Royal Marriage Of Convenience

every minute he could persuade them to leave off cricket or football.

And Sam’s semi-serious instructions came back now: never put your body between an opponent and the light. Never move until you’re sure of what you’re doing. They’d played tag in the back yard, creeping up on each other, touching and winning by stealth alone.

Boys’ fantasies. All of a sudden serious. All of a sudden imperative to remember.

For whoever it was meant no good. Whoever it was, he or she had almost reached the bedroom door. Nick was used to the dim light, and he could see the shadow now. One man, he thought, one man with his back to him. One man, slowly lifting the latch to the bedroom beyond.

The bedroom door opened slowly, slowly.

Hell, he needed a weapon.

The fire-iron. He slid forward, and the cold steel of the massive poker slid soundlessly into his grasp. He moved back, still crouched behind the settee, waiting.

His heart felt as if it had stopped beating. Sam, where the hell are you?

Whoever it was had opened the door fully now. There was an almost-full moon. The curtains in the sitting room were drawn but Rose must have opened hers, letting the moonlight flood her as she slept. As the bedroom door opened wide, Nick had a clear, full view of the man’s silhouette. Long and lean and all in black. One hand on the door handle.

The other…The other holding a gun.

How he moved, he didn’t remember afterwards. The man’s arm was raising. He was moving inside the bedroom, intent, concentrating fiercely on his target. His hand came up further…

And Nick’s poker smashed down with all the force he could muster.

He must have made a sound, slight but a sound for all that, for the man jerked to one side so that the poker didn’t smash down on his head but hit him hard, sickeningly, where neck met shoulder, then slid down, still with force, smashing into his gunarm, causing the gun to drop and skid and spin across the room.

And Nick had him, hauling him round, bringing his knee up, fighting foul as he’d learned to fight with six brothers. Ruby had hated their fighting, but they’d all been brought up tough and they knew the ways of the world. They’d practised constantly. Every single one of Ruby’s boys had learned the hard way that you could never depend on others to defend you.

But the man whirled and smashed back. Nick was too close to raise the poker again. He punched with all the power he had.

‘Rose!’ Nick roared as the man staggered against the wall, and he powered in again. ‘Get the gun.’

‘Wha…?’ Wakened from deep sleep, it took Rose all of two seconds to snap to wakefulness. ‘The gun?’ she said blankly.

‘Under the bed, your side!’ Nick yelled, and hit the guy again. If this guy knew any martial arts, Nick was in big trouble. Nick was a lawyer. Yeah, he’d learned to fight, but he hadn’t fought for years. But he wasn’t giving the guy room to do anything, punching him against the wall, hitting him, hitting him until the guy lashed out again…

‘Move one muscle and I’ll shoot.’ Rose’s voice rang out clearly over the moonlit room. The nightlight snapped on.

She must have been brought up in the same school as him, Nick thought approvingly, for she’d flicked the bed- lamp on and moved away up to the back of the bed so she could see but was in the shadows.

All the same, he could see enough to know she had the gun.

He moved back, which was a mistake. The guy lurched forward and his hand suddenly glinted in the light.

A knife…

The gun fired, a heavy, dull pop into the stillness. And everyone froze. For a moment.

The black figure cursed, grabbed his shoulder and lurched backwards. The knife, a wicked-looking stiletto, clattered onto the bedroom floor and slid harmlessly away.

‘I’ll shoot again,’ Rose said in a voice devoid of all inflection. ‘I’d advise you to keep very still indeed.’

The guy did. So did Nick. This seemed dream-like. Like a game with his brothers. But it was no dream. He was wide awake now and he felt sick.

Hell, she’d shot the man…

‘Back against the wall,’ Rose said, still in that cold, dead tone, and she jumped lightly from the bed and flicked the overhead light on. Nick grabbed the huge gold tassel of the bell-pull and pulled for all he was worth.

The bell pealed out so loudly that you could have heard it in the middle of next week. Not a nice, discreet, ‘hear it only in the butlers pantry’ bell. If the old Prince had wanted something he’d wanted the whole castle to know about it. The man made an involuntary lurch towards the door.

‘Still,’ she snapped. ‘I will shoot.’

‘Rose…’

‘Get right away from him,’ Rose said.

He couldn’t believe it. She was standing in her chemise, barefoot, her hair tousled from sleep, her face deathly pale. She was holding the gun in both hands and she was aiming it straight at the intruder.

The intruder had frozen. And why wouldn’t he? The man was young, thickset, dressed all in black with a balaclava covering his face. He was holding his arm, and blood was dripping slowly onto the polished floor.

And then there were people in the doorway. An elderly liveried manservant. A couple of dignitaries who were staying in the castle, in their nightwear. And behind them, blessedly, one of the castle security-guards. The man edged through the crowded doorway and stopped dead in astonishment.

‘He came to kill us,’ Nick said.

Rose hadn’t moved. She was still pointing the gun directly at the man before her. ‘Can I put it down?’ she whispered.

‘Let’s get back-up first,’ Nick said, and looked expectantly at the security guard, and the guard took a shocked look at Rose and moved into action. He spoke urgently into his radio.

And suddenly things were out of their hands.

The next hour passed in a blur. The security guards took their intruder down to one of the main sitting-rooms, where those who had no direct cause to be present could be closed out.

Nick called Erhard. The old man was a guest this night in the castle. Nick didn’t want to disturb him, but faced with what might have happened, faced with the evil he’d seen tonight, he needed to be sure who he could trust.

Erhard arrived in bathrobe and carpet slippers, looking pale, old and shaken to the core, but still retaining the aura of dignity that he’d carried from the first.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he told Rose, his voice trembling. ‘I would never have asked you if…’

‘It’s alright,’ Rose said, but she wasn’t moving from where she was. Which was tight against Nick. From the moment Nick had lifted the pistol out of her hands, she’d started trembling and the trembling hadn’t stopped. Nick had wanted her to be put to bed, for the doctors here to give her something to help her sleep, but she’d reacted with anger, and momentarily the trembling had stopped.

‘Someone tried to shoot me, so I’m supposed to take a sleeping tablet and go calmly to sleep without getting it sorted? You must be out of your collective minds.’ Then as Nick had held her she’d subsided against him and let him do the supporting. ‘I have a husband,’ she said with dignity. ‘When he goes to bed, I go to bed, and not before.’

She’d held to that line, as more onlookers had spilled from the surrounding bedrooms, as every member of the castle staff had seemed to find some excuse to see for themselves what was happening.

Little was happening. The security guards had held their prisoner until Erhard had arrived.

‘These men can be trusted,’ Erhard told Nick, nodding to each of the four security-guards. ‘I know each of them. But I don’t understand how-’

‘There was a disturbance on the far side of the castle grounds,’ one of the guards told Erhard, sounding appalled and apologetic at the same time. ‘The fence was slashed and a group of youths tried to break in. They were young and drunk and foolish, but we all attended.’ He hesitated. ‘There’s only been the old Prince here for so long,’ he said. ‘There’s been no interest in the castle. My officers have been lax.’

‘There’s been little need for security in the past,’ Erhard said gravely. ‘But there is now. What chance these youths were paid to make a distraction?’