Buch lesen: «The Marquis And The Mother-To-Be»

Chapter One

Eduard de Marigny, Marquis of Merrisand, wondered if he could recognize the terrain well enough to set the helicopter down on the landing pad behind Tiga Falls Lodge. Over two years had passed since his last visit, and he hadn’t piloted his own chopper then. The estate had belonged to his uncle, Prince Henry, and they had driven in a royal cavalcade from Perla, capital city of Valmont Province, a hundred and sixty miles away by road.

Strange to think of the house belonging to him now, Eduard thought, looking down at the rambling timber building nestled in the greenery. Eduard couldn’t honestly say he missed old Prince Henry, who had ruled the province with an iron hand. Eduard’s cousin, Josquin, had succeeded Henry as Crown Regent until the heir, Prince Christophe, came of age. Josquin managed to do an excellent job of running the province while being far easier to get along with than Henry had been.

Still, Henry had kept their branch of the royal family on its toes, insisting that titles and protocol were strictly observed. He had approved of his nephew joining the Carramer Royal Navy, especially when Eduard had gained his commission, but the old prince had disapproved of the informality Eduard permitted among the men under his command.

Eduard wondered what Henry would have made of the Australians he’d met during the last few months while he was seconded to the Australian Navy, on exercises off the coast of Queensland. On duty, military protocol had been observed, but off duty, he had been Ed, or “your lordship” when the Australians wanted to poke fun at him, which had been often.

Now he was home for a few weeks at least, he intended to spend his accumulated leave at the lodge, assessing his future. His brother, Mathiaz, had offered him a government position, but Eduard didn’t see himself as the administrative type. Tiga Falls had beckoned and with it, some serious decision-making to be done.

He spiraled in on the position of the landing pad, almost lost among the trees from this height, but gradually he made it out behind the lodge. A crosswind buffeted the small craft, so Eduard orbited until he was sure of a safe landing, then took her in.

The helicopter settled gently, and Eduard stayed in the pilot’s seat until the rotors stopped spinning. He half expected Henry’s staff to rush out to meet him, but they had either retired or taken up other positions with the family when the lodge was closed up after Henry became ill. Mathiaz had offered to send staff to open things up, but Eduard preferred to take care of himself for the time being, having acquired the habit in the navy.

“Does the word security mean anything to you?” his brother had asked pointedly.

“I didn’t have minders in the navy. I don’t need them at the lodge.”

Mathiaz hadn’t liked Eduard going off into the wilderness without at least one member of the Royal Protection Detail in attendance, but he hadn’t insisted. Eduard looked forward to the solitude, having had little enough of it in his life, either as a member of the royal family or in the military.

He hefted his duffel bag over his shoulder and climbed out of the helicopter, looking around with satisfaction. Henry couldn’t have left him anything that pleased him more. He decided to go inside and look around first. There was plenty of time to bring the rest of his stuff in later.

The key he tried to insert into the front-door lock didn’t fit. He frowned, trying some of the other keys. None of them worked. With a snort of annoyance, he walked around to the kitchen door, coming up short at the sight of a car parked behind the house. Had Mathiaz sent someone anyway?

On closer inspection, Eduard found the vehicle unlocked. It was a few years old and looked barely road-worthy. The only clue to the driver’s identity was a straw sun hat trimmed with silk flowers lying on the front seat. Curious.

The key he tried in the kitchen-door lock didn’t work either. Experimentally, he turned the handle and to his surprise, the door swung open. What was going on here?

He had expected the place to smell musty after being unused for more than two years, but the air was surprisingly fresh. If he hadn’t known better, he would swear he could smell baking. Just as well he didn’t believe in ghosts, because the place was starting to seem haunted.

The ghost was young and female, he decided, as he ducked under a row of lacy undergarments hanging from an improvised line in the kitchen. Evidently she hadn’t gotten around to haunting the lodge’s laundry yet.

The kitchen was vast, as befitted the size of the lodge. He saw no sign of the ghost herself, but evidence of her presence was everywhere, not only in the line of laundry, but also in the washed plates and cup neatly stacked beside the sink.

He left his bag in the kitchen and made his way along the gallery hallway to the bedroom wings. This part of the lodge was also occupied, he found to his annoyance. The novelty was fast wearing off, as he saw that someone had made herself at home in the room he usually preferred. It looked out onto the distant hills, although the view was obscured by overgrown trees now. He planned to attack them while he was here.

Evidently his ghost liked the room for the same reason he did, because the drapes were drawn right back and the window was open, letting a ginger-scented breeze into the room. Whoever his ghost was, she was tidy, and had good taste in bedrooms, although she was fairly lax when it came to security.

He froze as a hard cylindrical object bored into the small of his back and a female voice said, “Don’t move. I have a gun and I know how to use it.”

Returning to the lodge after her walk, Carissa Day heard the helicopter before she saw it. She watched it swoop low then disappear behind the tree line, heading toward the township of Tricot on the other side of the river. She wondered what had brought it here.

She hoped there wasn’t a medical emergency in the town. When she had made an appointment with the local doctor soon after she arrived, he had explained that urgent medical cases had to be flown to the hospital in Casmira, some fifty miles south. He had plainly disapproved of a foreigner taking up residence so far from help when she was pregnant.

She had told him that apart from being plagued by morning sickness, which he’d assured her would pass as her pregnancy progressed, she was fine.

“Is your husband joining you?” he had asked.

She had taken a firm hold of her temper before saying, “No.”

To his credit the doctor hadn’t pressed the issue and she hadn’t explained further. This was her baby and no one else’s. Now they had the lodge as a home and future source of income, they had everything they needed.

She stopped and stretched, pressing both hands into the small of her back. She had assigned herself a daily walk partly for exercise but mostly because she was in love with the lush rain-forest countryside surrounding her new home, and wanted to explore every inch of it while she still could.

Now the helicopter rotors had stopped beating, she could hear only birdsong and the whisper of leaves. Perfect peace. Her eyes misted in appreciation of the beauty around her.

A fragment of Yeats came into her mind: “Was there on earth a place so dear…” She might have been born in Australia but she loved Carramer with a fierceness that surprised her at times. Her baby was going to love it, too. She couldn’t imagine a more healthy, nurturing environment in which to bring a child into the world than right here.

She was determined to do better as a sole parent than her father had done. Graeme Day had been too preoccupied with the demands of diplomatic life to accommodate his children’s emotional needs. Their father had treated her and Jeffrey like miniature adults, expecting them to adapt to the different places they were dropped into, as easily as he did himself.

Sometimes they had and sometimes they hadn’t. To Carissa, Carramer was the only posting where she had felt at home. She had been heartbroken when her father announced they were returning to Australia. Too young to remain in the country alone, she had vowed to return as soon as she got the chance.

Her brother had thought she was crazy. “Give me the bright lights, big city” was Jeff’s motto. Carramer had its share of cities, too, but Carissa felt more at home in the lush, tropical regions barely touched by the hand of civilization.

She sighed. Home still needed a lot of work if she was to turn it into the bed-and-breakfast haven of her dreams. It wouldn’t happen by itself. Time she got back and made herself useful.

When she emerged from the rain forest into the clearing, the first thing she noticed was the kitchen door standing ajar. She knew she had closed it when she went out, had even been tempted to lock it until she asked herself who on earth she expected to break in here.

It looked as if she was going to find out.

Skirting the car, which appeared untouched, she peered around the door before going in. The kitchen was empty. Her laundry had dried on the makeshift line, and the smell of her morning’s baking lingered in the air. But it was overlaid with a pine-and-leather scent that hadn’t been there when she left. Silently she stripped the line of clothes, dumping them on a chair. If she had to make a fast exit, she didn’t want obstacles in her way.

She looked around for a weapon. A rolling pin would do the job but might be turned against her, she remembered from the self-defense lessons she’d taken as a teenager. The gleam of metal on the windowsill caught her eye. She picked up the old cigar tube she’d found when she arrived. She turned it over in her hands, an idea growing in her.

The pine scent led her down the hallway. Careful to avoid those floorboards she knew were prone to creak, she reached her bedroom and felt her heartbeat quicken. Someone was in the room. Common sense told her to call the police in Tricot. But what were the odds they could reach her before the intruder heard her talking and came to investigate?

For now she was on her own.

Through the three-finger gap in the doorway she saw the man look around. He was a head taller than she was, with chestnut hair cut in a military style. He half turned and she swallowed. Lord, he was big, wide at shoulder and hip and narrow everywhere else. His aristocratic profile tugged at her memory, but before she could pinpoint the reason, he turned away again.

She took stock of his clothing so she would be able to describe him to the police when she could safely contact them. White shirt, the sleeves rolled back over tanned forearms, open at the neck. The shirt was tucked into snug-fitting denims held up by a plaited leather belt slung cowboy-style around his hips. As he moved to the window, the gleam of his boots jarred her. What kind of prowler polished his boots to a mirror shine?

Now or never, she told herself, pushing the door all the way open. Without giving herself time to think, she moved up behind him and pressed the cigar tube into his back with all the force she could muster. “Don’t move. I have a gun and I know how to use it.”

Eduard lifted both hands to shoulder height, palms outward, careful not to move suddenly. He hadn’t allowed for his ghost to tote a gun and didn’t care for the businesslike way it pressed against his back. “We can work this out. Don’t do anything you’ll regret.”

“You seem sure I’ll regret it.”

The melodious voice reminded him of bells, and he itched to turn around and get a look at the owner. “Have you shot many people?” he asked.

“Only the ones who barge into my home while I’m out. You’re remarkably well dressed for a burglar. Who are you?”

Her home? He decided against arguing for the moment. “My name is Eduard de Marigny.”

He flinched as the gun barrel burrowed harder.

“Right, and I’m Princess Adrienne. I may be from Australia, but I know that de Marigny is the name of the Carramer royal family. You’ll have to come up with a better alias because I’ve met Eduard.”

This was news to him. Unable to resist, he glanced over his shoulder, catching a glimpse of shoulder-length ash-blond hair and a porcelain complexion. Cornflower eyes were trained on him as intensely as her weapon. A very attractive ghost, he judged. Her musical voice definitely held a hint of the Australian heritage she claimed, overlaid with something more European.

He sighed. “My name is Eduard Claude Philippe de Marigny, Marquis of Merrisand, currently with the rank of commander in the Carramer Royal Navy. I have identification in my shirt pocket if you’d care to examine it.”

He heard her indrawn breath as if she recognized his titles. But the gun barrel didn’t waver as she slid a slender hand around his chest and felt her way to his pocket. The lightly caressing touch made his heart pick up speed. He decided there were better ways to introduce himself to the young lady.

Reflexes and training allowed him to grasp her wrist, jerk her off balance, and spin her around in front of him so she fell into his arms. He tightened them around her, seeing that the weapon which dropped from her hand was only an old cigar tube of Prince Henry’s. He had to give his ghost full marks for ingenuity.

He looked down at the woman in his arms. In closeup, her blond hair was sun-streaked and cascaded around her shoulders in soft waves, framing delicate features that wouldn’t have been misplaced on a model.

“A most attractive ghost,” he murmured.

She struggled in his grasp. “What are you talking about? Let me up.”

He held tight, since it wasn’t exactly a hardship. “First I want to make sure that you’re human.”

He hadn’t intended to kiss her, but the temptation was too great. In his arms she felt as light as a feather, but she had her share of muscles, he noticed. Her shape and build suggested someone who took very good care of herself.

Her mouth was a shell-pink bow, curved now in fury, and her eyes sparked a warning at him. He ignored it and lowered his lips to hers. She tasted of the baking he’d smelled when he walked in, yeasty, warm, thoroughly inviting.

She tasted so good that he took his time over the kiss, aware that at some point she gave up fighting him, and brought her arms around him. She probably thought she was stopping herself from falling, but that didn’t explain the way her mouth opened so temptingly. If he’d been kissing her for real, he knew exactly how he would have responded to those parted lips.

But this wasn’t the time. As it was, he had let the kiss go on far longer than was wise, the heat racing through him testifying to how much he had enjoyed it. Setting her upright and away from him took considerable self-restraint.

Looking confused, she backed away a little, but her cheeks glowed and her eyes glittered as if she had also enjoyed the experience more than she thought she should. “What did you do that for?”

“When I arrived, I thought the place was haunted. I had to make sure you aren’t a ghost.”

“You’re crazy.”

“And you’re trespassing. Who are you, and what are you doing here?”

She made a choking sound. “I’m trespassing? You’re the interloper. I own this place.”

His intense gaze raked her, what he saw distracting him from the obvious foolishness of her claim. “You look familiar. Who are you?”

She’d been thinking the same about him. “Carissa Day, and this is my home.”

She saw his memory return in a rush. “Good grief, it is you, Cris.”

“Nobody has called me Cris since I was fifteen. Except… Eduard? It really is you.”

He had changed, she saw. As a teenager, he had worn his dark chestnut hair longer. In the navy he had grown from a shy, slightly bookish teenager into a solidly built man who looked as if he could handle himself in most situations. He folded his arms over his chest, evidently enjoying her astonishment. “Told you so.”

She had also changed, but she doubted if he saw as much progress as she did in him. When he’d last seen her, she had been long-legged and coltish, as if her limbs had outgrown her body. Her hair had been shorter and darker, and she’d worn glasses instead of the contacts she wore now.

Unwillingly reminded of the last time he had kissed her, all those years ago, she struggled to compose herself. “Of all the people who might have walked in here, you’re the last person I expected to see.”

“I don’t know why,” he observed. “Tiga Lodge has been in the family for a century. Prince Henry owned it until he died last year.”

She felt a frown etch itself between her eyes. “That must be why it was on the market.”

He took her arm. “You and I need to talk, Cris… Carissa.”

“It’s okay. Cris sounds good the way you say it.” Like a homecoming, she thought.

Telling herself she was bemused by his sudden appearance, not by his kiss, she let him steer her back along the hall toward the kitchen. She saw his look register that the laundry had been removed from the line, and felt herself color, thinking of him seeing the lacy garments. She was glad she had moved them on the way in. Her days of hoping to attract Eduard’s attention with her feminine wiles were long gone, although the way she felt now suggested otherwise. It was the aftermath of shock, nothing more, she reminded herself. Until a second ago, she had thought he was an intruder.

“Are your father and brother with you?” he asked.

She lowered her long lashes. “Dad died a year ago from a sudden heart attack.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

She inclined her head in silent acknowledgment.

“Is Jeffrey still in Australia?”

“Dad left the family home to him.” She couldn’t disguise the bitterness she’d felt when she’d found that out. No doubt Graeme Day had believed he was doing the right thing by specifying in his will that Jeffrey was to look after Carissa until she married. Embarrassed, Jeff had insisted on paying her half of the house’s value in cash, but it hadn’t assuaged her hurt. Or eased the sense of rootlessness that had plagued her all her life.

Their mother had died soon after she was born, and the family had lived in the Australian house for only a handful of years, so there was no reason for Carissa to think of it as home. But it was the only one she had. To have it bequeathed to her brother alone had hurt beyond measure. She had known her father had old-fashioned views about women, but had never dreamed he would do such a thing.

“Your accent doesn’t sound as Australian as I remember,” Eduard said, drawing her back to the present.

“I spent the last few years studying hotel management in Switzerland. After I graduated, I worked there for a while before being offered a job in Sydney.”

Eduard took a seat at the huge kitchen table and his palms skimmed the scrubbed pine surface. “Sitting here takes me back. My brother and I must have spent hours at this table, eating slabs of bread fresh from the oven, swearing the cook to secrecy so our parents wouldn’t find out we’d been fraternizing with the staff.”

Eduard had always been the more informal of the royal brothers, she recalled, unwillingly reminded of how she had once mistaken his friendliness for something more. She busied herself filling a kettle. “Do you still like your coffee black?”

He nodded. “You have a good memory.”

She forebore telling him that she hadn’t forgotten anything that had passed between them. Moments later she carried two cups of coffee to the table. Between them she placed a sliced tea cake. “I made it this morning.”

He took a slice and bit into it. “No wonder I could smell baking when I walked in. This is good.”

Her face twisted into a frown. “The agent selling this place told me the owner was away in the navy. Did he mean you?”

Eduard nodded. “The lodge originally belonged to my uncle, Prince Henry de Valmont.”

“The agent mentioned the former owner’s name. I knew de Valmont was a royal family name, but that’s all. I wonder why the agent didn’t tell me the house had been a royal lodge?”

“Probably because it still is.”

She felt the color drain from her face and gripped the edge of the table so hard that her knuckles whitened. “Oh no.”

“I’m sorry if that comes as a shock to you, Cris.”

Her eyes brimmed and she blinked furiously. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“You’d better tell me the rest.”

She drew a shuddering breath. “You didn’t authorize an agent to sell the house discreetly for you, did you?” She was afraid she already knew the answer.