The Prince She Had to Marry

“Yes. Expedient.” She wore an irritatingly patient expression. “I understand. And as I was saying, you need to be here for that. And as I mentioned earlier, I know you’ve been through a lot.”

“What does what I’ve ‘been through’ have to do with anything?” he demanded.

She answered carefully. “I just meant you’ve only been back for six months. I think you need more time here, in Montedoro, at the only home you’ve ever known, more time to … heal.”

To heal? How so? His wounds no longer festered. He’d put back on the thirty kilos he’d lost during his captivity, and then some. His “healing,” such as it was, was done. But he didn’t say that. He said nothing.

And she continued, “I’ve always loved Montedoro anyway. So let’s say a year, together, here at the Prince’s Palace. I’ll clear my calendar.”

“For the entire year?” She was constantly giving speeches at charity functions, working diligently to establish trusts for the needy. “Isn’t a year a bit extreme?”

“Perhaps, but necessary. I want our marriage to work. There’s the baby to think of, any way. I’ll want to take it easy from seven months or so on. And then I’ll need a few months to concentrate on our newborn. After the year is up, though, we will discuss a move to Alagonia—or a way to divide our time between our two countries.”

He had to give her credit. She was quite the negotiator. But it didn’t matter what he agreed to now. She would be fed up with him long before a year had passed. In the end, she would be only too happy for them to lead separate lives. He would make sure of that. “Agreed,” he said.

She folded her hands in front of her. “I want us to be happy, Alex.”

That was never going to happen. Not for him, anyway. “I’ll do my best.”

“And your best is all I can ask of you.” Her eyes were a deeper blue than ever right then, violet-blue. And her lips …

Better not to think about her lips. “Well, all right,” he said. “It’s settled.”

“Yes,” she answered quietly. “We’ll be married. This morning.”

He offered his hand.

She ignored it, surging forward on tiptoe instead, reaching up to take his shoulders, pulling him down and brushing the sweetest, too-swift kiss across his mouth. His senses flooded with the scent of her and her lips were infinitely soft. Warm.

He could have so easily broken free of her delicate hold, could have stepped back. But he didn’t.

He was captured. Disarmed. An all-too-willing prisoner.

Unbidden images flashed through his mind: Lili as a little girl, all dressed up as a fairy princess in a gossamer froth of purple and green, a foil crown on her head, a handmade wand in her hand. She wore wings, wire wings covered in transparent gauze. There was to be a play, wasn’t there, one of those plays she and his sisters were always putting on? He remembered her out by one of the fountains in the palace gardens, all dressed up to play a fairy princess, arms outstretched, turning in circles, giggling with happiness, her golden head tipped back, her face turned up to the sun.

The little-girl Lili faded away.

He saw her on that fateful morning in April, her hair flowing over his hands, her eyes dazed, dreamy. He saw the perfect curve of her hip, the concave temptation of her belly. The golden curls between her long, slim thighs. Her skin that was pale as milk, only faintly stained with pink.

Now, in the final hours of darkness on the morning they would marry, he had to steel himself to keep from reaching out, drawing her close, deepening that light, quick brush of a kiss.

Blessedly, within a few seconds, she let him go. “Good night, Alex,” she told him softly.

And then she turned and left him there, holding his empty glass and feeling bereft when he should have been grateful that she had gone.

Chapter Three

Lili’s wedding gown wasn’t white. It wasn’t even a gown, really. It was a very ladylike dress by Valentino, a tea-length dress of painted silk, dotted with tiny sprays of pale flowers on a ground of purple so dark it might have been midnight blue. Her suede shoes were deep violet, with ankle straps and very high heels. She smoothed her acres of hair into a simple twist and wore crystal Pavé earrings.

At a quarter of nine, she stood before the cheval glass in her palace guest apartment, ready to say her vows.

One of her attendants entered. “His Majesty is here.”

She greeted him in the sitting room. “Papa.”

He hesitated, the way he always did after he’d lost his wild Alagonian temper. He looked so hopeful and abashed. “Forgive me?”

“Always.”

He came to her and enfolded her in his lean arms, holding her close as he used to do so often when she was a child. When he took her by the shoulders and stepped away a little, he gazed at her admiringly. “You are a beauty, just like your mother.” There was sadness in his eyes when he spoke of his lost queen. “She looked forward so eagerly to your wedding day.”

Lili kept her smile in place, though her father’s image blurred a little to her misty eyes. “I feel she is watching over us, blessing us. I do, Papa.”

He touched her cheek, laid his hand lightly against her upswept hair. “She always planned a large, royal wedding for you, a wedding of state, a thing of pomp and glory, at D’Alagon.” D’Alagon was the Alagonian royal palace. It stood proudly on a hill above the capital city and port of Salvia. “I hope you’re not too disappointed, my little love, to have your wedding in secret, to wear a day dress, to marry here in Montedoro rather than at home.”

She leaned close to him and whispered in his ear, “It’s never the wedding, Papa. You know that. It’s the marriage that matters.”

His green eyes turned dark and stormy and a muscle twitched in his square jaw. “He’d better treat you well or I’ll have his head on a pike.”

She straightened his collar. “Papa, stop it. Alex is … troubled. But he’s a good man at heart.” As she said the words, she took comfort from realizing she believed them.

Her father held her close again. “Be happy, my little love.”

She thought of her groom again, of his shadowed eyes, his brusque, harsh ways. To be happy with Alex wasn’t going to be easy. Still, she promised her father, “I will, Papa. Happiness is something one chooses. And I do choose it. Gratefully.”

Lili married Alex at 10:00 a.m. in the St. Catherine of Siena Chapel at the palace. A trusted palace priest performed the ceremony. In attendance were only their immediate family members and several stone-faced, silent members of Alex’s Covert Command Unit. Alex’s men were assigned to guard the entrances and make certain that no one outside saw what was taking place within.

Later, a low-key family luncheon was held in the sovereign’s private apartment. Everyone seemed subdued, Lili thought. Even her usually loquacious father was quiet. Thoughtful.

Lili was content enough with her wedding day. The main thing was that she and Alex had reached a workable agreement in the hours before dawn. She had hopes that they might forge a real union as time went by. He stayed at her side through the meal. His eyes were guarded, his words few.

But then, he’d always been the quiet one, the scholar of the family, as serious and grim as his twin Damien was lighthearted and full of fun. From early childhood, Alex had wanted to be a writer, a journalist. He and Damien got their degrees from America, at Princeton, as their older brothers Max and Rule had done before them. Damien barely got through, but Alex was at the head of his class. He published early, a number of scholarly articles on Montedoran history, on the future of his people in the modern world.

Then he’d decided he wanted to write about Afghanistan. His American friend, Devon Lucas, the one who died while they were prisoners there, had somehow been involved in that decision. The story, at least as it had been told to Lili, was muddy at best. Three weeks into his stay in Afghanistan, Alex and his friend had vanished without a trace. He was gone for so long. They all assumed that both men must have died. But somehow, Alex had survived and made it home. And when he returned, the intense, brooding scholar had been replaced by a hardened warrior.

After the luncheon, Alex went off to work. She wasn’t sure exactly what he did, but the activity occurred in the training yard not far from the palace and no doubt involved much sweating and displays of manly strength. Lili spent a couple of hours with her new sisters-in-law in Rule and Sydney’s apartment. Sydney, as it turned out, was having a baby, too. She and Lili were both due in January. They agreed that the birth of a child was the perfect way to celebrate the New Year.

When Lili left the others, she went to change into a pale blue silk skirt and matching jacket. She met Alex, now dressed in a fine designer suit, in the private office of Her Sovereign Highness. For an hour, they received instructions and coaching from the palace press secretary.

And then, at five that afternoon, they were the star attraction at a press conference in the Blue Room of the State Apartments—the State Apartments being the official wing of the palace where public visits and activities took place. They sat at a long, red-clothed table flanked by her father on one side and Adrienne and Evan on the other. They faced row upon row of chairs filled with press people. There were cameras and microphones and a whole lot of questions.

Lili said what she had been told to say, as did Alex. They sat close together and held hands, as per the palace press secretary’s instructions.

It went as well as it could have been expected to go, Lili thought. As usual, the press people interrupted one another and talked over each other. They were impatient, demanding—and full of suspicion that more had to be going on than an elopement between a prince of Montedoro and Alagonia’s heir presumptive.

Lili concentrated on remaining calm and unruffled. On being gracious and not saying too much. She said how happy she was to be Alex’s wife. And how glad she felt that she and Alexander had finally come forward about their marriage. She was thrilled, she said, that she could now be Alex’s wife for all the world to see. And she was so looking forward to the gala dinner party that night. It would be a chance to celebrate their union with the people they loved the most.

Like all unpleasant occurrences in life, the press conference eventually came to an end. The press people were ushered out through one door. Lily, Alex, her father and Alex’s parents escaped through another.

Dinner, a formal affair to which Lili wore diamonds and a long strapless creation of metallic gold, was at eight in the ornate dining room within the state apartments. Lili’s father and all of the adult members of Alex’s family were there, plus several lords and ladies her father had invited from Alagonia and a number of top Montedoran officials and their wives. The courses were endless, the speeches and toasts more so. Lili smiled and chatted and played the part of the deeply in love, deliriously happy bride she was supposed to be.

She didn’t get any help from Alex. He sat at her side in his gorgeous white dinner jacket, looking distant and severe, saying little.

After an hour and a half of that, she leaned close to him and whispered, “This isn’t fair and you know it. You’re making me do all the work.”

He wrapped his powerful arm around her bare shoulders, causing a hot shiver to course through her, and he whispered back, “Ah, but Lili, you’re so very good at this.” His warm breath stirred the fine curls that had escaped her chignon. “And everyone knows about me, that I loathe any and all ceremonies of state—including endless, boring state dinners like this one. They all simply think I can’t wait to get you alone and out of that gold dress.”

She smiled at him in a way that she hoped looked adoring, and put her lips close to his ear again. “You promised to try.”

And he replied, equally softly, “And I am trying. I am trying so very hard…. ”

It was no use and she knew it. She would get nowhere with him here. Later, when they were alone, she would clarify their agreement and get his word that he would do better in the future. For the moment, she gave a light trill of laughter and eased out from under the stonelike weight of his arm.

The dinner went on until after eleven. Then there was music and brandy in the grand salon.

It was well after two in the morning before her new sisters-in-law spirited her off to Alex’s apartment in a nod to Montedoran wedding-night tradition. They helped her to dress in a long, white, semisheer nightgown just perfect for the virgin she wasn’t. They took down her hair. Laughing and joking, they urged her up into the bed and then pulled the covers over her. One by one, they kissed her and wished her happiness and eternal love.

And then, finally, they left her.

Alex’s brothers and a number of other young fellows brought him along a few minutes later. Lili heard them enter the apartment. They were laughing and singing some silly, bawdy song.

Out there in the main part of the suite, she heard a scuffle, which was part of the tradition. The groom was supposed to put up a fight when the other men helped him out of his clothes. It was all completely unnecessary, as it wasn’t even supposed to be their wedding night, because the story for the world was that they had married two months before.

But the brandy had flowed freely after dinner and the men seemed to have been caught up in the spirit of the evening. The scuffle beyond the door didn’t sound terribly loud or violent, though. Alex, apparently, was playing along.

And then, suddenly enough that she yanked the covers up to her chin and let out a gasp of surprise, the door was thrown open and Alex rolled in, naked as the day he was born.

His brothers and the other men were clustered in the doorway, some of them clearly more than a little bit drunk.

Alex jumped up, looking magnificent, even with all the angry scars that crisscrossed his back, his buttocks, his arms and his powerful thighs. He gave a low, perfect bow. “Good night, gentlemen.”

They all shouted, more or less in unison, “Good night!”

Alex slammed the door. And then he turned and strolled quite casually past the bed where she lay, wide-eyed, the covers up below her nose. He went into the bathroom. The latch clicked shut behind him.

Lili lay very still in the big bed. She heard noises beyond the outer bedroom door, footsteps moving away, men talking softly to each other.

In no time, there was silence.

She and Alex were alone in the suite.

Lili closed her eyes, took slow, even breaths to calm her suddenly racing heart, and waited.

After several minutes, the bathroom door opened. Alex emerged wearing the same robe he’d worn after his shower the night before.

Lili pushed the covers down and pulled herself up against the pillows. “Alex …” It came out breathless and hopeful.

He sent her an unreadable glance as he walked past the bed again. “Good night, Lili.” He pulled the door open, went through and shut it behind him.

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