Claiming My Duchess

by Jessica Blake

  “Not really,” Fieldsis replied. “I want to know if you think it’s safe enough for the Crown Princess to attend, considering all of the information we’ve received in the past weeks. Do you feel comfortable with her attending?”

  I drew in a deep breath and considered my words. This was a tough spot for me to be in and I wondered if Fieldsis was aware that he was putting me into it. If I agreed with Anjou Alaine, the Minister of the Interior I distrusted, that the royal family shouldn’t attend, I was going against my uncle’s opinion. If I agreed wholeheartedly with my uncle, I’d look like a puppet to his wishes.

  “Whether or not I think she should, or will, attend is not my decision,” I finally said. “But I can say that if she’s to attend, she will be safe, and there will be enough protection in place to ensure that nothing happens.”

  I wasn’t cocky. I was just good at this sort of thing. Nothing short of an armored tank could break through the security measures I’d have in place, and even then I was pretty sure we’d have enough advanced warning to, you know, move out of the way or something.

  Fieldsis gave me a look, and I shrugged.

  “I’m not here to be an expert on intel, sir,” I said. “I don’t have access to everything you and your team do. It would be imprudent for me to make that sort of judgment call with my limited scope. All I know is that the princess will be safe no matter where she is the night of the ball.”

  Fieldsis seemed to take my answer at face value, but Minister Alaine, the woman in charge of the inner workings of the Cassian government, didn’t want to let it go.

  “What a lucky position you must be in,” she said, her eyes on her paper in front of her, but the comment directed straight at me. “To not have to have an opinion about something so critical as national security.”

  There was an uncomfortable shuffling of papers and clearing of throats, and I tapped my pen on the desk in front of me.

  “Oh, Minister Alaine, I have an opinion,” I said, trying to maintain an unconcerned air around me, but my blood pressure was rising at the smug look on the woman’s face. “But I’m giving you and this team the opportunity to secure the safety of this nation before airing it.”

  She simply sniffed at the air and looked back down at her paperwork, knowing she had overreached. There was too much disdain in her expression for me to ignore and some internal warning went off inside me that I’d need to keep a closer eye on the woman. She was incredibly concerned with people’s opinions and roles in the inner workings of the country’s decision making. Proximity to power, I realized. That was what Minister Alaine was an expert in.

  The meeting eventually concluded, and as everyone filed out, I gathered my paperwork and folio and stood.

  Just outside the door, Fieldsis was waiting for me with two pages keeping a polite distance from us as we spoke.

  The general kept his voice low when he addressed me. “I saw it on your face. You don’t trust her. Neither do I.”

  Without another word, he gave me a curt nod and turned on his heel to walk down the hallway toward the defense offices.

  Stunned, I watched his back retreating and wondered how a simple job like protecting my niece just got incredibly complicated. And dangerous.

  ***

  It was just after lunch that I was passing by the open doors of the throne room and happened to glance inside. Normally, if the room was occupied outside of the times that the king might be in there, it was a cleaning crew or a tour.

  But that day?

  That day, there was a golden retriever sitting in front of the throne and one tiny, adorable photography intern doing everything she could to get the dog to stay still long enough to snap a picture.

  “Ollie!” Iliana called to the pup who, from personal experience, I knew had the attention span of a goldfish. “Ollie, over here. Look at me, boy! Look over here!”

  From where I stood, I could see that Iliana was holding lunch meat in her hand, but the king’s dog had zero interest in it. And if it weren’t for the handler hiding behind the throne with a leash holding Ollie in place, he’d have been halfway to Belgium by now.

  Ollie, it turned out, was a goofy male dog fresh out of his puppy days and really didn’t listen to anybody but King Demetrius himself, and even that was up for debate most days.

  I wandered in quietly but didn’t try to sneak up on her, as I was certain her poor body couldn’t take another scare.

  Clearing my throat, Ollie turned first. Iliana snapped her head around to see what had caught the dog’s attention, and I didn’t miss the fact that her eyes widened just a fraction at the sight of me before she quickly turned back to what she was doing.

  I also didn’t miss the way her breathing had gotten faster, or the way she dampened her lips with her tongue. And were her hands shaking?

  “Hello,” I said, moving closer. Ollie, having known me since my arrival at the palace a few months ago, jumped free from the handler holding his leash and bounded over to where I stood.

  Iliana stood slowly and turned to face me but didn’t take a step closer.

  “Good afternoon,” she said and watched the dog handler run from behind the throne to scoop up Ollie’s leash.

  Ollie was on a mission to jump into my arms and attack my face with his giant tongue, so I knelt down in front of him and made him sit.

  “Stay,” I commanded the animal, and for a few moments at least, he listened. “What are you up to today?”

  Iliana glanced around the throne room and motioned toward Ollie. “Social media stuff. I’m taking pictures of pets today. I already finished with the guinea pigs and the hamster. Just Ollie and his brothers are left.”

  I laughed. “Good luck with that.”

  Her smile broke free, and she relaxed. “I’m getting that,” she said and motioned toward the poor dog handler. “I think I’m working these guys to death. You can totally take him back now. We can try again next week with the other two.”

  Ollie had two brothers, Ferdinand and Maximus that the king and the princess doted on. Ollie, Ferdie, and Max were palace superstars, and it seemed that, soon enough, they’d be social media stars too. It was brilliant, really, the idea to focus on the details that made the royal family human. Iliana had a keen knack for these things, it seemed.

  I cleared my throat and looked at the ground as the handler led a bouncing Ollie away through a side door, leaving Iliana and me alone. Her fidgetiness returned as soon as we were alone, and I didn’t miss the fact that she even took a small step backward and cast a look over her shoulder toward the table where her bag was.

  It was pretty clear she wanted to get out of the room quickly. But why?

  “Are you busy tomorrow night?” The question was out before I really put any thought to it, but there it was. I wanted to see Iliana. Sooner rather than later.

  Her pupils dilated. She really was scared.

  “Jenn is in town,” she said quietly. “I should probably spend time with her since she’s leaving in a couple days.”

  The excuse seemed valid enough, but with the way she was reacting, I knew it was just that — an excuse.

  “How about I get Nate to show her around town while we’re together and get her into all the venues she’d never have access to — just one evening. And you and I can have dinner.”

  Iliana looked like she’d just swallowed a bug. “Just the two of us?”

  “And maybe a llama?”

  For the briefest second, a look of hope so bright jumped into her eyes, making me feel guilty for teasing her. Then she crossed her arms over her chest. “Very funny. Why do you want to have dinner with me?”

  I studied her face. There was a wall between us that I didn’t understand.

  “Because I want to eat dinner with you,” I said, using a teasing tone. “I don’t bite.”

  A smile played on her lips. “Yes, you do.”

  I laughed. “Busted is how I believe you Americans say. Right?”

  “Yes.”
/>   I raised an eyebrow. “Yes, you’ll have dinner with me?”

  She studied my face, and it took her entirely too long to think about my question. “Okay.” She nodded, her large, pale eyes looking up at me. “What time and where?”

  “I’ll pick you up.”

  The statement was met with an immediate refusal and head shake. “No, I’ll meet you,” she said. “When and where?”

  She entered the details into the phone, and I wished her a good day, promising to see her the next evening at seven.

  In the meantime, I promised myself that I’d focus on my job. The only problem was, all I could focus on was Iliana.

  Why was she scared?

  And would it cause her to shut me out entirely?

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Iliana

  “I’ll tell him tonight,” I promised Jennifer as she sat sorting through her things. Several days had passed since I peed on that stick, and she was set to leave on the day after tomorrow. “As long as you’re okay with all this. We can just tell him no and do something for just the two of us.”

  “You need to tell him, Squeaks,” she said as she folded a t-shirt and placed it in her luggage. “And you’ve been avoiding it. I’m all for you telling him everything tonight. He deserves to know, and you deserve to have some real support when I’m gone. Plus, the things that Nate will be able to show me tonight seem pretty damn cool. No offense or anything.”

  She was half-teasing me, though the behind-the-scenes access that Nate could offer her tonight was incredibly compelling.

  Jenn didn’t want to leave me behind in Cassia — she’d made that clear since the moment we learned that I was pregnant. But she had her own final semester of graduate school to prepare for, and she’d earned herself a prestigious thesis workshop with an impossible-to-land theater director in town. She had to go. We both knew it.

  “If things are bad enough, you can always come back to San Diego,” she said. “We can find some three-bedroom place and make it work for the time being if we have to. But you need to finish your master’s, and you should at least give the man a chance to be a dad.”

  I was panicked at that last part, although either direction Sebastianos went had the option of scaring the crap out of me. In my mind, either he’d abandon me altogether, which was just depressing, or he’d take my baby from me and kick me out of the country, which was terrifying.

  I’d run through the option of telling Sebastianos nothing a few times, mostly out of panic and in jest, and my best friend had wisely counseled me not to be an asshat.

  “This is one of those big moments, girl,” she’d said when I mused about hiding myself in her luggage. “Your life is going to pivot one way or another, so maybe you should try to be in some sort of control when it happens. Or at least try to avoid turf toe and a face full of mud if things go south.”

  Such a wise smart ass my best friend was.

  So, there we were. Jenn getting a head start on her packing for her trip home and me panicking, wondering how on earth I was going to tell this man I hardly knew that we were going to have a child together in mid-February.

  ***

  “My hand is turning purple,” Jenn hissed to me as we approached the plaza where Sebastianos and Nate were waiting for us. I was clinging to Jenn like my life depended on it, and to me, it did. In about a million scenarios I played out in my head, most of them ended with me somehow managing to get thrown into a dungeon or eaten by wolves. Or even worse… having my baby ripped from my arms. “At the end of the day, he’s just a man, Squeaks. Stop being so scared of him.”

  I swallowed hard. “A man with a title and an entire division of security guards and police behind him,” I muttered, also noting this was the man who was known as The Runaway Duke for good reason. The man had literally run away from the responsibility of his royal role. Granted, he hadn’t been off drinking Mia Tias on some exotic beach. He’d been in the military, but still…

  But that wasn’t enough for what was about to unfold between us tonight, I was certain.

  Up ahead, I spotted Sebastianos as he stood beneath a giant Kermes oak tree that soared a good forty feet above him. He hadn’t seen us yet, and he was talking on his cell phone. I took the opportunity to get a good look at him, something I was mostly unable to do whenever he was close by because there were always people around.

  Sebastianos Xenakis was damn handsome, and not for the first time since finding out I was having his baby, I wondered how much his good looks would influence what our child would look like.

  I swallowed a lump against the “our child” notion, and with all my heart, wished for a more traditional route to motherhood. A doting partner. A traditional nursery. Maternity photos and baby showers.

  This whole thing was bittersweet because, as I’d gotten used to being pregnant in the first place, I’d also resigned myself to the fact that I would likely be experiencing the whole gamut of childbirth and raising alone.

  And that made me sad for a lot of reasons.

  “Chin up,” Jenn whispered as Sebastianos noticed us approaching and smiled. He ended his call and headed in our direction. “You got this.”

  I’d gone back and forth over the past twelve hours about just how I would approach the dropping of this bombshell. Was I going to just blurt it out the first chance I got? Probably not. Wait until the last possible moment? More likely than not.

  My biggest hurdle was that I didn’t know Sebastianos well enough to really segue into that sort of conversation.

  Maybe I’d say, “Like kids?” Or something along that line. To which he’d have to affirm that he did or didn’t, leaving me the opening I was looking for. Like, “Surprise, you’re going to have one!” Or worse, “Surprise, you’re going to have one anyway!”

  It just didn’t work.

  “Let go of my hand now, Squeaks,” Jenn whispered through clenched teeth, and I realized I was still holding on to her for dear life.

  Nate approached from the right, holding an envelope in his hand. Jenn noticed and asked him about it.

  “The credentials we’ll need for tonight,” he explained, and Jenn looked even more excited than before.

  She looked over at me, her eyes wide. “I’m going places that need credentials, Squeaks,” she said with all the excitement of someone given a VIP pass to the entire capital city.

  I couldn’t help but smile as she gave me an excited hug and followed Nate to his waiting car. She cast one final, weighted look at me, as if to remind me of my mission for the night. My weak smile probably wasn’t reassuring, but it was the best I could do as I panicked at the thought of her leaving me alone to deliver the news to Sebastianos.

  For his part, the poor man looked about as oblivious as could be as he gave me a warm, stomach-tilting smile.

  “You look beautiful,” he said as he offered me his arm. Being Sebastianos, he was naturally wearing a classic button-down shirt, this one black, and gray pants. He looked casual and sharp all at the same time, and I couldn’t help but look down at my little sundress and sandals and wish I’d dressed up a little more.

  “Thank you,” I said, remembering myself.

  In the distance, the center of Abingson was all café lights and cobblestone at night, and it looked straight off the set of some romantic comedy movie. There were no cars allowed in that part of the capital city after six p.m. to allow for the restaurant and nightclub crowd to maneuver safely around.

  But we didn’t head that way.

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise,” Sebastianos said, taking my hand and linking it through his elbow as we walked. My heart raced, and I was grateful that the man didn’t have superhuman hearing or he’d have picked up on the fact that my pulse was galloping now that I was touching him.

  It raced even more as I realized he was walking us toward the water. And a boat. A big boat.

  “This belonged to my father, but don’t worry, we won’t set sail. There’s just so f
ew places I can dine without causing a stir that I thought you might appreciate something more private.”

  The yacht was massive, and as we walked up the ramp, I looked down onto the water that twinkled with the lights from the city and from the boat itself.

  “It’s beautiful,” I said, taking it in before remembering I had another thing to ask before unleashing the tidal wave of news. “One thing, though.”

  He lifted a brow. “What’s that?”

  “I accidentally forgot the phone Thierry has me using in the throne room yesterday.” I didn’t tell him that whenever he was around, my brain took long, disengaging naps. “Is there any chance we can grab it before I go home tonight? I don’t want to lose it.”

  “Distracted by my dashing presence were you?” There was a gleam in Seb’s smile that was infectious, and I couldn’t help but grin back.

  “You wish,” I replied, shaking my head, but he agreed to take me to the palace later to get the phone. Since I wasn’t on the schedule for the weekend, I couldn’t just pop in like I would a normal workplace to retrieve it, and this would save me the embarrassment of needing to be admitted to the throne room on Monday morning.

  Sebastianos was surprisingly open as we talked over the meal of steak and seafood along with regional specialties with names I could barely pronounce.

  There was enough food for an army, which was good because I was suddenly starving again, and the smell of the seafood only made me hungrier, not sick.

  This whole morning sickness thing was weird. For one, because it didn’t just happen in the morning. And two, I didn’t always know what would set me off.

  “My father was the Duke of Becktonas until he died a few months ago, leaving the title and all of the responsibilities to me.”

  “Were you close?”

  He nodded. “Mostly. He wasn’t thrilled when I joined the military all those years ago because he wanted me closer to the palace, to help with those duties, but I wasn’t interested. Eventually, he warmed up to what I wanted to do with my life and was supportive.”