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Reluctantly, she nodded. She’d known he would say that, but she’d hoped he might change his mind and try to take a step back into the world. A deep, abiding sadness settled into her soul as she faced the fact that he wasn’t even tempted to try. He was preparing for the end, and nothing she said or did would change that. Tears threatened and she forced them back. She would have to save her grieving for another time.
Right now, she had another goal in mind. She was hoping to prove something to Monte, and she was gambling that her father would respond in the tone and tenor that she’d heard from him so often before. If he went in a different direction, there was no telling what might happen. Glancing back at where Monte stood in the shadows, she made her decision. She was going to risk it—her leap of faith.
“Father, do you ever think of the past? About how we got here and why we are the way we are?”
He coughed and nodded. “I think of very little else these days.”
“Do you think about the night the castle burned?”
“That was before you were born.”
“Yes. But I feel as though that night molded my life in many ways.”
He grasped her hand as though to make her stop it. “But why? It had nothing to do with you.”
“But it was such a terrible way to start a new regime, the regime I’ve lived under all my life.”
“Ugly things always happen in war.” He turned his face away as though he didn’t want to talk about it. “These things can’t be helped.”
She could feel Monte’s anger beginning to simmer even though she didn’t look at him. She hesitated. If her father wasn’t going to express his remorse, she might only be doing damage by making him talk. Could Monte control his emotions? Was it worth it to push this further?
She had to try. She leaned forward.
“But, Father, you always say so many mistakes were made.”
“Mistakes are human. That is just the way it is.”
Monte made a sound that was very close to a growl. She shook her head, still unwilling to look his way, but ready to give up. What she’d hoped for just wasn’t going to happen.
“All right, Father,” she began, straightening and preparing to get Monte out of here before he did something ugly.
But suddenly her father was speaking again. “The burning of the castle was a terrible thing,” he was saying, though he was speaking so softly she wondered if Monte could hear him. “And the assassination of the king and queen was even worse.”
Relief bloomed in her chest. “What happened?” she prompted him. “How did it get so out of control?”
“You can go into a war with all sorts of lofty ambitions, but once the fuse is lit, the fire can be uncontrollable. It wasn’t supposed to happen that way. Many of us were sick at heart for years afterwards. I still think of it with pain and deep, deep regret.”
This was more like it. She only hoped Monte could hear it and that he was taking it as a sincere recollection, not a rationalization. She laced her fingers with her father’s long, trembling ones.
“Tell me again, why did you sign on with the rebels?”
“I was very callow and I felt the DeAngelis family had grown arrogant with too much power. They were rejecting all forms of modernization. Something was needed to shake the country up. We were impatient. We thought something had to be done.”
“And now?”
“Now I think that we should have moved more slowly, attempted dialogue instead of attack.”
“So you regret how things developed?”
“I regret it deeply.”
She glanced back at Monte. His face looked like a storm cloud. Wasn’t he getting it? Didn’t he see how her father had suffered as well? Maybe not. Maybe she was tilting at windmills. She turned back to her father and asked a question for herself.
“Then why do you want me to marry Leonardo and just perpetuate this regime?”
Her father coughed again and held a handkerchief to his lips. “He’ll be better than his father. He has some good ideas. And your influence on him will work wonders.” He managed a weak smile for his beloved daughter. “Once you are married to Leonardo, it will be much more difficult for anyone to hurt you.”
She smiled down at him and blotted his forehead with the damp cloth. He wouldn’t be so sure of that if he knew that at this very moment, danger lurked around her on all sides. Better he should never know that she was carrying Monte’s child.
“I must go, Father. I’ve got to prepare for the ball.”
“Yes. Go, my darling. Have a wonderful time.”
“I’ll be back in the morning to tell you all about it,” she promised as she rose from his side.
She hurried toward the door, jerking her head at Monte to follow. She didn’t like the look on his face. It seemed his hatred for her father was too strong for him to see what a dear and wonderful man he really was. Well, so be it. She’d done her best to show him the truth. You could lead a horse to water and all that.
But they were late. She had a path laid out and a routine, and now she knew she was venturing out into the unknown. At her usual time, she never met anyone in the halls. Now—who knew?
“We have to hurry,” she said once they were outside the room. She quickly looked up and down the empty hallway. “I’ve got to meet Leonardo in just a short time.” She started off. “Quickly. We don’t want to meet anyone if we can help it.”
The words were barely out of her mouth when she heard loud footsteps coming from around the bend in the walkway. Only boots could make such a racket. It had to be the guards. It sounded like two of them.
“Quick,” she said, reaching for the closest door. “In here.”
Though she knew the castle well, she wasn’t sure what door she’d reached for. There was a library along this corridor, and a few bedrooms of lower-ranking relatives of the Granvillis. Any one of them could have yielded disaster. But for once, she was in luck. The door she’d chosen opened to reveal a very small broom closet.
Monte looked in and didn’t see room for them both. He turned back to tell her, but she wasn’t listening.
“In,” she whispered urgently, and gave him a shove, then came pushing in behind him, closing the door as quietly as she could. But was it quietly enough? Pressed close together, they each held their breath, listening as the boots came closer. And closer. And then stopped, right outside the door.
Pellea looked up at Monte, her eyes huge and anxious. He looked down at her and smiled. It was dark in the closet, but enough light came in around the door to let him make out her features. She was so beautiful and so close against him. He wanted to kiss her. But more important things had cropped up. So he reached around her and took hold of the knob from the inside.
There was a muttering conversation they couldn’t make out, and then one of the guards tried the knob. Monte clamped down on his lower lip, holding the knob with all his might.
“It’s locked,” one of the guards said. “We’ll have to find the concierge and get a key.”
The other guard swore, but they began to drift off, walking slowly this time and chattering among themselves.
Monte relaxed and let go of the knob, letting out a long sigh of relief. When he looked down, she was smiling up at him, and this time he kissed her.
He’d been thinking about this kiss for so long, and now, finally, here it was. Her lips were smooth as silk, warm and inviting, and for just a moment, she opened enough to let his tongue flicker into the heat she held deeper. Then she tried to pull away, but he took her head in his hands and kissed her longer, deeper, and he felt her begin to melt in his arms.
Her body was molded to his and he could feel her heart begin to pound again, just as it had when they’d almost been caught. The excitement lit a flame in him and he pulled her closer, kissed her harder, wanted her all to himself, body and soul.
It was as though he’d forgotten where they were, what was happening around them. But Pellea hadn’t.
“Monte,” she finally managed to gasp, pushing him as hard as she could. “We have to go while we have the chance!”
He knew she was right and he let her pull away, but reluctantly. Still, he’d found out what he needed to know. The magic still lived between them and they could turn it on effortlessly. And, he hoped, a bit later, they would.
But now she opened the door tentatively and looked out. There was no one in the hall. She slipped out and he followed and they hurried to her gate, alert for any hint of anyone else coming their way. But they were lucky. She used a remote to open the gate as they approached. In seconds, they were safely inside.
The moment the gate closed, Monte turned and tried to take her into his arms again, but she backed away, trying hard to glare at him.
“Just stop it,” she told him.
But he was shaking his head. “You can’t marry Leonardo. Not when you can kiss me like that.”
She stared at him for a moment. How could she have let this happen? He knew, he could tell that she was so in love with him, she could hardly contain it. She could protest all she wanted, he wasn’t going to believe her. If she wasn’t very careful, he would realize the precious secret that she was keeping from him, and if that happened, they would both be in terrible trouble.
Feeling overwhelmed, she groaned, her head in her hands. “Why are you torturing me like this?
He put a finger under her chin and forced her head up to meet his gaze. “Maybe a little torture will make you see the light.”
“There’s no light,” she said sadly, her eyes huge with tragedy. “There’s only darkness.”
He’d been about to try to kiss her again, but something in her tone stopped him and he hesitated. Just a few weeks before, their relationship had been light and exciting, a romp despite the dangers they faced. They had made love, but they had also laughed a lot, and teased and played and generally enjoyed each other. Something had changed since then. Was it doubt? Wariness? Or fear?
He wasn’t sure, but it bothered him and it held him off long enough for her to pivot out of his control.
“Gotta go,” she said as she started for the gate, prepared to dash off again.
He took a step after her. “You’re not planning to tell Leonardo I’m here, are you?” he said. His tone was teasing, as though he was confident she had no such plans.
She turned and looked at him, tempted to do or say something that would shake that annoying surety he had. But she resisted that temptation. Instead, she told the truth.
“I’m hoping you won’t be here any longer by the time I get back.”
He appeared surprised. “Where would I go?”
She shook her head. It was obviously no use to try, but she had to make her case quickly and clearly. “Please, Monte,” she said earnestly. “Go back the way you came in. Just do this for me. It will make my life a whole lot easier.”
“Pellea, this is not your problem. I’ll handle it.”
She half laughed at his confidence. “What do you mean, not my problem? That’s exactly what you are. My problem.”
“Relax,” he advised. “I’m just going to work on my objective.”
“Which is?”
“I told you. I’m here to kidnap you and take you back to the continent with me.”
“Oh, get off it. You can’t kidnap me. I’m guarded day and night.”
“Really? Well, where were your wonderful guards when I found my way into your chambers?”
She didn’t have an answer for that one so she changed the subject. “What’s the point? Why would you kidnap me?”
He shrugged. “To show them I can.”
She threw up her hands. “Oh, brother.”
“I want to show the Granvillis that I’ve been here and taken something precious to them.”
Her eyes widened. “You think I’m precious?”
His smile was almost too personal. “I know you are. You’re their most beautiful, desirable woman.”
That gave her pause. Was she supposed to feel flattered by that? Well, she sort of did, but she wouldn’t admit it.
“Gee, thanks. You make me feel like a prize horse.” She shook her head. “So to you, this is just part of some war game?”
The laughter left his gaze. “Oh, no. This is no game. This is deadly serious.”
There was something chilling in the way he said that. She shivered and tried to pretend she hadn’t.
“So you grab me. You throw me over your shoulder and carry me back to your cave. You go ‘nah nah nah’ to the powers that be in Ambria.” She shrugged. “What does that gain you?”
He watched her steadily, making her wonder what he saw. “The purpose is not just to thumb my nose at the Granvillis. The purpose is to cast them into disarray, to make them feel vulnerable and stupid. To throw them off their game. Let them spend their time obsessing on how I could have possibly gotten into the castle, how I could have possibly taken you out without someone seeing. Let them worry. It will make them weaker.”
“You’re crazy,” she said for lack of anything else to say. And he was crazy if he thought the Granvillis would tumble into ruin because of a kidnapping or two.
“I’d like to see them tightening their defenses all around,” he went on, “and begin scurrying about, looking for the chinks in their armor. There are people here who watch what they do and report to us. This will give us a better idea of where the weak spots are.”
She nodded. She understood the theory behind all this. But it didn’t make her any happier with it.
“So when you get right down to it, it doesn’t have to be me,” she noted. “You could take back something else of importance. The tiara, for instance.”
Something moved behind his eyes, but he only smiled. “I’d rather take you.”
“Well, you’re not going to. So why not just get out of my hair and go back where you came from?”
He shook his head slowly, his blue eyes dark with shadows. “Sorry, Pellea. I’ve got things I must do here.”
She sighed. She knew exactly what he would be doing while she was gone. He would be in her secret room, checking out what was going on all over the castle. Making his plans. Ruining her life. A wave of despair flooded through her. What had she done? Why hadn’t she been more careful?
“Arrgghh!” she said, making a small wail of agony.
But right now she couldn’t think about that. She had to go meet Leonardo or he would show up here.
“You stay out of my closet room,” she told him with a warning look, knowing he wouldn’t listen to a word she said. “Okay?” She glared at him, not bothering to wait for an answer. “I’ll be back quicker than you think.”
He laughed, watching her go, enjoying the way her hips swayed in time with her gorgeous hair. And then she was gone and he headed straight for the closet.
To the casual eye, there was nothing of note to suggest a door to another room. The wall seemed solid enough. He tried to remember what she’d done to close it, but he hadn’t been paying attention at the time. There had to be something—a special knock or a latch or a pressure point. He banged and pushed and tried to slide things, but nothing gave way.
“If this needs a magic password, I’m out of luck,” he muttered to himself as he made his various attempts.
