Royal Weddings

‘‘No, thanks.’’ Elli took one of the high-backed leather chairs as Hauk, shoulders hunched, golden head grazing the ceiling, moved farther down the cabin.

‘‘Refreshment?’’

‘‘Not right now.’’ Elli’s mind wasn’t on food. She resisted the urge to lean out of her seat and look back at Hauk. He’d been depressingly silent on the drive to the airport—not that his silence was anything all that new or different. It only seemed that way, after those beautiful, too-brief moments in his arms.

‘‘Fasten your seatbelt,’’ said the flight attendant. ‘‘We’ll be cleared for takeoff soon.’’

Elli nodded and smiled and the attendant left her alone. She looked out the window as they taxied along the runway. It all seemed so… civilized, the attractive attendant, the beautifully appointed jet. She couldn’t help wondering what the attendant might have said to her had Hauk brought her on board all tied up with a gag in her mouth.

Probably nothing. The woman would have pulled the collapsible divider across the cabin and brought down the bed and Hauk would have dropped Elli on it without anyone asking if she’d care for a nap.

It would be a long flight, but it would be nonstop. Hauk sat in his seat and tried not to stare at her seat in front of him. The sky out the window was clear. Fat white clouds drifted below the wing.

It was over—their time together. In the end, his sense of duty and his understanding of his place in the world had triumphed. He hadn’t succumbed to the desperate hunger that would have caused her nothing but shame and heartache and cost him more than he cared to contemplate. He told himself he was glad it had gone no further between them.

An indiscreet embrace and a few passionate kisses—more than he should have allowed to happen. But not total disaster. Thanks to a ringing phone, he’d stopped it in time.

He was weary. Of everything. Hauk shut his eyes and allowed himself to disappear into the first deep sleep he’d known in days.

He woke, startled, when the plane dropped several hundred feet and then slammed against an air current below.

The attendant, in a chair down near the cockpit door, wore a bright, professional smile. ‘‘A little turbulence. Nothing to worry about.’’

He took her at her word, at first. But the going got rougher, the plane rising and dropping like a toy in the hands of a brutal child. Rain drove against the windows. The sky beyond the insulated panes was black a few feet from the glass—except when Thor threw his hammer and lightning in ragged fingers lit the blackness with a golden-green light, followed not long after by the deafening crack and roll of thunder.

Hauk got up and worked his way forward. He paused by the seat of the princess—after all, it was his duty to check on her. To keep her safe.

She looked up at him. ‘‘Kind of rough, huh?’’

‘‘You’re all right?’’

She gave him a nod. ‘‘I’m good.’’ It was another reason among the thousand reasons that she was a woman any man would covet—she didn’t frighten easily.

Lightning speared through the blackness outside again, its eerie glow suffusing the cabin. Thunder boomed. The plane dropped sharply, then bottomed out hard against the fist of a rising air current.

And through it all, he stared at her and she looked up at him, her face pale and calm and so beautiful it felled him like a deathblow from an enemy’s ax. ‘‘I’ll check our status with the pilot.’’

She nodded, shifted that haunting gaze away. He staggered on toward the cockpit.

The pilot told him what he’d already deduced. There was no fighting through this mess. They no longer had the fuel to make it all the way to Gullandria. They would have to land, refuel and then wait for the storm to blow itself out.

It was, to say the least, a rocky next few hours. Elli was never so grateful as when Hauk told her they’d gotten the go-ahead to land at a private airstrip just outside of Boston.

The landing was one of those lurching, scary, hope-I-never-do-this-again kind of experiences. But they made it and they made it safely. As soon as the plane taxied to a stop, Hauk went forward a second time to speak with the pilot.

He came out looking bleak. ‘‘The storm shows no signs of abating. This will be an overnight stop.’’

‘‘Will we just stay here, on the plane?’’

He shook his head. ‘‘I’ll arrange for suitable lodging.’’

Lodging. A triumphant little thrill shot through her. Hauk wouldn’t be rid of her quite as soon as he’d hoped.

And so very much might happen, in one more night alone together….

Half an hour later, Elli looked out the window and saw a long, black limousine rolling across the tarmac toward the jet.

‘‘Will you have need of both your suitcases?’’ Hauk asked, his tone carefully formal.

Elli had flown enough to be prepared for situations like this. ‘‘Just the smaller one.’’

‘‘Your Highness.’’ The flight attendant presented her with a big black umbrella at the cabin door.

‘‘Thanks.’’ The rain was coming down in sheets, the wind gusting hard.

Halfway down the steps, the umbrella turned inside out. Hauk, right behind her, took it from her hand. He shouted against the gale, his voice hearty with sudden good humor, ‘‘Speed will serve you better than this.’’ He held the ruined umbrella high. Already, that golden hair was plastered to his head. Water ran off his bladelike nose. His eyes gleamed. Apparently, he liked wild weather—enough that he’d even forgotten for a moment to treat her like the princess he didn’t dare to touch. ‘‘Run!’’

She took off down the final steps and sprinted across the streaming pavement to the open door of the limousine. Hauk ducked in right after her, pulling the door shut, tossing the useless umbrella to the floor. They waited a moment or two, while the necessary bags were stowed in the trunk. And then they were off.

Their hotel suite was on the thirty-fifth floor, with a view of the harbor where the storm was tossing all the boats around. There were two big bedrooms, each with its own bath, a living and dining area between. Elli suppressed a knowing smile when she saw there was a second bedroom. Wishful thinking on Hauk’s part. The poor man. Duty bound to sleep wherever she did.

Oh, yes. It could turn out to be a very interesting night.

They ate dinner in the room. Elli hadn’t realized how hungry she was until the bellhop wheeled it in. She’d ordered the pheasant. It was absolutely wonderful.

For dessert, she had amaretto crème brûlée. It was practically sexual, how delicious it tasted. She ate every last creamy bit.

Hauk, on the other hand, seemed to have little appetite. He mostly sat and watched her. He was looking broody again.

She could almost feel sorry for him.

A whole night of temptation ahead. How would he get through it?

Ah, well. She’d do her very best to help him with that.

She sent him a bright smile. ‘‘Does my father know we’re going to be a day late?’’

He nodded. ‘‘The message has been sent.’’

Via the mysterious black beeper thingy, no doubt. ‘‘Well, good. I wouldn’t want him to worry.’’

Hauk narrowed his eyes at her. ‘‘You are much too cheerful.’’

She toasted him with the last of her wine—he, of course, wasn’t having any. ‘‘You’d rather I scowled and brooded like you?’’

‘‘You have some scheme you’re hatching.’’

‘‘You are just so suspicious.’’

‘‘Not without good cause.’’

‘‘What can I tell you? I was born in Gullandria and Osrik Thorson is my father. Scheming comes as naturally to me as… tying people up does to you.’’ She drank and set the empty glass down.

He said, thoughtfully, ‘‘It takes study and practice to master the secrets in a strong length of rope.’’

She looked at him sideways. ‘‘Now, why did that sound like some kind of veiled threat?’’

He drank from his water glass. ‘‘I am your servant. Never would I threaten you.’’ He set the glass down and pushed back his chair. ‘‘I bid you good night.’’

It took her a moment to absorb what he’d just told her. He’d already grabbed that black duffel of his from where he’d left it in the corner and strode to the door of one of the bedrooms before she stopped him.

‘‘Hauk.’’

He turned, put his fist to his chest and dipped his head. ‘‘At your service.’’

‘‘What are you doing?’’

‘‘Going to bed.’’

‘‘But I’m… not ready for bed yet. I want a long bath first.’’

‘‘By all means, have your bath. Watch the television from your bed as you enjoy doing. This is America. There’s a television in every room.’’

She didn’t like what she thought might be happening here. ‘‘Then we are, uh, sleeping in separate rooms tonight?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

She had an awful, sinking feeling. All her glorious and naughty plans to seduce him were destined to come to nothing, after all. Disappointment had her dishing out a mean-spirited taunt. ‘‘You do serve me. I could command you to sleep at the foot of my bed.’’

‘‘Yes. But that would be needlessly cruel and you are not that kind of woman.’’

Her throat felt tight. She swallowed. ‘‘Hauk?’’

‘‘Yes?’’

‘‘You would rather take a chance that I might run away than sleep in the same room with me tonight?’’

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

She felt ashamed. ‘‘I won’t run away—wherever you sleep.’’

There was a long moment where neither of them spoke. Rain beat against the wide window that looked out on the lights of Boston and the harbor beyond. Lightning jumped and flashed across the black sky. Elli felt that something very precious, a onetime chance that would never come again, was slipping away.

‘‘All right,’’ she said at last. ‘‘Good night, then.’’

He turned and went through the door to the bedroom, closing it quietly behind him.

Hauk tossed his duffel on the bed and strode to the bathroom, pulling off his clothes as he went. He turned on the shower and stepped into the stall with the water running cold.

It wasn’t cold enough. It could never be cold enough. The ice-crusted Sherynborn—the river that ran through the Vildelund at home—in dead of winter wouldn’t be cold enough.

He stayed in there for a long time. It didn’t help, not in any measurable way. It didn’t cure him of the yearning that was eating him alive. But the beating of the cool water on his skin provided something of a distraction, at least.

When he got out, he toweled dry and then he spent an hour on the dragon dials, a series of strenuous exercises consisting of slow, controlled movements combined with precise use of the breath. He’d learned the dials at his mother’s knee. There were, after all, some benefits to being born the bastard of a well-trained and highly skilled woman warrior. Fighting women took great pains to develop control and flexibility in order to make up for their lesser physical strength. A woman warrior sometime in the 17th century had created the discipline of the dials.

All his life, the dials had served him well. They brought him physical exhaustion and mental clarity, always.

But not tonight. Nothing seemed to help him tonight.

He showered again—quickly this time—to wash off the sweat. Then he stood in the middle of the bedroom and stared at the shut door to the central living area and tried not to think how easy it would be to pull it open, to stride across the space between his room and hers.

A knock and she would answer. She would open her arms to him. She had made that so very, very clear.

Somehow, he kept his hand from reaching for the door. He climbed naked into the bed with thoughts that were scattered. Wild.

He stared toward the window opposite the foot of the bed. He’d left the blinds open. The rain beat against the single wide pane, streaming down in glittering trails, like veils of liquid jewels. When the lightning speared through the sky, the room would flash as bright as day. He tried to concentrate on that, on the beauty of the storm.

But he was not successful. Images of the woman kept haunting him. He arrived, constantly, at the point of thinking her name.

He’d already deliberately disobeyed his king, left her to her own devices for this entire night. She might turn and run. He’d have to track her down, or it would not go well for him.

But she’d said she wouldn’t run. And in his heart, he believed her.

The chance she might flee was not the true problem here. His climbing from this bed and going to her—that was the problem.

His own mind, usually a model of order and discipline, betrayed him now. It mattered not what orders he gave it, it would continue straying to forbidden thoughts of what it might be like, for just one night, to call her his love.

He lay there and he stared into the darkness. He listened to the storm raging outside and he tried not to see her face, not to think her forbidden name.

And in the end, it was as if all his efforts to deny her had only conjured her to come to him.

There was a soft knock at the door.

It fell to him to call out, Go away.

But he said nothing. He lay there. Waiting.

Slowly, the door opened and there she was in her big pink shirt.

He sat up. And he said the word he’d vowed to himself that he would never say—her name, unadorned.

‘‘Elli.’’

Chapter Eleven

Elli.

It was the first time, ever, that he’d called her by her given name alone. Her chest felt too small, suddenly, to hold her hungry heart.

The light from the room behind her spilled in across the bed. The blankets covered him to the waist.

He was… so beautiful and savage to her civilized eyes, with his broad smooth chest and the lightning-bolt tattoo slashing across it through a thicket of vines and dragons and swords. And his eyes… Oh, they were the saddest, loneliest eyes she’d ever seen.

‘‘Hauk, is it all right if I come in?’’ Even now, after he’d at last dared to call her Elli, she more or less expected him to send her away.

But what she dreaded didn’t happen. Instead, he flicked on the lamp beside him and held out his hand.

With a glad cry, she ran for the bed and scrambled up onto it, aiming straight for his arms. He wrapped them around her with an eagerness that warmed her to her soul. He stretched out on his back and she settled against him, cuddling close, with only his blankets and her big shirt between them now. She laid her head against his heart and noted with a surge of slightly silly joy that it seemed to beat right in time with hers.

She felt his lips brush the crown of her head. And she snuggled even closer with a long, happy sigh.

‘‘Maybe I’ll never move,’’ she threatened tenderly. ‘‘I’ll just lie here, forever, holding on to you….’’

Hauk made a low sound in his throat and kissed her hair again. Most important, he kept those warm strong arms around her. How absolutely lovely. To rest in his embrace, to feel his kiss in her hair, his heart beating a little fast like her own, but steady and true, too, under her ear.

She spoke dreamily, without lifting her head. ‘‘Hauk, you probably won’t believe this, but I came in here to talk to you.’’

‘‘Ah,’’ he said. ‘‘To talk. Always a danger, when you want to talk.’’

She faked an outraged cry and lightly punched his arm.

He stroked her hair. ‘‘Go ahead then. Say what you came to say.’’

She lifted her head. ‘‘I want to suggest something to you. And I want you to really think about it before you tell me it’s not possible….’’ He was looking at her. And she was looking back at him. And suddenly what she’d intended to say was the last thing on her mind. ‘‘Oh, Hauk…’’

He said her name again, ‘‘Elli…’’ The sound thrilled her.

With a hungry cry, she scooted up the glorious terrain of his big body to claim those beautiful lips.

Lightning flashed and thunder rolled as her mouth touched his. Elli didn’t know or care which storm—the one outside or the sweeter, hotter one between them—had caused the bright pulsing behind her eyelids, the lovely, echoing, booming crash that seemed to shake her to the core. She kissed him harder, longer, deeper.

And he didn’t hold back. He kissed her tenderly, passionately. He made her stomach hollow out and all her thoughts melt away to nothing but joy and a longing to be his. She rubbed herself against him, shamelessly eager, and she felt his response to her, knew that he was ready, so ready, to be hers.

But then he was capturing her chin, making her look at him. ‘‘We are foolish, worse than foolish.’’

She couldn’t argue fast enough. ‘‘Oh, no. That’s not so. Everything will work out. Just you wait and see.’’

His fine mouth curved upward. ‘‘You are, truly, an American.’’

She was so delighted to see his expression, she forgot to be irked at his superior tone. ‘‘Oh, Hauk. Look at that. I swear that’s a smile you’ve got on your mouth.’’

‘‘What man wouldn’t smile after kissing you?’’

She touched his lips, so soft when the rest of him was anything but. So soft and so perfectly designed for kissing…

‘‘Oh, Hauk…’’ Her eyes drifted closed and she lifted her mouth to him.

But just before her lips touched his and all rational thought could fly away, she remembered that she had something important to tell him. Her eyes popped open. ‘‘Wait.’’

He actually chuckled. ‘‘What?’’

She kissed the ridge of a crescent-shaped scar on his chin, because she couldn’t resist the temptation. But then she did pull back enough to say, ‘‘I was lying in that big, lonely bed in the other room, thinking…’’

He raised his huge arms, laced his fingers behind his head and lifted one eyebrow. ‘‘About?’’

She canted up on an elbow and laid a hand on his smooth chest, right in the center, where the lightning bolt zagged and a dragon reared, breathing fire. ‘‘My father.’’

He didn’t move. That one eyebrow was still arched, yet it seemed to her that his rare lighthearted mood had vanished as swiftly as the sun sliding behind a dark cloud. Lightning flared again, a blinding glare through the room, and somewhere out in the storm-dark sky, thunder boomed and rolled away.

‘‘Just listen to what I have to say.’’ She touched the hard line of his jaw. ‘‘Please.’’

‘‘I’m listening.’’

‘‘Everyone—my mother, my sisters, Hildy, Aunt Nanna and you, too—you all seem to think my father has something else planned for me. That there’s more going on here than a father’s desire to meet a daughter he’s never really known.’’

‘‘I never said—’’

‘‘Bear with me. Please?’’

He gave her a curt nod.

She spoke briskly. ‘‘So, then, what could it be, this other reason he’s sent for me?’’

‘‘We’ve spoken of this.’’ His gaze slid away. ‘‘I’ve told you I don’t know.’’

She reached up again, this time to touch his cheek. ‘‘Don’t look away….’’

He unlaced his fingers and dropped one hand at his side. The other hand he rested in the curve of her back—but very lightly, as if he didn’t plan on keeping it there for long. ‘‘All right.’’ He was frowning. ‘‘I’ll say it once more. I can’t tell you what His Majesty has planned for you, if anything, beyond what we already know—a time to speak with you, to see your face, to know the splendid young woman his infant daughter has become.’’

‘‘Splendid, huh? I like the sound of that.’’

‘‘It’s only the truth.’’

She trailed her hand down, so tenderly, and rested it once more against the dragon’s heart. ‘‘I think you do suspect his plans, Hauk.’’

‘‘It is not my place to—’’

‘‘Don’t say it.’’ She put her fingers to his lips. ‘‘I don’t need to hear it again. I sincerely do not.’’

He moved his head, to free his mouth from her shushing hand. ‘‘What do you wish me to say?’’

‘‘Nothing. Just listen.’’

He gazed at her coolly now. She wondered if this conversation would cost her the precious night to come.

No. She wouldn’t think that way. Once he heard what she had to tell him, he would cradle her close and kiss her, again and again. They’d hold back the dawn together.

And morning would find them all wrapped up in each other’s arms.

‘‘Hauk, I think my father has plans for me—wedding plans. I think you think so, too, and—’’ She cut herself off with a tiny cry of distress. ‘‘Oh, don’t do that, don’t… get that hard and distant look.’’

‘‘Why say such a thing?’’ His voice was ragged. ‘‘Why say it now, except to remind me that I betray my king—and that you and I have nothing beyond this moment, this moment that shouldn’t even be?’’

‘‘No. No, you don’t understand. You have to let me finish.’’

‘‘What do you want from me?’’ He dragged himself up against the padded headboard, took her by the shoulders and pushed her carefully away from him.

‘‘I said, let me finish.’’ Elli had gathered her legs beneath her. She knelt beside him, her hands folded tightly on her thighs. He didn’t want her to touch him right then, that was painfully evident in every line of his face, every tense muscle in his beautiful body. Clasping her hands together was the only way she could make them behave.

‘‘All right, then,’’ he said way too quietly. ‘‘Finish.’’

‘‘Oh, don’t you see? Why would he send you here, why would he force us to be together every minute? Unless he’s hoping I’ll see just what I see in you, unless it’s you he’s hoping I’ll learn to love and want to marry?’’

When she said that, Hauk’s hurt and anger melted away like the snowfields over Drakveden Fjord in the spring.

He almost smiled again. No matter that this woman was his king’s daughter, in her heart she was American. American to the core. She saw what she wanted to see. She made the world over to fit her own idea of it.

Those deep-blue eyes of hers were shining. By all the roots of the guardian tree, he hadn’t the will or the heart to remind her of the facts. Somewhere in that sharp mind of hers, she had to know the truth. That he’d first been sent to take her quickly and bring her straight to his king. That it was she, with her insistence on speaking to her father, on striking a bargain, who had made it necessary for Hauk to assume the role of round-the-clock guard.

Why point out the obvious when she so clearly didn’t want to see it? Why be wise now, when for once in his life, all he wanted was a chance to play the fool?

The mighty Thor, her family’s namesake, most beloved of all the gods, had given him this night of driving rain and rolling thunder, had forced her father’s ship out of the sky. Sometimes, the whims of the gods might favor a man.

For an hour. Or a night.

A man might, however briefly, hold in his arms his greatest desire.

In the morning, there would be time for wisdom, for acceptance.

For regret and for anger.

And for shame, as well.

She whispered, ‘‘Are you going to send me away?’’

It was the moment to tell her, to make her understand that her wild, bright American dreams would not change what was. If her father did have plans for her to marry a Gullandrian, it wouldn’t be his low-jarl bastard warrior he intended for her. It would be the man King Osrik thought most likely to be king himself someday. That way the Thorson bloodline would continue to hold the throne. That way, even if His Majesty had lost his sons, the day might come when his grandson would rule.

‘‘Oh, Hauk…’’ Those eyes of hers begged him to see what she saw—the two of them, united, His Majesty, her father, blessing the match.

He knew he should make the truth clear, that he should tell her what would really happen if they shared this stormy night and His Majesty found out.

At the very least, Hauk would lose his position, be stripped of all honors. He could be banished or even sent to Tarngalla, the tower prison where murderers and those who committed crimes against the state were kept. It was highly unlikely that what they were doing might cost him his life—not in this modern day and age. But anything could happen when the most trusted of soldiers dared to betray his king.