The Earl Takes A Bride

She pulled herself up and stood to face him as he rose from the table. The top of her head only reached the shoulder of his suit jacket. “I’m just tired. Days are pretty long around here. I should go to bed now.”

“Tell me what has happened,” he said, emphasizing each word.

She looked up at him, a spark of proud fire momentarily brightening her sad eyes. “Please go.”

“You are not leaving this room, and I’m not leaving this house until you tell me what’s going on.”

“Why does it matter?” Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “It’s the possibility of scandal, isn’t it? If the press hears the king of Elbia’s sister-in-law is bereft of a husband and can’t pay her electric bill, they’ll have a field day. Won’t they?”

Thomas’s heart stopped. So that was it. “Gary’s…left you and the children?” he asked hesitantly.

“Gone…flown the coop…absconded with a floozy from the office…good riddance.” She fluttered a hand carelessly in the air, but the gesture didn’t fool him a bit.

“Dear girl, I’m so sorry,” he muttered, trying to recover from his shock and think of something…anything appropriate to say.

“Well, I’m not,” Diane said in a quiet voice just short of cracking. “It’s been a long time coming. I should have insisted years ago…didn’t…couldn’t find a way to—”

The last ounce of strength drained from her. She turned with a choking sob and rushed toward the doorway into the living room.

Thomas cut her off with one enormous stride. She ran smack into his chest with her bowed head. His big arms immediately wrapped around her, pinning her there. She struggled for exactly half of one second, then went limp in his bear hug of an embrace.

Neither of them said a thing. But now that Thomas had her in his arms, her trembling body flush against his, he wasn’t sure what to do with her.

She didn’t push or squirm or indicate she needed space, oxygen or even words of solace from him. She seemed content just to remain where she was.

It was at that moment he became aware of an embarrassing development. Down below his belt. He felt himself move, extend, become…firm.

Thomas squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to remember he was duty bound to Jacob to protect, defend and honor the members of his family. Desire wasn’t supposed to enter the equation. That meant not responding to Diane as if she were a beautiful, soft, desperately overworked woman who might welcome a man. That meant switching off his hormones for one bloody hour, finding out what he needed to know, mending whatever was broken the best he could…and getting the hell out.

If he played his cards right and there were no technical delays at the airport, he could be on the royal jet and headed back toward Europe in a matter of hours.

But at the moment a woman was weeping on his chest. Probably ruining his new suit jacket, he thought regretfully. He had paid an exclusive tailor in Florence to make it for him, at the cost of more lire than his recent week on the Riviera with a sultry French actress. In retrospect, the suit had seemed the better deal.

Diane made no sound, moved not a muscle. Nevertheless he knew she was crying by the bucketful.

“Mrs. Fields,” he said, “I’m good at fixing things. Let me help.” Although he’d meant to be gentle, even paternal, his words came out clipped, tense, businesslike.

If she hadn’t been moving before, now she was suddenly as still as granite, hardly breathing, taut from her tiny bare feet to the top of her shampoo-fresh head. “Help?” she whispered hoarsely. She looked up at him with incredible sadness. “You silly man, this isn’t a matter of diplomacy or rescuing Jacob from a mob of overenthusiastic paparazzi.”

“I realize that,” he began, employing his best diplomatic tone nevertheless. “But perhaps there is a way to work things out between you and your husband.”

“No, there isn’t.” She ducked out of his arms and began pacing the vinyl flooring. “I know it was the right thing to do, signing those papers, but I can’t bear to think how my kids are going to suffer.”

Thomas frowned, feeling something like panic tug at his gut. “What papers?” Did she mean separation papers? Or was she already divorced? He couldn’t walk out without something more exact to report to Jacob. But he also wanted to know, for himself.

“Mr. Fields is where now?” The words came out casually enough, but the muscles in his shoulders and arms bunched, as if prepped for battle with the man who had broken the heart of this amazing woman.

“I don’t know and I can’t say that I really care.” She smiled grimly at him.

Thomas stared at Diane, hesitant to push further. Seeing her in such anguish was devastating to him, although he didn’t understand why. Over the years he had hardened himself to the pain of others. He held little sympathy for anyone who wasn’t part of the royal family or the inner circle of the court. The von Austerands had, in every sense but one—blood—become his family.

After all his own parents had deserted him—each in their own way. He had been barely five years old when his mother had left his father, the Earl of Sussex, his two brothers and him. At six he’d been shipped off to a boarding school by his aristocratic father. Who had bloody well cared about him then?

The troubles of strangers were of no consequence to him. And Diane, though related by marriage to Jacob, was in all other ways a stranger. Yet, watching her suffer the rejection of the father of her children, he felt truly and deeply moved.

“I’m sorry,” Thomas began slowly. “He’s a fool to have left you.”

She gave him a tiny, appreciative shake of her head.

“If it’s money you’re worried about, there are ways to track down a deadbeat father and force him to do his share. It’s the law in this country.”

“I know. I’d just rather do this on my own. They’re my kids. He wouldn’t have left if he’d loved them.”

Thomas winced. Had his mother not loved him and his brothers?

Diane pulled the chenille belt tighter around her waist to close an enticing gap over her chest that Thomas was having difficulty pretending wasn’t there.

“I suppose not,” he said, mourning the view now blocked by fuzzy tufts of fabric.

Diane cast him an irritated glance. “You’re not going to leave, are you.” It was a statement.

“Not until I have something more to tell Jacob.”

She whirled toward the living room and disappeared around the corner. He found her digging through a stack of mail scattered across the coffee table among crayons, dried-up bits of modeling clay and miniature dinosaurs in molded multicolored plastic.

She came up with a long white envelope and thrust it at him. “Here. This tells all. Read and relay as much as you like to my concerned family.”

Her robe slipped open again.

He ached to kiss her. There. Right there between her beautiful breasts.

But she was holding the envelope out to him. Waiting.

Reminding himself of his duty for the hundredth time, Thomas took it from her, extracted its contents and unfolded a five-page document. “It’s a divorce settlement—legally signed, dated, notarized.” He looked up at her, but whatever emotions he expected to see in her eyes were absent. She’d pulled herself together in the time it had taken him to scan the agreement.

“You’ve accepted sole custody of the children and released your husband of all financial responsibilities?” He didn’t understand. “Why, Diane? Did he coerce you into signing this?”

“No,” she said. “I’m the one who filed for divorce and had the papers drawn up.”

“And your lawyer…he didn’t—”

“He advised me against releasing Gary from his obligations to the children. He said I had grounds to demand support plus a large settlement for emotional injury due to his desertion.”

“But you ignored his advice.”

She looked him squarely in the eyes. “I don’t want anything to do with Gary Fields. The children and I are better off without him.”

“No doubt,” Thomas agreed. “But still—”