Romancing The Crown: Leila and Gage. Kathleen Creighton
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Perhaps you would like—”
“Cade raises horses, too,” Elena interrupted. “Arabians.” “Really? But that is wonderful!” In her eagerness and enthusiasm she seemed almost weightless, like a bird, he thought—a blackbird one sudden motion away from taking flight. “How I wish that I could see your horses, Mr. Gallagher.”
“Maybe someday you will,” Cade murmured, and felt a strange little shiver go through him—some sort of primitive warning. He coughed, glanced at Elena and gruffly added, “When you come to Texas to visit your brother.”
And he watched the light go out of the girl’s eyes as if someone had thrown a switch, shutting off all circuits. Her lashes came down and her smile faded. Her body grew still.
“Yes,” she said softly. “Perhaps…” She turned away, one hand going to her forehead. “Oh—I see the play has been stopped. Someone has fallen off. I think now it is safe to get my hat. Please, excuse me—”
Maybe it was because she’d looked so sad—Cade had no other rational explanation for doing what he did. He shot out a hand and caught her by the arm. The feel of her flesh beneath the silk fabric of her blouse sent impulses tingling along the nerves in his fingers as he gruffly said, “Here—I’ll get it.”
With that, he strode past her down the slope, stepped over the low barrier and scooped what was left of the hat out of the trampled grass. Grimly ignoring the smattering of applause from nearby spectators, he whacked the hat once against his thigh, then retraced his steps to where Elena and the princess were waiting for him under the trees.
“There you go,” he said as he handed the hat over to its owner. “For what it’s worth. Looks in pretty bad shape.”
“It is only a hat,” Leila said, smiling but without a trace of the sparkle that had lit her eyes before. Cade was conscious of a vague disappointment. It was like watching the sun set without colors. “It is not important. But it was very kind of you to retrieve it for me. Thank you.
“Well—” She looked quickly, almost guiltily, around. “I must go now. Someone will be looking for me. Elena, I am so glad to have had a chance to see and talk to you. And Mr. Gallagher, it was very nice meeting you. Thank you…goodbye….” Cade watched her disappear into the crowd like a doe in dense forest.
“Cade,” Elena said in a warning tone, “I mean it—she’s absolutely off-limits.” He pulled his gaze back to her, covering the effort it cost him with a snort and a wry smile. “Hey, she’s too young for me. Besides,” he added after a moment’s contemplation of the end of his cigar, “she’s not really my type.”
Elena gave a derisive hoot—not very ladylike, but pure Texas. “Oh, yeah, I know all about your ‘type.’ Whatever happened to that Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, by the way?”
“She was a nice girl,” Cade said with a small, reminiscent smile. “We…wanted different things, is all. She was thinkin’ in terms of wedding bells and baby carriages, while I—”
“I know what you were thinkin’ about,” Elena said dryly. “The same thing you’re thinking right now, which is absolutely out of the question. You promise me, Cade—”
Laughing, he held up both hands in a gesture of surrender. “Hey—you’ve got nothing to worry about. Like I said earlier, and like I told your friend Kitty last night—where is she, by the way? Haven’t seen her around this morning.” He looked around furtively, half expecting to see a fuzzy brown head bobbing through the crowd, to hear that gawdawful, “Yoo-hoo!”
Elena grinned. “I think maybe she overdid a bit on the rich food last night. She was planning on taking it easy this morning, getting all rested up for this evening’s festivities.”
Cade made a sound somewhere between a groan and a sigh.
Leila ran across the courtyard, the patterned tiles smooth and warm under her bare feet. She had taken her boots off in her chambers, but had found it impossible to stay there. She felt too stirred, too restless to stay indoors—which admittedly was not an uncommon way for Leila to feel.
But this was different. Today the pounding of her heartbeat was only an echo of the thunder of horses’ hoofbeats. The breeze from the sea tugged gently at her hair, but she longed to feel it whipping in the wind as she raced wild and abandoned across fields without boundaries. Today, every flower and tree and shrub in the gardens, every fountain and vine-draped arch and pillar, seemed like the bars of a prison to her. A very beautiful prison, it was true, but a prison nonetheless.
And something else. Today as she ran, she thought of the way a garden feels when it rains—a contradiction of freshness and excitement and anticipation, but also a bit of gloom and sadness, a yearning for the sun’s familiar warmth. And all of her insides seemed to quiver like the leaves of flowers and shrubs and trees when the raindrops hit them.
The palace gardens were vast, and Leila knew every inch of them, including hidden nooks and bowers where she occasionally sought refuge from turbulent thoughts like these. Today, though, it wasn’t refuge she wanted. After this morning, she very much needed to confront those disturbing thoughts, face them head-on, and then, if at all possible, decide what she was going to do about them. For this she had chosen a spot she was almost certain would be empty at that hour—the private terrace adjacent to the family’s quarters where she sometimes took breakfast with her sisters, or her mother and her mother’s faithful servant, Salma, who had once been Leila’s nanny. The terrace faced northeast and overlooked the sea. Now, approaching midday, it would be shaded, with a nice breeze from the sea to cool her burning cheeks while the gentle trickle of the fountain and the heady scent of roses would, she desperately hoped, help to calm her fevered thoughts.
Never had Leila so desired to be alone with those thoughts! Oh, such humiliating, embarrassing thoughts. And so she was dismayed to find, as she plunged headlong through the arched portal that was the garden entrance to her retreat, that someone was there before her.
Worse, a stranger. A woman with drab brown hair—rather frizzy—was sitting in a chair beside the fountain, reading a paperback book.
Leila’s headlong plunge had already taken her several steps onto the terrace before she realized it was already occupied. She lurched to a halt, arms flung wide, body tilted forward, and uttered a soft, disappointed, “Oh!”
The woman quickly set aside her book, a romantic novel, by the looks of the cover. She smiled, and Leila recognized her then—the woman who had been talking with Cade Gallagher during the banquet the night before. She felt a jolt of excitement, then an alarming twinge of jealousy. But it was fleeting. The woman wasn’t very pretty, and besides, Leila told herself with a mental sniff, she’s old. At least forty.
“I’m sorry,” the woman said, and Leila noticed that she had an accent just like Elena’s. “Gee, I hope I’m not where I shouldn’t be. I was looking for someplace cool and quiet, and…well, the roses just smelled so good….”
“No, no, it is quite all right.” Leila had been raised to be polite to her elders. She advanced, hand outstretched. “I am Leila Kamal. Please—do not get up.”
In spite of Leila’s assurance, the woman half rose and at the same time managed to execute an awkward sort of curtsey. “I’m Kitty.” And oddly, it was she who sounded out of breath, though it was Leila who had been running. “Elena’s friend.”
“Yes, I saw you last night at the banquet. You were talking with Mr. Gallagher.” Leila spoke slowly, absently. An idea was beginning to take shape in her head.
“That’s right!” Kitty looked pleased, perhaps flattered that Leila had noticed her. Then her pleasure changed to concern. “My, but you look warm. Would you like something cold to drink? There’s a lot more here than I’ll ever need.” She indicated a water-beaded pitcher and several glasses sitting on a tray on the glass-topped table an arm’s length away. “It’s some kind of fruit juice, I think—got a little bit of a bite to it. It’s not quite up to