absorb that for a moment. “Well, darling, I wasn’t planning to take you to task. Merely to ask you if things were heading in a more…personal direction for the two of you.”

  “Personal meaning what?” She was still stinging from her encounter with her father, but that didn’t mean she needed to take it out on her mother. “I’m sorry.” She sighed. “I didn’t mean to snap. It’s just—”

  “The colonel has you confused.”

  “I…yes. No.” She sighed, rubbing her wrist, which still stung furiously. “Not confused, exactly.”

  “Would you like me to arrange for your father to speak to him?”

  “No!” Horrified, Meredith closed her hands over the back of one of the chairs facing her mother’s desk. “Promise me you won’t do anything of the sort. Pierce’s belief in duty is legion. If he’s asked by His Majesty to do anything, he probably would, even if he hated every moment of it.” Then she saw her mother’s expression and blew out a breath. “You’re teasing me.”

  “Perhaps a little. You know your father and I have an agreement not to make arranged marriages for our children.”

  Meredith laughed shortly, feeling some of her tension abate. She moved around the chair and sat down. “I think the alliances are putting everyone on edge,” she murmured. “Even me. I saw Major Fox yesterday up in North Shore. He’s living at Sunquest.”

  “My goodness. I had no idea he was even in Penwyck. He retired ten years ago, at least.”

  “He doesn’t look well. Pierce said he suffers from Alzheimer’s disease.”

  “So, it’s Pierce now.”

  “Mother.”

  “Sorry.” Marissa didn’t look sorry. Her eyes were positively dancing with merriment.

  “So, is that the only reason you asked me to stop by your office? To tease me about the company I’m keeping?”

  “Oh, darling. I just wanted to make sure you’re all right. I believe I understand how much Colonel Prescott means to you. And I know you are not quite accustomed to men like—”

  “You make me sound as if I’m seventeen again.”

  “You’re worldly in many areas, Meredith,” Marissa said gently, “but when it comes to your heart…well, darling, you are so very innocent. And to a man like Colonel Prescott, a man who has personally dealt with dangerous situations and individuals, that kind of innocence may hold an immense appeal. I simply don’t want you to be hurt.”

  “Nor does he,” Meredith said crisply. “He bends over backward to avoid ‘hurting’ me. And, really, I’d just as soon not speak of it anymore. If you don’t mind.”

  “Of course,” Marissa agreed immediately. “Now, tell me what you have on your immediate plate at the RII. Now that Horizons is open on the army base, I’d like to shift some other duties your way. Unless you’re heading into another major project? I know how you prefer that sort of task.”

  “I’ll have Lillian get with Mrs. Ferth, and they can iron out whatever you need.”

  “Very good.” Marissa picked up her pen.

  Meredith started to go, but hesitated. She was loath to broach the subject of Edwin with the Queen. But, as she’d told the King, his death had occurred ten years in the past. “Mother, there is something I’ve been curious about lately. I just, well, I just don’t know whether I should bring it up, or not.”

  “Darling, there’s nothing you can’t talk to me about. Surely you know that.”

  “Even Edwin?”

  Marissa’s eyes clouded a little. “What about him?”

  “I just wanted to know more about what happened.”

  “Why?”

  Because the mention of Edwin’s name makes Pierce’s eyes go cold. “You know me. Always curious.”

  “That’s certainly true enough,” Marissa said wryly. “What is it that you want to know?”

  “He was visiting Majorco.”

  “On business.”

  “And…just an accident? The wrong place at the wrong time?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s what Pierce said.”

  Marissa frowned. “Meredith, is there something else bothering you about this?”

  “I don’t know.” She dashed a hand over her sage green linen slacks. “There are just, well, just remarkably few details about it. About what business he was conducting on Majorco—I mean, forgive me, Mother, but Penwyck wasn’t exactly bosom buddies with Majorco back then. It seems as if anything at all involving this family is front-page news, yet the only thing in the papers about him were a few very brief obituaries. There were plenty of photos of you and Father, of course. But very little about Edwin.”

  “My brother was a private man. We were very close as children, and I loved him dearly.”

  Meredith nodded. She was beginning to wonder if he’d been involved in something embarrassing to the royal family. It was the only explanation she could think of that made sense of the oddities. “I know you did. Father was right when he demanded that I drop it. I shouldn’t have brought it up. Major Fox definitely felt for your loss,” she said. “He told me so yesterday. Well, he mistook me for you, actually. He said you’d been very kind to him when his wife died.”

  “He was devastated when she died of cancer,” Marissa recalled. “He retired soon after, I believe.”

  A knock on the door brought their attention around. Lady Gwen was peeking in. “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. Mrs. Ferth has stepped away from her desk. I didn’t realize you weren’t alone.”

  Marissa waved in her lady-in-waiting. “Come in and sit down, Gwen. Meredith and I were merely visiting.”

  Meredith managed a smile, watching the woman smoothly enter and take the chair next to her. Lady Gwendolyn Corbin never did anything that wasn’t smooth. She’d raised her daughter, Amira, nearly single-handedly after the death of her husband many years ago, and Meredith had always admired her. “How are you, Gwen?”

  “Well, thank you,” Gwen assured. Though, privately, Meredith thought her mother’s lady-in-waiting looked a bit nerve-racked.

  Marissa laughed gently. “The state dinner is less than two weeks away and it is giving her fits, particularly since we absconded with a number of things she’d lined up for the event for use instead during Megan’s reception, but she’s far too polite to say so.”

  “To you, Your Majesty,” Gwen said, smiling sligh
tly. “There are others, however…”

  “Well.” Meredith stood. “I’ll let you both get to your business. I have to head into the office for a bit before making a run up to North Shore.”

  Marissa picked up her pen again as Meredith headed for the door. “Darling—”

  “Yes?”

  “Give the colonel my regards when you see him.”

  Meredith flushed. “I’m not planning to see him. And I very much doubt that he plans to see me.”

  Marissa waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, plans. What place do plans have when it comes to love?” But her eyes shifted to Gwen when Meredith let herself out of the office. “I need an appointment with His Majesty,” she said softly.

  Lady Gwen’s ordinarily cool expression turned surprised. “Because of Meredith’s interest in the duke?”

  “No.” Marissa stared at the door Meredith had closed behind her. “She’s begun questioning the details of Edwin’s death.”

  Gwen looked surprised. “Well. That is unexpected.” She turned her gold pen over in her fingers. “It was a terrible loss for you.”

  “Yes,” Marissa murmured. “And one that was never explained in any reasonable fashion to me.”

  “You were devastated. His Majesty undoubtedly wanted to spare you all that he could.”

  Marissa mulled that over. It would be just like Morgan to want to protect her. He’d long seemed to think that she needed it. Little did he know the deeds she’d done in order to protect him from any pain. “And what if Meredith’s curiosity sets off my own?”

  “Has it?”

  “I don’t know,” she murmured. “Morgan never wanted to discuss Edwin, or what happened to him. But every report came back with the same facts. I really can’t imagine anything new turning up after all these years.” She shook her head.

  “It was a long time ago, Your Majesty. Some things are better left in the past.”

  Marissa’s gaze shifted to the other woman. Gwen had lost her husband under rather hushed circumstances, too. They’d both been grieving, and it had cemented a relationship that superseded that of a Queen and her lady-in-waiting. They were friends. “Do you really believe that?”

  Gwen smiled a little, her classically beautiful face looking thoughtful. “Some days,” she admitted. Then she opened the pad on her lap and tapped it with the tip of her pen. “Now. About the state dinner. You had some concern over the seating arrangements?”

  Marissa applied one portion of her mind to Gwen’s details. Truthfully, she suspected her lady-in-waiting, who was the daughter of an ambassador, could have handled the entire event completely on her own. But there was a certain order to the way things occurred in the palace, and this was one of them.

  Nevertheless, when Gwen did head on her way, Marissa called in Mrs. Ferth and gave her instructions to make an appointment for Marissa to see the King. Morgan may have demanded Meredith leave it alone, but he couldn’t very well do the same with Marissa.

  Her encounter with the King was very fresh in Meredith’s mind later that morning as she talked her way past a guard into the underground tunnel that led from the palace to the Royal Intelligence Institute. She couldn’t do anything about Pierce’s stance when it came to the two of them, but she could do something about her questions regarding Edwin. Talking to her mother hadn’t helped at all.

  “I must verify some information in my father’s archives,” she told the guard.

  “I’m sorry, Your Royal Highness. My orders—”

  She smiled confidently. The guard was stone-faced but younger than she, and though she doubted her ability to intimidate him into cooperating, she could, perhaps, charm him into it. “His Majesty won’t be pleased if I’m delayed. I’m sure you understand.” She was trying to enter the secret, highly secured area from the RII side, thinking she’d have better success. “I’ve no need to go beyond the archives that are closest to this entrance. I know the tunnel is off-limits to anyone without proper clearance.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Royal Highness.”

  Truthfully, she didn’t even know what all was housed in the tunnel beyond the archive she’d had to visit once before. And then for legitimate reasons.

  The tunnel was a veritable fortress, impenetrable to unwanted surveillance and to attack. And she needed to get into those archives if she were ever going to be able to put to rest her growing concern over what had happened to her mother’s brother.

  Despising herself for it, Meredith managed to summon a tear. “Corporal, my father will be so angry with me. Please, couldn’t you let me slip in for just a moment?” She brushed her fingertips over the guard’s sleeve. “I made a mistake, you see, and—”

  The guard sighed and looked over his shoulder down the narrow stairs. The climate-controlled room where the archives were housed was the first door at the base of the stairs. “Just this once.” He relented.

  Meredith didn’t wait for him to change his mind. She darted down the stairs, practically dragging him with her so he could unlock the door. When he did, she smiled brilliantly at him, seeing the way his eyes glazed a little. “You’re a love,” she said softly, and quickly closed herself in the room. It was filled with shelves, boxes, metal cabinets. Very orderly and very neat.

  Which made her work all that much easier, as she quickly made her way toward the appropriate shelves. Painfully aware of the minutes ticking by, she dragged a ladder over and began climbing up the rungs, reading the tidy, discreet labels on the boxes as she passed.

  Aronleigh.

  Pierce’s dukedom. She stared at the box. Began to reach for it. Put her hand on the lid. But after a long moment, she drew back. She wouldn’t spy into Pierce’s affairs. If he didn’t choose to share things about himself with her, then she wouldn’t stoop to other means.

  She determinedly continued up the ladder, finally finding the box she sought at the very top. “Jamesette Bond,” she murmured as she pushed off the lid and began flipping through the file folders of every press release the palace had issued in the past twelve years.

  She found the official notice from the family in response to Edwin’s death. She found the hard copies of the newspaper clippings that must have been on the microfilm cartridge she’d lost. And even though she’d already read through them when she’d visited the library in Sterling, she found herself scanning them again. Looking at the photographs.

  Her mother had looked tragic, the devastation at losing her only brother clear on her lovely face. The citizens of Penwyck had bombarded the palace with condolences and flowers. Nobody had liked to see their beloved Queen in pain.

  So what if the King had behaved strangely when she’d mentioned Edwin? He was preoccupied. Under a great deal of pressure to insure an economically and militarily healthy future for his country. Bringing up Edwin’s passing at this late date was probably foolishness on her part.

  What she needed was what her mother had said. Another major project. Since Horizons was completed, she was obviously far too much at loose ends.

  Sighing a little, Meredith began to slide the file folder into the box, but something stuck in its way. She reached in, pulling out a folded, yellowed piece of paper. It was a memorandum. She barely had a chance to notice the surprising masthead when she heard the heavy door creak. Meredith did the unthinkable. She shoved the paper into her jacket where it couldn’t be seen, then looked down as the guard came into view.

  “You were taking so long, I thought you might need some help,” he said in such a friendly way that Meredith felt superbly guilty. Particularly with the sharp, folded edge of the paper shoved inside her jacket gouging into her breast.

  “Actually, I’m finished,” she said, and this time when she tried, the folder slid into its snug place within the box. She replaced the lid and carefully climbed down the ladder. “Thank you again,” she said.

  The guard nodded and told her he would take care of the ladder. Then he escorted her up the stairs, and Meredith took the elevator to the main floor of the
RII and headed straight for her office.

  She closed the door, leaning against it, and pulled the paper from her jacket. It crinkled as she opened it, and she let out a shaky breath. She hadn’t imagined what she’d seen before the guard interrupted her.

  The memo was from the RET, and it was directed to His Majesty, the King. It was undated, and contained only a very brief roster of names. She recognized some as members of the Royal Guard. Major Fox, for one. Lady Gwen’s deceased husband. But it was the name at the end of the list that jumped out at her.

  Army Lieutenant P. Prescott.

  She ran her fingertip along the edge of the paper, her thoughts scattered. When her phone buzzed, she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  “Colonel Prescott is holding for you on line one. Mr. Valdosta on two.” Lillian’s disembodied voice sounded through the intercom.

  Meredith’s fingers crumpled the memo. “Did, um, did the colonel say what it was regarding?” She spoke loud enough that Lillian would be able to hear her.

  “No, Your Royal Highness.”

  Of course he hadn’t. She headed toward her desk and picked up the phone. “Thank you, Lillian.” She swallowed and stared at the blinking buttons for a moment. She quickly jabbed the second line and canceled her dinner date with George Valdosta. He was understanding, which made her feel wretched, and he was disappointed when she carefully explained that she didn’t think she should go out with him at all.

  “Is there someone else?”

  “There could be, George,” she said truthfully. Even if Pierce wouldn’t allow himself to be involved with her, the truth was, she simply couldn’t bring herself to see anyone else. It had been the underlying reason she’d always remained uninvolved with anyone.

  “This isn’t about my forwardness the night of your sister’s wedding. I apologized for that. I’d drunk too—”