A Royal Bride of Convenience. Rebecca Winters

      Any second now she expected to be bound, gagged and suffocated by a blanket thrown over her head, before they transferred her to another location to be executed.

      While she bent over Celeste’s little body to kiss her cheek and neck, she heard men’s voices outside the helicopter. Until now no words had been spoken, but it didn’t matter. They were too indistinct for her to know what language the men were speaking, let alone what they were saying.

      As she lifted her head, she watched the one soldier leave and another one enter. This one closed the helicopter door and made his way toward her, filling her with renewed terror. In the semi-darkness he appeared to be the same soldier who’d carried her from the hut to the bush van.

      She held the baby tighter, while her heart hammered with sickening speed. He was tall and powerfully built. In his helmet and uniform, he looked so tough it made the horror of this night all too real.

      “What’s your name?” He spoke English to her in a deep masculine voice. It didn’t sound British or American. She pretended not to understand. He switched languages. “Como se llama usted?” When she still did not answer him, he said, “Parli Italiano?”

      When she continued to rock the baby, she heard him exhale, and realized her lack of cooperation was angering him. Good! She’d had it with being the helpless victim.

       “Eh bien, vous êtes française?”

      No, she wasn’t French, but since she was going to her death anyway, she refused to give him any information about herself. When she flew to and from Chakul, she traveled incognito, on commercial flights.

      Everyone assumed she was French. The fact that the customs officials saw she was a native of French-speaking Haut-Leman, a principality on the south side of Lake Geneva, didn’t raise any eyebrows. To make it easier for the locals she’d told them to call her Lise, a shortened version of the name of her grandmère, Analise Belard, and it had stuck.

      Though Lise might have lost everything else in the raid including her passport, she still had pride. Since her life was about to come to an end anyway, why give him the satisfaction of thinking he could intimidate her further.

      “Ecoutez, madame.” He continued in French, which he could have learned in any one of the French-speaking European countries, or the countries of Maghreb in North Africa. It was impossible to tell. “Your husband could be dead or not. For your safety, we’re going to take a small flight and then set down again. When we do, we’ll get into a car that will drive us to an airport where a plane is waiting.”

      For what? Was this a group involved in white slave trafficking? She couldn’t bear it.

      “You will speak to no one unless I tell you exactly what to say. Vous comprenez?” he demanded, in such a menacing tone she shrank from him. His dark voice added to the layers of fear paralyzing her.

      Lise nodded, not willing to enflame him further. He thought she’d been torn from her husband, that she was Celeste’s mother. The probability that the Fillouxes were dead made her want to cry out in agony. Instead, the scream of the rotors pierced the quiet.

      Her captor moved to the front of the helicopter. After saying a few unintelligible words to the pilot, he strapped himself in. Before long they were airborne.

      Celeste made little cries now and again. The poor darling missed her parents. Lise felt her cheeks and forehead. The baby was running a temperature. She needed to be in a hospital, but that wasn’t going to happen.

      Flying to her doom in the darkness, the next hour felt like an eternity. She’d been alone many times in her life, but this was a different kind of alone … All she could do was cling to the baby and absorb her warmth while she prayed for a miracle.

      Suddenly the helicopter was dipping. Her heart thundered, sounding out shockwaves through her terrified body. This was it.

      Her captor moved like lightning to undo her straps and whisked her to the entrance with Celeste. After opening the door he jumped out, before taking the baby from her.

      “Allez, madame. Into the car!”

      Lise could see it parked several yards away. Maybe she should just start running in the opposite direction and hope he shot her dead, but she couldn’t leave the baby defenseless.

      Everything became a blur as she got in the back of an old, dark, four-door sedan whose engine was running. She didn’t recognize the make. Her captor handed her the baby, then shut the door. The driver turned his head to stare at her. By now her body was soaked in sweat from fear.

      She clutched the baby against her shoulder. In a matter of seconds the soldier joined her in the backseat and the car took off. He’d discarded his uniform and was now wearing a T-shirt and khakis. Without his helmet, the transformation was quite startling, but a change in clothes couldn’t disguise the evil in him.

      Convinced her life had been preserved for a fate she considered worse than death, she couldn’t forget for a moment her captor had likely been paid a lot of money to carry out orders. He was going to turn her over to some filthy monster living in the darkest reaches of the continent, where she would no doubt be raped before she was exterminated.

       Celeste, Celeste. What are we going to do? How can I get us away?

      Another long drive in silence with twists and turns made her dizzy. She hadn’t had food or drink since she’d left the tent settlement. Her body had grown weak and was dehydrating. So was Celeste’s. Without nourishment, the baby was going to die.

      Maybe it would be better if she died in her arms. At least then Lise would know what had happened to the precious infant before they were brutally torn from each other.

      In a few minutes the car started to slow down. The driver spoke to her captor in rapid Swahili, but she followed it. Swahili had been an easy language for her to learn. They’d come to a police checkpoint outside the airport and had to stop while the car was searched.

      Her prayers for help had been answered!

      But when the car came to a full stop, she almost went into shock when the soldier holding her captive pulled her and the baby into his arms in an unexpected move. She half lay against his chest, imprisoned. As the driver opened the door, the light from outside allowed her the first real glimpse of her captor.

      Impressions of a man in his thirties with bronzed, rugged features flew at her like colors through a prism. Beneath straight black hair, eyes blacker than the night stared down into hers, impaling her. Their intensity sent a thrill of alarm through her shivering body.

      “Kiss me like you mean it if you want your freedom, madame,” he muttered fiercely, before his hard male mouth covered hers.

      Did he really say freedom?

      The word caused her heart to slam against her ribs. Maybe this man wasn’t her enemy. She didn’t know anything, but on the slightest chance that he meant it, she cooperated by not fighting him.

      Her lukewarm response didn’t appear to be enough. While the police shone a flashlight on them, he urged her lips apart to drink deeply. No one would know the baby was sandwiched between them.

      What had started out as a cold and calculated diversion to send the message that nothing of importance was going on in the backseat, became something else. His kiss of refined savagery grew more intimate and prolonged.

      With the release of adrenaline, she found herself getting into it—a kind of mindless response, because she’d never known a kiss like this before. Lise had never been made so compellingly aware of her womanhood. There was something primitive about what they were doing. It had to be the fear of losing her life that was causing her to lose her mind and her control right now. His kiss had ratcheted up her pulse-rate till it was off the charts.

      Somewhere on the periphery she heard the policeman and the driver passing muffled jokes back and forth before the door closed. As the car moved on, she wrenched her mouth from the