Royal Protocol (Crown & Glory Book 3) Read online

  At her quiet suggestion, the room suddenly fell as silent as Tut’s tomb.

  Four pair of eyes turned to where she still sat.

  It was Harrison who had her attention, though. From the way his eyebrows jammed together, she had the feeling he was going to react the same way he had when she’d suggested he call in her father.

  “What do you know of Gage Weston?”

  Not wanting a lecture, which she swore she could see brewing, she simply shrugged. “Enough to know he could be of help, if you’d let him.”

  “How do you know he could be of help?”

  That was none of his business. “I know a lot of things about a lot of people, Admiral,” she replied, refusing to bristle outwardly at his accusing tone. “Some of which you might find rather surprising. I’m just not in the habit of divulging privileged information. To anyone. Ever.”

  Pierce made a small choking sound. Immediately he covered it with a polite cough.

  Sir Selwyn’s thin eyebrows arched halfway up his forehead.

  For a moment Harrison said nothing. He just sat watching her watch him, not fooled for a moment by the lack of heat in her tone and knowing without a doubt that she was now biting her tongue.

  He’d caught the look she’d given him when he’d made it clear that she was to repeat nothing she heard here. It was the same veiled irritation he’d seen when he’d informed her that she was to say nothing to her father. And when he’d deliberately taunted her with his comment about not knowing who a person could trust on his way out of the queen’s drawing room yesterday morning.

  Obviously, that comment still rankled.

  “Lady Gwendolyn,” he began, admitting it probably would have eaten at him, too, “you wouldn’t be here if I thought for a moment that you couldn’t be trusted.” He truly had never doubted her loyalty. No one had. Her Majesty had even wanted to tell her of the king’s condition before the team had talked her out of it. “For the record, the four of us can be trusted, too.”

  “I doubt I can tell you anything about the king’s nephew that you don’t already know. I just suggested you consider calling him.”

  Carson Logan leaned forward, speculation in his glance as it moved cautiously to his peers. It seemed that he, like the others, caught the faint crackle of tension in the air.

  “You are undoubtedly aware of the duke’s connections, my lady. And your suggestion is a good one. It will certainly be considered.”

  “Thank you, Your Grace.” She knew that, aside from being the king’s nephew, Duke Gage Weston was an international spy, an operative in which the Crown had the utmost confidence. Since the king’s bodyguard was kind enough to acknowledge that she must be aware of that, she kept his more sympathetic ear.

  “I realize that everything here is privileged. Even this location,” she surmised, saving the man frowning at the side of her head the bother of pointing that out, too. “But may I tell Her Majesty what I have heard about the contact you just received?”

  “We have no desire to keep information from the Crown. Our duty is to serve.” He nodded toward the man she was ignoring. “That is why the admiral wanted you to meet with us all.”

  “No one of us has any more influence here than the other,” Harrison said from beside her. “We wanted you to be able to honestly tell the queen that the recommendations you offer are what we all agree to be in the kingdom’s best interest.”

  In other words, she thought, he didn’t want her thinking the decisions were his and disputing them the way she usually did.

  “Unless you have any questions,” he concluded, pushing back his chair, “I think that should take care of everything.”

  He’d say one thing for her. She knew how to take a hint. Clutching the envelope he’d given her, she immediately assured him she didn’t and turned a gracious smile to Pierce when he rose to pull out her chair.

  He didn’t mind her sass and her spirit when they were alone. If he were to be honest with himself, he would have to admit he was drawn to it, in fact. Yet, as she said goodbye to his counterparts, his only thought was that he wanted her out of there. Now. He didn’t want any sparring matches with her in front of the other men, no matter how subtle they were.

  This just wasn’t the time or the place for him to suggest a cease-fire.

  But he had the perfect time and place in mind.

  Chapter Seven

  There were only a handful of people Harrison’s assistant immediately put through to him when they called: any member of the royal family, any member of the RET and any ship’s commander. To that list, he had recently added Lady Gwendolyn Corbin.

  Lieutenant Sotheby patched her call through to his cell phone as he was leaving a meeting with the Majorcan delegation and heading for—and dreading—the meeting he now had with the ambassador of the United States, Mr. Anthony Fielding. Under any other circumstances he would have liked the man enormously. They shared a love of sailing, sports and an occasional good cigar. At the moment he didn’t care for him much at all. He was insisting on seeing the queen.

  “Gwen,” he said, using her first name without thinking about how intimate it sounded, “what’s the matter?”

  The cell phone connection wasn’t as good as it could have been. “Nothing is the matter,” came bits and pieces of her soft voice. “I just wanted to tell you that the queen has agreed.”

  “I told you I’d arrange tonight to talk with you. This line isn’t secure.”

  “It doesn’t need to be secure. She agreed. That’s all.”

  “To everything?”

  “Everything,” she repeated.

  “I still need to talk to you. What time are you free this evening?”

  “Not until nine.”

  “I’ll send an escort for you then.”

  The pause definitely wasn’t a break in the signal. It was hers. She wanted to ask why it was so necessary that they speak this evening. He would have bet his commission on it.

  All she said was, “Will this involve the boiler room?”

  He had no idea why her skeptical tone made him chuckle. Maybe it was the deadpan way she posed the question. Maybe it was the thought of her gamely working her way through the industrial maze of that forbidding space in heels and the slim tailored suit that had made her legs look a mile long. Maybe he was just relieved to know Her Majesty had okayed the RET’s recommendations.

  “No,” he promised, wondering how long it had been since he’d felt himself smile. “It won’t.”

  The Admiralty Building was a half a mile from the palace at the base of the hill. The sprawling, multistoried structure with its marble columns and the royal crest above the soaring glass entry doors stood like a sentinel above Castle Cove and Marlestone Harbor. Moored in the calm waters of the city’s huge port were part of Penwyck’s carrier and battleship fleets. The rest, as well as its submarines and basic training facilities, were based on the north end of the island.

  Gwen knew that because, years ago, she’d taken some of Penwyck’s more important visitors there as part of their tour of the kingdom.

  In the dark of the evening, the uniformed chauffeur pulled the limousine in which she rode around to a side entrance of the building. The long black vehicle had barely come to a stop when a navy guard stepped forward, opened her door and led her inside to a private elevator.

  She had honestly thought the phone call to Harrison that afternoon would end her dealings with him for the day. He had what he wanted—which was everything he’d asked for. She couldn’t imagine what he needed now. Especially at this hour.

  As she smoothed the simply tailored jacket she’d worn all day and touched her earrings to make sure they were still in place, she also couldn’t imagine, either, why he’d had her brought here.

  The guard put her in the elevator, pushed the button for the top floor and wished her a good-evening. After her foray through the boiler room earlier, she felt a bit like Alice, wary, curious and not sure at all what she’d find on the other
side of the rabbit hole when the brass doors slid open again.

  When they did, she found herself in a small and sparsely furnished foyer, facing Harrison, who filled the threshold of the entryway’s only door.

  Her first thought was that he was out of uniform. Parts of it, anyway. His jacket and tie were gone, his collar open. His white shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and was tucked neatly into the trim waist of his navy-blue slacks. She’d seen him without his jacket before. Yesterday in the garden, when he’d given it to her. But there was a casualness about him now that gave her definite pause.

  When she glanced back up, he was watching her unabashedly checking him out.

  “Thank you for coming,” he said, as if he’d actually given her a choice.

  Feeling hesitant, not sure why, she ventured as far as the doorway. The moment she reached it, he stepped back to let her in.

  Across the room from her, a wall of night-blackened glass revealed a sparkling view of the lights of the harbor. Black leather furniture and chrome-and-glass tables were grouped on plush carpeting of pearl gray.

  “I hope you don’t mind coming to my quarters.”

  His quarters, he’d said. Not his home.

  “Why did you have me brought here?”

  “Because I wanted a place where we could be comfortable while we talk.”

  Comfortable? “Why?”

  He turned to a built-in wet bar, leaving her to decide whether she wanted to stay or go.

  “I want to call a truce.”

  “With whom?”

  The look he gave her was as dry as dust. “With us.”

  Feeling a little like Alice again, she hesitated. “We’re not at war.”

  “You could have fooled me,” he muttered. “I can’t think of a single time we’ve been together in the past few days that we haven’t struck sparks off each other.” His dark eyebrow arched, his dark eyes piercing hers. “Can you?”

  She easily held his visual challenge. Several seconds passed, however, before she finally murmured, “No.”

  “Maybe someday we’ll figure out why that is,” he suggested, his glance drifting from her mouth to the indentation between her collarbones, “but right now I need your influence with the queen.”

  Heat tingled along the path his glance had taken. Doing her best to ignore it, she watched him take a heavy tumbler from a sparkling glass shelf and set it on the black marble bar counter. Between the overhead light and the table lamps, hard surfaces gleamed everywhere.

  “I know she doesn’t want to deal with anyone but you right now,” he admitted, making it clear that his interest at the moment was in her mind and not in her body. “I need you to change her mind about that. I figured we can work better together if we take off the gloves.” He raised one eyebrow. “You don’t drink scotch, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Wine?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Would one of those times be now?”

  The man was being totally up front with her. He didn’t want to argue anymore. He didn’t want to worry about why it was that they inevitably did. He just wanted them to cooperate. Willingly. He would do whatever it took to get her cooperation, too, including, apparently, the civility of offering her a drink.

  She didn’t want him to be so impressively honest. It made him seem far less formidable and rather…charming, in a reluctant sort of way.

  She closed the door with a soft click. She definitely didn’t want to be charmed, but considering that they did have to work together, for a while anyway, a truce was probably a good idea.

  In that spirit she murmured, “Please.”

  Preoccupation etched his handsome face as he took a bottle from a glass-fronted wine grotto and deftly removed its cork. Moments later, he’d poured her a goblet of ruby-red wine, himself a scotch and held the goblet out to her.

  “To a cease-fire.” Thin crystal rang against heavier as he touched the rim of his glass to hers.

  Quietly, dutifully, she echoed him and watched him take a sip. A breath later she jerked her glance from the strong cords in his neck to take a sip of her own.

  She was thinking he’d be much easier to take if he were built more along the lines of an oar when she closed her eyes in pure bliss.

  Liquid heaven, she thought with a sigh. The man was not only trying to get along, he knew good wine.

  When she opened her eyes a moment later, she found that his had narrowed in interest at her silent approval.

  Aware of warmth in her belly, knowing it wasn’t the wine, she headed for his incredible view. He’d brought her here for business. Not to seduce her.

  “As long as I’m here,” she said, quickly pushing past the heart-stopping thought, “would you answer something for me? About the Black Knights?”

  In the reflection of the window, she watched him come up behind her. “What about them?”

  “Do you think it’s possible they infected the king with the virus?”

  “Anything is possible,” he admitted.

  The certainty in his tone had her facing him again.

  “If you were to ask if I thought they did do it,” he continued, studying her as he spoke, “I’d have to say that I do. We’re still trying to figure out what they used as the medium to get it into him, but there’s no doubt in my mind that they’re responsible.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  It wasn’t challenge in her question. It was curiosity.

  He must have realized that. His tone remained as casual as his shrug. “Because it all fits. They don’t want that alliance, so they tried to kill him to keep him from signing it. When it looked as if they’d failed to even make him ill…because we’d brought in Prince Broderick to impersonate him,” he told her, sounding as if he suspected she might now already know that, “they needed another way to stop the signing. That’s when they kidnapped Prince Owen.”

  But the alliance would be signed anyway, Gwen thought and would have started to worry about the repercussions beyond that when Harrison tipped his head to study her.

  “Now you can answer something for me.”

  Ice clinked against the sides of his glass as he slowly swirled the amber liquid.

  “What?” she murmured, oddly transfixed by what he was doing. It was such a simple thing, that motion. So normal. So relaxed. There was less of an edge to him here in his own surroundings, more of a sense of ease.

  Or maybe, she thought, it was simply seeing him without his uniform. Without it, she wasn’t seeing the commander. She was simply seeing the man.

  “I ran across something in your file this morning. I had to pull it to screen you for a higher security clearance,” he explained, focused on his glass himself. “I checked your daughter’s, too.”

  Confusion colored her tone. “You checked Amira?”

  “It’s standard procedure to investigate anyone close to a candidate for higher clearance.” He lifted his glass toward her, the motion a congratulatory toast. “She sounds like a very accomplished young lady.”

  “Thank you,” she murmured. “She is.”

  “And a very protected one. It seems you’ve always kept her quite close to home.”

  Gwen’s confusion compounded itself. She could understand the need to check her background. What she couldn’t understand was his interest in how she’d chosen to raise her daughter. “I’ll admit I’ve always been protective of her, but I don’t understand why that’s a problem.”

  “I didn’t say it was a problem,” he said mildly, pointedly overlooking her hint of defense. “It was just something I noticed. There was something else, though, that has me a little curious.”

  “In my file? Or, in Amira’s?”

  “Yours.”

  “And that is…?”

  “Why you dumped your fiancé to elope with a man you’d only known for a month. It seemed a little out of character to me.”

  What she’d done had seemed more than out of character to him. It had smacked o
f outright defiance, but he didn’t want to color whatever response she chose to give him by mentioning that. It also had seemed terribly impulsive, which didn’t fit at all with the background of someone so well-bred and refined. He hadn’t been born into those circles himself. His roots were far more common. But he’d worked his way up and been around enough to know by now that elopements simply weren’t “done” in society. Weddings in the circle where she’d been raised were always huge, frequently ostentatious and more often than not, between parties of equal prominence.

  Before he’d seen her file, he would have bet his biggest boat that she would have settled for nothing less than an utterly proper celebration and a properly titled mate—had he given the matter any thought at all.

  “If it makes you uncomfortable to talk about it…”

  “No,” Gwen murmured, caught completely off guard by what had caught his curiosity. “No,” she repeated, “it doesn’t.”

  Not the way he meant, anyway. She was uncomfortable, but not because of her past. She cherished what she had done. What she found disconcerting was Harrison’s unexpected interest into her private life. But turnabout, she supposed, was fair play. After all, she’d pretty much insisted on knowing if there had ever been anyone he’d cared about. And when she’d asked, she’d practically been in his face.

  She took a sip of the lovely wine, understanding completely why a truce was necessary. “I did it because I didn’t want the same kind of duty-driven relationship my parents have.”

  “‘Duty-driven’?”

  “You know the kind,” she prompted. “She’s from the right family. He has the right connections and the right career. There’s no warmth. No vitality. No…passion,” she decided to say, because that was what had always been lacking in her parents union. They rarely laughed. On the other hand, they rarely argued. They simply…were. And were always very proper about it, too.

  “No passion,” he repeated flatly.

  “None.”

  Beneath his dark eyebrows, his eyes grew more curious. “So who was this passionless fiancé of yours?”