intruders who crossed your path?”
Her eyes danced. “Exactly.”
Another woman, he thought, might have taken insult just now. While he had his doubts about the kind of king Reginald would ultimately make, he was beginning to feel that at least Silvershire’s future queen was a woman who did not take herself too seriously. That spoke of a magnanimous ruler.
He laughed softly under his breath. “Judging from the way that ended up, I’d say you need a little more training.”
“I’ll work on it.”
They had come to a split in the hallway. Her rooms were on the far end at the right. The guest quarters were in the opposite direction, on another floor. It wouldn’t seem proper for her to walk him to his room, even though she found herself wanting to. Rules, always rules, she thought impatiently, chafing inwardly.
She forced a smile to her lips. “I’ll have someone show you to your quarters.”
“No need. I’ve already settled in.” Russell saw the protest rising to her lips and knew just what she was going to say. “I assumed that I would be staying in the same quarters I occupied the last time I was here.”
What had been adequate for the boy was not so for the man. She was surprised that he wouldn’t know that. “Actually, my father had left instructions for a suite of rooms to be prepared for you.”
But Russell shook his head. “The room I’m in will do just fine. I don’t need a suite of rooms,” he told her. “After all, I’m only going to be here long enough for you to gather together your entourage.” Since she’d been forewarned, he assumed that would only take her perhaps a day.
“My entourage,” she echoed. The term made her want to laugh as she imagined traveling about with an entire tribe of ladies-in-waiting trailing after her. The very idea made her feel trapped, hemmed in. And she was experiencing enough of that already without adding to it.
“You mean Madeline.” Madeline Carlyle was the Duke of Forsythe’s youngest daughter. With fiery red hair and a fiery spirit to match, Madeline was the perfect companion in her opinion. Madeline could always be counted on to tell her the truth.
Russell looked at her, mildly surprised. “Madeline? Just the one companion?”
“Just the one.”
Russell paused to regard her with deepening interest. Princess Amelia was certainly different from the man she was betrothed to, he thought. Reginald never went anywhere without at least a dozen people in tow. The prince had a hunger for an accommodating, accepting audience observing his every move.
“What about a bodyguard?”
Unconsciously rocking forward on her toes, Amelia raised her eyes to his, unaware of how terribly appealing she looked. “I expect that would be you.”
There was something about the way she looked at him that stirred things deep within him. It made him want to stand in the way of an oncoming bus just to protect her.
It also made him want to tell her to turn and flee before it was too late. Before Reginald had an opportunity to defile her.
But he couldn’t say that. Couldn’t warn her in any way. His duty, first and foremost, was to his king, to his country and to his prince. Not to a princess from another kingdom. The fact that his duty was elsewhere stuck in his throat.
After a beat he finally replied quietly, “That would be me. I suppose that means there won’t be much ‘gathering’ involved.”
“I suppose not.”
Amelia tried not to think of what she was saying. Of what her words actually meant. That she was leaving Gastonia, leaving everything she loved for a man she didn’t. For a man she didn’t even like.
With just the faintest inclination of his head, Russell bowed. It was time to take his leave before he forgot himself and misspoke. “Until the morning, then.”
“Until the morning,” she echoed.
She stood there for a long moment, watching the man who had become the Duke of Carrington, who would always be the boy who reveled in ambushing her with water balloons and bugs, walk down the hall. Away from her.
She didn’t know what to do with the emptiness inside.
“We can’t leave.”
Those were the first words Amelia uttered in greeting him the following morning as she swept into the dining room. Rather than take his breakfast in the formal dining room, Russell had chosen to take his first meal in Gastonia in the palace’s informal dining room, the one that only sat twenty people instead of fifty.
Preoccupied with his thoughts, with disturbing dreams that all centered around Amelia and the marriage that was to be, Russell hadn’t even heard her enter. He rose quickly to his feet now in acknowledgment of her presence. They might be friends of a sort, but there were traditions to honor and he had been trained long and well in them.
Taking a seat, Amelia waved for him to sit down again. Since the king had yet to arrive at the palace, she sat at the head of the table. Russell was to her right. Having him there made the room seem oddly intimate, despite its size.
Instead of exchanging obligatory small talk, Russell picked up the conversation she’d started up as she’d entered the room. “By leave, are you referring to leaving the palace, Princess?”
“No, the country,” she corrected.
He looked confused. And sweetly adorable. Did he accompany Reginald when the prince made his endless rounds at the various clubs where they knew him by sight rather than reputation? Was Russell just as eager as the prince to have women pour themselves all over him?
That’s not supposed to matter, she reminded herself sternly.
But she went on wondering.
“Madeline is ill,” she explained, “and I won’t leave without her.”
Amelia’s position seemed reasonable enough to him, seeing as his assignment had been to bring back the princess and “her entourage.” Curiosity prompted him to ask, “What’s wrong with her?”
“Madeline has always had a passion for exotic foods.” She spread the gleaming white linen napkin on her lap. “Sometimes that’s not such a good thing.” Madeline was up for anything; when they were children, Madeline was the one who could be counted on to swallow a bug whole to discover what it tasted like. “Something she ate yesterday didn’t agree with her. From what she told me, she’d been up all night, reacquainting her knees with the tile on her bathroom floor. The doctor gave her something. Depending on how she feels, she might not be able to travel for at least two, perhaps three days.” She watched his expression for signs of irritation.
But Russell took it in stride and nodded his head. “I’ll inform King Weston to have the tubas put in storage for a few days,” he deadpanned.
“Tubas?”
The somber expression vanished as he flashed a grin. She caught herself thinking that he had a delicious smile. “You didn’t think you could enter Silvershire
