The Virgin and His Majesty

Her eyes narrowed slightly when Gerd said something to his partner. The princess lifted her face and smiled, and they looked so utterly right together that Rosie winced at a stark return of the aching emptiness that had followed Gerd’s departure that summer.

Whatever had happened during those enchanted weeks—the companionship, the closeness—had meant nothing to him. Not once had he contacted Rosie. News of him came through his brother, Kelt.

Don’t be an idiot, she told herself robustly. Of course he hadn’t contacted her. Once he’d left New Zealand his life had been packed with action and events.

Immediately after he’d arrived in Carathia his grandmother, the Grand Duchess, named him heir to her throne, and he’d had to deal with disaffection amongst the mountain people—disorder that became riots, and had then turned into a nasty little civil war.

No sooner had it been decisively won than Princess Ilona slipped into the lingering final illness that forced Gerd to become the de facto ruler of Carathia. A year of official mourning had followed her death.

Which had given her three years to break free of the spell of the hot, lazy days she’d spent falling in love.

It wasn’t through lack of trying. She’d kissed enough would-be lovers to gain herself a reputation as a tease, but nothing—and no one—had matched the sensuous magic of Gerd’s kisses. Flirting had become a defence; she used it as a glossy, sparkling shield against any sort of true intimacy.

How pathetic to be still a virgin!

Yet when she did make love she wanted it to mean something—and she wasn’t going to succumb until her feelings matched the hungry passion Gerd had summoned so effortlessly in her.

Rosie focused her attention on the rest of the dancing throng, but inevitably her gaze crept back to Gerd and his partner.

He was looking over Princess Serina’s head, straight at Rosie. For a heart-stopping second she thought she read anger in his topaz-gold survey before the woman in his arms said something, and he glanced back at her.

Rosie’s heart thumped violently and a swift flare of colour burned up through her skin. Turning to Hani, she gave a quick nod in the general direction of the dance floor and forced her voice into its normal insouciant tone. ‘They look good together, don’t they?’

Hani was silent a moment before saying slowly, ‘Yes. Yes, they do.’

Rosie would have liked very much to ask what was behind the equivocal note in her voice, but the music stopped then, and Kelt, Gerd’s younger brother and Hani’s husband, came up. Hani’s face broke into the smile she kept only for him.

Rosie sighed silently; even after several years of marriage and a gorgeous little son, Hani and Kelt still looked at each other like lovers. And, when the band struck up again after the interval, she watched them melt into each other’s arms on the dance floor and fought back a shaming surge of envy, of wonder that they’d found such joy and satisfaction, when she…

When she’d let a memory rule her life. One summer of laughing, stimulating companionship and a few passionate kisses had fuelled a futile desire without any chance of fulfilment.

Enough’s enough, she thought on a sudden spurt of defiance. She was tired of being moonstruck. From now on—from this moment, in fact—it was officially over. She’d find some nice man and discover what sex was all about, get rid of this humiliating, futile hangover from the past—

‘Rosemary.’

The floor shifted under her feet and her stomach contracted as though bracing for a blow. She sucked in a sharp breath before slowly turning to look up into Gerd’s face, its angular features imprinted with the intimidating heritage of a thousand years of rule.

Here it was again, that seductive, treacherous ache of longing, almost more potent than the physical hunger that accompanied it. Pride persuaded her to ignore the shivers tingling down her spine.

‘Hello, Gerd,’ she said, hoping her voice was as steady and cool as his. ‘Why can I never get you or my mother to call me Rosie?’

His wide shoulders lifted fractionally. ‘I don’t know. That, surely, is up to you?’

Rosie’s snort was involuntary. ‘Try telling Eva to shorten my name and see how far you get,’ she told him briskly. ‘And I seem to remember asking you quite often to call me Rosie. You never did.’

‘You didn’t ask—you commanded,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘I didn’t take kindly to being ordered about by a tiny snip some twelve years younger.’

You are not in love with him, she reminded herself with desperate insistence. You never have been.

All she had to do was get him out of her bloodstream, out of her head, and see him as a man, not the compelling, powerful, unattainable lover of her fantasies.

‘Dance with me.’

Her brave determination melted under a sudden surge of heat. To be in his arms again…

Resisting the seductive impact of that thought, she summoned a smile glinting with challenge. ‘And you have the audacity to accuse me of ordering people about?’

‘Perhaps I should rephrase my request,’ he said on a note that held more than a hint of irony. ‘Rosemary, would you like to dance with me?’

‘That’s much more like it,’ she said sedately, hanging on to her composure by a thread. ‘Yes, of course I’ll dance with you.’

His mouth quirked at her formality, and something jabbed her heart. It took a determined effort of will to walk beside him onto the dance floor.

But when Gerd took her in his arms her natural sense of rhythm almost deserted her. Concentrating fiercely, she followed his lead. In that dazzling, dazed summer they’d danced together several times and she’d never forgotten the sensation of being held against his big frame, the way she’d felt so deliciously overpowered by his size and latent strength.

Now, close to him again, every cell in her body sang a wanton song of desire.

You’re not in love with him, she repeated fervently. Not a bit. Never have been…

This was merely physical, a matter of hormones and hero-worship. He’d imprinted her the way a mother goose imprinted her goslings.

The thought curved her mouth in an involuntary smile. How apt. She was behaving just like a goose!

Gerd broke a silence that threatened to drag on too long. ‘How long is it since we’ve danced together?’

‘I don’t know.’

That was a stupid response, an instinctive attempt at defence. And he’d noticed. Defiantly Rosie cocked her head and met his unusual eyes, tawny and arrogant as an eagle’s.

Hoping her tone projected amusement tinged with nostalgia, she continued, ‘Oh, yes, of course I do. How could I forget? It was my first grown-up party, do you remember? You were on holiday in New Zealand that summer.’

‘I remember.’ His voice was lazy, as amused as hers, the dark lashes almost hiding his eyes.

‘You gave me my very first grown-up kisses,’ she told him, and laughed before adding, ‘Ones that set an impossibly high standard.’

If she’d thought to startle him, she failed.

‘There have been plenty to judge them by since then, I understand,’ he said austerely.

Disconcerted, she demanded, ‘How do you know that?’

Again he shrugged, the muscles flexing beneath her fingertips. ‘Information travels fast in this family of ours,’ he told her laconically.

Rosie pointed out, ‘Except that I’m not proper family. The only connection is that my father’s first wife was your cousin. A fairly distant cousin at that. So I’m actually flying false colours. Everyone seems to think I’m a Crysander-Gillan, instead of a very ordinary Matthews!’

‘Nonsense,’ he said negligently, adding with an oblique smile, ‘There’s nothing ordinary about you. Anyway, your half-brother is my blood relation as well as a good friend, and Alex would very properly have told me where to go if you hadn’t been invited.’

Of course she’d been aware that only Gerd’s ironbound sense of duty had led to this invitation, but his laconic acknowledgement of it stung nevertheless.