Royal Families Vs. Historicals

“I guess,” he whispered against her hair, “it’s time for you to start calling me Jake.”

He picked her up for their first official date three nights later. He felt like a teenager getting ready. He wore jeans and a T-shirt, trying for just the right note of casual.

As he approached her address, he was aware that for a man who had done the most dangerous things in the world with absolute icy calm, his heart was beating faster, and his palms were sweat-slicked.

She lived on campus in what looked to be a very ordinary house until he went to the front door, rang the bell and was let in.

There were girls everywhere, short girls, tall girls, skinny girls, heavy girls. There were girls dressed to go to nightclubs and girls in their pajamas. There were girls with their hair in rollers and girls hidden behind frightening facial masks of green creams and white creams. And it seemed when he stood in that front foyer, every single one of them stopped and looked at him. Really looked.

“Sexy beast,” one of them called out. “Who are you here for?”

The last time he had blushed was when Shoshauna had kissed him on the cheek and called him Charming in that little market in B’Ranasha. She was determined to put him in predicaments that stretched him! At least now he knew a little blush wouldn’t kill him.

“I’m here for Shoshauna.” There were groans and calls of “lucky girl,” and he found himself blushing harder.

But when he saw her, coming down the steps, two at a time, flying toward him, all thought of himself, of his wild discomfort at finding himself, a man so used to a man’s world, so surrounded by women, was gone.

There was a look on her face when she saw him that he knew he would never forget, not if he lived to be 102.

It was unguarded and filled with tenderness.

A memory niggled at him, of a moment a long, long time ago. His father coming up the steps from work, in combat uniform, his mother running to meet him, a look just like the one on Shoshauna’s face now in her eyes. And he remembered how his father had looked at her. Despite the uniform, in that moment his father had not been a warrior. No, just a man, filled with wonder, gentled by love, amazed.

In the next few weeks, even though Ronan had to run the gauntlet of her housemates every time he saw her, he spent every moment he could with her. Every second they could wangle away from hectic schedules, they were together. Simple moments—a walk, holding hands, eating pizza, playing darts at the pub—simple moments became infused with a light from heaven.

Ronan was aware that, left to his own devices, he would have performed his duties perfectly on B’Ranasha. He would have been a perfect professional, he would never have allowed himself to become personally involved with the principal.

And he would have missed this: the tenderness, the sweetness of falling head over heels in love. But somehow, some way, a kind universe had taken pity on him, given him what he needed the most, even though he had been completely unaware of that need. Even though he had strenuously denied that need and tried to fight against it.

Falling in love with Shoshauna was like waking from a deep hypnotic state. When he woke in the morning, his first thought was of her. He felt as if he was living to make her laugh, to feel the touch of her hand, to become aware of her eyes resting on his face, something in them so unguarded and so breathtakingly, exquisitely beautiful.

For some reason he, a rough soldier, had come to be loved by a woman like this one. He planned to be worthy of it.

Shoshauna looked around, let the trade winds lift her hair. There was a flower-laced pagoda set up on the beach, the royal palace of B’Ranasha white and beautiful in the background. They had tried to keep things small, but even so the hundred chairs facing the wedding pagoda were filled. The music of a single flute intertwined with the music of the waves that lapped gently on the sand.

Jake’s mother, Bev, had managed to get over her disappointment that, despite the fact it was a royal wedding, her first, they wanted nothing elaborate. Now Shoshauna saw why her mother-in-law’s business was so successful: she had read their hearts and given them exactly what they wanted—simplicity—the beauty provided by the ocean, the white-capped waves in the blue bay the perfect backdrop to the day.

Shoshauna wore a simple white sheath, her feet were bare, she had a single flower in her hair.

She watched from the tree line as Jake made his way across the sand and felt the tears rise in her eyes. Beloved.

He was flanked by Gray Peterson, just as he had been the first time she had seen him, but this time Jake looked calm and relaxed, a man at ease despite the formality of the black suit he was wearing, the people watching him, the fact it was his wedding day.

It had been almost a year since she had first laid eyes on him, six months since she had won her first date with him in that chess match.

Since then there had been so much laughter as they discovered a brand-new world together—a world seen through the viewfinder of love.

They had ridden motorcycles, gone to movies, walked hand in hand down rain-filled streets, played chess and done nothing at all. Everything was equally as astounding when she did it with him.

He was so full of surprises. Who would have ever guessed he had such a romantic nature hidden under that stern exterior? The kitten as a gift should have been her first clue! He was constantly surprising her with heart-felt or funny little gifts: a tiara he’d gotten at a toy store; a laser pointer that drove the kitten, Hope, to distraction; a book of poems; a pink bikini that she would use now, for the first time, on her honeymoon.

And the stern exterior was just that. An exterior. She’d always thought he was good-looking, but now the hard lines on his face were relaxed around her, and the stern mask was gone from his eyes. The remoteness was gone from him and so was his need to exercise absolute control over everything. Jake Ronan seemed to have enjoyed every second of letting go of control, seeing where life—and love—would take them, if they gave it a chance.

It had taken them to this day and this moment. He stood at the pagoda, his eyes searched the tree line until they found her.

And he smiled.

In his smile she saw such welcome and such wonder—and such sensual promise—that her own heart beat faster.

Of course, there was one thing they had not done, one area where he had maintained every ounce of his formidable discipline. Jake Ronan had proven to be very old-fashioned when it came to the question of her virtue.

Oh, he had kissed her until she had nearly died from wanting him, he had touched her in ways that had threatened to set her heart on fire, but always at the last moment he had pulled away. He had told her his honor was on the line, and she had learned you did not question a warrior’s honor!

But tonight she would lie in his arms, and they would discover the breathtaking heights of intimacy. After the reception, they would take her grandfather’s boat, and they would go to their island, Naidina Karobin, my heart is home. The island would be once again inhabited only by them.

Last night, even though he wasn’t supposed to see her until today, Jake had managed to charm his way past all her girlfriends and her cousins and aunts.

“I brought you a wedding present.”

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she told him, but not with a great deal of conviction. She loved seeing him.

“I know. I couldn’t stay away. Knowing you were here, just a few minutes away from me, I couldn’t not be with you. Shoshauna, that’s what you do to me. Here I am, just about the most disciplined guy in the world, and I’m helpless around you. Worse,” he moved closer to her, touched her cheek with the familiar hardness of his hands, “I like being helpless. You make me want to be with you all the time. You make everything that is not you seem dull and boring and like a total waste of time.

“You make me feel as if all those defenses I had, had kept me prisoner in a world where I was very strong but very, very alone. You rescued me.”

Her eyes filled with tears. “Ronan, you could not have given me a more beautiful gift than those words.”

He smiled, a little bit sheepishly. “There’s still enough soldier in me that I don’t see words as any kind of gift.” He opened the door and brought in what he had left in the hallway.

She burst out laughing. That’s what he did to her, and for her—took her from tears to laughter and back again in the blink of an eye.

A brand-new surfboard, and she had been delighted, but at the same time she rather hoped, much as she was stoked about surfing, that the waves would never come up. She rather hoped they would never get out of bed! Not for the whole two weeks. That she could touch him until she had her fill of the feel of his skin under her fingertips, until she had her fill of the taste of his lips, and she already knew she was never going to get her fill of that!

Shoshauna was still blushing from the audacity of her own thoughts when her mother and her father came up beside her, not a king and a queen today but proud parents. Each of them kissed her on the cheek and then took their seats.

Her father in particular was very taken with Jake. Her mother had been more slow to come around, but no one who truly got to know Jake could do anything but love him.

Her mother had also been appalled by the simplicity of the wedding plans, but she and Bev had managed to console each other and had become quite good friends as they planned the wedding of their children.

Her grandfather came to her side, linked his arm through hers, smiled at her, though his eyes were wet with tears of joy.

And then Shoshauna was moving across the sand toward her beloved, toward Jake Ronan, and she could see the whole future in his eyes. Her grandfather let her go, and she walked the last few steps to him on her own, a woman who had chosen exactly the life she wanted for herself.

Jake watched Shoshauna move toward him across the fineness of the pure white sand.

She had chosen the simplest of dresses, her feet were bare, but when you were as beautiful as she was, even his mother had agreed that simplicity was the best way to let her true beauty shine through.

His mother and his wife-to-be, here together.

And in him the most wonderful surrender. He would protect them with his life, if he ever had to, and they both knew that.

Someday he would have children with Shoshauna, and he could feel the fierce protectiveness within himself extend to them, but something new was there, too.

A trust, that he would do whatever he could do, but when his strength ran dry, then there would be something else there to step in, something that seemed to have a better plan for him than anything he could have ever planned for himself, if the woman walking over the sand toward him was any indication.

He knew that something went by a great many names. Some called it the Universe, the life force, God.

He had come to call it Love, and to recognize it had been running the show long before he’d come along, and would be running it long after.

There came a point when a man had to realize that there were things he did not control, and that he would only exhaust himself, drain away his strength and his soul, if he continued to think the whole world would fall apart if he was not running it.

Ronan had come to believe that he could trust the protection and care of a force larger than himself.

It was the same force that brought a certain man and a certain woman together, against impossible odds, across cultural and social differences, the force that made one heart recognize another.

And it was that force that would protect them and see their children into the world.

Once upon a time Jake Ronan had thought if he ever had to stand where he was standing today, he would probably faint.

And yet the truth was, he had never felt so calm, so strong, so right. And the strangest thing of all was that, even as Ronan admitted he was powerless in the face of this thing called love, with each day of his surrender he felt more powerful, more alive and more relaxed, more grateful, more everything.

This was the something more he had longed for all his life: to be a part of the magnificent mystery that flowed around him and in him as surely as it flowed through the waves on the sea. He longed to ride that incredible energy with the ease and joy with which he could ride the most powerful of waves. Not to conquer but to feel connected.

He watched Shoshauna move toward him, and he almost laughed out loud.

For one thing he had come to know that this thing he chose to call Love had the most delicious sense of humor.

And for the longest time he had thought it was his job to rescue the princess.

But now he saw that wasn’t it at all.

That she had come to rescue him. And that allowing himself to be rescued had not made him a weaker man but a better one.

She reached him, looked him in the face, his equal, the woman who would be the mother of his children, his companion, his friend, his lover through all the days of his life.

“Beloved,” she said, her voice hushed with reverence of what they stood in the presence of, that Force greater than all things. “Retnuh.”

And he said to her, his eyes never leaving her face, in her own language, a greeting and a vow, “My heart is home.”

The Secret Princess

Jessica Hart

For my dear niece, Suzy,

with love on her engagement.

CHAPTER ONE

WAVING her hands around her head in a futile attempt to bat the midges away, Lotty paused for breath at the crest of the track. Below her, an austere granite house was planted between a forbidding sweep of hillside and a loch so still it mirrored the clouds and the trees clustered along the water’s edge.

Loch Mhoraigh House. It looked isolated and unfriendly and, according to all reports in the village, its owner was the same.

‘He’s the worst boss I’ve ever had.’ Gary had been drowning his sorrows in the Mhoraigh Hotel bar all afternoon and his words were more than a little slurred. ‘Not a smile, not a good morning, just straight to work! I told him if I’d wanted to work in a labour camp, I’d have signed up for one. It’s not as if he’s paying more than slave wages either, and he won’t get anyone else. I told him what he could do with his job!’

‘Quite right too.’ Elsie, the barmaid, polished glasses vindictively and warned Lotty against making the trek out to Loch Mhoraigh House. ‘We don’t want Corran McKenna around here. The Mhoraigh estate should have gone to his brother, we all know that,’ she said, hinting darkly at some family feud that Lotty didn’t quite follow. ‘Nobody from the village will work for him. You go on up to Fort William,’ she told Lotty. ‘You’ll find a job there.’

But Lotty couldn’t afford to go any further. Without her purse, she was penniless, and when you needed money, you got yourself a job, right?

Or so she had heard. The truth was that until an hour earlier, when she had realised that her purse was missing, Lotty had never in her life had to think about money at all.

Now she did.

It was Lotty’s first challenge, and she was determined to rise to it. Her life was so luxurious, so protected. She understood why, of course, but it meant that she had never once been tested and, until you were, how did you know who you were and what you were made of? That was what these few short weeks were all about. Was there any more to Her Serene Highness Princess Charlotte of Montluce than the stylish clothes and the gracious smile that were all the rest of the world saw?

Lotty needed to know that more than anyone.

Here was her first chance to find out. When you didn’t have any money, you had to earn some. Lotty set her slim shoulders and hoisted her rucksack onto her back. If everyone else could do it, she could too.

Three miles later, she was very tired, tormented by midges and, looking doubtfully down at the unwelcoming house, it occurred to Lotty, belatedly, that she could be making a terrible mistake. Loch Mhoraigh House was very remote, and Corran McKenna lived alone out here. Was it safe to knock on his door and ask if he could give her a job? What if Elsie had been right, and he was a man who couldn’t be trusted? Elsie’s dislike of him seemed to be based on the fact that he wasn’t a real Scot, and she had implied that he had acquired the estate under false pretences.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t have a choice, Lotty knew that. One phone call, and a close protection team would be on its way within minutes. A helicopter would swoop down and scoop her up, and take her back to the palace in Montluce. There would be no midges there, no money worries, no need to put herself at risk. There would just be her grandmother to face, and the knowledge of her own uselessness. She would be the princess who ran away and couldn’t last a week on her own.

Lotty grimaced at the thought of the humiliation. Three months, she had agreed with Philippe and Caro. Three months to disappear, to be anonymous, to see for herself what she was made of. She couldn’t give up at the first difficulty, and slink home with her tail between her legs.

She was a princess of Montluce, Lotty reminded herself, and her chin lifted. Her family hadn’t kept an iron grip on the country since the days of Charlemagne by giving up the moment the going got tough. She had been raised on the stories of the pride and courage that had kept Montluce independent for so long: Léopold Longsword, Princess Agathe who had been married off to a German prince nearly fifty years her senior in order to keep the succession safe, and of course the legendary Raoul the Wolf.

They had faced far greater challenges than Lotty. All she had to do was find herself a job. Was she going to be the first of the Montvivennes to accept defeat?

No, Lotty vowed, she wasn’t.

Lotty adjusted her rucksack more comfortably on her back, and set off down the rough track towards Loch Mhoraigh House.

The house loomed grey and massive as Lotty trudged wearily up to the front door. An air of neglect clung to everything. Weeds were growing in what had once been an impressive gravel drive and the windows were cold and cheerless. It was very quiet. No lights, no music, no sign of anyone living there. Only the crows wheeling above the Scots pines and the cry of some bird down by the loch.

Lotty hesitated, looking at the old-fashioned bell. What if Corran McKenna wasn’t there? She wasn’t sure her feet could take her back up that hill.

But what if he was? Lotty chewed her bottom lip uncertainly. She had never had to persuade anyone to give her a job before. She’d never really had to persuade anyone to do anything. Normally people fell over themselves to give her whatever she wanted. She led a charmed and privileged existence, Lotty knew, but it made it a lot harder to prove that she was a worthy successor to all those doughty ancestors who had fought and negotiated and bargained and married to keep Montluce free.

They wouldn’t have been deterred by a simple no, and neither would she.

For these few weeks, she had abandoned her title and her household. There was no one to arrange things for her, no one to make sure she got exactly what she wanted.

She was going to have to do this for herself.

Taking a deep breath, Lotty pressed the bell.

She could hear it clanging inside the house somewhere. Immediately, a furious barking erupted. It sounded as if there was a whole pack of dogs in there, and instinctively Lotty took a step back. There was a sharp command and the dogs subsided, except for a high-pitched yapping that continued until it was suddenly stifled as a door was shut firmly on it.

A few moments later, the front door was jerked open.

A tall, tough-looking man, as forbidding as the hills behind the house, stood there. He was younger than Lotty had expected, with dark, uncompromising features and a stern mouth, and his eyes were a pale, uncanny blue.

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve c-come about the job,’ said Lotty, cursing the stammer that still resurfaced at times when she was nervous. Raoul the Wolf wouldn’t have stammered, she was sure.

His fierce brows snapped together. ‘Job? What job?’

‘I heard in the hotel that you needed help restoring some cottages to let.’

‘News travels fast…or did Gary stop at the bar on his way back to Glasgow?’ Corran added with a sardonic look.

Lotty brushed at the midges that clustered at her ears. Raoul the Wolf wouldn’t have put up with being left on the doorstep either, but she could hardly insist that he invite her inside. She concentrated on sounding reasonable instead. ‘He said you didn’t have anyone else and that you’d be stuck without anyone to work for you.’

‘And did he also say that it was the worst job he’d ever done, not to mention being the worst paid, and having the worst boss?’

‘Something like that.’

‘And yet you want to work for me?’

‘I’m desperate,’ said Lotty.

The pale eyes inspected her. Lotty had never been the subject of that kind of unnerving scrutiny before and, in spite of herself, she stiffened. No one in Montluce would dare to look at her like that.

‘Forgive me for saying so, but you don’t look desperate,’ said Corran McKenna. He nodded at the high tech walking trousers and microfleece she’d bought in Glasgow only four days earlier. ‘Those clothes you’re wearing are brand new, and the labels tell me they weren’t cheap. Besides,’ he said, ‘you’re not suitable for the job.’

‘Why not?’

‘You’re not a man, for a start.’

‘That’s not a good enough reason,’ said Lotty, who might not want to rely on her royal status to protect her, but didn’t have to like his dismissive tone. ‘I think you’ll find there’s such a thing as sex discrimination.’

‘And I think you’ll find I don’t give a toss,’ said Corran. ‘I need someone strong enough to do physical work, not someone whose most strenuous activity is probably unscrewing her mascara.’

Lotty’s eyes sparked with temper. All at once she could feel her celebrated ancestors ranging at her back.

‘I’m not wearing mascara,’ she said coldly, ‘and I’m stronger than I look.’

For answer, Corran McKenna reached out and took her hands, turning them over as if they were parcels so that he could inspect them. His fingers were long and blunt, and they looked huge holding her small hands. He ran his thumbs over her palms and Lotty burned at the casualness of his touch.

‘Please don’t try and tell me that you’ve ever done a day’s rough work in your life,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t mean I can’t start now.’ Lotty tugged her hands free. ‘Please,’ she said, trying to ignore the way her palms were still tingling. If she looked down, she was sure she would be able to see the impression of his fingertips seared onto her skin. ‘I really need this job.’

‘I really need someone suitable,’ said Corran. ‘I’m sorry, but the answer is still no. And don’t bother looking at me like that with those big eyes,’ he added crisply. ‘I’m immune.’

Her jaw actually dropped. ‘I’m not looking at you like…like anything!’

She did astounded very well, but Corran found it hard to believe that she could really be unaware of the power of those luminous grey eyes. They were extraordinarily beautiful, the colour of soft summer mist, and fringed with long black lashes that did indeed appear to be natural when he looked closely.

The kind of eyes that got a man into trouble. Big trouble.

She was very pretty, slender and fine-boned, and she wore her trekking gear with an elegance that sat oddly with the short, garish red hair. A soft scarf at her throat added a subtle sophistication to her look.