Prince and Future...Dad?
Autor
Christine Rimmer
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18
HarlequinChapter One
Princess Liv Thorson woke nose to nose with a sheep.
Karavik, Liv thought woozily. The Gullandrian sheep are called karavik….
Since she’d arrived in her father’s country six days before, Liv had trotted along obediently on several highly informational tours. As a result, she’d seen a large number of karavik—always from a distance, though.
The karavik, up close and very personal, said what any regular American sheep might say: “Baaaa.” Its nose was damp.
“Yuck.” Liv jerked away. Her naked back met another naked back. Her bare foot brushed a hairy leg.
She frowned. For the moment, she decided, she wouldn’t think about that other naked back. Or that hairy leg.
The sheep, spooked, had already turned to trot off. It had a fat, fuzzy tail. Liv stared at that tail until the morning mist and the thick green trees enveloped it.
Her mouth tasted foul. She was lying on her left side on a bed of cool, damp grass. The idea of sitting up—of so much as lifting her pounding head—made her already queasy stomach roll. She shivered. The small clearing where she lay was protected somewhat by the thick circle of surrounding trees. Still it was chilly. Especially since she wasn’t wearing any clothes.
She ought to get dressed.
But to do that, she would have to move, to sit up.
Uh-uh. Sitting up went in the not right this minute category.
Squinting through the lushly green blades of grass in front of her face, Liv pondered the question of how she’d gotten herself into this mess.
It had all started last night. Beyond being Midsummer’s Eve—a major event in the island state of Gullandria—last night was the night her sister Elli married Hauk Wyborn.
Liv licked her dry lips and wished that little man inside her head with the hammer would give up and get lost.
But back to last night.
Back to Elli and Hauk.
Liv wasn’t sure she approved of the marriage. Yes, it was true they adored each other, Elli and Hauk. But what did they have in common, really—a kindergarten teacher from Sacramento and a huge, be-muscled Gullandrian warrior?
Liv brushed impatiently at a blade of grass that was tickling her nose. Those Gullandrians. They didn’t fool her. The tour guides loved to point at the spires of the local churches and call themselves Lutherans, but everyone knew better. Okay, it had been eight or nine hundred years since the last Gullandrian raider had kissed the wife goodbye and set off in his swift, sleek Viking ship to do a little raping and pillaging along the coasts of England and France. But every Gullandrian knew the Norse myths. They lived by them, really. They were Vikings at heart.
And on Midsummer’s Eve, they threw one hell of a par-tay.
Liv groaned softly.
Actually, much of last night was a blur. There had been a lot of that tasty, slightly sweet Gullandrian ale, hadn’t there? She really shouldn’t have drunk quite so much of it.
She remembered….
Laughter. And lots of raw jokes at the bedding of the bridal pair.
Hauk had gotten fed up with them—all the young, unmarried men and women—and ordered them out. So Liv and the rest of them had raced down the back stairs and through the gardens and out to the open parkland where, in honor of the occasion, Liv’s father, the king, had ordered a Viking ship set ablaze.
She had danced, hadn’t she?
Oh, yes, she had. Danced drunkenly right along with everyone else, laughing and singing as she pranced around the ship’s blazing hull.
But after that, well, it all got pretty fuzzy.
She was shivering steadily now. She wrapped her arms around herself in a futile attempt to warm up a little.
Seven or eight feet away—maybe halfway to the trees—she could see a swatch of midnight-blue silk. Her bra. Past the bra, nearer the trees, lay the long, glimmery peacock-blue skirt of the terrific two-piece crushed velvet dress she’d been wearing. Where were the rest of her clothes?
Oh, really. How could she have allowed herself to get so out of control? What could have gotten into her?
Beyond too much ale, the answer to that one lay behind her. Carefully, still shivering, stifling a groan at the way her head pounded and her stomach rebelled, she rolled over.
And there he was: Prince Finn Danelaw.
Oh, God. She did remember.
She’d kissed him in the shadows of the trees. And he had led her here, to this lovely, cozy private spot. The grass had shone golden in the faint endless twilight of Gullandrian Midsummer’s Eve. He’d undressed her and she’d undressed him and…
Liv turned back to her other side, dropped to the grass again, closed her eyes and stifled a long, self-pitying moan.
This was so not her. She was a second-year law student at Stanford, top of her class. Hardheaded and take-charge and always a model of self-control.
A princess? Well, all right, yes. By birth. But not by inclination. At heart, in her soul, Liv Thorson was American. Capital A. And she had plans for herself. Big ones.
By the age of forty, she’d be a senator, at least. Or maybe she’d end up taking a seat on the Supreme Court. She could never be president because she hadn’t been born in the U.S.A. But nobody ever got anywhere by not thinking big. Her prospects were better than most.
Which was why her current situation was so…disappointing.
A woman who dreamed of being on the Supreme Court one day did not have sex in fields. She did not have sex with men she’d known for less than a week. And she certainly did not have sex with men like Finn, who was charming, heartbreaker handsome and nothing short of legendary when it came to his exploits with women.
Slowly, carefully, ignoring her roiling stomach and her spinning head, Liv propped herself up on her forearms and looked at him again.
He was turned away from her, his beautiful, leanly muscled back curved to a bow, his hard, long legs drawn up against the morning chill. He remained—as far as she could tell—sound asleep. His hair, rich brown shot here and there with hints of gold, curled a little at his nape.
Even as her stomach lurched and her face flamed, Liv had to stop herself from reaching out. Her fingers itched to touch that silky hair, to trace the vulnerable bumps of his spine. He really was one gorgeous hunk of man. And last night—at least what she could remember of it—had been absolutely splendid.
She let her head drop to the grass again, shut her eyes and stifled another moan. Oh, how could she?
Liv wasn’t married. She wasn’t even engaged. But she and Simon Graves, a fellow student from back home in California, were more or less a steady couple. And even if she’d been completely free, well, Prince Finn was a player, for heaven’s sake. The man was incredibly charming. All the available—and some of the not so available—women in her father’s court adored him. They vied for his attention. He had his pick of them and he did his best to satisfy them all.
Never—ever—would she have imagined she’d wake up one morning and discover she’d become a notch just like all the other notches in some player’s bedpost. She was seriously disappointed in herself.
She was also outta here.
Now.
With bleak determination, Liv braced her hands against the grass and pushed. That brought her to all fours. It also caused her stomach to do something distinctly unpleasant—a lurch, followed immediately by a long, awful roll. She found the sensation not the least reassuring. And she didn’t even want to think about what might happen once she was fully on her feet.
But it couldn’t be helped. She was standing up and she was doing it now.
With a muffled groan, she lunged upright. For a minute, she swayed there, certain she was going to spew the contents of her stomach all over the dewy grass and the gorgeous naked man at her feet.
Somehow, she held it in.
Her clothes—and his—were strewn around the clearing. She had to swallow more than once to keep from hurling, but somehow she managed to lurch around from garment to garment, disentangling her soggy things from his.
She located everything—well, except for her shoes and her panties. The shoes, she remembered now, had been left behind long before Finn led her to the clearing—back there while she was dancing around the burning ship. As for the panties, well, she just didn’t care to consider what might have happened to them.
She made herself get dressed, more or less. Everything was limp and damp and hard to manage, and wooziness left over from all that ale she’d drunk didn’t help matters any. Right away, she gave up on her bra and the clingy calf-length half-slip that went under the skirt. She just put on the two damp halves of the dress, smoothed them as best she could and carried the rest in a wad in one fist. She did not look back as she headed for the trees.
Her father’s palace—unlike her panties—was easy to find. Isenhalla loomed several stories tall, a marvel of gleaming gray slate, with a fairy tale’s worth of turrets and ramparts, towers and widow’s walks. It rose majestically over the parkland where the revels of the night before had taken place, the red-and-black Gullandrian flag flying proudly from the tallest spire.
Liv walked fast, through the thick copse of trees that ringed the clearing, out into a broad, sloping meadow where the ashes of the burned-out ship still smoldered. She kept her head down and her feet moving and managed to avoid contact, verbal or otherwise, with the few leftover revelers sprawled here and there on the grass.
Beyond the grass were high topiary hedges, broken at intervals for access to the gardens. Head hammering and stomach churning, Liv pushed on through the gardens, ignoring the way the pebbled paths abused her poor feet.
By blind luck, she ended up at the same narrow back palace entrance the bridal party had come down the night before. Miraculously, the door had not been locked. She slipped through, padded down a short, dim hallway and then began climbing the narrow flights of stairs.
At the third floor, she pushed open the landing door. She went down a narrow hallway to another door. Through it was a main hallway—a wide one with an arched, intricately carved ceiling and a beautiful marble floor. A thick Turkish runner led off in both directions.
Liv went left. It wasn’t far—maybe a hundred feet—to the tall, carved double doors of the suite she shared with her “baby” sister, Brit—they were fraternal triplets, Liv, Elli and Brit. Liv was the oldest, Brit the youngest.
The doors, as per usual, were guarded.
Liv had hoped against hope that the pair of Gullandrian soldiers, beautifully rigged out in the dress uniforms of the palace guard, would for once have taken the morning off. But there they were, resplendent and impassive, as always. Liv tried her best to look dignified as she approached them, an effort severely hindered by her soggy dress, her battered, dirty bare feet and the wad of limp underwear she clutched in her fist.
Not that they said anything. The guards never said anything. They stared straight ahead, their handsome, square-jawed Nordic faces about as readable to her as runes. In unison, white-gloved fists hit proud, broad chests. As one, they each took an equal sideways step toward each other. Each grabbed a handle of one of the doors. Smoothly they pulled the doors wide.
Liv walked through with her shoulders back and her head high. Not until she heard the doors click shut behind her did she allow herself to droop a little.
The suite was huge. The marble-floored antechamber opened into a massive drawing room done in rich damask and heavy silk, with lots of gilded intricately carved tables and an ornate fireplace rigged, by way of a beautiful wrought-iron insert, to burn gas.
Liv kept walking. She walked through the entry hall and the drawing room, down a hallway, right past her own bedroom to Brit’s room. The door was shut. She grasped the gilded door handle. Not locked, it turned.
Just as she was about to push the door inward, Liv became aware of movement to her right. It was the chambermaid. For their stay in Gullandria, Liv and Brit shared a maid to take care of their rooms and their clothes and a cook who inhabited the small galley off the private living area to one side of the drawing room. The maid was young—eighteen or nineteen, max—and way too thin, with big, slightly protruding eyes in a wan, pointy face. She wore soft-soled shoes, so you couldn’t hear her coming. It seemed to Liv she was forever popping up out of nowhere, startling her and Brit when they thought themselves alone. Right now, the girl hovered in the open doorway to Liv’s own room.
“What?” Liv demanded in a distinctly crabby tone.
The pale, pointy face seemed to get paler and pointier still. “Highness, forgive me. Just tidying up—are you all right, Highness?”
“Never better,” Liv lied with a sneer.
The maid dipped a quick curtsy and escaped toward the drawing room. Liv watched her scurry off. Once she was sure the girl was gone, Liv swayed toward the door frame. For a moment she just sagged there, disgusted with everything, herself most of all.
She needed to lie down. To lie down and go to sleep and not wake up until her head had stopped hurting and her stomach quit churning.
But instead of turning for her own room, she pushed open Brit’s door and tiptoed in. After the trouble she’d gotten herself into, she wanted to be sure that Brit was all right.
The room was dim, all the heavy curtains drawn. The centuries-old rug—wine-red, with a golden wheellike pattern spinning out from the center of it—was wonderfully soft beneath her sore feet. The fine old mahogany bed, its four posters broad as tree trunks and intricately carved with dragons and vines and fairylike women with long, twining hair, loomed in the center of the room, the soft, old linens in disarray. Liv could see a slim tanned hand and arm hanging over one side.
Quietly Liv moved closer. At first, she smiled at the sight that greeted her when she got close enough to see that her sister was, indeed, in bed sound asleep.
Brit had always been a bed hog. When they were children and for one reason or another had to share a bed, Liv and Elli would whine and moan and complain that that they couldn’t sleep with Brit. Brit was always squirming around and sometimes she talked to herself in her sleep—plus, she stole the covers.
Now Brit managed to sprawl spread-eagled, face-down, wide enough that she took up the entire bed. Liv watched her slim back moving—slow, shallow breaths. Her face was turned Liv’s way and covered by a tangled mop of straight blond hair much like Liv’s own.
She looked so…utterly relaxed. So totally unconcerned, lying there in her usual bed-hogging sprawl.
Liv felt the tender smile leave her lips. Brit was the “wild” one of the three sisters, the one more likely to have done the kind of thing that Liv did last night.
But Brit hadn’t done it—though she’d danced with Finn Danelaw herself more than once, though she’d flirted and laughed and had herself a grand time. At some point, Brit had had sense enough to climb the stairs to her own bed, where she was now sleeping peacefully. When she woke, she’d have nothing to regret. She’d down her usual three or four cups of strong black coffee and she’d be ready to face the new day.
For the first time in her life, Liv wished she’d followed her baby sister’s example. She should be in her own room, safe in her own bed. Not dressed in last night’s wrinkled, clammy clothes, sick to her stomach with a pounding head, wishing she could turn back time and do it all differently.
And speaking of her stomach…
Liv dropped her underwear on the thick wine-red rug, clapped a hand to her mouth and whirled for Brit’s bathroom.
She got over the commode just in time.
It seemed like forever that she leaned there, until everything had come up and there was nothing left—and still, her stomach kept trying to get rid of more.
Somewhere in the middle of the unpleasantness, her sister’s bare feet appeared on the soft rug beside her.
“Oh, Livvy. What have you been up to?” Brit’s voice was sympathetic, her question rhetorical. She turned on the shower and then knelt beside Liv and held her tenderly as she finished.
“Come on,” she coaxed, when it looked like the heaving had stopped at last. “Into the shower…you’ll feel better.”
After the shower, Brit produced a tall glass of bubbling headache remedy. Liv made herself drink the whole thing. Then, gentle as a loving mother, Brit led Liv to bed.
Out in the clearing where Finn Danelaw lay, the morning mist slowly faded away. The day grew brighter. An eagle soared overhead, broad wings strong enough to carry him far to the north, to a craggy aerie somewhere high in the snow-crested peaks of the Black Mountains.
Finn woke to the eagle’s long, hollow cry. He opened his eyes and found himself looking at a swathe of thick green grass. On the grass lay his shirt and a shoe. Beyond the two articles of clothing, fat-trunked oaks stood close together, their branches so thickly intermingled it was impossible to say where the crown of one tree ended and the next began.
Finn’s head pounded dully, though not unbearably. It had been quite a night. A night certainly worth the price of a mild headache. He smiled to himself and rolled over to reach for the law student, his king’s daughter, Princess Liv.
She was gone.
With a soft groan, Finn sat up and raked his hair back out of his eyes. A quick scan of the clearing showed him the rest of his clothing but none of hers. The only proof that she’d spent the night in his arms was her scent on his skin—so sweet now, bound to fade too soon.
He leaned back with a long sigh and his fingers touched something silky. Her underlisse. What did they call them in America? Ah. Her panties.
The small triangle of dark blue satin had been pressed into the grass beneath his hip. He snagged it on a finger and twirled it. So. A proof beyond the enticing scent of her that she had been here, that he’d kissed all the most secret parts of her, that he’d pressed her down into the moist grass and buried himself to the hilt within her.
Was he surprised she’d left him there asleep? Not in the least. Finn understood women as well as any mere man might. She didn’t see herself as the kind who could ever become involved in a wild moonlit tryst with a man she hardly knew.
He closed the panties in his fist. On awaking, she would have been shocked at what she’d done so willingly the night before. The most natural response would be to flee before he woke and possibly did something to compound her distress—like reach for her and try to make love to her again.
A pity. He would have thoroughly enjoyed one last time with her. It aroused him even now to imagine staring down into her face by morning light as her pleasure crested.
Finn dropped the satin triangle to the grass. Sadly, such a moment was not to be. In fact, the night before was more than he should have dared to take. Were he a man prone to shock, he would be shocked right now. Shocked that he did take it, though last night was Midsummer’s Eve and Gullandrian tradition held that no man—or woman—could be called to account for amorous indiscretions on Midsummer’s Eve.
Tradition aside, if the king found out, he would not be pleased. And when a man displeased his king, disagreeable things were far too likely to happen to him. And more important than the possible danger inherent in crossing His Majesty, Finn didn’t want to displease Osrik Thorson. His king happened to be someone Finn Danelaw admired and respected.
Finn pushed himself to his feet and began gathering up his clothes.
As he dressed, he chided himself for being an idiot. He should have stolen a few harmless kisses and left it at that. He stood for a moment, staring up at the clear summer sky, wondering why he’d found Liv Thorson so difficult to resist.
The answer wasn’t that long in coming: her intelligence. He dropped to the grass to put on his shoes. Finn did admire a quick mind in a woman. Intelligence in a woman kept a man alert and boredom at bay. What was that old line from Chesterton? Something about one good woman eliminating the need for polygamy…
And besides her sharp mind, there was that excess of ambition and the matching control. The woman had the kind of control Finn was accustomed to seeing only in men. It was refreshing to find it in a woman, especially one under thirty years of age. Naturally, the temptation to help her lose that control had been great.
He stood once more, tucking and smoothing, straightening his collar, linking his cuffs. It had been an indiscretion, to put it mildly—one, he had enough self-awareness to know, given a fraction of a chance, he’d willingly commit again.
However, he wasn’t getting a fraction of a chance. Liv was leaving the next day, returning to America. Until then, he’d lay odds she’d do all in her power to avoid him.
The little swatch of satin glimmered at him from the grass. He bent and claimed it. As a rule, he wasn’t a man who collected intimate trophies. But it seemed somehow thoughtless—crass, even—to leave it lying there for some groundskeeper to find.
Ah, to be able to anticipate the delicious and private moment when he might return it. But it wasn’t to be. This woman, he would never see again.
Unless…
He shook his head.
The odds were very small.
Still the fact remained that he had been, in a second very dangerous way, indiscreet. He hadn’t been as careful as he should have been—as he always had been before. Yes, he would confess it, though only to himself: It was just possible that he’d been slightly swept away.
But the chance that there’d be the predictable price to pay for such a foolish oversight had to be slight. It had, after all, only been one night.
There was surely no need to worry. No need to give it another thought.
With a grin, he snapped his fingers. There. It was gone from his mind.
Her Highness’s underlisse, however, were still in his hand. He smiled a little wider. A swatch of blue satin, some sweet, hot memories.
It could have been worse.
Soon, he knew, the time would come for him to make a good marriage. The patriarch of more than one important family had approached him. All of those doting fathers kept their young virgin daughters well away from him, of course. They wouldn’t want the notorious Prince Finn plying his famed powers of seduction on their precious daughters until after the marriage swords had been exchanged.
He’d been…what? Accepting of the situation, he supposed. Willing to do what was expected of him. A man couldn’t hop from bed to bed forever. At some point, he had to find his comfort with one woman, plant his seed, raise his sons and pamper his daughters.
So it would be with him.
And last night?
Finn smiled up at the clear morning sky. When he was old and stooped and slow, when death was near and the frost giants hounded him through haunted dreams, he could remember his glorious, wild night with the princess from America. It would help him to hold back the encroaching cold.
Finn slid the panties into a pocket and turned for the silver-slate palace gleaming above the last of the mist.
