A Royal Wedding

chapter FIVE



MORNING brought surprisingly clear skies with little trace of the storm that had threatened to rend the night apart. Grace blinked as she drew open the curtains and gazed out over the view. Every surface sparkled with its recent wash, the sapphire sea calm now but for a breeze playfully tickling at its surface. Not a cloud in the sky as far as she could see. She looked up and promptly revised her weather report. Not a cloud in the sky—except for the wispy white one hovering over the castle. She smiled, feeling brighter despite the night-time’s interruptions. Like the tunnels underneath the castle, it would almost be disappointing if the cloud weren’t there.

She wasn’t left to wonder about the arrangements for breakfast. True to the Count’s prediction, Grace had no sooner bathed and dressed than Bruno appeared with a breakfast tray. She didn’t mind if she was being snubbed by being made to take her meals alone; the arrangement suited her. Less chance of running into anyone, she figured. At least less chance of running into the Count. She wasn’t sure she was ready for another encounter so soon after last night’s discomfiting dreams.

And even though she had some questions about the pages, like how he thought they might have come to be in the caves below the castle and who might have left them there, they could wait until he came looking for her. He was sure to come and check how long she thought she would be here.

She was back in her makeshift office across the hall before eight. She’d photographed each of the pages yesterday, taking her time to get detailed photographs of every page and then more detailed shots of the cut edges where they’d been sliced from the book.

The rest of the day she’d spent making meticulous notes on the condition of each of the pages. For something reputed to be upwards of six hundred years old, they were remarkably well preserved, a fact that at first had her doubting they could possibly be authentic and wondering if they were nothing more than a clever forgery. After all, nobody really knew what had been in the missing pages, only that the book and its prayers had been famous for their healing words.

And yet the more she’d examined the pages, the more she’d been convinced they were the genuine article. It couldn’t be confirmed until samples were matched with what little remained of the Salus Totus, but she almost didn’t need that confirmation right now to be sure. And the longer she examined the pages, the more certain she was that this had the potential to be the very biggest discovery of the twenty-first century.

And she was at the heart of it.

Her heart raced with the potential. People worked thankless long decades in this industry, re-examining texts already long known, searching for an angle, a point of difference with which to elevate their careers out of obscurity. Seldom did people have an opportunity like this, the chance to examine a new discovery practically thrust upon them.

It was really happening.

And now, because the pages were in such amazingly good condition and she didn’t have to spend time stabilising what was left, she could get to work on the translation. Some time this morning the power had been restored and gratefully she snapped on the lamps she’d arranged around the desk.

She’d recognised just an odd word or two as she’d performed yesterday’s tasks and it had been tempting to stop and decipher more. Now she had the luxury of time to study them more closely. So it was with a heart bursting with possibilities that she retrieved the package from the box in which she’d stored it and gently placed the first page in front of her.

It was hours later before she happened to glance at her watch. Excited about her work so far, she knew she had to move, so she stood and did a few stretches before heading to her room across the hall and the jug of water she had left there.

She poured herself a glass and took a long drink, gazing out of the window, musing over the pages, before her eyes caught on a movement below the castle. A boat was nearing the dock—it looked like the same boat that had brought her over yesterday, although she’d got the impression from the way the men spoke that the provisions runs happened no more than once or twice a week. She glanced down and saw Bruno standing ready to meet it. Curious, she waited for it to dock, wondering what they were bringing this time.

Make that who, she amended, as a raven-haired woman was handed by a smiling skipper to the shore. A striking woman too, in a peasant top and skirt that showed off a tiny waist and generous curves. With a laugh and a wave to the skipper, she pulled a scarf around her shoulders and climbed into the Jeep alongside Bruno. Grace lost sight of them as they started up the cliff track.

Who was she? Grace had got the impression visitors weren’t exactly welcome here. She shrugged and drained the rest of the glass. Maybe someone who worked at the castle. And with any luck a cook, given how hungry she suddenly felt.

Barely ten minutes later she was back at work when Bruno appeared, a very welcome tray in his hands. Whatever was on it, it smelled wonderful. She smiled and thanked him as he put it down on a table set a safe distance away from the desk and her work, even though she knew her words wouldn’t make a dent in his grizzled visage.

‘You’re busy today,’ she said. He merely grunted in response, peering at her from under tangled brows that looked like something that had been washed up in a storm. ‘I saw you down at the dock. Who’s the woman? Does she work here?’

He threw her a dark look. ‘The woman is not your concern.’

‘No, of course not. I just thought it might be nice to say hello—’

‘Forget the woman!’ he said, marching back to the door. ‘She is not here for your benefit.’

The door closed behind him with a bang. Okay, maybe his message was none too subtle, but he was right. She should just get on with the job. At least then she could finish up here and leave. God knew, the prospect was tempting.

She was waiting for him. He let himself into the darkened room, the ache in his loins more insistent than ever after a night spent torturing himself thinking about that damned Dr Hunter. He refused to let himself think of her as anything else. He needed to think of her as a cold-blooded scientist and not as a woman.

Which made no sense when all he had wanted last night was have that woman bucking beneath him.

Why was she doing this to him? And how?

He dragged in air. Damn her. He was hard as a rock, his loins aching with need and another woman waiting naked in bed for him. Why was he even thinking about her?

He growled and approached the bed, shucking off his robe and tossing it to the floor, already half dizzy with the heady anticipation of release. His erection rocked free, heavy and hard. He steadied it with one hand to don protection and felt his searing, throbbing heat against his palm. Dio, he needed this.

He pulled back the covers and stared down at her in the dim light. She was smiling knowingly, even though her eyes were dreamily closed, her head tipped back as if she was already in ecstasy, her hands busy at her breasts, tugging at her nipples, making them hard for him. Usually he’d spend some time with those breasts, but today his need was too great.

‘Open your legs,’ he commanded, and if she wondered at his brusque manner she didn’t show it in the way she acquiesced without a murmur. And why shouldn’t she do what he asked she when she was going home with the equivalent of a month’s wages in her pocket? She’d do anything he asked and more.

He gazed down at her, took in the glossy hair splayed over the pillow, her olive skin with its satin-like sheen in the half-light, her breasts plump and peaked. He was rock-hard and wanting and he wondered why the hell he was hesitating and not already inside her.

Until he realised that there was somewhere else he’d rather be.

With a cry of frustration he snapped on the light. ‘Get dressed,’ he ordered. ‘Bruno will take you to the boat.’

‘Did I do something wro—?’

He was reaching for his robe and tugging it on, but not before she’d opened her eyes to plead, no doubt worried she would not be paid. He caught the exact moment of change, when her eyes moved from protest to revulsion, and she pulled the covers back over herself as if to protect herself from his hideousness.

With a roar he ripped the covers straight back off. ‘Just go!’

He could wallow in them if he wanted. He could let those black waves rise up and swallow him whole, sucking him back to that dark time and those dark nights when there was no respite, no relief.

Or he could deal with the problem, get rid of the source of his aggravation, and be able to breathe in his own space again.

He would not be sucked back.

He would deal with the problem.

Because everything had been fine until she had come along. She would just have to leave.

Now.

He headed to her office to tell her exactly that. After all, it wasn’t as if the pages were in terrible condition and too fragile to be shifted. They looked fine as far as he was concerned. And besides, the longer she was here, the more chance someone would talk, someone would stumble on the news of the discovery, and the sharks and parasites of the media world would descend en masse. The story could break somewhere else—anywhere else; he didn’t care—and then the media attention would be someone else’s problem.

So he would tell her. And then she would go.

Nothing could be simpler.

The door to her office was slightly ajar. He pushed it open, still rehearsing his speech. It wouldn’t be a long one. Pack your things and be ready for the next boat, was about the size of it. Still, knowing Dr Hunter and how she liked an argument, he was mentally preparing for a fight.

He was also preparing himself to win.

She was sitting at the desk, so intent on one of the pages she was studying and on the notes she was typing in the notebook computer alongside that she didn’t hear him enter. She looked younger today, even with the frown puckering her brow, or maybe she just looked fresher. She’d dispensed with the ponytail and instead had twisted her hair behind her head so the blonde tips feathered out, and she’d swapped the khaki shirt for a white tank with straps so thin he wondered how they covered her bra straps.

Assuming she was wearing one …

Breath whooshed from his lungs. His blood rushed south. She muttered something, still oblivious to his presence, and jumped out of her chair, wheeling around to the briefcase on the credenza beside her, rummaging through its contents. It would be rude to interrupt now, he thought, when she was so intensely involved in her work. Besides, the view from the back was no hardship to endure either. A well-worn denim skirt lovingly hugged her bottom and made his hands itch to do the same. But it was the length of the skirt he approved of most, or rather the lack of it, showcasing the surprisingly long legs beneath.

He sucked in air, desperate to replace what he had lost. She was nothing like the woman from the village. That woman was olive-skinned and dark-eyed, lush with curves and sultry good-looks. Whereas this one was blonde and petite, blue-eyed and more than slightly bookish. It made no sense.

Except for one more difference that made all the sense in the world.

This woman he wanted.

She pulled something from the briefcase then, a sheaf of papers, and looked up, blinking warily when she saw him standing in the doorway. ‘Count Volta. I wasn’t expecting you.’

He nodded. ‘Dr Hunter,’ he acknowledged, moving closer, searching his mind, certain that he’d been intending to say something but knowing only that he needed to get closer— maybe then it would come to him. And maybe he might even find an answer to his earlier question. But before he could latch onto his reason for coming, or work out whether there were telltale lines under her singlet after all, her face broke into one of those electric smiles. He felt the charge all the way to his toes, felt the jolt in his aching length.

‘You picked the best time to drop by. Come and see.’

‘What is it?’

‘I translated the first of the pages. It’s a prayer, a midnight prayer, beseeching the coming of dawn and an end to the darkness of night.’

He looked at the page and then at the translation she had up on her screen. ‘And that’s important because …?’

‘Don’t you see? The Salus Totus was revered—no, more than that, almost worshipped in its own right—as a book of healing. But little of the book remains to explain why. Remnants talk of eating and drinking in moderation, of taking fresh air, and while that is good advice, scholars have always felt there must have been more to warrant such a reputation for miracle cures and saved lives. Speculation has existed for centuries as to what might be in the missing pages and why they were removed.’

He didn’t understand what she was getting at. He couldn’t honestly say he cared. But her face was so animated with whatever she’d discovered that he could not help but join in the game. He shrugged. ‘Because the pages offended someone they had to be destroyed?’

She shook her head. ‘That’s the most common theory, I agree, but I don’t think it’s right. Not now. I think they were sliced from the book not to destroy them but to save them.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they’re secular. They’re prayers of life and living that talk about the earth as mother of all. Nothing offensive to us now, in these times, but for all their gentle truths and wisdom they would have been seen as blasphemy then. The only reason we have what remains of the Salus Totus is because these pages were removed from inside its covers. With them gone there was no risk of offending anyone and the book could live on in more than memories. If they had stayed, the Salus Totus would surely have been thrown into the fires. So you see, by removing them from the book someone was trying to preserve them. Someone was trying to ensure their survival.’

Colour was high in her cheeks. Her blue eyes were so bright they had a luminous quality. He didn’t know anything about ancient texts or book-burning, but he knew he was burning and if he didn’t do something soon he would self-combust. His hand found its way to her shoulder, scooped around to her nape, his fingers threading into the upward sweep of her hair. She blinked up at him, questions in her clear eyes to which he had no answers.

Except that he wanted her.