Her Royal Husband

She tried to tell herself her mind was playing tricks on her.

A man sat at a polished table with her daughter. He was dressed in faded jeans, a denim shirt—he had the build of a prizefighter, all sinewy muscle.

And yet she could not deny his resemblance to the man she had loved so many years ago….

He glanced up, and his eyes met hers.

The exact color of the little girl’s who sat across from him.

This was a dream. No, a nightmare! Her daughter was sitting across the table from the man who bore such a frightening resemblance to the man who had fathered her.

Jordan let the shock of it wash over her. The man who had loved her was a prince. A living, breathing, gorgeous prince.

Her Royal Husband

Cara Colter

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my niece, Courtenay Sarvis, with all my love.

CARA COLTER

shares ten acres in the wild Kootenay region of British Columbia with the man of her dreams, three children, two horses, a cat with no tail and a golden retriever who answers best to “bad dog.” She loves reading, writing and the woods in winter (no bears). She says life’s delights include an automatic garage door opener and the skylight over the bed that allows her to see the stars at night.

She also says, “I have not lived a neat and tidy life, and used to envy those who did. Now I see my struggles as having given me a deep appreciation of life, and of love, that I hope I succeed in passing on through the stories that I tell.”

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter One

I t was the sound he had been waiting for.

The faint rasp of the key in the lock, the tumble of the bolt. Prince Owen Michael Penwyck felt his muscles coiling. He was tense, ready. He became aware he was holding his breath, and blew out slowly, forced himself to breathe.

The heavy wooden door creaked on its ancient hinges. Owen was wedged behind it. He remained focused on the shaft of light that penetrated the darkness of his cell as the door swung slowly open.

A long shadow, elongated, fell across the cold, stone floor. The shadow showed one man, his rifle slung over his shoulder, the sharp angle of his elbow indicating to Owen he carried something in front of him. All was as the young prince had hoped.

The shadow paused, and before he became aware of the broken, empty cot, to register danger, Owen launched himself from behind the door, and smashed into his captor. The man had been carrying a food tray, and some of the contents, steaming soup, a cup of coffee, flipped up onto him and he howled in surprised outrage. And then in pain as Owen pressed the advantage of surprise, and kneed him with all the considerable strength of legs hard-muscled from years of mountain climbing, horseback riding and hiking.

Too much noise, he thought with regret, stepping over the man who had curled up in a fetal position on his cell floor. His captors, alerted by that initial yell, were approaching down the hallway. Owen could hear their footsteps, coming fast, echoing like thunder in the cavernous passage.

Though Owen now knew escape was not likely, not this time, there was fierce swelling within him. It felt like a fire in his breast, a warrior spirit rising. He felt a moment of sweet gratitude for youth and strength, and he unconsciously flexed the hard line of his biceps, filled the breadth of his wide chest with a cleansing breath of air. He took a harder hold on the iron leg he had spent the better part of a day persuading to part company with the cot in his cell.

Fearless, ready, calm, like the knights who had been his ancestors, he stepped out of the doorway. He blinked once, hard, as his eyes adjusted from the murky darkness of the cell to the sudden brightness of the passageway.

Three men were on him almost instantly, dressed in black, faces covered. Owen swung the straight iron bar off the bed, putting all the considerable power of his arm and shoulder into the swing. He felt the jar of connection, and a man toppled to the ground. The bar had glanced off that first man and struck another, and that second attacker backed off warily, swiping at the cut over his eyebrow. He looked at his blood-covered hand with angry, stunned disbelief.

But the third attacker had ducked under the melee of bar and bodies, and was behind Owen. A sinewy arm, appallingly strong, wrapped around the column of the young prince’s neck. The second man saw opportunity and rushed forward again. Owen dropped the bed leg and pried ineffectively at the arm that was cutting off his air supply. He reared back, smashing the head of the man who had his arm around his neck with his own head. Though the force stunned him, he was caught in the flow of adrenaline and felt no pain. He heard the other man’s grunt, and felt a marginal loosening of the hold on his neck. Owen reared back again, this time kicking forward at the same time. He felt his foot connect with the belly of the second attacker, heard the satisfying “oomph” of the air leaving the man. His neck was free.

His satisfaction was short-lived. A black wave of men appeared out of a connecting passageway and was flowing down the hallway toward him.

And the attacker behind him was a demon. He had a clawlike grip on his shoulder now, and was slamming a hard fist over and over into the soft flesh of Owen’s cheek. Owen managed to twist, to finally see his opponent head-on.

He was dressed in black, like the others, but the cover had slipped from his face. Even as Owen let loose a punch, and felt the man’s nose give under the force of it, he was trying to memorize the hawkish features. He now knew there was no possibility of winning this fight, let alone escaping. Still, some base instinct roared within him, demanded he do as much damage as possible before the inevitable loss.

Owen used the man’s own shock against him. He shoved him to the floor, leapt on top of him, his knees bracketing the man’s chest. He pulled his arm back, seeing red now, his fury unleashed. But before he could complete his swing, his arm was caught fast and painfully. The air went out of him as someone leapt on his back, shoving him down hard on top of his opponent.

The young prince fought with everything he had left, but there were too many, now, holding him down. One sat on his back, a hard hand on his neck. Both his arms were being held behind him, and hands held his legs. He was lifted enough for the man underneath him to slither out, and then he was slammed back into the cold rock floor.

“Okay,” he said, and heard the calm contempt in his own voice, “uncle.”

That earned him a hard swat on the back of his head, and he tasted his own blood on his lip. He heard the subtle rattle of metal before he realized what they were doing, and felt his first moment of panic. He fought desperately with his remaining strength, managed to send a man flying and to get his arm free temporarily. But they came back harder than before, and his head was slammed again into the rock floor, and his arm twisted up painfully behind his back. He felt the shackle close and then click shut with cold metallic finality, first around his right wrist and then, despite the wild fury of his struggle, the left one.

More weight settled on him as he tried to writhe away from the leg irons. Cruel hands held him as the iron bands were clamped, too tightly, around his ankles.

He registered, with impotent fury, his own helplessness, and then was jerked roughly to his feet.

He stood, swaying, captured but unsubdued, and then marshaling his remaining strength, he lunged forward. He allowed himself to feel brief satisfaction in the wary respect he saw as men leapt back from him. He noted, too, that for a single, solitary man, he had managed to cause an inordinate amount of damage. The men who faced him were bloody and bruised, their clothing torn and disheveled. His captors’ chests were heaving from exertion.

Owen reminded himself he did not have the luxury to gloat. He had only one thing left and he needed to use it. His mind.

Carefully, he looked at the men, taking swift mental notes. They were dressed the same as they had been the night of his kidnapping, in identical black sweatpants, black turtlenecks, now pulled up over the lower part of their faces and black woolen caps. The effect was dramatic and sinister. He tried to get a sense of nationality from the eyes of the men, from their skin color, but he could not. He did get a sense of organization. This was not a motley crew who had decided to capture a prince for ransom.

This was a highly organized group, quasi-military.

He took his eyes from the men. He had been blindfolded when he arrived, and now he looked carefully at the passageway. It looked remarkably like a medieval dungeon, dark and dank. Still, the stones that formed the formidable walls caught his attention. They had a faint pink tinge. His gaze traveled up them. High up the wall was one small opening, barred, no glass. Owen was certain he could smell the sea.

That color of rock was famous on the island of Majorco, an island about to sign a groundbreaking military alliance with Penwyck.

Owen was careful not to let it show in his face that he had a pretty good idea where he was. And maybe even an inkling of why he was being held. There were those who were opposed to this kind of alliance between the two islands.

Maybe more opposed than anyone had ever guessed.

His chance to observe ended abruptly. A boot in his back indicated it was time for him to move back in the direction of his cell. Despite the chains he refused to shuffle, making his stride as long as the chain would allow. He tilted his chin up at a haughty angle.

“Your Royal Highness,” one of the men said sarcastically, bowing as he held open the cell door.

Owen slammed his whole body into the man who had been foolish enough to not only mock him, but to take his eyes off of him for a second.

He went down in a hard scrabble of bodies, took another hard punch to his head, and three or four to his rib cage. Then he was picked up and thrown unceremoniously on his cell floor. He watched, panting, his cheek resting on cold stone, as half a dozen of his captors entered the cell, and carried the dismantled bed out, and then the mattress.

The man who had bowed, gave him a kick as he walked by. “You’re more like a bloody street fighter than the pampered pouf I was expecting a prince to be,” he spat out.

Owen, flattered, managed to laugh through swelling lips, and then became aware of a man standing over him. It was the one whose turtleneck had slipped off his face. He had not bothered to replace it.

He was dabbing at his bloody nose with a handkerchief. Expensive, Owen noted. The eyes that watched him were liquid and black, his lips thin and cruel. Owen memorized the white ridge of the scar that ran from his ear to his jawline.

“A foolish move, Your Highness,” the man said mildly. “Your stay here could have been quite comfortable. Pleasant, even.”

From his position on the floor, Owen watched him narrowly. The leader? He listened for an accent. Did he hear a faint Majorcon lilt? Did it mean something that the man was making no attempt to conceal his identity? If it did, what it meant was not good.

“I expect that will be the end of such foolishness,” the man said silkily.

Owen said nothing.

The man crouched beside him, balancing on his toes. He rested his arms on his knees and when he did so the right sleeve of his dark tunic pushed up minutely, showing a square of his forearm. Owen tried to look at the unusual tattoo, without appearing to be the least bit interested. Only partially showing, it looked like the tip of a black dagger.

“Is that the end of your foolishness?” the man pressed.

Owen looked deliberately away from the tattoo, met the flat black eyes and said nothing.

The man laughed, a soft, chilling sound. “You are not my prince,” he said, “you are my prisoner. When I ask a question of you, I expect an answer.”

Educated, Owen decided of his tone, his inflection, his use of words. He answered him by spitting.

He waited for the blow that didn’t come.

“The man who guarded you last night said you called out in your sleep.” This was said softly, almost kindly.

Owen felt himself go very still. He felt a new wariness. This man was far more dangerous than those who thought they could beat him into submission. He sensed the cutting intelligence, and the ruthlessness of the man.

“You called a name. A name I have not heard before in connection with your family, not even as a minor player.”

He knows a great deal about my family, Owen noted uneasily. He did not let his unease show.

“Who are you?” Owen asked, every bit of twenty-three years of royal breeding and training going into the cold authority he inserted into his voice. “And what do you want?”

The man ignored him, gazed by him thoughtfully. “What was it now?” he mused. “An unusual name.”

Owen was not fooled into believing the man did not know the name.

“Laurie Anne? No, no. Jo Anne, perhaps.”

The man was playing with him, and Owen struggled to look patently bored, even though he dreaded the fact this man might know his deepest secret, or part of it.

“No. Now I recall.” The gaze was fixed intently on his face, gauging reaction. “Jordan. That was the name you called in your sleep.”

The black eyes seemed to bore into his own, and Owen knew he had not succeeded in preventing the shock of recognition from flashing in his own eyes even though he had been bracing himself since the moment the man began toying with him.

The man smiled slightly. “Obviously you are a man who can and will accept the price of personal pain for raising my ire. But will you be responsible for what I would do to others if you push me too far?”

“You would never find her,” Owen snapped.

“Her,” his captor said with satisfaction. “I didn’t know that before. Jordan could have been a man’s name.”

Owen silently cursed his own stupidity.

“Amazing that someone whose life has been so much under public scrutiny could have a love interest that no one knows about. I wonder how you managed that? A love interest, is that correct?”

Owen glared silently at his tormentor.

“Do you know there is a drug that will make a man tell everything? His every secret? It’s called Sodium Amytal. Have you ever heard of it, Your Royal Highness?”

It was a head game, now, a sparring of minds. Owen was aware if he answered he was conceding to his captor’s rules that he was expected to answer him, and that if he didn’t answer, the stakes could be upped. Jordan. He swallowed his pride.

“No, I haven’t heard of that drug,” Owen said tersely.

“No?” He nodded slightly acknowledging the younger man’s concession. “Well, princes don’t dabble in the dirty stuff, do they? No, they cut ribbons and dance at galas and ride the fall hunt. Though I will admit your strength took me and my men by surprise. But be warned, the drug can make even the strongest man, even a man who can withstand great physical punishment, babble like a baby. I could know everything about your Jordan in very short order.”

“Okay,” Owen said harshly, “I hear you.”

“I’m glad that you do.” The man rose to his feet. “I think this session is ended for today. Tomorrow I will have some questions. About the diamonds.”

“Diamonds?” Owen echoed, completely baffled.

“If you give me any more trouble, be warned, I will not punish you. I will find the girl. Do you understand that?”

Owen thought the threat was empty. For one thing, if he made another escape attempt, he fully intended to succeed. But if he did not, how could he tell his captor where Jordan was when he had no idea himself? On the other hand, somewhere in his mind, there were probably clues to her whereabouts. He remembered, uneasily, she was from Wintergreen, Connecticut.

“Do you understand?” he was asked again with soft, but unmistakable menace.

“Yes.”

“Good. It’s important that we understand each other. Satisfactory answers to the questions I have will also be beneficial to Jordan.”

Owen detested himself that he had revealed an Achilles’ heel so easily.

“I’ll leave your dinner here on the floor where you threw it. If you get hungry enough, it may begin to look appetizing to you, though it’s been slightly trampled now. Of course, I am unable to attest to the cleanliness of my men’s boots.”

Owen struggled with his fresh fury, the abject humiliation of finding himself being totally in this despicable despot’s power. He managed to turn over on his side, turn his back to his tormentor.

“Bon appetit, Your Royal Highness.”

It was not until he heard the door lock behind him that Owen allowed himself the luxury of a groan.

His whole body was throbbing. Owen would have liked to inspect his knuckles, as it felt like one of them was split open. And touch his face to check the swelling in his cheek, the bleeding from his lip. But his arms were trussed tightly behind his back. He contented himself with laying his hurt cheek against the cold floor.

His bid for freedom had not only failed, it had made the next attempt harder. Perhaps impossible. What if another attempt meant danger to Jordan Ashbury, wherever she was?

The floor seemed harder and colder by the second. Owen steeled his mind to the discomfort, refused to acknowledge the niggle of hunger that had begun in the bottom of his belly.

He had cried her name in the night.

Jordan.

He closed his eyes, and she danced across his memory and came to him. He remembered her running across the sand beside the ocean in the moonlight, her blond hair streaming behind her, the sparkle in her eyes putting the stars to shame. He remembered when he kissed her, that first time, her lips and skin had tasted of the salt in the moist sea air that shrouded them.

The memory made him groan again, a pain deeper than the physical pain he was in.

Because from the start he had known one truth: a relationship with her was impossible.

Impossible.

Impossible to resist. Impossible to control.

And in the end, just plain impossible, his life and hers too far apart, a chasm between worlds too huge to be leaped.

There was rough laughter outside his door. Changing of the guard. He tried to figure out what time it was, but then gave up. Instead, he closed his eyes and gave into the simple pleasure of remembering her speaking his name.

Or what she thought was his name.

He wondered, wearily, if they were going to kill him, these captors. It was the first time he had allowed himself to consider that possible outcome to his kidnapping.

He knew it did not bode well that his captor had allowed him to look at his face, had carelessly revealed the tattoo on his arm.

Looking his mortality in the face, Owen had a moment of illumination, a clarity of thought he had never experienced before.

He was aware, suddenly, that he had let go of the one thing in life that he should have treated as most precious.

He did what he had not allowed himself to do for five years. He allowed himself to remember her. He allowed himself to wish things could have been different.

He had been eighteen the summer of his rebellion.

Eighteen and aware that he was more likely than his twin brother, Dylan, to be chosen to be king one day.

What had it been about being eighteen that had made truths of which he had always been aware seem suddenly unbearable?

He had always known his life would not be his own.

He had always known that every decision regarding his life and every detail affecting his life would be carefully orchestrated, not to meet his needs, but to meet the needs of his small island nation of Penwyck.

He had always known that the most important decisions of his life, including whom he would one day marry, would largely be influenced by others.

At eighteen, he had seen his life unfolding before him, a prison he could not escape. He could see now they were grooming him to be king, and not his brother Dylan. He could see how it hurt Dylan, and he had hated a system that would make one brother seem to have more value than another, just because he had different gifts.

Owen was strong and fast and smart. Dylan was those things, too, but not to the same extent. And Dylan had quiet strengths of his own that were largely overlooked because Owen was a “package” that the public adored. Tall, dark and handsome, the fact that he was good-looking and athletic played a part in the manufacture of a fairy tale that the people of Penwyck delighted in believing. Sometimes Owen was uncomfortably aware of his image being manipulated more than Dylan’s, his acceptance as the future monarch of the small island being worked on in subtle and not-so-subtle ways all the time.

Most men, Owen knew, had to find their destiny. He had been born to his.

At eighteen, he accepted that. But he also realized he had some trading power. And the trade he insisted on was that he have a summer of freedom—one summer in the United States—before he came back and devoted himself and his life totally to the destiny he had been born to. In exchange for one summer he promised he would return to Penwyck without argument and ready and willing to assume his adult role in the affairs of state.

Even with that promise, he had to fight hard. It was the first time he came face-to-face with the implacable strength of his own warrior spirit.

He found it to be a part of himself that he enjoyed thoroughly.

Disguised, drilled in his assumed identity until he could recite it in his sleep, under oath not to reveal his true self to anyone, under any circumstances, Owen was finally allowed, albeit reluctantly by his parents, and especially by the Royal Elite Team, to go off completely on his own for what was supposed to be a five week program for gifted political science students at the world-renowned Smedley Institute at Laguna Beach in California.

“Hey, you, blond boy.”

Those were the first words she’d said to him, her voice laced with scorn, no doubt because she had realized he was no more a natural blonde than she was a sumo wrestler.

He’d recognized her as the smart girl, the one who was not afraid to raise her hand, who did her homework, who had the answers, who was on the lookout for sexism. She had shoulder-length blond hair and she could have been pretty, if she tried, but he suspected she would have scorned expending energy in such a superficial pursuit.

That day her jeans and T-shirt were way too baggy for her slight figure, and her beautiful eyes were almost hidden by the brim of a ball cap she had pulled down too low.

Almost. Because when he looked in her eyes for the very first time, he had felt a strange shiver. Her eyes were not the eyes of the class brain, nor even the eyes of a woman who could slice a man with her razor wit. Her gaze was calm, and strong, almost unsettling in what it said about her.

Honest. Trustworthy. Kind.

The word destiny had formed unbidden in his brain as he looked at her, but how could that be when his was already so rigidly outlined for him and when she so obviously thought men were beer-swilling swine whom she had to guard against at all times?