To Dance with a Prince (12 page)

Passersby and neighbors had stopped to gawk at the black limo, and the chauffeur holding it open for her.

It was not one of the official palace vehicles with the House of Chatam emblem on the door, but still she waved like a celebrity walking the red carpet, and slid inside the door.

The luxury of it was absolutely sumptuous. She was offered a glass of champagne, which she refused. The windows of the backseat were darkly tinted, so all the people staring at her as they passed could not see her staring back at them.

The car glided through the streets of Chatam into the harbor area, and finally arrived at a private dock. The yacht, called
Royal Blue
, bobbed gently on its moorings.

A carpet had been laid out to prevent her high heels from slipping through the wide-spaced wooden planks of the dock. Light spilled out every window of the yacht, danced down the dock and splashed out over inky dark waters.

The lights illuminated interior rooms. It wasn't a boat. It was a floating palace.

And against the midnight darkness of the sky, she could see Prince Kiernan. He was outside on an upper
deck, silhouetted by the lights behind him, leaning on a railing, waiting.

For her.

She wanted to run to him, as if he was not a prince at all, but her safe place in this unfamiliar world of incredible wealth.

Instead, she walked up the carpet, and up the slightly swaying gangway with all the pose and grace years of dancing had given her. She knew his eyes were only for her, and she breathed it in, intending to enjoy every second of this gift.

The crew saluted her, and her prince waited at the top of the gangway.

Prince Kieran greeted her by meeting her eyes and holding her gaze for a long time, until her heart was beating crazily in her throat. Then he took her hand, much as he had in the ballroom, bowed low over it, and kissed it.

“Welcome,” he said, and his eyes swept her.

Every moment she had taken with her hair and her makeup, her jewelry and her dress was rewarded with the light in his eyes. Except that he seemed to be memorizing her. He had said
welcome
, but really, hadn't he meant goodbye?

“You are so beautiful,” he said, the faintest hoarseness in that cultured voice.

“Thank you,” she stammered. She could have told him he looked beautiful, too, because he did, dressed in a dark suit with a crisp white shirt under it. At the moment, Kiernan was every girl's fairy-tale prince.

“Come,” he said, and he slipped his hand in hers, and led her to a deeply padded white leather bench in the bow of the boat.

As the crew called muted orders to each other the
yacht floated out of its slip and they headed out of the mouth of the harbor.

“I just have to let you know in advance, that as hard as I tried to completely clear my calendar for this evening, I'm expecting an overseas call from the Minister of Business. I'll have to take it. I hope it will be brief, but possibly not. I hope you won't be bored.”

Meredith was used to these kinds of interruptions from their dance classes.

“Bored? How could I be bored when I have this to experience?” She gestured over the view of dark sea, the island growing more distant. “It looks like a place out of a dream.”

The lights of Chatam, reflected in the dark water, grew further away.

“It will be breezy now that we're underway. Do you want to go in?”

She shook her head, and he opened a storage unit under a leather bench, found a light blanket and settled it on her shoulders. Then Kiernan pressed against her to lend her his warmth.

As the boat cut quietly around the crags of the island, she found she and Kiernan talked easily of small things. The girls' excitement for the upcoming performance, Erin Fisher's remarkable talent and potential, Prince Adrian's recovery from his injury, the overseas call Kiernan was expecting about a business deal that could mean good things for the future of Chatam.

After half an hour of following the rugged coastline of Chatam, the yacht pulled into a small cove, the engines were cut, and the quiet encircled them as she heard the chain for the anchor drop.

“It's called Firefly Cove,” he said. “Can you see why?”

“Oh,” she breathed as thousands and thousands of small lights pricked the darkness, “it is so beautiful.”

The breeze picked up, and he took the blanket and offered her his hand. They went inside.

It was as beautiful as outside.

There was really nothing to indicate they were on a boat, except for the huge windows and the slight bobbing motion.

Other than that the décor was fabulous—modern furniture covered in rich linens, paintings, rugs, an incredible chandelier hung over a dining table set for two with the most exquisite china.

All of it could have made her feel totally out of place and uncomfortable. But Kiernan was with her, teasing, laughing, putting her at ease.

Dinner came out, course after course of the most incredible food, priceless wines that an ordinary girl like her would never have tasted under other circumstances.

But rather than being intimidated Meredith delighted in the new experiences, made easy because of how her prince guided her through them.

They went back out on the deck for after-dinner coffee, he draped the blanket around her shoulders again, and tucked her into him. They sat amongst the fireflies and talked. At first of light things: the exquisiteness of the food they had just eaten, the rareness of the wines, the extraordinary beauty of the fireflies; the stars that filled the night sky.

But Meredith found herself yearning for his trust, the same trust that she had shown him the day they had watched the movie.

With a certain boldness, she took his hand, and said, “Tell me how you came to earn all those horrible
nicknames. Playboy Prince. Prince of Heartaches. Prince Heartbreaker. I feel as if I've come to know you, and those names seem untrue and unfair.”

But was it? Wasn't he setting her up for heartbreak right now? Without even knowing it? He'd been clear. Tonight was not hello. It was goodbye.

But she wasn't allowing herself to think of that.

No, she was staying in this moment: the gentle sway of the sea beneath her, his hand in hers, his shoulder touching hers.

She was staying in this moment, and moving it toward deeper intimacy even if that was crazy. She wanted him to know, even after they'd said goodbye, that she had known his heart.

“Thank you,” he said with such sincerity, as if she had
seen
him that she quivered from it, and could not resist moving a little more closely into his warmth. “Though, of those titles, the Playboy Prince was probably neither untrue nor unfair.”

He recounted his eighteenth summer. “I found myself free, in between getting out of private school and going into the military. Until I was eighteen, my mother had been very vigilant in restricting the press's access to me. And women hadn't been part of my all-male world, except as something desired from a distance, movie star posters on dorm room walls. So, I wasn't quite used to the onslaught of interest on both fronts.

“And like many young men of that age, I embraced all the perks of that freedom and none of the responsibility. Unfortunately, my forum was so public. There was a frenzy, like a new rock star had been unveiled to the world. I didn't see a dark side or a downside. I was flattered by the attention of the press and the young
women. I dated every beautiful woman who showed the least interest in me.”

“And that was many,” Meredith said dryly.

Still, she could feel the openness of him, and something sighed within her. She had trusted him, and now he was trusting her.

“That's what I mean about the Playboy Prince title having truth to it,” he said ruefully. “But after that summer of my whole life becoming so public, I became more discerning, and certainly more cynical. I started to understand that very few of those young women were really interested in
me
. It was all about the title, the lifestyle, and the fairy tale. I could be with the most beautiful woman in the world and feel so abjectly lonely.

“But for a short while, I searched, almost frantically for
the
one. I'm sure I broke hearts right and left because I could tell after the first or second date that it just wasn't going to work, and I extricated myself quickly. Somehow, though, I was always the one seen as responsible for the fact others pinned their unrealistic hopes and dreams on me.”

Was that what she was doing? By sitting here, enjoying his world and his company, was she investing, again, in unrealistic hopes and dreams?

Just one night. She would give herself that. It wasn't really pinning hopes and dreams on him. It was about knowing him as completely as she could before she let him go back to his world, and she went back to hers.

“I'd known Francine Lacourte since I was a child,” Kiernan continued. “We'd always been close, always the best of friends.”

“The duchess.” She felt the faintest pang of jealousy at the way he said that name. With a tender reverence.

“She was the funniest, smartest woman I ever met.
She was also the deepest. She had a quality about her, a glow that was so attractive. She shunned publicity, which I loved.”

“You were engaged to her, weren't you?”

“Ever so briefly.”

“And you broke it off, bringing us to nickname number two, the Prince of Heartaches. Because she never recovered, did she?”

Which, now that she thought about it, Meredith could see was a very real danger.

But Kiernan smiled absently. “The truth that no one knows? I didn't break it off. She did.”

He was telling her a truth that no one else knew? That amount of trust felt exquisite.

“But that's not what the press said! In fact, they still say she is in mourning for you. She has become very reclusive. I don't think I've seen one photograph of her in the paper since you broke with her. And that's years ago. It really is like she has disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“Our friends at the press take a fact—like Francine being reclusive—and then they build a story around it that suits their purposes. It has nothing to do with the truth. For a while there was even a rumor started by one of the most bottom feeding of all the publications that I had murdered her. How ridiculous is that?”

“That's terrible!”

“I am going to tell you a truth that very few people on this earth know. I know I don't have to tell you how deeply private this conversation is.”

Again, Meredith relished this trust he had in her, even as she acknowledged it moved her dangerously closer to pinning unrealistic hopes and dreams on him!

“That depth and quality and glow in Francine that I
found so attractive? She had a deep spiritual longing. Francine joined a convent. She had wanted to do so for a long, long time. She loved me, I think. But not the way she loved God.”

“She's a nun?” Meredith breathed, thinking of pictures of her that had been republished after his broken engagement to Tiffany Wells. Francine Lacourte was gorgeous, the last person one would think of as a nun!

He nodded. “She chose a cloister. Can you imagine the nightmare her new life would have been if the paparazzi got hold of that? Because I have a network around me that can protect me from the worst of their viciousness, I chose to let them create the story that titillated the world.”

“You protected her,” Meredith whispered.

“I don't really see it like that. She gave me incredible gifts in the times we spent together. I was able to return to her the privacy she so treasured.”

“By taking the heat.”

“Well, as I say, I have a well-oiled machine around me that protects me from the worst of it. The press can say whatever they want. I'm quite adept at dodging the arrows, not letting them affect me at all. So, if I could do that for Francine, why wouldn't I?”

Hadn't she known this for weeks? In her heart, with her sense of
knowing
him growing? That the prince was actually the opposite of how he was portrayed by the press?

“And then you graduated to being the Prince Heartbreaker,” Meredith said.

“Tiffany came along later, and I was well aware it was
time
. Very subtle pressure was being brought on me to find a suitable partner. I had been deeply hurt by Francine's choice, even as I commended her for making
it. At some level I think I was looking for a woman who was the antithesis of her, which Tiffany certainly was. Bubbly. Beautiful. Light. Lively. Tiffany Wells was certain of her womanly wiles in this seductive, confident way that initially I was bowled over by.”

There were few men who wouldn't be, Meredith thought, with just a touch of envy.

“I was a mature man. She was a mature woman. Eventually, we did what mature adults do,” he admitted. “I'm ashamed to say for the longest time I mistook the sexual sizzle between us as love. Still, we were extremely responsible. Double protected.

“But as that sexual sizzle had cooled to an occasional hiss, I realized it was really the only thing we had in common.”

“She bored you!” Meredith deduced.

He looked pained. “Her constant chatter about
nothing
made my head hurt. I was feeling increasingly disillusioned and she, unfortunately, seemed increasingly enamored.

“I told her it was over. She told me she was pregnant.”

Meredith gasped, but he held her hand tighter, looked at her deeply. “No, Meredith, it is not your story. I did not abandon a pregnant woman.”

P
RINCE
K
IERNAN TOLD
Meredith the rest of the story haltingly. After overcoming the initial shock of Tiffany's announcement he had weighed his options with the sense of urgency that the situation demanded.

He had done what he felt was the honorable thing, a man prepared to accept full responsibility for his moment of indiscretion.

His engagement had been announced, and they had set a date for the very near future, so that Tiffany's pregnancy would not be showing at the wedding. The press had gone into a feeding frenzy. Tiffany had appeared to adore the attention as much as he was appalled by it. She was “caught” out shopping for her gown and flowers, having bachelorette celebrations with her friends, even looking at bassinettes.

“When we were together, we could not have one moment of privacy. The cameras were always there, we were chased, questions were shouted, the press always seemed to know where we were. Now, uncharitably, I wonder if she didn't tip them off. But regardless, our lives became helicopters flying over the palace, the yacht, the polo fields, men with cameras up trees and in shrubs.

“On this point, Meredith, you were absolutely correct
in what you said to me on the day we began dance practice. Romance is glorious entertainment. It sells newspapers and magazines and it ups ratings. Interest in us, as a couple, was nothing short of insatiable.”

“How horrible!” Meredith said.

“You'd think,” he said dryly. “Tiffany loved every moment of it. For me, it felt as if I was riding a runaway train that I couldn't stop and couldn't get off of.”

“But you did stop it. But what of the baby? In all the publicity that followed, I never once heard she was pregnant.”

“Because she wasn't.”

“What?”

“Before that incident it had never occurred to me that a person—particularly one who claimed to love you—could be capable of a deception of such monstrous proportions as that. Luckily for me, the truth was revealed before we were married. Unluckily, it was the night before the wedding.”

He went on to say a loyal servant, assigned to Tiffany, had come in obvious distress late on the eve of the wedding to tell him something that under normal circumstances he would have found embarrassing. But the fact that
pregnant
Tiffany was having her period had saved him. Despite the lateness of the hour, he had confronted Tiffany immediately, and the wedding had been cancelled.

But now the whole world saw him as the man who had coldheartedly broken a bride's heart on the eve of all her dreams coming true. The press seemed tickled by the new role they had assigned him, Prince Heartbreaker.

Tiffany, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying the attention as much as ever, photographed often, sunglasses in place, shoulders slumped, enthusiastically
playing the part of the party who was suffering the most and who had been grievously wronged.

“Why on earth wouldn't you let the world know what and who she really is?” Meredith demanded, shocked at how protective she felt of him. “Why are you taking the brunt of the whole world's disappointment that the fairy tale has fallen apart?”

“Now you sound like Adrian.” He paused before he spoke. “I saw something in Tiffany's desperate attempt to capture me that was not evil. It was very sad and very sick. I glimpsed a frightening fragility behind her mask of supreme confidence.

“How fragile only a very few people know. Tiffany had attempted suicide after I uncovered her deception.”

“It sounds like more manipulation to me,” Meredith said angrily.

“Regardless, I was not blameless. I gave in to temptation, let go of control when I most needed to keep it. I put Tiffany in a position where she hoped for more than what I was prepared to offer, I put myself in a position of extreme vulnerability.

“I don't think Tiffany could have handled her deception being made public, the scorn that would have been heaped on her.”

“She certainly seems to handle it being heaped on you rather well. Her total lack of culpability enrages me, Kiernan.”

He shrugged. “I've been putting up with the attacks of the press since I was a young man. I'm basically indifferent to what they have to say.”

“You protected her, too. Even though she is not the least deserving of your protection!”

He shrugged it off. “Don't read too much into it, Meredith. I'm no hero.”

“Just a prince,” she said and was rewarded with his laughter.

“Just a man,” he said. “Underneath it all, just a man.”

But a good one, she thought. A man with a sense of decency and honor. A man who had not abandoned the woman he thought carried his child.

The man of her dreams. So, so easy to fall in love with him.

A steward came and whispered in his ear.

“I'm so sorry. That's the call I have to take.”

The truth? She was glad for a moment alone to sort through the new surge of emotion she felt at his innate decency, at his deeply ingrained sense of honor.

“Don't think anything of it,” she assured him. She didn't mind. She wanted to sit here and savor his trust and the world he had opened to her. But she badly needed distance, too.

The steward brought her a refill for her coffee, the day's paper, and a selection of magazines.

After staring pensively at the sea for a long time, she needed any kind of distraction to stop the whirling of her thoughts. She picked up the paper.

In the entertainment section she stopped dead.

There was a picture of society beauty Brianna Morrison under the headline Prince Heartbreaker's New Victim?

But Miss Morrison looked like anything but a victim! She was hugging a gossamer green dress to her, her choice for the Blossom Week Ball, the event that would culminate the week's celebrations.

“I couldn't believe it when I was asked,” she gushed to the interviewer. “It is like a dream come true.”

It seemed something went very still in Meredith. She was sharing the prince's yacht tonight. But he had been very clear. This was farewell.

The prince giving the peasant girl a final gift of himself before moving back to his real life.

But he had asked another woman to the ball.

Well, of course he had. Meredith had always known she didn't belong in this world. Brianna Morrison's family was old money, the Morrisons owned factories and businesses, real estate, and shipping yards.

And tonight he had said pressure, subtle or not, was being brought on him to find a suitable partner. Brianna was beautiful and accomplished. Her family's interests and the interests of the Chatams had been linked for centuries.

And then there was Meredith Whitmore. A dance instructor, more devoted to her charity than her business, a woman with a hard past.

No, the prince had decided to give his dance instructor a lovely night out.

A small token of appreciation. He had never claimed it was anything more than a way of saying goodbye to her and the world they had shared for a few light-filled days.

She had been crazy to encourage his confidences, some part of her hoping and praying she was in some way suitable for his world and that he would see it.

She set down the paper and called the steward. “Could we go back to Chatam, please? I'm not feeling well.”

In seconds, Kiernan was at her side.

“I hope you didn't end your phone call on my behalf,” she said coolly, not wanting to see the concern on his
face, deliberately looking to the sea that was beginning to chop under a strengthening wind.

“Of course I did! You're not feeling well? It's probably the roughening sea, but I can have my physician waiting at the dock.”

“No, it's not that serious,” she said, trying not to melt at his tender concern, trying to steel herself against it. “I'm sure it is the sea. I just need to go home.”

“I'll give the order to get underway immediately.” He rose, scanned her face, and frowned.

Then he saw the open newspaper.

She leaned forward to close it, but he stayed her hand, bent over and scanned the headline.

“You read this?” he asked her.

She said nothing, tilted her chin proudly, refused to look at him.

“Is this why you're suddenly not feeling well? It was arranged months ago,” he said quietly.

“It's none of my business. I'm well aware I don't belong in your world, Prince Kiernan. That this has been a nice little treat for a peasant you've taken a liking to.”

“It is not that I don't think you belong in my world,” he said with a touch of heat. “That's not it at all! And I don't think of you as a peasant.”

“Of course not,” she said woodenly.

“Meredith, you don't understand the repercussions of being seen publicly with me.”

“I might use the wrong fork?”

“Stop it.”

“I thought this was such a nice outfit. You probably noticed it was off the rack.”

“I noticed no such thing. It's a gorgeous outfit. You are gorgeous.”

“Apparently. Gorgeous enough to see you privately.”

“Meredith, you need to understand the moment you are seen with me, publicly, your life will never be the same again. Taking you to that ball would be like throwing you into a pail of piranhas. The press would have started to rip you apart. You've told me some shattering secrets about yourself. Do you want those secrets on all the front pages providing titillation for the mob? I won't do that to you.”

“Of course,” she said, “You're protecting me. That's what you do.”

“I am trying to protect you,” he said. “A little appreciation might be in order.”

“Appreciation? You deluded fool.”

He looked stunned by that and that made her happy in an angry sort of way so she kept going.

“You've chosen women in the past that build you up with their weakness, who need their big strong prince to protect them, but I'm not like that.”

“I've chosen weak women?” he sputtered.

“It's obvious.”

“I'm sorry I ever told you a personal thing about myself.”

She was sorry he had, too. Because it had made her hope for things she couldn't have. She couldn't stop herself now if she wanted to.

“I'm a girl from Wentworth. Do you think there's anything in your world that could frighten me? I've walked in places where I've had a knife hidden under my coat. I've been hungry, for God's sake. And so exhausted from working and raising a baby I couldn't even hold my feet under me. I've buried my child. And my
mother. Do you think anything in your cozy, pampered little world could frighten me? The press? I could handle the press with both my hands tied behind my back.

“Don't you dare pretend that's about protecting me. Your Royal Highness, you are protecting yourself. You don't want anyone to know about tonight. Or about me. I'm the sullied girl from the wrong side of the tracks. You're right. They would dig up my whole sordid past. What an embarrassment to you! To be romantically linked to the likes of me!”

“I told you everything there is to know about me,” he said quietly, “and you would reach that conclusion?”

“That's right!” she snapped, her anger making her feel so much more powerful than her despair. “It's all about you!”

She banished everything in her that was weak. There would be plenty of time for crying when she got home.

After the trust they had shared, the intimacy of their dinner, the growing friendship of the last few days, this was
exactly
what was needed.

Distance.

Anger.

Distrust.

And finally, when she got home, then there would be time for the despair that could only be brought on from believing, even briefly, in unrealistic dreams.

But when she got home, she realized she had done it on purpose, created that terrible scene on purpose, driven a wedge between them on purpose.

Because she had done the dumbest thing of her whole life, even dumber than believing Michael Morgan was a prince.

She had come to love a real prince. And she did not think she could survive another love going wrong.

And the truth? How could it possibly go right?

 

“What is wrong with you?” Adrian asked Kiernan the next day.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Kiernan! You're not yourself. You're impatient. You're snapping at people. You're canceling engagements.”

“What engagement?”

“You were supposed to bring Brianna Morrison to the ball. The worst thing you could have done is cancelled that. One more tearstained face attached to your name. She's been getting ready for months. Prince Heartbreaker rides again.”

“Is that a direct quote from the tabs?”

“No. That is so much kinder than the tabs. They're having a heyday at your expense. This morning they showed Brianna Morrison throwing her ball dress off a bridge into Chatam River.”

“Make sure she's charged with littering a public waterway.”

“Kiernan! That's cold! You are just about the most hated man on the planet right now.”

Yes. And by the only one that mattered, too.

Adrian was watching him closely. “And there's that look again.”

“What look?”

“I don't know. Moody.
Desperate
.”

“Adrian, just leave it alone,” he said wearily.

“If something is wrong, I want to help.”

“You can't. Not unless you can learn to dance in—” he glanced at his watch “—about four hours.”

Adrian's eyes widened. “I should have known.”

“What?” Kiernan said. What had he inadvertently revealed?

“Dragon-heart. She's at the bottom of this.”

Kiernan stepped in very close to his young cousin. “Don't you ever call her that again within my hearing. Do you understand me?”

“She did something to make you so mad,” Adrian said. “I know it.”