her teeth. “The queen and I have been planning the state dinner to celebrate its signing for the past two months. Everyone from the royal printers to the kitchen staff knows about it.”
“I’m not talking about the alliance.”
“Then what are we talking about? The alliance is what I asked you not to bother Her Majesty with.”
He caught a hint of her perfume again. The scent was subtle, warm. Like the air on a tropical island when flowers scented the sensuous breeze.
Distracted, annoyed because he wasn’t a man who distracted easily, he took a step closer—for no reason other than to prove she had no real effect on him at all.
“We’re talking about matters to which even the king’s council isn’t privy,” he informed her, ignoring the unwanted tingle of heat low in his gut. “But just so you’ll have some idea of what is going on, a special team will be arriving any minute to tap in to Her Majesty’s telephone lines. It’s possible that Prince Owen’s captors have her personal phone number and will try to make contact that way. It’s no secret how close she is to her children.”
His voice dropped like a rock over Penwyck’s sheer cliffs. “They will also be tapping the telephone in your apartment,” he informed her, failing to mention that telephone communications of all staff with access to the royal residence would be monitored. “Where are your rooms?”
A flicker of hesitation passed through her eyes. “Directly upstairs.”
“Then, I imagine they’ll do yours right after they’re finished here. One never truly knows who one can trust.”
He was baiting her. Deliberately. Gwen caught the odd glint in Harrison’s eyes as he waited for her reaction. Refusing to give him the satisfaction, she bit her tongue, swearing she almost perforated it in the moments before he released his visual hold and pulled open the door.
An instant later he was striding out down the long, wide hall, guards jerking to attention as he passed.
The guard near Gwen remained stiffly still, his eyes straight ahead, his rifle at his side. Not until she started to close the door did he reshoulder the weapon in three motions as quick as they were precise.
As he did, Gwen noticed the black holster resting against the red wool of his jacket. He was also wearing a side arm.
It had been ten years since she’d seen armed guards inside the private residence. Normally they kept posts only at exterior doors.
An old sense of loss, of anger, rose inside her. Uneasily, she pushed it right back down. She didn’t want to think about the events that had last required such tight security. Even though there never had been a sense of closure about them for her—or for her daughter—they were over and done with. They also had no part at all in what was going on now.
Reminding herself of that, she let the latch click quietly into place and pressed her hand to her stomach. She would think only of the present. Of this moment. And at that moment, she could still feel an odd, lingering heat where Harrison’s fingers had gripped hers when he’d so abruptly moved her hand. Preferring to ignore the sensation, she drew a breath of air that still smelled faintly of citrus and something distinctly, boldly male.
His aftershave.
Even when he was no longer physically present, the man had the power to unnerve.
Not wanting to think about him, either, Gwen headed for the desk, thinking about him, anyway.
She’d had little occasion over the years to directly encounter the admiral, but she could swear that, on the rare occasions they did meet, he made a point of provoking her. She had no idea why that was. Nor was she going to waste energy trying to figure out his warped power-hungry psyche. She knew only that he was reputed to be frighteningly intelligent, obsessed with his job and position and impossible for any woman to land.
Not that one would want him, she thought, heading for Mrs. Ferth’s painfully neat desk. The man possessed the sensitivity of stone.
There had been no blood. At least none that was immediately visible, he’d said, oblivious to the mental pictures such doubt would put in a mother’s mind.
She couldn’t believe the blunt way he’d responded to the queen’s request for information about her son. She couldn’t believe, either, that he would burden the queen about the alliance. Not that the queen wouldn’t be able to handle matters of state. The woman was enormously bright, well-read and far more politically astute than His Majesty tended to realize, or admit. It was just that King Morgan, though an eminently kind and wise monarch, wasn’t the most liberated ruler in the western hemisphere. To his royal mind, politics was man’s work. His queen was to tend their children and the plethora of women’s duties that kept Penwyckian arts, charities and hospitality the envy of the civilized world.
She had the feeling the admiral was just as narrow.
Frowning at how he invaded her thoughts, she automatically picked up a stack of lists near the queen’s personal calendar.
She had planned to check the silver services for the state dinner with the chef’s captain that morning, and to meet with the royal sommelier about the wine, provided that she had been able to get a decision out of the queen. The chef had made his recommendations, but he needed Her Majesty’s approval to serve the Margaux with the fois gras, rather than hold it for the main course of filet with truffles. Aside from the queen’s uncharacteristic indecision, there was the matter of champagne. It was nonexistent.
The cellar had been depleted of champagne last month due to Princess Meredith’s hastily planned and executed nuptials, and the order of Dom Perignon had yet to be received. Monsieur Pomier, the sommelier, lost sleep each night those dark-green bottles were being agitated by drivers and deliverymen and not resting properly in his cellar.
Returning the lists to the desk, Gwen stepped back. Because many of the elements for the dinner had been borrowed for the wedding, she had scrambled to redesign seating arrangements, floral displays, the menu, the music. But she felt none of the energy, or the urgency, that had sustained her for the past weeks.
What she felt was concern. Even before the horrible, unbelievable news of the prince’s kidnapping, the queen’s manner had seemed oddly withdrawn. Over the past week she had also become totally apathetic about the preparations for the dinner. It wasn’t like her to not care about such an important function. Her fingerprints were usually all over everything, from the choice of silver to be used to the color of ink on the place cards. But lately Marissa couldn’t have cared less about such details.
The queen had dismissed her own lack of enthusiasm as postwedding letdown following the frantic preparations for the royal wedding. Gwen wanted to believe that was all that was wrong, but she’d known the queen too many years not to feel that something more was going on.
When she’d asked, Marissa had insisted there wasn’t—and spent most of the past several days avoiding her by going for long walks. Alone.
Knowing that the woman didn’t need to be alone just then, she headed for the door of the salon. It didn’t matter at the moment why the queen had been acting so strangely. The dinner didn’t matter, either. With the prince missing, it would undoubtedly be postponed, anyway. All she really cared about was Prince Owen.
For his sake and the sake of his mother, she hoped desperately that he hadn’t been harmed.
She
