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“She isn’t my young lady,” Lorne said irritably. “Although I seem to be stuck with her for the time being.”
“Approach her with that attitude and it won’t be a problem. She’ll be gone so fast your head will spin,” the doctor pointed out. “Most virile young men wouldn’t consider accommodating a beautiful young woman to be a hardship.”
Lorne favored him with his most regal glare of disapproval although he knew it was wasted on the doctor. “Most virile young men don’t have a country to run.”
“Or a bad experience with an Australian beauty behind them,” the doctor observed with remarkable insight. “Remember, not all women from that country are like Chandra. Some of them enjoy living in Carramer.”
Alain Pascale’s wife, Helen, was one of them, the prince knew. A nicer, more generous person was impossible to meet. Even in her late sixties, she was still a beauty, and although she returned regularly to visit relatives in her native country, her loyalty to Carramer was unwavering.
“Neither are they all like Helen,” Lorne countered. “She may be Australian, but her heart belongs to Carramer.”
The doctor laughed. “Give me some of the credit at least. When you’re as much in love as Helen and me, even after forty years of marriage, it hardly matters where you live as long as you’re together.”
Jealousy gripped Lorne so fiercely it was like a physical pain, but years of royal training enabled him to mask the reaction. He kept his expression impassive as he bade the doctor good evening. “You may have only one patient, but I have a million of them and I need to get some work done, vacation or no,” he explained.
At the door the doctor paused. “You may have a million subjects, but you’re still a man with a man’s normal needs and desires. Maybe you needed to have a woman wash up at your feet to remind you of the fact. Good night.”
Before Lorne could frame a scathing reply, the doctor had gone and Lorne was alone. Never before had his private apartment seemed so vast or lonely, he reflected somberly. Maybe the doctor was right. It was time he got to know one or two of the beautiful women who were regularly paraded before him at official functions. One of them would never capture his heart unless he gave them a chance. Somehow the idea had less appeal than he thought it should.
“Good, you are awake. Papa said no one was to disturb you until you woke up by your own self.”
It took Allie a moment to connect the child at the foot of her bed with her surroundings, then she sat up with a jolt as memory came rushing back. She had almost drowned in the undertow known locally as the serpent and had been rescued by Prince Lorne himself. She remembered collapsing at his feet, then awakening briefly to find herself being checked over by a kindly doctor who said he would give her something to help her rest.
“What time is it?” she asked the wide-eyed little boy watching her intently.
He made a face. “I don’t know, I’m only four. You went to bed even earlier than me, Miss Carter.”
She couldn’t help smiling and realized how much better she felt. “I did, didn’t I, Nori? I’d like it if you called me Allie. It’s the name my friends use, and I hope you’ll be my friend, too.” She levered herself onto one elbow and patted the space beside her. “Jump up.”
He didn’t need a second invitation. “You talk funny.”
“I’m from Australia. That’s why I sound funny to you.”
He settled himself more comfortably beside her. “My mummy came from Australia. Is that like Heaven?”
Something was wrong here. “Australia’s a place like Carramer, Nori,” she explained, adding gently, “is your mummy in Heaven?”
The child nodded and his eyes grew luminous. “Papa says we can’t visit her but she’s very happy.”
Allie’s heart felt as if a giant hand had clamped around it. So Lorne’s wife had been Australian, too, and had died not so long ago. She remembered the cold way Lorne de Marigny had identified her nationality. Allie must have reminded him painfully of his loss. He must have loved his wife a great deal to react so strongly, she thought on a wave of sadness. What must it be like to be so loved? “I’m sure your daddy’s right, sweetheart,” she assured the little boy tremulously.
He nodded, then brightened. “Do you have a pet kangaroo in Australia?”
He was so sweetly earnest that she wanted to hug him, but hesitated. Was one allowed to hug a crown prince, even if he was only four years old? She settled for placing an arm around his small shoulders. He responded by nestling into the crook of her arm, triggering a surge of maternal longing deep inside her. “No, I don’t,” she said with a laugh. “Kangaroos are wild animals that live in the bush, not in people’s houses. But I have cuddled a koala. They’re adorable, like you.”
He looked disgusted. “I’m not ’dorable. But I’d like to cuddle a koala.”
“They’re only found in Australia and a few zoos in other places. Tell you what,” she said on a sudden inspiration, “I have a toy koala in my luggage back at Allora. I promise I’ll send it to you as soon as I get back there.”
“There’s no need. Nori has plenty of toys,” came a stern injunction from the doorway.
Allie turned to see Lorne standing there, looking like thunder. It was very attractive thunder, she couldn’t help thinking, as memories of him carrying her up the beach returned unbidden. He was dressed in a light-blue polo shirt with a monogram on the pocket and navy pants, the fine cut of the clothing emphasizing the athletic figure underneath. She pulled the bedclothes up higher in an instinctively defensive gesture.
At the sight of his father, little Nori scrambled off the bed and ducked under his father’s arm out of the room. Lorne said something to him about a nanny waiting with breakfast, and the child scampered off.
“I would rather not have my son’s head filled with fantasies about Australia,” the prince said grimly.
What had she done? “I only promised him a toy koala,” she explained. “I brought one with me in case I needed a gift, so it’s no problem.”
He folded his arms across his broad chest and angled his body against the door frame, a picture of masculine disapproval. “Perhaps not to you. But Nori already thinks of Australia as a kind of Disneyland where everything is more exciting than in his own country.”
The child probably associated all Australians with his mother and endowed them with the same magic, Allie thought. She wondered if Lorne knew just how much the little boy missed his mother. Without knowing more of what had happened, she didn’t feel free to bring it up. And she had already made enough mistakes where Lorne was concerned, starting with treating him as a commoner instead of the most powerful man in Carramer.
“About yesterday, Your Highness,” she began formally, although the effect was reduced somewhat by their relative positions. “I’m sorry for intruding. Thank you for having your doctor treat me and for letting me recover here, but I should get back to Allora.”
“Alain—Dr. Pascale—has prescribed several days’ rest for you,” the prince informed her. He didn’t sound pleased about it. “He tells me you’re run-down and slightly anemic.”
It was said as if he found her a complete nuisance. Her temper flared. “I didn’t plan on collapsing at your feet, Your Highness. I’m sure I can recuperate just as well at my hostel if you’ll let me dress and be on my way.”
She dimly remembered the doctor helping her to change, after having had clothing brought to her room, presumably from some royal storehouse. Turning her head, she could see several garments folded neatly over a stand under a window. One of the other teachers at the school where she worked would have called the situation “landing on her feet.” Looking at the prince’s forbidding expression, Allie wasn’t so sure. “I’ll make sure you get your clothes back safely,” she added.
The prince shook his head. “The clothes are unimportant. Dr. Pascale wants you to remain here.”
That made one of them, she thought tensely. She sat up, forgetting for a moment that the doctor’s bounty had included a decidedly skimpy nightdress that revealed as much of her as it covered. With difficulty she resisted the temptation to drag the covers back over herself. There were other, more important issues here. “Surely I have some say in this?” she demanded.
It was the wrong tone to use, she saw, when anger flared in the prince’s black eyes, but all he said was, “If you were from Carramer, you would know better.”
“Because you’re the prince and I’m nobody?” she asked. He might be the ruler of his country, but he wasn’t her ruler, and it was time she pointed it out.
If her comment amounted to high treason, he took it remarkably calmly. “Your status is irrelevant. I was referring to Dr. Pascale’s prescription of rest and quiet for you.”
The thought that Lorne wouldn’t allow her to stay for any other reason added fuel to her annoyance. It was clear that, doctor’s orders or no, the prince would like nothing better than to send her packing. She probably reminded him too painfully of the Australian wife he had lost. But Lorne wouldn’t want to risk having her collapse again if he let her leave before the doctor okayed it. And in truth, she did feel shakier than she had any intention of admitting.
The prince saw it, anyway. “Rest now,” he instructed. “Your accommodation has been informed that you are remaining here, and your luggage will be brought later this morning.”
“You’ve thought of everything,” she said mutinously.
He chose to ignore her tone. “Precisely. To allay any unseemly rumors, they have also been informed that you are joining my staff as a temporary companion to the crown prince.”
This was interesting news, given that Lorne obviously didn’t want her anywhere near his little son. “And am I?”
“Of course not. Nori seems to enjoy your company, but he is already well looked after.”
He was also a lonely little boy, but she had a feeling Lorne wouldn’t welcome that observation. “Then I’m afraid I can’t stay,” she said, pushing back the bedclothes.
It was a mistake, she realized as soon as she swung her legs over the side of the bed. The nightdress barely reached her thighs. Lorne had seen much more when he rescued her from the surf wearing only a bikini, but she hadn’t felt as exposed then as she did now.
She was acutely conscious that this was a bedroom and Lorne was first and foremost a man, a man among men, she recalled him being described in her guide book. She had thought the phrase extravagant and was alarmed at how readily it sprang to her mind now. He made her feel a sense of herself as a woman that she hadn’t felt in all the years that she had served as her mother’s housekeeper and younger sister’s caregiver.
She refused to let him see how much he discomfited her and stood her ground beside the bed, wishing that the room would stop moving around her and spoiling the effect.
“Get back into bed. You’re in no condition to go anywhere,” he commanded, but his voice had gentled and he moved to her side, steadying her. “Let me help you.”
She could have managed to stay upright if only he hadn’t touched her, but as soon as he took her arm her knees turned to jelly and she sagged against him. “I won’t stay here under false pretenses,” she insisted, trying to ignore the tattoo her heart had set up. It was a symptom of her weakened state, nothing more, she insisted to herself.
His deeply vibrant voice was very close to her ear. “Obviously you have yet to learn that one does not say no to royalty.”
Lorne might be used to his subjects shaking in their shoes when he looked at them, but she came from stock that had made an art form of equality. Respect was another matter, but it had to be earned, and riding roughshod over her preferences was no way to earn it. “And you have yet to learn that we Australians are an independent lot who prefer being asked to being told,” she said as coolly as she could manage.
His expression turned grim. “During my marriage, I was made well aware of your Australian disdain for authority, but you are in Carramer now. You will stay because the doctor advises it.” He didn’t add “and I command it” but he might as well have. She heard it in his steely undertone.
“Or you’ll do what? Throw me over a cliff like the guidebook says your ancestors did?” Her chin came up and she almost closed her eyes as the gesture brought her face alarmingly close to his. She settled for lowering her lashes slightly so she looked at him through a feathery screen. It softened the strong contours of his face but not by much.
The glint in his gaze clearly said “don’t tempt me” but the only outward sign of his anger was in the rigidity of his arm around her and the sudden tightening of his jaw as he said, “Please get back into bed.”
Surprise almost knocked the wind out of her. “There, see? Saying please didn’t hurt a bit, did it?”
As soon as the whispered words were out, she cursed herself. What was it about the prince that made her open her mouth and say stupid things? Lorne was a man who plainly wasn’t used to deferring to anyone. What would it have cost her to be gracious? Instead she had to issue what amounted to a challenge.
She should have known better, she grasped, as she glimpsed the light of battle in his eyes. Then his head came down and his lips claimed hers. Like many grown women, inside Allie was a little girl who had dreamed of one day being kissed by a prince, but nothing in her childhood fantasies had prepared her for the reality. Instinct told her that Lorne was only showing her who was boss, but the molten way he made her feel overruled logic, leaving a sensation so all-consuming that she didn’t want it to end.
When he put her away from him, she was glad of the bed at her back as her knees buckled. She curled her fingers around the edge of the mattress for support. “I wasn’t aware that your customs included the one about droit du seigneur,” she said shakily.
“Supposing it was not just a medieval myth. The right of the ruler to have any woman of his choosing before any other man hasn’t been claimed for centuries,” he said equably. The coldness in his expression reminded her that he hadn’t kissed her out of desire, but because she had challenged his authority.
“But you think it did exist?” She suppressed a shiver at the possibility.
His mouth curved into a perceptive smile, making her wish she had fought him when he kissed her. Why hadn’t she? “It would be…edifying,” he confirmed after a long pause, “but it has nothing to do with why I kissed you.”
She tossed her head, wishing she had more energy to put into the defiant gesture. His kiss had added to her feeling of weakness in ways she was probably better off not thinking about. “I know perfectly well that you did it to show that I may have won the round but you will win the match because of who and what you are.”
He inclined his head in agreement. “Then we both know where we stand.”
He was only confirming what she had suspected, but part of her rejected the thought that it was his only reason for kissing her. In the midst of her own maelstrom of feelings she had sensed an equally strong response in him. Clearly he did find her attractive, but it was plain that she reminded him painfully of the Australian wife he had lost, so he was unlikely to give in to it.
It was fine with her, too, she thought. After years of burying her own needs and desires in favor of her mother’s and sister’s, she wasn’t interested in exchanging one form of tyranny for another. Lorne was the last person in the world who should interest her romantically. He was too hard-headed and his position made him far too inflexible for there to be any common ground between them.
All the same, his kiss lingered on her lips long after he left her to sleep, and although she closed her eyes, it was a long time before her need for rest overcame the turmoil racing through her mind.
Chapter Three
The morning was well advanced by the time Lorne dismissed his aide and stood up from his desk. He stretched luxuriously, feeling his muscles unknot. He wondered briefly what it would be like to enjoy a vacation as others did, totally free of the responsibilities that even rested on his shoulders when he was at his summer residence, away from the capital. Like Alison, came the involuntary thought. No affairs of state troubled her, not even affairs of the heart, it seemed.
The state of her heart wasn’t his concern, he told himself fiercely. Until the doctor cleared her to return to her hostel, she was merely another responsibility. Lorne had no need to see her unless he chose to. The villa had more than enough staff to take care of one stray Australian who had had the misfortune to wash up on their private beach. Why was he wasting time thinking about her when his son was waiting?
Alison continued to occupy his thoughts as he changed for Nori’s daily swimming lesson. The task could have been delegated to the palace’s personal trainers, but Lorne enjoyed teaching his son himself, and Nori looked forward to having his father to himself and showing off what he had learned.
Today, however, Nori sat on the edge of the pool looking downcast. Lorne dropped to the marble coping beside his child. “What’s the matter, coquine?”
Nori’s small chin jutted out. “I’m not a little rogue. I’m a good boy.”
Lorne nodded, careful not to smile. “Of course you are.”
Nori’s huge baby eyes flashed to him. “Then why can’t Allie give me a koala? She promised, and I want it more than anything.”
The passion in his son’s voice caught Lorne by surprise. “But you have so many toys already.”
“I don’t have a koala from Australia.”
Lorne winced inwardly but kept his face impassive. So that was what this was all about. He dropped an arm around his son’s small body and pulled him close, reminding himself that as well as crown prince, Nori was still a baby who missed his mother. “Did talking to Miss Carter remind you of your mama?” he asked carefully.
Nori’s full lower lip quivered, and his shoulders trembled under Lorne’s hand, but he didn’t cry, eliciting a pang of empathy in his father. How many times in his own youth had Lorne fought to contain his emotions because of his position? “It’s all right to admit that you miss your mama, you know,” he said softly. “You’re very brave but when we’re alone you can tell me how you really feel.”
Nori turned lambent eyes to him. “You won’t mind if I cry a bit?”
Lorne shook his head. “Not even if you cry a whole swimming pool.”
Nori looked at the vast expanse of water beside them and gave a shaky laugh. “Nobody could cry that much,” he said in the tone of “shows how much you know.”
Thinking of his own loneliness that stretched back to well before they lost Chandra, Lorne wasn’t so sure. Chandra had never been the companion he had hoped for, but she had been Nori’s mother, and the child was entitled to mourn her loss. “How much do you think you might cry then, a bathtub full?”
Solemnly Nori extended his baby hands about shoulder width apart. “Maybe this much.”
“That’s quite a lot,” Lorne agreed. “But it’s all right. Cry that much if you want to. And remember, you can always talk to me about mama, or about anything.”
“Even about koalas?” Nori said, his eyes brightening with hope.
Lorne restrained a sigh. Had he been as persistent as Nori at the same age? “Yes, even about koalas,” he conceded heavily. “While we’re on vacation, why don’t we visit the zoo and you can see a real koala?”
Nori’s eyes shone. “You mean it? Can Allie come, too? She said I should call her Allie and she knows all about koalas.”
Wondering at how easily his son had made friends with their guest, Lorne was aware of a feeling very like envy gripping him. He shook his head. “Alison has other things to do besides entertain you on her holiday.”
Nori’s tiny chin jutted out. “She’ll come if I order her to.”
Lorne suppressed a smile. “Not if I catch you first.” Only the day before, he’d found a soldier marching pointlessly up and down the inner courtyard because Nori had ordered it. Then had followed a serious father-son talk about the responsibilities of being royal. “Didn’t I explain to you about giving orders?”
Nori squirmed uncomfortably. “Yes, Daddy. ’s not much fun being king if you can’t make people do what you want.”
“That’s exactly why Carramer doesn’t have a king,” Lorne explained. “A long time ago in our history, a king made his people’s lives miserable with his orders. When his son became ruler, he promised never to call himself king to remind himself and his heirs not to treat the people as badly as his father had done.”
“I won’t make anybody miserable,” Nori agreed impatiently. He had heard the story before and understood the point his father was making. “I just want Allie to come to the zoo with us. I like her, don’t you?”
“I don’t know her very well,” Lorne evaded.
“If she comes, you could get to know her.”
His son would make a good negotiator one day, Lorne thought wryly. “Very well, she can come if you want her to.” It would add to the fiction that she had been taken on as a companion to Nori, he told himself, wondering at the way his heartbeat suddenly picked up speed. It had nothing to do with the prospect of spending time in Alison’s company, he assured himself. After Chandra, getting involved with any woman, particularly another Australian, was the last thing he needed.
