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Ah, yes, a deal made in naïve, youthful folly. In desperation such as she’d never known. A pact etched in her mind like an effigy on a tombstone. A shiver ghosted over her as she was haunted by the past…
* * *
‘Please…please, Father. I can’t do it. I can’t get rid of him.’ She knew he was small, so small inside her, but she couldn’t take him away, she couldn’t give him up. She couldn’t.
‘Luciana, you are not married. You will bring disgrace on us all. You are the heiress to the throne and the father of the child you carry is an enemy of this nation. Do you forget his assassination attempt? On me? He is a traitor to the crown.’
‘Yes, but I didn’t know who he was. I—’
‘If this man ever discovered your child’s existence he could use him as a pawn to gain power over us. He could take Arunthia. And do you honestly want his Satan of an uncle getting his hands on your son? We have avoided war for sixty years—do you want your people to live in tyranny as those in Galancia do?’
‘No, no. But…no one need ever know. I could go away for a while. Please, I’m begging you. Pleading with you… Let me keep him.’
The King’s deep sigh filled the oppressive air stifling his office and she teetered on the precipice of throwing her pride to the gale and plunging to her knees.
Then he said, ‘Five years, Luciana. Five years of freedom. That is all I will give you. But the world must never know he is yours because Thane must never, ever find him. You will never be able to claim him as your son and heir. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes. Yes, I understand,’ she said—wild, frenzied, frantic. Unthinking of the consequences of what she was agreeing to. So desperate she would have sold her soul in that moment.
‘You will be hidden well in the Far East, and in five years you will return to take the throne and do your duty. You will marry, Luciana, am I clear?’
‘Yes—yes, I swear it. I’ll do whatever you want. Just let me have him.’
His steely eyes were clouded with disappointment and grief and sorrow. That gaze was telling her she would rue this day, this bargain.
Luciana ignored it. As long as her son got to take his first breath, got to walk upon the earth and live life to the full, without the constraints of duty like a noose around his neck, she would make a deal with the devil himself. And so she did.
* * *
Augustus’s voice shattered her bleak reflection and she tuned back in to the chatter that fluttered around them in a hushed din.
All she had to do was remember that her happiness came second to Natanael’s safety. And she would keep him safe if it was the last thing she did.
‘Luciana? Would you like coffee and dessert or…?’
Or…? Lord, not now. Not when she was falling apart at the seams. She wasn’t ready to hear those words. Not yet. Not ever.
She felt powerless. Completely out of control. Like a puppet on a string.
The room began to spin.
‘Yes, thank you, that would be wonderful,’ she said, her voice thankfully calm and emotion-free as she plastered a cringe-worthy beatific smile on her face.
Coffee. Crème brulée. That would buy her another twenty minutes, surely.
Panic fisted her heart as the tick of the clock pounded in her ears. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.
The walls loomed, closing in around her, crushing her lungs.
Calm down, Luce. What are you going to do—hyperventilate and pass out? Make a total fool of yourself?
She needed air. She couldn’t breathe.
‘I’m sorry—please excuse me. I think I need…’ To go out on the balcony? No, no, no, he’d follow her and drop to one knee, she knew. ‘To visit the restroom. I’ll only be a few minutes.’
After all that she realised he wasn’t listening. Someone on the other side of the room had caught his eye, and Luciana frowned as his lightly tanned face stained a ghastly shade of grey.
‘Augustus? Are you all right? Did you hear what I said?’
Slowly he shook his head. ‘I do not believe it. Luciana, you will never guess who is dining in this very room. I had no idea. Your father will be most displeased. I am so sorry…’
He was sorry? Ah, wonderful. One of his women, no doubt. The buxom brunette from earlier, come to ruin his perfect proposal? She didn’t want to know. It was her parents’ marriage all over again. No doubt she’d be faced with his mistresses most mornings too.
Well, that’s better than you warming his bed, isn’t it?
Anything was better than that.
‘Don’t worry about it, Augustus. Your secret is safe with me.’ Her father wouldn’t care less who the man whored with. There was more likelihood of mutual backslapping. ‘I’ll be back soon.’
Ignoring her, on he went. ‘Of all the places in all the world…’
Luciana bit into her bottom lip, stifling the impulse to run like a world class sprinter. Praying for this evening to be over. Praying someone would rescue her from this nightmare. Before the truth escaped on the scream that was building gradually, inexorably, and she single-handedly destroyed the very life she was trying to protect.
* * *
‘Of all the places in all the world… What an unpleasant surprise.’
His cousin, Seve, who was seated to his right at the oval dining table, leaned his upper body sideways in an effort to be discreet.
‘I can see the sweat beading on his upper lip from here. It’s your old pal from that exclusive rich joint you were sent to in Zurich. Viscount Augustus.’
Prince Thane of Galancia deflected the gut-punch the word Zurich evoked and sneered. ‘He was no pal of mine.’
For the one disastrous university term Thane had attended after his father’s death the Viscount had caused him no end of trouble—which he’d soon discovered was a horrendously bad idea—and subsequently shaken in his shoes every time he looked Thane’s way. Which had pleased Thane no end. It meant he’d generally kept a vast distance.
He couldn’t abide the man. Augustus was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Polished until every inch of him gleamed, he was a silver-tongued bureaucrat with sly eyes and a treacherous mind.
Seve smirked as if Thane had said the words out loud and he’d found it highly amusing. ‘What’s more, he’s dining with none other than Princess Luciana of Arunthia. One of Henri’s stuck-up brood.’
Thane resisted the urge to growl. ‘Then they belong together.’ A match made in heaven. ‘How do you know it’s definitely her? Last I heard, she lived abroad.’
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a photograph of any of them. Recent intel was off his radar, since he had zero interest in becoming embroiled with his uncle’s ongoing bitter feud with the house of Verbault. He’d made that mistake ten years ago, in his father’s day. Had the scars and the bitter aftertaste to prove it. Nowadays every time he thought of that varmint Henri a seizure of antagonistic emotion diseased his mind, so the less he heard or saw of the entire family the better. Besides, his every waking moment was spent deflecting blows from the latest fiasco in Galancia.
‘I know because the two of them having fun on the slopes made the French headlines this morning. Rumour has it she’s newly returned from Hong Kong, due to take the crown any day.’
Thane would have predicted a snowball in hell before he felt envy for a Verbault, but right then envy was definitely the evil he was up against. He wanted his crown. Taken from the hands of his uncle and placed in his own, where it should be. Before the man caused his people further damage. Four years… It seemed eons away, and his patience was wearing perilously thin.
He thrust his fingers through his hair and tucked some of the long, wayward strands behind his ear. ‘It isn’t hard to work out what Augustus wants. The vapid Viscount has always been an ambitious sleaze with illusions of grandeur.’
Seve chuckled darkly. ‘Very true. Although I will say that marriage to her will be no chore for him. Look at her. By God, she’s absolutely stunning.’
Thane couldn’t care less if she was Cleopatra. She was still a Verbault. Granted, he refused to get snarled up in that age-old vendetta again, but he wasn’t ignorant or blind to the reasoning for it. Verbault greed had once crippled a vulnerable Galancia, and rebuilding its former glory was an ongoing battle. Forgiveness would never be proffered. So the day he aligned with one of them would be the day he rode bareback with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
Seve, meanwhile, was still staring her way. Smitten. Practically drooling. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful woman in my life.’
‘That’s saying something, considering how many you’ve bedded,’ Thane incised sardonically.
His cousin, his second in command, his best friend—the only person he would ever trust—shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘Wouldn’t do you any harm to get laid either, cousin. Come on—I didn’t drag you here just to hurtle down the black slopes all day.’
He knew fine well what Seve had dragged him here for. All work and no play made Thane a dull, arrogant ass, apparently—and for a minute or three he had considered it. But when the redhead sitting to his right had appeared from nowhere he’d turned to stone. Unable even to contemplate getting close to another woman. In fact, if she touched his arm one more time…
Dios, didn’t she know he was dangerous? That his blood ran black and his heart was dead? That he was more powerful and more feared than any other man in Europe? Surely his scars were enough to give her a clue?
Maybe he should give the mindless female a lesson in Princes of Galancia. Top of the list: do not touch.
He hated being touched. Didn’t want anyone close to him. Ever again. While getting beaten to a pulp couldn’t possibly hurt him any longer, it was the softer stuff that was more dangerous. One taste and he might very well crave it. Long for more of it. Glut himself on it. Live for it. Every touch. Every caress. Every kiss. Until it was taken away, as it inevitably would be. Leaving him empty. Aching. Feeling. Weak. And the dark Prince of Galancia could not afford to be weak. Not again. When he was weak he took his eye off the ball and everything went to hell.
Thane reached for his tumbler of rare single malt, his hand stalling in mid-air as an army of ants marched across his nape. Instinct born from a childhood in the barracks made him turn to peer over his right shoulder. Past the garish pine trees smothered in red ribbons and gold baubles, declaring the onslaught of the festive season. How quaint. How pointless.
Ah, yes, there was Augustus. Averting his gaze like an errant schoolboy. No woman with him—not that Thane could see.
But what he did see was a striking, statuesque blonde walking in the direction of the hallway that led to the restrooms. No. Not blonde at all. Her rich, decadent shower of loose tousled waves reminded him of a dark bronze. Like new-fallen acorns.
Now, she was beautiful. And that thought was so incredulous, so foreign, that he felt a tingle of something suspiciously close to shock.
His avid gaze locked on its target, his usual two-second scan turning into a drawn-out visual seduction, and he trailed his eyes over the low scooped neck of the black sheath that hugged her feminine curves. Lingered on the lapels of her long white dress coat, frisking and teasing all that flawless golden flesh.
A faint frown creased her brow and Thane narrowed his eyes as she raised one hand and rubbed over the seam of her lips with the pad of her thumb.
A pleasurable shiver of recognition rippled over his skin and his entire body prickled with an unfathomable heat.
Ana used to do that. Stroke her mouth that way. When he’d asked her why, she’d said it likely came from sucking her thumb when she was a little girl. Thane had smiled and cracked some joke about her still liking things in her mouth, and she’d proceeded to prove him right. Many times over…
The brazen fires of lust swirled through his groin, and when the woman inhaled deeply—the action pushing those full, high breasts of surreal temptation to swell against the thin silk of her dress—ferocious heat speared through his veins until he flushed from top to toe.
It couldn’t be. Could it? His Ana? Here in the Alps? No, surely not. Ana’s hair was sable-black. Her body far more slender.
Look at me, he ordered. Turn around, he demanded. Now.
And she did. Or rather she spared a glance across the room in his direction, then wrestled with her poise, giving her head a little shake.
Thane’s hands balled in frustration. But he kept watching as she reached the slightly secluded archway leading to the restrooms. Alone, doubtless believing she was unseen, she tipped her head back, glancing skyward as if praying to God, and graced him with the elegant curve of her smooth throat.
Another flashback hit with crystalline precision—his woman, arching off the bed, back bowed as she seized in rapture beneath him, inarticulate cries pouring from her swollen ruby-red mouth. And for the first time in his life—or maybe the second—his insides started to shake. Shake.
Dios, was his mind playing tricks on him? Months he had searched for her. For that trail of sable hair, that mesmerising beauty mark above her full lips, those clothes that harked of dark blood, a roaming gypsy. No stone had been unturned in Zurich, since that was where they had met, where she had claimed to live. Torturous years of not knowing whether she was dead or alive. Living with the grief. The ferocious anger and self-hate that choked him at the notion that he might not have protected her. That she could have been taken from him because of who he was.
He blinked and she was gone. Disappeared once again. And before he knew it he’d shoved his chair backwards with an emphatic scrape.
‘Thane?’
‘Restroom,’ he said, and followed the dark blonde, his heart stampeding through his chest.
Thane thrust the double doors wide, then took a sharp right down the first corridor—and came to a dead end. A swift turn about and he flung open the double doors to the wraparound balcony. Empty.
Impatience thrummed inside him. The notion of being thwarted tore at his guts. He closed the doors with a quick click, turned and—
Slam.
‘Ooof.’ He ran straight into another body so hard and fast he had to grab hold of her upper arms to stop her from careening backwards and crashing to the floor.
‘I…I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking where I was going. Please…’
Just the sound of her voice washed clean rain over him. She was breathless, winded, clutching his lapels as if he was her life raft in the darkest, most turbulent storm.
‘Please. I need to…’
That soft, husky whimper flung him back in time, sent electricity sizzling over every inch of his skin. And the way she’d jolted—he would hazard a guess she’d felt it too.
Stumbling back a step, she jacked up her chin and their gazes caught, clashed…
Madre de Dios!
‘Ana?’
Brandy-gold eyes flared up at him as bee-stung lips parted with a gasp. And for the endless moments they stared at one another she seemed to pelt through a tumult of emotions. He could virtually see them flicker over her exquisite face. Fancied each one mirrored his own. She was astounded. Bewildered. Likely in denial. Half convinced she was hallucinating. And all the while Thane drank her in as if he’d been dying of thirst and his pulse-rate tripled to create a sonic boom in his ears.
He wanted to take her in his arms. Bury his fingers into the luxurious fall of her hair. Hold her tightly to him. Despite the internal screech of warning not to touch, not become ensnared in her again.
Thane swallowed around the emotional grenade lodged in his throat. ‘Ana, where have you been? I looked for you. What happened? I…’
Unable to wait a second longer, he reached out—but she staggered back another step; her brow pinched with pain.
‘No. No! Don’t touch me. I’m sorry. You must be mistaking me for someone else. I…’
That pain morphed into something like fear and punched him in the gut.
‘Please excuse me,’ she said, and she made to duck past him.
His confusion made his cat-like reflexes take a second too long to kick in.
‘Ana? What are you talking about?’
Why was she scared of him? He didn’t like it. Not one bit. Everyone else? Yes. Her? No.
A man emerged from around the corner and when Thane recognised Augustus he almost swung his fist in the other man’s face. Though at the last second he thought better of it. His word, he’d been told, was vehement enough. Consequently he opened his mouth to deliver a curt command but the Viscount beat him to the punch.
‘Luciana? Are you all right, querida?’
