Affaire Royale (7 page)

“Loubet is quite correct, Alexander.” Armand spoke without gentleness, but Brie heard the affection.

“In theory.” As he drank, Alexander shot Reeve a quietly resentful look. “But we already have outsiders
involved. Gabriella needs rest and therapy. Whoever did this …” His fingers tightened on the facets of his glass. “Whoever did this will pay dearly.”

“Alexander.” Brie laid a hand on his in a gesture he recognized, but she didn’t. “I have to remember what happened before anyone can pay.”

“When you’re ready, you will. In the meantime—”

“In the meantime,” his father interrupted, “Brie must be protected in every possible way. And after consideration, I agree with Loubet that part of this protection should come from concealing the amnesia publicly. If the kidnappers knew you hadn’t told us anything, they might feel compelled to silence you before you regained your memory.”

Brie picked up her glass again, and though she sipped calmly, Reeve saw her eyes were anything but. “How can we conceal it?”

“If I may, Your Highness,” Loubet began with a glance at Armand before he turned to Brie. “Until you’re well, Your Highness, we think it best that you remain home, among those who can be trusted. It’s a simple matter to postpone or cancel your outside commitments. The kidnapping, the strain and shock of it alone, will suffice without going further. The doctor who cared for you is your father’s man. There’s no fear that he’ll leak any news of your condition except what we wish him to.”

Brie set down her glass again. “No.”

“I beg your—”

“No,” she repeated very gently to Loubet, though her gaze shifted to her father. “I will not remain here like a prisoner. I believe I’ve been a prisoner quite long enough. If I have commitments, I’ll meet them.” She saw Bennett grin and lift his glass in salute.

“Your Highness, you must see how complicated and how dangerous this would be. If for no other reason than the police have yet to apprehend whoever kidnapped you.”

“So, the solution is for me to remain closed up and closed in?” She shook her head. “I refuse.”

“Gabriella, our duty is not always comfortable for us.” Her father tapped the cigarette he’d lit during the
conversation.

“Perhaps not. I can’t speak from experience at the moment.” She looked down at her hands, to the ring that was becoming familiar. “Whoever kidnapped me is still free. I mean to see they’re not comfortable with that. Monsieur Loubet, you know me?”

“Your Highness, since you were a baby.”

“Would you say I am a reasonably intelligent woman?”

Humor touched his eyes. “Far more than reasonably.”

“I think then, with a bit of coaching, I could have my way, and you yours. The amnesia can be kept quiet if you feel that’s best, but I won’t hide in my rooms.”

Armand started to speak, then sat back. A slight smile played on his lips. His daughter, he mused with approval, hadn’t changed.

“Your Highness, I would personally be pleased to help you in any way, but—”

“Thank you, Loubet, but Mr. MacGee has already agreed to do so.” Her voice was gracious and final. “Whatever I need to know in order to be Princess Gabriella, he’ll tell me.”

There was quick resentment again from Alexander, speculation from Armand and barely controlled annoyance from Loubet. Reeve felt them all. “The princess and I have an arrangement of sorts.” He sat comfortably, watching the reactions around him. “She feels that the company of a stranger might have certain advantages for her.”

“We’ll discuss this later.” Armand rose, and though the words weren’t abrupt, they were as final as his daughter’s had been. “I regret your schedule doesn’t permit you to dine, Loubet. We’ll finish our business tomorrow morning.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Polite goodbyes, a distinguished exit. Brie looked after him thoughtfully. “He seems very sincere and dedicated. Do I like him?”

Her father smiled as he reached for her hand. “You never said specifically. He does his job well.”

“And he’s a dead bore,” Bennett announced ungraciously as he rose. “Let’s eat.” He pulled Brie close by linking arms. “We’re having the best of the best tonight in celebration. You can have a half-dozen raw oysters if you like.”

“Raw? Do I like them?”

“Love them,” he said blithely, and led her into dinner.

*   *   *

“It was … amusing to find Bennett enjoys a joke,” Brie said some two hours later as she stepped onto a terrace with Reeve.

“Was it enlightening to learn you can take one?” He paused to cup his hand around his lighter. Smoke caught the breeze and billowed into the dark.

“Actually, yes. I’ve also learned I detest oysters and that I have a character that demands restitution. I’ll get him back for tricking me into swallowing one of those things. In the meantime …” Turning, she leaned back against the strong stone banister. “I can see I’ve put you in a bit of an awkward position, Reeve. I didn’t intend to, but now that I have, I’m afraid I don’t intend to let you out.”

“I can handle that for myself, when and if I choose.”

“Yes.” She smiled again. Then the smile became a laugh as she tossed her head back. Fear seemed so far away. Tension was so much simpler to deal with. “You could at that. Perhaps that’s why I feel easy around you. Tonight I took your advice.”

“Which was?”

“To observe. I have a good father. His position doesn’t weigh lightly on him, nor does the strain of this past week. I see the servants treat him with great respect, but no fear, so I think he’s just. Would you agree?”

The moonlight played tricks with her hair, making the pearls look like teardrops. “I would.”

“Alexander is … what’s the word I want?” With a shake of her head, she looked overhead to the sky. The
long, pale line of her throat was exposed. “Driven, I suppose. He has the intensity of a much older man. I suppose he needs it. He hasn’t decided to like you.” When she shifted her head again, he found his eyes were on line with her lips.

“No.”

“It doesn’t bother you?”

“Not everyone’s required to like me.”

“I wish I had your confidence,” she murmured. “In any case, I’ve added to whatever resentment he might feel toward you. Tonight when I said I wanted to walk outside and asked you to come with me, it annoyed him. His sense of family is very strong and very exclusive.”

“You’re his responsibility—in his opinion,” Reeve added when she started to protest.

“His opinion will have to change. Bennett’s different. He seems so carefree. Perhaps it’s his age, or the fact that he’s the younger son. Still, he watched me as though I might trip at any moment and need him to catch me. Loubet, what do you think of him?”

“I don’t know him.”

“Neither do I,” she said wryly. “An opinion?”

“His position doesn’t sit lightly on him, either.”

It wasn’t an evasion, Brie decided, any more than it was an answer. “You’re a very elemental man, aren’t you? Is it an American trait?”

“It’s a matter of pushing away frills that just get in the way. You seem to be a very elemental woman.”

“Do I?” She pursed her lips in thought. “It might be true, or it might be true now only out of necessity. I can’t afford frills, can I?”

The strain of the evening had been more than she’d admit, Reeve observed as she turned again to rest her palms against the stone. She was tired, but he understood her reluctance to go in where she’d have nothing but her own questions for company.

“Brie, have you thought about taking a few days and going away?” She lifted her head. Sensing the anger
in her, he laid a hand on her shoulder. “Not running away, getting away. It’s human.”

“I can’t afford to be human until I know who I am.”

“Your doctor said the amnesia’s temporary.”

“What’s temporary?” she demanded. “A week, month, year? Not good enough, Reeve. I won’t just sit and wait for things to come to me. In the hospital I had dreams.” She closed her eyes a moment, breathed deep and continued. “In the dreams I was awake, but not awake. I couldn’t move. It was dark and I couldn’t make myself move. Voices. I could hear voices, and I’d struggle and struggle to understand them, recognize them, but I’m afraid. In the dream I’m terrified, and when I wake, I’m terrified.”

He drew in sharply on his cigarette. She said it without any emotion, and the lack of feeling said a great deal. “You were drugged.”

Very slowly, she turned toward him again. In the shadowed light her eyes were very clear. “How do you know?”

“The doctors had to pump you. It’s the opinion from the state you were in that you were kept drugged. Even when your memory comes back, Brie, you may not be able to pinpoint anything that happened during the week you were held. That’s something you’d better face now.”

“Yes, I will.” She pressed her lips together until she was certain her voice would be strong. “I will remember. How much more do you know?”

“Not a great deal.”

“Out with it.”

He flipped his cigarette over the banister and into the void. “All right, then. You were abducted sometime Sunday. No one knows the exact time, as you were out driving alone. Sunday evening a call came in to Alexander.”

“Alex?”

“Yes, he usually works on Sunday evenings in his office. He has a separate line there as all of you do in your own quarters. The call was brief. It said simply that you’d been taken and would be held until the ransom
demands were met. No demands were made at that time.”

And where had she been held? Dark. All she could be certain of was dark. “What did Alex do?”

“He went directly to your father. You were searched for. Monday morning your car was found on a lane about forty miles from town. There’s a plot of land out there you own. It seems you have a habit of driving out there just to be alone and poke around. Monday afternoon, the first ransom demand was made. That was for money. There was no question about it being paid, of course, but before the arrangement could be made, another call came. This one demanded the release of four prisoners in exchange for you.”

“And that complicated things.”

“Two of them are set for execution. Espionage,” he added when she remained silent. “It took the matter out of your father’s hands. Money was one thing, releasing prisoners another. Negotiations were well under way when you were found on the side of the road.”

“I’ll go back there,” Brie mused. “To the place my car was found and to the place I was found.”

“Not right away. I agreed to help you, Brie, but in my way.”

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “Which is?”

“My way,” he said simply. “When I think you’re strong enough, I’ll take you. Until then, we move slow.”

“If I don’t agree?”

“Your father might just take Loubet’s plan more seriously.”

“And I’d go nowhere.”

“That’s right.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be an easy man, Reeve.” She walked a few feet away, into a stream of moonlight. “I haven’t much choice. I don’t like that. Choice seems to me to be the most essential freedom. I keep wondering when I’ll have mine back. Tomorrow, after I meet with my secretary …”

“Smithers,” Reeve supplied. “Janet Smithers.”

“What a prim name,” Brie observed. “I’ll go over my schedule with Janet Smithers in the morning. Then I’d like to go over it with you. Whatever it is I’m committed to do, I want to do. Even if it’s spending hours
shopping or sitting in a beauty parlor.”

“Is that how you think you spend your time?”

“It’s a possibility. I’m rich, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then …” With a shrug, she trailed off. “Tonight, before dinner, I lay in the bath and wondered. Actually, I thought of you and wondered.”

Very slowly he dipped his hands in his pockets. “Did you?”

“I tried to analyze you. In some ways I could and others not. If I had a great deal of experience with men, it’s forgotten along with everything else, you see.” She felt no embarrassment as she walked to him again. “I wondered if I were to kiss you, be held by you, if I’d see that part of me.”

Rocking back on his heels, he studied her blandly. “Just part of the job, Your Highness?”

Annoyance flickered in her eyes. “I don’t care how you look at it.”

“Maybe I do.”

“Do you find me unattractive?”

He saw the way her lip thrust forward so slightly in a pout as she asked. She seemed a woman accustomed to flowery, imaginative compliments. She wouldn’t get them from him. “Not unattractive.”

She wondered why it sounded almost like an insult. “Well, then, do you have a woman you’re committed to? Would you feel dishonest if you kissed me?”

He made no move toward her, and the bland smile remained. “I’ve no commitments, Your Highness.”

“Why are you calling me that now?” she demanded. “Is it only to annoy me?”

“Yes.”

She started to become angry, then ended up laughing. “It works.”

“It’s late.” He took her hand in a friendly manner. “Let me take you up.”

“You don’t find me unattractive.” She strolled along with him, but at her own pace. “You have no allegiances. Why won’t you kiss me then and help? You did agree to help.”

He stopped and looked down at her. The top of her head came to his chin. With her chin tilted back, she looked eye to eye with him. “I told your father I’d keep you out of trouble.”

“You told me you’d help me find out who I am. But perhaps your word means nothing,” she said lightly. “Or perhaps you’re a man who doesn’t enjoy kissing a woman.”

She’d taken only two steps, when he caught her arm. “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

She smiled. “Apparently.”

He nodded, then held her close in his arms. “Neither do I.”

He touched his lips to hers with every intention of keeping the kiss dispassionate, neutral. Though he understood her reasons, her needs, he also understood she’d goaded him into doing something he was better off avoiding. Hadn’t he wondered what that soft, curving mouth would taste like? Hadn’t he imagined how that slim, fragile body would feel in his arms? But he’d agreed to do a job. He’d never taken any job lightly.

So he touched his lips to hers, intending on keeping the kiss neutral. Neutrality lasted no more than an instant.