The Disgraced Princess (14 page)

G
ERD'S
head came up. In his most arrogant tone he said, ‘I love you too much—I can't bear to see you unhappy. Your tears rip my heart out.'

Sheer ecstasy burst through Rosie like a nova, the glory of his words wiping out everything else. Unable to speak, she stared at him with dilating eyes.

Even more harshly he went on, ‘I find in myself a certain distaste for pleading. But I have an even greater distaste of forcing you into a situation that causes you such misery.' He paused, then went on in the same level tone, ‘Therefore I release you from your promise, and I wish you every happiness in the future.'

Gazing at his face—still pale beneath the tan, its framework boldly angular and forceful—she realised she'd managed to hide her feelings so well he had no idea of them. Somehow she had to convince him that his love, given with such reluctance, was matched and returned by her. ‘Gerd, you
idiot
!' she said when she could control her voice. ‘I was crying because Hani is pregnant, and I wasn't.'

He looked at her as though she were mad. ‘What has that to do with anything?'

‘I envy them like crazy, and I was wishing it was the same for us—that no-holds-barred kind of love and trust and respect.' Freed from anguish now, she said, ‘I love you! How could you not know that? And if you send me away, I'll probably end up like my mother.'

‘What the hell do you mean by that?' he demanded. ‘You're nothing like your mother.'

She took a deep breath. ‘Maybe not, but she did love my father in the beginning.'

‘So she says,' he said caustically, and then, ‘And what on earth has she to do with us?'

‘I believe her,' Rosie told him. ‘He couldn't return her love, so she left him. If you send me away I won't set off on a useless search for a love to replace the one I can't have. But I'll never marry anyone else, never love anyone as I love you. So if you don't want me to be your wife and have your children—'

‘Don't
want
you?' he demanded in a voice she'd never heard before. ‘I want you so much it's eating my heart out.' He made a quick, unconsidered gesture and said something low and angry before striding across the room towards her.

Not knowing what to expect, Rosie quivered, but she held her head high and met his eyes without flinching. Everything, she thought, hinged on these moments. Her whole life…

He stopped a pace away. In a raw, undisciplined voice he said, ‘I don't dare believe you.'

‘I'm feeling the same way.' She reached out a hand and laid it on his chest, welcoming the solid thunder of his life-force beneath her palm with a relief so intense it made her giddy.

From some final reserve of strength she summoned a smile. ‘If you love me, why on earth have you kept away from me ever since we became engaged?'

His hand came up to cover hers and hold it clamped beneath his. She saw belief light his eyes to fire, relax the stark lines of his face, and joy lifted her so high she felt she was flying.

Although Gerd didn't smile, there was a note of humour in his voice when he said, ‘Because I'm an idiot! Right at the start, you were so determined to keep our affair without strings that I was sure you couldn't love me.'

‘I didn't want you to know I loved you. It seemed so—so
needy
! Especially,' she accused with spirit, ‘when you so clearly didn't love me!'

He laughed deeply and began to pull her towards him, his eyes narrowing in the way she'd come to recognise. Her pulse beat heavily, erratically, in her ears.

When they were so close she could feel the warmth of his body, he said, ‘But I did—and do—love you. And I want you to be needy where I'm concerned. Because I need you more than the breath in my body, more than anything I have ever coveted.'

‘I wish you'd told me,' she said huskily.

His smile was brief and sardonic. ‘I wish I'd had the courage,' he admitted. ‘Blame it on my pride. I hoped that passion would be enough to break your reliance on Kelt. And that once you had learned to trust me you might learn to love me.'

She shook her head, no longer embarrassed by the bob of her curls around her face. ‘Even after seeing me kiss
him, I don't know how you could mistake my feelings for Kelt for anything more serious than affection!'

‘I was jealous,' he admitted with a wry glance. ‘Jealous people don't reason terribly well, and when I'm thinking about you logic and common sense seem to fly out the window. Even when my plan seemed to be working, there was always that stab of jealousy, although I was happy on the island, and you seemed to be too.'

‘Oh, yes,' she sighed, colouring. ‘Until I got too bold,' she said ruefully.

His swift smile was sexy and reminiscent. ‘I liked what you did very much. One day—or night—you'll have to repeat it.' He sobered then, and went on, ‘And then I blew it. When I saw the chance to make you mine I couldn't resist. For the first time ever I didn't even care about Carathia; I just used it ruthlessly to persuade you. But you fought the idea with everything you had, and I realised that I'd been fooling myself about your feelings. You truly didn't want to marry me.'

‘Oh, no,' she said, her voice trembling. ‘I desperately want to marry you. I just didn't want it to be the
sensible
thing to do—a marriage for reasons of state was so cold, so impersonal.'

He gave a snort. ‘Impersonal?'

Rosie frowned up at him. ‘Well, you made it seem so,' she said forth rightly. ‘I wanted to marry you because we loved each other enough to spend the rest of our lives together. It hurt to think it was for convenience.'

‘Convenience?' he said incredulously. ‘You've thrown my life into disarray, come between me and everything I've been brought up to believe were the most important things in my life, and you call it
convenient
?' He
brushed an errant curl back from her face. ‘I've never come across a
less
convenient woman. If I could take you to bed right now I'd show you exactly how I feel, but I don't dare do anything—in fact, I shouldn't even be touching you—because in ten minutes or so I'm due to take a call from the Chief Minister about the latest news on the economic fallout, and if I do more than kiss the tip of your nose I won't make it.'

‘Far be it from me to keep you away from affairs of state,' she said demurely and stepped back.

‘But after that,' he threatened, eyes hot with promise, ‘all bets are off.'

Laughing, Rosie watched him go, then hugged herself with incandescent joy. It was too much to take in. After all the pain, the resolution had been so simple, so miraculously inevitable.

She went across to the window and looked out at the mountains. This place would always be precious to her because Gerd had confessed his love for her here.

Somewhere up on those high peaks the white lily bloomed—a link with New Zealand's high country. And on the island in the sunny Adriatic, myrtle bloomed around Aphrodite's temple—another link.

Appropriate that they should be flowers. Her desire for a flower shop seemed a distant, rapidly fading dream now, one she didn't regret. Loving Gerd was enough. And as his wife she'd look for a chance to do something in her favoured field.

She let the drape fall and settled down to write to Hani. If she hadn't loved her before, she thought as she sent the email, she'd love her now for being the—albeit unwitting—cause of this delicious happiness.

Two hours later Gerd came back to a supper table set for two with candles and flowers. He examined the table then said calmly, ‘When is this being served?'

‘In half an hour,' Rosie said. ‘I thought we should drink some champagne first, so I told the butler to find the very best vintage in the cellar.'

Gerd checked the bottle. ‘Ah, yes, that's perfect,' he said, and allowed his eyes to linger on her. She was dressed in a silky little shift, her hair pulled back into a ridiculous bobble of curls at the back to reveal the tender, innocent nape of her neck.

He said suddenly, ‘Twelve years seemed such a hell of a difference when you were eighteen and I was thirty. It didn't seem so much a couple of hours ago, but right now you look like youth and joy and delight, and that makes me feel old and jaded and rakish.'

‘You're none of those things,' she said indignantly. ‘Shall we make another promise to each other? Shall we decide never to talk about the difference in ages again? I don't care about it and I don't see why you should.' She laughed up at him, the sunshiny girl he'd fallen in love with so many years before, and said, ‘I plan to keep you young, anyway.'

Gerd's doubts fled, leaving him with a deep, intense joy he'd never thought to experience, a feeling of utter rightness. ‘I'm more than happy to drink to that,' he said, and popped the cork on the champagne bottle. As he handed her one of the flutes he said, ‘I think I must have fallen in love with you when I first kissed you.'

Rosie took a tiny sip. ‘If you did, you wasted an awful lot of time before you did anything about it, and even then you had to be seduced into it.'

‘
I
seduced
you
,' he said promptly, the hawk eyes gleaming gold. ‘As for wasting time—no, I don't think so. You were a child. The years between us put me very definitely in the too-old category. Now they don't matter so much.'

‘They don't matter at all,' she said quietly. ‘The only thing in the world that does matter is that you love me and I love you. And I will love you forever.'

In the raw, stripped voice of deepest emotion, Gerd said, ‘We're well matched, then, because that's exactly how long I plan to love you.'

 

Later, much later, when they were lying in bed entwined in the delicious, languorous after math of passion, Rosie smoothed a hand over his shoulder. ‘I'm sorry I bit you. I didn't mean to.'

‘Honourable scars,' he said complacently. ‘You can bite me any time you want to. Just don't break the skin.'

After she'd kissed the marks better she asked, ‘Why have you been so aloof and cold?'

He hugged her closer, and she felt his body tense against her. ‘Because I was trying—too late and rather foolishly—to keep what was left of my mind clear during the year it's going to take us to get married.' His chest lifted as he laughed quietly. ‘For all the good it did me. And partly to give you room—you were not happy, and I knew I'd forced you into this. I thought you needed time.'

‘I needed
you
,' she told him trenchantly. ‘Are we going to have to be discreet until we're married?'

‘I'm afraid so.'

Rosie shivered as he ran a far from discreet hand over her. ‘It's going to be hard,' she said thoughtfully.

‘We'll manage.'

She held his hand still. ‘When you proposed to me you said I'd be a good wife for you and good for Carathia too. What made you think that?'

After a pause he said, ‘I love you, so I knew you'd be a good wife for me. As for Carathia—that's a bit more subtle, but people instinctively like you and enjoy your company. And you're intelligent and beautiful and kind and sensible. What country could ask for more?'

‘I hope I can do it,' she said seriously. ‘I don't know anything about being a Grand Duchess. I don't want to let you—or the Carathians—down.'

‘You won't.' He held her against him, his voice so positive she allowed herself to relax and believe him. ‘My grandfather was a New Zealander; he had no idea how to be the husband of the Grand Duchess, but the Carathians adored him. They're more than ready to adore another Kiwi. And you'll have my complete and utter support.'

Rosie said goodbye to the last of her fears. ‘So when did you actually decide to marry me?' she asked, wriggling into a more comfortable position against him.

‘You're not going to like this,' he said drily.

‘Tell me just the same.'

‘When I realised you'd been a virgin. It was obviously something you had believed important enough to preserve. Yet you had given it to me.'

Brows wrinkled, Rosie thought about that. ‘So your proposal was a—some sort of recompense?'

‘I'm getting myself further and further into quick sand,'
he said half-humorously. ‘No. I hoped the gift of your virginity meant you felt more for me than casual lust.'

‘Casual?'
she asked on a choked laugh. ‘If you thought that was casual…'

He smiled. ‘And I suppose I should confess I couldn't bear the thought of anyone else making love to you. The thought of anyone else taking what had been mine filled me with a very uncomfortable possessiveness.' He cupped her chin, tilting her head so that he could see her face. ‘You don't seem shocked.'

No, because he was Gerd, Grand Duke of Carathia, and although he lived in the twenty-first century he hadn't entirely shaken off the high-handed attitudes of his ancestors. ‘Only a little bit,' she teased.

‘And now it's my turn to ask a question. Why were you so convinced I didn't—would never—love you?'

Rosie had rarely revealed her feelings, not even to her friends. She hesitated then looked up at him. This was Gerd, and he loved her.

She said, ‘I think it must be that I grew up believing I wasn't lovable. My mother left me, and my father was away so often it some times felt as though he'd just abandoned me to the housekeeper. Not that I suffered— Mrs Jameson was always good to me. Alex was away at school for most of the time and the age gap was too big for us to be friends. When I got older, I lived for those holidays at Kiwinui. Kelt became a sort of surrogate brother or father; I felt valued by him.'

Gerd said in a voice that made her cold, ‘Apart from Kelt, we were selfish bastards, all of us.'