His Convenient Royal Bride

Sophie pursed her lips together, miffed at the reprimand, as Maddie had known she would be.

“Or apparently your scones,” she said, pronouncing it as gone rather than cone as Maddie always had. Then she flounced through the swinging doors into the kitchen and gave Kettle the order.

“We ain’t open yet.” This declaration was followed by a string of cusswords used creatively and representing a long military history. “I don’t make exceptions. And that includes the apron. And tie your hair back. We have standards.” He put enough curse words between have and standards to impress a sailor.

Sure enough, Kettle himself stomped through the kitchen door. Despite the scowl on his grizzled face, Maddie felt a rush of affection.

Kettle had been her father’s best friend, there for her and her mother when her father had been killed in a logging accident. He’d been there for her again as her mother, heartbroken, had followed on her father’s heels way too quickly, leaving Maddie an orphan at eighteen.

Maddie’s fiancé, Derek, had not gotten it when she had felt compelled to return to Mountain Bend after Kettle’s accident, to manage the café. This was the code she had been raised with: you did right by the people who had done right by you.

So Kettle’s stomp was a good thing. He was nearly back to his normal self after he had fallen off the restaurant roof while shoveling snow in the winter and had a complicated break to his hip that had required several surgeries.

Kettle had spent a military career he would not talk about with Delta Force before returning to Mountain Bend. Now he skidded to a halt, surveyed the two men with a certain bemused expression, and then turned back to the kitchen in time to intercept Sophie, who was coming out behind him.

“Maddie,” he said gruffly, “you handle them customers. Sophie, you can help me in the kitchen for now.”

Sophie looked as if she planned to protest, but she knew better than to argue with her uncle, especially her first day of working for him. She cast one last longing look at the table before reluctantly obeying and going back into the kitchen.

“I trust you to be sensible,” Kettle told Maddie in an undertone. In other words, he trusted she’d outgrown the kind of shenanigans that got small-town girls, like her and Sophie, in all kinds of trouble.

Yes, she thought with a sigh, she was the sensible one now.

“I’m sure you won’t be imagining anyone in kilts, or any other romantic nonsense, either.”

So, he had heard something of that. She hoped she wasn’t blushing, again, but Kettle wasn’t looking at her, but watching their first guests of the day with narrowed eyes.

“What did they say they’re doing here?” he asked quietly.

“The Ritz concert.”

“The big one’s security. Written all over him. Maybe doing an assessment before the band arrives.”

“What about the other one?” Maddie asked, keeping her tone casual.

“Well, that’s the odd part.”

“In what way?”

“He looks like the principal, to me.”

“The what?”

“Never mind. My old life creeps up on me, sometimes. I’m sure they are exactly what they say they are.”

But he didn’t sound sure at all.

“Like a school principal?” Maddie asked, unwilling, for some reason, to let it go.

Kettle snorted. “Does he look like a school principal to you?”

Maddie looked at him one more time, that subtle aura of power and confidence. “No,” she admitted.

“Exactly. Someone who travels with a close protection specialist. Interesting.”

Interesting enough to make Kettle stop from tossing them out before regular opening hours. He had definitely recognized something that had automatically given them his respect—generally hard earned—but that had also made him cautious about exposing his man-crazy niece to them.

“A close protection specialist?”

“A bodyguard in civilian terms. Never mind. I’m being silly.” Kettle shook his head and went back to the kitchen muttering, “Ah, once a warrior.”

The ancient coffeemaker let out a loud hiss, announcing the coffee was ready, and Maddie went and grabbed the pot.

She popped her head in the kitchen door. “Sophie, can you hand me some mugs from the dishwasher?”

Sophie brought over the mugs. “I know what their car looks like,” she said in a hushed tone as she handed Maddie two thick crockery-style coffee mugs. “I’ll bet they’re staying at the Cottages. I’m going to go look as soon as I’m done with work.”

She already was planning to thwart Kettle’s plan to protect her!

“You will not,” Maddie said.

Feeling uncomfortably in the middle of something, Maddie started to take the mugs and the pot over to the window table. Then she paused and picked up two scones from the display and set them on a plate.

“Coffee?” she asked. She set down the scones. “Complimentary. The grill isn’t quite heated yet. Breakfast will be a few minutes.”

While Lancaster eyed the scones with deep suspicion, and even prodded one with his finger, it was Ward who answered, and again she had a sense of him being in a leadership position.

Did he do something that warranted a bodyguard? It seemed a little far-fetched for Mountain Bend. Poor Kettle just hadn’t been himself since he fell off that roof.

“Thank you. I’m Ward and this is Lancaster. And you are?”

She actually blushed, but kept her tone deliberately cool. “It’s Sophie’s first day. I hope she didn’t give you the impression it’s some kind of American tradition for staff at restaurants to introduce themselves to customers.”

“It isn’t? Lancaster, didn’t we have that happen before? In Los Angeles? That fellow. Franklin! He definitely introduced himself. Hi, I’m Franklin, and I’ll be your server tonight.”

“You’re right,” she conceded. “It is protocol at some of the big chains. But here in Mountain Bend, not so much.”

“Thank you for clarifying that,” Ward said. “I find learning another country’s customs a bit like learning a new language. There’s lots of room for innocent error. But now you have us at a disadvantage. You know our names, but we are none the wiser.”

She frowned. She was aware of needing to keep distance between her and this powerfully attractive sample of manliness. Still, she could not see a way out of it. Asking him to call her Miss Nelson would be way too stilted.

“Madeline,” she said, and it sounded stilted anyway and somehow unfriendly. “Maddie,” she amended in an attempt to soften it a bit.

“Maddie.”

Just as she had feared, her name coming off his lips in that sensual accent was as if he had touched the nape of her neck with his fingertips.

“I can’t help but notice your pendant. It’s extraordinary.” He reached up, and for a moment they both froze, anticipation in the air between them.

Then he touched it, ever so lightly. The pendant suddenly felt hot, almost as though there would be a scorch mark on her neck where it rested.

Maddie shivered, from the bottom of her toes to the top of her head.

CHAPTER THREE

“BEAUTIFUL,” WARD SAID SOFTLY. He withdrew his hand, his amazing sapphire eyes intent on her face.

The pronouncement could mean the pendant. But it could also mean—

“A gold nugget?” he asked her.

Obviously, he meant the pendant! Maddie had to pull herself together! Good grief. She felt as though she was trembling.

“Y-y-yes, my father found it and had it made into this piece.”

“Lovely,” he said, and again, it felt as if he might be commenting on more than the pendant. “My name’s a diminutive, too. Short for Edward.”

Did Lancaster shake his head, ever so slightly?

Ward changed tack so effortlessly that Maddie wondered if she had imagined that slight shake of head.

“Do you live up to it?” Ward asked in that sexy brogue. He took a sip of the freshly poured coffee and his laughing eyes met hers over the rim of the cup.

“Excuse me?”

“Your name? Are you mad?”

She wondered if, in her attempts to remain professional, she had ended up looking cranky! That was the thing to remember about men like this. Even simple things were complicated around them. She tried to relax her features as she realized he was deliberately trying to tease some of the stiffness from her.

She remembered Kettle’s confidence that she would be sensible. But not stiff and uninviting, even if it was self-protective. And suddenly she didn’t feel like living up to Kettle’s stodgy expectation of her.

“Mad, angry or mad, crazy?” Maddie asked him, returning his smile tentatively. It was an indicator of how serious everything in her life had become that she considered engaging in this banter and returning his smile living dangerously.

“Obviously, neither,” he said, saluting her with his coffee cup.

Was he flirting? With her? That certainly upped the chances of the mad, crazy. Especially if she engaged with him. Of course, she wouldn’t engage!

Or any other romantic nonsense. Though she suddenly felt a need not just to defy Kettle’s impressions of her, but to have a moment of lightness.

“And do you live up to your name?” she asked him.

He raised an eyebrow at her.

“Do you ward?”

“Ward, protect?” he asked her. “Or ward, admit to the hospital?”

They shared a small ripple of laughter, that appreciation that comes when you come across someone who thinks somewhat the same way you do. Their eyes met, and a spark, like an ember escaped from a bonfire, leaped between them.

Maddie reminded herself that one spark, even that small, could burn down a whole forest. She’d had her moment, Maddie told herself, clinging to the sensibility Kettle was relying on her for.

“Ward off pesky waitresses, I hope,” Lancaster said darkly, and then before she could take it personally, “Where’s your friend?”

“Her uncle needed her in the kitchen.”

“Locked her up,” Lancaster muttered with approval. He took a scone off the plate and scowled at it. “Is this a flavor?”

“Yes, it has a hint of orange in it.”

“There’s no flavors in scones,” Lancaster said firmly. “Do you have cream?”

“Cream? For the coffee? Of course. I’ll go get it.”

“No, for the scones. Cornish cream?”

“Sorry, I—”

“Too much to hope for.” He took a gigantic bite. And then, to Maddie’s satisfaction, he sighed and closed his eyes. “That’s good. Even without cream. Try it,” he insisted to Ward.

Ward picked up the other scone and took a bite. Even that small gesture spoke of refinement. There was that ultrasexy smile again. “You owe somebody an apology,” he told Lancaster. “Not only edible, but possibly the best scone this side of the Atlantic.”

“Any side of the Atlantic.” Lancaster finished the scone in two bites and eyed Ward’s hungrily.

“Who made these?” Ward asked, polishing it off.

“I did.”

“You did not. You’ve got to have a Celt hiding in that kitchen.” Again, Ward was teasing her, as if he sensed she took life altogether too seriously.

Maybe it was weakness to engage, and to want to engage, but what the heck? The men would eat their breakfast and be gone. They might come back, or she might see them in the street and wave, but it was hardly posting banns at the local church. After the concert tomorrow night, they would disappear, never to be seen again.

Unless they bought one of the old miner’s cottages. Unless they fell in love with Mountain Bend.

She did not want to be thinking of falling in love, in any of its many guises, anywhere in the vicinity of the very appealing Ward!

“It’s an old family recipe,” Maddie supplied. “My grandmother was English. And she pronounced it scone, as in cone.”

“Two strikes,” Lancaster muttered.

“Both entirely forgivable,” Ward said. “Do you think I could bother you for another for my hungry friend?”

Maddie brought back a plate of scones and Ward asked, “So it was you who was going to have a shop in New York City?”

“If I was, it was a long way in the future. Anyway, New York City is in my past now.” She needed to move on. She had just lectured Sophie about professionalism. There was no fraternizing with the customers!

She stood there, paralyzed.

“We visited briefly, before we went to California,” Ward volunteered. “This seems preferable to me, the little piece of America everyone knows exists, but that is hard to find. I work in community-based economies. I’d be interested to learn more about your town.”

She cocked her head at him. His intelligence and genuine interest was pulling at her. He was definitely a man she would love to sit down and have a conversation with.

And of course she was not going to give in to that temptation!

“I’d love to talk to you,” she said, and unfortunately, she meant it. “Maybe we’ll get together sometime.”

That part she did not mean at all!

“Can I get you something else?” she said quickly, a reminder to all involved what kind of relationship this was.

“Tea would be wonderful.”

She brought tea and more scones to their table, but thankfully it was opening time, so she could not linger. There was a surprising number of people coming into the café. The town appeared to be benefiting already from people arriving for tomorrow’s concert.

Was it possible this was going to work?

She didn’t have time to contemplate it for long. Her life became a whirlwind as Sophie remained in the kitchen. Kettle delivered the two men breakfast, but Maddie did not interact with them again until it was time to take their money at the till.

“You know how to make tea, too,” Ward said. “That’s a rare gift in this country!”

A small thing, not worthy of a blush, and yet there she was, blushing over tea! Or maybe it was the fact that his hand had brushed hers, and she had felt the jolt of his pure presence, the same way she had when his finger had rested, ever so briefly, on the pendant at her neck.

“That English granny again,” she said.

“Somehow the last thing I think of when I look at you is an English granny,” he said, his voice a sexy rasp. Then he looked faintly taken aback, as if he had said something wildly inappropriate. He recovered quickly, though.

“I hope we do have a chance to talk about your town’s transition,” Ward said. He said it as if he was talking to someone whose opinion he would respect. She glanced at him. Small talk.

“Me, too,” she said with bright insincerity. “Enjoy your stay here.”

Then she snapped the cash register shut and whirled away from them, feeling somehow as if she had escaped some unknowable danger.

Why would such a feeling, the feeling of a near miss on a road named Catastrophe, be tinged with regret?

* * *

“That was a good breakfast,” Lancaster said, as they exited the coffee shop. “You’ve got to give it to Yanks. They know how to eat. The scones were a surprise of the best possible sort.”

“Are you saying barracks food doesn’t appeal?”

“No, Your Highness.”

Both men looked around, but no one was within hearing.

“Sorry, sir, lifetime habits are hard to break.”

They came to the car and Ward regarded it appreciatively. “Do you want to drive, Major Lancaster?” He glanced around. “You’re right about lifetime habits.”

“I was hoping for an opportunity. Where to?”

“I feel, after California and New York, I just need to stretch my legs and have some space. What about those hot pools we heard about?”

“The hotel clerk told us they were in the middle of the wilderness,” Lancaster said, appalled.

“That part of America interests me.”

“I think this is bear country,” Lancaster said doubtfully, the quandary written on his face. How to keep the Prince safest?

“I’m prepared to live dangerously.”

“I was afraid of that.” Lancaster looked less than pleased, for he was a man born into the station of guarding the royal family of the Isle of Havenhurst, and he sniffed out—and avoided—situations that might place the Prince in danger, but he also knew an order when he heard it.

“The cover story went well,” Ward said as they left Mountain Bend and took a rough road that began to twist up the mountain through thick forest.

Lancaster was silent.

“Didn’t you think so?”

“The old guy didn’t buy it.”

“What old guy?”

“He came out of the kitchen for a minute and gave us a good look over. Limping. Ex-military.”

“How can you tell that?”

Lancaster shrugged. “There are ways to tell. But it works both ways. I think he could tell a bit about us, too.”

Ward contemplated the fact he had not registered the man coming out of the kitchen. Of course, it was Lancaster’s job to notice who was around them, and Ward was confident Lancaster was probably better at his job than just about anybody in the world. But still, Ward suspected the woman, Maddie, had something to do with the fact he had not noticed the man come out of the kitchen.

There was something about her that engaged him, especially after coming from California, where the women he met all seemed very outgoing, very tall, very tanned, wrinkle-free and white-blond.

In contrast he had found Maddie’s beauty was understated and natural, as refreshing as a cool breeze on a warm day. She was lovely, with those kissed-by-the-sun curls springing around her head, her delicate features, the perfect bow of puffy lips, hazel eyes that looked green one moment and doe brown the next. Despite the faintest hint of freckles, unlike her California counterparts, her skin had been porcelain pale, as if, despite being surrounded by the outdoors, she did not get outside much. And there had been faint shadows of what—weariness? worry?—under those remarkable eyes.

In their short encounter Ward had found her both delightfully interesting and intriguingly attractive, and at the same time a painful reminder of the kind of woman and kind of life he would never have.

“I’m not concerned. Yet,” Lancaster said. “But I wouldn’t be telling anyone else your name is Edward.”

“Havenhurst is probably the least known kingdom in the entire North Atlantic, a little speck in the ocean, two hundred kilometers from the North Channel. Even the Scots, who are the most culturally linked to us, barely know who we are. So, few people know who I am.”

Ward’s publicity-averse family employed a small army to fend off the pursuit of royalty-crazed tabloids, and though the odd picture or story about him emerged, he was mostly an unknown.

Lancaster looked unconvinced.

“I’m off the radar,” Ward assured him.

“Best to keep it that way. I think your California friend, Miss O’Brian, would have loved to have milked your status for a bit of publicity.”

Ward gave Lancaster a look. “Did you give her a talking-to?”

Lancaster lifted a huge shoulder. “Laid out a few ground rules, aye.”

The road had ended. Lancaster turned off the car, and they got out. They removed day packs from the trunk and hoisted them onto shoulders.

Hours later, they returned to the car. They had hiked all day, but they had not succeeded in finding the hot pool.

“The more we didn’t find them, the more I was homesick for a dip,” Ward said. “Maybe we should take that young waitress up on her offer to show us the sights, after all.”

“Huh. With a chaperone, maybe.”

“Perhaps Maddie could join us, too.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Lancaster offered.

Ward shot Lancaster a look. Had he guessed there was something about the gamine scone enchantress that had piqued his interest? But no, the scowl said something else entirely.

“Because the young Sophie may have been a bit smitten with you?”

Lancaster scowled. “Emphasis on young. There’s bound to be a slipup. Questions asked that can’t be answered. The cover story won’t stand up to close scrutiny.”

Ward reminded himself it was Lancaster’s job to think like this, to be on the alert for potential threats and possible dangers, real and imagined.

But he realized wanting Maddie and Sophie to join them wasn’t just about finding the hot pools. Maddie, with her curls and her tentative smile, had made him long for something he knew he could not have. Or maybe he could, not forever, but for a few moments in time. Maybe these last few final days of anonymity could give him one chance to see what it was like to have fun with an ordinary girl in an ordinary world. He felt a need to articulate it.

“Please don’t deprive me of this opportunity to do a few normal things, Lancaster. Yes, I want to drive a car like this one. But I want to laugh with a pretty lass. Dance at a concert. This may be the only opportunity I ever get to experience a normal life.”

A normal life. They got back in the car and Ward took the driver’s seat this time. Their small island home did not lend itself to a vehicle like this. In truth, he rarely drove himself anywhere. He put the car in gear and enjoyed the surge of power as he pressed down the gas. Lancaster made an unflattering grab for a bar above his door, but Edward soon found his groove and drove the car as quickly as the poor road would allow.

“I understand, Your Highness,” Lancaster said. “This is really your only taste of freedom. In a few weeks you’ll be a married man.”

“I’ve never had freedom,” Ward said quietly, “married or not. Just the same, I’ve reached a decision. I’ve decided not to marry Princess Aida.”

CHAPTER FOUR

“BUT...BUT YOUR marriage is expected,” Lancaster stammered, after a long silence.

“I’ve always understood that service comes before self, and that certain sacrifices would be expected of me.”

“Princess Aida is a beautiful woman, sir, hardly a sacrifice.”

“She doesn’t love me.”

“Love?” Lancaster shot him a distressed look. “What does that have to do with it?”

Love. Ward had never had an expectation of it in his life. His father, the King, had not loved his mother, nor she him. Their public lives had been orchestrated to be civil; privately they had been cold and distant to one another.

Ward himself had been sent away to a private school when he was six. So love was a nebulous thing to him. He had not experienced it, nor had any expectation of it.

Edward thought of Aida with affection, like one would think of a little sister. When she had come to him and told him she loved someone else, he had felt a shocking sense of envy for what was shining in her eyes.

And he’d felt the difficulty of what he needed to do. His nation wanted one thing. His family demanded one thing. His conscience commanded another. He could not be the one to kill the light that had shone from Aida when she talked about Drew Mooretown, the man on her personal guard that she now loved.

“The sacrifice would have been hers, if we married,” Edward said slowly. “I’ve no notions of love. We’ve both known, since we were children, what was expected of us and what the benefit to both of our nations is. Like me, she’ll do what’s required of her, but, Lancaster, she loves another. I cannot do this to her.”

“You’re a good man,” Lancaster said with a sigh, and Prince Edward Alexander the Fourth knew he had been paid the highest of compliments from one who rarely gave them. He could only hope it was true. “But it’s not going to be as easy to get out of it as you think. Your father—”

“Would force it, I know.”

“I don’t relish the thought of marching you down the aisle with a sword at your back.” Lancaster was only partly kidding. “What are you going to do? I’ve known this whole trip something was deeply troubling you. It seems impossible to get out of it. Unless you’re thinking of not going back?”

“Rest easy, Lancaster. You don’t have to feel a divided loyalty between your duty to your King and your duty to me. There will be no having to think of a way to wrestle me back to my kingdom. I have always known my destiny is there, and I embrace that. I love my work on economic development, bringing the island new ideas and prosperity, acting as a liaison with the people. I love listening to their ideas and concerns, involving them in the future of our island. I love Havenhurst.”