How to Love a Princess (20 page)

She shook her head,
laughing. “The last time you said that, I found myself kidnapped for the
afternoon.”

“Unfortunately,
cucciola
,
I can’t do that today.”

His head came down, taking
her by surprise as he took a kiss without breaking their stride and then
demanded one in return.

As soon as he released her
lips, she realised what she’d done. “Nicolas, we shouldn’t. I can’t—”

“You already have,” he cut
in softly, then turned his gaze forward as they reached the stairs. “I don’t
want another misunderstanding, Catherine. This is about us, not Ophella. I am
angry about your attitude to my meeting; I’m finding it increasingly difficult
to understand when it comes to you and Ophella. But this is about your mother,
about you needing me, about me wanting you to need me.
Cazzo
.” His gaze
slid sideways to her again and his voice turned husky, “It’s also about me
wanting you, plain and simple.”

Her heart hitched at the
longing in his eyes, in his voice. “You make it sound so easy, Nicolas. So
black and white. You might be able to separate your emotions into personal and
professional for now, but do you honestly think that won’t change?”

His shoulders lifted in a
shrug. “There are plenty of grey patches. I’m still working on those.”

“You sound very sure
you’ll succeed,” she said harshly, unreasonably irritated at the arrogance that
was so much part and parcel of the man she loved.

The depth of his
insecurity and vulnerability, of past and present pain, darkened his eyes and
pulled taut at his jaw. Catherine was instantly ashamed, even more so when he
spoke.

“I have to be.” He looked
into her eyes a moment longer, then jerked his gaze away. “The alternative is
unthinkable.”

“And I have no alternative
at all,” she said dully. “I can’t divorce myself from Ophella. Not even for a
moment.”

“Then it’s just as well
I’m prepared to share you,” Nicolas said cryptically as they entered her
mother’s room.

Before she had time to
puzzle on what he meant by that, the thought was lost as they gathered at her
mother’s bedside with Nicolas launching into a full explanation of what he was
about to do and all the possible side effects Helene might expect.

Catherine stayed until her
mother drifted off to sleep, then she left Nicolas and Dr. Stanzis conferring
in one corner to take a short walk by the river. When she returned to her
office, she was greeted by Nicolas, Gascon and Servuis Grasham, her minister of
national security.

“You’d better sit for
this,” Gascon informed her soberly.

Expecting the worst,
Catherine took the mug of strong black coffee he pressed into her hands and
sipped deeply, looking into Nicolas’s eyes, trying to read him. He seemed grim,
but neither particularly sad nor defeated.

It
wasn’t her mother.

As she listened, however,
she knew nothing could ever have prepared her for the conversation Gascon had
taped between Geoffrey and his father.

Harvey:
This is intolerable! I won’t accept it.

Geoffrey:
You have no choice. Catherine has made her decision and I’m quite prepared to
abide by it.

Harvey:
We had an agreement. How dare—

Catherine
and I have made a new agreement. It is our lives, after all.

You?
You think this is all about you? Good God, you are a stupid fool.

That’s
enough, father. As much as you wanted our families joined, I don’t quite see
the urgency that either Catherine or I need sacrifice ourselves just so that
our parents can snuggle up at some extended family Christmas.

Harvey,
after a long pause, sounding breathless and incredulous: This isn’t about happy
families. The things I’ve done. Good God, I’ve risked everything for this
bloody throne.

What—what
the hell are you talking about?

Nothing—
Another pause, followed by a groan— I can’t believe you’ve let this happen. Do
have any idea of the power Ophella is sitting on? If you had half a backbone,
you would have killed for it. All your life, I’ve had to do everything for you.

There was more, more hints
and innuendos, nothing that would stand up in an American court of law once
Harvey Talacon’s lawyers had thrashed it.

“There’s still something
bothering me,” Nicolas said, frowning as Catherine turned to him. “I understand
Harvey thinking he might rule Ophella through Geoffrey, but surely he was aware
his son would never be king?”

Servuis cleared his throat
and drew all eyes. “Maybe it wasn’t Ophella he was after.”

“The mines.” Catherine ran
a hand across her brow, wincing at her total lack of clarity. “He’s always had
an unnatural interest in those mines.”

Servuis met her gaze and
held it as they exchanged the devastating truth in silence. The world’s energy
crisis would peak in another twenty-five to thirty years. The timing was as
near to perfect as could be. Harvey didn’t intend to control Geoffrey, he had
his sights on a potential grandchild, the next Ophella heir.

“What is it about those
bloody mines?” Nicolas asked.

Her stunned gaze went from
Servuis to Nicolas and back again. As much as she trusted Nicolas, as much as
she welcomed his support, she couldn’t comprehend that Servuis felt the same
way. The man was so close-lipped and suspicious, he treated the smallest of
incidents as if they belonged in the top ten of the Pentagon’s highly
classified secrets.

“It was Nicolas’s suggestion
to put a bug on Geoffrey,” Gascon said, understanding her confused silence.

“I know I haven’t been
Geoffrey’s greatest fan,” Nicolas took up as her frown turned on him. “This
time, however, it wasn’t personal. Once you made the connection between your
mother’s poisoning and the unsolved deaths of your hunting dogs and the mines,
I started looking at who had been present, who else might have made the same
connection and found the perfect poison.”

“We always knew the
breaches in security must have come from an inside source,” Servuis concluded.
“I’ve been negligent in my duty. Everyone should have been investigated after
the—”

Catherine raised a hand to
stop him.

Alex,
Jev, they’d been flying back from a visit to the Talacons when their plane had blown
apart.
 
The blast on the Blueberry.

“He— He tried to kill me
as well,” she realised belatedly.

“He was desperate,” Gascon
suggested. “At the time, you were involved with…”

Gascon was tactful enough
to omit the details.

Catherine understood. Her
marriage to Nicolas would have put Geoffrey, and his father, out of the scene.
“But, he had no way of knowing.”

“I knew,” Gascon pointed
out.

That Harvey had kept her
under surveillance, the lesser of all his evils, somehow laid the final blow to
her fragile grasp of denial. The crack was instant.

Catherine saw that her
fingers were trembling, but didn’t feel it. She felt curiously disconnected
from her body. She knew she was suddenly cold, freezing; knew that her legs
were rubbery, her spine prickling ominously, but she didn’t
feel
a
thing. “Don’t take this on yourself, Servuis. If you’d come to me with such
suspicions, I’d have rejected them outright. If you’d asked me for permission
to pin a bug on any of the Talacons, I would have forbid it. And I know the queen
would have done the same.”

She looked helplessly to
Nicolas. “He murdered my brothers.”

Nicolas took charge at
once, rising to his feet, both his drilling gaze and voice filled with an
authority, an intimate right of way that would not give for any man, bodyguard,
minister or kingdom. “Please leave us. Princess Amelia and I would like to be
alone.”

Gascon was at the door
before he’d finished talking. Servuis lingered a moment longer, but he couldn’t
catch Catherine’s eye, her gaze stuck on Nicolas, and hastily decided he’d
indeed been dismissed as Nicolas’s brows drew together.

As soon as the door
closed, Nicolas moved to take a seat beside Catherine, scraping her chair
around to face him. Seeing all the signs of shock in her blank eyes and
shivering lips, he rubbed warmth into her upper arms and made his voice both
gentle and firm. “We are nothing if we cannot trust those closest to us. The
human race cannot survive without that trust and, when it is broken, you lose a
part of yourself. I cannot give that back to you, Catherine, but I’m here for
you. Let me help you.”

Nicolas removed one hand
from her arm to wipe his thumb beneath her eyes at the tears that should have
been there, tears trapped inside by numb shock. “He’ll never hurt you or
another member of your family again.” Sliding his arms around her waist,
Nicolas pulled her into his chest. “I won’t allow it,
cucciola
.”

Catherine rested her cheek
against his chest, lulled into his warmth, reassurance and strength, taking
from his reserves what she needed to work through the horror.

Slowly, shock turned to
outrage; disbelief hardened to determination.

Catherine pushed out of
his arms to meet his worried gaze. “Thank you, Nicolas. I feel so…” Angry?
Stupid? Appalled to the lining of her gut. “I feel much better.”

When she was fully back in
her own chair, he kept one hand on her arm. “I can give you a sedative.”

She shook her head and
slid the laptop closer to replay the damning portion of the taped conversation.
“I want to make him pay,” she ground out bitterly.

“He will, Catherine. I
personally guarantee it.”

Catherine blinked at him,
well aware how little they had to go on. “You sound so sure.”

His brow went up cockily.
“I’ve been accused of that before,” he said, referring to this morning.

She was in no mood to
share the private joke. The recent shock had stripped her soul bare and she was
not capable of lining her words. Her emotions were too close to the surface and
topping that was an aching fury. The strength she relied on so much in Nicolas
was the very thing that must destroy their love. “Sometimes you’re almost
egotistical. You’re so strong, arrogant and determined, so sure you’ve earned
the right to win that you don’t stop to consider the cost.”

“I’m guessing that’s not a
compliment.” Nicolas’s humour faded. “I’m not about to go vigilante to bring
Harvey Talacon down, if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

She waved a hand at him,
dismissing the accusation. “This is about us.”

His jaw clenched. From the
way she’d said it, he knew the full interpretation.
This is about why there
is no ‘us’. Why there’ll never be an ‘us’.
“I only want to protect you,
Catherine.”

“No, that is not all you
want,” she said, rising from her chair to walk away from him. “You want to be
my pillar of strength, but I’ve seen too many pillars crumble.”

“I see.” His sigh conveyed
his frustrated anger. “Is this about your father?”

She turned at the window
to look at him, her lower lip twisted beneath her teeth. “And my grandfather.
And my great-grandfather. They were all so strong, big men, bigger than life.”

Nicolas jumped to his feet
in a surge of rebellion at having to take on the entire chain of de’Ariggo men.
As if Catherine wasn’t challenge enough, he had to defend himself against
ghosts. He made it to the door before looking back, before his heart reminded
him that he had nowhere to run from Catherine.

She was in his head, his
heart, his blood.

“Did you ever consider the
possibility that it wasn’t their strength that destroyed them, but some
weakness in spite of all that strength?” he said softly.

She averted her eyes to
look out the window. She took so long in answering, he dared to hope she was
thinking on his words, allowing herself to be convinced.

And she probably had, but
only for a brief moment.

“Every man has at least
one weakness,” she agreed, looking back to him with a blue gaze as steady as
her unchanged mind.

She was right, of course.
He had his weaknesses as much as the next man. And right now, he identified at
least two, one of which was a murderous urge to fly through time and pay each
of her male ancestors an ominous visit.

Nicolas decided to put his
bets on the second. “You are my weakness, Catherine. And my strength. I could
never fall so long as you’re balancing my life.”

He didn’t wait around for
another slamming comment or doubt. When it came, and it would, he’d deal with
it. He’d spoken the truth inside his heart. Without Catherine, he’d crawl
through the rest of his life, crippled and incomplete, as he had the last four
years.

If he had to, he’d survive.

But he’d had enough of
just surviving.

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