Taking him, p.7
Taking Him, page 7
‘Oh, shit!’ Cormac said, thrusting his glass at Alistair. ‘I’m supposed to be over there too.’
‘Good luck!’ his new royal friend called, raising Cormac’s untouched drink his way as he tried to quickly manoeuvre through the crowd, who smirked at him as he went.
He reached the King and Queen and took a deep breath before bowing from the waist and holding a perfect forty-five degree angle as dictated by royal tradition.
He heard the frustrated sigh the King heaved.
‘Arise.’ With no names or acknowledgement beyond that single word, Cormac knew that he’d royally screwed up. Cormac stood back to his full height and looked down at the King; the man must have only stood about five foot five, but it was Cormac who felt tiny when his cold blue eyes stared at him.
‘Victoria, I will speak with you.’ The monarch didn’t take his eyes from Cormac, but Cormac saw her head bob before she stepped aside. Unsure of what to do, the King passed him, his eyes still on Cormac’s until it was physically impossible to hold them any longer. But even knowing the King was walking away, Cormac couldn’t help but feel as if the monarch was still watching him.
He heard a door open, before closing almost immediately after.
Alistair came up to him and handed him back his drink.
‘Deep breath, buddy,’ the other man said, and Cormac found himself doing exactly that, oblivious to the point he’d been holding it the whole time. ‘Knock this back and then get another. I’ll see you in a while. Duty calls.’ The man patted his shoulder before following in the direction of his grandfather.
Cormac followed Alistair’s instructions, grabbing another drink from the waiting staff who had begun to move around the party again as their guests began to murmur; obviously, the topic of conversation was how much of a disaster that had been.
‘I’ve seen worse,’ Queen Katrine said with an amused grin before someone caught her attention and she wandered away.
‘Cormac, are you okay?’ Geri asked, taking the again empty tumbler from him, and replacing it with another. The waiter went to protest, but Geri’s glare made the man scarper away.
‘Probably shouldn’t give him too many of those if he’s got to face the King again,’ Axel reminded them. Cormac closed his eyes and swallowed the drink in one gulp.
Victoria followed her grandfather into the throne room and took a deep breath as she positioned herself at the bottom of the dais. She’d been expecting to be called before him since the official announcement was released, figured he’d demand to speak to her when she called the palace to ask to use the Blue Ballroom—the smallest of the three in the palace—but Michael, the palace’s head butler, had merely told her it would be arranged.
She had hoped against hope that the King was merely going to ignore her pending nuptials as anything other than finally being done with her and being able to get Alistair down the aisle next. In fact, she’d counted on him reading her announcement and immediately calling Alistair with the date of his own wedding.
She really should have known better, she realised, as she watched him take a seat on his throne. He was so bloody dramatic. She heard the door open and close again and caught Alistair coming in from the corner of her eye. At least the Grand Duke wasn’t—
Victoria took another deep breath and resisted rolling her eyes as her uncle followed in her cousin’s wake.
Of bloody course. He just loved seeing her or her sisters being taken to task. Victoria swore he held a grudge against them just because her mother ran off and forced his father to marry him off immediately to beat her mother’s elopement by one day—officially. She bit back the smirk, recalling her mother showing her their true marriage announcement dated one day before the Grand Duke’s.
‘Lady Snape.’ King Richard’s voice, as husky and thready as it had once been deep and commanding, called her to attention.
‘Your Majesty,’ she curtseyed again, this time shallow and quick.
‘I think you know why I wish to speak to you.’
‘You wish to congratulate me on my betrothal and discuss my upcoming wedding plans?’ Her hopes were dashed when her grandfather narrowed his eyes and pursed his lips.
‘We’ll get to that. Maybe.’ Victoria swallowed. ‘Would you care to explain to me the reason for the expedience of your engagement?’
‘When one falls in love, one knows, sire.’
She tried to keep her tone casual, almost flippant and managed not to shrug as she spoke. Richard shook his head at her antics before dropping his cheek into his hand as he watched her. ‘There’s no point in waiting when one knows.’
‘You are most certainly your mother’s child,’ he muttered. Victoria swelled with pride at the comment, uncaring if it was meant to be a slight against her. They all knew her mother had barely been tolerated after her elopement.
‘Exactly, and she knew when she fell in love.’
She bit her lip and dipped her head a little, a slight hesitation before she added, ‘I imagine the Grand Duke did too, with how suddenly his wedding occurred—’
‘You bite your tongue, girl!’ her uncle snarled from somewhere behind her. Richard held up his other hand as he kept his gaze on her. She heard the door open and close again in the silence and she felt a little smug in the fact her uncle had been dismissed from her berating. She wished she were brave enough to land a few more points that evening.
Finally, the King sighed. ‘Pray tell,’ he began. 'How did you meet your fiancé?’
Victoria’s mind whirled as she tried to figure out how much he knew. Marcus said he’d intercepted Geri’s call the night of the attack, but then the papers had printed that picture of her stepping out of the club and, afterwards, the hospital. She’d been waiting for the King’s call about that ever since, but it had never arrived.
The same with him not calling her after the announcement had appeared.
A flicker of hope sparked to life at the thought that perhaps he didn’t know anything, and she’d be able to play this off as simply falling in love and not wanting to wait after all.
He shifted in his seat, straightening up, his fingers curling over the front of the arms of his throne as if he wanted to dig his nails in. Victoria swallowed; he wasn’t known for being temperate when he wanted something. When he spoke, his tone was impatient, the words spoken through clenched teeth.
‘I am waiting.’
She opened her mouth to speak, to spin her tale, but she caught Marcus’ warning a second before she spoke. He stood to her grandfather’s right, just off the dais, and while he didn’t move, his eyes stared intensely at her, and his face—while anyone else would say it remained neutral—told Victoria not to try and bullshit the King. The story they were going to tell the press about their whirlwind romance would not work here.
‘I met him after a date went wrong and Cormac came to my rescue.’ It was the truth, just worded a little less dramatically than it had been.
‘That’s an interesting way of explaining how you were drugged, possibly to be sexually assaulted, avoided being kidnapped only by happenstance, ended up in a strip club, and are now engaged to the stripper who rescued you—as you put it.’ He screamed the word stripper before going deathly quiet again. Victoria turned accusing eyes towards Marcus, but the man remained stoic even to her.
‘I wouldn’t look to Captain Walker,’ Richard said, calling her attention back on him. ‘The captain here might still be soft towards you, might hold things from me that I should know about, but he’s the captain of my guard, not the police force as much as he, his predecessors, and I’m sure his successors would like to think. Nor does he control the judges; those at the Broken Hill report directly to me.’
She bit her lip, unsure of what she was supposed to say.
She wasn’t sure if he was angrier at the fact she’d been attacked, that it had been dealt with without him, that they had attempted to hide it from him completely, or that she’d rushed into an engagement.
It was probably all the above.
She was also sure that he hadn’t been too happy at the whole dating spree she’d been on just months before she announced a surprise engagement on him and the nation.
But she didn’t want him knowing about the will, didn’t want him to hinder her sisters in their plight of getting their own inheritances—even if they didn’t seem that interested in the money—just so he could exact revenge on their father. Even in death, she knew their grandfather wouldn’t hold back on his vengeance.
He blamed Patrick Snape for so many transgressions when really he should have been looking in the mirror, as her mother had told her not long before she’d died and Victoria could finally begin to understand the goings on that their family kept secret from the public. Of course, she couldn’t say such things to her grandfather.
‘Cat finally got your tongue?’
‘Yes, all those things happened,’ she finally admitted, deciding a half-truth was better than any other option she had. ‘As I said, I met Cormac when he rescued me from a date that went wrong. I spoke nothing but the truth.’ The King scoffed at her audacity.
‘So, you’re going to marry a man you just met last week-’
‘Seventeen days ago,’ she interrupted. Marcus actively rolled his eyes, and she heard Alistair groan somewhere behind her.
Richard merely glared at her with his cold, piercing blue eyes.
It wasn’t like her. Victoria was the one who kept her head down, who blended in, who kept her mouth shut in the presence of the man before her, speaking only when spoken to. Sure, she’d been taken to task before, but it had always been for little, insignificant reasons.
But, she decided, in for a bit, in for a crown, and ploughed on—she’d probably never get the chance again!
‘And yes, I am going to marry him. As you are aware, the date is set for August twenty-ninth, the Archbishop of Avon will preside over the service at the Cathedral, and invites are already being printed and will be sent next week.’
‘I will remind you this once’—Richard held up a single finger—‘that you will speak only when spoken to.’
‘My apologies, Your Majesty, but I’m simply unsure which one of my supposed transgressions offends you the most,’ she snapped back. Marcus shook his head in exasperation at her, as the King shot up out of his chair, moving so quickly for someone who appeared so old and frail. However, Victoria knew that fragility to be an act, something to keep the public soft and caring towards him. The man was as fit as he’d ever been and as sharp as a knife ready to plunge into you with deadly force.
She heard heated whispering behind her but resisted the urge to turn away from her grandfather to glare at the spectators so obviously enjoying the show.
‘There is a man sitting in the Broken Hill serving a minimum of thirty years. I’d like to know why you felt it important to not bring this to the public’s attention.’
‘I didn’t want the public to know that I had been vulnerable. If it was in the public domain that someone was able to do such a thing to a member of their Royal Family, there might be an outcry. My aunts, uncles, cousins, and sisters could all be shut away in fear, and as it was an error in my judgement—trusting a sister’s word over getting a full security debrief from Captain Walker—I decided not to subject my family to such measures. Again.’
King Richard narrowed his eyes at her. She knew it was the perfect diplomatic answer. It was also completely true. No one outside of the royal circle would know that Victoria would need both hands and three toes to count how many thwarted kidnapping attempts she’d endured before she’d even hit thirty. She’d had four stalkers, had been hacked seven times, and had even been held hostage once. Although, that was more a case of wrong place, wrong time than a deliberate means of getting to her, and the public had definitely been aware of that one. Hell, part of it had been broadcast live on the internet. And afterwards, the whole family had been locked down for months before they slowly started to begin public appearances again after the Guard established they had caught everyone involved in the situation.
‘Yet you are quite happy to have your love life in the public domain? You’ve made quite a little spectacle of yourself these last few months. Different man on your arm every time you go out-’
Something within Victoria snapped. She was so tired of being pushed around, of being quiet, trying to be the perfect wallflower so she never drew attention to herself. Where had all that got her? A broken heart, problematic relationships with her sisters, and an empty life. She wanted a quiet, happy life, where she could welcome her sisters and forge relationships with them, the relationships she should have always had. She wanted a happy marriage and children running around a home. She wanted to watch royal events, not be part of them, and she wanted, so desperately wanted, not to be beholden to the man standing in front of her any longer!
‘No! No, I’m not happy to have my life splashed over the media! I don’t want the public knowing every facet of my life. I am not a source of gossip or entertainment. I should be able to go for a lunch with a friend or loved one without having my every move scrutinised; what did I eat and drink, who was I with, what did they have? It’s infuriating!’
She understood people who sought fame; actors, singers, influencers—whatever the hell they were!—being hounded and tracked, since it was what they needed to stay relevant. But people like her who had no choice in this; who were born into a family that had already established themselves as a public entity, why was she subjected to such scrutiny?
‘You are infuriating. You are a member of the Royal Family; you are privileged in ways so many others are not-’
‘I don’t want to be a member of the Royal Family!’ she shouted back. ‘I want out! Once I am married, it will be over and done with. I will rescind my title, give up my patronages—I’ve already moved out of Renfrew.’
‘How dare you speak to me-’
He moved his hand, raising his fist towards her and Victoria knew she was going to get the finger in the face, the old index jabbing towards her when he wanted to make a point. She always found it hard to focus on him when he did that, no matter how hard she tried. She always ended up looking at the finger and going cross-eyed in the process. It meant she’d lose the argument due to losing the fire in her belly, and once more, he’d beat her into submission.
Damn him.
‘Don’t you dare!’ roared a voice behind her, accompanied by heavy rushing footsteps. It took a moment for both her and the King to realise someone had interrupted them, but not for Marcus or the rest of the Guard present. And it took another second for Victoria to recognise who was causing the commotion.
‘Cormac!’ Alistair shouted out after her betrothed, but was too late. Victoria turned just in time to see two Royal Protection Officers trying to tackle Cormac to the floor, grappling with him as he fought them off. He kicked one away with a move she’d only seen in movies, and then blocked the other with his shoulder. He used that guard as an aid to kick at another one, before grabbing the same officer’s arm and twisting it around. The first Guard came back at him, and Cormac punched him square in the nose, making it explode blood across his face.
Victoria gasped at the action, her hand flying to her mouth in both horror and awe. She’d never seen the officers have such a hard time in dealing with a single attacker, and she was caught up in admiring her Prince Charming—who, dressed in a tuxedo, looked more like James Bond—that it took her longer than it should have to react.
‘Get off him!’ she cried as she hurried forward, only to have another Guard hold her back. Marcus and two more Guards joined the fray and finally, they caught him, dropping him to the floor. Marcus planted his knee between Cormac’s shoulder blades as one officer sat on his feet and the other kept his arms behind his back. Cormac struggled, trying to twist from their grasp but they held him firm. She tried to dart past the Guard blocking her, but he grabbed her around the middle and lifted her off her feet as she kicked out and scrambled blindly at his hands.
‘Get off him!’ she screamed as she thrashed as much as she could.
‘Put her down!’ Cormac grunted; his voice not as strong as it had been. He kept trying to lift his head to see where she was, and what was happening to her, but Marcus kept forcing his knee further into Cormac’s back, making it difficult for her betrothed to lift his head for too long.
‘Marcus, stop it!’ she cried. She dug her nails into the underside of the wrists of her captor—just as Marcus had shown her—and the man barked out a cry of pain, trying to keep his grip on her as she dug deeper still. She swore she drew blood before the Guard was no longer able to keep his grasp on her, and she finally found her feet touching the ground again and ran to Cormac’s side.
‘Get off him,’ she snarled as she pushed at Marcus. He refused to move, and she didn’t have the strength to force him off her future husband.
She dropped to the floor and allowed Cormac to see that she was okay, relatively unharmed, and begged that he calm down.
‘Please, they won’t let you go if you keep raging like this,’ she told him, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible.
‘Get them off me! I won’t have them treat you like that!’
‘But why did you get riled up?’ she asked, not having the slightest what had sparked her perpetual rescuer to come once more charging in on his white steed. There’d been nothing out of the usual in the meeting and she hadn’t even known Cormac was in the room.
‘He was going to hit you,’ Cormac spat and moved his head to try and glare at the King who stood a few steps away, staring down at the duo with open curiosity.
‘Oh please,’ her uncle said. ‘No one was going to hit anyone. I don’t know where you come from but in polite-’
‘This has nothing to do with you,’ she sneered at her uncle.
‘I will be King one day, so this has-’
