Royal Weddings

At the foot of the bed, Hauk lay utterly still. She could swear he hadn’t moved since he crawled beneath the blanket over an hour ago.

When the movie ended, Elli switched off the television. The room seemed so very quiet. She could hear Doodles purring—and nothing else.

Could the Viking have died?

Hah. No such luck.

Had he fallen asleep? It certainly seemed that way.

What a thrilling development. Hauk. Dead to the world. Dreaming whatever a Viking warrior dreamed, and for once—since the moment she’d walked in her door that afternoon—not guarding her.

Why, she might do anything. She might get up and go in the kitchen all by herself. Might walk out on the balcony and look up at the stars. Might go down the steps and along the walk and get in her car and…go for a drive.

And not to run away, not to break her word. Oh, no. Simply because she could.

She’d return later, after he woke and found her gone. He would be frantic. Old stone face. Freaking out.

Ah, yes. How lovely…

Elli rearranged the cats a little, pushing them gently to the side so they wouldn’t be disturbed when she slid from the bed. Then she switched off the lamp and lay back to wait awhile. She could see the glowing numerals on her bedside digital alarm clock. She’d wait half an hour. And if she still heard nothing, she was out of here.

Okay, maybe it was pointless and a little bit childish. But this whole situation deeply offended her. To show that she could leave if she wanted to would be something of an object lesson—to Hauk, and by extension, to her father. And maybe, if she left and came back of her own accord, Hauk would realize it wasn’t necessary to take the orders of his king so literally. Maybe, by tomorrow night, she’d have her bedroom to herself.

The time passed slowly. She used it to consider her next move. Should she creep to the foot of the bed and have a look at him, see if he truly was in lullaby land?

Uh-uh. No point in tempting fate—not to mention squeaky bedsprings. Better just to ease out from under the covers and tiptoe to the door. If it turned out he’d been lying there for hours, stone still and awake, she’d find out soon enough.

The minutes crawled by. There was nothing but silence from the man at the foot of her bed.

At last, that endless half hour was behind her.

Slowly, so quietly, Elli eased back the covers. In one careful, unbroken move, she swung her feet out and over the edge of the bed. She slid her weight onto them without a single spring creaking. Doodles, sound asleep by then, didn’t even open an eye. Diablo lifted his sleek head, blinked at her, then laid his head down again.

Good. Perfect. Wonderful.

Elli turned and started for the door to the hall. She was utterly silent. She wasn’t even breathing. She made it into the open doorway.

“Where are you going?”

Elli gasped and whirled to face him. He was standing beside his blankets, watching her. She could have sworn he had never moved, never so much as stirred.

She gulped. “Uh, well…ice water! You know, I really want some ice water.”

The big golden head dipped once—in permission, in acknowledgment, in who the heck knew what? Elli yanked her shoulders back and headed for the kitchen. She heard nothing behind her. But she didn’t have to turn and look to know that he had followed.

Eventually, very late in the night, she finally dropped off to sleep. She woke after daylight to the sound of birds twittering in the forest: her alarm clock. Brit had given it to her a couple of Christmases ago. It made nature sounds instead of beeping or buzzing. Elli reached over and punched the off button. The cats were already off the bed and racing down the hall.

And the Viking…

All she could see from the head of the bed was the edge of his blankets. “Uh, Hauk?”

No answer.

He’d proven last night that he could hear her even if she didn’t make a sound. So he must be up, or he would have answered. She pushed back the covers and scrambled to the bottom of the bed, where she found his blankets neatly folded, his pillow on top of the stack.

Boots, belt and man were gone.

Could it be? Had he really left—due to second thoughts on her father’s part, maybe? Had Osrik beeped him late in the night, told Hauk to back off, that his daughter had given her word and the king had decided to trust her to find her way to Gullandria on her own?

The idea warmed her heart. Her father had faced a basic truth, apparently. He’d seen that in order to begin healing the awful breach in their family, he must trust, first and foremost, he must—

“You called for me?”

Hauk stood in the doorway to the hall, bare-chested, a half beard of shaving cream frothed over one sculpted cheek. She couldn’t help gaping at his shoulders and arms, so big and hard, the muscles bulging and taut, the skin so tan and perfect, except for the occasional white ridge of scar tissue.

And his chest…

It was covered with beautiful, savage tattoos.

A lightning bolt like the one in his right palm, only much bigger, zigzagged across his bulging pectorals. Dragons and vines twisted and twined around it—and around the sword and dagger tattooed above and below it. The tail of the largest dragon trailed down his solar plexus to his navel.

His belly took her breath away. She’d never seen one like it—at least not outside of ab-machine infomercials and superhero video games.

Elli gulped and dragged her gaze up to meet those watching eyes. “Uh. Yes.” Carefully, tugging on her sleep shirt that had ridden up much too high, she rocked back so she sat on her knees. She tipped her chin to a proud angle and tried to look dignified, though she knew her cheeks were tomato-red. “I… didn’t see you,” she stuttered lamely. “I was wondering where you’d gone.”

He lifted an eyebrow and held up a thoroughly modern cartridge-type razor. She stared at it for a moment, thinking that it looked toylike and strange in his big hand. But what had she expected, that he’d shave with his black-handled knife?

“As you see, I am here. Anything else?”

“No. That’s all.” She gave him a backhanded wave of dismissal. “Go on and, uh, finish up.”

Elli dressed and made breakfast for both of them. Once they’d cleared off the table, she returned to the bedroom, Hauk close behind. He sat in the corner chair as she unpacked her suitcase.

When she was finished, she set it, empty, back against the wall.

“When will you pack?”

She looked at him, surprised to hear his voice. He’d said hardly a word since she’d called him, half-shaved, from the bathroom earlier. “I’ll get to it. I have plenty of time.”

He didn’t say anything more, but she knew he didn’t like it, that it bugged him, big-time, to think she might insist on hanging around in Sacramento till the last possible minute on Thursday. Baby-sitting a princess was not his idea of a good time and he wanted to get it over and done with, ASAP.

Too bad. Let him be bugged. Let him wait and wonder when she would end their constant togetherness and agree to get on the plane for Gullandria. It might be petty—really, really small of her, to torture him when he was only following orders.

But he ought to know better than to follow such orders as the ones her father had given him. He ought to stand up and say, My lord, I’m taking a pass on playing watchdog to your daughter. It’s beneath me and beneath her and I’m not going to do it.

He hadn’t said that, or anything like it. So let him sleep at the foot of her bed and stand by the bathroom door whenever she went in there and march along beside her if she dared to go outside. Served him right, as far as she was concerned.

Elli called a girlfriend, Barb Ferris, at the insurance office where Barb worked. She made that call on speakerphone, at Hauk’s insistence that he be able to hear both sides of her conversation.

Barb agreed to water Elli’s plants, to bring in her mail and newspapers and keep an eye on her apartment. Barb even offered to feed Doodles and Diablo, but Elli said she’d get back to her on that. She was hoping to get her mother to take the cats. Barb said sure, she’d tell the other girls that Elli was taking off for a few weeks and would miss their girls’ night out on Friday. When Barb asked her what was up, Elli said it was a family issue.

“Honest, Barb. It’s nothing too serious. I’ll be back in three weeks. Thanks a bunch for helping me out.”

Next, Elli called Ned Handly, her date for Saturday night. Ned was a doctor, in family practice. They’d met through a mutual friend and Saturday would have been their second date. Hauk stood a couple of feet away, wearing his usual carved-granite expression, as she told Ned she was going away for a while.

Ned said, with real regret, “I was looking forward to this weekend.”

Elli glared at Hauk. You’d think he’d have the courtesy to let her break her date in peace. But no. He had to loom right beside her, listening to every word, every disappointed sigh.

“I was, too,” Elli told Ned. “I hope you’ll give me a rain check.”

“I thought you’d never ask. A family trip, huh?” Elli had given him no details—and not because the stone-faced Viking standing next to her might not approve. News like this would travel fast, and she wanted to be the one to break it to her mother.

Her friends often used her title teasingly, calling her “the princess,” and “Your Highness.” They all thought she was so wonderfully unusual, one of three triplet princesses, her estranged father a king in some faraway northern land. As soon as one of them heard she was off for a visit to Gullandria, they’d burn up the phone lines sharing the scoop. Her mother might get wind of it before tonight. Someone might even let something drop to the tabloids.

Then the stinky stuff would really hit the fan.

So she was keeping the details to herself. “Yes, a family thing. But I’ll give you a call as soon as I get back.”

“Elli?”

“Hmm?”

“You take care.”

“I will.” She disconnected the call and wrinkled her nose at the big guy in black. “Well, now, wasn’t that innocuous and aren’t you glad you heard every word?”

Hauk said nothing. He just stood there, waiting for her to make her next move.

She realized she didn’t have a move. No one had called from the school or the district, so presumably the sub had been contacted and was, at that moment, teaching Elli’s morning class, managing just fine with the lesson plans Elli had left open on her desk.

Except for packing and dealing with her mother, Elli was ready to go.

And it was only ten in the morning—ten in the morning on Tuesday. She looked at Hauk, who gazed steadily back at her.

Elli sighed. “Oh, Hauk. What in the world am I going to do with you?”

“Pack your belongings,” he suggested softly. “His Majesty’s jet awaits you. As soon as you’ve spoken with your mother, we can be on our way.”

Chapter Five

Elli didn’t pack. Her father had agreed to give her till Thursday and, for the time being anyway, she was keeping that option open. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was simply because, with Hauk shadowing her every move, it felt like the only option she had.

She went to the spare room, where she kept her computer. Hauk sat at attention on her futon while she surfed the Net for a while and fiddled with e-mail. Then, for an hour or so, she made a valiant effort to get a little reading done.

But it was no good. She kept feeling those cool, careful eyes on her. She couldn’t concentrate on a book.

They had lunch at one. By then she was aching for a little ordinary conversation. Over BLTs she tried to engage him in a nice, friendly chat.

He was the master of the one-line reply. He’d get it down to a single word if he could, or better still, a low, unpromising sound in his throat. She got a number of curt noes, a lonely little yes or two and a whole lot of gruff grunts.

Finally, she asked him about his family. “Do you have brothers—or sisters?”

“No.”

“And your mother and father?”

He just looked at her.

“Your parents, are they still alive?”

“No.”

“Both gone?”

“That’s correct.”

Well, she couldn’t say she was surprised. It seemed hard to picture that he’d ever even had a father or a mother. With his huge, hard, smooth chest and his infomercial abs, his deadpan expression and his lightning-bolt tattoos, Hauk FitzWyborn seemed someone not quite mortal—someone who had never been something so vulnerable as a little boy with parents who loved him. He seemed more like a creature sprung from the Norse myths, like Odin, Vili and Ve, brought into being out of ice.

“Um, your father? Tell me about him.”

He gave her the lifted-eyebrow routine.

She tried again. “What was your father like, Hauk?”

“I told you. My father is dead.” He’d finished his sandwich. He stood, carried his plate and empty glass to the sink, rinsed them both and put them in the dishwasher.

She refused to give up. “I’m sorry, Hauk—that he’s gone. Do you…miss him?”

He reached for the towel, dried those big hands. “He’s been dead for almost a decade.”

“But do you miss him?”

He hung the towel on its little hook beneath the cabinets. “You behave like an American.” He made it sound like some crushing insult.

She sat up straighter in her chair. “I am an American.”

His sculpted mouth curved. Too bad it was more a sneer than a smile. “In Gullandria, the lowliest of the low will know which questions should never be asked. In Gullandria, we do not presume to ask after the dead loved ones of people we hardly know.”

Wow. Two whole sentences. The man was a chatterbox, no doubt about it. And he also had a truckload and a half of nerve, to imply that she was presumptuous, when he wouldn’t let her make a call without listening in on her speakerphone.

She kept after him. “So. You’re sensitive on the subject of your father. Why is that?”

He stood there by the sink, big and broad and silent, looking at her. But she was becoming accustomed to his eagle-eyed stare. She stared right back. And she waited.

At last, he shrugged. “My father was a Wyborn. My mother was not.”

She was getting the picture. “They weren’t married when you were born?”

“That’s right. They were never married. I am a fitz. For future reference, during your stay in Gullandria, when you hear that a man’s name begins with Fitz, you will know that man is a bastard. You might think twice before asking after his family.”

“Thank you.” She gave him the most regal of nods. “I’ll remember that.”

“The prefix Fitz,” he informed her in scholarly tones, “is one known to many lands. A child of King Henry the Eighth comes to mind. You’ve heard of Henry the Eighth, second of the Tudor kings of England?”

“Yes, Hauk,” she said dryly. “Even rude Americans take history in school.”

“A barmaid gave King Henry a son. The barmaid named the child for his father. Henry FitzRoy. The literal translation of Fitz is son of. Thus, Henry, son of—”

“—the king,” she finished for him. Her mother had told her many things about her homeland. But not this painful little detail. “Is there some reason, now, in the twenty-first century, to…label a person that way?”

“In Gullandria, we treasure the family. Life can be hard and short—not so much in recent decades, since we discovered we are rich in oil and have a valuable commodity to trade for the comforts of the modern world. But it was not always so.

“Over the generations, we have learned to count on one another. Loyalty and honor always come first. Marriage is a sacred trust. Once his wife has given him children, a man cannot divorce. With so much value on the family, it is seen as an offense against the continued survival of our people to bring children into the world without the sacrament of marriage. Certain doors are always closed to bastard children.”

“But why? It’s not the child’s fault that his parents weren’t married.”

“It’s nothing to do with who is at fault. There’s an old saying. Don’t bicker over blame while the house burns.” He came toward her. “You have finished your meal?”

She stared up at him, feeling, for the first time, a certain softening toward him. “What doors are closed to you, Hauk?”

He asked again, “Have you finished?”

She looked down at the bit of uneaten sandwich. “Sure, I’m finished. With lunch.”

He took her plate and her glass to the sink, dumped the crust in and ran the disposal. Then he rinsed her dishes and put them in the dishwasher with his.

“Hauk?”

He turned to her and folded his huge arms over his chest. The early-afternoon sun slanting in the window made his hair shine as though it were spun from real gold.

“What doors are closed to you?”

Now, instead of staring her down, he seemed to be studying her. She knew a certain feeling of warmth inside as she saw that she had found it, the key to having an actual conversation with him. If they spoke of Gullandria, if he thought he might impart to her things she would need to know as the daughter of his king, he was willing to talk.

He asked, “Do you understand the rules of Gullandrian succession?”

“I think so.” She repeated what her mother had told her long ago. “All male jarl—” she pronounced it yarl, as her mother had taught her “—and jarl means noble, both singular and plural—are princes, technically eligible to claim the throne when the current king dies or is no longer capable of ruling. When that happens, the jarl convene in the capital city of Lysgard and each casts a vote. The winner is the new king. The vote itself—as well as the ceremony surrounding it—is called the kingmaking.”

Hauk dropped his hands to his sides. She could have sworn he almost smiled. “Very good. You have it nearly right.”

“Nearly?”

“Not all male jarl are princes. Only all legitimate male jarl.”

“You’re saying that you, Hauk FitzWyborn, could never be king.”

“That’s correct. Not that I would get any real chance to be king—let alone even want to be king—were I legitimate in the first place. But were I not a fitz, to be chosen king would at least be a theoretical possibility.”

“What about your children?”

He looked rather pleased. “Good question. As far as my children go—and still, remember, speaking the-oretically—everything can be different for them.”

“You mean, if you marry, then the sons your wife gives you would be eligible when the kingmaking comes around again.”

“That’s right—given that my wife is jarl herself.” It suddenly occurred to her that he might be married right now. That shocked her, for some reason. Nothing personal, she hurried to reassure herself silently. It wasn’t about being… interested in him, as a man.

No. Of course not.

It was only that he didn’t seem married. Just as she couldn’t picture him as a vulnerable little boy with parents who took care of him, she had trouble seeing him with a wife, with children of his own.

She couldn’t resist asking. “Are you? Married?”

“No. And I have no children, either. I will never have children, unless I first have a wife. That is the lesson a fitz always learns and thus, in Gullandria, bastard children are rare.”

“So then,” she said gently, “you’ll never be king. But your children might.”

“They might. But again, it’s not likely. Families hold tight to ground they have gained. The sons of kings tend to become kings. They are groomed from birth with the throne in mind. Your brother, Prince Valbrand…” Hauk paused, fisted a hand at his heart and briefly bowed his head in what was clearly a gesture of respect for someone greatly valued and tragically lost. “Your brother was born to rule. He was wise beyond his years, a good and fair man. Gullandria would have prospered under him as she has thrived under His Majesty, your father.” Something had happened in Hauk’s cool eyes. For the first time, Elli saw that he did have a heart and that he had admired—even loved—her brother.

Her own heart contracted. “He was…good? My brother?”

“Yes. A fine man. The Gullandrian people felt pride that someday he would rule. Jarl and freeman alike knew a steady confidence in the future he would make for us all.”

“And my other brother, Kylan?”

Hauk shrugged. “He was a child when we lost him. Barely in his fifth year.”

“But…did you ever see him? Do you remember anything about him?”

After a thoughtful pause, he said, “Young Prince Kylan was strong and well made. He had the dark hair and eyes of the Celts—as did Prince Valbrand, as does His Majesty, your father.”

Strong and well made, dark hair and eyes…

It was all so sad. Both of them, her fine, strong, dark-eyed brothers, lost now, one to a fire, one to the sea the Gullandrians loved. Lost to Elli and her shattered family. Lost to the country they might have ruled and ruled well.

Hauk approached her again. She looked up at him. “So sad…”

“Yes. A great double tragedy. For your family. For our land.”

His words had so exactly echoed her thoughts. She gestured at the chair across from her. “Sit down. Please.” He took the chair. “Tell me more. About Gullandria.”

Hauk talked for a while, quietly. He told her that the North Atlantic drift made Gullandria’s seacoasts warm for that latitude. He spoke of the famous Gullandrian horses, with their flowing white manes and long, thick white coats to protect them against the northern winters.

Elli asked, “And with my brothers gone, who do you think will be the next king?”

Hauk spoke then of a man who had been her father’s friend since childhood, the man second in power only to King Osrik himself: the Grand Counselor, Medwyn Greyfell. Medwyn was several years older than Osrik, and unlikely to live to succeed him. But Greyfell had a son, Eric. The younger Greyfell was the most likely choice.

“Still,” he added, shaking that golden head, “none can say with certainty how the jarl will vote when the kingmaking again comes around.”

They left for her mother’s house at a little after six in Elli’s BMW. Hauk filled the seat beside her. His knees were cramped against the dashboard and his head touched the ceiling. They’d reached a sort of understanding in the past few hours. At least they’d found something to talk about: the land where he would soon be taking her, the land that he loved.

But looking at him, sitting there in the passenger seat, she was struck all over again with that feeling of extreme unreality: Elli and her Viking bodyguard, on their way to dinner at her mother’s house…

The house where Elli had grown up was three stories, Tudor in style, on a wide, curving street lined with gorgeous mature oaks and maples. As a child, Elli and her sisters had sometimes lain on the emerald slope of the front lawn and stared up at the thick canopy of leaves overhead, smiling at the blue sky beyond, watching the clouds up there, drifting by.

The driveway was on the west side. Elli drove under an arching porte cochere to a back parking area. She stopped at the farthest door of the four-car garage.

“We’ll go in the back way. I have a key, if we need it.”

Hauk frowned. He looked almost comical, crammed into her sporty little car, hunching those massive shoulders so that he could fit. “It would be wiser, I think, to go to the front door, to knock.”

“Oh, please. I was raised here. I don’t have to knock.”

“But I do.”

She sighed. “Listen. I don’t intend to explain everything. If my mother hears how you broke into my apartment, how you tied me up and planned to kidnap me, how Father has set you on me as a round-the-clock guard, she’ll hit the roof. So we’ll let her think you’re my guest, okay? I can always bring a guest home. My mother would never object to that.”