“How pregnant are you? Let’s see if that eliminates me, shall we?”
“Pregnant enough to need a pit stop. Can we stop here?”
“No.” The border guard waved them through with only a very minor slowing of their speed, recognizing the plates. “We’ll be at my chalet shortly.”
The car sped along the pass that formed part of the border between Austria and Elazar. As they rounded a bend, the valley opened, allowing a glimpse of Lirona, the capital, once a modest fiefdom, now a thriving city of culture, intellect and wealth. It sat like a heart against the shore of Lac Lirona, the arms of the mountains stretching out to embrace the blue water he loved with everything in him.
Over the centuries, his ancestors had fought to maintain their governance over this small kingdom many times. His great-grandmother had taken up with one of Hitler’s top advisors to keep the Nazi invasion at occupation rather than annihilation.
That is where the bar is set when it comes to duty, his grandmother had extolled as a history lesson, explaining why Xavier’s father was unfit to rule. We are custodians. We do what we must. To put yourself before Elazar is treason.
This, because his father had followed his libido into a high-profile affair with a topless waitress from Amsterdam then married the woman’s aunt, owner of a drug café. His divorce from Xavier’s mother had already been ugly and, even worse in his grandmother’s eyes, common.
His grandmother was a hard woman—her father, King Ugo, hadn’t forgiven his wife and Queen Julia had grown up in a harsh climate of blame and sacrifice. If her spare had survived, things might have been different. Instead, she had forced her only son to renounce the throne, disowning him and keeping her grandson as Elazar’s future.
It was all on Xavier to perpetuate the monarchy into the next generation. He had planned to do so through an elegant association with Patrizia, a respected princess with a degree in social justice and a pedigree that couldn’t be faulted.
Instead, he had behaved as impulsively as his father, tangling with a fashion designer whose life was stained with one scandal after another.
He was running out of hope that her child was not his. Whether his grandmother could find it in her to forgive him for this transgression didn’t matter.
He would never forgive himself.
CHAPTER FIVE
AS SOMEONE WHO had grown up in obscene wealth, Trella didn’t bat an eye at the chalet that turned out to be a three-story modern fortress with a nod to its rustic ancestors in its gables and tiered verandas.
She was more interested in counting pairs of eyes—one at the gate, two at the door, the physician who followed them into the house, the chauffeur who took the car around to what she presumed was the garage, a butler who greeted them and a woman named Inga who was asked to prepare tea.
“Powder room?” Trella clung by her fingernails to control.
Ghosts—terrible, terrible ghosts—were creeping in at the edges of her consciousness, but something pressured to diamond brightness inside her kept her from becoming hysterical. This time she would get away.
As each of the Prince’s attempts to draw her out had pulled at her laser-like focus, she had resentfully allowed that she was taking the rough road, not the high one. She could still call in a team to break her out if she wanted, but a furious, too often helpless, part of her demanded she prove she could rescue herself.
Over the last months, she had come close many times to calling him. The problem was, she wasn’t as stupid as many would conclude from her behavior. She knew what would happen and he had confirmed it. He would marry her.
Which meant a profile in the public eye that was even higher than the one she already occupied. One from which she couldn’t retreat at will.
Worse, it meant being honest with him. She would have to reveal exactly how crazy she was. She would have to explain these ghouls tickling across her skin, making her want to scratch herself all over. The nightmare could spring to life with a beat of her heart, the cold sweats and shaking, the profound helplessness...
She hadn’t suffered an attack since well before their night in Paris, but one ticked like a bomb inside her. She could feel it. But no. She wouldn’t succumb, even though fighting it made it worse. She knew that.
With a dry mouth, she locked herself into a bathroom that smelled of potpourri. The small space was pristine, with a porcelain sink in a cherry wood vanity. She glanced from the full bath and shower to the frosted window that, once carefully opened, looked out onto the woods at the back of the house.
No balcony below this window, but it was big enough to allow a woman with a modest six month swelling in her middle to crawl through, and close enough to the nearby balcony she could swing a leg that direction and clamber across.