CONNAL FELT LIKE an idiot. He should have thought of the sideways looks he would be garnering, walking through the palace with a bouquet of flowers.
Not just any bouquet. No, he’d had to ask for a large one. At the time, he hadn’t given a thought to the fact it would make it hard to tuck it inside a bag or behind his back. Now he had to endure these looks, the knowing smiles from the women, the winks from the men.
He passed a trash can and forced himself not to ditch the bouquet. He was braver than that, wasn’t he?
Lancaster had made a vow to himself, and it began with this bouquet.
He would do it right this time. In a way, maybe he was being given a chance to make up for all the times in his life he had done it so wrong.
Been so insensitive, and so self-centered.
A jerk. He had been a total jerk.
But this time, what if he brought flowers, big embarrassing bouquets that made the whole palace whisper about a romance? What if he wrote poetry in the rich language of his ancestors, and translated it for her? What if he packed picnics and they took long walks? What if he took her on ordinary dates, to the movies, to the pub, to ceilidhs? What if he wooed her slowly, swept her off her feet, treated her with the honor that she deserved?
What if he backtracked so that the horse went before the cart?
He arrived at the door to Sophie’s suite within the palace. He was a man who had exited helicopters on ropes, rappelled down the sides of mountains, jumped out of airplanes. He was a man who had dived off the tops of cliffs into pools so small they had looked like teacups way down below him. He could not possibly be afraid to be bringing flowers to a woman.
The racing of his heart said differently. He took a deep breath. And he knocked.
There was no answer.
He knocked again, and again. He frowned. She might be at the nursery or with Maddie. But in an hour, he knew Sophie was in none of those places. He went back to her room, knocked again and opened the door.
He could sense the emptiness, even before he went and flung open the closet doors. Her clothes were gone. The chest of drawers was empty. Even the bathroom had been swept clean. Only a bottle of shampoo remained, on the ledge of the tub. He resisted the urge to go and smell it, to fill his senses with something beyond the emptiness that was moving through him like winter ice claiming a lake.
He went back into the main room and saw an envelope on her bed.
It was addressed to Connal, not Lancaster, and that gave him the tiniest hope. Funny how not so long ago it had been the opposite. He had not wanted her to use his first name. Now he did not want to lose that small intimacy between them.
He opened the envelope and fished a single piece of paper from it.
It was so nice to have a chance to see you let down your guard! I’ve had an opportunity come up that I can’t say no to, but if I ever get stranded in the wilderness again I hope it’s with you.
Don’t forget to have some fun from time to time, Connal.
Sophie
P.S. It might have been nice if you’d let me know there was a plot with my name on it, but don’t worry about me. Read The Ransom of Red Chief!
It was everything he could do not to tear the note to shreds and fill that room with a howl of pure rage and frustration. She could, at this very moment, be walking blithely into danger. And she was dismissing it, writing polite little thank-you notes of the kind that one might give to a great aunt who had invited you to tea.
“Who the hell is Red Chief?” he asked, moments later of Prince Edward. He tossed the note down on the prince’s desk.
In this moment, he felt his deep kinship with the prince, the barriers of station between them removed by years of the friendship that had made them like brothers.
Edward scanned the note. Surely he wasn’t smiling? This was serious business. Sophie had managed to give them the slip and could be in mortal danger. But that did seem to be a small smile tickling Edward’s lips.
“She’s not in any danger, Lancaster—Connal—I’m sure of that.”
“Do you know where she is, then? Has she confided in Maddie?”
“I don’t know exactly where she is, and as far as I know, she hasn’t said anything to Maddie. But we’ve been through this once before. Surely you have not forgotten Maddie’s escape from Havenhurst?”
Lancaster took a deep breath. Kettle. Sophie would have called Kettle.
Still. “It’s not funny, sir.”
“Well, the reference to The Ransom of Red Chief is. Not familiar with that story, Lancaster?”
He shook his head.
“It’s about a group of thugs who kidnap the child of extremely wealthy parents. By the end of his stay with them they are negotiating how much they will pay to give him back.”
“She is a handful,” Lancaster said with resignation.
“And she’s your handful, isn’t she, Lancaster?” his friend asked him with soft sympathy and grave affection. With a knowing of Lancaster’s heart that only a brother could have.
“I’m afraid she is that, sir.”
“Then go and use all those skills you’ve been acquiring your whole life—maybe in preparation for this very moment—and get her.”
For the first time, ever so reluctantly, Lancaster smiled, too. “I will.”
* * *
Sophie heard something outside, and she jumped, then strained her ears, listening. She was embarrassed by how nervous she was, possibly worse than she had ever been.
On the other hand, she had been educating herself rigorously on the topic of fear. According to what she was learning, sometimes fear could be a gift. For instance, she was the target of a kidnapping plot. Her fear gave her an opportunity to address that reality, to prepare, to not be a helpless victim in the face of a threat.
She forced herself to do as the online course on fear suggested. She drew in a deep breath, allowed herself to feel it fill her lungs, let it out. It clarified her thinking almost instantly.
Really, the past few days had felt like something out of a cloak-and-dagger book.
Kettle, enlisting several of his old navy SEAL friends, had whisked her away from Havenhurst with ease. He had grumbled a bit about Maddie—and now her—pulling him out of retirement, but she could tell he quite enjoyed the rescue.
She had not told Kettle, though, the part about the kidnap plot, because she was pretty sure he would have left her to Lancaster’s care had he known about it.
No one trusted her to be that person who could look after themselves.
There was a knock on the door and Sophie nearly jumped out of her skin.
Again, she forced calm on herself, took a deep breath. She was pretty sure a kidnapper would not lose the element of surprise by knocking on the door. Still, her heart was beating way too fast.
In her mind, she reviewed the self-defense moves she had been teaching herself, also via an online course. She checked the location of the baseball bat, behind the door, and then she crept to the front window to peer out.
She could see someone very large on the front porch of the little house Kettle had put her in in Cannon Beach.
“No one will find you here until you are good and ready to be found,” he’d assured her. Kettle being Kettle, thankfully he had not asked her for any of the details leading up to her mad dash from Havenhurst.
The fear in her stood down. Sophie knew it was Lancaster. It wasn’t just the size of the shadow out there, it was that deep sense of knowing.
The fear was replaced by outrage. Of course he would arrive to claim her back! She had slipped his control. It was his job to protect her from some shadowy threat, and he would not like it one bit that she had thwarted that.
“Open the door, Sophie.”
The voice alone was enough to melt her resolve not to be his job, not to be protected by him, not to need him in any way.
“No,” she said.
“Don’t make me kick it down.”
A little shiver went up and down her spine. Good grief. He was being primitive. That shiver wasn’t a shiver of pure, well…thrill, was it?
“I know how to defend myself.”
“As if you have to defend yourself against me.”
“You’re the one who threatened to kick down the door.”
“Sophie, please be reasonable. Open the door.”
As always, just a little too sure of his ability to convince her. There was that little thrill again. There was no point in his knowing what kind of power he wielded over her. That was the message hiding behind a locked door would give him.
Taking a deep breath, she moved to the door and threw it open.
He stood there, so beautiful and so beloved to her that she wanted to touch the now oh-so-familiar plains of his face.
She glanced down the full length of him, and then back up into his face. There was something there. He looked worn out, haggard.
“You’re wearing a kilt,” she pointed out to him.
“Aye,” he said.
“But you told me you only wear it for special occasions.”
“Aye,” he said again.
“Oh! Bringing the escapee from your protection back into custody is a special occasion?”
“They apprehended everyone in the ring two days ago. The danger to you is over.”
“That’s too bad. I’m learning self-defense. I was hoping for an opportunity to use it.”
“I hope you’re kidding.”
“About learning self-defense?”
“About being in danger so you have an opportunity to practice.”
Really? The way her heart was beating it felt as if she was in more danger than she had ever been in in her entire life.
“Then you just dropped by on your way back from accompanying the prince to a state dinner or something?”
“You know as well as I do the prince would not leave his princess right now.”
Faint recrimination there? Because she had left her friend?
“I had to go,” she said firmly. “How did you find out where I am? What have you done with my uncle? He would have never given my whereabouts away willingly.”
“He did. Willingly.”
Her heart dropped to the bottom of her stomach. “Is something wrong? Did something happen to Maddie? Or the baby? Is that why Edward won’t leave her right now? Is that why Kettle told you where I was?”
But that didn’t make sense. Kettle could have come and told her himself if something was wrong with Maddie.
“Everyone’s fine,” he said softly. “Except…”
His voice trailed away.
“Except who?” she implored him.
“Isn’t it obvious who?” he asked her softly.
She looked, again, at the weariness in his face, the haggardness.
“It’s you,” she said, and then even though she did not want to, she reached up and cupped his cheek in the palm of her hand. She felt him surrender into that touch.
“Aye, lass, it’s me. Are you going to leave me standing on the stoop all night?”
She stepped back from the door, and he walked by her, the heavy kilt swirling around his legs. It was enough to make a girl swoon!
“Have a seat,” she said to him, with a little more snap than was strictly necessary.
He did, and she took a chair at right angles to him.
Do not look at his knees, she ordered herself.
“What’s wrong, Lancaster?”
“I need to talk to you about those days at the cabin,” he said.
“Could we not?” she said. “Please? I totally got it when you were embarrassed by it in front of your men. I got it, Lancaster. I’m a slow learner but I finally figured it out. I’m needy. The thing you hate the most. It was probably more than evident after those days together that I would need you. The way a flower needs rain. Or a puppy needs love. Or a—”
He was staring at her, stunned. “You thought I was embarrassed about you?”
“Oh, sure. I understand it. Crazy American woman fawning over you in front of people. I mean it’s one thing to chase each other around in privacy, quite another to be chased when you have a reputation to uphold. When I was supposed to be your—what word do you guys use?—principal, and you broke the cardinal rule. You let it get personal. I can see that—”
“Be quiet,” he growled. “I can’t listen to one more second of this. You have it so wrong. So utterly and completely wrong. You are hurting my ears.”
“I have it wrong?”
I’m hurting your ears? The nerve! But something in his tormented features saved her from anger.
“I wasn’t embarrassed by you,” he said softly. “Not ever. I was embarrassed by myself. By my total loss of control.”
“Oh,” she said, folding her arms over her chest, “you have no idea how much better that makes me feel. That’s sarcasm, in case you missed it.”
“I took your honor,” he said, his voice low. “I compromised my own. That’s what I didn’t want my men to see. I didn’t want them drawing conclusions about you. About us.”
“Well, good, you seemed to have handled all that quite nicely. I feel I left Havenhurst with my reputation intact, and I have you to thank for that. I’m also learning to protect myself. Because I’m not ever going to rely on someone else to do that for me again.”
He glowered at her. “A man likes to protect a woman.”
“Too bad.”
He groaned. “Why are you making this so difficult?”
“I’m making things difficult? I didn’t show up on your doorstep in a sexy outfit. You showed up on mine. What is the occasion by the way? For the kilt?”
“You’re wrecking everything,” he said.
“I’m not.”
“I wore the kilt for the most special occasion of my entire life.” His voice went very low, a rasp. “I wore it to propose to you.”
She went very still. “Wh-what?”
“To propose. To ask you to marry me.”
“That seems to be going a little far just to protect my reputation. And your honor.”
“Do you have to be so bloody pigheaded! I’m not proposing to you because I want to protect your reputation. Or my honor. I’m proposing to you because I got it so wrong, chasing you around the cabin, treating you without respect. Something like this needs to be treated with respect.”
“Something like what?”
“Something like me falling in love with you. Something like you falling in love with me. That’s what really happened at the cabin.”
It felt as if a light was coming on in darkness. “That happened way, way before the cabin, Connal.”
“For me, too,” he admitted. “Probably from the first time I laid eyes on you and told myself, this is a lass I cannot have.”
Canna.
“I’m just afraid,” he said, his voice hoarse.
This man, who seemed so fearless, laying his most vulnerable possession before her. Showing her his heart and his deepest fear. Finally, finally, finally, laying down his shield and his sword.
“I’m afraid. Afraid that I failed so badly once before, and that I will fail again. That’s why I want to start over. That’s why I want to court you. I want to romance you, and cherish you, and take every step slowly, making sure I am moving in the right direction. That we are moving in the right direction.”
“I hope you aren’t planning on being completely chaste about this,” Sophie said. The lightness in her heart made it impossible not to tease him when he was being so darned serious, so intense.
His eyes darkened as he looked at her lips. “Maybe not completely.”
Then she could not wait any longer. She flew to him, into the arms that opened and then closed around her. She covered his face in kisses.
“Can I take that as a yes?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Then get off of me. I have to make it official.”
She left his lap and watched as he slid to the floor, and on one bended knee—making his kilt ride up enticingly—fished around for a ring box, found it, opened it.
“Sophie Kettle, will you marry me?”
It felt as though the stars winked on, one by one, against a dark night. It felt as if she was a balloon that had been deflated and now found air. It felt as if a world that had been black and white went to full color.
“Yes,” she whispered.
And he whooped and found his feet and gathered her in his arms and swung her around and around and around until the world was a rainbow swirl of nothing but love.
* * * * *