The Marquis And The Mother-To-Be

She had taken a firm hold of her temper before saying, “No.”

To his credit the doctor hadn’t pressed the issue and she hadn’t explained further. This was her baby and no one else’s. Now they had the lodge as a home and future source of income, they had everything they needed.

She stopped and stretched, pressing both hands into the small of her back. She had assigned herself a daily walk partly for exercise but mostly because she was in love with the lush rain-forest countryside surrounding her new home, and wanted to explore every inch of it while she still could.

Now the helicopter rotors had stopped beating, she could hear only birdsong and the whisper of leaves. Perfect peace. Her eyes misted in appreciation of the beauty around her.

A fragment of Yeats came into her mind: “Was there on earth a place so dear…” She might have been born in Australia but she loved Carramer with a fierceness that surprised her at times. Her baby was going to love it, too. She couldn’t imagine a more healthy, nurturing environment in which to bring a child into the world than right here.

She was determined to do better as a sole parent than her father had done. Graeme Day had been too preoccupied with the demands of diplomatic life to accommodate his children’s emotional needs. Their father had treated her and Jeffrey like miniature adults, expecting them to adapt to the different places they were dropped into, as easily as he did himself.

Sometimes they had and sometimes they hadn’t. To Carissa, Carramer was the only posting where she had felt at home. She had been heartbroken when her father announced they were returning to Australia. Too young to remain in the country alone, she had vowed to return as soon as she got the chance.

Her brother had thought she was crazy. “Give me the bright lights, big city” was Jeff’s motto. Carramer had its share of cities, too, but Carissa felt more at home in the lush, tropical regions barely touched by the hand of civilization.

She sighed. Home still needed a lot of work if she was to turn it into the bed-and-breakfast haven of her dreams. It wouldn’t happen by itself. Time she got back and made herself useful.

When she emerged from the rain forest into the clearing, the first thing she noticed was the kitchen door standing ajar. She knew she had closed it when she went out, had even been tempted to lock it until she asked herself who on earth she expected to break in here.

It looked as if she was going to find out.

Skirting the car, which appeared untouched, she peered around the door before going in. The kitchen was empty. Her laundry had dried on the makeshift line, and the smell of her morning’s baking lingered in the air. But it was overlaid with a pine-and-leather scent that hadn’t been there when she left. Silently she stripped the line of clothes, dumping them on a chair. If she had to make a fast exit, she didn’t want obstacles in her way.

She looked around for a weapon. A rolling pin would do the job but might be turned against her, she remembered from the self-defense lessons she’d taken as a teenager. The gleam of metal on the windowsill caught her eye. She picked up the old cigar tube she’d found when she arrived. She turned it over in her hands, an idea growing in her.

The pine scent led her down the hallway. Careful to avoid those floorboards she knew were prone to creak, she reached her bedroom and felt her heartbeat quicken. Someone was in the room. Common sense told her to call the police in Tricot. But what were the odds they could reach her before the intruder heard her talking and came to investigate?

For now she was on her own.

Through the three-finger gap in the doorway she saw the man look around. He was a head taller than she was, with chestnut hair cut in a military style. He half turned and she swallowed. Lord, he was big, wide at shoulder and hip and narrow everywhere else. His aristocratic profile tugged at her memory, but before she could pinpoint the reason, he turned away again.

She took stock of his clothing so she would be able to describe him to the police when she could safely contact them. White shirt, the sleeves rolled back over tanned forearms, open at the neck. The shirt was tucked into snug-fitting denims held up by a plaited leather belt slung cowboy-style around his hips. As he moved to the window, the gleam of his boots jarred her. What kind of prowler polished his boots to a mirror shine?

Now or never, she told herself, pushing the door all the way open. Without giving herself time to think, she moved up behind him and pressed the cigar tube into his back with all the force she could muster. “Don’t move. I have a gun and I know how to use it.”

Eduard lifted both hands to shoulder height, palms outward, careful not to move suddenly. He hadn’t allowed for his ghost to tote a gun and didn’t care for the businesslike way it pressed against his back. “We can work this out. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“You seem sure I’ll regret it.”

The melodious voice reminded him of bells, and he itched to turn around and get a look at the owner. “Have you shot many people?” he asked.

“Only the ones who barge into my home while I’m out. You’re remarkably well dressed for a burglar. Who are you?”

Her home? He decided against arguing for the moment. “My name is Eduard de Marigny.”

He flinched as the gun barrel burrowed harder.

“Right, and I’m Princess Adrienne. I may be from Australia, but I know that de Marigny is the name of the Carramer royal family. You’ll have to come up with a better alias because I’ve met Eduard.”

This was news to him. Unable to resist, he glanced over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of shoulder-length ash-blond hair and a porcelain complexion. Cornflower eyes were trained on him as intensely as her weapon. A very attractive ghost, he judged. Her musical voice definitely held a hint of the Australian heritage she claimed, overlaid with something more European.

He sighed. “My name is Eduard Claude Philippe de Marigny, Marquis of Merrisand, currently with the rank of commander in the Carramer Royal Navy. I have identification in my shirt pocket if you’d care to examine it.”

He heard her indrawn breath as if she recognized his titles. But the gun barrel didn’t waver as she slid a slender hand around his chest and felt her way to his pocket. The lightly caressing touch made his heart pick up speed. He decided there were better ways to introduce himself to the young lady.

Reflexes and training allowed him to grasp her wrist, jerk her off balance, and spin her around in front of him so she fell into his arms. He tightened them around her, seeing that the weapon which dropped from her hand was only an old cigar tube of Prince Henry’s. He had to give his ghost full marks for ingenuity.

He looked down at the woman in his arms. In closeup, her blond hair was sun-streaked and cascaded around her shoulders in soft waves, framing delicate features that wouldn’t have been misplaced on a model.

“A most attractive ghost,” he murmured.

She struggled in his grasp. “What are you talking about? Let me up.”

He held tight, since it wasn’t exactly a hardship. “First I want to make sure that you’re human.”

He hadn’t intended to kiss her, but the temptation was too great. In his arms she felt as light as a feather, but she had her share of muscles, he noticed. Her shape and build suggested someone who took very good care of herself.

Her mouth was a shell-pink bow, curved now in fury, and her eyes sparked a warning at him. He ignored it and lowered his lips to hers. She tasted of the baking he’d smelled when he walked in, yeasty, warm, thoroughly inviting.

She tasted so good that he took his time over the kiss, aware that at some point she gave up fighting him, and brought her arms around him. She probably thought she was stopping herself from falling, but that didn’t explain the way her mouth opened so temptingly. If he’d been kissing her for real, he knew exactly how he would have responded to those parted lips.

But this wasn’t the time. As it was, he had let the kiss go on far longer than was wise, the heat racing through him testifying to how much he had enjoyed it. Setting her upright and away from him took considerable self-restraint.

Looking confused, she backed away a little, but her cheeks glowed and her eyes glittered as if she had also enjoyed the experience more than she thought she should. “What did you do that for?”

“When I arrived, I thought the place was haunted. I had to make sure you aren’t a ghost.”

“You’re crazy.”

“And you’re trespassing. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

She made a choking sound. “I’m trespassing? You’re the interloper. I own this place.”

His intense gaze raked her, what he saw distracting him from the obvious foolishness of her claim. “You look familiar. Who are you?”

She’d been thinking the same about him. “Carissa Day, and this is my home.”

She saw his memory return in a rush. “Good grief, it is you, Cris.”

“Nobody has called me Cris since I was fifteen. Except… Eduard? It really is you.”

He had changed, she saw. As a teenager, he had worn his dark chestnut hair longer. In the navy he had grown from a shy, slightly bookish teenager into a solidly built man who looked as if he could handle himself in most situations. He folded his arms over his chest, evidently enjoying her astonishment. “Told you so.”

She had also changed, but she doubted if he saw as much progress as she did in him. When he’d last seen her, she had been long-legged and coltish, as if her limbs had outgrown her body. Her hair had been shorter and darker, and she’d worn glasses instead of the contacts she wore now.

Unwillingly reminded of the last time he had kissed her, all those years ago, she struggled to compose herself. “Of all the people who might have walked in here, you’re the last person I expected to see.”

“I don’t know why,” he observed. “Tiga Lodge has been in the family for a century. Prince Henry owned it until he died last year.”