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Liv shifted her angry glare from her own chest to her sister’s wide-eyed reflection. ‘‘Oh, please. You know very well it’s only a family superstition.’’
‘‘Call it what you want. It did happen. To Mom and to Aunt Nanna and Aunt Kirsten, and to Granny Birget, too.’’
‘‘So they say.’’
‘‘Why would they lie?’’
‘‘I don’t know. I’m sure they didn’t lie—not exactly. I’m only saying, it’s a story. A family myth.’’
‘‘But your symptoms are exactly the same. You threw up. You fainted. And now, there it is. The rash.’’
The Thorson sisters had heard it over and over all their lives: The women in their family—on their mother’s side, the Freyasdahl side—always knew right away when they conceived. They’d all discovered they were pregnant within twenty-four hours of conception. They knew it every time, without fail. Partly, it was a simple feeling of certainty—that it had happened; there was a baby growing within them. But beyond the certainty, there were, each and every time, the family signs: they’d throw up, followed by a fainting spell and then by a bizarre bright red rash across the upper chest.
Liv spoke firmly to Brit’s reflection in the mirror. ‘‘I just don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. It’s a family superstition, that’s all—and besides, he used a condom.’’
Brit’s gaze slid away, was drawn inexorably back.
Liv wanted to strangle her. ‘‘Will you stop it with all those sneaky sideways glances? You’re starting to remind me of the maid.’’
‘‘Sorry—and are you sure? About the—’’
‘‘Positive. He’s a Gullandrian.’’
Brit blinked. ‘‘Right. And that means…?’’
Liv let out an impatient sigh. ‘‘Remember what Elli told us about Gullandrians? How it’s such a big stigma to be born illegitimate around here?’’
Brit still wasn’t getting it. ‘‘And so from that we can deduce…?’’
‘‘Well, it stands to reason that if you’re not married around here, you use contraception religiously.’’
‘‘So you’re saying you specifically remember that he used—’’
‘‘No. I’m not saying that.’’
‘‘You’re not?’’
‘‘No. I mean, yes. I mean, I do remember.’’ She fervently wished she sounded more convincing. ‘‘I do…’’ She looked at her welted, inflamed chest again and let out a moan.
Brit spoke flatly. ‘‘You’re not sure.’’
Liv found she couldn’t meet her sister’s eyes. She began hooking the silk frogs, buttoning all the way up, until she couldn’t see the rash anymore, until she could almost pretend it wasn’t even there.
‘‘Liv?’’ Brit asked carefully. ‘‘Are you sure or aren’t you?’’
Liv whirled on her sister. Fisting her hands at her sides, she spoke softly through clenched teeth. ‘‘All right. I suppose he didn’t. I suppose we were both kind of…carried away.’’
Brit said nothing. She was looking at Liv tenderly. Tolerantly. Liv hated that. She was not someone people had to look at with tolerance. Especially not people like her baby sister, whom she loved with all her heart, but who was, after all, a college dropout who’d never finished even one of the novels she’d started, who worked in a pizza joint in East Hollywood and couldn’t be bothered to balance her checkbook.
Brit began to speak. She said kind things, gentle things. ‘‘Oh, Livvy. I know everything is going to be all right. Of course, it’s probably just a fluke, your having the family symptoms like this. You’ve been so upset about what happened last night. Maybe tonight, you’re only showing the effects of all the stress, only…’’ Brit’s voice trailed off. Apparently, she had read Liv’s expression and realized that Liv had heard more than enough.
Liv spoke with grave dignity. ‘‘There’s certainly nothing that can be done about it right now.’’ Better, she thought. She sounded firm. Take-charge. More like herself. She was standing very straight, her head high. ‘‘In a few weeks, if my period is late, I’ll take a test like the normal, civilized twenty-first century woman I am. After that, if it turns out I really am going to have a baby—which I truly believe I am not—I’ll start making decisions.’’ She narrowed her eyes and stuck out her chin at her sister, as if Brit had given her some kind of argument. ‘‘And that’s it until then. You hear me? Not another word about it until then.’’
The next morning, the rash was gone. Liv showed Brit. Brit nodded and made a few cheerful, so-glad-you’re-feeling-better noises.
Liv knew just what she was thinking. The rash disappearing fit right in with the way it always happened, according to their mother and their aunts and their grandmother. The rash would appear after the fainting spell and fade a few hours later. The next signs of pregnancy wouldn’t appear for weeks and could be any of the usual ones: a missed period, morning sickness, aversions to certain foods….
‘‘And I feel just fine,’’ Liv announced with some defiance. ‘‘Whatever weird bug I caught, it’s gone now.’’ With each hour that passed, she found she was more and more certain that the events of last night had merely been some crazy stress reaction.
Liv could go home to her great summer job and her second year of law school and the nice boyfriend who might or might not be able to forgive her when he learned what she’d done on Midsummer’s Eve with the devastatingly sexy Prince Finn Danelaw.
And okay, yes, that would be a problem: figuring out how to tell Simon about the wild night she’d spent with Finn. But she’d manage it. All in good time.
Right now, her job was to get her things together and get to the plane.
An hour later, Brit hugged Liv goodbye and went off to spend the day wandering the charming cobbled streets of Lysgard, Gullandria’s capital. An hour after that, Liv was packing her vanity case in her bathroom, almost ready to head for the airport, when she glanced up and saw a flicker of movement behind her in the doorway.
She whirled, a hand to her throat. It was the maid. ‘‘You scared me to death.’’
‘‘So sorry, Highness.’’ The maid curtsied and brought her right fist to her flat chest. ‘‘Highness, Lady Kaarin is in the drawing room. She’s asked to speak with you.’’
‘‘Fine. Tell her I’ll be right there—and will you please stop sneaking around?’’
‘‘Yes, Highness. Of course, Highness. And I’ll tell Lady Kaarin you’re on your way.’’
Kaarin Karlsmon rose from a damask wing chair, fist to heart, when Liv entered the room.
‘‘Your Highness.’’ Liv stared at the beautiful redhead. She couldn’t help thinking of what Brit had said yesterday. Had this woman once been the lost Valbrand’s love? Clearly, now wasn’t the time to ask. Kaarin was looking very official. She announced, ‘‘The king has asked to see you right away in his private chambers. If you’ll come with me…’’
Liv had been expecting the summons. Her father, after all, would want to say goodbye. She didn’t exactly relish this final visit. Though Elli seemed fond of the king, and Brit, already, was calling him Dad, Liv still felt she hardly knew him. And she could see no reason that she had to know him in any particularly meaningful way.
She supposed it was classic stuff. In her heart, she sided with her mother against him. Liv felt he’d deserted her and her sisters when they were babies and as yet, he’d given her no reason to forgive him for it.
And that was okay with her. She didn’t hate him or anything. For Elli’s sake, she’d come here. She’d seen her sister married, met her father and looked around the land of her birth.
It was enough for her.
Now she could pay her final respects and go home.
Kaarin led Liv down a series of wide hallways to the massive doors that opened onto the king’s private reception rooms. Her task accomplished, she didn’t linger. With a bow, she took her leave.
The guards pulled the doors wide. Liv went through, the heels of her shoes tapping crisply as she crossed the stone floor of the antechamber.
Her father, tall, dark-eyed, in his fifties and still straight-backed and handsome, stood waiting for her in the room beyond. He was dressed in a fine lightweight, perfectly tailored midnight-blue suit.
‘‘Daughter.’’ He didn’t smile, but he did, very slightly, incline his proud silvery head. ‘‘Please. Join us.’’
‘‘Us’’ consisted, at first glance, of Osrik’s closest advisor and dearest friend, Prince Medwyn Greyfell. Greyfell held the title of Grand Counselor, the second most powerful position in the Gullandrian governmental hierarchy. Liv thought it odd that her father would have the gaunt, white-haired Greyfell present for a private farewell visit with his oldest daughter. But hey. Goodbye was goodbye, Greyfell or not.
The room was large, with tall diamond-paned windows. Bookcases filled with gold-tooled leather volumes lined two walls. A huge heavily carved antique desk with an inlaid top stood on a raised platform not far from the windows. There were a number of beautiful old chairs and couches arranged in separate conversation areas, and a thronelike seat, also slightly raised, with lower chairs grouped around it, used when her father granted private audiences to those who served him, or to freemen who had earned a coveted few moments of his undivided attention.
Liv didn’t see the other man until she cleared the massive arch that separated the antechamber from the main room. He stood off to the side, near a rather devilish looking bust of some Norse god or other. He wore a suit every bit as beautiful as the one her father wore, though it was lighter in color, a soft charcoal-gray. His eyes were the honeyed amber-brown she remembered from the magical, impossible, reprehensible night-before-last.
Liv froze at the sight of him, a small sound of distress escaping her before she could collect herself and call it back.
Intimate images insisted on flashing, unbidden, through her mind. Those eyes…
They had seemed to see right inside her—all her secrets, all her longings—as his lean naked body pressed her down into the green sweet-smelling grass.
She thought of her lost panties. Did he have them? Did he know where they were?
Oh, this was awful. It was exactly what she’d hoped to avoid at all costs: the chance of running into him again.
And there was absolutely no reason she could see why he should be here.
Unless…
But no. That was impossible. He would never tell her father what had happened between them the night before last. Why should he? What could that possibly get him? Except maybe the king’s ire.
Oh, God. Had someone seen them? And then carried the tale to her father?
And even if such a thing had happened, well, why call a meeting about it? It was acutely embarrassing, yes. It showed a distinct lack of judgment on Liv’s part and on Finn’s.
But this, after all, was an era when royals sometimes cohabitated without benefit of matrimony. That an unmarried princess and an equally unattached prince might spend a few passionate, imprudent hours together simply wasn’t the end of the world.
Plus, it had happened on Midsummer’s Eve. In Gullandria, the way she understood it, Midsummer’s Eve was the one night a year when, as the old saying went, anything goes.
Her father spoke again, his tone irritatingly neutral. ‘‘Of course, you know Prince Greyfell. And Prince Danelaw.’’
Liv nodded at each man in turn, taking care not to meet Finn’s eyes. ‘‘Yes, hello. Good to…see you both.’’ The old prince and the young one honored her with the usual fist-to-chest salute.
As Liv concentrated on not looking at Finn, she found herself pondering the whole prince question. In Gullandria, all male jarl born of married parents were princes, each a possible successor to the throne. When her father, for whatever reason, could no longer rule, the princes would gather in the gold-domed Grand Assembly building down in the capital. They would hold a special election, know as the Kingmaking, and a new king would be named from among them.
Thus, in her father’s palace, virtually every man she met who wasn’t a servant or a soldier was a prince. Kind of diluted the meaning of the word, if you asked Liv—which, of course, no one had.
Liv faced her father. She gave him a big smile. ‘‘Well, I’m glad you sent for me. I did want to say goodbye and—’’
Her father raised a hand for silence. ‘‘Liv, my dear. I didn’t call you here to tell you goodbye.’’
A weighty sense of foreboding caused her to swallow. Convulsively. ‘‘You didn’t?’’
‘‘No. I called you here so that we might discuss your upcoming marriage to Prince Danelaw.’’
Chapter Four
Liv stared at her father. Surely he hadn’t said what she’d thought he’d said.
She heard herself croak in sheer disbelief, ‘‘You can’t be serious.’’
‘‘Ah,’’ said her father in a gentle, kindly tone that made her want to grab a heavy, blunt object and break it over his head. ‘‘But I am serious. A marriage has become imperative. And I think you know why.’’
Liv kept her shoulders back and her hands at her sides. Of course, it didn’t matter what he knew or what he commanded her to do—at least, not aside from how utterly mortified she felt at the thought that somehow her father had found out about Friday night. She was her own woman and would run her own life.
And never in a million years would she marry Finn Danelaw.
Still, she did want to know what information he actually had and where he might have gotten it. She sent Finn a hot glare. He looked back at her, one bronze eyebrow slightly lifted—cool, collected. Giving her nothing.
Her father continued, ‘‘I know that you and Finn spent Midsummer’s Eve out in my parkland, indulging in…amorous adventures, shall we say?’’
‘‘Who told you that?’’
Osrik didn’t even blink. ‘‘You deny it?’’
She did not. She wasn’t proud of the truth, but she had more respect for herself than to tell lies about it. ‘‘I only asked who told you.’’
Her father waved a hand. ‘‘Suffice to say, there is nothing you do in Isenhalla or on the grounds surrounding it that I won’t learn about.’’ He paused, then swept his arm out toward the windows—and the world beyond. ‘‘There’s nothing you do in the whole of my kingdom that I won’t hear of, eventually.’’
‘‘Spies?’’ she demanded. ‘‘That’s what you’re talking about. You’ve got spies on me—and on Brit, too, right?’’ Suddenly, the annoying behavior of the chambermaid was starting to make sense. And if he had the chambermaid reporting to him, spying on his daughters for him, then he probably did know everything. It was altogether possible that the maid could have been there, lurking, listening to everything Liv had told Brit both last night, and the night before.
Osrik went on, ‘‘I was prepared to overlook your misadventures the other night. After all, it was Midsummer’s Eve and you were raised an American. You have no real sense of your true place and responsibilities in the world. But a pregnancy cannot be overlooked.’’
Liv stared at her father unflinching. ‘‘With all due respect, Father, I’m not even going to dignify that bit about me and my ‘place’ in the world with a response. As for the rest of it—ridiculous. Prince Danelaw and I were…together for one night. It hasn’t even been forty-eight hours since then. The likelihood that I’m pregnant isn’t all that high—and there’s no way to prove it right now, even if I am.’’
Osrik granted her an infuriatingly patronizing shrug of his proud, well-tailored shoulders. ‘‘I had, I confess, high hopes for you, Liv. I won’t go into detail about my plans. There’s no point. Now that there’s a child coming, my hopes must be put aside.’’
The man was impossible. Assumption piled upon assumption. Liv didn’t know how to answer them all. So she picked one of the major ones. ‘‘How many ways can I say it? You don’t know that I’m pregnant. I don’t know that I’m pregnant. There is no way for anyone to know at this point whether I might be pregnant or not.’’
‘‘Of course there’s a way. There’s what happened to you last night.’’
‘‘Who told you what happened to me last night?’’
He didn’t answer, only went on as if she hadn’t asked the question. ‘‘Your mother had my children. I know the Freyasdahl symptoms and I know those symptoms have never been wrong. You’re pregnant, Liv. I’ve spoken with Finn and he has agreed to marry you as soon as we can reasonably make the arrangements.’’
Liv could not find words blistering enough to express her unqualified contempt for virtually everything her father had said since she’d entered that room. While she cast about for them, Osrik let out a long sigh. He and Prince Greyfell exchanged knowing looks.
Osrik said ruefully, ‘‘As I mentioned, this marriage is not what I intended for you. But after what happened with Elli—which was not at all what I at first wanted for her—I find I’m learning to be more flexible.’’ He gestured grandly at Finn, as if drawing her attention to some fine piece of horseflesh or a prime breeding bull. ‘‘Finn Danelaw is the scion of an ancient and important family. His holdings are extensive. You will not be disappointed in the wealth and influence he brings you. It’s not a bad match by any means.’’
Liv was still seeking the right final, scathing words. They had to be just right. After all, her father was a king. And even a daughter had to use some care when giving a dressing-down to a king. She slid one more hard, burning glance at Finn. He met her look coolly, as if none of this ridiculousness really involved him, as if he were a mildly interested spectator at a melodramatic play.
Liv almost hated him at that moment. How dare he stand there, looking faintly amused as her father informed her that she had to bind her life to his?
She faced her father proudly. ‘‘Listen. Listen carefully. It is not going to happen. I am not marrying Prince Danelaw. I am…appalled at this, at all of this. I don’t know which of your outrages to answer first. If you will remember, you gave up my sisters and me when we were only babies. We never knew you. We still don’t know you.’’ And I don’t want to know you, she added silently. ‘‘The mere fact that you would dare to have ‘plans’ for me is insulting enough. But the rest is so much worse. You’ve spied on me. You’ve invaded my privacy and found out things you have absolutely no right to know. You’ve taken the information gleaned by your spies and used it to pressure a man who doesn’t love me—a man I don’t love—into marrying me. Evidently, all the awful things my mother ever hinted at about you are true. You’re an impossible chauvinistic manipulator of other people’s lives.’’
There was a rather grisly silence. Liv knew she had gone too far, but she couldn’t make herself feel sorry that she’d done it.
At last, her father said, too quietly, ‘‘You would do well to guard that tongue of yours, daughter. No matter what you may think of me, I am king here.’’
‘‘Yes, you are,’’ Liv readily agreed. ‘‘And that’s why I’m going back to my country. Today. I am not—’’
