Читать книгу The Baron and The Bodyguard - Valerie Parv, Valerie Parv - Страница 11

When next Mathiaz awoke, some of the pain has dissipated and he felt stronger. Sunlight streamed across the room. He recalled it had been dark when last he awoke. He must have slept around the clock.

He turned his head, smiling at the sight of his ministering angel seated beside his bed. She was asleep and looked even more beautiful than she had in his dreams.

Within minutes of the medical equipment registering his return to consciousness, Dr. Pascale hurried to his side. Instantly Jacinta stirred and came to her feet almost in the same moment. “Is something wrong?” she asked the doctor.

“You can ask our patient,” Pascale said with a smile.

“Mathiaz, you’re awake.”

Wishing he knew what he’d done to deserve the look of delight on her face, Mathiaz managed to nod. “Looks like it.”

“Do you know what happened?” Dr. Pascale asked.

Mathiaz struggled to think around the fog in his mind. The answer refused to come.

The doctor rested his fingers against Mathiaz’s wrist and frowned at the fast-beating pulse Mathiaz could feel from the inside. “Don’t agitate yourself. It will come back,” the doctor assured him.

“You were on your way to the royal treasury. You were caught in an explosion,” Jacinta supplied.

“Accident?” Mathiaz asked. Surely he should be able to remember such an event? When he tried, he met only blankness.

“The police and palace security are still investigating,” she said, but her expression told him she had her own theory. “If I’d been working for you…”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why weren’t you? You’re my bodyguard.”

She and the doctor exchanged concerned looks before the doctor asked, “What’s the last thing you remember before waking up here?”

Mathiaz had to think. “Taking Prince Henry some books for his nurse to read to him.”

“Prince Henry?” she said, sounding troubled.

Mathiaz’s uncle, Prince Henry, ruled Valmont Province under an ancient charter granted to the de Valmont family by the Carramer crown. “You should remember. You came with me.”

She took his hand, her grip warm and firm in his. “Mathiaz, the day you remember happened over a year ago. Henry died six months ago. In his will, he left you the Antoinette wedding ring. You were on your way to the treasury to have the ring valued when you were caught in the explosion.”

Mathiaz clung to her hand, wondering why holding her felt so right. Henry hadn’t been anyone’s favorite member of the family, but he and Mathiaz had respected each other. The old prince didn’t deserve to have his death erased from Mathiaz’s memory.

“What are you talking about? As far as I know, we saw my uncle yesterday. If he’s gone, then who…”

Her touch soothed some of his agitation. “Your cousin, Prince Josquin de Marigny, rules the province as Crown Regent until his stepson, Christophe, comes of age,” she anticipated his question.

That meant Josquin had married Sarah de Valmont, the American-born princess who had grown up in an adoptive family and borne Prince Henry an heir without knowing that she was Henry’s granddaughter, Mathiaz worked out. Their wedding and Josquin’s elevation to the Regency had vanished from his memory as if they had never taken place. He had missed baby Christophe’s accession to the throne, his cousin’s wedding, everything.

“How long have I been here?” he asked.

The doctor looked up from the chart he was studying. “You were brought in the day before yesterday. We worked on your injuries for a couple of hours, then you were semicomatose for another twelve and sleeping the rest. All up, you’ve been here two and a half days.”

“So how can I have lost a year?”

The doctor came closer, chart in hand. “My diagnosis is post-traumatic amnesia. Happens a lot in cases of closed-head injuries and shock. The mind can’t deal with what happened so it skips backward, to a more tolerable memory, giving the brain time to develop coping mechanisms.”

“You mean that whole year of my life is just…gone?” Mathiaz let his tone reflect his disbelief.

“Sounds that way. There’s no sign of any physical injury to the brain, but you were knocked unconscious by the blast, striking your head against the carved doors of the treasury as you fell. I’ll consult a specialist, since this is out of my field, but she’ll probably confirm my diagnosis.”

No wonder Mathiaz felt as if a team of miners were drilling through his brain. The treasury doors were eight feet tall and almost as wide, and made of foot-thick iron-wood. “No physical injury? That means my memory is intact. All I have to do is recover it, right?”

Dr. Pascale nodded. “That’s the good news.”

Mathiaz’s gut clenched involuntarily. “And the bad?”

“I can’t say when you might get your memory back.”

Mathiaz refused to accept that his memory of everything that had taken place in the last year was gone forever. Giving up wasn’t in his vocabulary. But some things were beyond even willpower. “You mean I might never recover those memories?”

“You have to consider the possibility.”

Mathiaz’s anger warred with his confusion. Having a headache the size of Carramer didn’t help. “What about hypnosis, therapy of some kind?” he demanded.

The doctor sighed. “This kind of retrograde amnesia is the mind’s way of dealing with the stress of major trauma. Trying to force a recovery could do more harm than good. Better to let yourself remember in your own sweet time.”

“Or not.” Mathiaz’s voice was edged with bitterness.

“Or not.” The doctor’s professionally calm expression didn’t change. Only his pale blue eyes registered the depths of his concern. “Give yourself time to recover before you start worrying too much.”

“Easy for you to say, Dr. Pascale. You don’t have a hole where the last year of your life is supposed to be.”

“It could be worse. The hole could have been in your head, if not for…”

“The angle of the explosion,” Jacinta said, cutting the doctor off in midsentence. “Another few feet closer to the source and you wouldn’t be here to complain about a few lost memories.”

Mathiaz intercepted a look between the two that he couldn’t interpret. Annoyed at being so obviously excluded, he glanced at the tubes feeding into his arm. “Are these really necessary?”

The doctor snapped the chart shut and replaced it at the foot of the bed. “One thing you didn’t acquire in the last year is a medical degree, Lord Montravel.” He made the title sound vaguely insulting. “I’ll be the judge of what you need and when you need it. Now just lie there and be glad you’re still in one piece.”

Jacinta asked, “Is he always this abrasive?”

Mathiaz grinned tiredly. “The time to worry is when he starts being nice.”

The doctor growled a negation. “You were easier to deal with when you were asleep.” But he managed to sound pleased at the same time.

“What else has happened that I don’t remember?”

“I’ll let Ms. Newnham fill you in on whatever you want to know. She’s the specialist when it comes to Lord Montravel. I have work to do.”

The doctor left and Mathiaz turned his head toward Jacinta. “What did he mean, you’re the specialist on me?”

She looked uncomfortable. “When they had trouble getting you to wake up after the surgery, Dr. Pascale called me in, hoping that I could get through to you.”

She had succeeded better than she knew, but her impersonal manner made him wonder if his erotic fantasies about her were just that, fantasies. “Why did he have to call you in? Don’t you work for me anymore?”

She glanced at the surgical monitors over Mathiaz’s bed. The readings evidently gave her cause for concern, because she said, “We don’t have to cover everything now. You should get some rest.”

His hand clamped around her wrist. “From the sound of things, I’ve had too much rest. I want to know what went on between us.”

Something flared in her unusual eyes, but was gone before he could identify it. “Nothing went on between us, as you put it. Fourteen months ago, you hired me following a security scare at the Château Valmont. Your valet, Andre Zenio, was fired for showing people around the palace without clearing them with the Royal Protection Detail. Zenio blamed you for getting him fired, although you weren’t the one who reported him. He started stalking you and making threats. Eventually the police caught him, and I went back to my work at the academy. End of story.”

Mathiaz remembered most of this. He knew that she ran a personal defense school in Valmont’s capital city of Perla. Mathiaz’s younger brother, Eduard, had taught a course at the academy and came back singing Jacinta’s praises. When Mathiaz started getting threats and being followed, the police advised hiring extra security. Jacinta had been the logical choice. She had the appropriate skills, but could be presented as Mathiaz’s girlfriend rather than as a bodyguard, saving the need to go public about the security scare.

“There was nothing more between us?” he asked, wondering why the question sounded so ridiculous, as if part of him already knew that there was.

She hesitated. “We were attracted to one another.”

Why did he get the feeling that was the understatement of the year? He sure as blazes was attracted to her, but in the incendiary kind of way that usually ended up in bed. He could hardly believe that she didn’t share his feelings. “How far did we take this—attraction?” he asked.

“We didn’t.”

Was he imagining things, or was her answer a little too glib? “I don’t believe you.”

She sketched a bow from the neck. “You have the right to believe what you choose, Lord Montravel.”

Pain fueled his irritation. “You can drop the Lord Montravel bit. We both know you never call me anything but Mathiaz or Baron when we’re alone.” They were alone now.

“As you wish, Baron.”

Her ready agreement didn’t fool him, either. “I may have forgotten the last year of my life, but I remember you were never awed by my rank and titles.”

“I’m an American, I was brought up in a democracy,” she reminded him, as if her California accent hadn’t already done so. “We don’t believe in bowing and scraping.”

He doubted if she would bow or scrape to anyone, regardless of her nationality. “You sure you’re not related to Alain Pascale?” he asked.

“Only by attitude.” She hefted a capacious shoulder bag off a chair. “I’d better leave you to get some rest.”

He felt the need to keep her with him. “What brought you to Carramer?”

She hesitated. “We have talked about this before.”

“Humor me.”

“Carramer is a beautiful, peaceful kingdom, and Valmont province is one of the most attractive regions.”

“With about as much use for a self-defense expert as a fish has for a bicycle,” he pointed out. Apart from an occasional problem like the security scare, Carramer had one of the lowest crime rates in the world. What wasn’t she telling him?

She shrugged. “Maybe that’s why I wanted to live here. The skills I teach are as useful for honing self-discipline and fitness as they are for fighting crime.”

If all her pupils developed figures like hers, he could hardly argue. She had moved a little away and she stood about five-eight, although trapped on the bed, he couldn’t see if that was with or without heels. With, his memory supplied. Without, he recalled, she only came up to his shoulder.

She had a waist he could nearly span with two hands, although he’d need a longer reach to span any higher. She was dressed in a clinging sunshine-yellow halter top that left her satiny shoulders bare and emphasized the fullness of her feminine curves. The top was tucked into the slimmest pair of black denim jeans he’d seen in a long time. Getting into them must be an exercise in itself, he thought, then slammed a lid on the thought. Trussed up as he was, letting himself dwell on such things was a recipe for terminal frustration.

“Why did you agree to come back?” he asked, hoping she’d give him a clue as to why she’d left his employ in the first place.

She looked startled as if the question was unexpected. “You needed me,” she said. Then she glanced away as if she had given away more than she wanted to.

He felt a surge of satisfaction. “If you were from Carramer, I could put your answer down to loyalty to the crown, but you’re not. You tell me there’s nothing between us, yet you come running the moment I’m injured. Does that sound like nothing to you?”

“You always did twist my words,” she snapped. “I’ve a good mind to…”

“Careful,” he cautioned her. “You’re dealing with an injured man.”

“He’ll be a lot worse injured if he keeps provoking me.”

“Does the word ‘treason’ mean anything to you?” he asked, pleased to have provoked some sort of response from her.

She wrapped her arms around herself as if she was cold. “As I recall, you threatened to have me charged with treason when I resigned. It didn’t work then, so I don’t see why it should change my behavior now.”

“I didn’t want you to leave?”

The question hung in the air between them. Finally she shook her head. “No, but you didn’t need a bodyguard after Zenio was caught.”

He must have had another reason for wanting her to stay, he concluded. He wished his head didn’t ache so abominably, making thinking such an ordeal. Belatedly he noticed something else. She wore a flesh-colored bandage on her left forearm. She saw him looking at it and dropped the arm to her side, where she’d held it since he woke up, wanting to keep him from seeing the injury, he assumed.

“How did you come by that?”

She glanced at the bandage then looked away. “It’s nothing. I was jogging past the treasury at the time of the bombing.”

He hated the thought of her being injured, however slightly. “You weren’t working for me, so what were you doing there?”

She had been running through the park and had seen him approach the treasury in his limousine. Even as she chided herself for acting like a sycophantic teenager, she had moved closer, hoping for another glimpse of him when he got out.

Automatically her gaze had swept the area. Her realization that something was wrong had been almost subliminal, an awareness that one of the terra-cotta pots of flowers edging the steps didn’t match the others. It was also out of alignment, as if it had been added in haste.

She had moved without conscious thought, grabbing the object and flinging it into the lake. Before the water could absorb the detonation the bomb hidden in the pot had exploded in the air, the blast catching Mathiaz as he walked up the treasury steps.

A flying fragment of hot debris had singed her arm, but she hadn’t paid the injury any attention until later. At the time, she had been consumed with worry for Mathiaz. Seeing him stir and moan, she had known he was still alive, and it had been all she could do not to rush to his side.

No one had seen her action, or if they had, they hadn’t reported her to the police because she hadn’t been detained or interviewed. She had waited long enough to see a doctor emerge from the crowd and check Mathiaz over then an ambulance had arrived and she had slipped away. Later she had telephoned the police and tipped them off about the flowerpot, without identifying herself.

Explaining about her role to the police or to Mathiaz would have meant revealing her feelings for him. She was far from ready for that, so she said, “When I saw your car pull up, I was curious to see what you were doing, that’s all.”

Her answer left him unsatisfied, as if he suspected there was more she wasn’t telling him. “You weren’t keeping an informal eye on me, by any chance?”

Her heightened color told him he was getting close, but she shook her head. “I told you, I was only called in after you became injured. Dr. Pascale hoped a familiar face would help bring you back to consciousness.”

“The family is full of familiar faces. Any one of them could have answered Pascale’s call as well as you could. There’s another reason, isn’t there?”

This time she met his gaze. “The police are treating the explosion as suspicious, so palace security asked me to come back for the time being.”

An upsurge of pleasure at the news that she was staying around, was offset by the worry her statement generated. Apart from an occasional malcontent like Zenio, Carramer had few antiroyalists. Fewer still who would actively harm the monarchy which ensured the country’s peace and prosperity. Mathiaz asked grimly, “What do you think?”

Her expression tightened. “Explosions don’t happen by themselves. We’ll know more when the experts have finished combing through the debris. The treasury portico and front courtyard were a mess.”

He fisted handfuls of the bedclothes, his tension rising. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“A couple of passersby had near misses. Mostly shock. As luck would have it, you arrived a few minutes early. The staff were on their way to greet you when the explosion occurred.”

“Then I should thank my stars we all got off so lightly.” Another thought occurred to him. “I did get off lightly, didn’t I? There’s nothing Pascale hasn’t told me?”

“Your leg is still attached, if that’s what’s worrying you,” she assured him. She gave a knowing smile. “And according to Dr. Pascale, everything else is in working order.”

Mathiaz masked his relief. As far as he could remember, he wasn’t involved with anyone, but he hoped one day to have a wife and children, especially a son to inherit his land and titles. Jacinta’s oblique reassurance meant they were still a possibility.

Good grief, he could be married already, and not remember. The thought made him realize how much could have happened in the months he had lost. He felt awkward asking Jacinta whether or not he was involved with anyone, so he kept silent. Surely if he had, she would have been at his bedside, rather than Jacinta?

“What happened to my leg?” he asked instead.

“They removed a chunk of shrapnel from your calf muscle, so you won’t be playing hopscotch for a week or so. You’ll be on crutches for another week, but after that, with care, you should heal as good as new.”

Some of his anxiety receded. “What about your arm?”

“It’s nothing.”

“One thing I do remember is that with you, nothing can cover anything from a bruise to the need for a bionic replacement.”

A smile blossomed, lighting up her features, and Mathiaz felt his insides tighten. In the months she’d worked with him—a year ago now, he struggled to remember—she hadn’t smiled nearly often enough. When she did, it was like the sun coming out. He felt an aching need to see her smile again.

“Were we lovers?”

Instead of making her smile, his question had her looking away. He felt cheated. In his dream when he’d held her in his arms, his mouth hungry on hers, she’d laughed with happiness. She’d responded out of her own hunger, and the ferocity of what they’d shared made him ache with the desire to translate dream into reality.

“If you weren’t injured, I’d be insulted,” she said. “It wouldn’t say much for my lovemaking capability if you couldn’t remember.”

She hadn’t answered his question, he noticed, wondering if her brittle response covered something deeper. More wishful thinking? Or a memory beyond conscious reach? He decided to match her brittleness, for now. “Considering I can’t remember what I had for breakfast, it’s hardly an insult.”

“French toast and double-strength black coffee.”

He stared at her. As far as he knew, that was the breakfast he’d eaten, except that it wasn’t yesterday, it was months ago. “How did you…”

“You have the same thing every morning except Sundays when you have eggs Benedict.”

Inwardly he felt gratified at how well she knew him. Warning himself not to read too much into the discovery, he said, “Am I that predictable?”

“Bad security, but yes. When I worked for you, we argued a lot about the need to vary your routines to reduce the risk of the stalker being able to predict your movements.”

The relationship he remembered was friendly but formal, at least on Jacinta’s side. On his own, he remembered a strong wish to turn their association into something more personal. Had they done so, or had it remained another dream? “I don’t recall arguing with you.”

“Trust me, we didn’t see eye to eye on anything much.”

She had revealed more than she knew, Mathiaz thought. He rarely argued with anyone. When they were boys, his brother, Eduard, used to complain that Mathiaz preferred to use logic rather than fists to resolve their differences. No wonder Eduard had ended up a navy pilot, while Mathiaz had gone into government.

Mathiaz wondered if Jacinta knew how much she had just revealed. For sparks to have flown between them, she had to have reached him on a level few people did. Their relationship may have started out purely professional, but somewhere along the line things had changed, he would swear to it. He was still agonizing over it when a nurse came in, smiled at him, and did something to the drip feeding into his arm, before making a note on his chart. Moments later, he was deeply asleep.

Jacinta wondered if he sensed her keeping watch at his side.