The Monarch's Son. Valerie Parv
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what their station in life.
This perception of him should have been at odds with the gentleness he demonstrated with his son in the pool. The sight reminded her of a lion and its cub. Lorne showed strength when it was warranted and paternal care when it was needed. The fanciful image brought a rueful smile. Lion, indeed! What were lions if not merciless hunters who pulled down living prey on the run?
He had looked at her as if she was potential prey, she recalled with a slight shiver. It wasn’t fear, more like—she refused to identify her response as pleasure. He was unlikely to feel any such thing after the way she had interrupted his holiday. The sooner she left the royal villa, the better.
It was hard to make herself believe it. She didn’t want to, she acknowledged with a flash of insight. The obvious trappings of royalty didn’t attract her as much as the warm family feeling she observed between Lorne and Nori. Toddlers could be a handful at the best of times, but Lorne looked as if he genuinely enjoyed interacting with the child.
When Nori did something amusing, Lorne’s laughter reached her as a warm sound that tingled all the way to her toes. She wrapped her slender arms around herself in an instinctively defensive gesture. Toe tingling was all very well if the man was available and interested, but Lorne was neither.
A discreet knock on the outer door of her suite startled her. In response to her soft acknowledgement, a maid entered carrying clothes over one arm. “His Highness saw you at the window and requested that you join him at the pool,” the maid relayed. “I was instructed to bring a selection of bathing things for you to choose from.”
From the woman’s deferential manner, Allie gathered that refusing was not an option. Her bikini wasn’t among the choices on offer, she also noticed. Was it too brief for the prince’s royal sensibilities, she wondered wryly? The maid hardly seemed like the appropriate person to ask.
“Thank Prince Lorne for me and tell him I’ll be down as soon as I’ve changed,” she agreed. After her experience yesterday she had thought she wouldn’t want to swim again for a long time, but the weather was too hot and the pool far too tempting. Her eagerness had nothing to do with wanting to be a part of the inviting family scene below her, she told herself.
Lorne was swimming laps by the time she emerged from the villa. She had chosen a one-piece swimsuit that was as modest as her white bikini had been revealing. The high cut of the legs was the only remotely provocative feature. Over the ultramarine-colored suit she had slipped a filmy cover-up in a combination of ultramarine and Moroccan gold swirls. Raffia slip-on scuffs protected her feet from the sun-heated marble tiling around the pool. Finding things to fit her had proved remarkably easy because the maid had brought each garment in several sizes.
Huge seagrass umbrellas provided shade, and she sat down on a lounger under one of them, breathing in the exquisite ginger-scented air. Nori’s swimming lesson appeared to be over because there was no sign of the child. Her gaze went almost involuntarily to the figure plowing up and down the length of the pool. The only sound was the beat of Lorne’s arms and legs as he sliced through the water.
He was good enough to swim competitively, she thought, riveted by the sight of his smooth progress that left hardly a ripple in his wake. No wonder he was so muscular if he made a habit of exercising so strenuously. Watching the rhythmic kicking of his long legs and the pistonlike arc of his arms made her feel limp.
He made her feel limp for a lot of reasons, she thought, not least being his overwhelming masculinity. A man among men indeed. It would have been easy to fantasize that he had invited her to join him because he found her equally fascinating, but she knew it wasn’t the case. Being a good host was probably bred into him from childhood. No matter how reluctant he might be to have her company, he would accept it rather than appear inhospitable.
One thing she had learned in her short stay on Carramer was that hospitality was considered a cardinal virtue. She had already received invitations to share meals with a number of families she had done no more than talk to on the beach, so she supposed the monarch could do no less, regardless of his personal feelings.
Knowing she was here on sufferance did little for her mood, and she was frowning when Lorne emerged from the water. “If you still feel unwell, perhaps you should return to your room and let the doctor take a look at you,” he said when he saw her expression.
She started to get to her feet in deference to his position but he waved her back down. “The doctor came to see me half an hour ago,” she informed the prince. “He said I’m fine to get up as long as I don’t overdo things.”
The prince slung a towel around his broad shoulders to catch the moisture beading his honey-toned skin. “Then we must see to it that you don’t overtax yourself. The whirlpool tub might be safer for you than a strenuous swim. I was about to head there next myself so you can join me.”
The thought of sharing a hot tub with the prince was thoroughly alarming. “I’m fine right here,” she said with a furious shake of her head.
He picked up the hesitation in her voice, and his look challenged her. “Afraid of me, Alison? You weren’t yesterday.”
“Yesterday I didn’t know who you were.”
“And now?”
“Now I know you’re the boss around here, I don’t know how I should behave toward you, Your Highness.”
He frowned darkly. “Yesterday you were itching to call me Lorne. Why not start now?”
She was sure her astonishment showed on her face. “How did you know?”
“You forget how well I know the Australian character. You even refer to your prime ministers by their first names. You can’t be that much more intimidated by a prince.”
Want to bet? she thought furiously. He obviously had no idea of the impact he had made on her long before she knew his title. Insisting on using it would be a dead giveaway so she nodded. “Okay, Lorne it is, as long as it doesn’t get me thrown into a dungeon or my head chopped off.”
“Such a beautiful head belongs right where it is, on your shoulders,” he said without missing a beat. “In any case my palace at our capital, Solano, has no dungeons. For those, you would need to visit my brother, Prince Michel, who governs Isle des Anges. Although it’s called Island of the Angels, the island was used to exile criminals centuries ago, and the dungeons remain as historical curiosities. You should see them, as a visitor, of course,” he added.
She gave a slight shudder. “No, thank you. I once visited the former convict settlement of Port Arthur in Tasmania and couldn’t get out of the cells quickly enough. The walls seemed to be impregnated with the hopelessness of the poor souls who were incarcerated there.”
“I think Michel would agree with you. When we were boys, our younger sister, Adrienne, dared us to go into the dungeons, and Michel said much the same thing.”
The thought of Lorne having a brother and sister, let alone playing with them as a boy, made him far too human in her estimation. As well, the image of him teaching his little son to swim was still fresh in her mind. “I hope it makes him a benevolent governor,” she said quickly.
“Unlike his older brother, you mean?”
Benevolence was not a quality she would readily attribute to Lorne. She bridled, stung that he could read her so well on such short acquaintance. “From what I hear you are a popular monarch.”
“But not popular with you,” he divined with the same uncanny accuracy.
The feeling was probably mutual, she reminded herself. She was uncomfortably aware that her nationality reminded him of his late wife. But for the doctor’s insistence that she rest, she was sure she would be back at the hostel in Allora by now. “I’m well aware that I’m here on sufferance,” she said. “You saved my life yesterday, and I’m grateful, but we both know you don’t want me to stay any longer than necessary.”
“Agreed,” he said with a coolness that cut to her core, although it was no