And he’d taken it out on Elizabeth. He’d sensed her love for him before she’d confessed it, and he’d been so confident that her heart would be his forever that he hadn’t realized how easily hearts can be broken.
He’d just ground hers into dust.
Could he repair the damage? The sick feeling told him it wouldn’t be easy. But he had to try.
Rising, he walked slowly down the hall to her suite and knocked on the door. But as he’d expected, she didn’t answer. He listened carefully, but she wasn’t sobbing—at least, not loudly enough for him to hear. With a weariness deeper than anything he’d ever felt before, he slid down the door into a sitting position and prepared to wait. When she opened that door, he intended to be there.
No matter how long it took.
Because she was the bottom line. Elizabeth was what mattered most to him. If she wouldn’t forgive him, if she didn’t love him anymore, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Dawn came a few hours later and he still didn’t hear her. Good. She must have fallen back asleep. God knew how— he hadn’t been remotely tempted to close his eyes.
By eight he was tired of sitting. She rarely ever slept this late. He straightened from the cramped position in which he’d been sitting and stood, then knocked on the door. Not hard enough to make her think he was still angry, but firmly enough that she couldn’t sleep through it.
Not a peep.
Fifteen minutes later he was getting worried. She still hadn’t made any sound at all and his imagination was starting to rev into overdrive, quickening his pulse and shortening his breath.
“Elizabeth! Open this door. I only want to talk to you.” He paused.
No answer. Oh, God, was she hurt? Lying on the bathroom floor unconscious? Those tiles were so slippery….
“Either you open it now or I break it down.” That was an idle threat. He’d designed the house himself. There was no way anyone could kick in one of these doors.
Keeping an ear tuned for her, he hurried to his tool closet and got a few items, then returned and began taking the door off its hinges. One way or another, she was going to talk to him.
Finally, the door came free and he set it to one side, then rushed into the room. She wasn’t there. Heart pounding, he checked the adjoining bath but she wasn’t there, either.
Then he noticed the French doors leading to the pool terrace. The deadbolt was unlocked as was the lock on the doorknob. As he started across the room, something white and out of place on the bed’s forest-green quilt caught his eye.
Snatching up the note, he scanned its contents.
Rafe
I will contact you when the baby is born. Please inform your family of the change in plans.
HRH Elizabeth, Princess of Wynborough.
Nine
The sunlight hurt her eyes even through the dark glasses she wore.
As the driver of the rental car she’d hired sped along the highway toward Catalina, Elizabeth wished for the tenth time that she was allowed to take a painkiller for the headache that was pounding behind her eyes.
When she extracted the sheet of paper from her purse, her hands were shaking and abruptly she clasped them together in her lap, squeezing tightly enough that her knuckles turned white. She had to get herself under control before she reached Catalina, or Sam Flynn would think she was crazy.
Sam Flynn was likely to think she was crazy, anyway. After all, how many people knocked on your door and explained that you might be a long-lost prince?
She should be more excited about this venture. It was quite likely that she would be meeting her older brother for the first time in her life in less than an hour.
But nothing seemed exciting to her after the events of last night.
She swallowed and told herself to think of something— anything—else. But over and over again, like a scratched CD that kept skipping back to the same spot, she heard Rafe’s voice in her head: You knew who I was at the ball that night… Heir to the Grand Duchy of Thortonburg.
The pain battered her skull. Dear God, how could he have believed that of her? She was right to break it off. He would never be able to get past his doubts, never be able to work through the anger he still felt at his father and his family for trying to make him into something he wasn’t.
She recalled the look she’d seen on the Grand Duke’s face the day they’d gone to visit. Victor Thorton was a man who loved his son…a man who would have to live the rest of his life knowing he had driven away his own child with his demands and his untruths. But Rafe would never fully understand that. Because he would never choose to allow himself to believe it.