Capturing the Crown: The Heart of a Ruler. Marie Ferrarella

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СКАЧАТЬ was a little after midnight and she felt it safe to assume that everyone who worked in the palace had retired to their own lives for the remainder of the night. Who did that leave?

      She stiffened. There it was again. Rustling. Someone brushing against the shrubs that were directly on the other side of the ones she was facing. She was sure of it.

      Since there was no sound of soft laughter or lowered voices exchanging endearments, Amelia knew that whoever she heard couldn’t be any of the palace’s younger employees sneaking a moment to share the grounds with someone special.

      It had to be an intruder.

      A chill ran down her back. How had he gotten past the palace security?

      Her heart began to hammer quickly. Her father would have ordered her to hurry back to the palace before whoever had managed to get on the grounds saw her.

      But her father had also been the one to see to it that she had extensive training in self-defense, telling her that in the end, all one had was oneself to rely on. She wasn’t going to turn tail and run. This was her home, damn it, and no one was going to make her fearful while she was here.

      With a rush of adrenaline, Amelia charged around the shrubs, uttering something akin to a war cry that had been designed by her trainer to help empower her and increase her adrenaline while intimidating whoever was on the receiving end.

      The man who turned around to see her coming at him a second before she tackled him was tall. His muscular frame was clothed entirely in black. Like a burglar.

      She’d meant to knock him down, to, at the very least, knock the wind out of him. And she succeeded.

      Partially.

      What she hadn’t counted on was that at the last moment, the man in black would grab her wrist. When he went down, he took her with him.

      The air drained out of her lungs as she was yanked down. Her head made contact with his chin. She wasn’t sure who got the worst of it.

      Within moments of her hastily devised attack, Amelia found herself sprawled out on top of the intruder, stars swirling through her head, her face a mere three inches away from his. If that.

      If the intruder was surprised or dazed, it was for less than a heartbeat. And since hers was beating in a tempo that made “The Flight of the Bumblebee” sound like a tune being played in slow motion, the registry of the intruder’s emotion came and went in something less than could be calibrated by any earthly means.

      And then she heard the laugh. Deep, rich, full and completely all-encompassing. A laugh that drenched whoever heard it with liquid waves of warmth. A laugh out of her past.

      Amelia blinked. She stared down at the face of the man beneath her. A man who might or might not be an intruder but who definitely was having a reaction, not to what had just transpired, but to what was happening this very moment. The very intimate contact of their bodies.

      The ends of her robe were spread out on either side like the giant wings of a bird and the scrap of silk beneath seemed not to be there at all. Every inch of his rocklike body was imprinted against hers. And she was achingly aware of it.

      Gastonia’s cool night breeze faded instantly, all but fried in the face of the heat that was traveling up and down her body like white lightning, desperately searching for a target.

      “Russell.” Her voice sounded hoarse to her ears.

      The smile that slipped along his lips was positively wicked. He made no effort to move or rectify the situation. “At your service, princess.”

      As if somewhere someone had magically snapped their fingers, Amelia scrambled to her feet, vainly trying to regain her composure. Not an easy feat when her entire body felt as if it were vibrating like a tuning fork struck against a goblet filled to the brim with subtly aged red wine.

      She tugged the ends of her robe together. Her insides were still trembling, but she noticed thankfully that her hands were steady enough.

      “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

      Russell rose to his feet in a fluid motion she envied. “Apparently being knocked off my feet by a blazing ball of fire.” He casually brushed himself off. Humor never left his lips. And his eyes never left hers.

      The trembling had stopped. But she couldn’t get her body to stop tingling. This was like old times, she thought. Except that instead of a water balloon, she’d been hit by Russell. Sort of.

      She was a woman now, not a child. Forming coherent words should not be an insurmountable effort for her.

      Taking a breath, Amelia managed to restore a measure of dignity to the moment. “I mean, you weren’t due until tomorrow.”

      How had he managed to sneak into the country? Just how lax was security at the airport? She made a mental note to speak to her father.

      Her father.

      Her eyes widened as she remembered. “My father had a ceremony all in place to greet you at the airport.”

      If the information was meant to evoke remorse from the tall man before her, it failed. He gave her his trademark lopsided smile. The same one that had made her adolescent heart secretly flutter.

      “Which is why,” he told her, “I came in early this evening.”

      She knew what Reginald thought of Gastonia and the crown. Did his chief political advisor and cohort share that view? Her eyes narrowed as a wave of protectiveness passed over her. “To humiliate my father?”

      He made no effort at denial. He thought her intelligent enough to know that none was needed. “To avoid attention.”

      Still smarting from Reginald’s high-handed snub, she looked for the insult in Russell’s actions. “Why? Are you ashamed to have to come to bring me back to your prince, Lord Carrington?”

      She was being formal. Somehow, he hadn’t expected her to be. He’d expected her, he supposed, to be exactly the way she’d been the last time he’d seen her. Sweet. Unassuming. And open.

      But nothing in life, Russell reminded himself, stayed the same. Things changed, they evolved or they died. There didn’t seem to be any other choice.

      He saw the way her mouth curved, saw the displeasure when she uttered Reginald’s title. It was obvious that the princess was no happier about the union than Reginald was. And in her case, Russell couldn’t blame her. At least Reginald was getting a beautiful woman. All Amelia was getting, beyond a treaty, was an egotistical, self-indulgent, power-hungry, spoiled brat of a man who seemed too besotted with his womanizing way of life to appreciate even marginally what he was being handed on a silver platter.

      “No,” he answered her question quietly, “I’m not ashamed to be the one to bring you back to Silvershire. I just don’t care for any kind of unnecessary fanfare. Unlike the prince, I never really liked being in the spotlight, however briefly.”

      The moon was full tonight and its silvery light was caressing the man standing before her. Amelia realized that she’d stopped breathing only when her lungs began to ache. As subtly as she could, she drew in a long breath.

      “Then СКАЧАТЬ