Laurie Paige – The Princess Is Pregnant! (страница 2)

Megan was bored, tired after a week of endless speeches and diatribes, not to mention lunches, dinners and cocktail parties every night. She really preferred her own silent company to all this noise.

Grimacing at how terribly vain that sounded, she glanced around as if looking for an escape route.

At the back corner of the room, she spied a tall masculine figure slipping into the shadows of the terrace. Another soul who needed to escape. She knew who he was.

On impulse, she followed.

Bolted was more like it, she admitted with a carefree laugh as she ducked through the door, which was slightly ajar, and into the star-glazed Mediterranean night. The casinos of Monte Carlo were brightly lit and doing a bustling business. The moon was huge. Its light silvered everything in its glow.

She spotted the lithe frame of Jean-Paul Augustuve as he strolled purposefully toward the marina. She knew he kept a sailboat there, an oceangoing ketch that he could sail alone. She’d never been invited on it, although she’d seen photos of other royal offspring or world-famous models smiling from its teak decks in newspapers from time to time.

Beautiful, competent women who knew their place in the world. Or forged one for themselves.

Megan hesitated, for those traits didn’t describe her at all, then hurried to keep up with his long strides. They arrived at the boat slip, with her not more than ten feet behind him.

“What do you want?” he asked, swinging around to face her after he stepped aboard.

She started in surprise, sure he hadn’t known she was near. “I wondered if you were going for a sail.”

Hearing the uncertainty in her voice, she groaned internally. He would never mistake her for one of those confident women he favored.

His eyes, dark now but a brilliant blue in daylight, studied her for a long, nerve-racking moment, then his teeth flashed in a smile. “Yes.”

She gripped the material at each side of her silk gown. “I want to go with you.”

“No.”

The refusal didn’t surprise her—she’d never expected him to notice her—but it did hurt a bit. The hot press of tears stung her eyes. She was suddenly angry, with herself for the weakness of weeping and with him for his cruel indifference to her feelings.

“Why?” she demanded, surprising both of them.

“I want to be alone.”

“So do I.”

“Then find your own boat.”

“I won’t get in your way,” she promised. “I know how to sail. You might need my help.”

Again the white flash that appeared almost ghostly in the silvery light. He unfastened one of the mooring lines.

“She’s a true lady,” he said of his ship. “She responds to only one hand—mine.”

The sure arrogance along with a second rebuff dissolved the unusual anger. The odd pain flowed over her again.

Megan thought of cold things, of icy fjords and glaciers, of herself as the Ice Princess, remote, cold, untouchable. It was a device she’d used since she was a child—to simply remove her emotions from the situation and lock them in ice. It worked this time, too.

She took one step back on the dock, away from the sailboat and the handsome, arrogant Earl of Silvershire and his wish to be alone.

He moved about the deck effortlessly, fluidly, seemingly one with the night, a fairy prince spawned of something as insubstantial as sea foam and moondust. Nourished by sea and moonlight, he needed nothing from one as mortal as she. Lifting her chin, she turned away.

“Cast off the other line,” he ordered softly and stepped toward the tiller.

Surprised, she spun and caught a flash of silver from his eyes as he glanced her way. She slipped the line from the mooring, took two running steps as the ship swung away from the dock and leaped to the deck.

The action would have been a small step for Jean-Paul Augustuve; it was a giant leap for Megan Penelope Penwyck. Would she land in a safe harbor? Or in a foreign port amidst the gravest danger?

An engine throbbed to life and the ship eased from the slip and into the black-and-pewter waters of the sea. Once away from the marina and the crowded shoreline, Jean-Paul cut the engine and hoisted the sail. They sailed silently on the silver path where the moon met the sea.

“Out here like this,” he said in a voice that murmured over her like the sound of the sea and the night wind, “I sometimes imagine that I’ll sail right off the end of the earth.”

“What will you find?” she asked, intensely curious about his fantasy.

“Never-never land, perhaps. I always wanted to be Peter Pan and sail the heavens on great adventures.”

His soft laughter, aimed at himself and a boy’s foolish dreams, broke through the ice dam and touched her heart.

Jean-Paul was known as something of a rebel and one of the world’s most sought after bachelors, but here was another side to him that was usually hidden, one that was whimsical and tender with dreams that could never be realized.

She’d sometimes felt like that.

A bond, she realized, and wondered if he felt it, too, and if that had prompted his confidence. His next words dispelled that notion.

“Sit down before you fall overboard,” he ordered, his tone sardonic, as if it wouldn’t bother him at all if that should happen.

She ducked as the wind grabbed the sail and the boom shifted. Jean-Paul swung them around so that they ran with the wind. He motioned for her to sit on the bench with him.

The wind snatched her hair from the circle of flowers that secured it to the back of her head, and blew tendrils around her face. Her breath nearly stopped when he reached over to her and began pulling the long pins loose and tossing them over the side.

When she glanced at him, no smile lit his lean face. Instead he appeared thoughtful, almost angry as he frowned at some conflict that showed briefly in his eyes then was hidden from her.

Confused, she watched as he lifted the circlet of flowers, studied it for a long moment, then brought it to his lips the way a lover might who mourned his lost love and tossed it into the night.

Her heart clenched so tightly she thought it would explode from the pressure as she watched the wreath land in the dark water, catch a moonbeam and float out of sight. She pushed the hair from her eyes and held it back with hands that trembled ever so slightly.

With another glance she didn’t understand, Jean-Paul turned the ship once more and sailed on a tack into the wind. Tendrils of hair blew back from her temples.

“Let it go,” he commanded.

She slowly dropped her hands to her lap. He lifted one hand and slid his fingers into the tangles.

“Like silk,” he said in a low tone that stirred turmoil within her.

When his hand dropped to her bare shoulder, she started, then retreated behind the icy facade.

“I’ve wanted to do this all evening,” he continued, and stroked across her back, along the edge of the silk, until his arm was around her. His fingers caressed slowly up and down her arm, causing chills, which he then smoothed away.

Disappointment swamped her when he withdrew his arm and set the vessel on a different tack across the wind. She watched the shoreline as they raced parallel to it. At last he spilled the wind from the sail and engaged the engine again to push into a small cove similar to the one at Penwyck where she’d learned to swim and sail years ago.

“You seem to know these waters well,” she said.

“Yes.”

Sudden, intense jealousy flamed in her, then died as she further retreated from emotion. She was nothing to him; he was nothing to her. There was no need for this reaction.

“I love the sea,” she said to distract herself from his allure. “At home, we have a private place, a cove behind the palace where we played and learned to swim. The bay there is small, but it was a world to us, a place of freedom…”

She let the thought trail off, aware that she gave too much of herself away to this worldly man. What did he care about her need for freedom, to secret herself away from the rest of civilization and live her own fantasy?

He watched her, a slight puzzlement in his eyes. “Who are you?” he asked in a quiet tone.

A current ran along her nerves at the question that was as whimsical as his desire to sail off into the moonlight. The bond grew stronger…more urgent.

“Megan,” she finally answered, a hitch in her breath as possibilities opened to her. She wanted…she wanted…oh, stars and moonlight and rapture.

Foolish, foolish Megan, the Ice Princess scolded.

“Not your name,” he corrected. “The real you. Ah, yes, the Quiet One.”

She tensed at the nickname, but he said nothing more, only watched her from eyes hooded by thick lashes, the lean planes of his face harsh and forbidding. She shivered.

He stood, then quickly threw out the anchor and furled the sail. He went into the hold. In another minute, soft music swelled into the darkness. He returned and held out his arms in invitation to dance.

The first time they’d danced had been at Meredith’s birthday ball. Jean-Paul had politely danced with all the royals, starting with the birthday girl, then the queen and finally her. Anastasia had attended the dinner, then been sent to bed, but Megan had been allowed to stay. Those moments in his arms had seemed filled with magic.