The Princess's Bodyguard

But there was something else about her. She didn’t look happy. In fact, she looked more like a condemned woman than a bride-to-be.

Worth emerged from the bathroom, his auburn hair damp and his dark eyes wide open. “How’s the coffee?”

“Not bad.”

Worth poured himself a cup and sat across from Matt in the chair at the desk. “Are you about finished with the paper?”

“Just started looking,” Matt said. “This—” he held up the page to show Worth “—caught my eye.”

“I didn’t know you were a royal watcher.” Worth brought the cup to his lips.

Matt chuckled. “I’m not. I just happened to notice the headline.” Matt folded the paper in two and tossed it to Worth, who caught it midair.

“My French isn’t too good,” Worth admitted.

“Why don’t you call the front desk and have them bring up a copy of the—”

“Nah.” Worth flopped the paper down on the desk, opened it and scanned the page. “Am I reading this right? These two have been engaged since they were kids?”

“Politics,” Matt said. “Makes you wonder what century those people are living in, doesn’t it?”

Worth turned the page. “I’m catching the next flight back to Atlanta,” he said, abruptly changing the subject. “While you were down in the bar last night, I called Ellen and she already has my next assignment lined up.”

What was it with this guy? Matt wondered. Ever since he’d joined the Dundee Agency over a year ago, he’d gone from one assignment to the next, without a break. Didn’t he ever rest? Ever have any fun?

“Have you got something against taking a day off?” Matt asked. “You’re making the rest of us look bad.”

Worth didn’t glance up from the paper. “I prefer working.”

“Yeah, well, to each his own. I for one plan to whoop and holler a little while I’m in Paris.”

Worth continued glancing through the paper, for all intents and purposes ignoring Matt. Hell, with an attitude like that, Matt was glad Worth wasn’t going to stay on. The guy was a real stick-in-the-mud. Matt leaned back, folded his hands behind his head and slowly closed his eyelids. Instantly a pair of dark eyes set in a sad little face appeared in his mind. The unhappy princess. Maybe here in Paris he’d meet someone half as pretty as Princess Adele. But a tempting little tidbit of Parisian fluff wouldn’t be able to compare to the princess. Her full, pouting mouth materialized in his mind. Damn, he could almost taste her.

Matt’s eyelids flew open. What was the matter with him, daydreaming about a rich, snobbish woman who would never give a guy like him the time of day? But there was something about her that made her unforgettable. Was it the beauty or the sadness? Or a combination of the two?

Matt grunted. He knew two things. One, no woman was unforgettable. Two, if he was the princess’s fiancé, she’d be smiling.

Adele Reynard, heir to the throne of Orlantha, packed quickly, intending to take only the bare necessities and one change of clothes. She could buy whatever she needed once she and Yves were safely across the border. Ordinarily Adele wasn’t the type to run away; she believed in standing up against tyranny and fighting to the finish. But in this case her father had taken away all other options. If she remained in Orlantha, she would be forced to marry Dedrick—which was a fate worse than death. Not only did she personally dislike the pompous ass, she had recently come to distrust him. And even to fear him.

“Yves is here,” Lisa Mercer said. “He is parked at the back entrance. He told the guards that he’s here to pick me up for our date.”

Lisa, Adele’s secretary for the past seven years, handed her the red wig styled in an identical fashion to Lisa’s short, stylish hairdo. “Here, put this on. It’s the finishing touch.” Adele took the wig, slipped it over her short, curly locks that she’d dampened slightly and combed as flat as possible against her scalp. Lisa surveyed Adele from wig to chunky sandals. “Perfect. With my clothes, shoes and now the wig, you could easily pass for me. Well, at least from a distance. You’re not quite as tall and your eyes are brown where mine are green, but—”

“Once I’m gone, do not give away anything about where I’ve gone or with whom. Swear to my father and to Lord Burhardt that you have no idea where I went,” Adele said. “Give my father this.” Adele picked up the envelope off her bed and handed it to Lisa. “I’ve written him a very brief letter telling him that I refuse to marry Dedrick and that I will not return home until he agrees to call off the wedding.”

“If King Leopold suspects that I helped you—that I’m the one who contacted Yves for you—then when you return you may find me exiled or in prison.” Lisa’s lips curved into a smile.

Adele hugged Lisa. “If Father finds out that you helped me, you have my permission to assure him that you had no idea what I planned to do and you were simply following my instructions.”

“Please, Your Highness, be careful.” Lisa followed Adele out into the hallway. “If what you suspect about the duke is true, your life could be in danger.”

Clutching her small suitcase, Adele paused, glanced over her shoulder and said, “I won’t be able to contact you for a while, but please tell Pippin that I can be contacted through Dia Constantine in Golnar. Any important messages can be sent through her. I hope he is able to unearth some solid evidence against Dedrick that I can take to my father.”

Lisa nodded. “I’ll send a message to him as soon as I can.”

Adele hurried up the hallway and down the back stairs. At this time of night the entire kitchen staff would be in bed, so she felt relatively safe going through the kitchen and out the back way. Her heart beat erratically as she made her way outside to the service lane behind the castle. A black Ferrari waited, the lights off, the motor running. A tall, lanky blond jumped out of the sports car, grabbed Adele’s small case, tossed it into the trunk, then opened the passenger door for her. Once inside, Yves Jurgen leaned across the console and kissed Adele’s cheek.

“Chère, what a marvelous disguise,” Yves said. “Who would ever suspect that underneath those funky clothes and boyish hairdo is the ultrachic and very traditional princess?”

“Did the guards buy your story?”

“But of course.” Yves revved the motor. “I am a consummate actor, am I not?”

“You’re what the Americans call a big ham.” Adele fastened her seat belt.

Yves clutched his shirt where it lay over his heart. “You wound me, my dear princess.”

“Enough of this,” she told him. “We must leave now. If my father finds out that I’m trying to escape, he’ll lock me away and put guards at my door until the wedding.”

Yves changed gears and headed the Ferrari toward the long drive that took them to the tall, imperial gates that separated the royal grounds from the city of Erembourg.

“Your papa will be furious when he discovers you have fled,” Yves said. “It is a good thing for me that there is nothing he can do to harm me or ruin my good reputation.”

“What good reputation?” Adele said teasingly. Yves Jurgen was known internationally as “The Playboy of Europe.” Impossibly arrogant and a heartbreaker extraordinaire, Yves had tried unsuccessfully to woo her when she was twenty. But once he’d realized she was one woman he would never bed, he graciously accepted her friendship. If he had been her lover, Yves would have moved on to other women long ago, but as a friend, oddly enough, he was steadfast and loyal.

“You do have a point, my sweet Adele.”

When the guards glanced into the car, Adele slunk lower in the seat and pretended to be engrossed in straightening her short, leather skirt. Yves smiled, waved and spoke to the uniformed guards. When the gates opened, Adele breathed a sigh of relief.

“The first hurdle passed,” Yves said as the gates closed behind them. “And once we’re over the border, we should be safe. I’ll have you in Vienna before dawn.”

Adele laid her head back and closed her eyes, wondering how long she would be safe at Yves’s estate outside Vienna. A week, two at the most? Sooner or later someone would leak the information to the press. One of his servants or an acquaintance. She needed to call Dia in a few days to let her know what was going on, that if necessary she might have to seek sanctuary in Golnar, where not even her father’s powerful influence could touch her.

Come morning, her disappearance would disrupt the palace. The king would be outraged, and no one, not even his wife or his chief advisor, Lord Burhardt, would be able to calm him. She wasn’t sure exactly what her father would do, but she knew one thing for certain—he would do whatever necessary to bring her home in time for the wedding. But she was equally determined to elude her father’s search and find a way to prove to him not only how unsuitable Dedrick was for her but how dangerous Dedrick was to Orlantha.

Chapter 1

K ing Leopold crushed the letter in his meaty hand as he paced back and forth in his private chambers. With a mane of steel-gray hair and hypnotizing dark eyes, the ruler of Orlantha was still a handsome man at sixty. Six feet tall, with wide shoulders and thick chest, he emitted an aura of regal power. The willowy blond Queen Muriel, the king’s second wife and twenty years his junior, wrung her hands as she watched her husband and kept repeating the same caution. “Now, dear, don’t upset yourself.” Lisa waited, as she’d been instructed, her back ramrod straight and her chin tilted upward. Princess Adele had trusted her to keep her whereabouts a secret, and she intended to do just that. But considering how upset His Majesty was she wished that she had not been the one to deliver the letter.

The king’s health had been failing for the past several years, after his heart attack and bypass surgery. Only last year he had made a monumental decision—to abdicate the throne in favor of Princess Adele, upon her marriage to the duke. This decision was made when his doctors advised the king to reduce the stress in his life, and when it became apparent that the queen, after ten years of marriage, would not be giving the king a son to rule the kingdom.

Princess Adele was greatly admired and loved by the citizens of Orlantha. Poised, graceful, intelligent and charming, she was seen by her people as the ideal princess. A reformer and progressive thinker at heart, Adele worked diligently to help improve conditions in Orlantha, and her participation in social and charity organizations was legendary. Lisa knew that Orlantha would welcome Adele as queen with great celebration. The elected members of the council, who coruled the country with the monarch, also respected the princess, who supported the continuation of joint leadership. Pippin Ritter, vice chancellor of the council, had come to Princess Adele months ago with the information that Dedrick Vardan, Duke of Roswald, was a suspected member of a secret society called the Royalists, with ties to Balanchine. The Royalists’ objective was to reunite Orlantha and Balanchine under one monarch, who would be the supreme ruler after abolishing the elected council. Balanchine’s King Eduard was nearly eighty and had no heir. By a suspicious coincidence, Dedrick Vardan’s mother was King Eduard’s cousin.

“How dare Adele make such a demand! She says that she will not return home unless I call off her wedding to Dedrick. The very idea. I will not allow her to get away with blackmail.” King Leopold stopped, glared at Lisa and asked, “Do you have any idea where she went?”

Lisa swallowed hard. “No, Your Majesty. She simply commanded me to give you the letter.”

“Why didn’t you try to stop her?” the king asked.