would have jumped on it by the second ring. With the blow dryer running, Gwen had barely heard it at all.
“He’s on his way up now?” she asked, tucking the receiver under her chin to snatch up her beige suit skirt. “Where exactly is he?”
The formal male voice on the other end of the line informed her that Admiral Monteque had just passed through the vestibule and turned into the queen’s hallway. He would be at the doors of the queen’s apartments in less than a minute.
Gwen’s heart felt as if it were beating out of her chest as she hurried to her wardrobe and stuffed her feet into a pair of taupe leather pumps. The only reason she could imagine him needing to see the queen—and at such an hour—was because something had happened with Prince Owen.
In her years of service to the queen, Gwen had always preferred two-piece suits because they were neat, comfortable and layers could be added or dispensed with beneath the jacket, depending on the season. There would be no layers today. Grabbing the beige silk jacket that matched her skirt, she shoved her arms into the sleeves, pushed back her freshly dried hair and rushed through the doorway beside her small Italian marble fireplace, zipping her skirt as she hurried down the narrow staircase that led directly to the queen’s drawing room.
Stepping through the narrow door by Mrs. Ferth’s desk, she closed it behind her and hurried soundlessly across the pale butters and creams of the carpet.
She was buttoning her jacket over her bra when she reached for the long gold handle and opened the carved door.
The red-jacketed guard beside it was already at attention. But it was the tall, powerfully built man in the navy uniform who commanded her attention as she stepped back.
Feeling totally thrown together, she watched the admiral close the door, her anxious eyes seeking his.
“Is it news of the prince?”
Harrison opened his mouth and felt his breath snag halfway to his lungs. Her usually restrained hair tumbled around her face and shoulders in a shimmering fall of platinum and honey. The thick, dark lashes of her sapphire eyes were as unadorned as her flawless skin. She smelled of soap, shampoo and fresh powder.
The combination sent something sharp and hot straight to his groin.
“I’m afraid not,” he murmured, the tightness gripping his body slipping into his voice.
An odd sense of regret licked through him as he watched the light of hope slip from her eyes.
Before he could question it, before he could stand there staring at her any longer, he pulled the newspaper he carried from beneath his arm. “It’s about the morning paper. Has Her Majesty seen it?”
Aware of the edge in his voice, Gwen took a step back and blinked at the shaving nick in his chin. “The paper?” she repeated, thinking that little wound terribly human for someone who seemed to have a rock for a heart. “She was up most of the night. Worried about Prince Owen,” she explained, in case that might not have occurred to him. The queen had called her at midnight to come sit with her. Gwen hadn’t gone to bed herself until after two. “I wasn’t even going to order up her tea for at least another hour.”
He took her response as a no and tried to ignore how soft her mouth looked without the pale-peach lipstick she’d worn yesterday. He’d obviously caught her dressing. Something she hadn’t quite managed to fully accomplish. She was without makeup, which made her look temptingly touchable. She hadn’t had time to restrain her hair, which made her look even more so. She wore no necklace, no earrings—and she’d missed the top button of her jacket.
Trying to ignore the latter, he held out the paper.
She took it from him, looking faintly puzzled at its importance.
When she read the headline, her flawless skin lost a hint of the natural peach that blushed her cheeks.
Utter disbelief washed her delicate features as she looked back up. “Is this true? It can’t be,” she concluded, before he could respond. “How is this possible?”
“The part about Prince Broderick isn’t true,” he assured her, wishing she weren’t standing so close. Standing in front of her as he was, towering over her, he could see a small strip of her champagne-colored bra. The scalloped lace lay taut against the firm swell of her breast. A small bow centered with what looked like a tiny pearl rested at the base of her cleavage. “He isn’t in power. The queen is. As for the rest of it, it’s quite accurate.”
Incredulity and concern turned her voice to nearly a whisper. “The king is in a coma? From what? And why wasn’t Her Majesty notified last night?”
He could practically see the wheels spinning in her mind. But whatever else she was about to say seemed to vanish like woodsmoke in a coastal wind, when he reached over and slipped his fingers beneath the lapel of her jacket to fasten the button himself.
The glimpse of her breast was entirely too tantalizing. But the feel of that soft swell beneath his knuckles nearly made his mind go blank.
His glance jerked to hers, their eyes colliding, his fingers still brushing her skin. In the space of a heartbeat, the air turned as heavy as the atmosphere on the island when clouds rolled in from the sea with a blast of wind, thunder and jagged bolts of lightning. Electricity snapped. Her breath stalled.
“It was distracting,” he muttered, and finished what he’d started by sliding the oyster-colored disk into place.
He could swear he felt her heart slam against her breastbone. He knew his own wasn’t beating too steadily. But as he slowly pulled back and let his hand fall, his only thought was that he couldn’t believe what he’d done. He never took liberties with a woman who hadn’t made it clear that she wanted his touch. And this woman, the queen’s best friend and lady-in-waiting, had never given him reason to think anything other than how glad she would be to see him leave.
He had no idea what she was thinking at the moment, however. Or what she was about to do. She took a step back, her hair draping forward to hide the hint of heat in her cheeks as she glanced at the paper she still held.
“It says he has encephalitis,” she murmured, focusing on the one word that jumped out as her lungs began to function again. The headlines had shaken her, but she felt rattled beyond belief by his touch. It felt as if he’d branded her. The feel of his knuckles still burned her flesh. More disconcerting still had been the way that initial jolt of heat had shot straight to her toes.
Duty demanded her concentration. Latching on to it, she did her best to ignore her scrambled senses and the rather uncertain way Harrison was watching her. “I must tell Her Majesty about the king.”
“She already knows. She was told days ago,” he said, confusing her further still.
“But I saw him in the garden just yesterday.”
“We had tried to keep the king’s condition from the public,” he said, thinking the queen could explain later, “but Her Majesty needs to be informed that the public now knows. There will be a press conference within the next couple of hours.”
The queen had known? Gwen thought—only to suddenly realize why Her Majesty had seemed so ambivalent about her duties of late.
“Of course,” she murmured, wishing her friend had confided in her,
