Royal Protocol

Royal Protocol

Christine Flynn

MILLS & BOON

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To all the wonderful ladies who helped create Penwyck.

Thanks!

Chris

CHRISTINE FLYNN

admits to being interested in just about everything, which is why she considers herself fortunate to have turned her interest in writing into a career. She feels that a writer gets to explore it all and, to her, exploring relationships—especially the intense, bittersweet or even lighthearted relationships between men and women—is fascinating.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

A dmiral Harrison Monteque moved with the silent aggression of a nuclear submarine as he strode down the gilded main hall of the royal residence. Uniformed guards snapped to attention in his wake, doors opening to allow him entry without question as he moved toward the queen’s private apartments.

Not one of those young guards made eye contact with him. A fair number held their breath. No one wanted to draw his attention for fear they weren’t standing smartly enough, weren’t looking alert enough. He wasn’t even their commander. Not directly, anyway. Yet every one of them knew that the formidable man in the impressively decorated navy-blue uniform held the respect of every officer in the military and that he demanded the best of anyone who served the crown.

The best was nothing compared to what he demanded of himself. Rumor had it that he constantly pushed his own limits, asking even more of himself than he did of others.

Lately he’d been pushing himself more than many would have thought humanly possible—had they known the pressures and responsibilities he and a handful of his peers had secretly undertaken.

For nearly two months he had lived on four hours of sleep each night. Five at best. He spent his nights poring through reams of diplomatic communiqués, stacks of ministerial requests and reports usually meant only for the eyes of the king—all to keep the government running smoothly and protect the interests of the kingdom of Penwyck’s citizens.

He spent his days in briefings with his three counterparts on the king’s Royal Elite Team—each of whom had spent the night with piles of paper of his own—and overseeing the fleets of ships, the aircraft and the fifty thousand sailors under his command.

His caffeine consumption had doubled.

So had his intake of antacids.

If he’d still smoked, he didn’t doubt that he’d be up to a couple of packs a day by now. If not before, then certainly after this morning.

Prince Owen, one of the king and queen of Penwyck’s twenty-three-year-old twin sons and a possible heir to the throne, had been kidnapped.

A note to that effect had been delivered to the royal offices two hours ago. The prince’s absence, along with the signs of struggle the guards had found in the prince’s bedroom, proved the note hadn’t been a hoax.

Harrison had been in an intelligence meeting when he’d received the call. As head of the Royal Elite Team, he had immediately ordered full security for the rest of the royal family. Those he could find, anyway. Prince Owen’s vagabond twin, Prince Dylan, was still off trekking Europe, deliberately ignoring the need for security for someone of his stature. Or perhaps escaping it. But Harrison had taken full measures to protect those he could. He’d then had the king’s personal secretary break the news of the prince’s kidnapping to the queen.

He would have told Queen Marissa himself, but there had been other security measures to implement, questions to ask, answers to demand. Aside from that, he never did well when it came to breaking upsetting news to a woman. Where females were concerned, he definitely lacked training when it came to offering emotional support.

He had no choice but to speak with her now. As he understood it, Her Majesty had been at breakfast with two of her three daughters, the Princesses Megan and Anastasia, when the note had been received. Security precautions demanded they be separated. The princesses had been escorted to their rooms on the second floor of the east wing. The queen had retired to her chamber.

The thud of Harrison’s polished black shoes echoed off the marble floor as he approached a set of carved double doors. His only hope was that she would remain as calm and serene as she always appeared to be.

A baby-faced lieutenant in the Royal Guard’s red-jacketed uniform and red beret jerked his rifle to parade rest and snapped a salute. “Admiral.”

“Lieutenant,” Harrison returned, and walked past the door the soldier held for him.

The queen’s drawing room was as ornate as the rest of the palace: ceilings and cornices were coffered and curved; walls were covered with hand-carved plaster and gilded wainscoting; the marble fireplace was graced by marble columns. Except, here rich colors of royalty gave way to frankly feminine shades of cream and yellow. Other than the pale velvet sofa framed by a sheer-curtained window, the furniture was all dainty chairs and chaises covered in silk damask and totally unsuitable for use by any male with muscle on his bones.

The secretary’s desk, tucked against a far wall, was unoccupied. A guard had called ahead, so they’d known he was coming. The queen’s personal secretary, however, the gray-haired and very proper Mrs. Ferth, was nowhere to be seen.

Impatient at the thought of having to wait for the woman to announce him, he started back for the guard. He’d barely turned when the tall, carved doubled doors at the far side of the room swung inward. A slender woman in a pale-pink wool suit, her gleaming blond hair restrained in a tight twist, stepped out and closed the doors behind her.

Impatience turned to an inward groan.

No one saw the queen without going through her secretary or her lady-in-waiting. With the secretary obviously unavailable, that left him stuck with the woman he’d come to think of as the ice maiden, Lady Gwendolyn Corbin.

“Lady Corbin,” he said, acknowledging her with a nod of his dark head. He knew there were those who found the woman walking toward him quite charming. Where they got that impression was beyond him. From the cool formality she’d always exhibited around him—on the rare occasions he had been around her—Lady Gwen had struck him as possessing about as much warmth as the marble statues in the garden.

“I must speak with Her Majesty.”

“She’s coming. Can you tell me what’s going on?” With her hands clasped tightly enough to whiten her knuckles, she moved closer, her blue eyes searching his. “Sir Selwyn would say only that Prince Owen had been kidnapped and that the queen is to remain in her rooms. Do you know what happened? Is he hurt?”

Gwen anxiously searched the ruggedly carved features of the tall, powerfully built man before her. Harrison Monteque had always reminded her of a Scottish warlord, that breed of male who had defended his highlands with nothing but brute force and a sword of hammered steel. The hard angles and planes of his face were framed with deep-auburn hair cut close, she assumed, to tame any hint of curl rather than to meet military code. His eyes, the amber brown of a panther’s, held hers with disconcerting ease.

He was over six feet of commanding, demanding male in an admiral’s uniform. But even without the gold braid trimming his cuffs and epaulets, the five stars denoting his rank and the slew of ribbons decorating his chest, his authority was unmistakable. Power radiated from him like heat.

She had never felt comfortable around the man, never cared for his iron-fisted methods and his overbearing manner. Yet, as she stood waiting for him to shed light on the awful events of the morning, she wouldn’t have cared if he’d marched in with trumpets and his troops, as long as he could tell her what was happening. Her concern for the royal family and her friend the queen totally overrode everything else.

“I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”

“Because you don’t know? Or because you can’t say?”

Harrison heard no challenge in the question. Only disquiet and a hint of totally unexpected vulnerability.

“Because what I have is only for the queen.”

“Can you at least tell me if the news is positive?”

He had never seen her look at him so openly before. Without the polite-but-cool facade she usually wore around him, he couldn’t help but notice the flecks of turquoise in her lake-blue eyes, the delicate curve of her cheek, the soft part of her lovely mouth.

He’d never before noticed the poreless quality of her skin, or the intriguing, tantalizing fullness of her bottom lip.

He noticed now—along with a distinct and unmistakable pull low in his groin when he caught a hint of the surpassingly erotic perfume she wore.

Caught completely off guard by her, unaccustomed to being caught off guard by much of anything, he banished his body’s betraying reactions beneath military bearing and watched her openness fade.

“I’m sorry,” he said, though the tightness in his voice hardly made him sound it. “I really must speak with the queen.” Wishing she wasn’t standing so close, he nodded over her shoulder. “If you would please get her for me?”

“No need,” came the cultured tones of Queen Marissa’s voice. “I’m here.”

As Gwen had done moments ago, the queen of Penwyck stepped through the double doors that led from her salon and bedchamber. A tall, slender woman of grace and breeding, her dark hair was knotted at her nape and held with a filigreed gold clasp. Her cashmere slacks and silk blouse were as flawless as the diamonds on her fingers and the thick gold chain draped around her neck.

Gwen dropped a quick, automatic curtsy. Her Majesty’s striking features bore the strain of the morning as she acknowledged her with a nod and continued toward the man dominating the decidedly feminine room.

Harrison’s air of command suggested that he deferred to no one. Yet he immediately offered a respectful and amazingly gallant bow.

“Admiral Monteque.” Lifting her hand to indicate that he should rise, she stopped by a small chair beneath a surprisingly casual portrait of the royal family. In it, she and King Morgan were in hunting clothes, their five children surrounding them with their horses. “Please, let’s dispense with formalities. What can you tell me of my son?”

His incisive glance cut toward the woman quietly waiting ten feet away. “May I speak with you alone, Your Majesty?”

“I would prefer that Lady Gwendolyn stay.”

“This is a matter of security, Your Majesty.”

“We all realize that, Admiral,” she replied, too tense to sit, too refined to pace. “Please, what do you know of Owen? I heard a guard say that his room has been searched. There was a struggle.” Her hand clutched the back of the chair as she took a deep breath. “Was there any sign of…violence?”

“There was no blood,” he replied, fairly certain that was what she was asking. “At least none that was immediately visible. We have forensics people in there now.”

“Doing what?”

“Dusting for prints. Searching for physical evidence. Royal Intelligence is on top of it.”

“But what are they doing to find him?”

“What they’re doing right now will help find him,” he explained, taking her insistence as a merciful sign that she was holding her own. “They need clues to know where to start.” He paused. “The best one we have right now was in the ransom note.”

It was against his better judgment to continue in the presence of the woman watching him so intently. He had no idea what Lady Corbin’s security clearance was, but he knew it wasn’t anywhere near high enough to be privy to the events now taking place. He also knew he wasn’t in a position at the moment to do anything other than as his sovereign instructed.

“The contents of the note will not be made public,” he continued with a pointed glance toward Gwen, “but we know why he was taken. Whoever took the prince is demanding that Penwyck withdraw from the treaty we are about to sign with Majorco.”

“That’s the ransom demand? That we not sign?”

Harrison’s confirming nod was as tight as the muscles knotting his gut.

Majorco was an island thirty miles southeast of Penwyck. Like the island of Drogheda to the east, it was a principality. At least it had been until the last of the ruling family died off last year and left them without an heir. The existing parliament had taken over quickly enough to form a democracy, but their military had fallen apart.

The country’s new leaders had asked Penwyck for protection and proposed an alliance that had quickly become part of a larger agreement the king had been unable to refuse.

“You know that withdrawal from the alliance isn’t an option,” he carefully reminded her. “The treaty with Majorco has become crucial to our trade agreement with the United States. That alliance must go through at all costs.”

The queen visibly paled. “Not at all costs, Admiral.”

“You know how important this is to the kingdom.”

“You will not sacrifice my son.”

Even as the queen spoke, Gwen moved toward her, graceful in her silence, and stopped protectively a few feet from her side. He didn’t at all appreciate that she was looking at him as if he’d snatched the prince himself.

“I assure you that is not our intention. We will find him,” he insisted, because the alternative wasn’t one he was willing to accept. “Our analysts are already working on the note to see where it came from. Intelligence is also profiling every radical and subversive organization that might feel threatened by that alliance.”

Gwen’s glance caught his. “Who brought it?” she quietly inquired. “The note. Who delivered it here?”

“Please answer her,” the queen asked when he hesitated.

“A commercial courier service delivered it to the royal offices for King Morgan. We’re checking now to see who paid for the delivery.

“We’re taking care of everything,” he assured the older woman, wishing the younger one would leave. “But we’ll have to speak later about what remains to be done regarding the alliance.” He paused, a muscle in his jaw jerking, as it tended to do when inner frustration leaked out. It would have been so much simpler to take care of all his business with the queen right now. But, right now, because of the petite blonde staring icicles at him, he couldn’t. “It’s no longer safe to speak by telephone. There’s too much risk of conversations being intercepted,” he explained, ignoring the chill. “It will be best if we meet to talk.”

The queen said nothing. She simply stared at him long enough for him to get the feeling that the alliance was the last thing on her mind before giving him a rather numb nod.

“Please keep me informed,” she murmured.

“I will.”

“About my son,” she clarified.

“Of course, Your Majesty,” he replied, and watched her give her lady-in-waiting a look of pure distress before she walked regally across the antique Aubusson carpet to the tall double doors.

Harrison could have sworn the temperature in the room dropped another ten degrees in the time it took her to step into her salon and close the door with a dignified click.

“I’ll let myself out,” he muttered, and turned on his heel.

Gwen would have been more than happy to let him leave on his own. As shaken as Marissa had looked to her, she would much rather have gone after her friend, but duty demanded that she escort the queen’s guest from the room.

“Her Majesty wouldn’t hear of it,” she returned politely, and turned ahead of him. “I’ll see you to the door.”

She was fairly certain he’d expected her to stay put. He was, after all, the sort of man who ordered and expected people to obey.

She tended to bridle around any man, other than the king, who automatically expected such total deference. There were many like him in the circles in which she moved. Her own father being one of them. Yet, even her father wasn’t as hard or ruthless as the admiral was rumored to be.

To be fair, ruthless or not, she knew that if anyone could be counted on to find the prince it would be the man following her across the room and the men he commanded on the Royal Elite Team. The RET consisted of the best of the best, the cream the king himself had skimmed from his Royal Intelligence Institute with its top scientists, doctors, military and economists. All were at the admiral’s disposal.

“May I ask something of you, Admiral?” Feeling as protective as a sister of the woman she had served for the past ten years, she reached for the gilded handle of the door. “For Her Majesty?”

“Put that way, I can hardly refuse.”

“Then, please,” she requested, overlooking the flatness, or maybe it was the fatigue, in his tone, “don’t burden Her Majesty with details of the trade alliance.”

His eyebrows knit into a single slash. “Excuse me?”

“The alliance,” she repeated, wishing he wouldn’t frown at her with such displeasure. “It’s the king’s project. All the queen needs right now is information about her son. You should speak with His Majesty about anything else.”

Her tone was faintly disapproving, her manner utterly calm and certain. At that moment, with her cool guard firmly in place and the soft vulnerability he’d glimpsed nowhere in sight, she looked very much like the very proper matron of a school for incorrigible young boys.

He was in no mood for a reprimand. Or to be told what he should or shouldn’t do, something that seldom happened to him, anyway. Taking her hand from the latch, surprised to find her slender fingers so warm, he replaced it with his own and turned to face her.

Despite the way she clasped her hands in a knot, the way she looked up at him made her seem every bit as regal and poised as their queen.

“Lady Corbin,” he began, his tone a shade shy of patient, “I realize it’s your job to protect Her Majesty from whatever she doesn’t wish to deal with around here. You screen her visitors and answer her mail and do whatever is required of you to insulate her from what takes place beyond the scope of her duties and these walls. But there are forces at work here about which you haven’t a clue.”

Most people would have backed down. The faint-hearted would even have backed away. Remarkably, admirably, she did neither—though he did catch a telltale hint of color rising beneath her maddeningly calm facade.

“And those forces would be?”

“Nothing you’re cleared to know about.”

“The alliance with Majorco is hardly top secret, Admiral.” Years of training kept her tone even, her manner unfailingly polite. He wouldn’t have any idea that she was practically gritting her teeth. “The queen and I have been planning the state dinner to celebrate its signing for the past two months. Everyone from the royal printers to the kitchen staff knows about it.”

“I’m not talking about the alliance.”

“Then what are we talking about? The alliance is what I asked you not to bother Her Majesty with.”

He caught a hint of her perfume again. The scent was subtle, warm. Like the air on a tropical island when flowers scented the sensuous breeze.

Distracted, annoyed because he wasn’t a man who distracted easily, he took a step closer—for no reason other than to prove she had no real effect on him at all.

“We’re talking about matters to which even the king’s council isn’t privy,” he informed her, ignoring the unwanted tingle of heat low in his gut. “But just so you’ll have some idea of what is going on, a special team will be arriving any minute to tap in to Her Majesty’s telephone lines. It’s possible that Prince Owen’s captors have her personal phone number and will try to make contact that way. It’s no secret how close she is to her children.”

His voice dropped like a rock over Penwyck’s sheer cliffs. “They will also be tapping the telephone in your apartment,” he informed her, failing to mention that telephone communications of all staff with access to the royal residence would be monitored. “Where are your rooms?”

A flicker of hesitation passed through her eyes. “Directly upstairs.”

“Then, I imagine they’ll do yours right after they’re finished here. One never truly knows who one can trust.”

He was baiting her. Deliberately. Gwen caught the odd glint in Harrison’s eyes as he waited for her reaction. Refusing to give him the satisfaction, she bit her tongue, swearing she almost perforated it in the moments before he released his visual hold and pulled open the door.

An instant later he was striding out down the long, wide hall, guards jerking to attention as he passed.

The guard near Gwen remained stiffly still, his eyes straight ahead, his rifle at his side. Not until she started to close the door did he reshoulder the weapon in three motions as quick as they were precise.

As he did, Gwen noticed the black holster resting against the red wool of his jacket. He was also wearing a side arm.

It had been ten years since she’d seen armed guards inside the private residence. Normally they kept posts only at exterior doors.

An old sense of loss, of anger, rose inside her. Uneasily, she pushed it right back down. She didn’t want to think about the events that had last required such tight security. Even though there never had been a sense of closure about them for her—or for her daughter—they were over and done with. They also had no part at all in what was going on now.

Reminding herself of that, she let the latch click quietly into place and pressed her hand to her stomach. She would think only of the present. Of this moment. And at that moment, she could still feel an odd, lingering heat where Harrison’s fingers had gripped hers when he’d so abruptly moved her hand. Preferring to ignore the sensation, she drew a breath of air that still smelled faintly of citrus and something distinctly, boldly male.

His aftershave.