baby-faced lieutenant in the Royal Guard’s red-jacketed uniform and red beret jerked his rifle to parade rest and snapped a salute. “Admiral.”
“Lieutenant,” Harrison returned, and walked past the door the soldier held for him.
The queen’s drawing room was as ornate as the rest of the palace: ceilings and cornices were coffered and curved; walls were covered with hand-carved plaster and gilded wainscoting; the marble fireplace was graced by marble columns. Except, here rich colors of royalty gave way to frankly feminine shades of cream and yellow. Other than the pale velvet sofa framed by a sheer-curtained window, the furniture was all dainty chairs and chaises covered in silk damask and totally unsuitable for use by any male with muscle on his bones.
The secretary’s desk, tucked against a far wall, was unoccupied. A guard had called ahead, so they’d known he was coming. The queen’s personal secretary, however, the gray-haired and very proper Mrs. Ferth, was nowhere to be seen.
Impatient at the thought of having to wait for the woman to announce him, he started back for the guard. He’d barely turned when the tall, carved doubled doors at the far side of the room swung inward. A slender woman in a pale-pink wool suit, her gleaming blond hair restrained in a tight twist, stepped out and closed the doors behind her.
Impatience turned to an inward groan.
No one saw the queen without going through her secretary or her lady-in-waiting. With the secretary obviously unavailable, that left him stuck with the woman he’d come to think of as the ice maiden, Lady Gwendolyn Corbin.
“Lady Corbin,” he said, acknowledging her with a nod of his dark head. He knew there were those who found the woman walking toward him quite charming. Where they got that impression was beyond him. From the cool formality she’d always exhibited around him—on the rare occasions he had been around her—Lady Gwen had struck him as possessing about as much warmth as the marble statues in the garden.
“I must speak with Her Majesty.”
“She’s coming. Can you tell me what’s going on?” With her hands clasped tightly enough to whiten her knuckles, she moved closer, her blue eyes searching his. “Sir Selwyn would say only that Prince Owen had been kidnapped and that the queen is to remain in her rooms. Do you know what happened? Is he hurt?”
Gwen anxiously searched the ruggedly carved features of the tall, powerfully built man before her. Harrison Monteque had always reminded her of a Scottish warlord, that breed of male who had defended his highlands with nothing but brute force and a sword of hammered steel. The hard angles and planes of his face were framed with deep-auburn hair cut close, she assumed, to tame any hint of curl rather than to meet military code. His eyes, the amber brown of a panther’s, held hers with disconcerting ease.
He was over six feet of commanding, demanding male in an admiral’s uniform. But even without the gold braid trimming his cuffs and epaulets, the five stars denoting his rank and the slew of ribbons decorating his chest, his authority was unmistakable. Power radiated from him like heat.
She had never felt comfortable around the man, never cared for his iron-fisted methods and his overbearing manner. Yet, as she stood waiting for him to shed light on the awful events of the morning, she wouldn’t have cared if he’d marched in with trumpets and his troops, as long as he could tell her what was happening. Her concern for the royal family and her friend the queen totally overrode everything else.
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that.”
“Because you don’t know? Or because you can’t say?”
Harrison heard no challenge in the question. Only disquiet and a hint of totally unexpected vulnerability.
“Because what I have is only for the queen.”
“Can you at least tell me if the news is positive?”
He had never seen her look at him so openly before. Without the polite-but-cool facade she usually wore around him, he couldn’t help but notice the flecks of turquoise in her lake-blue eyes, the delicate curve of her cheek, the soft part of her lovely mouth.
He’d never before noticed the poreless quality of her skin, or the intriguing, tantalizing fullness of her bottom lip.
He noticed now—along with a distinct and unmistakable pull low in his groin when he caught a hint of the surpassingly erotic perfume she wore.
Caught completely off guard by her, unaccustomed to being caught off guard by much of anything, he banished his body’s betraying reactions beneath military bearing and watched her openness fade.
“I’m sorry,” he said, though the tightness in his voice hardly made him sound it. “I really must speak with the queen.” Wishing she wasn’t standing so close, he nodded over her shoulder. “If you would please get her for me?”
“No need,” came the cultured tones of Queen Marissa’s voice. “I’m here.”
As Gwen had done moments ago, the queen of Penwyck stepped through the double doors that led from her salon and bedchamber. A tall, slender woman of grace and breeding, her dark hair was knotted at her nape and held with a filigreed gold clasp. Her cashmere slacks and silk blouse were as flawless as the diamonds on her fingers and the thick gold chain draped around her neck.
Gwen dropped a quick, automatic curtsy. Her Majesty’s striking features bore the strain of the morning as she acknowledged her with a nod and continued toward the man dominating the decidedly feminine room.
Harrison’s air of command suggested that he deferred to no one. Yet he immediately offered a respectful and amazingly gallant bow.
“Admiral Monteque.” Lifting her hand to indicate that he should rise, she stopped by a small chair beneath a surprisingly casual portrait of the royal family. In it, she and King Morgan were in hunting clothes, their five children surrounding them with their horses. “Please, let’s dispense with formalities. What can you tell me of my son?”
His incisive glance cut toward the woman quietly waiting ten feet away. “May I speak with you alone, Your Majesty?”
“I would prefer that Lady Gwendolyn stay.”
“This is a matter of security, Your Majesty.”
“We all realize that, Admiral,” she replied, too tense to sit, too refined to pace. “Please, what do you know of Owen? I heard a guard say that his room has been searched. There was a struggle.” Her hand clutched the back of the chair as she took a deep breath. “Was there any sign of…violence?”
“There was no blood,” he replied, fairly certain that was what she was asking. “At least none that was immediately visible. We have forensics people in there now.”
“Doing what?”
“Dusting for prints. Searching for physical evidence. Royal Intelligence is on top of it.”
“But what are they doing to find him?”
“What they’re doing right now will help find him,” he explained, taking her insistence as a merciful sign that she was holding her own. “They need clues to know where to start.” He paused. “The best one we have right now was in the ransom note.”
It was against
