A Royal Marriage of Convenience by Marion Lennox

Author:Marion Lennox
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2008-09-16T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY were indeed going to the palace. The car pulled up in the forecourt of a building that brought Rose’s memories flooding back. The grand palace of the royal family of Alp de Montez.

‘I’d forgotten it was so grand,’ Rose whispered, staring up at gleaming white turrets, battlements, fountains in the forecourt two stories high, marble steps leading to an entrance that took up an area the size of a tennis court. ‘My mother was never given an independent allowance. So here we stayed. I was tutored here, and we hardly left the place. But I’d forgotten…’

It looked like something out of a fairy tale. Could she really be a princess?

And then the car door was hauled open by men in uniform, and the fairy tale evaporated like the bursting of a bubble.

‘Out,’ someone snapped, and a hand grabbed her arm and tugged so hard she fell out onto the gravel.

But she had a protector. In seconds Nick was on her side of the car, lifting her to her feet, pushing the uniformed thugs aside as if it was he who was in charge and not these people. He set Rose firmly before him, and placed a hand strongly on each shoulder. He smiled at her, a ‘we’re in this together’ smile. And then he faced Jacques. The black car that had drawn up right behind them had disgorged Jacques and his lady. Julianna.

‘If you lay a finger on the Princess Rose, you’ll be facing enquiries from the international community,’ Nick said in a carrying, commanding voice he must have perfected in years of work as a lawyer. Now he deepened his voice, making it louder, as if wanting to carry his words as far as possible.

‘Princess Rose-Anitra and I—Nikolai de Montez—have been escorted to the Imperial Castle of Alp de Montez against our will,’ he said strongly, loudly, to the world at large. ‘The date is…The time is…We’re being held in custody by Jacques and Julianna de Montez. Jacques and Julianna are here right now, in my sight, with direct authority over the people holding us.’

What was he doing?

‘At any moment my mobile phone will be taken from me,’ he continued. ‘I will then stop transmitting, but this message is recorded. Blake, you know what to do.’

There was a moment’s taut stillness—and then a roar of fury from Jacques as he realised what Nick had just done. The man who’d done the talking back at the river and at the airport—Dupeaux—snapped a curt order. Nick was summarily searched and a mobile phone tugged from his shirt pocket.

‘It’s still transmitting,’ Nick said blandly as Dupeaux handed it to Jacques. Again he raised his voice. ‘The phone’s been forcibly removed from me.’

Jacques threw the phone on the ground and ground it with his heel.

‘I’d guess it’s stopped transmitting now,’ Nick said and smiled, tugging Rose tight against him. ‘But it’s been transmitting to my foster brother, Blake, partner in the international law-firm Goodman, Stern and Haddock. I commenced recording back at the river, and what I just said has been transmitted as well.

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