Capturing the Crown: The Heart of a Ruler

She saw his lips curving. Was he laughing at her? Having fun at her expense? Try as she might to take offense, she couldn’t. There was something about his smile … But then, there always had been.

“Such as my father. His advisors. It seems these days, everyone feels they have to tell me what my duty is.”

“I won’t,” he promised, dropping the subject for now. And then he looked at her, compassion filling his eyes. “You’re not having an easy time of it, are you, princess?”

She thought of denying it, of saying everything was fine and that she had no idea what he was talking about. But everything wasn’t fine and, very possibly, never would be again. Not once she left for Silvershire and married Reginald.

With a feeling of longing wrapped in futility, she thought of the past. “Things were a lot simpler when all I had to worry about was ducking out of the way of water balloons and checking my bed half a dozen times to make sure I didn’t find any surprises in it before I got in.”

He laughed. He’d been a hellion back then, all right. The thing was, he couldn’t really say he regretted it. Teasing Amelia was the one way he had of making her notice him. He had no crown in his arsenal, but he had been clever and he’d used his wiles to his advantage. He remembered how wide those violet eyes could get.

“These days, I’m sure the surprises in your bed are far more pleasant,” he told her. “And come with less legs.”

The moment the words were out, he waited for the anger to gather in her eyes, the indignation to appear on her face. Without meaning to, he’d crossed a line. But he’d always had a habit of being too frank and with Amelia, he’d felt instantly too comfortable to censor himself.

She surprised him by exhibiting no annoyance at his assumption. “The only thing my bed contains, besides sheets and blankets, is me.”

The moment was recovered nicely. “The prince will be very happy to hear that.”

As if she cared what made that thoughtless ape happy, Amelia thought darkly. “Speaking of the prince, why didn’t he come himself?”

He’d expected her to ask and shrugged vaguely. “He had business to attend to.” If it were him, he added silently, nothing on heaven or earth would have kept him from coming for her.

Amelia laughed shortly. “What is her name? Or doesn’t he know?”

Russell looked at his prince’s intended bride for a long moment. For all his wealth and fame, he’d never envied Reginald. Until this moment. “You’re a lot more worldly than I remember.”

“You remember a thirteen-year-old girl who was afraid of her own shadow.” Her eyes held his. “I’m not afraid of my shadow anymore.”

He rubbed his jaw where her head had hit against it just before recognition had set in for her. For him, it had been immediate, because he’d followed the stories about her that appeared in the newspapers. Stories that were as different from the ones about Reginald as a robin was from the slug it occasionally ate. While stories about Reginald went on about his various less than tasteful escapades, hers told of her humanitarian efforts.

“I noticed,” he replied with an appreciative, warm laugh.

Amelia felt the laugh traveling straight to the center of her abdomen, before it seemed to spread to regions beyond, like a sunbeam landing on a rock, then widening as the sun’s intensity increased.

She cleared her throat and looked back toward the palace. It was obvious that he had to have come through there to wind up here. “How did you get into the palace?”

She watched as a smile entered his eyes, shadowing a memory. “Remember that old underground passage you once showed me?”

Amelia’s eyes widened. He was referring to something that was forever burned into her memory. She’d slipped away from her nanny, leaving the poor woman to deal with Reginald, while she took it upon herself to share her secret discovery with Russell. It was the one bold incident she remembered from her childhood.

Remembered it, too, because the episode had ended in a kiss. A soft, swift, chaste kiss that Russell had stolen from her.

A kiss, Amelia thought, that she still remembered above all the others that had subsequently come in its wake.

She was glad for the moonlight, fervently hoping that it offered sufficient cover for the blush that she felt creeping up her neck and onto her cheeks.

Chapter 3

“So that’s how you got in,” Amelia finally said, finding her tongue.

Strangely enough, the air was not uncomfortable, but it had grown far too still between them. And she found herself feeling things. Things that, at any other time, she would have welcomed, would have enjoyed exploring, things she had never felt before, had only thought about. But feelings like this, if allowed to flourish, to unfold, would only get in the way of her obligations.

She suddenly felt a great deal older than her twenty-six years.

“That’s how I got in,” the tall, handsome man at her side confirmed needlessly.

They had begun to walk back to the palace, to the world where their lives were, for the most part, completely laid out for them. Where obligations constricted freedom and feelings were forced by the wayside. All that mattered were boundaries.

“I had to do a lot of stooping,” Russell continued. His mouth curved as he spared her a glance. “The passageway beneath the garden to the palace is a great deal smaller than I remembered.”

Amelia paused for a moment, reluctant to leave the shelter of the garden. Here, for a fleeting amount of time, she could pretend to be anyone she wanted to be.

Banking down her thoughts, Amelia began to walk again as she smiled at Russell. “You’re a lot bigger than you were then.” And you’ve filled out, she added silently.

“I suppose,” he allowed with a self-deprecating laugh she found endearing as well as stirring. “Funny how you never really think of yourself as changing.”

Moving to one side, he held the terrace door open for her. Amelia looked up into his face as she entered the palace. “Is that a warning?”

His eyebrows drew together over a nose that could only be described as perfect. Entering behind her, he closed the French doors. “I don’t follow.”

Amelia led the way to the rear staircase. As before, she kept her path to the shadows that pooled along the floor. The palace seemed empty, but that was just an illusion. There were more than a hundred people on the premises.

Though she sincerely doubted that Russell didn’t understand her meaning, she played along. “Should I be looking over my shoulder for water balloons?”

Cupping her elbow, he escorted her up the stairs. Perfectly capable of climbing them on her own, she still enjoyed the unconscious show of chivalry, not to mention the contact. It was hard to believe that this was the same mischievous, dark-eyed youth who’d simultaneously tortured her and filled her daydreams.

“The water balloons were never over your shoulder,” Russell pointed out as they came to the landing. “They were always dropped from overhead.” His mouth curved a little more on the right than on the left. “I’m sorry about that.”

Amelia tilted her head and looked into his eyes. They were the color of warm chocolate. How strange that she could pick up the thread so easily, as if no time had gone by at all since his last visit. As if more than twelve years had merely melted away into the mists that sometimes surrounded the island kingdom and they were children again.

“No, you’re not.”

She was rewarded with the rich sound of his laugh as it echoed down the long, winding hallway lined with portraits of her ancestors. They seemed to approve of him, she thought.

“All right, maybe I wasn’t,” Russell admitted. “Then,” he quickly qualified. “But I am now.” He saw her raise her delicate eyebrows in a silent query. And just for the tiniest of moments, he had an overwhelming urge to trace the arches with the tip of his finger. He squelched it. “I frightened you.”

“You made me jumpy,” Amelia corrected, then in case that would arouse some kind of unwanted pity, she quickly added, “You also made me strong.”

He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

With the grace of a princess trained at putting others at ease, Amelia slipped her arm through his and urged him down the hallway. If her heart sped up just a little bit at the contact, well, that was a secret bonus she kept to herself.

“Because of you, I became disgusted with myself. With being a mouse.”

“You were thirteen.”

“I was a mouse,” she repeated, then added with the loftiness that befitted her station, “I resolved to be a tigress.”