Crowned for the Prince's Heir

She must have slept, because she awoke to the smell of mint and, disorientated, opened her eyes to see Luc putting a steaming cup of tea on the table beside the bed. He had brought her tea?

‘Feeling better?’ he said.

His kindness disarmed her and she struggled to sit up, trying to ignore the ache of her breasts and the fact that he was fully dressed while she was still wearing the bathrobe which had become looser while she slept. She pulled the belt a tiny bit tighter but that only emphasised the ballooning shape of her baby bump and she silently cursed herself for caring what she looked like. At least the sight of her was unlikely to fill him with an uncontrollable lust, she reflected. It wasn’t just the shower cap which wasn’t a turn-on, it was everything about her...

She cleared her throat. ‘Much better, thanks,’ she lied. ‘What time is dinner?’

Luc walked over to the window and watched as she began to sip at her tea. With

her face all flushed and her hair mussed, she looked strangely vulnerable—as if she was too sleepy to have remembered to wear her familiar mask of defiance. Right then it would have been so easy to take her into his arms and kiss away some of the unmistakable tension which made her body look so brittle. But she’d made her desires clear—or, rather, the lack of them. She didn’t want intimacy and, although right now he sensed she might be open to persuasion, it wouldn’t work in his favour if he put her in a position which afterwards she regretted. And she was pregnant, he reminded himself. She was carrying his baby and therefore she deserved his consideration and protection.

‘Dinner is whenever you want it to be.’

She put the cup back down on the saucer, looking a little uncomfortable. ‘Will it be served in that huge room with all the golden plates?’

‘You mean the formal banqueting room which we use for state functions? I don’t tend to eat most meals in there,’ he added drily. ‘There are smaller and less intimidating rooms we can use.’ He paused. ‘Or I could always have them bring you something here, on a tray.’

‘Seriously? You mean like a TV dinner?’ Her green-gold eyes widened. ‘Won’t people think it odd if we don’t go down?’

‘I am the Prince and you are my wife and we can do whatever we damned well like,’ he said arrogantly. ‘What would you like to eat?’

‘I know it probably sounds stupid, but I’d love...well, what I’d like more than anything is an egg sandwich.’ She looked up at him from between her lashes. ‘Do you think that’s possible?’

He gave a short laugh. When she looked at him like that, he felt as if anything were possible. But how ironic that the only woman in a position to ask for anything should have demanded something so fundamentally humble. ‘I think that can be arranged.’

A uniformed servant answered his summons, soon reappearing with the sandwich she’d wanted—most of which she devoured with an uninhibited hunger which Luc found curiously sensual. Or maybe it was the fact that she was ignoring him which had stirred his senses—because he wasn’t used to that either.

After she’d finished and put her napkin down, she looked up at him, her face suddenly serious.

‘Eleonora showed me the gallery today,’ she said.

‘Good. I wanted you to see as much of the palace as possible.’

She traced a figure of eight on the linen tablecloth with the tip of her finger before looking up.

‘I noticed two paintings of the same woman. Beautiful paintings—in a specially lit section of the gallery.’

He nodded. ‘Yes. Two of Kristjan Wheeler’s finest works. Conall Devlin acquired one of them for me.’

‘Yes, I knew he was an art dealer as well as a property tycoon,’ she said. ‘But what I was wondering was...’

He set down his glass of red wine as her voice tailed off. ‘What?’ he questioned coolly.

She wriggled her shoulders and her hazelnut curls shimmered. ‘Why Eleonora seemed so cagey when I asked about the paintings.’

He shrugged. ‘Eleonora has always been the most loyal of all my aides.’

‘How lovely for you,’ she said politely. ‘But surely as your wife I am expected to know—’

‘Who she is? The woman in the paintings?’ he finished as he picked up his glass and swirled the burgundy liquid around the bowl-like shape of the glass. ‘She was an Englishwoman called Louisa De Lacy, who holidayed here during the early part of the last century. She was an unconventional woman—an adventuress was how she liked to style herself. A crack shot who smoked cheroots and wore dresses designed to shock.’

‘And is that relevant? She sounds fun.’

‘Very relevant. Mardovia was under the rule of one of my ancestors and he fell madly in love with her. The trouble was that Miss De Lacy wasn’t deemed suitable on any grounds, even if she’d wanted to be a princess, which she didn’t. Despite increasing opposition, he refused to give her up and eventually he was forced to renounce the throne and was exiled from Mardovia. After his abdication his younger brother took the crown—my great-great-grandfather—and that is how it came to be passed down to me.’

‘And was that a problem?’ she questioned curiously.

He shrugged. ‘Not for me. Not even for my father—because we were born knowing we must rule—but for my great-great-grandfather, yes. He had never wanted to govern and was married to a woman who was painfully shy. The burden of the crown contributed to his early death, for which his wife never forgave Louisa De Lacy, and in the meantime...’