Be sure to catch the next segment in the Crown and Glory series, Her Royal Husband by Cara Colter.

Harrison wasn’t sure he was a man of honor himself.

Not at the moment. He’d had no intention of touching her. He’d deliberately kept himself from it, in fact. Yet, he could feel the taunting fullness of her soft lips beneath his fingers. Her warm breath trembled against his skin.

It would be so easy to slip his hand around the back of her neck, lower his mouth to hers and find out what it was about her that tested his control. But now wasn’t the time to cave in to temptation.

She stepped back, looking very much as if she didn’t know why she hadn’t moved before now. He confused her. But he figured that made them even. She was confusing the daylights out of him.

Royal Protocol
Christine Flynn

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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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.

Even when he was no longer physically present, the man had the power to unnerve.

Not wanting to think about him, either, Gwen headed for the desk, thinking about him, anyway.

She’d had little occasion over the years to directly encounter the admiral, but she could swear that, on the rare occasions they did meet, he made a point of provoking her. She had no idea why that was. Nor was she going to waste energy trying to figure out his warped power-hungry psyche. She knew only that he was reputed to be frighteningly intelligent, obsessed with his job and position and impossible for any woman to land.

Not that one would want him, she thought, heading for Mrs. Ferth’s painfully neat desk. The man possessed the sensitivity of stone.

There had been no blood. At least none that was immediately visible, he’d said, oblivious to the mental pictures such doubt would put in a mother’s mind.

She couldn’t believe the blunt way he’d responded to the queen’s request for information about her son. She couldn’t believe, either, that he would burden the queen about the alliance. Not that the queen wouldn’t be able to handle matters of state. The woman was enormously bright, well-read and far more politically astute than His Majesty tended to realize, or admit. It was just that King Morgan, though an eminently kind and wise monarch, wasn’t the most liberated ruler in the western hemisphere. To his royal mind, politics was man’s work. His queen was to tend their children and the plethora of women’s duties that kept Penwyckian arts, charities and hospitality the envy of the civilized world.

She had the feeling the admiral was just as narrow.

Frowning at how he invaded her thoughts, she automatically picked up a stack of lists near the queen’s personal calendar.

She had planned to check the silver services for the state dinner with the chef’s captain that morning, and to meet with the royal sommelier about the wine, provided that she had been able to get a decision out of the queen. The chef had made his recommendations, but he needed Her Majesty’s approval to serve the Margaux with the fois gras, rather than hold it for the main course of filet with truffles. Aside from the queen’s uncharacteristic indecision, there was the matter of champagne. It was nonexistent.

The cellar had been depleted of champagne last month due to Princess Meredith’s hastily planned and executed nuptials, and the order of Dom Perignon had yet to be received. Monsieur Pomier, the sommelier, lost sleep each night those dark-green bottles were being agitated by drivers and deliverymen and not resting properly in his cellar.

Returning the lists to the desk, Gwen stepped back. Because many of the elements for the dinner had been borrowed for the wedding, she had scrambled to redesign seating arrangements, floral displays, the menu, the music. But she felt none of the energy, or the urgency, that had sustained her for the past weeks.

What she felt was concern. Even before the horrible, unbelievable news of the prince’s kidnapping, the queen’s manner had seemed oddly withdrawn. Over the past week she had also become totally apathetic about the preparations for the dinner. It wasn’t like her to not care about such an important function. Her fingerprints were usually all over everything, from the choice of silver to be used to the color of ink on the place cards. But lately Marissa couldn’t have cared less about such details.

The queen had dismissed her own lack of enthusiasm as postwedding letdown following the frantic preparations for the royal wedding. Gwen wanted to believe that was all that was wrong, but she’d known the queen too many years not to feel that something more was going on.

When she’d asked, Marissa had insisted there wasn’t—and spent most of the past several days avoiding her by going for long walks. Alone.

Knowing that the woman didn’t need to be alone just then, she headed for the door of the salon. It didn’t matter at the moment why the queen had been acting so strangely. The dinner didn’t matter, either. With the prince missing, it would undoubtedly be postponed, anyway. All she really cared about was Prince Owen.

For his sake and the sake of his mother, she hoped desperately that he hadn’t been harmed.

She also hoped that Admiral Arrogant and his men could find him.

The same thought was on Harrison’s mind when he was awakened by the telephone before the sun rose the next morning. But with that call, concern about the prince was replaced with a more pressing problem.

Chapter Two

T he kidnapping of Prince Owen was not the Royal Elite Team’s first priority. Under most other circumstances, it certainly would have been. But the RET was presently perpetrating a royal hoax they were duty-bound to continue. That was why the complexities of locating the missing heir simply blended into the mix of duties and dilemmas Harrison took to bed with him a little before midnight.

Ordinarily he slept like the dead. Some would have claimed that was because he had no conscience. But his conscience was just as keen as the rest of his mind, and if he slept well, it was because an exhausted body had no choice. Sleep tonight was fitful, though. He still felt a niggling dread every time his subconscious stirred with thoughts of who was actually wearing the king’s robes.

What the public didn’t know was that their beloved King Morgan was at that very moment locked away in the bowels of the palace, deep in a coma. He was being cared for in secret by an elite medical team with access to the most brilliant minds in modern medicine, but that didn’t change the fact that the monarchy was not precisely what the RET was honor bound to make it appear on the surface.

The situation, as Harrison had come to think of it, began over six weeks ago when King Morgan had unexpectedly fallen ill and slipped into unconsciousness. Viral encephalitis had been the diagnosis. A rare form from Africa that the king’s body might be able to fight off—if it didn’t kill him first.

No one had any idea how he had contracted it. But once the diagnosis had been made, there had been no real question about what needed to be done. Because Penwyck had been—and still was—involved in its history’s most critical treaties and alliances, the RET had been forced to implement a plan the king himself had devised years ago in the event of his incapacitation.

His Majesty wanted his estranged identical twin, Prince Broderick, to impersonate him. Plan B, he had called it. B for Broderick.

The RET had collectively cringed at the idea. All any of them really knew of the prince was that his relationship with his brother had been as volatile as it was strained while they’d grown up, and that Broderick had been estranged from his family ever since the boating accident that killed both their parents when the elder royal twins were in their early twenties.

It had been known for some time prior to that, that the reigning king and queen had favored Morgan over his ineffective, unproductive sibling. When it was discovered upon their parents’ deaths that Morgan had been named heir-apparent and was crowned king, Broderick had bought himself a surprisingly modest estate on Majorco and quietly gone into seclusion.

No one knew if he’d been grieving for his parents or merely licking his wounds. It was as if the man had dropped off the planet. For years Broderick ignored all of King Morgan’s attempts to draw him back into the fold. When Broderick finally did respond to the overtures, he’d returned long enough to cause grief by impersonating his brother to embezzle funds, and King Morgan had sent him packing. After that, the king had heard from him only once—the evening Broderick called to warn him of an assassination attempt that was about to be made on his life and that of Queen Marissa and their children.

That call had saved their lives, but Broderick had promptly withdrawn once more to the reclusive life he’d chosen to lead. By then he’d already been little more than an afterthought to the public. Because so few knew of the assassination attempt that had taken place those ten long years ago, he had now all but disappeared from the public’s memory. His heroic act, however, had made the men of the RET look at him with less skepticism, but not one of them was totally comfortable with the man presently playing king.

Broderick could run as hot as lava or as cold as the earth’s poles. He could be cooperative or demanding. But so far he had proven worthy of the confidence his brother had placed in him and been a model king in public.

King Morgan himself had told Harrison that Broderick would be convincing in the position. He had said that, if worst came to worse, his brother could take over quite ably in the role because, even though Broderick hated him, Broderick had always loved power and would work to foster the image of a great monarch.

Harrison would never disobey the king’s command. Yet, as much as Harrison respected His Majesty’s opinions, he couldn’t shake the thought that nothing about Broderick was what it appeared to be.

That was the thought preying through his fitful sleep when the telephone beside his bed jerked him awake at four o’clock the next morning.

Within seconds of groping for the receiver and grumbling, “Monteque,” he learned that Plan B had been blown wide open.

Even as his feet hit the floor, the muffle-voiced reporter on the other end of the line was saying that he couldn’t reveal his source, but that the headline would explain everything. Before Harrison could try to demand that source, anyway, his caller told him that he’d just left a copy of the morning paper outside the admiralty’s office. The rest of the copies would be hitting the streets in a little over an hour.

The RET didn’t have a headquarters with a plaque or signage to identify it as such. Since it consisted only of four men whose daily duties kept them in the palace or elsewhere in the capital city of Marlestone, and who met solely when an emergency situation threatened the royal family or its government, the RET met wherever it was expeditious and secure.

Security was a definite priority with Harrison.

Half an hour after the call, showered, shaved and still bleeding from the nick on his chin where he’d been a little too aggressive with his razor, he opened a steel door deep beneath the palace’s grounds and stepped into a brightly lit and austere gray hallway. There were few places on earth more secure than the rooms he was about enter.

Few people knew of the tunnel beneath the palace that the royal family used to avoid walking through the palace’s public areas. Even fewer knew of the tunnel intersecting it through a boiler room that connected to the Royal Intelligence Institute a mile away.

It was the second tunnel Harrison had just entered.

The doors here were unmarked and the same pale gray as the walls. The floor was industrial tile. Overhead lights were long, fluorescent tubes. Cameras followed the movements of whoever stepped inside. Many of the unseen rooms were soundproofed and lined with lead so no communication inside could be overheard or intercepted by equipment from the outside world.

A Star Wars array of the most sophisticated surveillance equipment known to man occupied a cavernous space behind the unobtrusive door a couple hundred yards down. A door beyond that led to a suite, complete with kitchens and a year’s worth of supplies for the royal family and necessary staff in the event of an attack. Another on the other side led to a medical clinic with a surgical suite and hospital beds.

One of those beds was occupied now—by King Morgan.

A soldier in the khaki uniform and black cap of the Royal Army appeared from behind the only glass door.

Shoving the newspaper he carried under his left arm, Harrison returned his salute.

“Sir,” the young man began, still at attention, “the men you asked your secretary to summon are waiting in the conference room. Except for Colonel Prescott. He’s on his way,” he explained, his words as clipped as the bristle of brown hair covering his head. “Your secretary also asked you be told that the minister of foreign relations has requested your presence at a meeting in his office as soon as possible. She said it was urgent.”

It appeared that no one had slept much that night. That meeting would be about Majorco, Harrison thought. And there wasn’t anything that wasn’t urgent at the moment. “I need coffee. Black.”

“It’s already waiting for you, sir.”

He had his secretary to thank for that. He was sure of it. If the woman wasn’t already married, he’d consider marrying her himself. “What’s the holdup with Colonel Prescott?”

“I wasn’t informed, sir.”

Harrison gave the young man a nod. “As you were,” he muttered, and pressed a code into the pad by the unmarked conference room door.

In one salute, Harrison returned those of the two highly trained men rising to their feet around a gleaming mahogany conference table. The walls here were richly paneled wood, the carpet beneath his feet a deep burgundy.

“Sorry to call you out so early,” he said to men who had to be every bit as tired as he felt. “I know neither of you got to bed before midnight.”

“I’m not sure the colonel got to bed at all,” said Carson Logan, referring to Colonel Pierceson Prescott, Duke of Aronleigh. Logan, the king’s loyal and powerful bodyguard, was a duke himself. “I think he’s on to something.”

Harrison stopped halfway between the table and the coffee tray on the matching sideboard. Pierce Prescott was also head of Royal Intelligence.

“On to what?”

“He didn’t say. He called half an hour after you did and said he’d meet us here. You’d probably already left or he’d have called you, too.”

Harrison headed for the caffeine.

Sir Selwyn Estabon, the king’s personal secretary and secret member of Royal Intelligence, settled back into one of the burgundy leather chairs. “Before we get into why you called,” he said, over the sound of coffee being poured into a white ceramic mug, “I just spoke with the king’s nurse. He had an uneventful night.”

Cup in hand, Harrison eyed the tall, rather elegant-looking man through the steam rising over the rim. “His condition is the same, then?”

“Still critical but stable,” the king’s secretary confirmed. “And he’s still quite comatose.”

Logan leaned his big frame forward in his chair. The king’s bodyguard was a man of action who’d proven his loyalty time and again protecting the king. He was clearly frustrated by his inability to protect him now. “I thought once they’d discovered that Princess Meredith had the same thing, they’d be able to come up with something to help him. I don’t understand why her case was so mild and his is so severe.”

“It’s as Doctor Waltham told us before,” Selwyn reminded him. “He feels it a matter of exposure. Somehow Her Highness was less exposed than His Majesty.”

“But how was either exposed in the first place?” Logan demanded of his compatriots. “Everything we hear is that the disease is contracted through a mosquito bite. Neither had a bite anywhere on their bodies. It makes no sense that he contracted a form of encephalitis found only in Africa when he hasn’t set foot on the continent in forty years. Her Highness has never been there at all.”

He wasn’t voicing anything they hadn’t all puzzled over for weeks.

Harrison, tired of having no answers himself, simply let his friend vent.

Selwyn, ever the diplomat, sought to soothe.

“Perhaps they’ll find an answer now that they’ve discovered the virus can be grown. A sucrose medium is what I believe the doctor said the lab found worked best.”

“I sure as hell hope they come up with something soon,” Logan muttered over the click of the electronic lock on the door. “None of this is making any sense.”

Even as everyone murmured their agreement, all eyes swung toward the handsome young officer in uniform. Colonel Pierce Prescott acknowledged them with a nod as the door clicked shut behind him.

His gray-green eyes looked bleary as he tossed his beret on the table. “The bad news is that the courier service was paid in cash to deliver the envelope,” he began, not bothering to waste breath on formalities. “It was dropped off at their largest downtown office location which takes in anywhere from three to four thousand business envelopes a day. But,” he stressed, sinking into the nearest chair, “one of the clerks remembers it because it was the first package she checked in that day. It was brought in by an old woman with curly gray hair, big hands and a bad case of laryngitis.”

“Great,” Harrison muttered. “A guy in drag.”

“You got it. We found a wig and a housedress in the trash bin behind the building. We’re going through the netting in the wig for human hair.

“The good news,” he continued, pushing his fingers through his own, “is that we’ve identified the paper the ransom note was written on. It was run on a laser printer on the king’s personal stationery. The letterhead was cut off.”

Sir Selwyn’s dark eyebrows formed a single heavy slash. “The king’s personal stationery? The beige paper with the royal crest and banner on the side? Not the white?”

“What we have is beige,” Pierce informed him, “with remnants of a thin red line down the left side. Microscopic analysis discovered a micrometer of crimson ink that hadn’t been trimmed away.”

“But that is kept only in the royal residence.”

Harrison’s eyes narrowed at the trusted secretary’s certainty. “There is none in the royal office?”

“It’s never kept there,” Selwyn insisted. The royal offices were inside the main gates of the palace grounds. That was where the daily affairs of running the kingdom were handled by the king, his ministers and dozens of assistants, secretaries and clerks. Correspondence flowed through his staff like rainwater, all manner of memoranda and letters issued on the standard white stationery bearing the small tasteful seal of Penwyck above its letterhead. “The king’s personal stationery is used only for his most personal correspondence,” he continued. “It is always addressed from his office in his private apartments.”

Harrison took his coffee and offered it to Pierce. The younger man looked even more desperate for caffeine than he felt himself.

“Have a seat,” he muttered, and poured himself another cup as the importance of something that ordinarily wouldn’t seem significant at all turned all four men silent.

Whoever had kidnapped Prince Owen had also been in the king’s private apartments.

The conclusion was so obvious that not one of them felt compelled to mention it.

“Not to add insult to injury,” Harrison prefaced, “but was the printer used the one in the king’s residence office, too?”

Pierce had taken a grateful sip of what his colleague had offered him. Preparing to take another, he muttered, “It appears so.”

Harrison’s grip on his own mug tightened. “How do you want to handle General Vancor?” he asked, speaking of the head of the royal guard.

“I think it’s best that whatever evidence we have remain among us,” Logan asserted.

“I agree,” Harrison concluded, his voice going hard as he wondered how many other ways security might have been compromised that night. “Just tell him we have reason to believe Prince Owen’s kidnappers were also in the king’s apartments and find out how security was breached. If he doesn’t have answers from his men by this afternoon, I’ll pay him a visit myself.”

Having delegated that task, he picked up the newspaper he’d dropped onto a side chair and slid it faceup to the center of the table. “We also have another security problem.” His tone was matter-of-fact, his manner amazingly calm considering how furious he was at whoever had broken their confidence. The situation before had been delicate, to say the least. It now held the potential for disaster. “I received a call from a reporter of the Penwyck Herald about forty-five minutes ago. This is already hitting the streets.”

The bold, black headline screamed up at them all: King Morgan in Coma; Prince Broderick in Power

The other three men rose to their feet, each turning the paper so he could better see, the sounds muffled by their expletives.

Having already uttered a few oaths himself, Harrison glanced from one to another. These were the men the king had chosen to trust with his kingdom. There wasn’t one Harrison didn’t trust himself.

“We need to find whoever leaked this information.”

“What did the reporter say?” Logan demanded darkly.

“Only that he thought the palace should know before the public found out. He hung up before I could ask anything else.” To Harrison, Logan looked as if he could cheerfully choke someone. He could sympathize. Refusing to cave in to fatigue or frustration, he shoved his hand into his pocket instead. “My secretary is tracking him and his editor down now.”

“Aside from us,” Logan growled, “the only people who knew were the doctor and the three nurses tending His Majesty. They all have top security clearance and wouldn’t have anything to gain by leaking this.”

“The queen knows,” Pierce reminded him.

“Well, we know she wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the Crown,” the bodyguard conceded. “What about someone in a lab somewhere? The king’s bloodwork is still being handled under an alias, isn’t it?”

“I’ll check with the doctor,” Pierce replied, fully sharing his peer’s frustration. “But questions raise questions and we need to tread lightly there. I think our best source right now is the reporter and the editor.”

“I’ll stay on it,” Harrison promised. “But who leaked this isn’t our biggest problem at the moment.” He was unable himself to imagine where the leak had occurred, though he did agree with Pierce about Her Majesty. If the queen were to confide in anyone, it would be Lady Gwendolyn, and he had already eliminated her as a suspect. Had she known, she would have immediately understood why he had to consult with the queen about the alliance. But she hadn’t betrayed so much as a hint of such knowledge. All he remembered seeing in her intriguing blue eyes was the unexpected and beguiling plea with which she’d greeted him, and the quick, damnably annoying way that sapphire blue had frosted over before she’d come to her queen’s defense.

With a swift frown, he shook off the thoughts. He didn’t need to be thinking about the ice maiden—especially while three of the most intelligent, wealthiest and most powerful men in the country were waiting for him to continue.

“The entire kingdom is waking up to these headlines,” he pointed out, determined to stave off disaster. “Press from all over the world is going to descend like locusts in less than an hour…if the pressroom phone isn’t ringing already.” The thought had him starting to pace. “The good news is that the reporter apparently hadn’t been told how long the king has been ill. As far as anyone will know from that article, King Morgan took ill last evening rather than weeks ago.

“However,” he continued, pacing behind the men, “now that the public does know the king’s condition, it is imperative that Prince Broderick cease the masquerade as the real king and make a statement to the people that he will be taking his brother’s place in a ceremonial capacity. With those headlines,” he muttered, dismissing the offending wording with the wave of his hand, “we also need to make it very clear to the public and the world that Prince Broderick is a figurehead only. In the absence of an appointed heir, Penwyckian tradition passes power to the queen.”

Selwyn was inevitably the voice of reason. “I for one am relieved to have this out in the open. Prince Broderick has proven far more amenable than I would have expected, but I don’t know how much longer we could have kept up the charade.”

Pierce nodded. “I never liked this. I’ve always felt he was too much of a wild card.”

“We all share that feeling,” Harrison assured them both, “but we had no choice but to play the card we were handed. Our concern now is the effect this news will have on pending negotiations. Nothing must happen to jeopardize either the alliance with Majorco or the alliance with the U.S.”

“No question,” muttered Logan.

Sir Selwyn smoothed his tie. “Absolutely.”

“Pierce.” Harrison paced the length of the table again, his mind totally focused on a new battle plan. “I think it would be most expeditious if you met with Broderick to advise him of his change in status while Selwyn heads off the press. Are you all right with that?”

A sharp nod confirmed that he was.

“Selwyn,” he said to the Royal Secretary, “we need to arrange for the king’s press secretary and staff to meet with Prince Broderick.”

“Consider it done. Do we want cameras? All the trappings?”

The king’s twin would love that.

“Whatever it takes to make it look as if everything is totally under control. As to official statements,” Harrison continued, pacing back the other way, “Prince Broderick needs to assure the kingdom that official business will be conducted as usual. That message needs to be strong enough to assure the citizens of Penwyck that their government is and will remain stable but nonspecific enough to allow us time to track down Prince Owen before his abductors realize the alliance will be signed as planned.” He stopped at the head of the table and turned to face them. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” they replied in unison.

“Good. In the meantime, I will ask the appropriate ministers to meet with the ambassadors of the United States and Majorco, and assure them that nothing will stand in the way of their alliances.”

“Is that where you’re headed now?” Logan asked.

“No.” A muscle in Harrison’s jaw jerked. “Right now I’m going to see the queen.”

It was barely six in the morning when the guard at the entrance to the royal residence rang Gwen’s apartment on the second floor overlooking Castle Cove. Her three rooms, once a nanny’s quarters, were appointed modestly and were quite small, considering the size of the rooms below her. Still, decorated with the comfortable provincial furniture and personal treasures Gwen had brought with her ten years ago, they had proved more than adequate for a young widow with a small child to raise.

That child was now a twenty-year-old woman, who was presently on holiday with a friend and her family in the Scottish highlands—which was why the telephone rang five times before Gwen snatched it up.

Amira would have jumped on it by the second ring. With the blow dryer running, Gwen had barely heard it at all.

“He’s on his way up now?” she asked, tucking the receiver under her chin to snatch up her beige suit skirt. “Where exactly is he?”

The formal male voice on the other end of the line informed her that Admiral Monteque had just passed through the vestibule and turned into the queen’s hallway. He would be at the doors of the queen’s apartments in less than a minute.

Gwen’s heart felt as if it were beating out of her chest as she hurried to her wardrobe and stuffed her feet into a pair of taupe leather pumps. The only reason she could imagine him needing to see the queen—and at such an hour—was because something had happened with Prince Owen.

In her years of service to the queen, Gwen had always preferred two-piece suits because they were neat, comfortable and layers could be added or dispensed with beneath the jacket, depending on the season. There would be no layers today. Grabbing the beige silk jacket that matched her skirt, she shoved her arms into the sleeves, pushed back her freshly dried hair and rushed through the doorway beside her small Italian marble fireplace, zipping her skirt as she hurried down the narrow staircase that led directly to the queen’s drawing room.

Stepping through the narrow door by Mrs. Ferth’s desk, she closed it behind her and hurried soundlessly across the pale butters and creams of the carpet.

She was buttoning her jacket over her bra when she reached for the long gold handle and opened the carved door.

The red-jacketed guard beside it was already at attention. But it was the tall, powerfully built man in the navy uniform who commanded her attention as she stepped back.

Feeling totally thrown together, she watched the admiral close the door, her anxious eyes seeking his.

“Is it news of the prince?”

Harrison opened his mouth and felt his breath snag halfway to his lungs. Her usually restrained hair tumbled around her face and shoulders in a shimmering fall of platinum and honey. The thick, dark lashes of her sapphire eyes were as unadorned as her flawless skin. She smelled of soap, shampoo and fresh powder.

The combination sent something sharp and hot straight to his groin.

“I’m afraid not,” he murmured, the tightness gripping his body slipping into his voice.

An odd sense of regret licked through him as he watched the light of hope slip from her eyes.

Before he could question it, before he could stand there staring at her any longer, he pulled the newspaper he carried from beneath his arm. “It’s about the morning paper. Has Her Majesty seen it?”

Aware of the edge in his voice, Gwen took a step back and blinked at the shaving nick in his chin. “The paper?” she repeated, thinking that little wound terribly human for someone who seemed to have a rock for a heart. “She was up most of the night. Worried about Prince Owen,” she explained, in case that might not have occurred to him. The queen had called her at midnight to come sit with her. Gwen hadn’t gone to bed herself until after two. “I wasn’t even going to order up her tea for at least another hour.”

He took her response as a no and tried to ignore how soft her mouth looked without the pale-peach lipstick she’d worn yesterday. He’d obviously caught her dressing. Something she hadn’t quite managed to fully accomplish. She was without makeup, which made her look temptingly touchable. She hadn’t had time to restrain her hair, which made her look even more so. She wore no necklace, no earrings—and she’d missed the top button of her jacket.

Trying to ignore the latter, he held out the paper.

She took it from him, looking faintly puzzled at its importance.

When she read the headline, her flawless skin lost a hint of the natural peach that blushed her cheeks.

Utter disbelief washed her delicate features as she looked back up. “Is this true? It can’t be,” she concluded, before he could respond. “How is this possible?”

“The part about Prince Broderick isn’t true,” he assured her, wishing she weren’t standing so close. Standing in front of her as he was, towering over her, he could see a small strip of her champagne-colored bra. The scalloped lace lay taut against the firm swell of her breast. A small bow centered with what looked like a tiny pearl rested at the base of her cleavage. “He isn’t in power. The queen is. As for the rest of it, it’s quite accurate.”

Incredulity and concern turned her voice to nearly a whisper. “The king is in a coma? From what? And why wasn’t Her Majesty notified last night?”

He could practically see the wheels spinning in her mind. But whatever else she was about to say seemed to vanish like woodsmoke in a coastal wind, when he reached over and slipped his fingers beneath the lapel of her jacket to fasten the button himself.

The glimpse of her breast was entirely too tantalizing. But the feel of that soft swell beneath his knuckles nearly made his mind go blank.

His glance jerked to hers, their eyes colliding, his fingers still brushing her skin. In the space of a heartbeat, the air turned as heavy as the atmosphere on the island when clouds rolled in from the sea with a blast of wind, thunder and jagged bolts of lightning. Electricity snapped. Her breath stalled.

“It was distracting,” he muttered, and finished what he’d started by sliding the oyster-colored disk into place.

He could swear he felt her heart slam against her breastbone. He knew his own wasn’t beating too steadily. But as he slowly pulled back and let his hand fall, his only thought was that he couldn’t believe what he’d done. He never took liberties with a woman who hadn’t made it clear that she wanted his touch. And this woman, the queen’s best friend and lady-in-waiting, had never given him reason to think anything other than how glad she would be to see him leave.

He had no idea what she was thinking at the moment, however. Or what she was about to do. She took a step back, her hair draping forward to hide the hint of heat in her cheeks as she glanced at the paper she still held.

“It says he has encephalitis,” she murmured, focusing on the one word that jumped out as her lungs began to function again. The headlines had shaken her, but she felt rattled beyond belief by his touch. It felt as if he’d branded her. The feel of his knuckles still burned her flesh. More disconcerting still had been the way that initial jolt of heat had shot straight to her toes.

Duty demanded her concentration. Latching on to it, she did her best to ignore her scrambled senses and the rather uncertain way Harrison was watching her. “I must tell Her Majesty about the king.”

“She already knows. She was told days ago,” he said, confusing her further still.

“But I saw him in the garden just yesterday.”

“We had tried to keep the king’s condition from the public,” he said, thinking the queen could explain later, “but Her Majesty needs to be informed that the public now knows. There will be a press conference within the next couple of hours.”

The queen had known? Gwen thought—only to suddenly realize why Her Majesty had seemed so ambivalent about her duties of late.

“Of course,” she murmured, wishing her friend had confided in her, wishing she knew why she hadn’t. Wishing the air in the room were easier to breathe.

She could practically feel the tension radiating from the admiral’s big body. It snaked around her, through her, as tangible as the warmth still lingering on her skin.

“If you will wake her and break the news of this to her yourself, I’ll come back to talk with her after I’ve met with the minister of foreign affairs.” He glanced at his watch, his other obligations clearly pulling at him. “There is much she and I must discuss.”

Gwen gave him a nod, took a step back. As she did, his edgy glance fell to where her hand protectively covered the vee of her jacket.

Silence echoed off the ornate walls. In the taut moments before his eyes lifted to hers, his jaw had hardened enough to shatter his back teeth.

The silence was disturbing enough. But the banked heat in his gaze was knitting her nerves into a knot when one of the double doors behind her opened.

She turned to see Queen Marissa cautiously watching them both.

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