Command Performance (20 page)

“Ah, the kicker.” She smiled again and tried to ignore the fact that she felt like a bowl of gelatin. “How about free orchestra seats to opening night of each play?”

“I wouldn’t refuse.” Her pulse was strong, her blood pressure well within the normal range, but there was still a lack of color in her cheeks and a hollow look around the eyes. “But to seal this bargain, I must have your word that you will rest for twenty-four hours.”

“Twenty-four? But tomorrow I have to—”

“Twenty-four,” he repeated in his mild, implacable tone. “Or I will tell the prince that you require a night of observation here at St. Alban’s.”

“If I have to stay in bed all day tomorrow, I’ll need more than a hospital.”

“We could perhaps compromise with a walk in the garden, a drive by the sea. But no work, my dear, and no stress.”

She could make calls from her bedroom, she decided. Her office would probably take days to repair in any case. And if agreement got her out, she’d agree. “Twenty-four hours.” She sat up again and offered her hand.

“Come, then. I’ll take you out before there is a rut in the corridor from the pacing.”

Alexander was indeed pacing when Dr. Franco brought her out of the examining room. Bennett was leaning against the wall, watching the door. As soon as they came through, both men started forward. Alexander took
Eve’s hand, but looked at Franco.

“Doctor?”

“Miss Hamilton is naturally a bit shaken, but has a strong constitution.”

“I told you,” she said smugly.

“However, I have recommended twenty-four hours of rest.”

“Not bed rest,” Eve put in.

“No,” Franco agreed with a smile. “Not complete bed rest. Though all activity should be relaxing. What she needs now is some quiet and a good meal.”

“Medication?” Alexander asked.

“I don’t believe she requires anything, Your Highness, but a bit of pampering. Oh, and I would disconnect the phone in her room for the next twenty-four-hour period.” When Eve’s mouth fell open, he patted her hand. “We can’t have you disturbed by phone calls, can we, my dear?” With a final pat he wandered away.

“Sharper than he looks,” Eve said under her breath, but was weary enough to accept defeat. “Russ?”

“One of the guards took him back to the hotel.” Bennett touched her shoulder. “His nerves are a bit shot, that’s all. The doctor gave him some tranquilizers.”

“Now we’ll take you home.” Alexander took her arm. Bennett flanked her other side. “My father and the rest of the family are anxious to see for themselves that you’re all right.”

* * *

She was fussed over, pampered, as per doctor’s orders, and put to bed by the Bissets’ old nanny. The woman who had cared for Alexander’s mother, for him and his brother and sister, and now for the third generation, clucked and muttered and had hands as gentle as a baby’s. They were curled with arthritis, yellowed and spotted with age, but she undressed Eve and slipped her into nightclothes effortlessly.

“When your dinner tray comes, you will eat.”

“Yes, Nanny,” Eve said meekly as her pillows were fluffed and piled behind her.

The old woman settled beside her and picked up a cup of tea. “And now you will drink this. All of this. It’s my own mixture and will put the color back in your cheeks. All my children drink it when they are sick.”

“Yes, Nanny.” Even Prince Armand had never awed her as much as the silver-haired, black-clad old woman with the Slavic accent. Eve sipped at the mixture, expecting the worst, and was surprised by a nutty herbal taste.

“There.” Pleased with herself, Nanny nodded. “Children always think medicine will taste nasty and find tricks to keep from taking it. I know tricks of my own.” Her stiff skirts rustled as she shifted. “Even little Dorian asks for Nanny’s drink when he’s feeling poorly. When Alexander was ten, Franco took out his tonsils. He wanted my tea more than the ice cream.”

She tried to picture Alexander as a child, and only saw the man, so tall and straight and proud. “What was he like, Nanny, when he was little?”

“Reckless. Thunderous.” She smiled and the symphony of wrinkles on her face deepened. “Such a temper. But the responsibility was always there. He learned it in the cradle. He seemed to understand even as a baby that he would always have more than other men. And less.” As she spoke, she rose to tidy Eve’s clothes. “He was obedient. Though you could see the defiance in his eyes, he was obedient. He studied hard. He learned well. Both he and Bennett were fortunate that their personalities were so markedly different. They fought, of course. Brothers must, after all. But they became fond of each other early as people.”

She kept a sharp eye on her patient, and noted the tea was nearly finished. “He has the intensity of his father, sometimes more. But, then, the prince had my Elizabeth to share with him, to soothe him, to make him laugh at himself. My Alexander needs a wife.”

Eve’s gaze rose slowly over the rim of her cup. She was warm and growing drowsy, but she recognized the look in Nanny’s eyes. “He’ll have to decide that for himself.”

“For himself. And for Cordina. The woman he chooses will have to be strong, and willing to share the burdens.” Nanny took the empty cup. “Most of all, I hope she is capable of making him laugh.”

“I love to hear him laugh,” Eve murmured as her eyes fluttered closed. “Does it show, Nanny? Does it show
that I love him so much?”

“I have such old eyes.” Nanny smoothed the sheets before she dimmed the light. “And old eyes see more than young ones. Rest now and dream. He’ll come to you before this night is over, or I don’t know my children.”

She knew them well. Eve stirred and sighed and saw Alexander the moment she opened her eyes. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand in his, watching.

“Nanny gave me a magic potion.”

He kissed her knuckles. He wanted to go on kissing her, holding her close and tight against him until the nightmare had faded completely. With an effort he kept his fingers light, as well as his voice.

“It brought the color back to your cheeks. She said you’d be waking soon and would be hungry.”

Eve pushed herself up. “She’s right. I’m starved.”

He rose and walked to a tray at the foot of the bed. “She ordered your menu herself.” He began to remove covers. “Chicken broth, a small lean steak, fresh greens, potatoes mixed with grated cheese.”

“Enough torture.” Eve laid a hand on her stomach. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I’ll start anywhere.”

“The broth, I think.” He placed it on a tray.

“Oh, it smells wonderful.” Eve picked up the spoon and began to recharge her system. He sat in silence while she worked her way through the soup. He could remember every word of Reeve’s report.

Though tests still had to be run, it was almost certain that the bomb had been the same type as the one planted in the Paris embassy. If anyone had been in the office, or even within twenty feet of the door, it would have been fatal.

Eve’s office—where he had once seen her sitting so competently behind her desk.

Security believed that Eve had not been meant to be harmed. Hence the warning. The bomb had been used to terrorize, to confuse, to undermine. But if she hadn’t been quick enough …

He wouldn’t think beyond that. She was here now, unharmed. Whatever he had to do, she would remain that way. When she’d finished the broth, he removed the bowl and replaced it with the main course.

“I suppose I could get used to the pampering.” The meat was pink and tender inside. “It was so sweet of
everyone, even your father, to come in and see me, to make sure I was all right.”

“My father cares for you. All of us do.”

She tried not to make it mean more than it did. He did care. She’d felt it in the way he’d held her when he’d reached the grove. Maybe, just maybe, he even loved her a little. But she couldn’t push him, or herself. It was best to deal with other things.

She toyed with her potatoes. “But I really do feel fine now, Alex. There’s no need for you to go to the trouble of disconnecting the phones.”

“It’s already done.” He took a bottle of wine from a bucket and poured two glasses. “There won’t be any need for you to speak with anyone outside the palace tomorrow. Brie and her family are moving in temporarily. I’m sure the children can entertain you.”

“Alex, be reasonable. I have to talk to my people. They must be frantic. You have no idea how overblown theater people can make things. And getting my office back into shape is going to take days.”

“I want you to go back to Houston.”

Slowly she set her knife and fork on the tray. “What?”

“I want you to take your troupe back to America. I’m canceling the performances.”

She hadn’t realized she had the energy for anger. “You try that and I’ll sue your royal tail off.”

“Eve, this is no time for ego. What happened today—”

“Had nothing to do with the theater and little to do with me. We both know that. If it did, I’d be no safer in Houston than here.”

He was through with logic. In this, with her, there were only feelings. “I don’t want you here.”

The quick slice of pain hit its mark. She let it pass, then picked up her knife and fork again. “It won’t do any good to try to hurt me, Alexander. I won’t go, and neither will the troupe, not until all four performances are finished. We have a contract.”

His French was harsher and a great deal more explicit than his English. He rolled into it as he rose to pace the room. She’d learned enough in her Swiss boarding school, particularly in the dorms, to understand him
perfectly.

“Nanny mentioned that you had a filthy temper,” she said, and continued to eat. The fact that she’d finally seen it loose pleased her. He wasn’t so controlled now, she thought. So she would be. “The wine is excellent, Alexander. Why don’t you sit down and enjoy it?”

“Merde!”
He swung back to her, resisting the urge to fling her tray and its contents on the floor. “This is not a game. Do you know what I went through when I thought you might be dead? That you might have been in that room when the bomb went off?”

She set her utensils down again and lifted her gaze to his. “I think I do. I go through much of the same every time you go out in public. This morning I stood at that window and thought of you. I didn’t even know how long you’d been gone.”

“I didn’t want to wake you.”

“I’m not asking for explanations, Alex.” Her appetite gone, she pushed the tray away. “I’m trying to make you see what I was feeling. I looked out at the sea, and I knew you were somewhere, tending to Cordina. Somewhere I couldn’t be, somewhere I couldn’t help you. And I had to get dressed and go out and go on, when in the back of my mind was the fear that today would be the day I’d lose you.”

“Eve, I’m so surrounded by guards that sometimes I think they’ll smother me. The security on all of us has been doubled since the bomb in Paris.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me? Would it comfort you?” He said nothing, but came and removed the tray from her lap. “You want me to run away, Alex. Will you run away with me?”

“You know I can’t. This is my country.”

“And this is my job. Please don’t ask me to go.” She held out a hand, watched him hesitate, then come back to take it. “If you want to be angry with me, wait until tomorrow. All through this hideous day I’ve wanted you to hold me. Please stay with me tonight, Alex.”

“You need rest.” But he gathered her close.

“I’ll rest after,” she murmured, and drew him down with her.

Her office looked as though it had been bombed. Somehow, even living through it, being told about it, reading the story in the paper, Eve hadn’t been prepared for the stark reality of it.

She’d kept her word and had stayed away for twenty-four hours—mainly because she’d been given no choice. Now she stood at the doorway, or what was left of the doorway, and looked at what had been her office.

The debris hadn’t been hauled away, by order of the police. They had sifted and searched through the ashes and rubble throughout the night of the bombing, the day she’d been kept away, and the night she’d lain restless and anxious to get back to work. If there had been a sense of order to their investigation, Eve couldn’t see it.

There was a hole in one wall, taller and wider than she, so that Eve could see that the small, unoccupied room beyond had problems of its own. Shafts of wood were burrowed into the plaster or lay heaped on the floor. Her file cabinet was a mass of twisted metal, the contents ashes. The carpet was gone, simply gone, with the floor beneath scarred and scored. The window had been boarded up so that no light seeped through. The repair crew was coming that morning, but she had wanted to see it for herself, before it was swept clean.

She didn’t shudder. She had thought she would when she had been walking down the hall. The fear she had expected, had been willing to accept, didn’t come. In the hole left by fear, anger came, ripe and deep and cleansing.

All her files, her notes, her records—destroyed. She stepped in and kicked aside a lump of ceiling. Weeks, months, even years of work reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds. Some things could be replaced; other things were simply irreplaceable.

The picture she had had on her desk, her favorite one of her and Chris; it was part of the ashes. Gone, too, was the play she had written and the one she’d been working on. The tears that sprang to her eyes weren’t of
sorrow, but of fury. Her work might have been rough, maybe it had even been foolish, but it had been her work. Lack of confidence and her own self-deprecating humor had caused her to file it away under
F
for Fantasies.

Now that dream was gone, blown apart by someone who didn’t even know her. They had taken away pieces of her life, and would have taken her life, as well, without a second thought.

They would pay, she promised herself as she stood among the wreckage. Somehow, someway, she would see to it personally.

“Eve.”

With the back of her wrist she swiped at her eyes before turning. “Chris!”

In that instant she was only a younger sister. The emotion and need swamped her as she scrambled over the wreckage and into her sister’s arms. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad.”