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Chapter Three

Liv opened her eyes. She was flat on her back on the bathroom floor.

Brit was bending over her. ‘‘Livvy?’’

Liv frowned as she studied her sister’s face above her—upside down and way too pale.

Brit said, ‘‘Can you hear me?’’

So strange, Liv thought dazedly, the way a mouth looks when it’s moving upside down, as if the top were the bottom and the bottom the top.

Brit’s turned-around mouth continued asking questions. ‘‘Do you know what happened? Do you know who I am?’’

‘‘I fainted. You’re Brit.’’

Brit’s upside-down mouth formed what must have been meant as a smile. ‘‘Welcome back.’’

‘‘Why are you grinning?’’

The forced smile flattened out. ‘‘Damn it, I’m trying to be reassuring.’’

‘‘Well, it’s not working—and really, I’m okay.’’

‘‘I’d better get a—’’

Liv grabbed Brit’s arm before she could jump up and rush off. ‘‘I don’t need a doctor.’’

‘‘But—’’

‘‘I mean it. I am fine.’’ She did feel a little warm. She fumbled at the silk frogs that buttoned her pajama top.

‘‘Here.’’ Brit scooted around beside her and gently pushed her hands out of the way. She unhooked the first three frogs—and then she gasped.

‘‘What?’’ Liv popped to a sitting position and looked down at herself.

Her Chinese-style tangerine silk pajamas gaped. She could see her upper chest, the shadows of her breasts. Everything seemed to be right where it was supposed to be. She looked closer.

Liv felt her mouth drop open. ‘‘Omigod.’’

Beside her, Brit said in an awed whisper, ‘‘My sentiments exactly.’’

Liv met her sister’s astonished eyes. ‘‘It can’t be.’’

‘‘But Mom always said—’’

Liv didn’t let her finish. ‘‘Help me up.’’

‘‘Are you sure? You just fain—’’

‘‘Help me. Now.’’

Brit took her hand and half dragged her to her feet. Together, they turned to the mirror above the sink. Liv pulled the sides of the mandarin collar wide. The skin of her upper chest was a florid red—blotched and welted with a livid rash.

‘‘It can’t be,’’ Liv said. ‘‘I refuse to believe it.’’

‘‘But, Livvy. You’re showing all the signs.’’

Liv shifted her angry glare from her own chest to her sister’s wide-eyed reflection. ‘‘Oh, please. You know very well it’s only a family superstition.’’

‘‘Call it what you want. It did happen. To Mom and to Aunt Nanna and Aunt Kirsten, and to Granny Birget, too.’’

‘‘So they say.’’

‘‘Why would they lie?’’

‘‘I don’t know. I’m sure they didn’t lie—not exactly. I’m only saying, it’s a story. A family myth.’’

‘‘But your symptoms are exactly the same. You threw up. You fainted. And now, there it is. The rash.’’

The Thorson sisters had heard it over and over all their lives: The women in their family—on their mother’s side, the Freyasdahl side—always knew right away when they conceived. They’d all discovered they were pregnant within twenty-four hours of conception. They knew it every time, without fail. Partly, it was a simple feeling of certainty—that it had happened; there was a baby growing within them. But beyond the certainty, there were, each and every time, the family signs: they’d throw up, followed by a fainting spell and then by a bizarre bright red rash across the upper chest.

Liv spoke firmly to Brit’s reflection in the mirror. ‘‘I just don’t believe it. I refuse to believe it. It’s a family superstition, that’s all—and besides, he used a condom.’’

Brit’s gaze slid away, was drawn inexorably back.

Liv wanted to strangle her. ‘‘Will you stop it with all those sneaky sideways glances? You’re starting to remind me of the maid.’’

‘‘Sorry—and are you sure? About the—’’

‘‘Positive. He’s a Gullandrian.’’

Brit blinked. ‘‘Right. And that means…?’’

Liv let out an impatient sigh. ‘‘Remember what Elli told us about Gullandrians? How it’s such a big stigma to be born illegitimate around here?’’

Brit still wasn’t getting it. ‘‘And so from that we can deduce…?’’

‘‘Well, it stands to reason that if you’re not married around here, you use contraception religiously.’’

‘‘So you’re saying you specifically remember that he used—’’

‘‘No. I’m not saying that.’’

‘‘You’re not?’’

‘‘No. I mean, yes. I mean, I do remember.’’ She fervently wished she sounded more convincing. ‘‘I do…’’ She looked at her welted, inflamed chest again and let out a moan.

Brit spoke flatly. ‘‘You’re not sure.’’

Liv found she couldn’t meet her sister’s eyes. She began hooking the silk frogs, buttoning all the way up, until she couldn’t see the rash anymore, until she could almost pretend it wasn’t even there.

‘‘Liv?’’ Brit asked carefully. ‘‘Are you sure or aren’t you?’’

Liv whirled on her sister. Fisting her hands at her sides, she spoke softly through clenched teeth. ‘‘All right. I suppose he didn’t. I suppose we were both kind of…carried away.’’

Brit said nothing. She was looking at Liv tenderly. Tolerantly. Liv hated that. She was not someone people had to look at with tolerance. Especially not people like her baby sister, whom she loved with all her heart, but who was, after all, a college dropout who’d never finished even one of the novels she’d started, who worked in a pizza joint in East Hollywood and couldn’t be bothered to balance her checkbook.

Brit began to speak. She said kind things, gentle things. ‘‘Oh, Livvy. I know everything is going to be all right. Of course, it’s probably just a fluke, your having the family symptoms like this. You’ve been so upset about what happened last night. Maybe tonight, you’re only showing the effects of all the stress, only…’’ Brit’s voice trailed off. Apparently, she had read Liv’s expression and realized that Liv had heard more than enough.

Liv spoke with grave dignity. ‘‘There’s certainly nothing that can be done about it right now.’’ Better, she thought. She sounded firm. Take-charge. More like herself. She was standing very straight, her head high. ‘‘In a few weeks, if my period is late, I’ll take a test like the normal, civilized twenty-first century woman I am. After that, if it turns out I really am going to have a baby—which I truly believe I am not—I’ll start making decisions.’’ She narrowed her eyes and stuck out her chin at her sister, as if Brit had given her some kind of argument. ‘‘And that’s it until then. You hear me? Not another word about it until then.’’

The next morning, the rash was gone. Liv showed Brit. Brit nodded and made a few cheerful, so-glad-you’re-feeling-better noises.

Liv knew just what she was thinking. The rash disappearing fit right in with the way it always happened, according to their mother and their aunts and their grandmother. The rash would appear after the fainting spell and fade a few hours later. The next signs of pregnancy wouldn’t appear for weeks and could be any of the usual ones: a missed period, morning sickness, aversions to certain foods….

‘‘And I feel just fine,’’ Liv announced with some defiance. ‘‘Whatever weird bug I caught, it’s gone now.’’ With each hour that passed, she found she was more and more certain that the events of last night had merely been some crazy stress reaction.

Liv could go home to her great summer job and her second year of law school and the nice boyfriend who might or might not be able to forgive her when he learned what she’d done on Midsummer’s Eve with the devastatingly sexy Prince Finn Danelaw.

And okay, yes, that would be a problem: figuring out how to tell Simon about the wild night she’d spent with Finn. But she’d manage it. All in good time.

Right now, her job was to get her things together and get to the plane.

An hour later, Brit hugged Liv goodbye and went off to spend the day wandering the charming cobbled streets of Lysgard, Gullandria’s capital. An hour after that, Liv was packing her vanity case in her bathroom, almost ready to head for the airport, when she glanced up and saw a flicker of movement behind her in the doorway.

She whirled, a hand to her throat. It was the maid. ‘‘You scared me to death.’’

‘‘So sorry, Highness.’’ The maid curtsied and brought her right fist to her flat chest. ‘‘Highness, Lady Kaarin is in the drawing room. She’s asked to speak with you.’’

‘‘Fine. Tell her I’ll be right there—and will you please stop sneaking around?’’

‘‘Yes, Highness. Of course, Highness. And I’ll tell Lady Kaarin you’re on your way.’’

Kaarin Karlsmon rose from a damask wing chair, fist to heart, when Liv entered the room.

‘‘Your Highness.’’ Liv stared at the beautiful redhead. She couldn’t help thinking of what Brit had said yesterday. Had this woman once been the lost Valbrand’s love? Clearly, now wasn’t the time to ask. Kaarin was looking very official. She announced, ‘‘The king has asked to see you right away in his private chambers. If you’ll come with me…’’

Liv had been expecting the summons. Her father, after all, would want to say goodbye. She didn’t exactly relish this final visit. Though Elli seemed fond of the king, and Brit, already, was calling him Dad, Liv still felt she hardly knew him. And she could see no reason that she had to know him in any particularly meaningful way.

She supposed it was classic stuff. In her heart, she sided with her mother against him. Liv felt he’d deserted her and her sisters when they were babies and as yet, he’d given her no reason to forgive him for it.

And that was okay with her. She didn’t hate him or anything. For Elli’s sake, she’d come here. She’d seen her sister married, met her father and looked around the land of her birth.

It was enough for her.

Now she could pay her final respects and go home.

Kaarin led Liv down a series of wide hallways to the massive doors that opened onto the king’s private reception rooms. Her task accomplished, she didn’t linger. With a bow, she took her leave.

The guards pulled the doors wide. Liv went through, the heels of her shoes tapping crisply as she crossed the stone floor of the antechamber.

Her father, tall, dark-eyed, in his fifties and still straight-backed and handsome, stood waiting for her in the room beyond. He was dressed in a fine lightweight, perfectly tailored midnight-blue suit.

‘‘Daughter.’’ He didn’t smile, but he did, very slightly, incline his proud silvery head. ‘‘Please. Join us.’’

‘‘Us’’ consisted, at first glance, of Osrik’s closest advisor and dearest friend, Prince Medwyn Greyfell. Greyfell held the title of Grand Counselor, the second most powerful position in the Gullandrian governmental hierarchy. Liv thought it odd that her father would have the gaunt, white-haired Greyfell present for a private farewell visit with his oldest daughter. But hey. Goodbye was goodbye, Greyfell or not.

The room was large, with tall diamond-paned windows. Bookcases filled with gold-tooled leather volumes lined two walls. A huge heavily carved antique desk with an inlaid top stood on a raised platform not far from the windows. There were a number of beautiful old chairs and couches arranged in separate conversation areas, and a thronelike seat, also slightly raised, with lower chairs grouped around it, used when her father granted private audiences to those who served him, or to freemen who had earned a coveted few moments of his undivided attention.

Liv didn’t see the other man until she cleared the massive arch that separated the antechamber from the main room. He stood off to the side, near a rather devilish looking bust of some Norse god or other. He wore a suit every bit as beautiful as the one her father wore, though it was lighter in color, a soft charcoal-gray. His eyes were the honeyed amber-brown she remembered from the magical, impossible, reprehensible night-before-last.

Liv froze at the sight of him, a small sound of distress escaping her before she could collect herself and call it back.

Intimate images insisted on flashing, unbidden, through her mind. Those eyes…

They had seemed to see right inside her—all her secrets, all her longings—as his lean naked body pressed her down into the green sweet-smelling grass.

She thought of her lost panties. Did he have them? Did he know where they were?

Oh, this was awful. It was exactly what she’d hoped to avoid at all costs: the chance of running into him again.

And there was absolutely no reason she could see why he should be here.

Unless…

But no. That was impossible. He would never tell her father what had happened between them the night before last. Why should he? What could that possibly get him? Except maybe the king’s ire.

Oh, God. Had someone seen them? And then carried the tale to her father?

And even if such a thing had happened, well, why call a meeting about it? It was acutely embarrassing, yes. It showed a distinct lack of judgment on Liv’s part and on Finn’s.

But this, after all, was an era when royals sometimes cohabitated without benefit of matrimony. That an unmarried princess and an equally unattached prince might spend a few passionate, imprudent hours together simply wasn’t the end of the world.

Plus, it had happened on Midsummer’s Eve. In Gullandria, the way she understood it, Midsummer’s Eve was the one night a year when, as the old saying went, anything goes.

Her father spoke again, his tone irritatingly neutral. ‘‘Of course, you know Prince Greyfell. And Prince Danelaw.’’

Liv nodded at each man in turn, taking care not to meet Finn’s eyes. ‘‘Yes, hello. Good to…see you both.’’ The old prince and the young one honored her with the usual fist-to-chest salute.

As Liv concentrated on not looking at Finn, she found herself pondering the whole prince question. In Gullandria, all male jarl born of married parents were princes, each a possible successor to the throne. When her father, for whatever reason, could no longer rule, the princes would gather in the gold-domed Grand Assembly building down in the capital. They would hold a special election, know as the Kingmaking, and a new king would be named from among them.

Thus, in her father’s palace, virtually every man she met who wasn’t a servant or a soldier was a prince. Kind of diluted the meaning of the word, if you asked Liv—which, of course, no one had.

Liv faced her father. She gave him a big smile. ‘‘Well, I’m glad you sent for me. I did want to say goodbye and—’’

Her father raised a hand for silence. ‘‘Liv, my dear. I didn’t call you here to tell you goodbye.’’

A weighty sense of foreboding caused her to swallow. Convulsively. ‘‘You didn’t?’’

‘‘No. I called you here so that we might discuss your upcoming marriage to Prince Danelaw.’’