The Princess And The Duke

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“Thank you.”

With a sweep of her skirt, Meredith glided toward the terrace doors. As she neared, the light haloed around her, glinting off her hair, her dress, her ivory skin.

Pierce was glad for the relative darkness in which he stood. Lady Gwendolyn studied him silently for a moment. It had been a lot of years since he’d gone to Gwendolyn Corbin on the occasion of her husband’s funeral to express his condolences at her loss, only to end up having to lie to the young woman when—tears flooding her lovely blue eyes—she’d asked him the most natural of questions. What her husband’s last words had been.

Pierce still felt awkward in her presence.

The woman, with no smile whatsoever on her classically beautiful face, nodded briefly. “Good night, Your Grace.” Then she turned and glided away.

Pierce turned around and stared over the wall into the night, his hands tight on the stone ledge. He hated the noble title.

There was nothing noble about him. Nothing at all.

He stood there, drawing in the increasingly crisp, sea-scented air, until his tension abated. Until he could be sure he wouldn’t betray himself when he went into the ballroom. Only then did he turn and follow the women’s path inside.

He immediately noticed Meredith in conversation with her father. She was smiling as she greeted the people in the group surrounding the King, but Pierce could see how tired she was.

If King Morgan were any kind of father, he’d have seen it, too. But the man standing beside Meredith wasn’t any type of father. Not to Meredith. Nor to anyone else.

Because the man standing beside Meredith, foisting her off into dancing with one of the men, was not her father, King Morgan of Penwyck.

It was Morgan’s twin brother, Broderick.

And Pierce was one of a very small handful of people in the country who knew it.

Chapter Four

As he circled the grand ballroom, Pierce’s attention kept straying to Meredith. She was being passed from one gentleman to the next, barely managing two minutes of dance between the lot of them.

His hands curled. It was nearing two in the morning. She was tipsy on champagne and nerves. It was none of his business with whom she danced away the hours.

She’d always been out of his reach. Never more so than now.

Even the King’s family didn’t know about the health crisis that had necessitated bringing in Broderick to act as king.

And it was that secret, right now, that ate most at Pierce’s conscience. He wanted to go onto that dance floor and rescue Meredith with her aching feet and her tired body from the demands of her position in the royal family.

But she was out of his reach. She always had been. She always would be. Instead of heading toward the exit, Pierce headed toward the King. He was aware of the cold expression in Broderick’s eyes as he joined the small group of men cloistered around him. But he didn’t let Broderick’s expression stop him.

“Your Majesty,” he greeted respectfully. “Could we have a word?”

Broderick’s lips thinned. He waved off his crowd and, though nobody saw the reluctance but Pierce, walked with him to the terrace, then into the rose garden, passing the guard who quietly assured Pierce that the area was secure. “Spending a lot of time out of doors, Prescott,” Broderick said smoothly. “Is the moon full?”

“If you’re implying I’m a wolf under this tux, you’d be right.” Pierce didn’t like Broderick. He liked lying about this business even less. It wasn’t the first lie he’d kept secret from the rest of the royal family, but this one sat more heavily on his conscience than the other.

Probably because he was worried about the true King.

Morgan should have come out of his coma by now, yet he hadn’t. And the doctors who were privy to the truth were noticeably concerned. They were even now covertly consulting the Centers for Disease Control in the United States. Megan’s bout with encephalitis had resolved extremely rapidly. The King’s case, however, seemed another kettle of fish entirely.

Lies, Pierce thought as he watched Broderick pluck a fat bloom from a laden rosebush. He hated lies.

The last situation had been unavoidable, and even ten years later, Pierce knew he’d undoubtedly take the same actions. Now, however, this game of make-believe could make or break the delicate negotiations involved in the alliances that King Morgan had been so determined to see to fruition.

“Did you add to the guest list?” he finally asked.

Broderick barely spared him a look. “My dear Prescott, is that not the right of any father of the bride?”

“Don’t mess with me, sir.”

Broderick turned on Pierce, smiling coldly. And in that coldness, his startling resemblance to his twin brother was lost. “And don’t mess with me, old boy. I didn’t have to agree to this charade of yours, after all. The high and mighty RET. My brother’s pet team. I could have told you all to go to hell.”

The Royal Elite Team was far more than the King’s pet, and Broderick knew it. They were a group of four men, personally selected by King Morgan, to protect and serve every interest of Penwyck. If there were a modern-day musketeer, Pierce figured his associates of the RET and he would be it. Though their efforts these days rarely involved wielding the sword themselves.

He didn’t rise to Broderick’s taunt. “You could have refused. You didn’t.”

“It’s to Penwyck’s advantage that I was able to step into my sainted brother’s shoes,” Broderick said. His fingers slowly plucked the petals from the rose.

“We didn’t expect the charade to have to continue beyond a few days. A week.” Nobody had expected the King to be indisposed for so long a time. It had them all worried.

Broderick nodded slowly, for once exhibiting a small portion of concern. “Yet my brother hasn’t rallied as expected. A terrible thing. Lying there in a coma. The man didn’t even have an opportunity to name his successor. To choose between his twin sons the way my parents had to choose between Morgan and me.”

And you hated your parents for the choice they made, didn’t you, old boy? Pierce kept the thought to himself. Broderick had been living in relative seclusion on Majorco, thoroughly estranged from his brother, for so many years that few people even remembered his existence, but he had to admit that, so far, Broderick had been doing an admirable job of taking his brother’s place.

None of which mitigated Pierce’s concern for the King, who lay in that damnably prolonged coma, secreted from all but the most necessary and trusted of staff.

And whether or not Pierce liked it, Broderick was a member of the royal family. “Your Royal Highness—”

“Majesty,” Broderick snapped. “You will address me as you address the King, or you will not address me at all. Is that clear?”

Pierce stepped close to the King, keeping his voice low. “And you will not overstep yourself so much as an inch, or we will deal appropriately with you. Is that clear?”

Broderick suddenly smiled and stepped back, breaking the tension between them. “Relax, Prescott. I swear, neither you nor Monteque have any idea how to have fun. The good admiral dogged my footsteps for most of the night before he was—hallelujah—called away.”

Admiral Harrison Monteque was the unofficial leader of the four-man Royal Elite Team. And Pierce knew Harrison was about as trusting of Broderick as he was. “Adding guests that were never run by my team is hardly what I’d describe as having fun. Yet that’s what you did, isn’t it?”

Broderick shrugged. “So, I was having a bit of fun at the family’s expense. Everyone loves a party, Prescott. What’s a few dozen people more or less?”

“It’s a few dozen people who haven’t been run through security,” Pierce said flatly. “There is no excuse for putting any member of the Penwycks at risk, yet you did just that.”

Broderick sighed heavily. “All right. All right. Relax. Everyone is safe and my…friends have nearly all departed.”

There was little Pierce could do about it without tipping his hand, and Broderick knew that. “How are things going in the private quarters? Anyone suspicious?” If Meredith had noticed anything amiss, he probably would have known by now. She was nothing if not excruciatingly honest.

He wished he were the kind of man who could be just as candid. Who could be worthy of a woman like her. But he wasn’t.

He hadn’t been for ten long years.

“Not even the Queen herself when I slipped into her bed last night has shown suspicion.”

Pierce’s stomach twisted, and his hands curled into fists. “You gave your word you would not—”