travel arrangements?”
She flushed. “Your...honeymoon.”
He gave her a look she couldn’t decipher. “I may have lost my bride at the altar, but I’m not completely inept. Seeing as I made the reservations, I will cancel them.”
Her hands twisted in her lap. “I’m just trying to help.”
“I’m sure you are. You are a singularly devoted secretary, always looking out for my best interests.”
She sucked in a breath at the biting sarcasm. “I’ve always done my best for you.”
“Does that include today?”
“What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means, Poppy? Or have you suddenly become exceptionally good at playing dumb?”
* * *
Dal wanted to throttle Poppy; he really did. She knew far more than she was letting on but she was determined to play her role in whatever scheme she and Sophie had concocted.
He was disgusted, and not just with them, but with himself. He’d always believed himself to be an excellent judge of character, but obviously he was wrong. Sophie and Poppy had both betrayed his trust.
He hated himself for being oblivious and gullible.
He hated that he’d allowed himself to be played the fool.
His father had always warned him not to trust a woman, and he’d always privately rolled his eyes, aware that his father had issues, but perhaps in this instance his father had been right.
Dal’s hand tightened on the steering wheel as he drove the short distance from Langston House to the private airport outside Winchester. There was very little traffic and the sky was blue, the weather warm without being hot. Perfect June day for a wedding. This morning everything had seemed perfect, too, until it became the stuff of nightmares.
He gripped the wheel harder, imagining the headlines in tomorrow’s papers. How the media loved society and scandal. The headlines were bound to be salacious.
Unlike Sophie, he hated being in the public eye, detesting everything to do with society. In his mind there was nothing worse than English society with its endless fascination of classes and aristocrats, and new versus old money.
He’d spent the past ten years trying to avoid scandal, and it infuriated him to be thrust into the limelight. The attention would be significant, and just thinking about having cameras or microphones thrust in his face made him want to punch something, and he hadn’t wanted to fight in years.
Dal had been a fighter growing up, so much so, that he’d nearly lost his place at Cambridge after a particularly nasty brawl. He hadn’t started the fight, but he’d ended it, and it hadn’t mattered to the deans or his father, that he’d fought to defend his mother’s name. To the powers that be, fighting was ungentlemanly, and Dal Grant, the future Earl of Langston, was expected to uphold his legacy, not tarnish it.
The school administrators had accepted his apology and pledge, but his father hadn’t been so easily appeased. His father had been upset for weeks after, and then as usual, his anger finally broke, and after the rage came the despair.
As a boy, Dal had dreaded the mood swings. As a young man, he’d found them intolerable. But he couldn’t walk away from his father. There was no one else to manage the earl, never mind the earldom, the estates and the income. Dal had to step up; he had to become the dutiful son, and he had, sacrificing his wants for his father’s mental stability, going so far to agree to marry the woman his father had picked out for him fifteen years ago.
Thank God his father wasn’t alive today. His father wouldn’t have handled today’s humiliation well. God only knows what he would have done, never mind when. But his father wasn’t present, which meant Dal could sort out this impossible situation without his father’s ranting.
And he would sort it out.
He knew exactly how he’d sort it out. Dal shot a narrowed glance in Poppy’s direction. She was convenient, tenderhearted and malleable, making her the easiest and fastest solution for his problem.
He knew she also had feelings for him, which should simplify the whole matter.
Dal tugged on his tie, loosening it, trying to imagine where they could go.
He needed to take her away, needed someplace private and remote, somewhere that no one would think to look. The Caribbean island he’d booked for the honeymoon was remote and private, but he’d never go there now. But remote was still desirable. Someplace that no one could get near them, or bother them...
Someplace where he could seduce Poppy. It shouldn’t take long. Just a few days and she’d acquiesce. But it had to be private, and cut off from the outside world.
Suddenly, Dal saw pink. Not the icy-pink of Poppy’s bridesmaid dress, but the warm, sun-kissed pink of the Mehkar summer palace tucked in the stark red Atlas Mountains... Kasbah Jolie.
He hadn’t thought about his mother’s desert palace in years and yet suddenly it was all he could see. It was private and remote, the sprawling, rose-tinted villa nestled on a huge, private estate, between sparkling blue-tiled pools and exquisite gardens fragrant with roses and lavender, mint and thyme.
The spectacular estate was a two-hour drive from the nearest airport, and four hours from the capital city of Gila. It took time to reach this hidden gem secreted in the rugged Atlas Mountains, the estate carved from a mountain peak with breathtaking views of mountains, and a dark blue river snaking through the fertile green valley far below.
He hadn’t been back since he was an eleven-year-old boy, and he hadn’t thought he’d ever want to return, certain it would be too painful, but suddenly he was tempted, seriously tempted, to head east. It was his land, his estate, after all. Where better to seduce his secretary, and make her his bride?
The jet sat fueled and waiting for him at this very moment at the private airfield, complete with a flight crew and approved flight plan. If he wanted to go to Mehkar, the staff would need to file a new flight plan, but that wasn’t a huge ordeal.
Once upon a time, Mehkar had been as much his home as England. Once upon a time, he’d preferred Mehkar to anyplace else. The only negative he could think of would be creating false hope in his grandfather. His grandfather had waited patiently all these years for Dal to return, and Dal hated to disappoint his grandfather but Dal wasn’t returning for good.
He’d have to send word to his grandfather so the king wouldn’t be caught off guard, but this wasn’t a homecoming for Dal. It was merely a chance to buy him time while he decided how he’d handle his search for a new bride.
POPPY CHEWED THE inside of her lip as the sports car approached the airstrip outside Winchester.
She could see the sleek, white jet with the navy and burgundy pinstripes on the tarmac. It was fueled and staffed, waiting for the bride and groom to go to their Caribbean island for an extended honeymoon.
She’d
