Louis fiddled with the controls in front of him to zoom in on the conversation taking place between MacTavish and the mystery woman. She had remained in the reception hall, casually admiring what artwork remained on the walls while MacTavish approached. When he opened the tall double doors at the far end of the room, she spun again with those twin pistols ready.
He watched her lips move but couldn’t hear. Louis frantically spun dials and control knobs until he found the audio gain for that room and cranked it to maximum. Licking his lips, he looked back at the monitor and zoomed in a little further until the entire screen was filled with her exquisite body.
“You okay?” MacTavish asked.
Louis blinked. Wait, you know her?
“Why, Roland dear, I’m touched at your concern,” the woman said, laying one delicate hand across her bosom, still ample despite being constrained by the glossy material of her outfit.
MacTavish grunted, the sound echoing in Louis’ headset—he must be nearest the hidden microphones.
“I hadn’t heard things had gone so poorly,” MacTavish said, glancing at the bodies of his men as if they were strangers.
Louis frowned. What’s going on here?
The woman pouted. “It couldn’t be helped. After Barron…well, I suppose things went south after…Reginald…”
“Was it that bad?” MacTavish asked, his voice softer than Louis had ever heard before. The man seemed to genuinely care for their strange guest.
“Oh, it was awful,” the woman said, her voice cracking. She flicked her hand away from one eye, as if wiping off a tear. “Look at what that bitch did to me,” she said, turning her head to the right, giving MacTavish a good look at her left cheek.
His sudden intake of breath told Louis something was wrong with the woman’s face, but the camera couldn’t detect anything. Her pale white skin looked smooth as marble from his perspective.
“That’s a mark, aye.”
“I’m going to kill her for it,” the woman said, rolling her shoulders. “But I don’t have time for that just now. You understand with Reginald dead, things are going to get a little dicey now, right?”
MacTavish grunted again. “Aye. But tell me something, first—if he’s dead, and presumably most of the Council—”
“Almost all of them, dear,” the woman said offhand, looked around at the bodies in the room.
“If they’re all dead, and the king too, why should me and my men follow you?”
Your men? Louis pulled his attention away from the meeting and scanned the other monitors, each one showing at least a body or two of his household guard. What about them?
“Why, because I’m the one in charge, dear.” Her voice had dropped into a dangerous tone, one that Louis knew to fear, purely on instinct. He shivered, as if an icy blast of air had suddenly slipped down his shirt.
Who is this woman?
MacTavish snorted. “I could say the same. You have your two stooges back there, but I’ve got at least a dozen men, hand picked and trained. This place belongs to me.”
The woman smiled, a seductive, red crescent across her face, full of promise and desire. She half closed her eyes and took a melting step closer to MacTavish, tracing the line of his jaw with one graceful, red-tipped finger. “My dear Roland…because I am who I am…and I have all Reginald’s files and money.”
MacTavish stiffened at the comment or her touch, Louis couldn’t tell, but whatever the cause, he was surprised, Louis was sure of it.
“All of it?”
She leaned in close. “All of it,” she said, clicking her teeth shut in a mock bite gesture when she pronounced ‘it,’ barely more than a whisper. She stepped back suddenly, regarding MacTavish like someone examining a used car.
She reached out and flicked the pleat in his kilt. “Love this, by the way. You definitely have the legs for it, dear.” She smiled. “But seriously, where do your loyalties lie, MacTavish?”
The question hung like a challenge in the air, echoing through the chamber of death. MacTavish looked around the room, taking his time in examining the carnage. “To King and Council.”
“Good. Then we understand each other. You have him secured, I presume?” she asked, eyeing her nails as if she had nothing better to do.
MacTavish nodded, all hesitation gone from his voice. “Aye, in the safe room.”
Wait, what? Louis felt his heart thud against his chest. You just told her where I’m at?
“Take me to him.”
“He’s watching us now,” MacTavish said, gesturing over his shoulder toward the hidden camera.
Louis leaned back from the monitor as if caught peering in a girl’s window at night. His heart raced when that angelic face tilted up at the camera and the woman smiled even broader than before. His breath caught in his throat.
“Oh, I like it when people watch me…” she purred. “Hello dear.”
That voice. That look. That body…Louis suddenly was very aware of how restrictive his pants had become. He was at once excited and embarrassed. Thankful that he was alone in the room, he let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding when she started walking away from the camera.
Wait. She’s going toward the kitchen…that’s where MacTavish went when he left me…
Louis couldn’t keep up with MacTavish and the woman as they moved room to room, talking as they walked. They stepped over and around bodies—including the man named Jean that MacTavish had comforted in his dying moments in the kitchen. The pair of them avoided the bodies and continued to walk, undisturbed by the violence that had erupted inside his house. At every door, MacTavish held it open and deferred to the woman.
It was clear to Louis by the time they reached the East Library that MacTavish not only knew the woman well, he was subservient to her. Whatever she’d been talking about regarding the man named Reginald, it had made MacTavish fall in line like an obedient soldier.
Louis stared at the screen in disbelief as MacTavish followed the woman into the library. He used to obey my father like that.
He glanced away from the screen at the heavy steel door behind him. They were right on the other side of the bookcase. He could hear their muffled speech.
What do I do?
He looked back at the bank of monitors to see the woman waving at the camera, looking up at the books where MacTavish indicated the device was hidden. She was talking, but Louis’ shaking hands couldn’t find the right switch to activate the audio control in the library.
“Your Majesty, are you there?” MacTavish’s voice asked in his Scottish brogue.
Louis stammered a response as he watched the woman’s face. A slight frown creased her brow as she grew impatient. Eventually she gestured at MacTavish, who removed his radio and handed it to her. She smiled and twisted her head to flip long locks of blonde hair over her shoulder and out of the way of the radio.
“Hello? Hello, can you hear me, Your Majesty?” she asked in that decidedly American accent of hers.
Louis started to speak, then cleared his throat and tried again. “Y-yes. I’m here.”
“Lovely!” she beamed, all smiles.
Louis felt his spine soften. He wanted to lean forward and put his elbows on the console and just watch her move.
“I want you to do something for me. You’re aware—you know, I hate talking through these things,” she said, her eyes narrowing as she protruded her lower lip in an exquisite pout. “It’s so impersonal, you know?” she asked, putting a husky emphasis on impersonal.
“What…what about the—those men with the guns?” asked Louis, his voice cracking to his everlasting shame.
The woman covered her mouth but couldn’t quite hide her smile. “It’s quite safe out here. Can you come out so I can…hmmm…talk to you, face to face?” she asked, lowering her voice.
Louis swallowed audibly. He glanced at MacTavish, who stared right at the camera and nodded. The woman handed the radio back to him. “It’s all right, lad. Come out.”
Louis thought about it for a moment. MacTavish didn’t so much ask him as order him to come out. He took a look around the safe room. Stacks of food and water filled the back half of the room, behind a small cot and built-in toilet connected to its own, separate septic system.
I could stay in here…what, for months? A year?
The woman took the radio back from MacTavish and smiled, running a finger down the front of her glossy, skin-tight outfit. “Oh, come out, Your Majesty…please?” she teased. The red-tipped fingers of her alabaster white hand fingered a shiny zipper at her throat.
When that zipped descended just an inch, Louis jumped out of his chair, stumbling over supplies on the floor in his effort to reach the door release button. After the snap-hiss of the inner seal breaking, the heavy metal door swooshed open under the glare of the red blinking light above.
He stepped out into the dark space behind the bookcase and spotted the dull gleam of the release handle jutting from the stone interior wall. He cleared his throat, adjusted his clothes, and smoothed the front of his shirt.
Standing straight as an arrow, Louis d’Fleur, the King in Exile, pulled the release handle and waited with an imperious tilt to his head for the bookcase to swing open with a muffled swish.
The woman was waiting for him with a smile and eyes that sparkled with mischief. “Oh my, you’re much more handsome than they said.”
Louis didn’t know who they were, but he was grateful. He always saw himself as a gangling youth, not a boy any longer, not quite a man, all knees and elbows and awkwardness. Especially around girls. But the blonde beauty before him was no girl—she was all woman. He swallowed.
“Come now,” she said, reaching out a hand. “Don’t be shy, dear. That’s it, come on out where we can talk.”
Louis reached out a hand, quite forgetting that as King, it was she who should be kissing his hand, and felt the heat ripple through his chest when her soft, warm hand found his. She squeezed just so and led him out of the bookcase passage.
The woman smiled as she looked him up and down, her eyes devouring him like a fine steak set before a starving person. “Now then…let’s have a look at you…”
She walked around him in a slow circle, humming and murmuring to herself, her fingertips lightly brushing his shoulder, his hair, his elbow, an arm, his back. When she’d stepped back in front of him again, the smile was wider than before.
That was when he noticed the pink scar on her cheek, the skin puckered slightly in the zig-zag of torn flesh healing as best it could, the line stretched from the corner of her mouth up to her eye. Someone had cut her…bad. And recently, by the looks of it.
Her cold eyes noticed his gaze and her left hand reached up, fingertips tracing the scar tissue that marred her otherwise exceptionally lovely face. The mirth left her eyes as her smile vanished. “I apologize, Your Majesty, for my appearance,” she murmured, bowing for the first time.
Louis stepped forward in a show of gallantry and took her by the hand. “No, no—your face was not meant to be hidden,” he said, forcing his voice as deep as he could muster. He swallowed again as she raised her eyes to meet his. She was only an inch or two taller than him. He struggled to keep his eyes focused on her face. They wanted to travel down her neck, past the flowing golden tresses that cascaded over her shoulders to the—
“You are too kind, Your Majesty,” she said, purring. “A dashing king and a gentleman to boot. You are quite the catch.”
Louis felt the heat rise up his neck and knew he was blushing like a rose but kept his back stiff. “You’re a king now,” his father’s dying words echoed through his mind. “Dignity and honor—blanket yourself in them. Let others bow to you.”
Just then, with the soft glow of a fire in the rubble behind her making her hair luminescent, the sultry sound of her voice, the hooded cast of her eyes, and the pouting lips…Louis would have bowed to her, and gladly.
She licked her lips. “I think we’re going to get along just fine…sire.”
“Who…” Louis swallowed again, his mouth dry as a desert. “I’m afraid you have me at a loss, madam. Who are you?”
MacTavish snorted, earning him an elbow in the ribs from the woman. “Hush. He’s trying to be nice.” She flashed a smile at him. “I like it when men are nice to me,” she said with a wink.
She called me a man!
“How old are you, Your Majesty?” she asked, her head tilted, exposing a long pale neck. The skin looked so smooth, Louis ached to reach out and touch it.
“I’m 16.” He straightened his back. “I’ll be 17 next month.”
The sparkle returned to her eyes and those red lips parted in a smile. “Oh, lovely.”
“You gonna tell him who you are?” asked MacTavish, shifting his rifle from one arm to the other. He glanced over his shoulder at the wreckage down the hall. “We need to be moving soon. All this ruckus will have attracted unwanted attention, aye?”
“Of course,” she said, looking over her shoulder. “We did make a bit of a mess, didn’t we?”
He inclined his head. “A bit.”
Louis cleared his throat. “You still haven’t told me who you are.”
“Apologies, my king,” the woman, bowing deep. The movement made her outfit crinkle audibly. “My name is Jayne Renolds,” she said, straightening. “Your new regent.”