Journey Day was a public holiday in Carramer. From the royal helicopter she looked down on a flotilla of small craft dotting the strait between the main island of Celeste and Isle des Anges. “It looks like half of Carramer is out on the water,” she said to Nori. The child could hardly contain his excitement, both at the novelty of the helicopter ride and at the adventure ahead.
“Are we really going to swim with dolphins?” he asked Allie.
Lorne met her questioning glance. “We’ll swim where they are usually found, coquine. It’s up to the dolphins whether they want to swim with us.”
“They’ll come if you tell them who I am,” Nori said with such confidence that Allie was forced to laugh.
“They probably will.” Love for the little boy tugged at her, his curious mixture of regal arrogance and baby charm threatening to melt her heart. What she wouldn’t give to be a mother to him and to give him the brothers and sisters he deserved.
Her heart almost stopped as she considered what it would take to fulfill the wish. She looked at Lorne through a screen of lashes and was startled to find him studying her speculatively. He couldn’t possibly have guessed what she was thinking. All the same she felt a blush starting and looked quickly away.
Through the Plexiglas she saw Isle des Anges approaching rapidly and immediately understood how it came by its name. From the air its shape, like an angel’s wings, could be seen clearly. As they came in to land she glimpsed white sand beaches fringing stands of tropical rainforest. Native orchids, vines and fern trees threatened to spill over onto the helipad, and a flock of sulphur-colored parrots rose screeching from the pad as they approached.
She had thought the main island was beautiful, but Isle des Anges took her breath away. It was a magical, romantic place, possibly the last place on earth she should be with Lorne.
A convoy of luxurious off-road vehicles met them at the airstrip, and they were driven to the palace at Aviso, where Lorne’s brother, Michel, had his seat of government. Nori bounced up and down in the car, his eyes round. “Will Uncle Michel be waiting for us?”
“Of course,” Lorne said with a fond laugh. “Sit still, coquine, or you’ll frighten away the dolphins.”
Nori instantly made himself as small as possible, peering over the edge of the car window as if the dolphins could observe his every move. “Do you think they saw me?” he asked Allie.
She masked her smile. “You stopped fidgeting just in time.”
The palace came into sight, and the dolphins were forgotten for the moment as Nori craned for a glimpse of his uncle. Allie was also curious to meet Lorne’s younger brother, wondering whether she would gain any new insights into Lorne’s character through his family.
The palace was a sprawling coral-colored building with carved columns supporting a porte cochere in the front where their convoy pulled up. Honey eaters swooped and dived beneath the porte cochere, unafraid of the new arrivals.
She stepped out of the car into warm, orchid-scented air just as a tall, well-built man came down the steps, taking them two at a time. Michel de Marigny, Allie guessed. He looked at most two years younger than Lorne, with the same elegant features, prominent cheekbones and strong jaw. His shoulders were almost sinfully wide under a monogrammed chocolate polo shirt tucked into butter-colored pants.
Allie frowned. With everything monogrammed, the brothers would have a hard time losing anything, although Michel’s confident air suggested he seldom lost much anyway, not games, battles or love matches.
Ran in the family, she thought, her gaze drifting back to Lorne as the brothers greeted each other. When Lorne introduced Allie, Michel appraised her speculatively, but Lorne didn’t elaborate. She wondered if Lorne made a habit of bringing minor staff members to family gatherings. Nori’s nanny hadn’t been invited.
Their escort fanned out around the grounds as Michel hoisted Nori onto his shoulders and led the way inside. “How’s my favorite nephew?” He seemed comfortable around the little boy, and she wondered if he had any children of his own. If so, she saw no signs of them.
While they exchanged news, she made herself useful pouring the tea that had been set out. Lorne gave her an appreciative smile when she handed him a cup but took no more notice of her than he did of the other servants coming and going.
Annoyance flashed through her. What had she expected? Champagne and roses? She knew he regretted the shared moment of passion, but it hurt to find herself back in her slot, invisible except when she was waiting on him. She hid her anger. Letting him see how much his neglect bothered her would be far too revealing.
She forced her attention back to the brothers. “The yacht is ready, but I won’t be joining you aboard,” Michel was saying.
Lorne frowned. “Why not?”
“Would you believe that I have to take care of an affair of state?” Michel spoke lightly but she detected his faint undercurrent of resentment at being questioned.
She saw Lorne’s mouth tighten. “Affair, perhaps. Of state, I doubt it. Have I met the woman who’s keeping you from a family occasion?”
Michel shifted impatiently. “I don’t believe so. I’ve only started seeing her recently.”
Lorne sighed. “Another new one. When are you going to start behaving as befits your position, Michel?”
A glint of annoyance lit his brother’s gaze but it was quickly masked. “Surely it’s too fine a day for this discussion?”
Lorne looked as if he wanted to say more but seemed to become aware of Allie’s presence at last. “I agree for now, but consider it a postponement. Even a prince can’t evade responsibility forever.”
So much for a family and children, Allie thought. Evidently playing the field also ran in the de Marigny family.
Moored at a marina in nearby Turtle Bay, Michel’s yacht turned out to be a sleek sixty-foot ketch with a swimming platform at the back and every possible luxury inside. A glass of champagne welcomed them aboard, with orange juice for Nori.
So smooth was their departure that she hardly noticed they were moving until she glimpsed the island falling rapidly astern. Most of their minders had peeled off at the jetty, she noticed. Presumably they were aboard the second vessel that shadowed them at a discreet distance. She had counted on the security team being aboard to provide a buffer between herself and Lorne. The yacht crew were practically invisible. Apart from Nori, she and Lorne could have been alone.
Changing into a swimsuit seemed like the height of folly, but Allie could think of no way around it. She couldn’t supervise Nori from the saloon and she refused to let her feelings for Lorne prevent her from taking proper care of the little boy.
She felt the prince’s eyes on her as she emerged from a cabin wearing the navy maillot she had bought on a recent shopping trip with Laura. It was far more modest than the bikini she’d worn when he fished her out of the sea, but the high cut of the legs and the plunging back were revealing enough, and the lycra fabric skimmed her curves like a second skin.
She fought down a sensation of nearly drowning in Lorne’s compelling gaze. He was admiring his property, she told herself fiercely. He had already made it clear that one didn’t make love to a bonded servant.
This bond business was the pits, and she wondered how she was going to get through the remainder of her sentence. However loose a rein Lorne kept on her, allowing outings like shopping with Laura and sight-seeing trips with Nori, she couldn’t forget her position, as last night had proved. A flash of insight made her frown. Was she really chafing at the restriction on her freedom or because the bond outlawed closeness between her and the prince?
No way, she vowed mentally. The bond had saved her from getting in deeper with Lorne when nothing could come of it. All the same her throat dried and she swallowed hard as he stood up, every muscle gleaming, his black swimming suit molded to hips as hard as angle iron. She was thankful when Nori joined them in the saloon. “Are the dolphins here yet?”
She dragged her gaze to the little boy. “Let’s find out.”
She wasn’t nervous about swimming in the open ocean, having done it off her native Queensland all her life. So why did she tremble when Lorne held out his hand to help her down to the swimming platform?
A crewman fitted them with masks and snorkels. The little boy also wore a flotation vest and listened intently to his father’s lecture about the need to hold either his or Allie’s hand in the water. “Remember our lessons and turn over on your back to float if you get tired,” Lorne told Nori. The child nodded earnestly.
Snorkeling in the aqua waters was heavenly. Zebra and angel fish brushed by in schools, and Allie stared spellbound through the mask at the view of coral and giant clams far below. Then suddenly a pod of spotted dolphins swooped in to surround her and Nori who had taken her hand and floated alongside her.
Her initial lurch of fear gave way to wonder as the gun-metal-gray creatures with their distinctive leopard spots swam and corkscrewed around them. Their faces were set in a perpetual toothy smile she could feel mirrored on her own face.
One of the rare creatures hovered level with Nori’s face mask, almost touching the glass with its white-tipped bottle nose. The little boy was beside himself with excitement. It was hard to believe that something weighing over five hundred pounds could be so gentle and playful.
A young dolphin, still to develop spots, came too close to them and was shepherded away by an anxious mother, reminding Allie of herself when she was out with Nori. She smiled at the young prince as he ran a hand across a dolphin’s back, his small face alight with wonder behind his mask.
Lorne hovered in the water beside them. She couldn’t see his expression but he had to be smiling. With a nod of reassurance to Allie, he took Nori’s hand and they swam a little way off, following the pod.
The tableau caught at her. The dolphin family were so involved and protective of each other, their closeness a joy to behold. If only she and the man she loved could be as close.
The man she loved. The thought hit home with such force that she sucked air in through her breathing tube and had to surface to clear it. Gasping and treading water, she faced the truth. In spite of everything, she had done the unthinkable and fallen in love with Lorne. Not the prince, but the man, she recognized painfully, understanding why she had yearned to give herself to him last night and why his rejection was so hard to bear.
On his side it wasn’t love as much as physical need born of being alone for too long, she felt sure. As soon as he came to his senses he had retreated behind his great wall of status. Whether she liked it or not, the prince was the larger part of the man she loved, the part forever beyond her reach.
After making sure Nori was safe in his father’s care, she lifted herself out of the water onto the swimming platform and stood under a shower to wash off the salt water. No reason a cold shower couldn’t work for a woman as well as a man, she thought grimly. In fact it only made her shiver and want him all the more.
By the time Lorne and Nori emerged from the water, she had dried off and changed into white Bermuda shorts and a cerise T-shirt and was sipping a cold drink in the saloon.
Oblivious of his wet state Nori raced up the steps and threw himself into Allie’s arms, leaving a soggy trail as he climbed onto her lap and linked his baby arms around her neck. “Did you see? Did you see me pat the dolphin? He liked me.”
In spite of her inner turmoil or maybe because of it, she wrapped her arms around the small, damp body. Her heart felt as if it was being squeezed in a vise. Her eyes felt bright and she had to blink furiously to bring her emotions back under control. “I saw you, sweetheart,” she agreed, her voice husky and vibrant. “One of the dolphins came right up to you to say hello so he must have liked you.”
Nori touched a finger to his nose. “He was this close. He had a white nose and lots of sharp teeth but he wasn’t scary at all.”
She laughed and hugged him tightly. “You’re the bravest boy in Carramer and quite possibly also the wettest. Let’s get you showered and dried off.” Luckily it was so warm that she didn’t have to worry about him catching cold.
Lorne was toweling himself dry when they returned to the swimming platform where the shower and dressing rooms were located. She was disturbingly aware of her damp T-shirt clinging to her, outlining every curve. She wished she’d had the presence of mind to protect herself with a towel before Nori had launched himself at her.
Knowing she loved Lorne made it almost impossible to share such a confined space with him without her senses running riot. His amazing body, starkly outlined in the merest scrap of wet lycra, put thoughts in her head that had no business being there. Was her wet T-shirt putting similar thoughts into his head?
His expression gave her no clues as he took in her damp state. “I gather Nori couldn’t wait to tell you his news,” he said as the little boy splashed in the freshwater shower.
She nodded, not trusting her voice.
“You mean a lot to him,” he said.
Safe ground. “He means a lot to me. He’s a special little boy.” With a special father, insisted a traitorous inner voice. Part of her willed Lorne to return to the saloon while another part longed for him to stay.
“He needs a mother.”
It was the last thing she had expected Lorne to say, and her mouth dropped open. An abyss yawned at her feet. Was he going to tell her he had someone in mind? She shot a warning glance in Nori’s direction before turning off the shower.
Lorne’s look of disgust told her he was well aware that it wasn’t a subject to bring up in front of his son. “We’ll talk after lunch while Nori has his nap.” He ruffled his son’s glossy hair.
Nori’s small face wrinkled. “Don’t want a nap.”
“Neither did the baby dolphin, but you saw his mother come and get him, didn’t you?” Allie asked.
The little boy nodded. “Was he going to have a nap, too?”
“You bet he was.”
The child gave a long-suffering sigh. “I s’pose it’s all right then.” She was aware of Lorne watching her intently as she shepherded Nori upstairs. Discussing the prince’s love life held almost zero appeal now she knew how much she loved him herself. Having slotted her back into the role of servant, he was probably blissfully unaware that it would be a refined form of torture.
What advice could she possibly give? He was right. Nori did need a mother, and she knew just the candidate for the job. But with it came a small detail called marriage to Lorne himself, and that was out of the question.
So was the hope that he would forget the discussion by the time lunch was over. She dawdled over tucking Nori up in one of the spacious cabins, but when she emerged Lorne was waiting on the afterdeck with chilled champagne and glasses set out on a low table between two comfortable chairs. An awning provided shade from the tropical heat, and the sea was like a sheet of glass around the vessel.
She settled into the seat he pulled out for her and accepted a glass of champagne. Dutch courage, she thought ruefully, sipping it. The silence lengthened until her nerves reached screaming point. Her mind insisted on picturing him in the arms of some other woman, triggering a wave of possessiveness that strangled her breathing. Lorne could never belong to her in any sense of the word, but the problem was convincing her emotions.
“You seem on edge,” he commented quietly.
She wanted to laugh at the understatement. She was like the proverbial cat on hot bricks. “You had something you wanted to discuss with me, Your Highness?” she asked, desperate to have this over with.
“Titles are hardly appropriate between us, given what I have in mind,” he said in a low voice. “I have decided to ask you to marry me.”
She almost choked on the champagne. “Marry you? Aren’t there laws against it? I’m still bonded to you, after all.” She was babbling, she knew, but the blunt proposition had robbed her of coherent speech.
“You suggested the solution yourself last night,” he reminded her. “I hereby release you of all obligations under the bond. Think of it as time off for good behavior.”
She could barely deal with the restoration of her freedom. Her mind was too busy fixating on his marriage proposal. “Why on earth would you want to marry me?” she asked.
His expression softened. “You are beautiful, skilled in the social graces as my consort must be, and above all, you are good for my son.”
“But surely a nanny—”
“He has a nanny,” he said, not letting her finish. “What he does not have is a mother.”
She found her voice with an effort. “I can’t be his mother, as much as I wish I could.”
“The instinct for motherhood is not only biological. I see it in the way you behave with him, and he responds to you. You would make an excellent mother for my son.”
But what about a wife for Lorne himself? Her thoughts whirled, rejecting his proposal with every fiber of her being. Much as she loved Nori and would give almost anything to be a mother to him, the thought of being Lorne’s wife when he didn’t love her was intolerable.
“It won’t work,” she said softly. “It would only be your first marriage all over again.”
He shook his head. “Last time I chose with my heart, not my head. This time will be different.”
Because he wasn’t in love with her, she concluded, wounded beyond belief. Her fingers tightened around the stem of the crystal goblet, and she had to fight the urge to fling the contents over him. Couldn’t he see he was asking the impossible?
“It would be an ideal solution for us both,” he went on, not giving her chance to argue. “Neither of us wishes to be bound by love. You would have the life you want, free of all responsibility except as my wife and Nori’s mother.”
Her throat ached. He had reached the wrong conclusion about her, and she had only herself to blame. “You seem very sure I don’t want any responsibility.”
One dark eyebrow canted upward. “Don’t you? Isn’t it why you’ve never tied yourself to a serious relationship before, and why you came to Carramer?”
She wasn’t going to marry him, but it was no reason to let him go on believing a lie. “It may look that way to you, but it isn’t true. I had years of responsibility long before I should have.” Haltingly she explained about her father’s desertion and how she had been forced to shoulder his responsibilities at an age when most girls were more concerned with dresses and dates.
He drew a deep breath. “My poor Allie. What was your family thinking to let you take on such burdens?”
“It’s in the past now,” she said dismissively. “My mother has remarried and is happy at last, and now that my sister has to pay her own way at university, she’s finally buckling down to her studies. All’s well that ends well.”
“Except for you. Who is going to give you back your lost teenage years?” He sounded angry, although she had trouble believing it was on her account.
“Maybe that’s why I came to Carramer, to enjoy being young and carefree for a while,” she explained, fully understanding her own motives for the first time.
“I see why marriage to me is so hard to contemplate,” he volunteered. “You are finally free of all ties, so new ones cannot seem very appealing.”
They could but not for the reasons he was offering them. If he had only said he wanted to marry her because he loved her, how different her answer would have been. The memory of her parents constantly arguing, before her father finally moved out, were too vivid for her to consider a loveless marriage. It wouldn’t be loveless on her side, but admitting it would only complicate things so she inclined her head in agreement.
“You’re right, I do want to be carefree for a while. In any case, you can’t order someone to fall in love with you by royal decree.”
He sipped champagne thoughtfully before asking, “Why not?”
It was so typically Lorne that she suppressed a smile. What must it be like to have the world turn at your whim? A pang shot through her. It could be her world, too, if she accepted his proposal. From Laura she had learned that there was no such thing as divorce on Carramer, so they would be joined for a lifetime. He could be her husband and lover forever.
Her stomach knotted, and she felt her cheeks catch fire. Thinking of Lorne as her lover for a night was enough to set her nerve endings jangling. Forever was a miracle beyond imagining.
You started this, she told herself, frantically groping for an answer. Nori had already suffered through the loss of his mother and had probably sensed the end of his parents’ love long before. Children were like little antennae, picking up emotional vibrations long before they could understand the meaning, Allie knew, both from her teaching experience and her own childhood.
Although years had passed, she vividly recalled the night her father had come to tell her he was leaving. She had known at some level for ages. It hadn’t stopped her hoping with all her heart that he wouldn’t go. Or that he and her mother would magically fall in love again. They hadn’t and Allie had been devastated, driven to pick up the pieces of her world as it fell crazily apart. Part of her was still fighting to hold her world together.
Now she felt the same sense of balancing on a crumbling edge, but she could answer Lorne without betraying too much of her inner turmoil. “It wouldn’t be a good example for Nori,” she said.
Lorne sat in silence for a long time before asking, “What do you think would set a better example for my son?”
She longed to tell him that Nori needed parents who loved each other and him, who were so obviously in love that it radiated from them, encompassing their child—children, if they were so blessed—and spilled over into the life around them.
Was it so much to hope for? Perhaps she idealized love because of the lack of it in her own family, but she didn’t want to change. There had to be something better to aim for than the kind of marriage her parents and Lorne had endured. She couldn’t accept that people were meant to settle for second best, when true love existed in the world.
“A wife isn’t something you hire, like a nanny or a companion,” she told Lorne carefully, her voice clogged with emotion. She coughed to clear it. “Stop thinking of it as filling a vacancy and listen to your heart. To me it sounds as if the prince is doing all the thinking, when a decision like this should be up to the man.”
“They are one and the same,” he insisted.
She twisted to look at him and regretted it as soon as her gaze collided with his. Her breath came out ragged. She loved him with all her heart. He wanted to marry her. She must be insane to say no. Her emotions churned and she held to her resolve with the last of her courage. Lorne might think the prince and the man were the same, but she knew they weren’t.
The prince had been born to his role, trained and groomed to put his people and his duty before everything else. Why else would he propose to Allie if not out of a sense of duty, to provide his son with a mother regardless of his own feelings? She didn’t even know what his feelings were, and she wondered if he did.
“That’s exactly why I can’t marry you,” she said, astonished at how hard it was to say the words. Perhaps because it was the opposite of what her heart wanted to say. “I’m not cut out to be royal, sharing my husband with a kingdom. I want…” She couldn’t continue. What she really wanted and what he was willing to provide were worlds apart.
“You want to be courted,” he said, misunderstanding. “Of course, I should have seen it before.”
She gave him a slightly dazed look, her pulse thundering in her ears. “What are you talking about?”
He turned his body until his knees almost touched hers. “Tell me how your ideal romance would unfold in your country.”
Her mind whirled. She had drunk only a little champagne, but the buzz in her head suggested it was having an effect. Or else it was his nearness making her body feel like a tuning fork, vibrating with unspoken needs. Her mind struggled to block the sensations, but they flooded through her uncontrollably until she leaned toward him as if drawn by an invisible thread.
She ran her tongue over dry lips. “Yes, my ideal romance includes being courted,” she heard herself admit as if from a long way away. “My love would bring me flowers and champagne. We’d talk softly over candlelit dinners for two. And gradually we’d learn how important we are to each other and how little meaning life would have if we were forced to be apart.”
“Would you kiss?”
A lump rose in her throat. “It’s what people do when they’re in love.” He had kissed her and he wasn’t in love with her, she thought, contradicting herself. But this wasn’t real, this was her fantasy, and kissing was definitely called for.
Her voice vibrated and her eyes were moist by the time she’d finished painting the word picture. She must be crazy sharing her fantasy with him when nothing of the sort was going to happen. He was right. The prince and the man were one. The man might contemplate a slow, intimate dance of courtship such as she had described, but the prince was too bound by protocol.
Was that what had gone wrong in his first marriage? Had he been too inflexible, commanding a result rather than working to create understanding between him and his wife? Allie could hardly blame him if so. From boyhood he had been raised knowing he would become the sovereign of his country. Asking nicely for what he wanted was probably as alien to him as issuing orders would be to her.
“You seem very sure of what you want,” Lorne observed tautly. He didn’t sound pleased, and she wondered if he would have preferred her to specify diamonds and rubies as the price of her love. At least then he would have known what to do.
“I am sure,” she confirmed, wishing with all her heart that she didn’t mean it. But there was no escaping it. Being who and what he was, he couldn’t give her what she needed, and she couldn’t give him what he wanted.
Impasse.
He took the champagne glass from her, his fingers brushing hers in a butterfly touch, and her stomach muscles clenched. Forestalling tears became a full-time job for the next few minutes. Loving him and knowing it couldn’t lead anywhere was almost more than she could stand.
Somehow she had to stand it, at least until she could put some distance between them. As long as he was only a heartbeat away and she could feel his breath fanning her cheek, she hadn’t a prayer of refusing him for long.
In that same moment it came to her that she was free. In order to propose, Lorne had released her from the bond. A stab of anguish caught her unawares. Surely she didn’t want to remain tied to him, knowing there was no future in it? As a free woman she could take up the reins of her life again, move on, find someone who could truly love her.
It wasn’t as much consolation as she thought it should be.