The Marquis And The Mother-To-Be. Valerie Parv
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pocket if you’d care to examine it.”
He heard her indrawn breath as if she recognized his titles. But the gun barrel didn’t waver as she slid a slender hand around his chest and felt her way to his pocket. The lightly caressing touch made his heart pick up speed. He decided there were better ways to introduce himself to the young lady.
Reflexes and training allowed him to grasp her wrist, jerk her off balance, and spin her around in front of him so she fell into his arms. He tightened them around her, seeing that the weapon which dropped from her hand was only an old cigar tube of Prince Henry’s. He had to give his ghost full marks for ingenuity.
He looked down at the woman in his arms. In closeup, her blond hair was sun-streaked and cascaded around her shoulders in soft waves, framing delicate features that wouldn’t have been misplaced on a model.
“A most attractive ghost,” he murmured.
She struggled in his grasp. “What are you talking about? Let me up.”
He held tight, since it wasn’t exactly a hardship. “First I want to make sure that you’re human.”
He hadn’t intended to kiss her, but the temptation was too great. In his arms she felt as light as a feather, but she had her share of muscles, he noticed. Her shape and build suggested someone who took very good care of herself.
Her mouth was a shell-pink bow, curved now in fury, and her eyes sparked a warning at him. He ignored it and lowered his lips to hers. She tasted of the baking he’d smelled when he walked in, yeasty, warm, thoroughly inviting.
She tasted so good that he took his time over the kiss, aware that at some point she gave up fighting him, and brought her arms around him. She probably thought she was stopping herself from falling, but that didn’t explain the way her mouth opened so temptingly. If he’d been kissing her for real, he knew exactly how he would have responded to those parted lips.
But this wasn’t the time. As it was, he had let the kiss go on far longer than was wise, the heat racing through him testifying to how much he had enjoyed it. Setting her upright and away from him took considerable self-restraint.
Looking confused, she backed away a little, but her cheeks glowed and her eyes glittered as if she had also enjoyed the experience more than she thought she should. “What did you do that for?”
“When I arrived, I thought the place was haunted. I had to make sure you aren’t a ghost.”
“You’re crazy.”
“And you’re trespassing. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”
She made a choking sound. “I’m trespassing? You’re the interloper. I own this place.”
His intense gaze raked her, what he saw distracting him from the obvious foolishness of her claim. “You look familiar. Who are you?”
She’d been thinking the same about him. “Carissa Day, and this is my home.”
She saw his memory return in a rush. “Good grief, it is you, Cris.”
“Nobody has called me Cris since I was fifteen. Except… Eduard? It really is you.”
He had changed, she saw. As a teenager, he had worn his dark chestnut hair longer. In the navy he had grown from a shy, slightly bookish teenager into a solidly built man who looked as if he could handle himself in most situations. He folded his arms over his chest, evidently enjoying her astonishment. “Told you so.”
She had also changed, but she doubted if he saw as much progress as she did in him. When he’d last seen her, she had been long-legged and coltish, as if her limbs had outgrown her body. Her hair had been shorter and darker, and she’d worn glasses instead of the contacts she wore now.
Unwillingly reminded of the last time he had kissed her, all those years ago, she struggled to compose herself. “Of all the people who might have walked in here, you’re the last person I expected to see.”
“I don’t know why,” he observed. “Tiga Lodge has been in the family for a century. Prince Henry owned it until he died last year.”
She felt a frown etch itself between her eyes. “That must be why it was on the market.”
He took her arm. “You and I need to talk, Cris… Carissa.”
“It’s okay. Cris sounds good the way you say it.” Like a homecoming, she thought.
Telling herself she was bemused by his sudden appearance, not by his kiss, she let him steer her back along the hall toward the kitchen. She saw his look register that the laundry had been removed from the line, and felt herself color, thinking of him seeing the lacy garments. She was glad she had moved them on the way in. Her days of hoping to attract Eduard’s attention with her feminine wiles were long gone, although the way she felt now suggested otherwise. It was the aftermath of shock, nothing more, she reminded herself. Until a second ago, she had thought he was an intruder.
“Are your father and brother with you?” he asked.
She lowered her long lashes. “Dad died a year ago from a sudden heart attack.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
She inclined her head in silent acknowledgment.
“Is Jeffrey still in Australia?”
“Dad left the family home to him.” She couldn’t disguise the bitterness she’d felt when she’d found that out. No doubt Graeme Day had believed he was doing the right thing by specifying in his will that Jeffrey was to look after Carissa until she married. Embarrassed, Jeff had insisted on paying her half of the house’s value in cash, but it hadn’t assuaged her hurt. Or eased the sense of rootlessness that had plagued her all her life.
Their mother had died soon after she was born, and the family had lived in the Australian house for only a handful of years, so there was no reason for Carissa to think of it as home. But it was the only one she had. To have it bequeathed to her brother alone had hurt beyond measure. She had known her father had old-fashioned views about women, but had never dreamed he would do such a thing.
“Your accent doesn’t sound as Australian as I remember,” Eduard said, drawing her back to the present.
“I spent the last few years studying hotel management in Switzerland. After I graduated, I worked there for a while before being offered a job in Sydney.”
Eduard took a seat at the huge kitchen table and his palms skimmed the scrubbed pine surface. “Sitting here takes me back. My brother and I must have spent hours at this table, eating slabs of bread fresh from the oven, swearing the cook to secrecy so our parents wouldn’t find out we’d been fraternizing with the staff.”
Eduard had always been the more informal of the royal brothers, she recalled, unwillingly reminded of how she had once mistaken his friendliness for something more. She busied herself filling a kettle. “Do you still like your coffee black?”
He nodded. “You have a good memory.”
She forebore telling him that she hadn’t forgotten anything that had passed between them. Moments later she carried two cups of coffee to the table. Between them she placed a sliced tea cake. “I made it this morning.”
He took a slice and bit into it. “No wonder I could smell baking when I walked in. This is good.”
Her face twisted into a frown. “The agent selling this place told me the owner was away in the navy. Did he mean you?”
Eduard nodded. “The lodge originally belonged to my uncle, Prince Henry de Valmont.”
“The agent mentioned the former owner’s name. I knew de Valmont was a royal family name, but that’s all. I wonder why the agent didn’t tell me the house had been a royal lodge?”
“Probably because it still is.”
She felt the color drain from her face and gripped