Her Royal Husband (12 page)

One of the headlines read Beauty and the Beast, and she realized exactly who they thought the beauty was, and it wasn’t her.

She scanned the papers. “Prince’s Mystery Girl,” “Prince’s Secret Love?” The articles were full of speculation about who she was and what her relationship to the prince was. They universally decried her as dowdy and unsuitable, and some of them used very unkind language.

One of the more trashy papers called her a scritch.

He had perched himself on the end of her bed, and studied the papers, but she could tell he was really studying her, wanting her reaction. What did he think? That she was going to burst into tears like some soap opera heroine?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know better. I shouldn’t have allowed you to be seen in such an unflattering light.”

“You tried to protect me,” she reminded him. “I wouldn’t listen. What else is new? Is this an embarrassment to you? That you were seen with me looking like this?”

“An embarrassment to me? I’m worried these vipers have hurt your feelings!”

She looked at him perched on the end of her bed, worried, and she tossed down the papers. She was tired of fighting it. She didn’t care what the papers said about her. She had learned, being an unwed mother in a small, conservative town, that she had a place within herself
where her dignity could not be touched. What annoyed her about the papers was the fact that they were asking the very questions she was asking herself.

Was she his mystery woman? Was she his secret love? Where was all this going? Where did she want it to go?

She was so tired of fighting her feelings. She closed her eyes, and tried to sort it out. How was she ever going to know what she truly felt?

And then it came to her, how to know. A method she would have disapproved of for any of her girls in the unwed mothers support group.

“Owen,” she said sternly, “shut the door. And then come over here and kiss me, the way you used to do.”

O
wen was not sure he had heard correctly. He stared at her. She looked lovely, white sheets tangled around her, her hair standing straight on end, her cheeks faintly flushed, her pajamas askew.

Pajamas. Nice flannel pajamas, styled like a man’s shirt and buttoned up the front. If he was not mistaken those were puppies frolicking across the front. They were not the pajamas of a woman who was enjoying a wild life back in Connecticut.

Nor were they the kind of pajamas worn by the kind of woman who suggested he shut the door, and come kiss her.

Still, he saw the light in her eyes, recognized it, knew exactly what it meant. He went and shut the door, came back and swept the offensive newspapers on the floor. He flung himself on the bed next to her.

It felt like coming home to be lying next to her once more. He reached for her, wholeheartedly planning to ravage her mouth, just the way he used to do.

But as he reached for her, he noticed her eyes were wide and somber, and he realized she had frightened herself with her suggestion.

With superhuman effort he looked away from the plump invitation of her lips, and took her hand instead, ran his thumb over the slender ridges of her knuckles, tried to pull the future out of her palm with his fingertips.

“This room even reminds me of the room in the dorm,” he said, “and that one you had in the basement suite.”

“Horrible, weren’t they?” She leaned over and nuzzled his shoulder where it was nearly touching hers.

Slowly, he warned himself. That was part of the problem before. Everything too fast, too urgent, too much about need instead of desire.

“I didn’t think those rooms were horrible,” he said. “They taught me something I have never forgotten. The magic is not put in rooms by paint and wallpaper and rugs and furniture and a tasteful collection of paintings. The people who share the space are the ones that can make a plain room with small windows and terrible furniture into heaven.”

“Take me to heaven,” she murmured, her voice husky. “I’ve missed it so.”

So, he didn’t have to worry about the shadowy fiancé in that arena. The relief he felt was enormous. Unfair of him to still regard her as
his,
and yet the heart did not always speak in the language of what was fair and reasonable.

All those years ago when he had first glimpsed heaven, he had never once allowed himself to think in terms of the future, of living a reality of joy-filled days and passion-filled nights forever.

Now he wondered if his future could be like this, wak
ing up beside her, holding hands in bed with her, laughing with her, looking into her eyes until the world around him faded into nothingness.

If he was an ordinary man, he could just say it.

Jordan, marry me. Spend the rest of your life with me.

She kissed his ears. Her tongue slid into one. “Why is it taking you so long to ravage me? Is it because the
Sterling Times
called me frumpy? Or because the
Penwyck News
called me a fashion disaster?”

Despite the fact that his temperature was rising rapidly because of the tongue inserted in his ear, he said, “Careful, or I’ll call in on the pajamas.”

“These are nice pajamas! Practical. Cute! Are you saying my pajamas are keeping you from the task at hand?”

He realized what he thought the task at hand was, and what she did were totally separate things.

He wanted it totally different than before. He wanted commitment, he wanted forever, he wanted more than a quick tumble, as glorious as that might be.

And if he was to have those things in the future, he could not give into the temptations of the present. He could not promise her forever without clearing it through the proper channels. What if he asked her to marry him, and he was refused permission to marry her?

Plus, there was the little issue of her planning to marry someone else.

She hit him with a pillow, hard. “You are doing a terrible job of wooing me,” she said.

He picked one up and hit her back. They didn’t stop until they were both weak with laughter.

“Foam pillows,” she said with disgust. “Do you remember the one we broke open that night in your room?”

He remembered and apparently her memory of how that play fight had ended was very close to his memory of how it had ended.

“How about that kiss?” she said huskily.

But when she leaned toward him, her mouth parted and her eyes closing, he realized, he had matured. Everything had happened much too quickly last time. He wanted her to know he was no longer a callow boy. He was no longer capable of using her, without giving her something in return. His ring. His name.

He peeled the bedclothes off of her. The rest of her was clothed in flannel, too. He decided flannel on some people was what Victoria’s Secret was to others. He lay upside down. “I’ll start here,” he said, wiggling her little bare toe, “and work my way up.”

“That will take three days!” she protested.

“That’s the idea,” he agreed. Three days. Plenty of time to talk, to communicate, to resolve, to humble himself before the powers that be and beg to be allowed to marry whom he wished.

Meanwhile, he kissed her baby toe. Thoroughly. She gasped and tried to wriggle away. He snagged her ankle in his hand, planted his lips on that arch of her foot that was so ticklish.

She squealed and tried to wriggle away. He wondered if he was going to end up with a black eye and decided it would be worth it.

“Just surrender,” he suggested, finding her second toe. He kissed it tenderly.

“I have a prince kissing my feet,” she said, dazed.

“Just don’t let the tabloids get hold of that one,” he suggested. He felt her whole body shiver as he took her third toe in his mouth and gave it a little pull. He had a feeling it was going to be a great day.

Unfortunately, the door swung open, no knock. Since the kidnapping he had been on alert, and he rolled from the bed, came up on his feet ready to take on the enemy.

Whitney stood in the doorway, adorable in one-piece pink pajamas with feet attached. Her blond hair was tousled. She had a stuffed elephant, ragged from much handling, under one arm, and her thumb in her mouth.

She regarded the two of them thoughtfully, tugged her thumb from her mouth. “What you doing, Pwince Owen?”

“Um, I was playing ‘this little piggie’ with your mommy.”

She accepted that and wandered over to the bed. He slipped his hands under her arms and lifted her up, put her between the two of them. Her weight was slight and sweet, and she snuggled into him, trusting, accepting.

“Jay-Jay bites my mommy’s toes, too.”

He felt his whole body go rigid. If Jay-Jay would have walked in the room at the moment his nose would not have fared any better than Westbury’s.

“It’s not what you think,” Jordan said, laughing.

Laughing.
Apparently not understanding at all that her toes belonged to him. That a five year separation mattered not one whit. That even though it was not rational, he was insanely jealous that her toes—

“Mommy doesn’t like it. She says you never know where his mouth has been.”

This was worse than he thought. Jordan was doubled over with laughter.

“Do you like Jay-Jay?” he managed to ask the child.

Whitney considered. “Not as much as Peaknuckle.”

Peaknuckle. Well, did he think Jordan would have been a nun over the past five years? Just because she had spoiled him for all time for all other women, did he
think she had been celibate? Did he have a right to expect that? If he didn’t, why did he feel so betrayed?

Whitney held out the shapeless stuffed elephant she had. “This is Peaknuckle.”

It felt like the light was going back on in his world.

“Jay-Jay made this wip in him,” Whitney informed him solemnly, showing him a tear in the worn fabric. “Mommy said he didn’t mean to, but I’m still mad.”

Me, too. Just tell me where he is, and I’ll make a rip in him. Limb from limb. Kissing my true love’s toes, wrecking my daughter’s toys, I’ll—

“Mommy says he’s just a baby, he’ll be better when he grows up. He won’t pee under my bed anymore.”

“Are we talking about Justin Jason, Jason Justin?” he asked uncertainly.

Whitney nodded solemnly. “Our cat.”

The man in her life was a cat! The one she had said she was going to marry. He met Jordan’s eyes.

She was smiling, a little abashed.

And then he knew exactly why she’d said it. To protect herself. From feeling all the same things all over again that had hurt her the first time. Except she probably already was feeling those things.

He stared at her, and the truth stared back at him.

She loved him. Jordan loved him. He was going to be given a second chance. Was his world going to allow him a second chance?

Was he going to be allowed a life that included his daughter? He noticed the aroma coming off Whitney, wonderful, soapy and sleepy. Her pudgy hand had crept into his. Could this be his life?

“Would you be ruined if this cozy little picture made the papers?” Jordan asked, and he could tell she was only partly kidding.

“The palace is secure. Nothing ever gets out of here.” Though since the kidnapping he was not quite as willing to see things as completely secure as he had once been. And occasionally a staff member, usually someone new, did get a story bribed out of them.

“Thank God. How could a person live if they thought their every move was going to be recorded? Every bad hair day a topic of public ridicule.”

He wondered if that meant she had gone from her vehement “I could never live like this” of yesterday, to thinking it was the remotest possibility.

He did not know if he had ever known contentment such as this: sitting on a big bed in a humble room made so lovely by the presence of the most beautiful girls in the world. Contemplating a future…

Whitney said suddenly, “I love Penwyck, Mommy. Can we stay?”

And there it was, right out in the open.

“I don’t know,” her mother said, ruffling her daughter’s hair, not looking at him.

Much better than an out-and-out no, he decided. He wished he could get down on one knee right now and turn that I-don’t-know into a yes.

The phone rang and Jordan hesitated, obviously regretting an intrusion into their lovely little morning as much as he did, but then picked it up.

“A call from America?” she said. “Oh, yes put it through. Mom? Sorry, you’ll have to speak up. I’m what? On the front page of the
Connecticut Chronicle?
Me? And I look awful? I don’t remember where I got the sweatshirt. No, I am not throwing it away. It’s my best Chocolate Ecstasy shirt. No, you won’t be reading about that next. It’s Meg’s most celebrated dessert not a perverted act.”

Jordan studied her fingernails and listened. Owen could hear the excited rise and fall of her mother’s voice on the other end of the phone.

She sounded…intimidating.

“The prince?” Jordan glanced at him guiltily. “Mom! You’re always the one who told me not to believe everything you saw in the paper. Especially that paper.”

So, if he didn’t want Jordan’s life too upset he had to make his move quickly.

“I wanna talk to Gwandma,” Whitney said. Jordan looked like she couldn’t unload the phone fast enough.

He hoped Whitney’s enthusiasm about talking to her grandmother meant she wasn’t nearly the dragon her disembodied voice indicated.

“Hi Gwandma. I have a pony named Tubby. He’s pwetty. And Pwince Owen is in bed with Mommy.”

Jordan snatched back the phone. “Mom, quit shrieking. She calls her elephant that now. I have to go, bye.”

And she crashed down the phone and closed her eyes.

“Mommy, you lied,” Whitney said, appalled.

“Yes, you did,” Owen said, trying not to sound too cheerful.

He didn’t succeed, because Jordan glared at him.

“Are you going to do it all over again?” she asked. “Ruin my life?”

It occurred to him that he was going to marry her. And that if he was going to do that he better start laying the groundwork. And that meant meeting with his own mother before he even gave another thought to Jordan’s.

He had a sudden sinking sensation. What if he was unable to obtain permission to marry Jordan?

And then he looked at her, and his small daughter, and knew. If he was not granted permission to marry the woman he loved and had loved since he was eighteen
years old, then he would not stay in Penwyck, never become king.

The relief he felt at that confirmed the final lesson he had learned while being held prisoner in Majorca. He had no real desire to be king.

Still, he would try proper channels first.

“I have some things to do,” he said regretfully.

“Pwince things?” Whitney asked.

“Yes.”

“Liking kissing a pwincess?”

“Yes,” he said, leaned forward and kissed her soundly on the cheek, and her mother on the mouth. “Tell grandma that the next time she phones,” he said.

He closed the door, and heard the pillow crash against it a millisecond later. He grinned and tried to remember when he had felt so happy in his entire life.

He noticed, an hour later, when he was ushered into his mother’s quarters that she looked dignified and beautiful, as always, but there were strain lines at the corners of her eyes and around her mouth.

The kidnapping had taken its toll on her, and he was glad he had said yes to the celebration, because maybe it would bring her some joy.

Plus, indirectly, wasn’t that what had brought Jordan and Whitney to him?

He went forward and took his mother’s hand, kissed it gently. She dismissed her staff, and they were alone.

He had always loved her apartment with its rich furnishings and lovely, light colors. But today it didn’t hold a candle to a small room in the servants’ quarters in the basement.

“I’m proud of you, Owen,” Queen Marissa said, in that quiet, well-modulated voice. “I’ve been hearing reports all morning about how you conducted yourself at
the mine yesterday. Of course, I would have preferred you didn’t find it necessary to go underground.”