by Cara Colter
Hadn’t she known this for weeks? In her heart, with her sense of knowing him growing? That the prince was actually the opposite of how he was portrayed by the press?
“And then you graduated to being the Prince Heartbreaker,” Meredith said.
“Tiffany came along later, and I was well aware it was time. Very subtle pressure was being brought on me to find a suitable partner. I had been deeply hurt by Francine’s choice, even as I commended her for making it. At some level I think I was looking for a woman who was the antithesis of her, which Tiffany certainly was. Bubbly. Beautiful. Light. Lively. Tiffany Wells was certain of her womanly wiles in this seductive, confident way that initially I was bowled over by.”
There were few men who wouldn’t be, Meredith thought, with just a touch of envy.
“I was a mature man. She was a mature woman. Eventually, we did what mature adults do,” he admitted. “I’m ashamed to say for the longest time I mistook the sexual sizzle between us as love. Still, we were extremely responsible. Double protected.
“But as that sexual sizzle had cooled to an occasional hiss, I realized it was really the only thing we had in common.”
“She bored you!” Meredith deduced.
He looked pained. “Her constant chatter about nothing made my head hurt. I was feeling increasingly disillusioned and she, unfortunately, seemed increasingly enamored.
“I told her it was over. She told me she was pregnant.”
Meredith gasped, but he held her hand tighter, looked at her deeply. “No, Meredith, it is not your story. I did not abandon a pregnant woman.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
PRINCE KIERNAN TOLD Meredith the rest of the story haltingly. After overcoming the initial shock of Tiffany’s announcement he had weighed his options with the sense of urgency that the situation demanded.
He had done what he felt was the honorable thing, a man prepared to accept full responsibility for his moment of indiscretion.
His engagement had been announced, and they had set a date for the very near future, so that Tiffany’s pregnancy would not be showing at the wedding. The press had gone into a feeding frenzy. Tiffany had appeared to adore the attention as much as he was appalled by it. She was “caught” out shopping for her gown and flowers, having bachelorette celebrations with her friends, even looking at bassinettes.
“When we were together, we could not have one moment of privacy. The cameras were always there, we were chased, questions were shouted, the press always seemed to know where we were. Now, uncharitably, I wonder if she didn’t tip them off. But regardless, our lives became helicopters flying over the palace, the yacht, the polo fields, men with cameras up trees and in shrubs.
“On this point, Meredith, you were absolutely correct in what you said to me on the day we began dance practice. Romance is glorious entertainment. It sells newspapers and magazines and it ups ratings. Interest in us, as a couple, was nothing short of insatiable.”
“How horrible!” Meredith said.
“You’d think,” he said dryly. “Tiffany loved every moment of it. For me, it felt as if I was riding a runaway train that I couldn’t stop and couldn’t get off of.”
“But you did stop it. But what of the baby? In all the publicity that followed, I never once heard she was pregnant.”
“Because she wasn’t.”
“What?”
“Before that incident it had never occurred to me that a person—particularly one who claimed to love you—could be capable of a deception of such monstrous proportions as that. Luckily for me, the truth was revealed before we were married. Unluckily, it was the night before the wedding.”
He went on to say a loyal servant, assigned to Tiffany, had come in obvious distress late on the eve of the wedding to tell him something that under normal circumstances he would have found embarrassing. But the fact that pregnant Tiffany was having her period had saved him. Despite the lateness of the hour, he had confronted Tiffany immediately, and the wedding had been cancelled.
But now the whole world saw him as the man who had coldheartedly broken a bride’s heart on the eve of all her dreams coming true. The press seemed tickled by the new role they had assigned him, Prince Heartbreaker.
Tiffany, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the attention as much as ever, photographed often, sunglasses in place, shoulders slumped, enthusiastically playing the part of the party who was suffering the most and who had been grievously wronged.
“Why on earth wouldn’t you let the world know what and who she really is?” Meredith demanded, shocked at how protective she felt of him. “Why are you taking the brunt of the whole world’s disappointment that the fairy tale has fallen apart?”
“Now you sound like Adrian.” He paused before he spoke. “I saw something in Tiffany’s desperate attempt to capture me that was not evil. It was very sad and very sick. I glimpsed a frightening fragility behind her mask of supreme confidence.
“How fragile only a very few people know. Tiffany had attempted suicide after I uncovered her deception.”
“It sounds like more manipulation to me,” Meredith said angrily.
“Regardless, I was not blameless. I gave in to temptation, let go of control when I most needed to keep it. I put Tiffany in a position where she hoped for more than what I was prepared to offer, I put myself in a position of extreme vulnerability.
“I don’t think Tiffany could have handled her deception being made public, the scorn that would have been heaped on her.”
“She certainly seems to handle it being heaped on you rather well. Her total lack of culpability enrages me, Kiernan.”
He shrugged. “I’ve been putting up with the attacks of the press since I was a young man. I’m basically indifferent to what they have to say.”
“You protected her, too. Even though she is not the least deserving of your protection!”
He shrugged it off. “Don’t read too much into it, Meredith. I’m no hero.”
“Just a prince,” she said and was rewarded with his laughter.
“Just a man,” he said. “Underneath it all, just a man.”
But a good one, she thought. A man with a sense of decency and honor. A man who had not abandoned the woman he thought carried his child.
The man of her dreams. So, so easy to fall in love with him.
A steward came and whispered in his ear.
“I’m so sorry. That’s the call I have to take.”
The truth? She was glad for a moment alone to sort through the new surge of emotion she felt at his innate decency, at his deeply ingrained sense of honor.
“Don’t think anything of it,” she assured him. She didn’t mind. She wanted to sit here and savor his trust and the world he had opened to her. But she badly needed distance, too.
The steward brought her a refill for her coffee, the day’s paper, and a selection of magazines.
After staring pensively at the sea for a long time, she needed any kind of distraction to stop the whirling of her thoughts. She picked up the paper.
In the entertainment section she stopped dead.
There was a picture of society beauty Brianna Morrison under the headline Prince Heartbreaker’s New Victim?
But Miss Morrison looked like anything but a victim! She was hugging a gossamer green dress to her, her choice for the Blossom Week Ball, the event that would culminate the week’s celebrations.
“I couldn’t believe it when I was asked,” she gushed to the interviewer. “It is like a dream come true.”
It seemed something went very still in Meredith. She was sharing the prince’s yacht tonight. But he had been very clear. This was farewell.
The prince giving the peasant girl a final gift of himself before moving back to his real life.
But he had asked another woman to the ball.
Well, of course he had. Meredith had always known she didn’t belong in this world. Brianna Morrison’s family was old money, the Morrisons owned factories and businesses,
real estate, and shipping yards.
And tonight he had said pressure, subtle or not, was being brought on him to find a suitable partner. Brianna was beautiful and accomplished. Her family’s interests and the interests of the Chatams had been linked for centuries.
And then there was Meredith Whitmore. A dance instructor, more devoted to her charity than her business, a woman with a hard past.
No, the prince had decided to give his dance instructor a lovely night out.
A small token of appreciation. He had never claimed it was anything more than a way of saying goodbye to her and the world they had shared for a few light-filled days.
She had been crazy to encourage his confidences, some part of her hoping and praying she was in some way suitable for his world and that he would see it.
She set down the paper and called the steward. “Could we go back to Chatam, please? I’m not feeling well.”
In seconds, Kiernan was at her side.
“I hope you didn’t end your phone call on my behalf,” she said coolly, not wanting to see the concern on his face, deliberately looking to the sea that was beginning to chop under a strengthening wind.
“Of course I did! You’re not feeling well? It’s probably the roughening sea, but I can have my physician waiting at the dock.”
“No, it’s not that serious,” she said, trying not to melt at his tender concern, trying to steel herself against it. “I’m sure it is the sea. I just need to go home.”
“I’ll give the order to get underway immediately.” He rose, scanned her face, and frowned.
Then he saw the open newspaper.
She leaned forward to close it, but he stayed her hand, bent over and scanned the headline.
“You read this?” he asked her.
She said nothing, tilted her chin proudly, refused to look at him.
“Is this why you’re suddenly not feeling well? It was arranged months ago,” he said quietly.
“It’s none of my business. I’m well aware I don’t belong in your world, Prince Kiernan. That this has been a nice little treat for a peasant you’ve taken a liking to.”
“It is not that I don’t think you belong in my world,” he said with a touch of heat. “That’s not it at all! And I don’t think of you as a peasant.”
“Of course not,” she said woodenly.
“Meredith, you don’t understand the repercussions of being seen publicly with me.”
“I might use the wrong fork?”
“Stop it.”
“I thought this was such a nice outfit. You probably noticed it was off the rack.”
“I noticed no such thing. It’s a gorgeous outfit. You are gorgeous.”
“Apparently. Gorgeous enough to see you privately.”
“Meredith, you need to understand the moment you are seen with me, publicly, your life will never be the same again. Taking you to that ball would be like throwing you into a pail of piranhas. The press would have started to rip you apart. You’ve told me some shattering secrets about yourself. Do you want those secrets on all the front pages providing titillation for the mob? I won’t do that to you.”
“Of course,” she said, “You’re protecting me. That’s what you do.”
“I am trying to protect you,” he said. “A little appreciation might be in order.”
“Appreciation? You deluded fool.”
He looked stunned by that and that made her happy in an angry sort of way so she kept going.
“You’ve chosen women in the past that build you up with their weakness, who need their big strong prince to protect them, but I’m not like that.”
“I’ve chosen weak women?” he sputtered.
“It’s obvious.”
“I’m sorry I ever told you a personal thing about myself.”
She was sorry he had, too. Because it had made her hope for things she couldn’t have. She couldn’t stop herself now if she wanted to.
“I’m a girl from Wentworth. Do you think there’s anything in your world that could frighten me? I’ve walked in places where I’ve had a knife hidden under my coat. I’ve been hungry, for God’s sake. And so exhausted from working and raising a baby I couldn’t even hold my feet under me. I’ve buried my child. And my mother. Do you think anything in your cozy, pampered little world could frighten me? The press? I could handle the press with both my hands tied behind my back.
“Don’t you dare pretend that’s about protecting me. Your Royal Highness, you are protecting yourself. You don’t want anyone to know about tonight. Or about me. I’m the sullied girl from the wrong side of the tracks. You’re right. They would dig up my whole sordid past. What an embarrassment to you! To be romantically linked to the likes of me!”
“I told you everything there is to know about me,” he said quietly, “and you would reach that conclusion?”
“That’s right!” she snapped, her anger making her feel so much more powerful than her despair. “It’s all about you!”
She banished everything in her that was weak. There would be plenty of time for crying when she got home.
After the trust they had shared, the intimacy of their dinner, the growing friendship of the last few days, this was exactly what was needed.
Distance.
Anger.
Distrust.
And finally, when she got home, then there would be time for the despair that could only be brought on from believing, even briefly, in unrealistic dreams.
But when she got home, she realized she had done it on purpose, created that terrible scene on purpose, driven a wedge between them on purpose.
Because she had done the dumbest thing of her whole life, even dumber than believing Michael Morgan was a prince.
She had come to love a real prince. And she did not think she could survive another love going wrong.
And the truth? How could it possibly go right?
“What is wrong with you?” Adrian asked Kiernan the next day.
“What do you mean by that?”
“Kiernan! You’re not yourself. You’re impatient. You’re snapping at people. You’re canceling engagements.”
“What engagement?”
“You were supposed to bring Brianna Morrison to the ball. The worst thing you could have done is cancelled that. One more tearstained face attached to your name. She’s been getting ready for months. Prince Heartbreaker rides again.”
“Is that a direct quote from the tabs?”
“No. That is so much kinder than the tabs. They’re having a heyday at your expense. This morning they showed Brianna Morrison throwing her ball dress off a bridge into Chatam River.”
“Make sure she’s charged with littering a public waterway.”
“Kiernan! That’s cold! You are just about the most hated man on the planet right now.”
Yes. And by the only one that mattered, too.
Adrian was watching him closely. “And there’s that look again.”
“What look?”
“I don’t know. Moody. Desperate.”
“Adrian, just leave it alone,” he said wearily.
“If something is wrong, I want to help.”
“You can’t. Not unless you can learn to dance in—” he glanced at his watch “—about four hours.”
Adrian’s eyes widened. “I should have known.”
“What?” Kiernan said. What had he inadvertently revealed?
“Dragon-heart. She’s at the bottom of this.”
Kiernan stepped in very close to his young cousin. “Don’t you ever call her that again within my hearing. Do you understand me?”
“She did something to make you so mad,” Adrian said. “I know it.”
“No, she didn’t,” Kiernan said. “I did. I did something that made me so mad. I gave my trust to the wrong person.”
Adrian was watching him, his brow drawn down in puzzlement. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “You aren’t angry. You’re in love.”
Kiernan thought it would be a
n excellent time for a vehement denial. But when he opened his mouth, the denial didn’t come out.
“With Dra— Meredith?”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s going nowhere. After I revealed my deepest truths to her do you know what she did? She called me a deluded fool!”
Adrian actually smiled.
“It’s not funny.”
“No, it’s a cause for celebration. Finally, someone who will take you to task when you need it.”
“Don’t side with her. You don’t even like her.”
“Actually, I always did like her. Immensely. She wouldn’t settle for anything less than my best. She was strong and sure of herself and intimidating as hell, but I liked her a great deal.”
“Do you know what she said to me? She said I deliberately chose weak women. What do you think about that?”
“That she’s unusually astute. Finally, someone who will tell you exactly what they think instead of filtering it through what they think you want to hear.”
“You never told me you thought my women were weak,” Kiernan said accusingly.
“Because they were heart-stoppingly beautiful. I thought that probably made up for it. I always knew you never dated anyone who would require you to be more than you were before. I thought it was your choice. That you had decided love would take a minor role in your life. Behind your duties.”
“I think I had thought that. Until I fell in love. It doesn’t accept minor roles.”
“So, you do love her!” Adrian crowed.
“It doesn’t matter. I had her to the yacht for dinner last night, and she opened the paper and saw I was escorting Brianna to the ball. She left in a temper.”
“Uh, real world to Kiernan: any woman who is having dinner with a man will be upset to find he has plans with another woman for later in the week.”
“I told her it had been planned for months.”
“Instead of I’ll cancel immediately?” Adrian shook his head and tut-tutted.
“I told her it was for her own good. She has some things in her past I don’t want the press to get their hands on. I was protecting her!”
