How to Love a Princess (6 page)

Catherine gave a small
shake of her head, but Nicolas won himself a smile as she plonked her backside
on a tuft of old, mouldy leaves and drew her knees up. “A lifetime of drilling
on proper etiquette is hard to let go of.”

He crossed his legs beside
her, not too close, not too far. “Then you must have had amnesia in London,” he
said, recalling a particularly invigorating romp in Hyde Park.

Catherine shrugged.
“Another time, another person.”

She lifted her chin at
him.

Sweet, tempting lips.
Another time, maybe, but not another person. Nicolas didn’t stop to think. Too
many memories collided with the present and the soft, inviting picture she
made. He brought his mouth down. The taste of her fired through his blood and
overtook his senses. He wanted her. Needed her.

Dear
God, Catherine, how have I lived without you?

Gently, he reached across
her with one arm and eased her to the ground. Her brief resistance held no
substance. The momentary stiffness melted. Not once releasing her lips, he
stretched out beside her, nudging one leg between hers, threading her hair
between his fingers, stroking her cheek with his other hand, losing himself to
her touch, her warmth, her body, her taste. At some point he realised that she
was kissing him back, devouring as much as he devoured. He felt her fingers
slide down his back, then grip at his hips with urgency. Her body arched into
him as a tiny moan escaped through their kiss.

“
Mi fai impazzire,
”
he groaned, deepening the kiss.
You drive me crazy.

And the first rip came at
the wall around his heart.

With that rip, he flung
himself off Catherine, too aware of how loudly his heart was pounding, how
quickly his pulse raced, how swiftly he’d regressed into the past.

It could not be allowed.

At all costs, the last
three weeks had to override the four years he’d loved a ghost. That ghost was
gone. That Catherine had never existed. She hadn’t returned to him; she’d never
been.

The Catherine he’d taken
so easily into his arms now was the woman who’d deceived him, who’d stolen his
love and then slipped out into the night, worse than any thief, for she had
taken something that could not be replaced. How could he forget, even for these
few moments?

Catherine lay perfectly
still until she regained control of her breathing.

What had Nicolas done?

What had
she
done?

“Why?” His accusation was
as ragged as a hurt beast’s growl.

She glanced his way to
find his hard stare on her. “Why?” she repeated dully, pulling herself up and
wrapping her arms around her knees.

“Why did you leave me?”

She couldn’t look at him.
Her pulse slowed down, lethargic as the winter stream she gazed on. The trees
down here by the river were bare, stripped from their glorious canopies by the
turn of a season, as her heart had been stripped by the turn of a single event.

With two older brothers,
there’d been no chance of her ever having to rule.

She’d been free.

And then in one exploding
moment, she’d lost both her brothers and her freedom. And Nicolas.

Still, the sun shone down,
struggling to heat the day, a promise that spring would come again. Nicolas’s
hard gaze would still be looking down on her, she knew, struggling in his own
way to find some neat conclusion, dark and stormy from her broken promises.

But there was no promise
for her heart. It would always be locked in winter.

“I told you why I had to
leave,” she said at last.

“Answer me, Catherine.”

She jerked her head and
set her eyes on him. The dark, brown depths told her that she was out of time.
He wanted answers and he was determined to get them. “We were not meant to be.”

“You used me.”

“No, Nicolas, it wasn’t
like—”

“You used me to experience
life. I was just another stop on your world tour.” Not a question. The
underlying storm broke after all these weeks of riding a wave of repressed
emotion. “Why did you agree to marry me?”

Catherine sucked in a
staggered breath at the bitterness in his voice. She’d take anger over that any
day. “I wanted to—”

“I know exactly what you
wanted, Catherine. You wanted to experience the pleasures of my bed. You knew
my price and so you accepted my proposal with no intention of ever marrying me
at all.”

“If you know all the
answers,” she retaliated, jumping up, dusting herself off with shaky fingers,
“then why bother asking at all?”

He flew to his feet and
gripped her wrist. His other hand came to her chin, forcing her eyes to meet
his. “There’s one answer I do not know. Why? Why did you choose me?”

Her eyes closed. Every
breath Catherine took brought his masculine scent into her.
I fell in love
with you. I’m still in love with you.
She licked her suddenly dry lips and
tasted him. His touch was still with her. She could not bear this. She could
not be with him every day, see him, talk to him, love him. She was not this
strong.

“Once you’d chosen me,
once you’d had me,” he continued in that brittle voice, “how could you let me
go?”

Her eyes snapped open and
a drop of the sorrow in her heart leaked to roll down her cheek. “I had to.”

“
Cazzo.
” He flung
her chin from him and stood back.

“You don’t understand,
Nicolas. I never deceived you intentionally. I would have married you, but then
my brothers…”

“You became the heir
apparent,” he finished when she could not. The emotion in his eyes changed:
deeper, darker, hotter. “The difference between us, Catherine, is that I would
have given up a kingdom for you.”

“Oh, Nicolas—”

“Ah, yes, that’s right,”
he said with a grimace. “I don’t have a kingdom to give up.” His shoulders
heaved in a sigh filled with frustrated fury. “But if forced to make a choice,
I would have given up my research, my life, my soul.”

The weary thread at the
end told her that he meant every word. Is that what she should have done? But
for Catherine, there’d never been a choice. Her responsibilities came at birth
and there was nothing selfish about them. For herself, she’d have given up all
and everything. But what right had she to give up on behalf of her country? To
give up on her people? She was the last remaining heir. Yes, she might have
done it. After all, who was to stop her? But what would have happened when she
sat in London and watched her country fall apart, crushed between two powers
poised for the first sign of weakness?

“And would you have been
content once you’d given up everything?” she asked, just as wearily.

“I don’t know,” he
answered quietly. “Maybe I would have grown resentful with time. Maybe I would
have regretted it in the end. But that is a chance I would have been willing to
take. I loved you enough to risk everything.”

“I am a princess of
Ophella. I do not have the luxury of risking everything.”

“Was marrying me such a
terrifying risk?”

Catherine rubbed her
forehead at the pain of confusion building there. How could she possibly make
him see that the risk was to himself and not to her? Not easily. He’d brush her
reasons aside as a sorry excuse. The fear she lived with was not something that
could be explained with mere words.

“I was not good enough to
marry, is that it? I was not good enough to be a prince of Ophella.”

“No,” she cried out.
You
were too good to be a prince of Ophella.
“Please, Nicolas, you must believe
me.”

“I believed in you
before,” he bit out, “and I don’t like where it took me. But don’t worry,
Catherine, I realise now that you spared us both by running away. I almost
married a woman that I now realise was a complete stranger.”

“Nicolas,” she called when
he turned to walk away. He spun back to face her, but she didn’t know what else
to say. As he started turning again, she panicked at how badly this kiss had
ended. “You won’t leave, will you? My mother…you’re her only hope.”

His face darkened in
contempt. “What kind of man do you take me for?”

The fear and panic lifted.
He wouldn’t go. She should have known. She
did
know. “A better man than
I’m a woman.”

He didn’t hear. He’d
already stalked off down the river path, away from the castle. She was
relieved. That admission was not meant for his ears, but for herself. Because
she was already wondering where the courage would come from to let him go once
his job here was done. To not beg him to stay. She had to find the courage. And
if she couldn’t find any, she’d have to create some from scratch. She loved him
too much to see him self-destruct.

Then again, she told
herself furiously as she stomped up the castle driveway, what would begging
achieve except shame?

He was done with her.

He’d never trust her
again.

Her feelings—courage,
strength and weakness—were all moot, including this sudden and useless anger at
his rejection. Nicolas Vecca would never allow himself to rekindle his love for
her.

He’d kissed her to prove a
point. To once more counter her silent commands to keep his distance. He threw
questions and accusations at her that meant nothing, because his mind was made
up all along.

What he didn’t know, was
that he had the power to break her. He’d push and push until she broke and then
he’d walk away without a backward glance.

But she wouldn’t break.
She couldn’t even afford to bend.

The long table in the
formal dinning hall was set with elaborate silver, china and crystal. Wild
blossoms imported from the height of summer in Cape Town added the finishing
touch.

“Everything looks lovely,”
Catherine complimented her staff. “Sophia, spray the flowers with cool water
every hour to keep them fresh.” She turned to Jonnal. “Have the pineapples arrived
from Brazil?”

Jonnal bobbed. “Claustaud
has everything in hand.”

“Wonderful.” Smiling,
Catherine whirled about, her sharp gaze searching for anything left undone and
came stuck at the doorjamb where Nicolas was leaning a casual hip and observing
with folded arms. His cheeks were still stung with the winter chill and she
realised he’d only just returned from their walk.

“Everything looks
perfect,” he agreed, pushing away from the door to come inside the room. “To
think I once accepted that you’d run our home into chaos and here you are,
running an entire castle.”

“Organisation and giving
orders is a far cry from cracking an egg,” she responded, suddenly needing to
know that he remembered every little thing about that day, demanding validation
for the way he’d bared her nerves earlier.

He did. She saw it in the
way he quickly averted his eyes. The hardening of his jaw. She was at once
ashamed of provoking the memory.

Thankfully, he recovered
almost at once. His gaze had settled on the table and he took his cue from
there. “Where did you get fresh flowers from at this time of year?”

“They were flown in from
South Africa last night.” She backed into a cabinet as he changed direction and
came toward her. “Sophia, Jonnal, see if Claustaud needs you in the kitchen,”
she said, convinced there was about to be another outburst similar to the one
at the stream.

They quickly scuttled from
the room and then there was just Nicolas and herself. He stopped a breath away,
searching her face.

“Have you come to accuse
me of something else?” Catherine hissed into the tension. It didn’t help
knowing that Nicolas had every right to his anger while she had none. She was
responsible for his misery, while fate was responsible for hers.

“Not at all,” he said, his
tone conciliatory. “I was thinking of your mother on my walk and something came
to mind.”

His easy dismissal of
their earlier argument brought a flush of heat to her cheeks, but she was
determined to take a leaf from his book. “I’ll do anything to help.”

“Is there anything specific
that only your mother eats or drinks? Prescribed medicine or pills? Something
she might have digested regularly before she took ill?”

She started to shake her
head on a frown, then remembered. “Hormone tablets. But she’s been taking them
for years.”

“Good. That’s definitely
worth a look.”

Her frown returned. “What
exactly are you looking for?”

“Poison,” Nicolas said
grimly. “Where would I find these hormone tablets?”

“In her medicine cabinet.
In the bathroom leading off her—” He was already walking away even as she
finished, “—room.” Catherine raced after him. “Surely you don’t think her pills
are the poison.”

Nicolas glanced her way
without breaking his stride. “Something could have been injected into the
pills.”

She grabbed his arm and
pulled him to a stop. “Are you telling me that someone in the castle has done
this?”