Capturing the Crown. Linda Winstead Jones

Amelia, and Carrington will be the next king. I will hear no more about it.”

      So saying, King Roman swept out of the room with his bodyguards following closely behind him.

      The room was very quiet for a moment. All that was heard was the sound of their breathing.

      And then, because he couldn’t bear the position he found himself in, couldn’t bear the thoughts that were assaulting him, Russell broke the silence. “I could disappear,” he offered.

      Amelia stared at him, uncomprehending. This was his homeland. “Why would you do that?”

      As if it wasn’t written all over her face, he thought. As if her doubt wasn’t palpable. “To spare you. You obviously don’t want to go through with the ceremony.”

      Didn’t he understand what he was suggesting? “If you ‘disappear,’ people will think that you killed the prince and succumbed to the guilt.”

      “If I stay and marry you they might be inclined to think the same thing.” It was damned if you do, damned if you don’t, he thought. Except that until a few seconds ago, he had known which way he would have chosen to be damned. Now, he wasn’t so sure and it hurt more than he was prepared for.

      “Which would you rather do?” There wasn’t so much as a hint in his eyes, she thought.

      He shrugged his shoulders, looking away. “It doesn’t seem that really matters to anyone.”

      How could he say that after the other night? She moved so that she was in front of him again. “It matters to me.”

      He wasn’t sure if he truly believed that. Not after the uncertainty he’d seen in her eyes. He gave her his honest answer. “Then, Princess, I would rather marry you—and not be king.”

      He really meant that, she realized. That made him a unique man. “That doesn’t seem to be a choice that’s on the table.”

      “It should be.” She couldn’t read the expression that came over his face. “But then, if I wasn’t to be king, you couldn’t marry me, could you?”

      Her heart froze as the thought she didn’t want to entertain returned to haunt her. Could knowing that she had to marry the future king of Silvershire make Russell kill Reginald?

      Oh, God, how could she think he was guilty of murder? The man she had made love with was gentle, tender. The hands that had touched her so reverently weren’t the hands of a killer.

      Were they?

      “No,” she answered quietly. “I couldn’t. Not after my father had pledged my hand to the future king. But I could spare you,” she went on to suggest. He looked at her quizzically. “If I were the one to run away, you couldn’t marry someone you couldn’t find.”

      Unable to resist the desire to touch her, he took her hand in his. “There’s no need for you to run away. You’re not the bad part of the bargain—the crown is.” He brought her hand to his lips and kissed it. “And your father’s right. If the public knows about us, or learns about us in the near future, then marriage to me is your only option.”

      Was that it? No mention of love, of desire, even of affection? Just some old-fashioned sense of duty? She pulled her hand away and tossed her head. “I don’t have to safeguard my reputation, Carrington. This isn’t a hundred years ago.”

      It wasn’t all that easy to shake off the mantle of royal expectations. “Then why are you to marry the next ruler of Silvershire?” Russell asked gently.

      Momentarily stumped, Amelia blew out a breath. “Point taken.”

      Touching her hand wasn’t enough. He wanted to take her into his arms, to kiss her and make love with her. But now, of all times, they had to keep a distance between themselves. Besides, he reminded himself, she harbored suspicion in her soul. He had to remember that and not let himself be ruled by his hormones. Or his needs.

      He began to back away from her, out of the room. “Princess, if you’ll excuse me, I have a great many things to do.”

      She wanted to ask him to stay. To hold her. To tell her one last time that he had nothing to do with the prince’s death. Her heart said one thing, her mind, taught to be suspicious, said another.

      And she had also been taught to keep a tight rein on her emotions, so she merely inclined her head as he took his leave, saying nothing to stop him from going.

      Russell had never felt more trapped in his life. He did not want to be king. Not once, in all the time that he had been growing up, had he entertained the idea of being king, even in passing or in jest. Reginald was only a year older than he was, in excellent physical health and vital and vibrant. It had never entered his mind that Reginald would not someday take the crown and be King of Silvershire.

      Even though he’d felt that the prince was the wrong person for the responsibility, he had not once thought that he would make a better ruler than Reginald. He hadn’t thought about being ruler at all, despite all of his schooling and qualifications, despite the fact that he cared about matters of state and Reginald wasn’t interested in anything larger than the bust size of the woman he was currently with.

      He, a king.

      The very idea would have been laughable if it weren’t so equally painful, Russell thought as he made his way down the palace corridor. What kind of a ruler would he make, anyway? He had betrayed the most sacred of trusts. Asked to bring back his future king’s bride, he had slept with her instead.

      Not exactly qualifications for ascending the throne.

      How could he possibly be expected to lead a country if he couldn’t even lead himself? If he couldn’t control himself? Just now, back in that room with the princess, in the middle of it all, he had found himself thinking how beautiful she looked. How much he wanted to make love with her. Fine thoughts to be having when the prince’s body was barely cold.

      Damn it, this wasn’t a time for angst and self-doubt. This was a time for action. The prince was dead and his first priority was finding about the circumstances that had led up to that event. His second would undoubtedly involve generating some sort of a cover-up of those circumstances, if for no other reason than to save the king public embarrassment and humiliation. The monarch had suffered enough of that already, thanks to Reginald’s escapades. Enduring more of the same was not something that the king should be asked to go through.

      There were intrigue and tangled webs no matter which way he turned, Russell thought. The fact that there wasn’t a single living soul at the prince’s estate was odd, to say the least. Reginald had always been surrounded by hangers-on and parasites. And there was the matter of the royal bodyguards. Where were they? Why hadn’t they remained with the prince? He doubted very much that they had scattered of their own volition. Had Reginald ordered them away? Or had they been done away with in order to get to the prince? These and other questions begged for answers.

      What had happened in the time he’d been away in Gastonia, making preparations to bring the princess back to Silvershire?

      And losing his heart in the bargain, he added ruefully.

      Russell sighed quietly to himself as he made his way up the spiral staircase. It was a damnable offense against all that he was raised to believe in, but in the shadowy recesses of his heart, he had to admit that he was relieved that Amelia was no longer going to have to marry Reginald for the sake of duty. The late prince would never have loved her, never have treated her with the kind of respect she deserved as a princess and as a human being.

      His head throbbed. In a perfect world, he would have been able to marry Amelia with no strings attached, with no stain of doubt and suspicion attached to the union. But the world, he had learned long before he became the prince’s shadow, was far from perfect. And this present situation he found himself in was apparently the best that he could hope for. To take the crown if he hoped to take the princess.

      And what of the princess? Would she ever look at him without wondering if he’d had