The Virgin and His Majesty

To her disappointment he glanced at his watch. ‘We’d better go. One of the minor irritations of life here is that it’s ruled by the clock.’

‘Even when you’re off-duty?’ she asked on the way down.

‘Basically I’m never off-duty.’

A car waited discreetly by one of the side doors of the palace. Two men sat in front—one in uniform, one without.

Gerd stood aside to let her in first and, once settled, she said thoughtfully, ‘I doubt if I could cope with that.’

‘I’ve always known I was going to have to do it.’ He clicked his seat belt in and glanced across at her already fastened one. ‘When I was younger I was resentful of paparazzi, but I grew out of that.’

A grim note in the deep voice made her wonder how hard it had been for him to achieve that resignation. Something about the man sitting in front of her caught her eye. ‘Gerd, the man in the passenger seat isn’t wearing a seat belt.’

Straight brows drawing together, he told her, ‘He’s a bodyguard.’

‘Oh.’ Feeling foolish and slightly uneasy, she asked, ‘Bodyguards don’t?’

‘No. They need to be able to react instantly.’

Perturbed at the thought of him in danger, she said, ‘I didn’t realise you’d need them here.’

Although she should have. Only a couple of years ago the Carathians had been fighting each other over his accession.

Quickly she asked, ‘Is everything all right here now?’

He said in a tone that dismissed her concern, ‘Yes, of course.’

But something his First Minister had said to him that morning echoed in Gerd’s mind. ‘Things are quiet now; the discovery that the ringleaders were in the pay of MegaCorp and that the purpose of the insurrection was to take over the carathite mines horrified every Carathian. And while the people are basking in the afterglow of the coronation and the harvest is on the way, no one is going to have time to call on ancient legends to back up any lingering dissatisfaction.’

Gerd trusted his judgement; the First Minister came from the mountains, where the legend that had bedevilled his ancestors for centuries had its strongest adherents.

Before Gerd could speak the older man had added, ‘But with respect, sir, you need a wife. Further celebrations—a formal betrothal followed by a wedding and the birth of an heir as soon as possible—would almost certainly put an end to any plotting. Your plans for higher education should mean that the old legend will never have the hold over future generations that it has in the past.’

Gerd said grimly, ‘At least we don’t have to worry about further problems from MegaCorp.’

He’d seen to that, using his power in the financial world to clinically and without mercy ruin the men who’d so cynically played with other men’s lives.

He glanced down at the woman beside him, lovely and eminently desirable, her wide blue eyes anxiously uplifted. Concernwas in them and something else, something that disappeared so quickly he barely recognised it.

Deep inside him a fierce instinct stirred. She was so young, but it wasn’t hero worship he’d caught in her gold-sprinkled eyes. If she was still longing for Kelt, it was a total waste of a life.

And he suspected he could do something about it…

Rosie could gather nothing from his impassive, gorgeous face. Repressing a quiver deep in the pit of her stomach, she demanded, ‘What do you mean, of course everything’s all right? I thought—’

‘Once the ringleaders of the insurrection were shown to be the pawns of a foreign company who wanted to take over the mines,’ he interrupted, ‘the fighting stopped. No one in Carathia wanted that.’

‘Of course they wouldn’t.’ The country’s prosperity was based to a large degree on carathite, a mineral necessary in electronics. ‘What happened to the people who started the rebellion?’

Gerd looked ahead. A gleam from the setting sun caught his black head, summoning a lick of blue fire. For a few seconds Rosie allowed herself to examine his profile, hungrily taking in the bold, angular outline. A potent little thrill burnt through her. His mouth should have softened his features; instead, that top lip was buttressed by a firm lower one and the cleft square of his chin.

He said calmly, ‘They are no longer in any position to cause further trouble.’

This was Gerd as she’d never seen him before, his natural authority tinged with a ruthlessness that sent a chill scudding down her spine.

He turned his head, and she flushed. His brows lifted slightly, but he said in a level voice, ‘Somehow I find it difficult to see you as an accountant.’

‘Why?’

‘As a child you adored flowers. I always assumed you’d do something with them.’

She gazed at him in astonishment. ‘I’m surprised you remember.’

‘I remember you being constantly scolded for picking flowers and arranging them,’ he said drily.

‘I grew out of that eventually. Well, I grew out of swiping them from the nearest garden! But actually, I’m seriously thinking of setting up in business as a florist as soon as I can.’

He said thoughtfully, ‘You’ll need training, surely?’

Briefly she detailed the experience she had, finishing, ‘I can run a shop. I have the financial knowledge, and I was left in sole charge often enough in my friend’s shop to know I can do it. I helped her with weddings, formal arrangements for exclusive dinner parties, the whole works. I can make a success of it.’

‘So how are you going to organise things financially?’

She kept her gaze resolutely fixed in front, but from the corner of her eye she sensed him examining her face. ‘I’ll manage,’ she said coolly.

‘Alex?’

‘No.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘And before you ask, I’m not going to ask Kelt for backing, either.’

‘I refuse to believe your mother is happy about this.’

He spoke neutrally, but she knew what he meant. ‘She’ll get used to it.’

He said quietly, ‘You didn’t have much luck with your parents, did you.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Your father didn’t live in the modern world.’

‘None of us had much luck,’ she returned, forcing a note of worldliness. ‘Yours died early—Alex’s mother too—and mine just weren’t interested in children. Still, we haven’t turned out badly. Perhaps that happy home life children are supposed to need so much is just a myth.’ She finished casually, ‘Like perfect love.’

‘Can you see Kelt and Hani together and believe either of those assumptions?’

‘No,’ she said instantly, ashamed of her cynicism. ‘They are the real thing.’

Perhaps her envy showed in her voice because he asked rather distantly, ‘Is that what you’re looking for?’

‘Aren’t we all?’ she parried, wary now. She loosened fingers that had tightened on each other in her lap, and gazed resolutely at the streetscape outside. Perfect, eternal, all-absorbing romance was the elusive chimera her mother searched for, restlessly flitting from lover to lover, but never succeeding.

Was Gerd hoping for that same eternal sense of fulfilment with Princess Serina?

She could ask him, but the words refused to come, and the moment passed as the car turned into a narrow alley in the older part of the city.