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The prince saw it, anyway. “Rest now,” he instructed. “Your accommodation has been informed that you are remaining here, and your luggage will be brought later this morning.”
“You’ve thought of everything,” she said mutinously.
He chose to ignore her tone. “Precisely. To allay any unseemly rumors, they have also been informed that you are joining my staff as a temporary companion to the crown prince.”
This was interesting news, given that Lorne obviously didn’t want her anywhere near his little son. “And am I?”
“Of course not. Nori seems to enjoy your company, but he is already well looked after.”
He was also a lonely little boy, but she had a feeling Lorne wouldn’t welcome that observation. “Then I’m afraid I can’t stay,” she said, pushing back the bedclothes.
It was a mistake, she realized as soon as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. The nightdress barely reached her thighs. Lorne had seen much more when he rescued her from the surf wearing only a bikini, but she hadn’t felt as exposed then as she did now.
She was acutely conscious that this was a bedroom and Lorne was first and foremost a man, a man among men, she recalled him being described in her guide book. She had thought the phrase extravagant and was alarmed at how readily it sprang to her mind now. He made her feel a sense of herself as a woman that she hadn’t felt in all the years that she had served as her mother’s housekeeper and younger sister’s caregiver.
She refused to let him see how much he discomfited her and stood her ground beside the bed, wishing that the room would stop moving around her and spoiling the effect.
“Get back into bed. You’re in no condition to go anywhere,” he commanded, but his voice had gentled and he moved to her side, steadying her. “Let me help you.”
She could have managed to stay upright if only he hadn’t touched her, but as soon as he took her arm her knees turned to jelly and she sagged against him. “I won’t stay here under false pretenses,” she insisted, trying to ignore the tattoo her heart had set up. It was a symptom of her weakened state, nothing more, she insisted to herself.
His deeply vibrant voice was very close to her ear. “Obviously you have yet to learn that one does not say no to royalty.”
Lorne might be used to his subjects shaking in their shoes when he looked at them, but she came from stock that had made an art form of equality. Respect was another matter, but it had to be earned, and riding roughshod over her preferences was no way to earn it. “And you have yet to learn that we Australians are an independent lot who prefer being asked to being told,” she said as coolly as she could manage.
His expression turned grim. “During my marriage, I was made well aware of your Australian disdain for authority, but you are in Carramer now. You will stay because the doctor advises it.” He didn’t add “and I command it” but he might as well have. She heard it in his steely undertone.
“Or you’ll do what? Throw me over a cliff like the guidebook says your ancestors did?” Her chin came up and she almost closed her eyes as the gesture brought her face alarmingly close to his. She settled for lowering her lashes slightly so she looked at him through a feathery screen. It softened the strong contours of his face but not by much.
The glint in his gaze clearly said “don’t tempt me” but the only outward sign of his anger was in the rigidity of his arm around her and the sudden tightening of his jaw as he said, “Please get back into bed.”
Surprise almost knocked the wind out of her. “There, see? Saying please didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”
As soon as the whispered words were out, she cursed herself. What was it about the prince that made her open her mouth and say stupid things? Lorne was a man who plainly wasn’t used to deferring to anyone. What would it have cost her to be gracious? Instead she had to issue what amounted to a challenge.
She should have known better, she grasped, as she glimpsed the light of battle in his eyes. Then his head came down and his lips claimed hers. Like many grown women, inside Allie was a little girl who had dreamed of one day being kissed by a prince, but nothing in her childhood fantasies had prepared her for the reality. Instinct told her that Lorne was only showing her who was boss, but the molten way he made her feel overruled logic, leaving a sensation so all-consuming that she didn’t want it to end.
When he put her away from him, she was glad of the bed at her back as her knees buckled. She curled her fingers around the edge of the mattress for support. “I wasn’t aware that your customs included the one about droit du seigneur,” she said shakily.
“Supposing it was not just a medieval myth. The right of the ruler to have any woman of his choosing before any other man hasn’t been claimed for centuries,” he said equably. The coldness in his expression reminded her that he hadn’t kissed her out of desire, but because she had challenged his authority.
“But you think it did exist?” She suppressed a shiver at the possibility.
His mouth curved into a perceptive smile, making her wish she had fought him when he kissed her. Why hadn’t she? “It would be…edifying,” he confirmed after a long pause, “but it has nothing to do with why I kissed you.”
She tossed her head, wishing she had more energy to put into the defiant gesture. His kiss had added to her feeling of weakness in ways she was probably better off not thinking about. “I know perfectly well that you did it to show that I may have won the round but you will win the match because of who and what you are.”
He inclined his head in agreement. “Then we both know where we stand.”
He was only confirming what she had suspected, but part of her rejected the thought that it was his only reason for kissing her. In the midst of her own maelstrom of feelings she had sensed an equally strong response in him. Clearly he did find her attractive, but it was plain that she reminded him painfully of the Australian wife he had lost, so he was unlikely to give in to it.
It was fine with her, too, she thought. After years of burying her own needs and desires in favor of her mother’s and sister’s, she wasn’t interested in exchanging one form of tyranny for another. Lorne was the last person in the world who should interest her romantically. He was too hard-headed and his position made him far too inflexible for there to be any common ground between them.
All the same, his kiss lingered on her lips long after he left her to sleep, and although she closed her eyes, it was a long time before her need for rest overcame the turmoil racing through her mind.
Chapter Three
The morning was well advanced by the time Lorne dismissed his aide and stood up from his desk. He stretched luxuriously, feeling his muscles unknot. He wondered briefly what it would be like to enjoy a vacation as others did, totally free of the responsibilities that even rested on his shoulders when he was at his summer residence, away from the capital. Like Alison, came the involuntary thought. No affairs of state troubled her, not even affairs of the heart, it seemed.
The state of her heart wasn’t his concern, he told himself fiercely. Until the doctor cleared her to return to her hostel, she was merely another responsibility. Lorne had no need to see her unless he chose to. The villa had more than enough staff to take care of one stray Australian who had had the misfortune to wash up on their private beach. Why was he wasting time thinking about her when his son was waiting?
Alison continued to occupy his thoughts as he changed for Nori’s daily swimming lesson. The task could have been delegated to the palace’s personal trainers, but Lorne enjoyed teaching his son himself, and Nori looked forward to having his father to himself and showing off what he had learned.
Today, however, Nori sat on the edge of the pool looking downcast. Lorne dropped to the marble coping beside his child. “What’s the matter, coquine?”
Nori’s small chin jutted out. “I’m not a little rogue. I’m a good boy.”
Lorne nodded, careful not to smile. “Of course you are.”
Nori’s huge baby eyes flashed to him. “Then why can’t Allie give me a koala? She promised, and I want it more than anything.”
The passion in his son’s voice caught Lorne by surprise. “But you have so many toys already.”
“I don’t have a koala from Australia.”
Lorne winced inwardly but kept his face impassive. So that was what this was all about. He dropped an arm around his son’s small body and pulled him close, reminding himself that as well as crown prince, Nori was still a baby who missed his mother. “Did talking to Miss Carter remind you of your mama?” he asked carefully.
Nori’s full lower lip quivered, and his shoulders trembled under Lorne’s hand, but he didn’t cry, eliciting a pang of empathy in his father. How many times in his own youth had Lorne fought to contain his emotions because of his position? “It’s all right to admit that you miss your mama, you know,” he said softly. “You’re very brave but when we’re alone you can tell me how you really feel.”
Nori turned lambent eyes to him. “You won’t mind if I cry a bit?”
Lorne shook his head. “Not even if you cry a whole swimming pool.”
Nori looked at the vast expanse of water beside them and gave a shaky laugh. “Nobody could cry that much,” he said in the tone of “shows how much you know.”
Thinking of his own loneliness that stretched back to well before they lost Chandra, Lorne wasn’t so sure. Chandra had never been the companion he had hoped for, but she had been Nori’s mother, and the child was entitled to mourn her loss. “How much do you think you might cry then, a bathtub full?”
Solemnly Nori extended his baby hands about shoulder width apart. “Maybe this much.”
“That’s quite a lot,” Lorne agreed. “But it’s all right. Cry that much if you want to. And remember, you can always talk to me about mama, or about anything.”
“Even about koalas?” Nori said, his eyes brightening with hope.
Lorne restrained a sigh. Had he been as persistent as Nori at the same age? “Yes, even about koalas,” he conceded heavily. “While we’re on vacation, why don’t we visit the zoo and you can see a real koala?”
Nori’s eyes shone. “You mean it? Can Allie come, too? She said I should call her Allie and she knows all about koalas.”
Wondering at how easily his son had made friends with their guest, Lorne was aware of a feeling very like envy gripping him. He shook his head. “Alison has other things to do besides entertain you on her holiday.”
Nori’s tiny chin jutted out. “She’ll come if I order her to.”
Lorne suppressed a smile. “Not if I catch you first.” Only the day before, he’d found a soldier marching pointlessly up and down the inner courtyard because Nori had ordered it. Then had followed a serious father-son talk about the responsibilities of being royal. “Didn’t I explain to you about giving orders?”
Nori squirmed uncomfortably. “Yes, Daddy. ’s not much fun being king if you can’t make people do what you want.”
“That’s exactly why Carramer doesn’t have a king,” Lorne explained. “A long time ago in our history, a king made his people’s lives miserable with his orders. When his son became ruler, he promised never to call himself king to remind himself and his heirs not to treat the people as badly as his father had done.”
“I won’t make anybody miserable,” Nori agreed impatiently. He had heard the story before and understood the point his father was making. “I just want Allie to come to the zoo with us. I like her, don’t you?”
“I don’t know her very well,” Lorne evaded.
“If she comes, you could get to know her.”
His son would make a good negotiator one day, Lorne thought wryly. “Very well, she can come if you want her to.” It would add to the fiction that she had been taken on as a companion to Nori, he told himself, wondering at the way his heartbeat suddenly picked up speed. It had nothing to do with the prospect of spending time in Alison’s company, he assured himself. After Chandra, getting involved with any woman, particularly another Australian, was the last thing he needed.
The knowledge didn’t stop a flood of raw emotions from surging through him until he gripped the marble coping of the pool, his fingers whitening with the strain. “How about we get on with your swimming lesson now?” he suggested, hoping Nori wouldn’t hear the tension in his voice.
His son was too distracted to notice. “After the lesson, can we go to the zoo and see the koalas?”
Lorne shot an involuntary glance at the windows of the Rose Suite overlooking the pool. “Alison isn’t well enough to go anywhere today. Perhaps tomorrow if Dr. Pascale says it’s okay.”
As his son mumbled a reluctant acceptance, Lorne thought he caught a glimpse of movement at one of the windows and shook himself mentally. Alison Carter was a temporary distraction, nothing more. Taking her with them to the zoo was unavoidable if Lorne was to keep his word to Nori. But if the doctor approved, she would return to her hostel in Allora afterward and that would be that.
Forget about her, Lorne ordered himself and slid into the pool. He felt like a poker being plunged into ice water. Steam practically hissed off him, and he knew the heat of the morning had little to do with it.
Watching Lorne with his son, Allie felt a rush of admiration. He was the ruler of his country, with all the responsibilities that entailed, but he still found time to give his child a swimming lesson.
This afternoon, after sleeping late, eating the light meal that was brought to her room and taking a leisurely bath in the vast bathroom adjoining her bedroom, Allie felt refreshed. She was still tired from her battle with the serpent yesterday but at least her vision was unclouded.
Yesterday she had wondered if she’d exaggerated the impact of the magnificent man who came to her rescue. Today she knew she hadn’t. Lorne de Marigny was every bit as prepossessing as she’d first thought. She had reached this conclusion before she knew who he was so his effect on her had nothing to do with his position.
She chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. Why couldn’t she have been rescued by an ordinary Carramer man, then she could have enjoyed his company, maybe even a holiday romance? The thought flashed through her mind, startling her with its unexpectedness. There could be no holiday romance with the sovereign ruler of the island kingdom.
She was amazed he had allowed her to stay at the villa, although she recalled it was on doctor’s orders. Not that she imagined Lorne de Marigny taking orders from anyone unless they coincided with his own wishes. He was the kind of man who naturally led rather than followed. If he had been born a commoner, he would still have been a leader, she sensed. Men like Lorne stood out from the crowd no matter what their station in life.
This perception of him should have been at odds with the gentleness he demonstrated with his son in the pool. The sight reminded her of a lion and its cub. Lorne showed strength when it was warranted and paternal care when it was needed. The fanciful image brought a rueful smile. Lion, indeed! What were lions if not merciless hunters who pulled down living prey on the run?
He had looked at her as if she was potential prey, she recalled with a slight shiver. It wasn’t fear, more like—she refused to identify her response as pleasure. He was unlikely to feel any such thing after the way she had interrupted his holiday. The sooner she left the royal villa, the better.
It was hard to make herself believe it. She didn’t want to, she acknowledged with a flash of insight. The obvious trappings of royalty didn’t attract her as much as the warm family feeling she observed between Lorne and Nori. Toddlers could be a handful at the best of times, but Lorne looked as if he genuinely enjoyed interacting with the child.
When Nori did something amusing, Lorne’s laughter reached her as a warm sound that tingled all the way to her toes. She wrapped her slender arms around herself in an instinctively defensive gesture. Toe tingling was all very well if the man was available and interested, but Lorne was neither.
A discreet knock on the outer door of her suite startled her. In response to her soft acknowledgement, a maid entered carrying clothes over one arm. “His Highness saw you at the window and requested that you join him at the pool,” the maid relayed. “I was instructed to bring a selection of bathing things for you to choose from.”
From the woman’s deferential manner, Allie gathered that refusing was not an option. Her bikini wasn’t among the choices on offer, she also noticed. Was it too brief for the prince’s royal sensibilities, she wondered wryly? The maid hardly seemed like the appropriate person to ask.
“Thank Prince Lorne for me and tell him I’ll be down as soon as I’ve changed,” she agreed. After her experience yesterday she had thought she wouldn’t want to swim again for a long time, but the weather was too hot and the pool far too tempting. Her eagerness had nothing to do with wanting to be a part of the inviting family scene below her, she told herself.
Lorne was swimming laps by the time she emerged from the villa. She had chosen a one-piece swimsuit that was as modest as her white bikini had been revealing. The high cut of the legs was the only remotely provocative feature. Over the ultramarine-colored suit she had slipped a filmy cover-up in a combination of ultramarine and Moroccan gold swirls. Raffia slip-on scuffs protected her feet from the sun-heated marble tiling around the pool. Finding things to fit her had proved remarkably easy because the maid had brought each garment in several sizes.
Huge seagrass umbrellas provided shade, and she sat down on a lounger under one of them, breathing in the exquisite ginger-scented air. Nori’s swimming lesson appeared to be over because there was no sign of the child. Her gaze went almost involuntarily to the figure plowing up and down the length of the pool. The only sound was the beat of Lorne’s arms and legs as he sliced through the water.
He was good enough to swim competitively, she thought, riveted by the sight of his smooth progress that left hardly a ripple in his wake. No wonder he was so muscular if he made a habit of exercising so strenuously. Watching the rhythmic kicking of his long legs and the pistonlike arc of his arms made her feel limp.
He made her feel limp for a lot of reasons, she thought, not least being his overwhelming masculinity. A man among men indeed. It would have been easy to fantasize that he had invited her to join him because he found her equally fascinating, but she knew it wasn’t the case. Being a good host was probably bred into him from childhood. No matter how reluctant he might be to have her company, he would accept it rather than appear inhospitable.
One thing she had learned in her short stay on Carramer was that hospitality was considered a cardinal virtue. She had already received invitations to share meals with a number of families she had done no more than talk to on the beach, so she supposed the monarch could do no less, regardless of his personal feelings.
Knowing she was here on sufferance did little for her mood, and she was frowning when Lorne emerged from the water. “If you still feel unwell, perhaps you should return to your room and let the doctor take a look at you,” he said when he saw her expression.
She started to get to her feet in deference to his position but he waved her back down. “The doctor came to see me half an hour ago,” she informed the prince. “He said I’m fine to get up as long as I don’t overdo things.”
The prince slung a towel around his broad shoulders to catch the moisture beading his honey-toned skin. “Then we must see to it that you don’t overtax yourself. The whirlpool tub might be safer for you than a strenuous swim. I was about to head there next myself so you can join me.”
The thought of sharing a hot tub with the prince was thoroughly alarming. “I’m fine right here,” she said with a furious shake of her head.
He picked up the hesitation in her voice, and his look challenged her. “Afraid of me, Alison? You weren’t yesterday.”
“Yesterday I didn’t know who you were.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you’re the boss around here, I don’t know how I should behave toward you, Your Highness.”
He frowned darkly. “Yesterday you were itching to call me Lorne. Why not start now?”
She was sure her astonishment showed on her face. “How did you know?”
“You forget how well I know the Australian character. You even refer to your prime ministers by their first names. You can’t be that much more intimidated by a prince.”
Want to bet? she thought furiously. He obviously had no idea of the impact he had made on her long before she knew his title. Insisting on using it would be a dead giveaway so she nodded. “Okay, Lorne it is, as long as it doesn’t get me thrown into a dungeon or my head chopped off.”
“Such a beautiful head belongs right where it is, on your shoulders,” he said without missing a beat. “In any case my palace at our capital, Solano, has no dungeons. For those, you would need to visit my brother, Prince Michel, who governs Isle des Anges. Although it’s called Island of the Angels, the island was used to exile criminals centuries ago, and the dungeons remain as historical curiosities. You should see them, as a visitor, of course,” he added.
She gave a slight shudder. “No, thank you. I once visited the former convict settlement of Port Arthur in Tasmania and couldn’t get out of the cells quickly enough. The walls seemed to be impregnated with the hopelessness of the poor souls who were incarcerated there.”
“I think Michel would agree with you. When we were boys, our younger sister, Adrienne, dared us to go into the dungeons, and Michel said much the same thing.”
The thought of Lorne having a brother and sister, let alone playing with them as a boy, made him far too human in her estimation. As well, the image of him teaching his little son to swim was still fresh in her mind. “I hope it makes him a benevolent governor,” she said quickly.
“Unlike his older brother, you mean?”
Benevolence was not a quality she would readily attribute to Lorne. She bridled, stung that he could read her so well on such short acquaintance. “From what I hear you are a popular monarch.”
“But not popular with you,” he divined with the same uncanny accuracy.
The feeling was probably mutual, she reminded herself. She was uncomfortably aware that her nationality reminded him of his late wife. But for the doctor’s insistence that she rest, she was sure she would be back at the hostel in Allora by now. “I’m well aware that I’m here on sufferance,” she said. “You saved my life yesterday, and I’m grateful, but we both know you don’t want me to stay any longer than necessary.”
“Agreed,” he said with a coolness that cut to her core, although it was no more than she had expected him to say. “However, there is a complication.”
She regarded him curiously. “Yes?”
“Nori has taken a liking to you, perhaps because you remind him of his mother.”
She felt her eyes start to mist and automatically lowered her lashes. “This morning he told me he misses his mother since she died.”
“Just over a year ago now,” Lorne supplied tautly, his raw tone confirming Allie’s suspicion that he didn’t want her around because she reminded him of what he had lost. She felt even worse when he added, “Your talk of koalas stirred memories for my son.”
She lifted her gaze to him, not caring if he saw the moistness in them. “I assure you it wasn’t my intention. He’s a delightful little boy. I wouldn’t have said anything to hurt him deliberately.”
The prince’s features hardened perceptibly. “If you had, you would have me to answer to.”
She released the breath she had been unaware of holding. “Is there any way I can make it up to him?”