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Again, he caught that sidelong look from her. He wondered if she knew the effect that kind of look had on a man. Probably. She was smooth, intelligent and well past the age of consent. Which did not mean that standing there in the moonlight with her was not one of the most foolish indulgences ever.
She finished her champagne and turned a little. Facing him. “Truthfully, I was standing here thinking about something Owen said. About all the unfamiliar faces here.”
Pierce had noticed that, as well. And done his share of wondering. Speculating. Though it was a royal wedding, it was not a state occasion, and the guest list had not gone through some of the channels it otherwise would have. He hadn’t seen the list himself until last week when it was submitted to Royal Intelligence. At that point, his men and women had kicked their diligence into high gear to insure the safety of everyone who came to the wedding.
It was what they did. Protecting Penwyck, its citizens, its interests, its ruling house.
It’s what Pierce did, as well. And had been doing for more of his life than not. More than that, it was what he was.
“Your new brother-in-law contributed to the guest list,” he said. “As did his parents and uncle, undoubtedly. The King and Queen had their lists, as well. Guests they wanted to include for whatever reason. Not every face would be recognizable under those circumstances.”
“And you’re one of them. Well—” she lifted a slender, long-fingered hand “—you’re not unfamiliar, but you’re certainly not a face we often see at the palace.”
“It’s an important event.”
“The other events in which we are involved are not?”
“We?”
She gestured gracefully. “We. The family. You do tend to avoid us, you know. Why is that, I wonder?”
He was, first and foremost, a military man. Yet he’d walked blindly into that mine field. Diversion, he thought. “Dance with me.”
Her lips parted softly. “I believe we covered that.”
“Not exactly.” He left his glass on the wide ledge next to hers and took her hand. It was undoubtedly only surprise that let her step so easily away from the stone wall and into his arms. The music was softer out here. Still audible. But it was barely a background to the sound of the breeze through the leaves of the trees surrounding the estate, the distant lap of the sea against Castle Cove. And the music was fairly inaudible when his senses were suddenly, achingly aware of the cadence of Meredith’s breath, the soft scrape of shoe against stone and brick as they swayed.
“You’re trembling.”
“It’s chilly out here with the breeze.”
She lied, he thought. It was a balmy, breezy night. And he was burning up, holding her. Though there was more space between them than decorum demanded. His fingers barely grazed the fabric covering the small of her back, and her fingertips barely touched his shoulder. Where their other hands linked, however, a flame burned between their palms. Hot. Enticing.
Impossible.
“You ought to go inside,” he said. “If you’re chilly.”
“Yes.”
Yet she made no move to do so. In fact, as one song melded into the next, the distance between them lessened. Until Pierce eventually realized that his arms were definitely full of warm, sweet-smelling woman. That they’d shuffled and swayed themselves into the rear corner of the terrace. Where light barely reached, where the salty scent of sea was nearly a tang on their lips.
Her hair smelled of orange blossoms, he thought, and he felt like a drowning man. His palm flattened against her spine, and he felt her long, slow intake of breath that pressed her breasts against his chest. Her hand glided, measuring, over his shoulder to his collar. Her fingertips grazed his neck below his ear. His nape. Her forehead found the perfect resting place below his jaw. Heart to heart. Curve to angle.
She was royal by birth. She was the daughter of his King.
He had no business holding her the way he was. No business wanting to imprint his body on hers and hers on his. Not with the secrets he was keeping from her.
“Mer—Your Royal Highness.” His jaw was aching again. Hell. Every part of him ached.
“Would you mind?” She leaned back, swaying a little. Making him wonder, all of a sudden, just how much champagne she’d consumed. “My shoes. They’re so tight.”
A moment later, she was several inches shorter. Obviously, she’d stepped out of her high heels. And she’d kicked them with her foot until they tumbled against each other, stopped only by the wall.
It wasn’t his shoes that were tight, he thought with grim humor as she linked her hands behind his neck and nestled against him. “That’s better,” she sighed, sounding tired. “You dance well, Colonel.”
He was doing little other than holding her against him. “You should go to bed.”
Her lashes lifted, and she looked at him. He wished there were more illumination so he could tell if her eyes were glazed with champagne or drowsy with desire. Either was inappropriate to take advantage of, and he knew it.
“I don’t think I’m the spoiled brat I was at ten. Or seventeen,” she said, lucidly enough, “who needs to be sent to bed.”
At seventeen, she’d been a burgeoning young woman, just beginning to grasp the feminine power she could wield over others. A power that was now in full bloom.
Apparently, though he was nearly at a standstill, she, without her too-tight shoes, felt rather more like dancing. Swaying hypnotically. He clamped his hands on her waist. Her hips. She was tormenting him, and she probably didn’t even know it. Despite his torment, he knew there were guests inside the ballroom who were dancing far more closely, far more uninhibitedly.
“You weren’t a brat,” he said.
“But I was spoiled.”
“You’re the beloved first child of our ruler.”
“Spoken very properly.” She tossed back her head and watched him from beneath her lashes. “Do you ever lose your composure, Colonel Prescott?”
Only with you. Her lips looked impossibly soft. Inviting. “Rarely,” he said. “Do you ever fail to get what you want?”
“Rarely. So, if I’m not the spoiled brat, then why do you feel compelled to send me off to bed as if I were?”
Holding Meredith against him while speaking about bed hadn’t been particularly wise of him. His imagination was running riot. “Simple concern for your welfare, Your Royal Highness. You’ve had a long day. And plenty of champagne, I think.”
She smiled beautifully, telling him more surely than ever that she had imbibed more than was usual. As far as Pierce knew, Meredith never drank to excess. She never did a single thing to cause her family worry.
“Haven’t you had a long day, as well? Weren’t you up before dawn for your run in the hills around the base? Or in your old age have you given up your three morning miles?”
Old age? There were times when thirty-five felt old. There were times, like now, with a beautiful woman against him that were something else entirely. “Five miles. At the park near my place in Sterling.”
“That’s right.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I’d heard you’d taken a flat there. A few years ago.” She shot him another one of those veiled looks. “What brought that about, anyway? No, wait. A woman, I’ll wager.”
“Yes.”
Her eyebrows rose a little. “And that’s all you have to say about it, I suppose.”
“Yes.”
“Closemouthed as always, Colonel Prescott. Intelligence really is right up your alley.”
“I took the flat because I was driving my men and women crazy being on base twenty-four seven.” He’d be hanged if he’d admit to Meredith that she was the reason he’d chosen Sterling. It was a large city. Larger than Marlestone. And it was far enough away from Marlestone that he’d be unlikely to run into Meredith.
“Thinking only of others, as usual,” Meredith murmured, then quickly hid a yawn behind her hand. “Heavens. Please excuse me.”
“I’m surprised you even heard about my place in Sterling.” Or that she remembered his penchant for running in the morning—a hangover from the days he’d run track in school. “It’s hardly the stuff for the gossips.”
“You’re eligible, attractive and the Duke of Aronleigh. Surely you don’t expect to be immune from the paparazzi?”
“I’m a colonel in the Penwyck army,” he said flatly.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Did I hit a nerve?”
He consciously relaxed his grip on her slender waist. “You should get back inside.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ve been out here for some time now.”
“Afraid it’ll mar your reputation as the immovable, untouchable colonel?”
“I’m afraid George Valdosta will fall to the ground, prostrate in grief that you’re out of sight, and he’ll be trampled to death by dancers.”
“It always surprises me that you’ve a sense of humor lurking beneath your stony exterior, Colonel Prescott.”
She didn’t have a clue what lurked beneath his exterior. It was just as well. “Gossip aside, the papers tomorrow morning will be filled with accounts of the wedding.”
“This morning,” she corrected. “It’s past midnight.”
“And the princess really should be in bed.”
“I’m not eight, Colonel. I’m twenty-eight.” She was amused. Amused and drowsy and nearly boneless against him. “What is this preoccupation you have with my sleep habits?”
“Only your welfare.”
She shook her head slightly, then tilted it to look at him. “My father has always said you are a man of honor.”
That was debatable, Pierce thought. Where was honor when the only reason he was out on this terrace with Meredith was that he didn’t seem to have the fortitude to tear himself away?
“The speeches were lovely, don’t you think?”
“Speeches?”
“During the dinner. I thought my mother would nearly faint when the King toasted the memory of my uncle. They didn’t like one another much, you know.”
She was scrambling his brains. “His Majesty and Edwin?”
“Yes.”
His fingers flexed against her waist. Felt the seductive flare of her hips beneath the silk that wrapped her torso snugly, only to flare out in luxurious folds around her knees. “Edwin seems on your mind today.”
She lifted her shoulder, drawing his bedeviled gaze to the ivory skin left bare to the moonlight. “He seemed on the minds of many,” she said easily. “Isn’t that what families do when they gather together for weddings and christenings and funerals and such? Talk about the rest of the family? Those present and those lost?”
“Your family is a far cry from the typical.”
“Typical or not, I thought the toast was nice.”
“For the Queen’s sake,” Pierce agreed.
Her head tilted again, this time brushing against the arm he’d slid behind her shoulders. Was it his imagination that she was looking at his mouth? “Did you know,” she said softly, “that you get this hard look around your mouth whenever you say my uncle’s name?”
“No.”
“At least you don’t deny it,” she said.
“As I have no mirror on hand to test your theory, I’ll have to take your word for it.”
“’Tis more than a theory, Colonel.” Her fingers flitted over his jaw. His cheek. “Right there,” she whispered. “You get this fierce-looking crease in your cheek. Why is that?”
He caught her fingers in his, pulling them from his face. He didn’t want Meredith pressing her lovely, aristocratic nose into his feelings, or lack of them, regarding Edwin.
Her fingers flexed against his, and he settled her hand safely on his shoulder once more. “So proper,” she murmured.
If she only knew. “I’ll take you inside.”
She sighed faintly. “Of course.” She turned away, and only through sheer will did he let go of her as if nothing untoward had been running through his mind. “Oh. My shoes.” She looked at the ground where it was black as pitch.
Pierce knelt and felt around for the shoes until he found them. “Give me your foot.”
“What every woman dreams of hearing,” she murmured. But he heard the rustle of silk and tormented himself with images of her lifting it.
Then her foot butted his thigh. “Sorry,” she said on a soft laugh.
“Admit it. You’ve wanted to kick me since you were ten.”
She giggled.
Definitely too much champagne, he thought as he reached for her foot. Slowly slid the shoe into place. Her ankle felt delicate. Narrow.
“Are you certain that isn’t a glass slipper there?”
He took his hand away from her ankle, aware that his hold was too lingering, and rapidly slid the other shoe on for her. “You’ve no need for fairy godmothers or glass slippers. You’re already a princess.”
“One without a prince,” she said. Then laughed lightly, as if her voice hadn’t sounded utterly melancholy. “Thank you for playing shoe man, Colonel. I’ll just have to give away this pair, I think. Beautiful as they are, they’ve been torturing my toes the entire day.”
“Your Royal Highness.”
She turned on her heel so abruptly she swayed, and he put a steadying hand on her back. Was she as startled by the appearance of Lady Gwendolyn behind her as he’d been?
“Yes?”
“Your father is asking for you.”
Meredith nodded. “Of course. Thank you.” She looked over her shoulder at Pierce. “Colonel. The dance was…delightful. If I don’t see you before you leave, I hope you’ll have a safe trip home.”
