"So, where've you stashed that princess of yours?  You can't just keep her to yourself, old man."

"You know how bloody careless Drew is, Ross.  He's probably gone and lost her."

"Sorry to disappoint you, Jared," Drew said, wishing once again that his meddling friends hadn't come to the duke's ball tonight.  "But I have yet to meet the little virago."

"Andrew Chase, behave yourself!"  Kate had been standing peaceably near her starry-eyed husband, but managed to look away from Jared long enough to give Drew one of her chiding scowls.  "Princess Caroline is hardly a virago.  I've met her myself; she's lovely."

"Begging your pardon, Kate," Drew said as he adjusted his neckcloth, "but I've never met a royal who wasn't a pain in the. . . trousers."

Ross laughed and whispered over-loud, "Word around town is that she's stunning."

"Great."  Drew snorted, not at all pleased to hear this.  "Royal and beautiful." 

Not to mention vain, arrogant, demanding.  Bred in the bone.

"Husband, dear," Kate said, grinning up at Jared in that bountiful way of hers, hooking her finger into his lapel and drawing him closer, "if you and Ross had been paying the least attention, you'd know that the princess hasn't arrived yet."

Jared got that goofy look on his face again as he gazed down at his wife, love-sick and lusty.  "My love, how can I possibly pay attention to anything else in the room with you wearing that smile, that gown, with that necklace dangling between your luscious. . . ." 

Fortunately, Drew didn't have to listen to the rest of Jared's sugary cooing because the man had buried his words against his wife's ear.  Though Kate's sultry giggle left little to the imagination.

He turned away from the pair and Ross moved in to stand beside him as they overlooked the swirl of the dance floor.  "Gad, Ross, how the mighty have fallen."     

"And damned if he doesn't look happier than a bloody clam at high tide, lucky bastard."  Ross cuffed him in the arm.  "And you assigned to princess duty."

"My favorite kind of assignment, as you know."  Putting his life on the line for another arrogant, ill-tempered royal.  "But it's my fault this time.  Stumbling into a hornet's nest." 

"Punishment for doing your job too well, Drew."

"On time and under budget."  It's what he did, without questioning.  "I couldn't really refuse to finish what I began, could I?  After all, the princess is a cousin to the queen."

Ross laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.  "Ah, but who among them isn't, Drew?"

Indeed.  Drew only grunted, deciding to reveal nothing more on the subject of the princess's family ties, at least for the moment.

"If the woman is any kind of a princess, Drew, she won't arrive until well after midnight."

And it was one minute till.  Hours yet to go.

Time didn't seem to matter a whit to a royal.  Keeping as many people waiting as long as possible seemed a heady pastime for most of them.

He should expect no less from Princess Caroline of Boratania.

Impatient to begin, he scanned the perimeter of the dancing below, assessing every move and gesture.  He was on duty now, fully absorbed, carefully reading the room as he waited for this princess, who was indeed keeping everyone cooling their heels while she took her own sweet ti–          

"Is that. . . ?" Drew heard from the crowd below as the music faded. 

"It is!"

"So beautiful. . . !"

"So regal. . . "

The idling crowd that had formed on the landing above the dance floor suddenly closed ranks around the great arching doorway.

"Well, I'll be damned," Drew heard himself say to no one in particular.  Could it possibly be?  A punctual royal? 

Rumblings of, "look!  She's here!"

And, "oooo, let me see," tumbled off the landing. 

The crowd parted and poured down the stairs to form a gawking, gossiping gauntlet, everyone wanting to get a closer look at the pomp that was billowing above like a glittering cloud.

"Midnight on the dot, Drew."

"I'll believe it when I see her, old man."

If this was indeed Princess Caroline making her grand entrance, she was taking her time progressing though her sea of admirers, still masked from Drew's vantage point. 

Not that he cared.  Palmerston would officially present him to her soon enough. 

And the game would begin in earnest. 

Drew had just put the rim of his glass to his lips when an awestruck silence rolled across the room toward him. 

And then came the booming announcement from the top of the stairs, "The Princess Caroline Marguerite Marie Isabella of Boratania."

Good Christ!

The crowd had parted like a bank of sun-setting clouds, revealing from their midst the most astoundingly beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

A curling, shimmering crown of golden hair, eclipsing the marvel of the gleaming tiara, keenly bright eyes and a dazzling smile that knocked around inside his chest and kept him waiting eagerly for more.

"You've got the luck of the devil, Drew!"

Ross's voice popped through Drew's soddened brain, a stunning reminder that he wasn't alone with the woman.  He swallowed past a dry throat.  "What's that?"

"I said you pulled this one out of your hat, man."  Ross nudged him in the arm, once again bringing him back to the present.  "She's . . . amazing."

"Which makes her all the more dangerous, Ross."  The woman wasn't going to be easy to protect, not if she was forever surrounded by a swarm of courtiers like those who now followed her down the grand staircase.

The portly Prince of Fontmere stopped her on the third step, redcheeked and groveling, nearly drooling over her gloved hand.

The King of the Belgian's bastard son blocked her progress on the next step, and then another princeling and another.  Each of them gathering her hand and her easy, elegant smile, vying for the favors of Boratania.

Playing bodyguard to a spoiled princess, no matter how stunning, was bound to be one massive headache after another.  But at least the assignment would only last three weeks, a month at the most. 

Then her highness would become Her Empressness and his job would be over and done with.  Thank God.

Drew watched the princess's progress among the guests, dismissing the coiling knot of heat in the center of his chest, the driving, dizzying change in his own pulse.  He kept a professional distance as he observed her in detail.  The grace in her finest gesture, in the nod of her head, her regal bearing.  The brilliance of her smile, her indulgence toward the lowliest baroness as well as the highest and the mightiest, always unruffled, aloof.

And yet, if he wasn't mistaken, slightly distracted.

The music began with a flourish, louder than before and more sweeping as the Duke of Bradford himself whisked the princess onto the dance floor. 

Next came the stocky, floridly exuberant Prince Rudolph, then his self-conscious younger brother. 

Followed by the architect Henry Cole, who seemed to engage the princess's interest completely with his wild gestures and whispered jests.

And then Sir Hugh de Ferrier, dandy and gambler; and the Earl of Stratton, who seemed to have lost his sense of balance.

"Gad, Drew, the woman's dance card must read like a page from Burke's Peerage."

Ironic, that.  A secret he must keep even from Ross and Jared.  Because a job was a job.  It wasn't his mission to judge or make comment.

"The lot of a princess, I suppose," he said.  No matter who they were.

"You'll let me know if you need me to fill in for you, Drew.  Any time, any place: I'll be there.  In fact, I'll take the case if you don't want to bother with it.  With her."

"I'll keep that in mind, Ross, old man."  Feeling a bit smug, because the princess was indeed an indulgence to look upon, Drew watched her more intently from the gallery, easily following her progress across the dance floor.  Those dazzling, milky white shoulders that would surely taste of honey, the softly gilded upsweep of her hair, the delicately sparkling tiara crowning the top of her head. 

He found himself leaning his elbows against the railing, following the billowing sway of her gem-studded skirts, fascinated by the random glimpse of her dainty slipper that would peek out from the flounce of her hem and then disappear in the next measure of music.

"There's Palmerston, Drew."  Ross pointed toward the undercroft directly across from them.  "Looking for you, I wager."

"I'm not ready to be found."  Drew looked from Palmerston back to the teeming dance floor, expecting to see the princess still in the arms of Count Bressington, but finding the man standing by himself among the dancers, scratching at his moth-eaten, painfully outdated wig.

And Drew feeling nearly as confused as he cast about for the woman.

Blast it all, he'd only just glanced away for a moment–

"I don't see her anymore, Drew."

"She's here somewhere."  She must be.  He scanned the swelling sea of dancers, searching for the telltale crown of golden hair.  But Princess Caroline wasn't among them. 

Wasn't holding court with her slavering admirers.  Or changing partners.  Or gossiping with the ladies.

The normal, highly-steady beat of his heart rattled off center, leaving him with that familiar tic of danger ringing low in his left ear.  An old injury with a long, dark memory that always sharpened his senses and set his muscles on edge.

"You've really gone and lost her now, Drew."

She'd vanished from the dance floor entirely. 

Damnation!  If she wasn't on the dance floor then. . .   Ah, there she was, beneath the gallery, skirting the dancers, making a beeline for a small door at the base of the gallery stairs.

"Don't wait up for me, Ross."

Drew wound his way through the clots of people in the gallery, glad that he'd attended many balls at Bradford's home before tonight.

With any luck, the princess's trajectory would lead her through the service doors below, and directly into his path as he slipped through a gallery door and down the backstairs.

But the blasted woman must have taken another corridor.  He hurried along the service hallway, listening for her telling footsteps.

Ah, there they were.  Soft, but shooshing along the passage that connected the grand ballroom with the service buildings.

A curious route for an innocent princess.  Surely a secret rendezvous with an unsuitable suitor.  Well, he'd been assigned to protect her from anything, and that was his plan.

So he followed her into a dimly lit corridor that turned sharply to the left and became a landing, and then a half staircase down to another flagged corridor.  Not only her padding footstep, he was following her scent.  Floral and soft, rosewood and orange blossoms. 

And on she led him with her fragrance, across the uneven tiles of a wet laundry and into a room stacked with terra cotta pots, musty damp with planting compost.

Through another door into a glass conservatory and then she seemed to burst out into the garden as though she had been holding her breath. 

She flitted quietly along the cobbled pathway, her willowy shadow merging for a moment with those of a neatly trimmed row of boxwood pillars that lined either side, then breaking into the moonlight, her gown a glittering cloud of silvery stars.

With an admirable determination, she made a sharp left and hurried along the tall laurel hedge and its picket of Grecian statues.  Drew followed, but held back against the trunk of a tree as the woman stopped in front of a dark, arching opening in the hedge and stared up at one of the pale marble figures flanking the entrance as though studying its size and composition. 

She brushed her palm along the top of the fat urn cradled in the crook of its arm, then straightened her skirts, and darted into the darkness on her suspicious errand.

A rendezvous with a lover, an assignation? 

Bloody hell, he hadn't even considered the very worst scenario.  That the little fool was heading for a carefully set trap? 

Damnation!  His heart suddenly taking off like a rabbit, Drew ducked into the same opening.  He had just made the first turn into the blinding darkness when he heard a snap to his left and then felt the jab of something pointy right in the middle of his back.

"Hands up where I can see them!"

Drew held back a laugh at the false gravel of the voice, but dutifully raised his hands to his shoulders.  "Anything you say, miss."

That got him a poke.  "I don't know who you are, sir, or why you've been following me, but unless you leave this garden immediately, you'll find yourself in more trouble than you can possibly imagine."

Easy, Princess.  "Oh, my dear, I can imagine a great deal of trouble."

"Sir, I know how to use this thing."  She shifted to a more expert stance, doubtless learned in a fencing class, but with an epee.

"I'm sure you do, madam.  But if you're seeking to frighten me into obeying you, I'm afraid you're going to have use a more lethal weapon than that stick you're holding at my back."

She gave an inelegant snort.  "Do not mock me, sir!  I–"

Drew used her momentary chagrin to turn swiftly and grab her hand.  He pulled the stick from between her fingers and leveled it at her nose.  "Never threaten anyone with a weapon which can't possibly subdue them."

"I don't need advice from a. . .a. . . ."  She blustered at him, her eyes glints of lavender moonlight, her fists jammed against her perfectly shaped hips.  "Do you know who you're talking to, sir?"

"God, yes, madam!"  Drew laughed, delighted by the low, lilting melody of her voice, at the shards of moonlight filtering through the leafy alley, playing softly down the column of her long neck.  "You are a very dangerous woman who knows how to use a stick."

She tossed back her shoulders and lifted her chin.  "I am Princess Caroline, the Duke of Bradford's guest of honor, and I command you to return to the ball and stop following me."

"Hmmm. . . Princess . . . " he really shouldn't be toying with her "–whom did you say?"

He heard her stamp her slippered foot into the gravel pathway.  "You heard me, sir.  Now, go back where you came from and stop following me."  She stuck out her arm and pointed toward the entrance.

Odd that the little princess wouldn't just turn tail and leave him standing there.  Not that he would allow her to do that while he was in charge.  She was his now to watch over.

"Why, Princess?  So you can meet with your lover in the middle of this maze?"

She gasped and then sputtered.  "How dare you speak to me that way?"

"I'm only looking out for your best interest, your highness."  Drew shrugged and yanked a leaf off the hedge.  "What if you're caught out here with your paramour?  What will people say?  With you a princess and all."

"I'm not meeting a lover, sir, not that it's any business of yours.  Now go back to the ball before I–"

"I can't do that, Princess.  Not without you.  After all, if you're Princess Caroline, as you say you are–"

"I am!"

"Then you're the guest of honor tonight, and ought to be inside dancing with your many admirers, not out here unchaperoned."

"I don't need a chaperone.  I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself.  Now, I'll thank you to excuse me–"

She tried to brush past him, but he heard a pair of voices just on the other side of the hedge coming their way.  Hell, the last thing he needed was to be discovered in the bushes with the princess he was supposed to be protecting.  Tongues would do more than just wag.

He caught her arm and bent down to her ear.  "You'll be quiet now, Princess!"

"Move, you big lout."  She gave his chest a two-handed shove but he only brought her closer to him.

"Too late, Princess.  We've got company."  Hoping the prickly woman would take his lead, Drew pressed her backward into the laurel hedge.

"What are you doing?"

"Saving us both, madam," he hissed as he turned away from her.  "Now, quiet yourself."

Hoping the large, shiny leaves would mask her completely from whoever was coming through the maze, Drew then leaned back against her, as though idling there against the hedge, not at all pleased at her curving softness he met there, at the plushness of her breasts, or her hot little fingers spread across his back.

"Are you mad, sir?"  She shoved at him with a grunt, causing Drew to pressed harder.

"Keep still, madam!" he whispered over his shoulder.  Else this whole enterprise might perish before its birth.

And Princess Caroline along with it.
 

 Come back to read chapter 2 in August!