A Thoroughly Modern Princess Page 24

  “It’s pretty.” Emmaline placed it around her neck. “And heaven knows I can use some positive energy these days.”

  “Have you heard from Remi?” Josephine asked, her gaze falling on a framed photograph on the mantel. It showed Emmaline and Remi, arm-in-arm, in happier times.

  “Not yet,” Emmaline said, all traces of the smile fading from her lips.

  She longed to tell her sister the real reason she had fled her wedding—and Remi had subsequently abandoned her. The truth would become evident soon enough, she thought, glancing down at the barely visible swelling in her belly.

  “Do you still want to marry him, if he’ll have you?” Josephine asked.

  Emmaline hesitated. “Of course,” she said with a conviction she didn’t feel.

  An image of Granger Lockwood invaded her thoughts. She pushed it firmly away. He was history.

  “Emmaline, it isn’t healthy for you to stay alone here, day after day, brooding.”

  “What else can I do?” Emmaline walked to the window and gazed out at the night sky. “The palace is surrounded by the press. They’re even more bloodthirsty now than they were before the wedding. It was so wonderful to have a reprieve from all that for a few days, in New York . . .”

  She trailed off. Granger Lockwood again.

  “A reprieve? How can you call being a virtual prisoner in that dreadful little hovel a reprieve?” Josephine shuddered. “I suppose when you’re in love—”

  “I wasn’t in love! And the apartment was quite comfortable,” Emmaline protested. “You didn’t even see it.”

  “I didn’t have to. You said that it was a one-room apartment. On the fifth floor. Without an elevator. Without a single servant. How on earth did you manage?”

  “It wasn’t that awful,” Emmaline said. “And I wasn’t a prisoner. We went out. He showed me the sights.”

  “Did you cook and clean?”

  “A bit.”

  “Good Lord, Emmaline, what were you thinking?”

  Emmaline scowled. “Josephine, if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to be left alone.”

  Her sister hesitated, her expression having grown serious. “Emmaline, before I go, there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m afraid it’s a confession. Two confessions, really.”

  “Whatever have you done now, Josephine?” Emmaline asked, suppressing a smile. She recalled their younger days, when her sister used to sneak into her bedroom to douse herself in Emmaline’s French perfume and try on her formal gowns. “Let me guess. Did you help yourself to something of mine while I was gone?”

  Josephine looked even more distressed at her words. “Oh, Emmaline, I’m terribly sorry. I never meant to—”

  She was interrupted by a sharp knock on the door.

  Emmaline sighed. “Just a moment, Josephine.” She called, “Come in.”

  A maid materialized in the doorway. “Your Highness, a Ms. Brynn Halloway has requested that you contact her at the Traviata Hotel.”

  “Brynn Halloway?” Emmaline’s heart leaped. “She’s here in Chimera?”

  “Who is Brynn Halloway?” Josephine asked.

  “She’s a friend,” Emmaline said, already reaching for the telephone. “A very good friend. You must excuse me, Josephine.” Noting her sister’s dismayed expression, she added, “We’ll talk later. You have my word.”

  “But Emmaline—”

  “Please, Josephine. This is important.”

  Her sister hesitated. “All right. But we really will talk later.”

  * * *

  Seated in the back of his chauffeured limousine, Prince Remi gazed out the window at the passing farmland. Soon this bumpy two-lane road to Verdunia would become a six-lane superhighway—provided he married Emmaline.

  If he went ahead with the royal wedding, the coastal access and development plan created by Lockwood Enterprises would proceed as planned.

  If he didn’t marry Emmaline, there would once again be bad blood between his family and the Verdunian royals. Buiron would lose its access to the shipping port. Verdunia would lose Buiron’s financial backing. The people of both kingdoms would suffer.

  Remi shook his head sadly.

  Unless . . .

  Unless, of course, he married Josephine instead of Emmaline.

  But how on earth could he expect either kingdom to take him seriously if he merely swapped one princess for another, as though they were interchangeable?

  They weren’t, of course.

  Josephine . . . ah, Josephine had captured his fick-le heart.

  And Emmaline . . .

  Emmaline had betrayed him. She was going to give birth to another man’s child.

  Nobody will ever have to know, Remi reminded himself. If they were married immediately, the world would assume the baby was his.

  But you would know. Emmaline would know.

  And Granger Lockwood would know.

  Remi tried to summon hatred for the dashing American who had bedded his bride-to-be—and hatred for the woman who had left him at the altar with the entire world looking on.

  Yet he didn’t hate Granger or Emmaline.

  Remi wasn’t in love with her, nor had he ever, for one moment, believed that she was in love with him.

  She claimed that she wasn’t in love with Granger Lockwood, either. But Remi had seen the longing in her gaze when she spoke his name.

  He assumed that it was the same expression that flickered in his own eyes when he thought about Josephine.

  Remi sighed.

  He knew what he longed to do . . .

  Just as he knew what he must do.

  He supposed that Emmaline would be grateful for his wise, selfless decision. And that Josephine would understand that they must all put their personal desires aside for the greater good, as generations of royals had done before them.

  Remi glanced at his watch.

  It was half past eight o’clock in the morning. He would reach the palace in Chimera before nine.

  He and Emmaline could be married in the king’s private study before noon.

  Granger’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of Emmaline in the doorway of the hotel suite. Several palace security guards hovered in the corridor behind her.

  Mere days had passed since he had seen Emmaline, yet her appearance was drastically altered. He took in her elegant, dark, figure-hugging dress, her upswept hair, her fully made-up features. She was a princess once again—regal, sophisticated, beautiful.

  Only the slightly noticeable protrusion where the fabric hugged her tummy confirmed that Granger had ever been in her life at all.

  “Emmie!” Brynn swept her into a hug before she could glimpse Granger standing across the room. “It’s so wonderful to see you.”

  “It is, but . . . what are you doing here in Chimera?” Emmaline asked as Brynn released her.

  “I told you when we spoke on the phone last night—I came to see you,” Brynn said, closing the door, leaving the guards stationed outside. “You left so abruptly, Emmie. I didn’t even get to say goodbye. And there’s one more little thing . . .”

  As she looked past Brynn, her gaze sweeping the elegant suite, Emmaline spotted Granger. She gasped.

  “Hello, Emmaline.” He walked toward her.

  “Granger! I didn’t realize that you were—”

  “I know.” He halted a few feet from her, so close that he could smell her perfume. His eyes swept over her, taking in the details—the tendril of hair that had escaped a pin just above her left ear, the unusual pendant she wore around her neck. “I knew that if Brynn told you I was here, you wouldn’t come.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Of course it’s true. Come on, Emmaline. Would you really be here if you knew that you were going to see me?”

  “I don’t know,” she said quietly.

  “Well, I do know. You want to avoid me. You’d probably be happy if I’d leave an ocean between us forever. B
ut we have to talk,” he told her.

  On cue, Brynn started to slip into the next room.

  “Brynn, don’t go,” Emmaline ordered. To Granger, she said, “There’s nothing to talk about.”

  “Of course there is. You can’t shut me out of your life. We’re having a child together.”

  “Granger, when I told you about the baby, you made it perfectly clear that you’d be more than happy if the baby—and I—just disappeared.”

  He thought back to that day in his bedroom. Okay, she was right. But things had changed.

  “I wasn’t thrilled about the baby at first,” he admitted, watching Brynn edge toward the door out of the corner of his eye. “But now—”

  “Now you’re thrilled?” Emmaline shook her head. “Granger, the last thing you need is the burden of a child.”

  “How do you know what I need?”

  A door closed quietly as Brynn left the room. Emmaline didn’t notice.

  “I know what you need because you told me,” she said. “You told me—more than once—that you need freedom. That you don’t want to go back to work for Lockwood Enterprises.”

  “You’re right. I don’t.”

  “Yet you were willing to do so for the baby. I can’t allow you to—”

  “And for you,” he said softly, capturing her trembling hands in his own. “I was willing to do it for you.”

  Debi Hanson gasped.

  It was her third or fourth gasp in the space of the last sixty seconds. Sinking to the nearest chair in her elegant hotel suite, she pressed her earpiece so hard that it pinched her ear, but she barely noticed the pain.

  This was extraordinary.

  Utterly extraordinary.

  Princess Emmaline was pregnant . . .

  And the baby didn’t belong to Prince Remi . . .

  The prim Verdunian royal had apparently had a raging affair with one of America’s most eligible—and supposedly perennial—bachelors . . .

  And the luscious cherry topping this delectable scandal sundae: Granger Lockwood had fallen head-over-heels in love with the pregnant princess. That much was obvious. Even Debi’s near-deaf Grandma Gretl could have detected the passion in Lockwood’s voice just now when he declared, I was willing to do it for you.

  What else was he willing to do for Princess Emmaline?

  And just what, Debi wondered, was the princess willing to do for Granger Lockwood?

  Ditch her royal groom at the altar and run off to New York, for one thing.

  That didn’t last long, Debi reminded herself.

  Yet it sounded as though Granger Lockwood wasn’t going to let her go without a fight.

  Never in her wildest dreams had Debi imagined so sensational a scoop.

  And for once, everything had fallen into place so easily. Almost too easily.

  All it had taken were some strategic feminine wiles—and of course, cold hard cash—to convince Dolph to convince his trainer, Jean Paul, to convince Jean Paul’s brother Pierre to give Princess Josephine the bugged pendant for her sister.

  Even then, there was no guarantee that the princess would wear it.

  But wear it she had, and now Debi found herself privy to the scoop of the millennium—directly on the heels of what she had thought would be her ultimate coup de grâce: the exclusive interview with Prince Remi.

  To make matters most convenient, the confrontation between the princess and her playboy lover was taking place in this very hotel, in a suite just down the hall from Debi’s. She took that coincidence as a sign—a cosmic thumbs-up.

  “I didn’t ask you to do that—or anything else—for me,” Princess Emmaline was saying in her ear.

  “Oh really? Look, I didn’t blindly call up and offer to land a helicopter on the palace grounds and rescue you from your wedding. If you recall, that was your idea.”

  Debi gasped again. The helicopter! Of course! She had seen it that day, while she was doing her live feed in front of the palace.

  And to think she had believed that it was a news chopper, perhaps with Naomi Finkelmeyer on board.

  Just wait, Naomi Finkelmeyer. Just wait until I drop this bombshell. You’ll be history.

  Move over, Naomi.

  Move over, Barbara and Diane and Katie . . .

  Here comes Debi Hanson, full speed ahead!

  Emmaline deeply regretted the day she had ever laid eyes on Granger Lockwood.

  She regretted the day she had ever asked him to help her escape from Verdunia.

  Most of all, she regretted the night they had shared in his hotel room . . .

  Or did she?

  If it weren’t for that night, she would be married to Remi . . . and she wouldn’t be pregnant.

  Somewhere along the way, the unplanned pregnancy had already turned into a baby. Her baby. And she wanted this baby more than she had ever wanted anything in her life.

  Even more than she wanted Granger Lockwood out of it.

  She glared at him. “You can’t resist throwing that in my face, can you? You repeatedly remind me of how you came to my rescue. And I am grateful, Granger, really I am. But I never should have asked you for help, and I certainly don’t expect anything else from you.”

  “What kind of man do you think I am, Emmaline? Do you think I don’t intend to take responsibility for the baby—and for you? I’m willing to do whatever it takes to support you. I’m willing—hell, Emmaline, I’m willing to marry you and give the baby a name.”

  Willing?

  He was willing to marry her?

  A jagged shard of pain ripped into her heart as his words sunk in.

  She realized that a proposal was what she had waited to hear from him all along.

  But this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to want to marry her. Not merely be willing. He was supposed to get down on one knee, and take her hand, and tell her that he loved her and always would.

  “Forget it,” she said grimly. “I don’t want you to marry me. I want you to go back to your life so that I can go back to—”

  “To what? To your gilded cage?” he asked darkly, his face inches from hers. “Or to Remi?”

  “Perhaps.” She turned away, unwilling to let him glimpse her true feelings—feelings for him.

  It was tempting—oh, so tempting—to throw caution to the wind and tell him that she would return to New York with him. That she would marry him.

  If only he could offer her more than a mere arrangement.

  Here he was, asking her to do the very thing he had condemned mere months earlier: enter into a loveless marriage for a selfless cause.

  “And what will you tell Remi about the pregnancy?” Granger asked.

  “I’ve already told him.”

  “And he’s willing to take you back, and marry you, and raise my child as his own?”

  She hesitated only briefly before nodding. “Yes. He is. It would be the best thing for everyone involved.”

  He was silent for so long that at last she had to turn back to look at him.

  To her shock, his gaze betrayed sharp regret.

  “All right, then,” he said quietly. “If that’s the best thing, then I wish you and Remi—and my child—well.”

  No! she wanted to scream. No, I lied. About Remi. About not wanting anything from you. And about my marrying Remi being the best thing. The best thing would be for you to ask me to marry you again, and this time, tell me that you love me. Because . . .

  Because . . .

  Because I love you.

  There.

  There it was, the stunning truth.

  She loved him.

  She had to tell him. Telling him might make a difference. It might allow him to realize that—

  “Goodbye, Emmaline,” Granger said gruffly, turning his back.

  “Granger . . .”

  “Just go. Get out of here. That’s what I want, okay? And for once, all I care about is what I want. So go.”

  She nodded. Somehow she found her voice. “All right.
I’ll go. Goodbye, Granger.”

  Thirteen

  The throng of reporters at the palace gate had thickened considerably when Emmaline’s chauffeured car returned from the Traviata Hotel shortly after nine a.m.

  She was grateful for the tinted windows that masked her tearstained face from the gaping crowd as the car slowed and passed through the entrance.

  She was grateful, too, for her security team’s professional, detached silence. Neither the uniformed driver nor the two burly men sharing the backseat with her had so much as glanced at Emmaline as she sobbed quietly into a soggy linen handkerchief.

  Toying with the so-called good luck pendant around her neck, she stared dully out the window as the car pulled to a stop beside the familiar side entrance, well out of view of the media circus. It wasn’t until she had stepped out into the warm September sunshine that she saw the shiny black Rolls Royce parked nearby, its hood marked by two Buironese flags.

  Startled, she jerked the pendant so hard that the chain snapped.

  A chill slithered over her.

  Remi was the last person she wanted to see now.

  She gazed from the car to the broken necklace in her hand.

  So much for that.

  She hurled it into the bushes with a muttered curse.

  A guard was holding the side door open for her.

  She couldn’t stand out there all day.

  Emmaline forced her wobbly legs to carry her inside. She was immediately met by Tabitha, who had been alerted to her arrival.

  “Prince Remi is waiting in the front drawing room with your parents, Your Highness,” the lady-in-waiting announced. In a whisper, she added, “Are you all right? Have you been crying?”

  “I’m fine, thank you, Tabitha.” Emmaline resisted the overwhelming urge to flee.

  She took a deep breath to steady herself and walked slowly toward the drawing room. A maid scurried ahead to open the door for her.

  The trio—Prince Remi, King Jasper, and Queen Yvette—were seated before the fireplace. All three rose when she entered.

  “We’ll leave you two alone,” Queen Yvette said, hurrying to the door.

  “I’ll see to it that those phone calls are made,” King Jasper said, exchanging a meaningful glance with Remi as he strode past.