Royal Protocol. Christine Flynn
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wait for the woman to announce him, he started back for the guard. He’d barely turned when the tall, carved doubled doors at the far side of the room swung inward. A slender woman in a pale-pink wool suit, her gleaming blond hair restrained in a tight twist, stepped out and closed the doors behind her.
Impatience turned to an inward groan.
No one saw the queen without going through her secretary or her lady-in-waiting. With the secretary obviously unavailable, that left him stuck with the woman he’d come to think of as the ice maiden, Lady Gwendolyn Corbin.
“Lady Corbin,” he said, acknowledging her with a nod of his dark head. He knew there were those who found the woman walking toward him quite charming. Where they got that impression was beyond him. From the cool formality she’d always exhibited around him—on the rare occasions he had been around her—Lady Gwen had struck him as possessing about as much warmth as the marble statues in the garden.
“I must speak with Her Majesty.”
“She’s coming. Can you tell me what’s going on?” With her hands clasped tightly enough to whiten her knuckles, she moved closer, her blue eyes searching his. “Sir Selwyn would say only that Prince Owen had been kidnapped and that the queen is to remain in her rooms. Do you know what happened? Is he hurt?”
Gwen anxiously searched the ruggedly carved features of the tall, powerfully built man before her. Harrison Monteque had always reminded her of a Scottish warlord, that breed of male who had defended his highlands with nothing but brute force and a sword of hammered steel. The hard angles and planes of his face were framed with deep-auburn hair cut close, she assumed, to tame any hint of curl rather than to meet military code. His eyes, the amber brown of a panther’s, held hers with disconcerting ease.
He was over six feet of commanding, demanding male in an admiral’s uniform. But even without the gold braid trimming his cuffs and epaulets, the five stars denoting his rank and the slew of ribbons decorating his chest, his authority was unmistakable. Power radiated from him like heat.
She had never felt comfortable around the man, never cared for his iron-fisted methods and his overbearing manner. Yet, as she stood waiting for him to shed light on the awful events of the morning, she wouldn’t have cared if he’d marched in with trumpets and his troops, as long as he could tell her what was happening. Her concern for the royal family and her friend the queen totally overrode everything else.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”
“Because you don’t know? Or because you can’t say?”
Harrison heard no challenge in the question. Only disquiet and a hint of totally unexpected vulnerability.
“Because what I have is only for the queen.”
“Can you at least tell me if the news is positive?”
He had never seen her look at him so openly before. Without the polite-but-cool facade she usually wore around him, he couldn’t help but notice the flecks of turquoise in her lake-blue eyes, the delicate curve of her cheek, the soft part of her lovely mouth.
He’d never before noticed the poreless quality of her skin, or the intriguing, tantalizing fullness of her bottom lip.
He noticed now—along with a distinct and unmistakable pull low in his groin when he caught a hint of the surpassingly erotic perfume she wore.
Caught completely off guard by her, unaccustomed to being caught off guard by much of anything, he banished his body’s betraying reactions beneath military bearing and watched her openness fade.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though the tightness in his voice hardly made him sound it. “I really must speak with the queen.” Wishing she wasn’t standing so close, he nodded over her shoulder. “If you would please get her for me?”
“No need,” came the cultured tones of Queen Marissa’s voice. “I’m here.”
As Gwen had done moments ago, the queen of Penwyck stepped through the double doors that led from her salon and bedchamber. A tall, slender woman of grace and breeding, her dark hair was knotted at her nape and held with a filigreed gold clasp. Her cashmere slacks and silk blouse were as flawless as the diamonds on her fingers and the thick gold chain draped around her neck.
Gwen dropped a quick, automatic curtsy. Her Majesty’s striking features bore the strain of the morning as she acknowledged her with a nod and continued toward the man dominating the decidedly feminine room.
Harrison’s air of command suggested that he deferred to no one. Yet he immediately offered a respectful and amazingly gallant bow.
“Admiral Monteque.” Lifting her hand to indicate that he should rise, she stopped by a small chair beneath a surprisingly casual portrait of the royal family. In it, she and King Morgan were in hunting clothes, their five children surrounding them with their horses. “Please, let’s dispense with formalities. What can you tell me of my son?”
His incisive glance cut toward the woman quietly waiting ten feet away. “May I speak with you alone, Your Majesty?”
“I would prefer that Lady Gwendolyn stay.”
“This is a matter of security, Your Majesty.”
“We all realize that, Admiral,” she replied, too tense to sit, too refined to pace. “Please, what do you know of Owen? I heard a guard say that his room has been searched. There was a struggle.” Her hand clutched the back of the chair as she took a deep breath. “Was there any sign of…violence?”
“There was no blood,” he replied, fairly certain that was what she was asking. “At least none that was immediately visible. We have forensics people in there now.”
“Doing what?”
“Dusting for prints. Searching for physical evidence. Royal Intelligence is on top of it.”
“But what are they doing to find him?”
“What they’re doing right now will help find him,” he explained, taking her insistence as a merciful sign that she was holding her own. “They need clues to know where to start.” He paused. “The best one we have right now was in the ransom note.”
It was against his better judgment to continue in the presence of the woman watching him so intently. He had no idea what Lady Corbin’s security clearance was, but he knew it wasn’t anywhere near high enough to be privy to the events now taking place. He also knew he wasn’t in a position at the moment to do anything other than as his sovereign instructed.
“The contents of the note will not be made public,” he continued with a pointed glance toward Gwen, “but we know why he was taken. Whoever took the prince is demanding that Penwyck withdraw from the treaty we are about to sign with Majorco.”
“That’s the ransom demand? That we not sign?”
Harrison’s confirming nod was as tight as the muscles knotting his gut.
Majorco was an island thirty miles southeast of Penwyck. Like the island of Drogheda to the east, it was a principality. At least it had been until the last of the ruling family died off last year and left them without an heir. The existing parliament had taken over quickly enough to form a democracy, but their military had fallen apart.
The country’s new leaders had asked Penwyck for protection and proposed an alliance that had quickly become part of a larger agreement the king had been unable to refuse.
“You know that withdrawal from the alliance isn’t an option,” he carefully reminded her. “The treaty with Majorco has become crucial to our trade agreement with the United States. That alliance must go through at all costs.”
The queen visibly paled. “Not at all costs, Admiral.”
“You know how important this is to the kingdom.”
“You will not sacrifice my son.”
Even as the queen spoke,