Victoria Parker – To Claim His Heir by Christmas (страница 3)

Or…? Lord, not now. Not when she was falling apart at the seams. She wasn’t ready to hear those words. Not yet. Not ever.

She felt powerless. Completely out of control. Like a puppet on a string.

The room began to spin.

‘Yes, thank you, that would be wonderful,’ she said, her voice thankfully calm and emotion-free as she plastered a cringe-worthy beatific smile on her face.

Coffee. Crème brulée. That would buy her another twenty minutes, surely.

Panic fisted her heart as the tick of the clock pounded in her ears. Tick-tock. Tick-tock.

The walls loomed, closing in around her, crushing her lungs.

Calm down, Luce. What are you going to do—hyperventilate and pass out? Make a total fool of yourself?

She needed air. She couldn’t breathe.

‘I’m sorry—please excuse me. I think I need…’ To go out on the balcony? No, no, no, he’d follow her and drop to one knee, she knew. ‘To visit the restroom. I’ll only be a few minutes.’

After all that she realised he wasn’t listening. Someone on the other side of the room had caught his eye, and Luciana frowned as his lightly tanned face stained a ghastly shade of grey.

‘Augustus? Are you all right? Did you hear what I said?’

Slowly he shook his head. ‘I do not believe it. Luciana, you will never guess who is dining in this very room. I had no idea. Your father will be most displeased. I am so sorry…’

He was sorry? Ah, wonderful. One of his women, no doubt. The buxom brunette from earlier, come to ruin his perfect proposal? She didn’t want to know. It was her parents’ marriage all over again. No doubt she’d be faced with his mistresses most mornings too.

Well, that’s better than you warming his bed, isn’t it?

Anything was better than that.

‘Don’t worry about it, Augustus. Your secret is safe with me.’ Her father wouldn’t care less who the man whored with. There was more likelihood of mutual backslapping. ‘I’ll be back soon.’

Ignoring her, on he went. ‘Of all the places in all the world…’

Luciana bit into her bottom lip, stifling the impulse to run like a world class sprinter. Praying for this evening to be over. Praying someone would rescue her from this nightmare. Before the truth escaped on the scream that was building gradually, inexorably, and she single-handedly destroyed the very life she was trying to protect.

* * *

‘Of all the places in all the world… What an unpleasant surprise.’

His cousin, Seve, who was seated to his right at the oval dining table, leaned his upper body sideways in an effort to be discreet.

‘I can see the sweat beading on his upper lip from here. It’s your old pal from that exclusive rich joint you were sent to in Zurich. Viscount Augustus.’

Prince Thane of Galancia deflected the gut-punch the word Zurich evoked and sneered. ‘He was no pal of mine.’

For the one disastrous university term Thane had attended after his father’s death the Viscount had caused him no end of trouble—which he’d soon discovered was a horrendously bad idea—and subsequently shaken in his shoes every time he looked Thane’s way. Which had pleased Thane no end. It meant he’d generally kept a vast distance.

He couldn’t abide the man. Augustus was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Polished until every inch of him gleamed, he was a silver-tongued bureaucrat with sly eyes and a treacherous mind.

Seve smirked as if Thane had said the words out loud and he’d found it highly amusing. ‘What’s more, he’s dining with none other than Princess Luciana of Arunthia. One of Henri’s stuck-up brood.’

Thane resisted the urge to growl. ‘Then they belong together.’ A match made in heaven. ‘How do you know it’s definitely her? Last I heard, she lived abroad.’

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a photograph of any of them. Recent intel was off his radar, since he had zero interest in becoming embroiled with his uncle’s ongoing bitter feud with the house of Verbault. He’d made that mistake ten years ago, in his father’s day. Had the scars and the bitter aftertaste to prove it. Nowadays every time he thought of that varmint Henri a seizure of antagonistic emotion diseased his mind, so the less he heard or saw of the entire family the better. Besides, his every waking moment was spent deflecting blows from the latest fiasco in Galancia.

‘I know because the two of them having fun on the slopes made the French headlines this morning. Rumour has it she’s newly returned from Hong Kong, due to take the crown any day.’

Thane would have predicted a snowball in hell before he felt envy for a Verbault, but right then envy was definitely the evil he was up against. He wanted his crown. Taken from the hands of his uncle and placed in his own, where it should be. Before the man caused his people further damage. Four years… It seemed eons away, and his patience was wearing perilously thin.

He thrust his fingers through his hair and tucked some of the long, wayward strands behind his ear. ‘It isn’t hard to work out what Augustus wants. The vapid Viscount has always been an ambitious sleaze with illusions of grandeur.’

Seve chuckled darkly. ‘Very true. Although I will say that marriage to her will be no chore for him. Look at her. By God, she’s absolutely stunning.’

Thane couldn’t care less if she was Cleopatra. She was still a Verbault. Granted, he refused to get snarled up in that age-old vendetta again, but he wasn’t ignorant or blind to the reasoning for it. Verbault greed had once crippled a vulnerable Galancia, and rebuilding its former glory was an ongoing battle. Forgiveness would never be proffered. So the day he aligned with one of them would be the day he rode bareback with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Seve, meanwhile, was still staring her way. Smitten. Practically drooling. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful woman in my life.’

‘That’s saying something, considering how many you’ve bedded,’ Thane incised sardonically.

His cousin, his second in command, his best friend—the only person he would ever trust—shrugged his wide shoulders. ‘Wouldn’t do you any harm to get laid either, cousin. Come on—I didn’t drag you here just to hurtle down the black slopes all day.’

He knew fine well what Seve had dragged him here for. All work and no play made Thane a dull, arrogant ass, apparently—and for a minute or three he had considered it. But when the redhead sitting to his right had appeared from nowhere he’d turned to stone. Unable even to contemplate getting close to another woman. In fact, if she touched his arm one more time…

Dios, didn’t she know he was dangerous? That his blood ran black and his heart was dead? That he was more powerful and more feared than any other man in Europe? Surely his scars were enough to give her a clue?

Maybe he should give the mindless female a lesson in Princes of Galancia. Top of the list: do not touch.

He hated being touched. Didn’t want anyone close to him. Ever again. While getting beaten to a pulp couldn’t possibly hurt him any longer, it was the softer stuff that was more dangerous. One taste and he might very well crave it. Long for more of it. Glut himself on it. Live for it. Every touch. Every caress. Every kiss. Until it was taken away, as it inevitably would be. Leaving him empty. Aching. Feeling. Weak. And the dark Prince of Galancia could not afford to be weak. Not again. When he was weak he took his eye off the ball and everything went to hell.

Thane reached for his tumbler of rare single malt, his hand stalling in mid-air as an army of ants marched across his nape. Instinct born from a childhood in the barracks made him turn to peer over his right shoulder. Past the garish pine trees smothered in red ribbons and gold baubles, declaring the onslaught of the festive season. How quaint. How pointless.

Ah, yes, there was Augustus. Averting his gaze like an errant schoolboy. No woman with him—not that Thane could see.

But what he did see was a striking, statuesque blonde walking in the direction of the hallway that led to the restrooms. No. Not blonde at all. Her rich, decadent shower of loose tousled waves reminded him of a dark bronze. Like new-fallen acorns.

Now, she was beautiful. And that thought was so incredulous, so foreign, that he felt a tingle of something suspiciously close to shock.

His avid gaze locked on its target, his usual two-second scan turning into a drawn-out visual seduction, and he trailed his eyes over the low scooped neck of the black sheath that hugged her feminine curves. Lingered on the lapels of her long white dress coat, frisking and teasing all that flawless golden flesh.

A faint frown creased her brow and Thane narrowed his eyes as she raised one hand and rubbed over the seam of her lips with the pad of her thumb.

A pleasurable shiver of recognition rippled over his skin and his entire body prickled with an unfathomable heat.

Ana used to do that. Stroke her mouth that way. When he’d asked her why, she’d said it likely came from sucking her thumb when she was a little girl. Thane had smiled and cracked some joke about her still liking things in her mouth, and she’d proceeded to prove him right. Many times over…