A WEEK LATER Sophie picked her way along the darkening cobblestone path that led away from the castle, and then zigzagged its way down the steep cliff side from the palace grounds to the village below. She paused for a moment, aware she was a bit nervous. Maybe she shouldn’t have been quite so eager to slip her guard.
She ordered herself to breathe, and as she watched, lights began to come on in the buildings—many of them dating back to medieval times. It was like watching a Christmas card come to life.
She felt in her handbag for her flashlight—they called them torches here—because it would be full dark by the time she wound her way back up. She headed eagerly toward the promised warmth of those lights.
She contemplated what she was experiencing on Havenhurst—something she hadn’t been expecting. She felt lonely. Adrift, almost.
Sophie, deep in her thoughts, but already a little nervous, shrieked as something moved in the shrubbery beside her.
“Miss Kettle,” Lancaster said, pushing himself out of the shadows.
“Oh! You scared me!” And that was the only reason her heart was doing double time, she told herself firmly. She hadn’t seen Lancaster for the entire week. Somehow, she had thought he would be more a part of daily life, or at least that she would catch glimpses of him, cross paths with him when he came to visit his godson. She was guiltily aware she even selected her outfit each day with that in mind. Even though she was definitely no longer in the market, every woman wanted to be seen as attractive by a man like him.
The truth was even though distance between them was the safest thing, she craved the company of someone she knew. Anyone! And she was glad she had on her snug designer jeans, tucked into high leather boots that might not have been the best for walking, but did show off the length of her legs to great advantage. She was wearing a gorgeous red cape against the autumn damp that was worst in the evenings, and she had a large designer bag that matched her boots.
He did not look the least contrite that he had startled her. And he did not seem to take any notice of her outfit, whatsoever. In fact, his handsome features had a distinctly sour look on them, which should have made him less attractive, but didn’t. At all.
“So, Little Red Riding Hood, what if it hadn’t been me lying in wait for you?” he asked, raising the dark slash of an eyebrow at her. “What if it had been the big, bad wolf?”
“Don’t be silly.” Little Red Riding Hood wasn’t exactly the image she’d been trying for. His voice was so sexy it made the hair on her arms stand up.
“I’m never silly.”
“Shocking you’d make a reference to something as lighthearted as a fairy tale, then.”
“Most fairy tales are very dark if you look below the surface.”
“That’s something I wouldn’t have considered you any kind of expert on, fairy tales.”
“The Tyrant Prince has his favorites.”
The thought of Lancaster reading Ryan stories filled her with more longing for things she didn’t have. Things she had sworn off of, Sophie reminded herself firmly.
“Were you lying in wait for me?” she asked.
“Yes.”
She looked into his face. Even in the poor light, she could see right below the slightly sour, impassive expression, a spark of anger glittered in those green eyes.
“Where’s Guardsman Henderson?” he asked silkily.
Sophie shrugged. “I think he’s still standing outside the powder room door on the nursery floor. Ryan’s in bed for the night, and it’s become my habit to go to town and have tea at that little shop Maddie started.”
She loved that cozy bakery, and the cheery girls who worked there, how they were coming to know her and greeted her as if they were glad to see her.
“I’m well aware of your habits,” he said tersely.
He was?
“Well, if it was anyone but you saying that, I could interpret it as downright creepy.”
She was teasing him, but he did not seem receptive. She tried a different tack. She smiled at him. “Do you still love scones, Lancaster? Come have one with me. Do you approve of my pronunciation? Scone, as in gone, not scone as in cone?”
But he wasn’t being dragged down memory lane, he wasn’t being put off and he didn’t smile back. From the expression on his face, Sophie was guessing he was not going to be joining her for a scone.
“It’s the guardsman’s job to look after you,” he said, his tone tight. “What do you think happens to a soldier when he doesn’t do his job?”
“He’s not in trouble, is he?” she asked, and felt genuinely contrite when she saw the expression on Lancaster’s face. “It’s not his fault. I don’t like being followed around. It’s unnerving and it makes people look at me sideways and afraid to approach me.”
“Life isn’t always about what you like. Everyone on this entire island and beyond knows you are close to the princess. That makes her vulnerable, through you.”
“Oh,” Sophie said. “I hadn’t thought of that.” She registered, slightly miffed, his concern was for Maddie.
“You think you were assigned a guardsman because it amused me? Because I wanted to keep tabs on you?”
“Look, obviously, you’re angry.”
“I’m not angry.”
“Oh, you are so! I’m going to have tea, so I’ll wait here if you want to send Ricky to walk me to the village. Though, really, so tedious for him. He won’t eat with me.”
“Ricky?” he breathed. “I should bloody well hope he’s not eating with you! I just came across him wandering about, looking for you, and he admitted you gave him the slip last night, too.”
“I found these hot springs, not too far a walk from the castle. I’m afraid I didn’t want him sneaking a peek at me while I had my lovely evening soak.”
“No one under my command would ever sneak a peek at you.”
“They’re just men,” she said.
“They are not just men. They are guardsmen.”
“Whatever. I’m not inviting any of them to the hot springs with me. And I’m not giving it up. It reminds me of Mountain Bend.” She hesitated. Really? If you had to pick someone to confide in, Lancaster would be an awful choice. But she had no choice.
“I’m homesick,” she admitted softly.
“You’ve been here a week! And you insinuated home wasn’t fun.”
His response was not in the least sympathetic, but she felt she could not shut off the tap now that she’d opened it.
“My career and my travels gave me all the fun I needed,” she said, “and going home grounded me.” In fact, when she thought of the solidness of her mom and dad and the loyalty of her friends and that life being so far away she felt a sharp pang of longing…and loneliness. Even though she hadn’t lived in Mountain Bend for some time, and had made a small apartment in Portland home base, it was still always only an hour away. And the quiet of it appealed to her more now than she wanted to let on.
It seemed too pathetic to admit to him that she was lonely, so she said she was bored, instead.
“Prince Ryan, while he has his adorable moments, is mostly, as you said, a royal tyrant in a two-year-old body. And he has a nanny, who seems to be worried that I’m here to take her job, so I have to tread very carefully about how much I take on with him. Thankfully, he’s worn himself out by seven, because possibly I’d kill him if he was up any later than that.”
“Note to self,” Lancaster said, still without any sympathy at all, “threat to Prince Ryan increases after seven in the evening.”
“Go ahead and make a joke out of it, but I need adult interaction.”
“Your best friend is here.”
“Maddie’s not herself. She’s under doctor’s orders to remain in bed. I mean I love her dearly, but there’s only so much we can chat about. Besides, I’m a sympathetic vomiter.”
“A what?”
“If somebody else gets sick, I get sick, too.”
“That’s not a real thing,” he said with authority.
“It is. Google it. And I’m afraid it’s made our visits quite unpleasant.”
“I’m trying not to imagine it.”
“Why? If you don’t think it’s a real thing, imagine away. See what happens.”
He glowered at her.
“It’s quite a relief, actually, when Prince Edward arrives. He’s not a sympathetic vomiter, by the way. He seems to find Maddie quite adorable even hunched over the loo, gagging. Anybody who thinks royal life is all glitz and glamour could have an evening with the pair of them. Sitting on the bathroom floor, eating soda crackers and giggling.
“Still, even with that, they’re like the poster children for romance. They’ve been married forever. You’d think they’d be beyond the starry-eyed stage.”
She stopped herself—barely—from saying how the couple’s love for each other made her feel lonelier than ever, and a sharp sense of longing that didn’t feel as if it could ever be filled.
The thunderous look was softening a bit on Lancaster’s face, so she took that as encouragement and went on.
“I like to go to town for my supper—you call it tea, I know, but that’s very confusing. Besides, Edward takes his meals with Maddie, feeding her off his spoon and wiping her brow, and it’s all quite romantic and very intimate. Well, until she loses it again.” Sophie sighed. “I can tell they cherish their time, even with the vomitus interruptus. There’s nothing worse than being the third wheel at a party for two.”
“You’ll make some friends,” Lancaster said, but she could hear the uncertainty in his voice. Whether that uncertainty was caused because he didn’t think she would make friends, or because he was out of his element trying to be sensitive, she wasn’t quite sure.
“Friends,” Sophie said with a snort. “I’ve been invited to eat with the family, if you can call it that. The dining table is a veritable football field. His mother and father are completely stuffy, and it’s excruciating trying to think of things to say and remember all the rules I’m supposed to remember to dine with the king and queen. It’s quite remarkable that Edward is as lovely as he is, don’t you think?”
Apparently Lancaster’s job description did not allow him to comment on the loveliness of his employer, because he said nothing. Which encouraged her to keep talking!
“Don’t even get me started on blarneycockles! I know they’re your national food or treasure or something, but do they have to be on every table? Honestly, I think that’s why Maddie has taken to her bed. Perpetually nauseated by blarneycockles.”
She paused for breath. “I thought I should probably go back to the US but Edward begged me not to. He said that I’m helping immensely. That both Maddie and Ryan seem so much better since I got here.”
“I believe that’s true,” Lancaster said, nodding emphatically.
She cast him a faintly suspicious look. Why did he sound eager to have her stay? He couldn’t possibly know if it was true or not, since he hadn’t even been around for the past week.
“I’ve committed to staying until the baby comes, and maybe a little beyond that, but honestly, Lancaster, this is a lovely place, quite quaint and charming, but extraordinarily dull. It’s what I left behind in Mountain Bend, only worse because aside from Maddie, I don’t have any friends or family here. And because I’m friends with her, the princess, none of the other staff wants to get chatty with me, as if I’m upper crust—there’s a laugh—and they aren’t. I mean, even though Ricky was super polite and answered all my questions—his girlfriend’s name is Becky and he has a dog named Buck—I couldn’t exactly have a conversation with him, because he wouldn’t ask anything about me. I have to do something or I’m going to become a raving lunatic.”
He was silent.
“Quit looking at me like that, as if you think I already am a raving lunatic.” It occurred to her she had been raving, a week’s worth of pent-up frustrations boiling over on her.
“I’ll walk you down to the village and have tea with you,” Lancaster said.
She looked at him. She wanted to weep she was so grateful for his company and understanding. Was it possible she and Lancaster could be friends?
I doubt it, a voice inside her whispered.
She glanced at him again. As always, his face was unreadable.
“Are you escorting me? Your duty? Ricky’s replacement?”
“Please stop calling him Ricky,” Lancaster said with a groan. He did not answer the question.
“It’s a mark of my desperation that I’ll say yes to your suggestion, even though it’s prompted by either a sense of duty or pity,” she told him.
He looked at her long and hard. “You make me feel many things, Sophie, pity not being one of them.”
Which left duty. Still…
“What kind of things?” she whispered.
“Oh, no you don’t, lass. It’s bad enough I’ve admitted to having a feeling.”
She laughed at that, and it felt good to laugh with someone—anyone—though somehow laughing with Lancaster was special. Well, not exactly with him. She was laughing. He had what might have been a reluctant smile tickling across the full, sensuous swell of his lips.
“Those boots don’t seem like the most practical,” he said, finally noticing her lovely outfit, but not with approval. “And that bag must be heavy. What on earth do you put in a bag that size?”
“I have a collapsible donkey in here,” she told him. “For the trip back up. It’s not nearly as easy as the one going down.”
He did smile at that.
A group of schoolgirls in sports uniforms were coming up the pathway toward them. Lancaster pulled back to let them by, asking them something in Gaelic.
The giggles intensified. One girl blushed. Another, beautiful with a head of flaming-red curls, stopped and said something to him. She had her hand on her hip and rocked forward slightly on one leg as she said it. Her voice was a purr and her air was definitely flirtatious.
It reminded Sophie, uncomfortably, of exactly the kind of attention her fiancé had attracted from fans at rock concerts.
But Lancaster had a different attitude. He looked at the girl sternly, then leaned very close to her, and said something for her ears only. She rocked back from him, and went very pale before hurrying off to catch up to her friends.
“What was that about?” Sophie asked.
“They’re going to the pitch on the castle grounds. I told them to score one for me. That’s all.”
“It’s not all! That’s part of why I feel so lonely here. English is the official language, but the accents are so thick, or people mix Gaelic and English to the point I can’t understand half of what anyone is saying.”
“The girl who stopped said something quite naughty about scoring,” he admitted reluctantly.
“I figured as much. And what did you say that dispatched her as if she’d been confronted with a banshee?”
“I said I knew her father.”
Sophie studied his face. “Do you?”
“Good grief, no. I had no idea who she was, let alone who her father is.”
“What a perfect response.” Sophie laughed, partly in relief because Lancaster was so unlike her fiancé, Troy.
But then she stopped laughing. That girl, really, had been just like she had been when she first met Lancaster. Young. Intrigued. Testing a newfound feminine power. And yet, testing it on a man she knew, intuitively, was completely safe. Honorable.
Biology, she reminded herself, the power of which was not to be underestimated.
“It must be very tough on you fighting off the attentions of females, young and old,” she said drily. Troy would have seen that as a compliment.
“A full-time occupation,” he agreed, just as drily.
Sophie felt a reluctant trust in him. And then they shared a tentative smile. It made her aware what a rare thing Lancaster’s smile was.
If she wasn’t aware he was already fully occupied fighting off female attention, she might be tempted to try to make that smile happen more often.
Instead, she turned quickly to the path. He fell into step beside her, and Sophie was aware that though there was no reason to be frightened on Havenhurst—the very thought seemed ludicrous—there was something immensely solid about having Lancaster at her side. There was something about the way he moved—with an innate sense of his own power—that made her feel protected. It was a lovely feeling, even though she did not need protection!
The streetlights, charmingly old, were coming on as they entered the village. Sophie turned to go the way she always went, down a street of the most delightful thatched roof cottages, but Lancaster nodded to a different street.
“I usually go this way,” he said. She could not help but notice that everyone they passed seemed to know who he was. He was admired, but it seemed people trusted him, completely, not to ever take any kind of advantage of that admiration, unlike someone else she could think of! Lancaster had earned a deep-seated respect from his fellow countrymen and women.
The way he had chosen didn’t seem like the most direct route, but all the streets of Havenhurst were equally enchanting, and she readily gave herself over to exploring a new route.
“It’s so old,” she said.
“It is, indeed. Some of these buildings date back to the thirteenth century.”
“The oldest building in Mountain Bend was from the eighteen hundreds. Look, the shops are still open.”
“Traditionally, they stay open later on Friday.”
It marked how her days had begun to melt together that she hadn’t even realized it was Friday.
“What’s this building?” she asked, pausing to look at a sign above a doorway that said Top Secret. While most of the buildings on the street were quaint—brick or stone, with steep-pitched roofs, dormer windows and soaring chimneys—this one was squat, square and formidable.
“It’s kind of creepy-looking. The Havenhurst spy agency?”
He actually threw back his head and laughed. “It used to be a jail, but it’s enjoying a rather heady second life. One of Havenhurst’s proudest success stories.”
Sophie looked up at his face, illuminated by both the streetlights and his laughter. His laughter was rich and real. She tried to think if she had heard him laugh before. She didn’t think you could possibly forget if you had. He carried himself with a certain grimness, a man not to be messed with, who rarely let his guard down.
She felt just like that schoolgirl who had just tried out her feminine wiles on him. Just like the girl she had once been, she wanted to be the one whom he let down his guard for.
“What kind of success story?” she forced herself to ask.
The laughter died. He suddenly looked uncomfortable. “Let’s go for that scone,” he said.
She frowned at him. “There’s an open sign. I’ll go see.”
“Wait.”
Sophie ignored him, and pushed open the heavy, black iron-clad door. It had huge nail heads in it, as if she was entering a medieval torture chamber. And so nothing about the imposing exterior prepared her for what was inside. The space was beautifully lit, lights shining on gorgeous creations in silk and lace.
Top Secret. Lingerie.
She turned back to see Lancaster scowling at her from the street. It was hilarious that such a self-composed man was embarrassed about a little lingerie.
Hilarious and endearing.
Even though she was almost pathetically lonely, the last thing she wanted was to be endeared by Lancaster. She shut the door behind herself, leaving him on the street.