AllFreeNovel
Share Us
She stopped looking at the view, instead looking at Rafe as he deftly negotiated the treacherous, winding roads that would soon carry the dairy herds down from the tree line to the winter pastures and barns. His hands were relaxed. Long fingers on the steering wheel. Forearms, strong and bronzed in the sunshine. Arms that had wrapped round to steady her as she’d slipped on the loose leaves. The overheated memory of being cradled, safe. It flooded over her, warming like the autumn sunshine spilling through the windscreen. A delicious, hazy sensation that slid inside and had her shifting in her seat.
Rafe glanced over at her. ‘It’s been a long drive. We’re almost there.’
He’d misinterpreted her discomfort. Which was a good thing. If he knew the real reason, he’d use it against her, of that she was sure.
They rounded a corner, turning into a narrow drive that meandered further uphill. Nestled in a tangle of wildflowers and rambling cottage garden sat a two-storey chalet, with steep shingled roof and Juliet balcony up high. The fresh, whitewashed walls and dark timber cross-hatching reminded her of a gingerbread house. Wisps of smoke drifted lazily from a chimney.
‘This is lovely,’ she said, almost with a sigh. Rafe smiled as he pulled his car around the back to where a building stood. The barn, if she had to guess.
‘It’s a little crooked and well worn being so old, but this has always been home.’
Rafe tugged their bags from the boot of the car. Lise loved the way the muscles in his arm bunched and flexed as he did. She grabbed the bucket of mushrooms. He walked to a back entry and opened it, guiding her through the mud room into a sunny, country kitchen where she placed the bucket on a bench top.
‘How often do you come here?’ she asked. The place looked well lived in, the wooden surfaces polished to a shine, no dust anywhere to be seen.
‘If I’m not travelling, this is where I try to stay.’
That surprised her. Most of Lauritania’s wealthy lived on the lake, or in one of the fashionable skiing areas. This part of the country was only known for summer pastures and farming.
‘It’s so far from the capital.’
He laughed and the deep, masculine sound rippled through her like an earth tremor. ‘I enjoy the solitude. Plus, I’ve a helipad built out back. If pressed for time I fly.’
Another surprise. It was something about him she should have known, but in all the times they’d been together, they’d only talked about her. How much of himself did Rafe hide?
‘You could have flown me here?’
‘Of course, but the drive is beautiful, and I thought you’d enjoy it. Next time I’ll bring you by helicopter. If you trust me.’ Something about the fact he’d again thought of what she might enjoy warmed her insides. She liked him caring, she ached for him to touch her. They were dangers she could not succumb to. Because she didn’t trust him. She didn’t trust anyone any more, least of all herself...
‘Come,’ he said, jolting her out of those miserable thoughts. ‘I’ll take you to your room.’
She followed him through the kitchen and up a wooden staircase, the treads burnished to a low gleam by generations of footsteps. On the top floor, the ceiling sloped with the frame of the house. Rafe dropped his bag outside one door. Toed open another and let her inside.
A fire crackled in the grate of a rough stone fireplace. That, and the sun streaming through the doorway to the tiny balcony she’d seen on the drive towards the house, made the room warm and inviting. Dominating the space stood a magnificent four-poster bed with a comforter of rich burgundy. Plush rugs covered the dark wooden floor. In front of the fireplace sat a deep blue velvet couch she craved to sink into and never leave.
But she realised, looking about her, that the room was undeniably masculine with its solid furniture and bold palette. A man’s space.Rafe’s.She turned, and found him leaning against the door, her bag at his feet.
‘I can’t take this room. It’s yours.’ How could she sleep here? In hisbed.It was too much. Her heartbeat picked up its already hyperactive pace. She needed to distance herself from him, not immerse herself completely.
‘It’s more comfortable than the second bedroom and has its own en-suite bathroom.’ He shrugged. ‘I thought you’d appreciate it.’
‘I can handle having to walk to the bathroom. If I survived Princess School, I can survive that.’
He raised an eyebrow, and his mouth curved into that warm, slow smile of his that did complicated things to her insides she refused to dwell upon.
‘Princess School?’
‘Finishing school. It was...’ stultifying, depressing, demoralising ‘...austere. I shared a room with another girl, and we definitely had to share bathrooms.’
‘Strange. I thought it would be palatial quarters, hot chocolate, toasting marshmallows, and plotting to acquire rich husbands.’
‘The plotting for husbands was there. Along with lessons in flower arranging, correct placement of cutlery, deportment and how to be the perfect lady. All those kinds of world-saving skills. Exactly what I needed for my job as Queen.’
She gave a laugh, which came out more like a hysterical snort.
‘Learning how to be a perfect lady was obviously one lesson you paid most attention to.’ He grinned at her.
‘Obviously.’ Lise laughed harder, but there was no joy there, only disbelief at the absurdity of it all. The futility of those twelve, lonely months. They’d prepared her for precisely nothing. Not her family’s death, not her new role leading the country. She laughed till she doubled over, then the laughing morphed into the clutch of grief that clawed her throat, of loss and missed opportunities. That her family never saw any more of her than her value as a bargaining chip. As a wife to someone powerful. It was how her country saw her, too. Only her marriage making her legitimate as Queen.
