LITMIR.BIZ

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Perfectly capable of climbing them on her own, she still enjoyed the unconscious show of chivalry, not to mention the contact. It was hard to believe that this was the same mischievous, dark-eyed youth who’d simultaneously tortured her and filled her daydreams.

      “The water balloons were never over your shoulder,” Russell pointed out as they came to the landing. “They were always dropped from overhead.” His mouth curved a little more on the right than on the left. “I’m sorry about that.”

      Amelia tilted her head and looked into his eyes. They were the color of warm chocolate. How strange that she could pick up the thread so easily, as if no time had gone by at all since his last visit. As if more than twelve years had merely melted away into the mists that sometimes surrounded the island kingdom and they were children again.

      “No, you’re not.”

      She was rewarded with the rich sound of his laugh as it echoed down the long, winding hallway lined with portraits of her ancestors. They seemed to approve of him, she thought.

      “All right, maybe I wasn’t,” Russell admitted. “Then,” he quickly qualified. “But I am now.” He saw her raise her delicate eyebrows in a silent query. And just for the tiniest of moments, he had an overwhelming urge to trace the arches with the tip of his finger. He squelched it. “I frightened you.”

      “You made me jumpy,” Amelia corrected, then in case that would arouse some kind of unwanted pity, she quickly added, “You also made me strong.”

      He shook his head. “I don’t understand.”

      With the grace of a princess trained at putting others at ease, Amelia slipped her arm through his and urged him down the hallway. If her heart sped up just a little bit at the contact, well, that was a secret bonus she kept to herself.

      “Because of you, I became disgusted with myself. With being a mouse.”

      “You were thirteen.”

      “I was a mouse,” she repeated, then added with the loftiness that befitted her station, “I resolved to be a tigress.”

      Russell looked at her for a long moment. “A tigress, eh?” At first, he’d thought of her as too sweet, too innocent. But there was something in her eyes, something about the way she carried herself. Maybe the image was not as far-fetched as it initially seemed.

      He felt his blood stirring again and this time upbraided himself. He had no business reacting like this to his future queen.

      “A tigress,” she repeated with a lift of her head. “I pleaded with my father to get me trainers, not just for my mind, but for my body.”

      Short on water balloons, Russell sought refuge in humor. “So that you could flip 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,

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