Royal Weddings. Joan Elliott Pickart
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rethink your decision to go to bed at this time. I see no reason to become comfortable if you’re only going to go elsewhere.”
“Comfortable? What are you talking about? You never become comfortable. You never even sleep.”
“I sleep. Perhaps not as you would perceive sleep to be. I am capable of maintaining a state of readiness while technically sleeping.”
“A state of readiness.”
“Yes.”
She resisted the urge to hurl the remote at him. “Hauk.”
“Yes?”
“Lie down.”
He dropped to his blankets, disappearing from her view.
She petted her cats, watched back-to-back Buffy reruns and told herself she was ignoring him. A state of readiness. Oh, fershure.
At eleven, she turned off the television and rolled on her side. By midnight, she couldn’t stand it. She sat up and turned on the lamp and grabbed the phone.
“Who are you calling?” His voice came from the foot of the bed. She couldn’t see him. He hadn’t even sat up.
“My mother. And I’m not putting it on speakerphone, so don’t you dare try to make me.” She clutched the phone tightly, ready to whack him with it if he rose up from below the footboard.
She thought she heard him sigh. “All right. Keep your word. Say nothing to endanger your visit to your father.”
“I hate you, Hauk.”
“Make your call.”
Her mother answered on the first ring. “Elli?”
“I love you, Mom. I’ll be fine. Please don’t worry.”
There was a silence, then Ingrid said, “I won’t.” They both knew it was a lie, but a good lie, a loving mother’s lie. “Thank you, darling. For calling. I’ve been lying here thinking of you.”
“I know. I was thinking of you, too.”
A low, sad little chuckle came over the line. “Isn’t it ironic? Liv is so headstrong. And Brit? Well, we all know Brit is the type of daughter to make her mother prematurely gray. But you? An excellent student, always so reasonable. You were the one I went to when I needed help convincing one of your sisters not to do something dangerous or harebrained.”
“Mom…”
“Oh, I know, I know. This is something you feel you have to do. And it’s your choice to make.”
“That’s right.”
“Hilda will be over tomorrow to pick up Diablo and Doodles.”
“That should work.”
“Elli.”
“What, Mom?”
“Have a good trip. A safe trip.”
“I will, Mom. I’ll be back before you know it and…our lives will go on.”
“Good night my own sweet Little Old Giant.”
Elli whispered, “Good night, Mom,” and hung up the phone.
From the end of the bed, there was silence.
“Hauk?”
“Yes?”
“I don’t really hate you.”
“I know.”
Elli turned off the light and rolled onto her side. Within a few minutes, she was asleep.
Hauk lay awake.
Wide-awake.
As a rule, he possessed considerable discipline when it came to the time for sleep. He’d been trained and trained well. Sleep, like good nourishment and regular physical exercise to muscular exhaustion and beyond, was a main building block of superior performance. He could sleep in a snow cave, in subzero temperatures with enemies on every side—and be ready to snap wide-awake at the smallest strange movement or sound. As he’d told Elli—
He caught his own dangerous thoughts up short. Not simply Elli. Never simply Elli.
She was the princess. Her Highness. Princess Elli.
But never her name by itself.
From thought sprang action. And he couldn’t allow his thoughts to become too familiar. It was unacceptable. More than unacceptable.
It was forbidden.
He wanted her on that plane. He wanted her safe with his liege and out of his hands.
But she would balk, would stall—would keep insisting she had until Thursday and she wasn’t leaving until then. The more he tried to get her to go, the more determined she became to stay.
Dangerous, the games she played. For more reasons than she allowed herself to understand. Not only was she stuck with him, every moment, as she never seemed to tire of reminding him; he was stuck with her. He could go nowhere, do nothing, without keeping her in sight.
This was the kind of assignment that, under most circumstances, he could do with one eye closed and a hand tied behind his back. Second nature. To watch. To guard. To remain detached and yet vigilant. Over the years, he’d delivered a number of important personages—and dangerous prisoners—into the proper hands.
But this, he was learning, was not most circumstances. This was the daughter of his king. And something was happening to him, in this period of forced proximity with her. Something that had never happened to him before.
He let himself think it: She draws me. I want her….
He could hardly believe it. He’d thought himself well beyond such ridiculous weakness. A warrior, in particular the king’s warrior, learned early to effectively sublimate physical needs—especially sexual ones, which were no use at all to a soldier in his work.
And yet, in a mere twenty-four hours, it had happened. This troublesome princess had somehow managed, all unknowing, to get under his skin.
He found himself doing things he despised. Noticing the fresh, flowerlike scent of her. More than noticing. May the three Norns of destiny curse him, he was constantly sniffing the air when she was near. And he watched her. All the time. Yes, it was his duty to watch her. But he was not supposed to take such pleasure in the task.
It was hopeless, this growing hunger he felt for her. Counterproductive in the extreme. The woman was so completely beyond his touch. So far above him that his king had not even bothered to remind him to keep his hands off.
Hauk didn’t know for certain what scheme his king was hatching, but he knew that Queen Ingrid was right. His lord had plans for Princess Elli. And those plans did not include her lying down with her father’s bastard warrior. It would be a huge and unpardonable betrayal of honor and his king’s trust for Hauk to lay a hand on her, except as required in the furtherance of his duty.
Still—in spite of how wrong it was, no matter the complete lack of discipline it showed—the woman enchanted him. She wove a spell over him, with her huge eyes and soft mouth, her clever tongue and quick mind. And her heart.
Yes, that was surely her most alluring feature. That seeming contradiction of softness and strength only found in a woman with a true and loving heart. She would be a prize beyond price to the man who claimed her.
And he would never be that man.
Yet his orders forced him to this—to spending the nights at the foot of her bed—scenting her, listening to her small, sweet sighs as she dreamed.
It was the purest kind of torture. A taste of Valhalla. A visit to Hel.
And there was no way to make an end to it until she gave up