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Winning the Queen's Heart (The Brides of Belles Montagnes) (Volume 2)

By Carol Moncado

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“Arrest him and throw him in the dungeon.” Queen Christiana Elizabeth Marissa Abigail the First stared as seven slightly different versions of herself in a cloud of white satin and tulle stared back from the multifaceted mirror. The satin hugged her curves in a way that made her uncomfortable. But it was the dress he had picked for her. And she wanted to make him happy.
The man behind her nodded. “I will give the order, Your Majesty.” He bowed slightly at the waist and turned to walk out, but she called after him.
“Alexander?”
He stopped and turned, meeting her eyes in the mirrors. “Yes, ma’am?”
“You are certain?”
Alexander Bayfield nodded. “The assassination would be carried out on your honeymoon allowing your fiancé to claim his ‘rightful’ place as King of Ravenzario. The drugs were found in his possession.”
“That’s not how the Commonwealth works.” Without an heir, Ravenzario would be broken up and absorbed into Mevendia and Montevaro.
“I know. I doubt he does. Many people do not.”
Christiana allowed nothing of her feelings to show as she dismissed him with a curt nod. Alexander held the door for the seamstress to return.
“I would like to change out of this.” The implications of her fiancé’s betrayal were beginning to fly through her mind. Not only would there be a trial and the man whose name she refused to think would be paraded in front of the people, but so would her personal life. And her judgment would once again be called into question. This time, however, there would be truth to the allegations.
Now there was a wedding to call off.
As the gown slipped over her shoulders and she stepped out of it, Christiana merely nodded, the seamstress’s words floating in one ear and out the other as the consequences to her country began to assail her. A year after ousting her uncle who had been usurping her throne and authority, she wouldn’t be getting married as planned. Foreign dignitaries would have to be told. The crowds expecting to see the royal couple would be disappointed.
And her family’s good name would once more be dragged through the mud.
The seamstress carried the dress out, leaving Christiana alone. As she slid into her linen pants and retied the cobalt wraparound silk blouse, for the first time in her adult life, Christiana wished to merely be a normal person. To have the weight and pressures of ruling her country fall away. Where the only concern would be how much of a refund she would get from the vendors, not if her countrymen would lose their already fragile trust in her.
Her heels clicked along the stone floor in the hallway as she retreated to her personal apartments. Here no one entered without explicit permission. It gave her the privacy she craved - and the solitude she detested. For nearly an hour, she sat in an arm chair, staring out the window and over the storm tossed waves of the Mediterranean. The gray sky and torrential downpour matched the turmoil inside until the buzz of the intercom interrupted her reverie.
“Yes?”
“Alexander to see you, ma’am.” The disembodied voice of her assistant, Diana, crackled through the air.
“Send him in.”
She did not move as the door to her sitting room opened and closed. “Your Majesty?”
One hand waved toward the armchair across from her. “Have a seat, Alexander.” As he sat, she shifted to look at him. “You have a report?””
“He is in the dungeon, ma’am, per your orders. Bail has already been denied due to the eminent threat to your person. The judge and security teams believe he would try something else, though they are certain you will call off the wedding. No official statement has been made, of course, but that is the presumption among those in the know.”
“The wedding will be called off,” she answered softly. “I have not given the orders yet, but it is only a matter of time. My only saving grace at the moment is his anonymity. His subterfuge gives a valid reason for his insistence on utter secrecy surrounding his identity as my intended.”
“It does,” Alexander confirmed. “Since he had not been associated with you, he was able to get what he needed from otherwise unsavory characters who would never betray the crown so directly.”
“The press will have a field day.” Christiana turned back to the window, standing and moving toward it until she could feel the chill rolling through to reach her. “My country is like the weather. We were stable for so long. Following the death of my parents and brother, there was a brief time of turmoil, but my uncle ruled on my behalf, giving continuity and gravitas to the government. The turmoil of his arrest has not been settled very long, if truly at all. The wedding and tour of the country was to have been the occasion to restore the trust and let my countrymen lay to rest their concerns.”
She drew in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. “I fear what will happen when this becomes public. Not for myself. I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy the trappings of royalty most of the time, but a revolution or civil war will result only in needless deaths and chaos for my people, and I must do whatever is in my power to stop it from happening.” She turned to look at Alexander. “If only there was a solution.”
***
Nick stared at the young woman he was supposed to marry. All the color had drained from her face, and she looked like she might faint.
Definitely not his goal for this first meeting.
The woman standing on the other side of the room moved unobtrusively behind the throne until she was at the younger woman’s side. She slid an arm around Yvette’s waist. At least he presumed the pretty, suddenly-pale, girl was Yvette. She matched the pictures Michaela kept around the house, though the most recent one had been several years old. The deep blue of her dress didn’t help her skin tone any. In fact, the word “alabaster” came to mind.
The king drew Nick’s attention back to the chair dominating the end of the long room. “Excuse me?”
Nick’s new-found sister stared down the king. “You heard me, Antonio.”
The king didn’t look too pleased at the use of his name without the title in front of it. But Christiana was a queen in her own right. She may have been the younger generation, but she didn’t let the king intimidate her.
Nick kept his eyes on the slip of a girl who seemed to be struggling to stand. Had she not been told there was even a possibility he was still alive? He didn’t quite understand all of the dynamics that led to his escape with Michelle...Michaela. Would he ever get her real name straight in his head?
King Antonio ran his hand down his face. “Why don’t we go have breakfast? This isn’t the official conversation I thought it would be.”
“What did you think it would be?” Christiana rested her hands on her expanding stomach. “That I was going to tell you no trace had been found?”
She was bluffing. Nick knew his sister had no idea where Tony had been. She truly believed her head of security had been on vacation, not tracking down the long-missing heir to the throne and his nanny.
“To be honest? Yes. I think all of us who knew of the escape plan believed contact would have been made long ago if the plan had been successful.”
“You knew?” The whisper came from the girl to the side. “You knew he might be alive? And you never told me? You didn’t think I had a right to know?”
Antonio stood and walked toward her, enveloping her in a hug when he reached her. “Why don’t we go change into something more comfortable, and we’ll have breakfast? And we’ll talk it through.”
Princess Yvette nodded. “Okay,” she whispered, the sound echoing through the large room. She turned and froze as his eyes met hers.
Nick smiled his best smile. He didn’t want to scare her anymore than she probably already was. He was also sure she didn’t know what would happen if the wedding didn’t take place. The only reason he still even thought about going through with a wedding to someone he’d never met. That the three of them would be exiled if they didn’t.
The Mevendian royal family all left with Nick, his sister, and brother-in-law trailing behind.
They were ushered into a formal dining room unlike any Nick had ever seen. He amended the thought. Not since he was a very young child. He’d been born Crown Prince Nicklaus, but he’d been raised solidly middle class American. This kind of dining room didn’t exist in his world until a few days earlier.
It took nearly half an hour, filled mostly with uncomfortable silence between him and the family he still didn’t really know, for the Mevendian family to come back in. By then, food was being brought in as well.
“I suppose introductions are in order.” King Antonio started as a plate was delivered. He pointed to the queen, seated to his right. Then his oldest son, William, and so on around the table until he got to the teenage girl, now dressed in nice slacks and a filmy top of some kind. “And, of course, my daughter, Princess Yvette. Your fiancée.”
Nick smiled and nodded at her. “A pleasure to meet you.”
She looked like she was going to cry and didn’t say anything.
Before anyone else could, the door opened behind Nicklaus.
“I heard there was a family breakfast going on.”
He turned to see an older woman, not very tall, walking in like she owned the place. Come to think of it, she likely had at one point, if she was a member of this royal family.
She came to a stop next to him, and before he realized what she was doing, her cool hands were on either side of his face. “Welcome home, Prince Nicklaus. We’ve been waiting for you.”
He blinked as a servant pulled out the chair next to him, and she took a seat. “You’ve been waiting for me? You knew I was alive? I didn’t even know I was alive.” Well, that came out wrong.
But she just chuckled. “Oh, yes. I knew.” She waved a hand toward the king. “Not in any official capacity, but I did know, in my heart of hearts, that Prince Nicklaus would be found.”
“Why didn’t you tell me, Nana Yvette?”
Nick could see the tender look on Nana Yvette’s face. “It wasn’t time yet, my dear one. Just like it wasn’t time for anyone to know about Malachi or Jessabelle until last year.”
Who? Right. The king’s second son and his wife, both now staring at their plates. That was a thread to be pulled at later.
Then Nana Yvette turned to him. “Why don’t you tell us your story, Nicklaus? How did you manage to survive the accident, and where have you been all these years?”
Nick put down his fork and used his napkin to wipe his mouth. “I don’t remember much of it,” he admitted. “Just what my mother and Tony told me this week.”
“Your mother?” The question came from the king.
Right. He needed to be more careful. A glance at his sister showed she was studying her plate very carefully, her lips in a tight line.
“Michelle, that is. Michaela.” Would he ever get it right? He reached over and squeezed his sister’s hand. “Michaela, our nanny, went by Michelle. She never made it a secret that I wasn’t her child, but I believed she was my aunt, raising me after the death of my parents as part of some big war between two competing, very powerful, business interests. I hated not having a mother, and it kept up our pretense for me to call her mom most of the time. We rarely corrected those who didn’t know any better. Those who knew us well enough knew what I believed to be the truth about the relationship.”
He squeezed Christiana’s hand again before letting it go. “I didn’t know my sister was still living until a few weeks ago. I don’t remember the escape or the journey to the United States. I just found out about the wedding this week. I always knew there was this girl, Eve, that my parents had hoped I’d marry, but I didn’t know about the contract or the exiles until very recently.”
“Exiles?” Princess Yvette looked at him then her father. “Who’s being exiled?”
King Antonio set down his fork. “If this wedding does not happen, both of you and Michaela will be exiled from the Commonwealth.”

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