Cara Colter - His Convenient Royal Bride

“The cover story went well,” Ward said as they left Mountain Bend and took a rough road that began to twist up the mountain through thick forest.

Lancaster was silent.

“Didn’t you think so?”

“The old guy didn’t buy it.”

“What old guy?”

“He came out of the kitchen for a minute and gave us a good look over. Limping. Ex-military.”

“How can you tell that?”

Lancaster shrugged. “There are ways to tell. But it works both ways. I think he could tell a bit about us, too.”

Ward contemplated the fact he had not registered the man coming out of the kitchen. Of course, it was Lancaster’s job to notice who was around them, and Ward was confident Lancaster was probably better at his job than just about anybody in the world. But still, Ward suspected the woman, Maddie, had something to do with the fact he had not noticed the man come out of the kitchen.

There was something about her that engaged him, especially after coming from California, where the women he met all seemed very outgoing, very tall, very tanned, wrinkle-free and white-blond.

In contrast he had found Maddie’s beauty was understated and natural, as refreshing as a cool breeze on a warm day. She was lovely, with those kissed-by-the-sun curls springing around her head, her delicate features, the perfect bow of puffy lips, hazel eyes that looked green one moment and doe brown the next. Despite the faintest hint of freckles, unlike her California counterparts, her skin had been porcelain pale, as if, despite being surrounded by the outdoors, she did not get outside much. And there had been faint shadows of what—weariness? worry?—under those remarkable eyes.

In their short encounter Ward had found her both delightfully interesting and intriguingly attractive, and at the same time a painful reminder of the kind of woman and kind of life he would never have.

“I’m not concerned. Yet,” Lancaster said. “But I wouldn’t be telling anyone else your name is Edward.”

“Havenhurst is probably the least known kingdom in the entire North Atlantic, a little speck in the ocean, two hundred kilometers from the North Channel. Even the Scots, who are the most culturally linked to us, barely know who we are. So, few people know who I am.”

Ward’s publicity-averse family employed a small army to fend off the pursuit of royalty-crazed tabloids, and though the odd picture or story about him emerged, he was mostly an unknown.

Lancaster looked unconvinced.

“I’m off the radar,” Ward assured him.

“Best to keep it that way. I think your California friend, Miss O’Brian, would have loved to have milked your status for a bit of publicity.”

Ward gave Lancaster a look. “Did you give her a talking-to?”

Lancaster lifted a huge shoulder. “Laid out a few ground rules, aye.”

The road had ended. Lancaster turned off the car, and they got out. They removed day packs from the trunk and hoisted them onto shoulders.

Hours later, they returned to the car. They had hiked all day, but they had not succeeded in finding the hot pool.

“The more we didn’t find them, the more I was homesick for a dip,” Ward said. “Maybe we should take that young waitress up on her offer to show us the sights, after all.”

“Huh. With a chaperone, maybe.”

“Perhaps Maddie could join us, too.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lancaster offered.

Ward shot Lancaster a look. Had he guessed there was something about the gamine scone enchantress that had piqued his interest? But no, the scowl said something else entirely.

“Because the young Sophie may have been a bit smitten with you?”

Lancaster scowled. “Emphasis on young . There’s bound to be a slipup. Questions asked that can’t be answered. The cover story won’t stand up to close scrutiny.”

Ward reminded himself it was Lancaster’s job to think like this, to be on the alert for potential threats and possible dangers, real and imagined.

But he realized wanting Maddie and Sophie to join them wasn’t just about finding the hot pools. Maddie, with her curls and her tentative smile, had made him long for something he knew he could not have. Or maybe he could, not forever, but for a few moments in time. Maybe these last few final days of anonymity could give him one chance to see what it was like to have fun with an ordinary girl in an ordinary world. He felt a need to articulate it.

“Please don’t deprive me of this opportunity to do a few normal things, Lancaster. Yes, I want to drive a car like this one. But I want to laugh with a pretty lass. Dance at a concert. This may be the only opportunity I ever get to experience a normal life.”

A normal life. They got back in the car and Ward took the driver’s seat this time. Their small island home did not lend itself to a vehicle like this. In truth, he rarely drove himself anywhere. He put the car in gear and enjoyed the surge of power as he pressed down the gas. Lancaster made an unflattering grab for a bar above his door, but Edward soon found his groove and drove the car as quickly as the poor road would allow.

“I understand, Your Highness,” Lancaster said. “This is really your only taste of freedom. In a few weeks you’ll be a married man.”

“I’ve never had freedom,” Ward said quietly, “married or not. Just the same, I’ve reached a decision. I’ve decided not to marry Princess Aida.”

“BUT...BUT YOUR marriage is expected,” Lancaster stammered, after a long silence.

“I’ve always understood that service comes before self, and that certain sacrifices would be expected of me.”

“Princess Aida is a beautiful woman, sir, hardly a sacrifice.”

“She doesn’t love me.”

“Love?” Lancaster shot him a distressed look. “What does that have to do with it?”

Love. Ward had never had an expectation of it in his life. His father, the King, had not loved his mother, nor she him. Their public lives had been orchestrated to be civil; privately they had been cold and distant to one another.

Ward himself had been sent away to a private school when he was six. So love was a nebulous thing to him. He had not experienced it, nor had any expectation of it.

Edward thought of Aida with affection, like one would think of a little sister. When she had come to him and told him she loved someone else, he had felt a shocking sense of envy for what was shining in her eyes.

And he’d felt the difficulty of what he needed to do. His nation wanted one thing. His family demanded one thing. His conscience commanded another. He could not be the one to kill the light that had shone from Aida when she talked about Drew Mooretown, the man on her personal guard that she now loved.

“The sacrifice would have been hers, if we married,” Edward said slowly. “I’ve no notions of love. We’ve both known, since we were children, what was expected of us and what the benefit to both of our nations is. Like me, she’ll do what’s required of her, but, Lancaster, she loves another. I cannot do this to her.”

“You’re a good man,” Lancaster said with a sigh, and Prince Edward Alexander the Fourth knew he had been paid the highest of compliments from one who rarely gave them. He could only hope it was true. “But it’s not going to be as easy to get out of it as you think. Your father—”

“Would force it, I know.”

“I don’t relish the thought of marching you down the aisle with a sword at your back.” Lancaster was only partly kidding. “What are you going to do? I’ve known this whole trip something was deeply troubling you. It seems impossible to get out of it. Unless you’re thinking of not going back?”