be married. This morning.”
He offered his hand.
She ignored it, surging forward on tiptoe instead, reaching up to take his shoulders, pulling him down and brushing the sweetest, too-swift kiss across his mouth. His senses flooded with the scent of her and her lips were infinitely soft. Warm.
He could have so easily broken free of her delicate hold, could have stepped back. But he didn’t.
He was captured. Disarmed. An all-too-willing prisoner.
Unbidden images flashed through his mind: Lili as a little girl, all dressed up as a fairy princess in a gossamer froth of purple and green, a foil crown on her head, a handmade wand in her hand. She wore wings, wire wings covered in transparent gauze. There was to be a play, wasn’t there, one of those plays she and his sisters were always putting on? He remembered her out by one of the fountains in the palace gardens, all dressed up to play a fairy princess, arms outstretched, turning in circles, giggling with happiness, her golden head tipped back, her face turned up to the sun.
The little-girl Lili faded away.
He saw her on that fateful morning in April, her hair flowing over his hands, her eyes dazed, dreamy. He saw the perfect curve of her hip, the concave temptation of her belly. The golden curls between her long, slim thighs. Her skin that was pale as milk, only faintly stained with pink.
Now, in the final hours of darkness on the morning they would marry, he had to steel himself to keep from reaching out, drawing her close, deepening that light, quick brush of a kiss.
Blessedly, within a few seconds, she let him go. “Good night, Alex,” she told him softly.
And then she turned and left him there, holding his empty glass and feeling bereft when he should have been grateful that she had gone.
Chapter Three
Lili’s wedding gown wasn’t white. It wasn’t even a gown, really. It was a very ladylike dress by Valentino, a tea-length dress of painted silk, dotted with tiny sprays of pale flowers on a ground of purple so dark it might have been midnight blue. Her suede shoes were deep violet, with ankle straps and very high heels. She smoothed her acres of hair into a simple twist and wore crystal Pavé earrings.
At a quarter of nine, she stood before the cheval glass in her palace guest apartment, ready to say her vows.
One of her attendants entered. “His Majesty is here.”
She greeted him in the sitting room. “Papa.”
He hesitated, the way he always did after he’d lost his wild Alagonian temper. He looked so hopeful and abashed. “Forgive me?”
“Always.”
He came to her and enfolded her in his lean arms, holding her close as he used to do so often when she was a child. When he took her by the shoulders and stepped away a little, he gazed at her admiringly. “You are a beauty, just like your mother.” There was sadness in his eyes when he spoke of his lost queen. “She looked forward so eagerly to your wedding day.”
Lili kept her smile in place, though her father’s image blurred a little to her misty eyes. “I feel she is watching over us, blessing us. I do, Papa.”
He touched her cheek, laid his hand lightly against her upswept hair. “She always planned a large, royal wedding for you, a wedding of state, a thing of pomp and glory, at D’Alagon.” D’Alagon was the Alagonian royal palace. It stood proudly on a hill above the capital city and port of Salvia. “I hope you’re not too disappointed, my little love, to have your wedding in secret, to wear a day dress, to marry here in Montedoro rather than at home.”
She leaned close to him and whispered in his ear, “It’s never the wedding, Papa. You know that. It’s the marriage that matters.”
His green eyes turned dark and stormy and a muscle twitched in his square jaw. “He’d better treat you well or I’ll have his head on a pike.”
She straightened his collar. “Papa, stop it. Alex is … troubled. But he’s a good man at heart.” As she said the words, she took comfort from realizing she believed them.
Her father held her close again. “Be happy, my little love.”
She thought of her groom again, of his shadowed eyes, his brusque, harsh ways. To be happy with Alex wasn’t going to be easy. Still, she promised her father, “I will, Papa. Happiness is something one chooses. And I do choose it. Gratefully.”
Lili married Alex at 10:00 a.m. in the St. Catherine of Siena Chapel at the palace. A trusted palace priest performed the ceremony. In attendance were only their immediate family members and several stone-faced, silent members of Alex’s Covert Command Unit. Alex’s men were assigned to guard the entrances and make certain that no one outside saw what was taking place within.
Later, a low-key family luncheon was held in the sovereign’s private apartment. Everyone seemed subdued, Lili thought. Even her usually loquacious father was quiet. Thoughtful.
Lili was content enough with her wedding day. The main thing was that she and Alex had reached a workable agreement in the hours before dawn. She had hopes that they might forge a real union as time went by. He stayed at her side through the meal. His eyes were guarded, his words few.
But then, he’d always been the quiet one, the scholar of the family, as serious and grim as his twin Damien was lighthearted and full of fun. From early childhood, Alex had wanted to be a writer, a journalist. He and Damien got their degrees from America, at Princeton, as their older brothers Max and Rule had done before them. Damien barely got through, but Alex was at the head of his class. He published early, a number of scholarly articles on Montedoran history, on the future of his people in the modern world.
Then he’d decided he wanted to write about Afghanistan. His American friend, Devon Lucas, the one who died while they were prisoners there, had somehow been involved in that decision. The story, at least as it had been told to Lili, was muddy at best. Three weeks into his stay in Afghanistan, Alex and his friend had vanished without a trace. He was gone for so long. They all assumed that both men must have died. But somehow, Alex had survived and made it home. And when he returned, the intense, brooding scholar had been replaced by a hardened warrior.
After the luncheon, Alex went off to work. She wasn’t sure exactly what he did, but the activity occurred in the training yard not far from the palace and no doubt involved much sweating and displays of manly strength. Lili spent a couple of hours with her new sisters-in-law in Rule and Sydney’s apartment. Sydney, as it turned out, was having a baby, too. She and Lili were both due in January. They agreed that the birth of a child was the perfect way to celebrate the New Year.
When Lili left the others, she went to change into a pale blue silk skirt and matching jacket. She met Alex, now dressed in a fine designer suit, in the private office of Her Sovereign Highness. For an hour, they received instructions and coaching from the palace press secretary.
And then, at five that afternoon, they were the star attraction at a press conference in the Blue Room of the State Apartments—the State Apartments being the official wing of the palace where public visits and activities took place. They sat at a long, red-clothed table flanked by her father on one side and Adrienne and Evan on the other. They faced row upon row of chairs filled with press people. There were cameras and microphones
