Crown Prince, Pregnant Bride!

by Raye Morgan

  She sighed. “You’re probably right,” she said regretfully. It would have felt good taping over his window into her world.

  There was a strange gurgling sound and they both turned to see Pellea’s father rising up against his pillows.

  “Father!” she cried, running to his side. “Don’t try to sit up. Let me help you.”

  But he wasn’t looking at his daughter. It was Monte he had in his sights.

  “Your Majesty,” he groaned painfully. “Your Royal Highness, King of Ambria.”

  Monte rose and faced him, hoping he would realize the man standing in his bedroom was not the king he’d served all those years ago, but that king’s son. This was the first time anyone had mistaken him for his father. He felt a strange mix of honor and repulsion over it.

  “My liege,” Pellea’s father cried, slurring his words. His thin, aged face was still handsome and his silver hair still as carefully groomed and distinguished as ever. “Wait, don’t go. I need to tell you. I need to explain. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. I…I didn’t mean for it to be like that.”

  “Father,” Pellea said, trying to calm him. “Please, lie back down. Don’t try to talk. Just rest.”

  “Don’t you see?” he went on passionately, ignoring her and talking directly to the man he thought was King Grandor. “They had promised, they’d sworn you would be treated with respect. And your queen, the beautiful Elineas. No one should have touched her. It was a travesty and I swear it cursed our enterprise from the beginning.”

  Monte stood frozen to the spot. He heard the old man’s words and they pierced his heart. It was obvious he had a message he’d been waiting a long time to deliver to Monte’s father. Well, he was about twenty-five years too late.

  He slid down into his covers again, now babbling almost incoherently. Pellea looked up with tears in her eyes.

  “He doesn’t know what he’s saying,” she said. “Please go, Monte. You’re only upsetting him. I’ll stay until the nurse comes.”

  Monte turned and did as she asked. His emotions were churning. He knew Pellea’s father was trying to make amends of sorts, but it was a little too late. Still, it was good that he recognized that wrong had been done.

  Wrong that still had to be avenged.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KNOWING PELLEA WOULD BE BUSY with her father for some time, Monte made a decision. He planned to make a visit to General Georges. Why not do it now?

  A deadly calm came over him as he prepared to go. This meeting with the most evil man in his country’s history was something he’d gone over a thousand times in his mind and each time there had been a different scenario, a different outcome. Which one would he choose? It didn’t matter, really. They all ended up with the General mortally wounded or already dead.

  The fact that his own survival might be in doubt in such an encounter he barely acknowledged and didn’t worry about at all. His destiny was already set and included a confrontation with the General. That was just the way it had to be.

  He strode down the hallways with confidence. He knew where the cameras were and he avoided them with ease. One of Leonardo’s compadres had pointed out the General’s suite to him as they’d carried Leonardo past it, and he went there now.

  Breaking into the room was a simple matter. There were no guards and the lock was a basic one. He’d learned this sort of thing as a teenager and it had stood him in good stead many times over the years.

  Quietly, he slipped into the darkened room. He could hear the General snoring, and he went directly into his bedroom and yanked back the covers on his bed, ready to counter any move the older man made, whether he pulled out a gun or a cell phone.

  But the man didn’t move. He slept on. He seemed to have none of the effete elegance his son wore so proudly. Instead, he was large and heavy-set, but strangely amorphous, like a sculpture that had begun to melt back into a lump of clay.

  “Wake up,” Monte ordered. “I want to talk to you.”

  No response. Monte moved closer and touched the dictator. Nothing changed.

  He glanced at the things on the bedside table. Bottles of fluid and a box of hypodermic needles sat waiting. His heart sank and he turned on the light and looked at the General again.

  His eyes were open. He was awake.

  The man was drugged. He lay, staring into space, a mere burnt-out shell of the human being he had once been. There wasn’t much left. Monte realized that he could easily pick up a pillow and put it over the General’s face…and that would be that. It would be a cinch. No problem at all. There wasn’t an ounce of fight left in his enemy.

  He stood staring down at the General for a long, long time and finally had to admit that he couldn’t do it. He’d always thought he would kill Georges Granvilli if he found him. But now that he’d come face to face with him, he knew there was nothing left to kill. The man who had murdered his parents and destroyed his family was gone. This thing that was left was hardly even human.

  Killing Georges Granvilli wouldn’t make anything any better. He would just be a killer himself if he did it. He wasn’t worth killing. The entire situation wasn’t worth pursuing.

  Slowly, Monte walked away in disgust.

  He got back to the courtyard just moments before Pellea arrived. He thought about telling her where he’d been and what he’d seen, but he decided against it. There was no point in putting more ugliness in her thoughts right now. He could at least spare her that.

  He was sitting by the fountain in the twilight atmosphere created by all the tiny fairy lights in her shrubbery when she came hurrying in through the gate.

  “Monte?” she asked softly, then came straight for him like a swooping bird. As she reached him, she seized his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips, hard.

  “You’ve got to go,” she said urgently, tears in her eyes. “Go now, quickly, before they come for you.”

  “What have you heard?” he asked her, reaching to pull her down into his lap so that he could kiss her sweet lips once more.

  “It’s not what I’ve heard,” she told him, snuggling in closely. “It’s what I know. It’s only logic. When all this chaos dies down and they begin to put two and two together, they’ll come straight here looking for you. And you know what they’ll find.”

  He searched her dark eyes, loving the way her long lashes made soft shadows on her cheeks. “Then we’d better get the heck out of here,” he said calmly.

  “No.” She shook her head and looked away. “You’re going. I’m staying.”

  He grimaced, afraid she still didn’t understand the consequences of staying. “How can I leave you behind to pick up the pieces?”

  “You have to go,” she told him earnestly. She turned back to look at him, then reached up to run her fingers across the roughness of his barely visible beard, as though she just couldn’t help herself. “When Leonardo wakes up, he’s going to start asking around and trying to find out just who that man at the ball was. He’ll want to know all about you and where you’ve been staying. And this time, they won’t leave my chambers alone. They’ll search with a fine-tooth comb and any evidence that you’ve been here will be…”

  Her voice trailed off as she began to face the unavoidable fact that she was in as much danger as he was. She looked at him, eyes wide.

  He was just thinking the same thing. It was torture to imagine leaving her behind. He’d turned and twisted every angle in his mind, trying to think of some way out, but the more he agonized, the more he knew there was no good answer. Unless she just gave up this obsession with staying with her father, what could he do to make sure she was protected while he was gone?

  Nothing. Nothing at all.

  He did have one idea, but he rejected it right away. And yet, it kept nagging at him. What if he showed her the tunnel to the outside? Then, if she was threatened, she could use it to escape.

  They were bound to come after her, and even if they couldn’t find any solid evidence of her ties to him,
they would have their suspicions. Luckily her position and the fact that her father was so highly placed in the hierarchy would mean the most they would do at first was place her under house surveillance—meaning she would be confined to her chambers. But if her father died, or Leonardo became insanely jealous, or something else happened, all that might fall apart. In that case, it would be important for her to have a way to escape that others didn’t know about. That was what made it so tempting to give her the information she needed.

  Still, it was crazy even to contemplate doing that. Deep down, he didn’t believe she would betray him on purpose. But what if she was discovered? What if someone saw her? His ace in the hole, his secret opening back into the castle which he and his invading force would need when he returned to claim his country back would be useless. He just couldn’t risk that. Could he?

  “And Monte,” she was saying, getting back to the subject of her thoughts. “Leonardo’s father is not a nice man.”

  “No?” Monte thought of the burned-out hulk he’d just been visiting. “What a surprise.”

  “I’m serious. Leonardo has at least some redeeming qualities. His father? None.”

  He looked at her seriously. “And do those redeeming qualities make him into a man you can stomach marrying?”

  She avoided his eyes. “Monte…”

  His arms tightened around her. “You can’t kiss me the way you just did and then talk about marrying Leonardo. It doesn’t work, Pellea. I’ve told you that before and nothing’s changed.” He kissed her again on her mouth, once, twice, three times, with quick hunger that grew more urgent with each kiss. He pulled her up hard against his strong body, her softness molding against him in a way that could quickly drive him crazy. Burying his face in her hair, he wanted to breathe her in, wanted to merge every part of her with every part of him.

  She turned in his arms, reaching up to circle his neck, arching her body into his as though she felt the same compulsion. He dropped kisses down the length of her neck and heard her make a soft moaning sound deep in her throat. That alone almost sent him over the top, and the way her small hands felt gliding under his shirt and sliding over the muscles of his back pretty much completed the effort.

  He wanted her as he’d never wanted a woman before, relentlessly, fiercely, with an insatiable need that raged through him like a hurricane. He’d felt this way about her before, but he hadn’t let her know. Now, for just a few moments, he let her feel it, let her have a hint of what rode just on the other side of his patience.

  She could have been shocked. She could have considered his ardor a step too far and drawn back in complete rejection. But as she felt his passion overtaking him and his desire for her so manifest, she accepted it with a willingness of her own. She wanted him, too. His marriage of the emotional need for her with the physical hunger was totally in tune with her own reactions.

  But this wasn’t the time. Resolutely, she pushed him back before things went too far.

  He accepted her lead on it, but he had to add one thing as she slipped out of his arms.

  “You belong to me,” he said fiercely, his hand holding the back of her head like a globe. “Leonardo can’t have you.”

  She tried to shake her head. “I’m going to marry him,” she insisted, and though her voice was mournful, she sounded determined. “I’ve told you that from the moment you came today. I don’t know why you won’t listen.”

  This would be so much easier if she could tell him the truth, but that was impossible. How could he understand that she needed Leonardo even more than he needed her? She was caught in a web. If she didn’t marry Leonardo, she would be considered an outcast in Ambrian traditional society.

  Out-of-wedlock births were not uncommon, but they were considered beyond the pale. Once you had a baby out of wedlock, you could never be prominent in society. You would always have the taint of bad behavior about you. No one would trust your judgment and everyone would slightly despise you.

  It wasn’t fair, but it was the way things were.

  He held her in a curiously stiff manner that left her feeling distinctly uncomfortable.

  “You don’t love Leonardo,” he said. He’d said it before, but she didn’t seem to want to accept it and act upon the fact. Maybe he should say it again and keep saying it until she realized that some things were hard, basic truths that couldn’t be denied or swept under the rug.

  She pulled away from him and folded her arms across her chest as though she were feeling a frost.

  “I hate to repeat a cliché,” she said tartly, “but here goes. What’s love got to do with it?”

  He nodded, his face twisted cynically. “So you admit this is a royal contract sort of wedding. A business deal.”

  “A power deal is more like it. Our union will cement the power arrangements necessary to run this country successfully.”

  “And you still think he’ll want you, even if he begins to suspect…”

  “I told you, love isn’t involved. It’s a power trade, and he wants it as much as I need it.”

  “Need it?” He stared at her. “Why do you ‘need’ it?”

  She closed her eyes and shook her head. “Maybe I put it a little too strongly,” she said. “I just meant… Well, you know. For my father and all.”

  He wasn’t sure he bought that. There was something else here, something she wasn’t telling him. He frowned, looking at her narrowly. He found it hard to believe that she would prefer that sort of thing to a love match. But then, he hadn’t offered her a love match, had he? He hadn’t even offered her a permanent friendship. So who was he to complain? And yet, he had to. He had to stop this somehow.

  “Okay, I see the power from Leonardo’s side,” he said, mulling it over. “But where do you get yours?”

  She rose and swayed in front of him, anger sparking from her eyes. She didn’t like being grilled this way, mostly because she didn’t have any good answers.

  “For someone who wants to be ruler of Ambria, you don’t know much about local politics, do you?”

  He turned his hands palms-up. “If you weren’t such a closed society, maybe I could be a bit more in the know,” he pointed out.

  She considered that and nodded reluctantly. “That’s a fair point. Okay, here’s the deal. Over the years, there have been many factions who have—shall we say—strained under the Granvilli rule for various reasons. A large group of dissenters, called the Practicals, have been arguing that our system is archaic and needs updating. For some reason they seem to have gravitated toward my father as their symbolic leader.”

  Monte grunted. “That must make life a bit dodgy for your father,” he noted.

  “A bit. But he has been invaluable to the rulers and they don’t dare do anything to him. And anyway, the Practicals would come unglued if they did.”

  “Interesting.”

  “The Practicals look to me as well. In fact, it may just be a couple of speeches I gave last year that set them in our direction, made them think we were kindred souls. So in allying himself with me, Leonardo hopes to blunt some of that unrest.”

  He gazed at her in admiration and surprise. “Who knew you were a mover and a shaker?” he said.

  She actually looked a bit embarrassed. “I’m not. Not really. But I do sympathize with many of their criticisms of the way things are run. Once I marry Leonardo, I hope to make some changes.”

  Was that it? Did she crave the power as much as her father did? Was it really all a bid for control with her? He found that hard to believe, but when she said these things, what was he to think?

  He studied her for another moment, then shrugged. “That’s what they all say,” he muttered, mostly to himself.

  She was tempted to say something biting back, but she held her tongue. There was no point in going on with this. They didn’t have much more time together and there were so many other things they could be talking about.

  “Have you noticed that so far, no one seems to know who you really are
?” she pointed out. As long as they didn’t know who he was, his freedom might be imperiled, but his life wouldn’t be. And if they should somehow realize who it was they had in their clutches… She hated to think what they might do.

  “No, they don’t, do they?” He frowned, not totally pleased with that. “How did you know, anyway? From the other time, I mean.”

  “You told me.” She smiled at him, remembering.

  “Oh. Did I?” That didn’t seem logical or even realistic. He never told anyone.

  “Yes, right from the first.” She gave him a flirtatious look. “Right after I saved you from the guards, you kissed me and then you said, ‘You can tell everyone you’ve been kissed by the future king of Ambria. Consider yourself blessed.’”

  “I said that?” He winced a bit and laughed softly. “I guess you might be right about me having something of an ego problem.”

  “No kidding.” She made a face. “Maybe it goes with being royal or something.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.” After all, he hadn’t blown his cover all these years—except, it seemed, with her. “I think I do pretty well. Don’t you think I blend in nicely with the average Joes?”

  She shook her head, though there was a hint of laughter in her eyes. “Are you crazy? No, you do not blend in, as you so colorfully put it. Look at the way you carry yourself. The arrogance. There’s no humility about you.”

  “No humility?” He was offended. “What are you talking about? I’m probably the most humble guy you would ever meet.”

  She made a sound of deprecation. “A little self-awareness would go a long way here,” she noted as she looked him over critically. “But I could see that from the start. It was written all over you. And yet, I didn’t kick you out as I should have.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Their gazes met and held. “But we did have an awfully good weekend, didn’t we?”