Chapter Two
SHE HAD FOUGHT him valiantly, and for that she had earned a small amount of his respect. But now she was unconscious and bruised besides for her foolish escape attempt, and that made Ragnar less inclined toward positive feelings for his wayward wife.
He hauled her back up onto the horse, adrenaline still coursing through his veins. He hadn’t intended to turn this into a military operation but it certainly felt like a battle.
Why he’d thought it would be different, he couldn’t say now.
All he knew was battle.
And this creature…
He held her firmly as he began to maneuver his horse around to head back to where they had come, to where his private plane would take them back to the palace in Asland.
He would have her examined by a doctor as well. He was certain she’d fainted from fear, but there was a small chance she’d hit her head when she’d fallen. Or rather thrown herself off the back of the horse.
Little fool.
It had been a long time since he’d held a woman. He pushed that thought, and any accompanying desire, aside. There was no time for that. There was a reason he hadn’t indulged himself since taking over the throne. He had to stay sharp.
He felt the moment she woke up, her body no longer relaxed. She sat up against him, her body going rigid.
“Do not fling yourself down to the ground again,” he warned, against her ear.
She turned just slightly, her expression fierce. “Let me go!”
“We have an agreement.”
“I don’t have an agreement with you.”
“You do, signed by your father.”
“I didn’t sign it. It has nothing to do with me, except that my father decided my future without consulting me. That isn’t an agreement with me. Just with the patriarchy.”
“I will see the agreement honored.”
“Then you’re boring,” she shot back.
Boring?
He had been called a great many things, but never boring.
“Yes. Because you’re doing the exact thing that all men do. In the pursuit of power you will ignore everyone else.”
“I am ignoring nothing, little one. I have a country to run and to stabilize. Your father promised you to the next ruler of my country, and that is now me.”
“I don’t want to go with you.”
“I don’t care.”
If she was looking to find a man who might be moved to compassion by sorrow, or helplessness, then she was sadly looking in the wrong place.
All he had ever known was the brutality of survival.
He didn’t remember the details of his family.
Oh, he had been old enough when the royal family had fallen that he should have some memories of them, of his life at the palace before.
But they were gone. Erased by whatever trauma had come that day with the deposition of the king and queen.
With their execution.
He had read about it in documents, in news articles. The king and queen had both been slain in their seaside home, but he had no memory of that day at all, or of any of the days before.
It was his nanny who had helped him escape—so he had been told. Though she had passed him on to members of her own family and not stayed with him, and that was where things had gone wrong.
Everything crumbled. Nearly overnight. Any prosperity to be had in the country was gone. And he had been used for labor by the people who had taken him in.
At least there had been food and shelter. Though that had not lasted either.
Softness was not something he had experience with. She would not get it from him now.
“We are flying back to my country tonight.”
“How did you find me?” she demanded, the haughty, glittering green gaze that of a princess, however humble her clothing was.
“It was a mistake of your father to tell your brothers where you were. They’re fools.
Your father is not a fool, though he is a man who looks out for his own interests.
I understand that he was afraid I would not be interested in guarding that which he valued.
He made an alliance with my enemy, and I imagine he fears me for that reason.
He should fear me. But with you in the palace, he should know that he is safe.
But I will also expect an alliance in return. ”
“He isn’t going to take kindly to you kidnapping me.”
“But I didn’t. Because he sold you to me. I will send him the bride price that is in the paperwork.”
“A bride price?”
“Did you not know? It is not just eased trade and military alliances.”
“Well, that means he decided that he didn’t want the payment as much as he wanted to keep me safe.”
“That is one way of looking at it, I suppose. The truth is, I think what he was afraid of is that I might seek to uncover some of the more nefarious things he engaged in with my predecessor.”
“You can say whatever you want about my father, but Cape Blanco is not a dictatorship, and he did not commit human rights violations, not like the man who ruled your country.”
“No,” he said. “He didn’t. You are correct about that. He was too smart to do it here. Too smart to do anything to his own people. But I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. For the strength of my nation.”
If he could, he would see the destruction of every corrupt man.
But unfortunately, corrupt men were the pillars of society.
It made it difficult. What he had discovered when he had begun his mission for revolution, to reclaim the throne, was that he could not be a purist. There was no place in the world for a purist. Only for strength.
He could only do so much. He couldn’t change the entire system. What he could do was save his own country.
And Princess Fernanda was part of that salvation whether she wanted to be or not.
“Are we riding your horse back to Asland?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
They had landed the plane in a covert area in a desolate place in the Highlands, with permission from the Scottish government. He had told them it was a matter of diplomacy, and no one had pressed. As long as he was leaving as quickly as he had come, no details were required.
The cargo area of the plane was open, and gripping Fernanda tightly, he rode the horse up the walkway and straight into the stable area in the cargo hold.
“Why the horse? You could have a fleet of sports cars down here.”
“I could.” He didn’t offer her any explanation.
He didn’t owe her one.
She was not so foolish as to think that her happiness, her desires, anything played into the way that the world ran. She was like him. In a fashion. She had grown up in a royal family. And even though he had grown up outside of one, the reality of being a king informed everything he did.
They might have been able to remove him from the palace. To remove him from the throne, but they had never been able to remove the responsibility he had to his country, to his people.
It was part of who he was. The very blood in his veins.
He’d had amnesia, still did. And yet he had always known who he was, with a deep certainty. There had been years when the true meaning of that had been lost to him, but he had never fully lost himself.
When he knew nothing, he knew he was the rightful king of Asland.
When he knew nothing, he knew that his father’s blood called him to power.
“Will you tell me anything?” she asked.
“Do not bother me, or I will leave you down here with the horse.”
“Well…”
She was clearly weighing her options. Testing him or complying. He didn’t want to leave her down here, but he would. If she pushed.
He had no patience for hysterics.
He hadn’t really gotten a good look at her yet.
But as she stood there in the plain, glaring up at him, her green eyes glittering with rage, he finally got the measure of her.
She was small. In height and in build, her figure neat and proportioned well.
Her black hair went down to her waist, and was a wild snarl, all curls and now scattered through with pieces of the Highlands, since she had gone rolling in the dirt.
“Manage the horse,” he said to three of his men who had come down the stairs. “I’m taking the princess up so that she may rest.”
She didn’t move when he did, so he gripped her arm up by the shoulder, his hand fitting entirely around it easily.
He didn’t have to hold her firmly to hold her strong.
She moved in angry, halting steps behind him, going up the stairs and into the main seating area of the plane.
He had brought a small contingent of his military with him, while leaving his highest-ranking generals behind.
There was a sense of real stability in his country now. Now that all of these freedoms had been restored, now that people were able to live again, there was a sense of calm, and he didn’t worry about forces rising up against him. But he wouldn’t take chances.
Not at this time.
He ushered her through the main quarters quickly, and took her back to his private office and bedroom area.
Her head whipped around toward the bed, her eyes going wide, as she looked up at him.
“Don’t worry. I don’t want your body. I want your bloodline.”
“Wow. That is not reassuring at all. And seems to suggest you require my body eventually.”
“We’ll worry about that down the road. For now, I have to concern myself with quickly and publicly marrying you before reaching out to your father.”
“I have to agree to the marriage.”
“You don’t. The plane is about to take off, and then we will be in my country.
I could stand in the center of the palace and declare us married and it would be so.
You do not have to make vows to me. What I would like is a spectacle for all the world to see, so that there is no move your father can make that wouldn’t receive so much public outcry that it wouldn’t be worth it for him. ”
“But you require my obedience.”