True bewilderment sharpened the angles of his face.
“It’s a pretty common practice in my world.”
He leaned against the chair back, clearly amazed. “So you’re really a princess? Like real royalty?”
Reality was slowly sinking in.
“Yes.”
“And being a princess is the reason you said you couldn’t work? That you couldn’t have a career?”
“That’s right.” He was thinking back over their time together, fitting together the puzzle. “I can volunteer all I want. But my taking a real job would be seen in my country as displacing someone who truly needs that job.”
His head tilted. “Do you live in a castle?”
She grinned. “A massive one, made of stone and complete with turrets. Although much of it now has been converted into a museum where our people can come and see the accomplishments we’ve made throughout history. Still, though, our living quarters are quite spacious. I have a nice suite of rooms all to myself. You’d probably call it more of an apartment, I guess.”
“Do you actually wear a crown?”
“No crown.” One corner of her mouth quirked. “But I do have a diamond tiara that I wear to public functions. It was my great-grandmother’s. Yvonne, my sister, talked Father into having a new one made for her, and it’s a pretty elaborate headpiece. But I’m happy with great-grandma’s tiara. However, I don’t wear it often.”
“A princess,” he murmured under his breath.
Yes, the idea really was sinking in.
“But you didn’t call your father a king. You called him Prince something or other.”
Prince something or other? Wouldn’t that just infuriate her father? Catherine stifled the bubble of laughter gathering at the back of her throat.
“Prince Wilhelm,” she provided. “Lextanya has a conglomeration of complicated and ancient laws that connect us to Lantanya. The King of Lantanya—that would be my cousin Max—is the actual sovereign head of state of both islands. But my father is acting chief of state whenever Max isn’t actually in Lextanya.”
“Ah, so your father is like Prince John in Robin Hood?”
She laughed. “The evil Prince John—”
“I meant no disrespect,” he rushed to say.
“I know you didn’t.” Catherine thought a moment, then she said, “I think Father would rather be compared to Prince Rainier the Third of Monaco. Both men are monarchs. They make the laws along with their counsels, they rule the land and the people, but they’ll never hold the title of king.”
Riley sat quietly, taking it all in. When he tipped up his chin, she could tell his mind was in utter turmoil once again.
“Well, how does it work?” he asked. “The marriage arranging, I mean. It seems strange to me. How do royals go about finding husbands for their daughters? Come to think of it, is the arranging done only for daughters, or for sons, too? Are the arrangements made with the, um, prospective groom’s parents or with the man, himself? Do you get to have any say in who is chosen? And why now? I mean, is there some kind of law that says you have to be married by a certain age? And if you don’t do as you’re told, is there some terrible consequence you must face? And—”
“Wait, wait.” The query avalanche made her chuckle. She’d have to take this one question at a time. “First off, the idea isn’t all that odd. All royals have arranged marriages for themselves and for their children at one time or another throughout history. It was—and continues to be—a means of elevating not just your family, but your entire country. After all, a marriage can make or break an entire nation. But the custom is changing, albeit slowly. Some royals have stopped the practice altogether. It depends a great deal, I think, on the open-mindedness of past and present generations. And their willingness to, um, keep up with the times.” Her mouth twisted as she added, “Obviously the von Husden family—at least, my branch of it—has remained all too provincial. It doesn’t help a bit that my father is a complete control freak. You wouldn’t believe the pressure he’s been putting on me lately. And we can’t forget the Caslow diamond. Étienne’s family owns it, and they’ve offered it to my father in exchange for my hand in marriage.”
Realizing she was getting off on a tangent, she reeled herself in. “Anyway, the custom of choosing a mate is based on many unwritten rules, and those rules can vary for each kingdom. My father can’t really force me to marry anyone—” she winced “—I think. You have to understand that this is a way of life for me. Marrying a man, giving birth to ‘an heir and a spare’ is simply my fate.”
She lifted one shoulder. “My father has been orchestrating a match with one man or another ever since I turned twenty-one. I’ve come up with one excuse after the other to refuse the arrangements. But time is running out. And if he were to actually announce my official engagement—which he is threatening to do come Sunday—I don’t see a way to get out of the commitment without causing my father, my whole family, a huge amount of embarrassment.”
“Why now, though?” he repeated. “If he’s been pressing you for years, and you’ve been avoiding it for years, why is there such urgency now?”
“It’s Yvonne, my sister. She’s agreed to a match.” Catherine tucked her bottom lip between her teeth for a moment. “But she’s younger than I. Being the oldest, I have to marry first. It’s protocol. One of those unwritten rules. But this one is strict. There’s no getting around it. Yvonne has been waiting for nearly a year. She’s pressuring Father, and Father is pressuring me. He expects me to be on that plane tonight. There’s a party planned for Saturday night, and an engagement luncheon set for Sunday.”
“You’re really going to go through with this?”
Catherine thought about her phone conversation with her father, recalled the sound of his voice. “I think I’ve pushed my father as far as he can be pushed.”
“And this man you’re to marry…this Étienne. Have you even met him?”
She nodded. “The world I live in might be opulent by your standards, but it’s fairly small, and the people are few who travel in the same circles as…”
“As royalty?” he provided.
Her head dipped. “It sounds so arrogant and pretentious.” She didn’t like thinking she was either of those things.
“I’ve met him,” she forced herself to continue. “But I don’t know him well.”
“How is he going to feel when he discovers that you’re no longer—” He cut off the remainder of his sentence. He tried again. “That you and I—”
Again, he was unable to put his thought into words, but that was all right. Catherine knew well enough what he meant.
She shrugged. She didn’t know the answer to Riley’s question. And she didn’t care, really.
“If he expected to marry a virtuous woman,” she commented dryly, “then I think he should have been a little more discreet in his own behavior, if you know what I mean.”
Riley shot her a knowing look. “He’s got a reputation? He’s a womanizer?”
Her brows arched. “He’s known far and wide.”
The idea seemed to trouble him, but he didn’t say more.
Finally, he said, “My God, Catherine. You’re a von Husden. With an honest-to-goodness royal title.”
Ah, she thought. The idea wasn’t only sinking in, he was actually getting used to it.
His dark eyes leveled on her. “You don’t want to marry this man.”
He wasn’t really asking. He knew her well for having known her such a short time.
She quietly told him, “I can’t see any way out of it. It’s what’s expected of me.”
Riley heaved a sigh as he scrubbed his fingers over his jaw. “The only good solution I can see to your problem happens to be the simplest one.”
Solution? To suggest this was a problem with a good solution inferred that she had a choice in the matter. She’d lived her whole life with the idea that the very nature of who and what she was left her with no options whatsoever.
“I thought avoiding the whole sordid mess for as long as possible was the best solution I could hope for,” she muttered. “The problem can’t be avoided any longer.”
“Sure it can.”
Catherine stared at him.
“Just don’t marry him.”
Eleven
The look on Catherine’s face convinced Riley that she thought he’d just made the most outlandish and rebellious suggestion in history. The idea wasn’t in the least bizarre from where he was sitting. But he guessed it would be pretty hard for someone in her position to contemplate becoming a rebel.
A princess! He could hardly wrap his mind around the thought. The woman he’d been seeing, the woman he’d slept with was a royal.
In a flash, his thoughts turned inward, to last night.
Having her naked body curled up next to him had been one hell of a way to wake up. The warm, womanly scent of her had filled his nostrils, and her hair had draped across his chest. The soft rhythm of her breathing had been calming. Like gentle music soothing his soul.
And then the wonder filling him had escalated when he remembered the awesome moments they’d spent making love. Catherine had rocked him to the core. She’d responded to him as if his touch contained a potent magic that carried her off to euphoria. The melodious moans that had issued from her luscious lips had driven him mad with need.
His mouth had gone dry just lying there thinking about it. It went dry again right now.
But then he recalled the instant he’d entered her. Pain had seemed to spear through her, and she’d gasped. He’d gone still, recognizing instantly what had been happening. The hazy passion had cleared in that instant, and he’d been prepared to stop right there and then. But she’d urged him onward. She’d crooned to him, stroked him with velvety fingers, kissed him with that searing mouth. And he’d surrendered to the desire surging through him, through them both.
Realizing what he’d done, what he’d taken from Catherine, had turned that wonderful, sleepy moment into a horrific recollection. Who the hell was he to take what she’d been keeping safe from all others for so long?
Yes, she’d coaxed him along, urged him on. But that didn’t matter. She was an innocent. Her virginity was proof of that. She was inexperienced in such matters. He should have had the strength to stop. He should have crawled out of her bed, gotten himself dressed and left her hotel room.
But he hadn’t.
Anger directed nowhere but at himself had begun to roil and seethe. Finally, he’d slid from beneath the sheets and had searched around for the clothes they had tossed hither and yon.
Catherine had awakened, seemingly unaware of his anguish. He’d gotten out of there as quickly as possible.
Then he’d arrived at the clinic, and his anger had been further whipped up by David Graham. The man’s discriminatory management style was going to get him into big trouble one day. And Riley hadn’t minced words when he’d told Dr. Graham just that.
Riley felt doubly guilty for leveling all that fury on Catherine when she’d shown up. He’d had no right to do it, and it wasn’t as if he were really angry with her. He’d been the one in the wrong.
However, like a pin pricking a balloon, she’d taken all the wind—and anger—out of him when she’d disclosed her mind-boggling revelation.
A princess!
The idea continued to astound him.
Her blue eyes had clouded with such vulnerability when she had related her predicament that Riley had wanted desperately—once he’d finally wrapped his brain around the whole concept—to help her find a way out of her terrible fate.
What exactly had he meant when he’d blurted out the suggestion that she defy her father by not marrying the man who’d been chosen for her?
Come on, Riley, a voice in the back of his brain jeered, why don’t you just fess up? You’d love to become Catherine’s soldier of fortune, her shining knight. You’d love to rush in and rescue her from this awful dilemma.
How? By carrying her off to some fantasyland where she would be free of worry and strife forevermore?
What whimsical malarkey!
Whimsical or not, he could easily see them together. Hell, he’d love to wake up every morning next to Catherine! What man wouldn’t?
But if he contemplated being with her, seriously, then that meant he must also contemplate telling her the full truth about himself and the things he’d done.
That would be impossible.
He wasn’t a soldier of anything. And he sure as hell was no shining knight. He was simply an ex-offender who was striving to rise above his tainted past.
How would Catherine—or worse yet, her family—react to that bit of news?
Well, they wouldn’t get the chance to react. Not if he had any say in the matter. And he had all the say, he suddenly realized. Because he intended to see to it that Catherine would never find out.
Evidently, the lovely Catherine was unable to come up with a response to his suggestion. She sat on the couch looking as tense as a canary in a room full of tomcats.
Riley suddenly felt as if he’d overstepped his bounds. In fact, the advice he’d offered now seemed too simplistic, made it seem as if he thought her situation was easily avoided. And he didn’t think that at all. He couldn’t imagine the anguish she must be experiencing.
Little by little, the very air seemed to congeal with awkwardness.
The phone rang, and simultaneously there was a knock on Riley’s door. An orderly poked his head into the office.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Dr. Lassen told me you’re taking over for her today,” the elderly gentleman said to Riley.
Rising to his feet, Riley said, “Yes, I am.”
“I’ve got several requisition forms that need signing. I can’t order supplies until I get a signature.”
“I’ll be right there.” Riley glanced at Catherine once they were alone. Over the ringing of the phone, he said, “I’m sorry, but I promised Faye I’d—”
“I understand.” She stood.
Riley couldn’t let things end like this. “I’d like to see you this evening before you go. Would you have dinner with me tonight?”
She flinched as the phone rang a third time. She nodded. “I’d like that,” she said, backing toward the door.
The fourth ring of the phone had Riley jerking the receiver to his ear and barking a none-too-pleasant greeting. He was barely aware of what the caller was saying as he watched Catherine disappear from his office.
“Well, don’t think just because you’re a princess,” Faye said dryly, “that I intend to treat you any differently.”
Catherine laughed. “That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”
She was amazed by how well Faye took the news. Why, the woman barely batted an eye.
“You’ve told Riley?”
Catherine nodded. “This morning.”
The two women were enjoying a quick cup of tea late Friday afternoon in their favorite café around the corner from the clinic. Because Faye had been busy in the lab with Dr. Richie all day, she hadn’t been able to make the lunch date with Catherine, so the women had arranged to meet as soon as Faye had finished at the lab for the day.
“Ah, so that was the problem,” Faye said. “The chill radiating off Riley was so bad when we met in the hall that he could have been crowned the ice king.”
Pursing her lips self-consciously, Catherine decided not to correct Faye regarding why Riley was upset when they met in the hallway earlier today.
“So he didn’t take the news well?”
The porcelain handle of her teacup was cool against Catherine’s fingers. She didn’t want to go into why Riley had been so curt when they’d all met up that morning. “Well, he didn’t take it as well as you, I must say. He was overwhelmed. He had tons of questions.”
Faye swirled sugar into her tea with a spoon. “Oh, there’s plenty I’m dying to know. But I don’t want to look like a commoner.”
The snort Faye purpo
sely emitted was most unladylike, and it made Catherine laugh.
“Besides,” Faye continued, “the way I figure it, we’re going to be little ol’ blue-haired ladies together, so I have the rest of my life to ask questions.”
Catherine felt a rush of relief, and she reached over to slide her fingertips over her friend’s forearm.
“I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear you say that,” she murmured, suddenly serious.
Bewilderment knit Faye’s delicate brow. “Would you stop that? What did you think? I would stop being your friend because…”
Evidently, Catherine’s expression caused Faye to let the rest of her thought wither away.
“Catherine?”
Catherine sighed. “I know it’s probably hard to imagine, but so many people have ulterior motives.” She pressed her lips together. “Let’s just say that it’s hard to find friends. True friends.”
Faye set down her cup and covered Catherine’s hand with her own. “I’m a true friend, Catherine.”
The women basked in the heartrending moment, and Catherine feared she was going to tear up.
Finally, Faye said, “Are you really going to marry this Étienne?”
“I don’t know,” Catherine groaned. She leaned back in her chair, tucked her hands in her lap. “If it turns out that I have to, would you be my maid of honor?”
“No way.”
Faye’s flat refusal shocked Catherine. Faye just shrugged.
“Didn’t we just establish that I’m your true friend? My conscience wouldn’t allow me to stand in some church, wearing some god-awful bridesmaid gown, knowing you were doing something you don’t want to do.”
Catherine smiled warmly. Then she whispered, “I was saving the god-awful gown for my sister.”
They shared a chuckle.
“I agree with Riley about this, Catherine,” Faye told her. “Don’t do it.”
Catherine rested her elbow on the table, her chin on her fist, worry over what she should or shouldn’t do crowding her thoughts. She wished she had the answer. Sure it was fun to dream up all sorts of fairy tales. But reality was reality. There was no getting around it. Étienne was in Lextanya waiting for her return. And her father expected her to announce her engagement this very weekend.
Royal Seduction Page 16
