A Royal Marriage

Fan-favorite Royally Wed miniseries originally launched with Susan Mallery and continues with Cara Colter’s beloved story, A Royal Marriage.

Prince Damon Montague needed a wife. And there was no better candidate than Rachel Rockford…a single mom with a baby connected to the Montague Royal Family…a woman who needed a prince to sweep her off her feet!

Damon would do his duty as a husband and father…and even help Rachel search for her missing sister. But scarred by the pain—and loss—of his past, that was all he could offer. He couldn’t risk loving anyone ever again.

But his princess bride and her baby just saw this as a challenge: if anyone could melt this prince’s frozen heart, they could!

A Royal Marriage
Cara Colter

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

“And I think she’s—”

“Excuse me, miss.” The bland-faced young police officer behind the counter picked up an incessantly ringing phone. “A brawl? At where? Sorry, I can’t hear you. Yes. Yes...”

Rachel Rockford listened, and bit back a sigh of frustration. There was boredom and impatience in his voice. How could she possibly make him understand that this was important? Urgent?

“McAllistar’s Pub? On Fourth, is it?”

She tucked a stray strand of her shoulder-length auburn hair behind an ear, and looked over his broad, uniformed shoulder at the police office. She found it a depressing place. The lights were too harsh, the walls too white, the desk and chairs old and scarred. Stacks of paper leaned in drunken piles off the desk. A big bulletin board behind that desk featured posters of wanted men and missing children. Incongruously, a colorful ad, featuring two people dipping in silhouette, heralded the upcoming Policeman’s Ball.

No wonder the young police officer seemed so indifferent to what she was trying to tell him. He lived in a world she probably didn’t even want to think about.

“He said that? Well, it’s little wonder a fight started then.”

Rachel turned from the counter, gathering her thoughts. Absently she tightened the belt of her navy blue trench coat, chosen, along with a mid-length full white skirt, to make her appear respectable, someone to be taken seriously. It didn’t appear to have worked. So that left her with words. She rehearsed them in her mind, putting together the sentences that would make him understand.

This outer room of the precinct was every bit as bleak as what was behind the counter. Vinyl chairs, the color of pea soup, had been repaired with electrical tape. The tile floors were scuffed, the pattern long since faded. The walls were badly in need of fresh paint.

Her eyes rested on a man, in worn work clothes, slumped in one of the chairs. He was studying the grooves of his palms as if he could see his future written there and what he saw was not good. He looked as though whatever his complaint was, he had not received any satisfaction.

Rachel had a panicky sensation of wanting out of here. She did not want to be relegated to one of those chairs. She took a deep and steadying breath, prayed for patience. She must make a report about Victoria.

The constable hung up the phone. Just as she turned back to him, it began to ring again.

“Friday night,” he explained, somewhat unapologetically. He picked up the phone.

She actually had to turn away again and swallow a scream of utter frustration. The last thing she wanted was to appear hysterical. She closed her eyes and counted to ten, and when she opened her eyes a man was coming up the wide outer precinct steps. A man who did not belong here.

She had dressed to be respected, to be heard, and though he had done no such thing, would not have even given such a matter a thought, she knew this man would be given what she had come here for.

Full attention. Respect. Yes, even deference.

There was something in the way he carried himself that would command all that. Something that went far beyond the obvious expense of the knee-length black overcoat, the white silk scarf draped carelessly under the collar, the gloved hands.

It was something more than his substantial height, the breadth of his shoulders, and impeccably groomed brown hair that shone like silk under the harsh precinct lights.

It was in the cut of his features, whatever that “something” was. He was not handsome in the traditional sense of the word. His features were too strong for that. His cheekbones, in particular, were high and prominent. His nose straight, his chin jutting.

If it was arrogance she saw in him, she might have resented the fact that he was going to get what she was not—the undivided attention of the man behind the counter. But it was not arrogance, but rather a self-confidence that went to the bone, that radiated outward as he opened the door and came through it with a masculine kind of grace and strength that was entirely without self-consciousness.

His eyes swept the precinct, pausing for a moment on the man who sat in the chair, then coming to rest on her. She found his eyes the most astonishing color.

Only hazel, Rachel admonished herself. But that didn’t quite capture all the nuances of gold and green in those eyes. He smiled briefly, a smile that lit his eyes from within and was somehow reassuring after the professional coldness of the man behind the counter. His eyes, she decided, were kind. The smile, a little upward quirk at the corner of his mouth, made her heart race unaccountably.

She turned quickly from him, reminding herself brutally about the last time she had reacted to an attractive man. Carly, twenty months old yesterday, was with the sitter now, living proof of her foolishness.

Not, she decided, that she could ever regret Carly.

The young officer hung up the phone. Anxious to get in her two cents worth before his attention was distracted by the awe-inspiring figure in the overcoat, Rachel started to speak, her rehearsed lines tumbling out. The officer held up a finger, asking her for a moment, and then pressed down the radio control in front of him and called some incomprehensible code into a large silver microphone.

“Now,” he said pleasantly as if they were discussing the wonderful spring weather, “you were saying your sister is missing. When did you last see her?”

“I haven’t actually seen her for some time,” Rachel said. “But we talk on the phone from time to time, and write. I haven’t been able to reach her. I feel like something’s wrong.”

“Oh,” he said. “A feeling.”

Rachel glanced over her shoulder to see if the well-dressed man was waiting impatiently for his turn at the counter. She was surprised to see he had taken a chair right next to the desolate-looking chap in the work clothes, and was talking to him in a low tone.

A lawyer, then, she thought. But the lines of his face had softened with unmistakable compassion. Surely one who dealt with human tragedy all the time would not be able to manage that. The young man in front of her seemed a perfect example. Still, the compassion on that attractive stranger’s face was like a ray of light in this bleak place, and it gave her the courage to go on. She turned back to the counter as the man in the dark overcoat was sliding a cell phone from his inner pocket.

“I’ve written her,” Rachel said. “I’ve been trying to call her for weeks. I came back to Thortonburg to see why I couldn’t get in touch with her, and she’s not at her apartment. The papers were all stacked on her porch, her mail was overflowing out of her box. A neighbor came by to collect them and said she thought Victoria was due home last week.”

“Due home? So she has been away? Did you know about that?”

“Actually, I didn’t, but—”

“Your sister is probably just having a good time somewhere and extended her holiday. Isn’t that a possibility?”

“Why isn’t it a possibility that I’m right and she’s missing?” Rachel asked with a bit of heat. Still, that was exactly what her father had said when she had talked to him about her concerns. That he vaguely recalled Victoria saying she was going on holiday.

“What would make you think she’s missing? I mean, besides your feeling?”

“Rachel? Is that you?”

Rachel’s heart fell. Though her father had suggested if she had to be silly enough to report her sister’s supposed disappearance, she should go to Lloyd Crenshaw, his old pal in the police department, she had resisted the idea. But there was Lloyd, having come through an outer door directly into the office. The papers on the desk tilted more dramatically, but did not topple, as he bulldozed by them.

A bulldozer, she thought. He had always reminded her of a bulldozer, and the police uniform did nothing at all to improve his short, squat stature.

“Lloyd,” she said weakly, trying to hide the fact that he was the one person she hadn’t wanted to see. “How are you?”

“Fine. My, if you don’t look just the same! I thought you might have thickened up a bit. You know, with the baby and all.”

Rachel smiled tightly. Lloyd Crenshaw and her father had been friends for as long as she could remember. Still, she had resisted the idea of making a report to him, not just because Lloyd had always made her uneasy, but because Victoria had always detested him.

“Are you going to look after this?” the young constable asked, making no attempt to hide his eagerness to be free of her and her intuitions.

“Look after what exactly? You don’t have a problem, do you, my dear Rachel? Surely you just got home!”

There seemed to be something fake about his joviality, but then there had always been something a bit fake about him. A smile that touched his lips, but never quite made it to his crafty little brown eyes.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the well-dressed man was now beside her at the counter.

“My sister is missing,” she told Crenshaw. She could hear the strain in her own voice.

“Sir?” she overheard the young constable. “How may I help you?” His tone, as she had known it would be, was brimming with both deference and eagerness to be of service.

“Good evening,” the man said. His voice was deep and pleasing, the confidence he exuded appearing again in his tone. “My name is Damon Montague.”

He spoke softly, but Rachel lost Lloyd Crenshaw’s attention immediately. His gaze swiveled to the taller man. “Prince Damon Montague?” he asked.

“That’s correct.” He nodded briefly at Crenshaw, and then looked back to the young constable. “I’ve had a slight problem. My—”

“A problem, sir?” Crenshaw asked. “We’ll get on it right away. Let me get the report form and—”

“Please.” A gloved hand was raised, and Rachel found herself once again caught in the light of those eyes. They held both apology and sympathy, and his glance told her he found Crenshaw’s obsequiousness amusing.

Rachel, how can you see all that in a glance? she chastised herself.

“I couldn’t help but overhear the young lady’s sister is missing. She seems to be feeling some distress. I think that warrants your attention far more than an antenna broken off my vehicle. Constable—” he squinted at the young man’s name tag “—Constable Burke looks more than capable of taking my complaint.”

“Yes sir,” Constable Burke said with such enthusiasm, Rachel felt a strong desire to smack him.

“So, your sister is missing? Victoria?” Crenshaw said loudly, turning back to her with a great show of concern that was, she suspected cynically, more for Prince Montague’s benefit than hers. “What makes you think that? Your father hasn’t mentioned it to me.”

“He’s never exactly made Victoria one of his priorities,” Rachel said. Certainly not when they were children, so why would he bother now?

“Don’t be silly. He always loved you both madly.”

She took a deep breath. She had not come here to be called silly, or to be mocked for her feelings. Though Lloyd Crenshaw and her father had been friends, no one could ever say with such certainty what went on in another’s home, behind closed doors. And behind closed doors, her father had been hostile to her sister, a fact that had caused Rachel to feel bewildered and guilty and caught in the middle because he had favored her so markedly.

“In fact, now that I think about it, I’m sure your father said Vicky was going away on a holiday.”

Another thing her sister detested was being called Vicky.

“I think there’s something wrong,” Rachel said. “Victoria usually tells me when she’s going away. Her neighbor said she had gone away, but that she should have been back by now. I’m telling you, my sister is missing.”

She was not happy that the last came out with a squeak that showed how very close to tears she was.

“What would you like me to do then, dear?”

“Whatever it is you usually do when someone goes missing,” she said, her voice raw.

“Well, if you insist then, we’ll do a missing person’s report, but really, Rachel, Vicky has always been a bit of a wild one.”

She stared at him, flabbergasted. She could feel tears of frustration and fear building pressure behind her eyes. Her sister was not “wild.” Not in the least. Headstrong, yes. Adventurous, maybe. Spirited, definitely.

But wild, and all the things that implied?

“She is not!” she snapped with such vehemence even she was taken aback. She met Crenshaw’s eyes, and the flatness in them filled her with a feeling of defeat. She looked down at her trembling hands. “Please,” she said, “please help me.”

And help came. From the most unexpected of sources. Suddenly she felt the brush of that expensive overcoat against her shoulder, and saw a glove quickly slipped from the strong and warm hand that covered hers.

The sensation was shocking, unexpectedly delightful, like coming to a place of warmth and comfort after a long and lonely trek through the cold.

How long since anyone had offered her such a simple human gesture of support? How long since she had been touched?

Far too long. All the stresses and strains of single motherhood now seemed to be pushing from behind her eyes, too, this tenderness from a stranger breaking the dam of control she had built around her heart.

She felt the first tear slip down her cheek, and yanked her hand out from under the weight of his to brush it away.

“Really, Corporal,” her defender said with annoyance.

“Sergeant,” Crenshaw corrected him.

“Sergeant, I think just a little sensitivity would not be out of line here.”

Crenshaw looked mutinous, like a little boy who had been reprimanded, but he dutifully took papers out of a drawer and began to fill them out. Rachel noticed his stubby fingers were nicotine-stained above the class ring he wore. She fished desperately in her pocket for a tissue. Her fingers felt a baby soother, and a crushed bonnet. Desperately, she considered blowing her nose in that, when a handkerchief was pressed into her hand.

She looked up at him. The gentle kindness in his eyes made her want to weep anew.

“Thank you,” she said, and dabbed at her running nose, and eyes. The handkerchief was gloriously soft, and held a scent so powerful and compelling, she wanted to leave her nose in it forever.

“Rachel,” said Crenshaw, “what is your second name? And your full street address?”

The pure monotony of being asked such routine questions as her correct street address, and Victoria’s, and watching Crenshaw write them out with a painfully slow hand helped Rachel regain her composure.

“I’m fine now,” she said quietly to the man beside her. She stared at the now used handkerchief, uncertain what to do with it. She certainly didn’t want to return it to him in this condition.

“Keep it,” he said, reading her mind.

“Thank you.” Two thank-yous in two minutes. If he did not go soon, she’d end up owing her life to him. That was the game she and Victoria used to play. If one did the other a kind turn three times in a row, then the other would say jokingly, “Now I owe you my life.” It was one of those funny, tender things that only they understood—their kindnesses to each other had been the life raft they both clung to in the turbulent waters of their growing up.

Prince Montague did not leave, and she was glad for that. She suspected Crenshaw’s cooperative manner would disappear when he did. But he did not disappear, a fact not lost on Crenshaw, either.

“Sir, is your report completed?” Crenshaw asked pointedly.

“It is,” Montague replied, deliberately not taking the point.

“We’ll do everything we can to find who vandalized your vehicle. One of those Thortons, most likely. You’re on their territory now.” He chuckled at his own humor. “Perhaps the Duke hisself. The tabs say there’s no love lost between your two families.”

“I’m sure the Grand Duke of Thortonburg has a little more to do than to follow me around breaking antennas off my vehicles,” Montague said, a thread of irritation appearing in that well-modulated voice.

“Just attempting a little levity, sir,” Crenshaw said. “Would be funny if it was him, wouldn’t it?”

“I don’t think so, particularly. Now what are you going to do for this young lady?”

“I done the report!”

“And then?”

“I’ll post it, naturally.”

“Perhaps it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you to stop by—did you say Victoria—Victoria’s place of residence and ask a few questions. Her landlady, her friends, might know something.”

That mutinous expression appeared on Crenshaw’s face again.

“Well?” Montague prodded, his voice so low that Rachel glanced up at him. There was no kindness in those eyes now. They were cold and hard. He was a man obviously very used to authority, to diffidence, to obedience.

And he got them now, though reluctantly. Crenshaw lowered his eyes and said, “We’ll do whatever we can.”

“Thank you,” Montague said. He turned to her, and his eyes were warm again, sympathetic. “Now, are you all right?”

“Yes, I’m fine.” But to her horror, just as she said the words she began to shake like a fall leaf in a breeze. She looked away from him, looked frantically at her watch. “Good grief, I’m late. I must go.”

“You aren’t driving anywhere in this condition,” he informed her levelly. “I’ll take you where you need to go.”

“No, I couldn’t. Not possibly. My car—”

“I’ll have one of my staff return the car to you.”

“Really, no.”

“Is it because I’m a stranger to you?” he asked.

She wanted to tell him she felt as though she had known him always, especially when his voice became so gentle as it was right now. She shook her head, unable to speak.

“Don’t worry,” Crenshaw said, eavesdropping shamelessly. “I seen you together. If you turn up missing, his Royal Highness will be my primary suspect.”

“I don’t find that amusing,” Montague snapped.

Crenshaw looked sulky. “Just trying to add a little levity, sir.”

“Quit trying! Her sister is missing. I have a sister, too, whom I love dearly, whom I would lay down my life for, if I had to. I know how I would feel if she was missing, and there is absolutely nothing funny about it.”

“Well, I guess I’ve been shown my place,” Crenshaw said. A rat-like glint of malice appeared in the darkness of his eyes.

Montague ignored him and turned back to Rachel. “Please. Allow me to see you home.”

“He don’t have the right of primae noctis in Thortonburg, Rachel,” Crenshaw said.

Rachel gasped at this reference to the feudal custom of the lord of the land having first union with its young maidens. Not, she thought ridiculously, that she qualified.

She watched as Montague turned slowly and deliberately back to Crenshaw. “I beg your pardon?”

“Besides, the tabs all say that the womenfolks are pretty safe since the prince’s wife died. Grieving, he is. But I understand the bookies are taking odds on who your parents are going to match you up with. Sir.”

Montague leaned his expensively clad elbows on the counter and leaned across it, almost casually.

But Rachel was not fooled and neither was Crenshaw who took a wary half step back.

“I told you once before I don’t find you amusing. I don’t often find it necessary to repeat myself,” Montague said, his tone quiet but nonetheless low and lethal.

Crenshaw shot Rachel a look that somehow made this all her fault before he looked thoughtfully at his feet and said, “I’ve known Rachel since she was a baby. We’re practically family. That’s why I was kidding with her.”

Rachel looked hard at him. Practically family?

“In fact, Rachel, your father said you might be wanting a job. Clerical, right? I’m pretty sure I could dig up something here for you.”

How like her father, she thought, not to mention that she was a technical writer. He’d been angry when she had not followed through on her teaching degree, ignored the fact she had obtained at least a little success in her chosen field. Now he’d told Crenshaw any old clerical position would do. She didn’t want to think about the fact if she did not turn up a contract soon that might be true. She hoped she would never be desperate enough to work in this bleak place.

“No thanks,” she said firmly.

Crenshaw looked insulted, shot Montague one more look loaded with resentment, and then said, “Well, excuse me, Your Royal Holiness. If that’s all, I have business elsewhere.”

“Good,” Damon Montague said evenly, not rising to the bait of being addressed with such officious incorrectness. “I thought you might.” He did not turn away from the counter until Crenshaw had scuttled away, and closed the door behind himself. “How unfortunate that a man like that ends up a police officer. He needs to be reminded he has taken an oath to protect and serve, not bully and insult.”

He turned back to Rachel with a wry smile that gave lie to the lethal anger she had seen in his eyes only moments ago.

“He’s always been somewhat disagreeable,” she said.

“He said he was a family friend.”

“I think our definitions of friendship differ,” she said. “He was a student of my father’s many years ago. My father is the headmaster at Thortonburg Academy. They’ve been friends for many years.”

He nodded, then said softly, “Will you allow me to see you home? Please?”

It really seemed too ludicrous that Prince Damon Montague, eldest child of Prince Charles Montague of Roxbury, was begging to take her home.

It was a gift, really. A page pulled out of a fairy tale and dropped at her feet, humbly clad, no glass slippers. Only a fool would say no.

“No,” she said. Even Cinderella had the good sense to run.

“I really can’t allow you to drive in the condition you’re in.”

“I’m not in bad condition!”

He laced his fingers through hers, briefly, and they both felt the trembling. Only one of them knew that she was no longer trembling out of shock and fear, but from the awakening of a heart, long left sleeping, now shaking off its slumber.

As if she’d been kissed by a prince.

You are mixing your fairy tales, Rachel, she told herself sternly.

“Do you have any authority in Thortonburg?” she asked, hiding in her teasing note the quaking of her heart, ordering herself fiercely not to overreact to a random act of kindness from a stranger.

He laughed, and the sound of it was rich and warm, and made her very aware that her life, aside from the pure joy of Carly, had become bleak and worry-filled. At times the drudgery of working and caring for a baby, trying to stretch limited funds and even more limited time, made her feel strung as tight as a bow string about to launch an arrow.

“I don’t think so. I just want to play knight to your damsel in distress. What do you say?”

No wonder this encounter was catching her so off guard. She was vulnerable. Still, she could not say no again. It had taken too much to do it the first time, used every ounce of her will power. She surrendered. “I’d like a ride home very much, Prince Montague.”

“My friends call me Damon.”

“I don’t think we qualify as friends.”

“Maybe not yet. But we will.”

He said this so easily that she felt the warmth rush up her cheeks. Really, she was just a common girl. She was not spectacular to look at, nor wildly witty and outgoing. There was nothing about her that was going to interest royalty, to make him want to be her friend, even casually. She needed to remember that.

She went ahead of him. As they passed the man who still sat slumped in the chair, Prince Montague reached out a hand and squeezed that defeated shoulder for an instant. The man sat up straighter, managed a smile. Then the prince placed one hand on her shoulder. The fabric of her coat was light, and she could feel the heat from his hand, the utter strength of the man reflected in the sureness of his grip. He guided her down the steps and to the sleek black Jaguar parked at the meters right outside the police station. A white notice was tucked under the windshield wipers.

“What do you want to bet our friend lost no time in running right out here to give this to me?” he asked, slipping it into his pocket without looking at it.

She shot a worried look across the street at her little red Volkswagen. How much was a parking ticket these days? Her budget was already stretched to breaking with the move back here to Thortonburg, and the fact she had not yet found a contract. But there was no telltale white slip on her windshield.

“I should just go put some change in my meter,” she said. “I—”

“Never mind,” he said. “I’ll look after it.”

Rachel took fierce pride in her independence. In the fact she had never asked anyone for help since Carly was born. Why did it feel so good to have someone say that? They would look after it?

For once, she would swallow her foolish pride and accept. Just for tonight, she would let herself believe in the fairy tale.

“Thank you,” she said. There. Three times. Now she owed him her life.

She wondered what it was like to be born into a family that had more money than several generations of them could spend. She wondered, as he held the door open for her and she slid into the deep leather luxury of the seats, what it felt like never to worry about money, to have as much to spend on a car as it would take to buy the small cottage that she dreamed of for herself and Carly. She had been squirreling away tiny amounts of cash toward that end since Carly had been born. But it suddenly occurred to her Carly could be a mother of three herself before she could save enough on her tight budget.

The car started with a rich purr that became a throaty growl as he put it in gear and pulled smoothly into traffic.

* * *

He found her utterly beautiful, the woman who sat beside him. Her hair, shoulder length, cut perfectly to frame the loveliness of her face, was a rich blend of colors that he did not think the term auburn did justice. Her eyes were the spectacular color of the purest jade. Her nose was small and neat and her mouth was sweet and vulnerable. There was a hint of stubbornness in the tilt of her chin.

She wore hardly a trace of makeup and the scent that wafted his way was clean and pure—soap, rather than perfume.

Her clothing, a navy blue trench coat over a white skirt and matching pumps, was plain and yet tasteful. Her hair was tucked behind her ears, and there were little white drops that matched the skirt attached to tiny earlobes.

Earlobes that begged a man’s lips to nuzzle them.

The thought shocked Damon Montague. Sergeant Crenshaw might not have been delicate about it, but he was right. Since the death of Damon’s wife just over a year ago, he’d been walking in a fog, held in the grip of a grief so deep, he was convinced it would never heal. Of course, it wasn’t just the loss of his wife.

Sharon had died bearing their first child, a son. The infant, perfectly formed, a tiny, angelic replica of Sharon, had died, too.

He knew that people thought he had everything. And once that might have been true. But the fact was, tragedy had made him long to be the most ordinary of men. Because money, position, prestige—none of it could buy him out of this place he was in. A place of feelings so raw and overwhelming, he did not know what to do with them. All his position had done was put his grief in a harsh spotlight, for viewing by the likes of Crenshaw. And now his position was making demands on him to get better. Get over it. Get on with life. Do his duty.

Even tonight, he’d come by private ferry from his island home of Roxbury to this neighboring island of Thortonburg to squire one of the many beautiful young women his well-meaning mother kept putting in his path. An unusually tall, if attractive girl, well-educated, from the best of families. Eligible, in other words.

When he’d come out of the opera to find his antenna broken, he’d felt relief, not anger. It was the perfect excuse to put the blond titan on his arm in a cab with his assistant, Phillip, and bid her adieu on the Opera Hall steps. No awkward moment when he had to try and escape kisses he had no heart for, conversation he could not stir interest in.