“That is enough, Danielle.”

  Prince Akaba’s voice carried an authoritative command. Though he was not her king, he was still a king, or would be one. Roseline had honored his position and she must do the same.

  She turned away from the dismayed sight of the woman who helped to procure her sisters from their home.

  “Lucien, is there something between you and Miss Bradford I need to know? You seem familiar with her.”

  Danielle’s back prickled from the force of Prince Akaba’s gaze trained on her. “Marianne, I’d like to speak with Miss Bradford alone, please.”

  “What am I to tell Archie?”

  Archibald Gordon, the man responsible for tying her sisters in matrimonial chains, barring the way for them to ever come back to Arabette Grove. If Prince Akaba hadn’t taken her weapon, she probably would have trained it on that man as well.

  “Tell him whatever you wish. Whatever he decides, we will abide by.”

  “Can I trust that you will not bring any harm to anyone under this roof, Miss Bradford?”

  Danielle refused to speak. She acted like Arielle in one of her stubborn days, but she just didn’t care.

  Prince Akaba spoke in her stead. “I have the gun, Marianne. Miss Bradford won’t be doing anything with it.”

  Her nostrils flared. Don’t make a wager on that, my prince.

  When Marianne’s footsteps drifted away to some inner part of the mausoleum, Danielle turned back around.

  “Prince Akaba—”

  A quick wave of a hand silenced her. “Not here.”

  He motioned for her to follow him. She did so and he led her to a drawing room of sorts with a plush velvet settee and odds and ends to relieve the room of its spartan décor.

  When the door closed, Prince Akaba’s black eyes bore into hers.

  “Address me properly.”

  To anyone else, his demand would have presented itself as the epitome of arrogance. But Danielle knew of the political maneuvering of France and the kingdom of Dahomey. France, powerfully equipped with firearms and weapons to fortify an already formidable tribal kingdom like Dahomey against its enemies. Dahomey, bursting with rich and precious metals along with palm oil and other such exports France hungered for.

  The kingdom of Dahomey had held off the encroaching power of France for years. An uneasy truce was further complicated by Dahomey’s dark practices of slavery.

  Regardless, her mother demanded all her daughters show proper respect to the crown of a country. Danielle started to fall to her knees and bow as any citizen of Dahomey when Prince Akaba stopped her by placing his hand on her shoulder.

  “What is it, my prince?”

  “You will address me as your husband, Danielle.”

  For a moment, Danielle stood rooted to the spot, her body briefly unable to do anything more than stare at the man who made such an extraordinary statement. When the ability to speak returned, she gasped, “You must be mad to think I will ever address you as such.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Remember who I am.”

  Did all those of royal blood inherit the propensity to expect that every wish they demanded be granted?

  She spluttered. “I remember all too well, my prince. Mother told me of your wish to marry me seven years ago.”

  “I’m not surprised. Roseline would have warned you against my advances, I’m sure.”

  More like anointed her body with holy oil. Roseline’s ardent desire to keep the prince away from Danielle had bordered almost on paranoia. She recalled a conversation she had with her mother about the prince a few months before she passed away.

  “Why is it that you don’t wish for me to marry the prince?” Danielle asked.

  “Because the prince has no idea what he wants. He is like a boy with a new toy. At first, his fascination is all-encompassing. Once the newness wears away, he discards it and searches for the next amusement. He has an insatiable appetite, Danielle. In more ways than one.” Her mother scowled, a rare expression because she was always so content. “I’ll be sent to the dredges of hell before I allow him to treat my daughter in such a fashion.”

  “She did, so you can understand that I’ve no desire to address you as husband.” She cocked her head to the side. “You’ll receive due deference as a man fit for your station, my prince, but as for the other—” Her shoulders lifted in an insolent shrug. “You’ll have to find your bride elsewhere.”

  Danielle waited for the prince to deny her words, but he said nothing to that effect. Instead he asked, “Why is it that you believe your father is dying of a broken heart?”

  Just like that, the prince’s ridiculous wish was vanquished to the recesses of her mind while the reason for her sojourn to the Pinkerton office of Denver Colorado came hurtling to the surface once more.

  “He is listless as he never was, my prince,” Danielle watched the weak flames of the fire in the small hearth. “He stays locked away in his study day after day, sometimes all week without ever coming out. When he does, my father looks lost, as if the very reasons for his being had been stripped away from him.”

  “Are you certain he isn’t sick, Danielle?”

  “A broken heart is a sickness, my prince. No one can love as fervently as my father loves. When the source of one’s love has been ripped away, what can you expect? He loved my mother with every fiber of his being.” Her voice choked suddenly, as the emotion overtook her.

  “Danielle?”

  She swallowed the lump in her throat. “We, her daughters, kept him from sinking into despair. And now, Arielle, Brielle, and Camille have all left within this past year and have stranded my father on an island.”

  Danielle whirled around in a flurry of skirts. “For what, my prince? What does the Pinkerton agency have that my father does not?”

  ***

  “Ma reine, don’t you think you may be taking your contempt too far?” Lucien tsked. “Surely the answer isn’t to travel halfway across the world and kill anyone?”

  “Mock me all you wish to, Prince Akaba. Your family are safely ensconced in Dahomey while mine has been—”

  Lucien pursed his lips and then winced at the resultant pain. Although the throbbing had gone down, his mouth was still sensitive from Danielle’s attack. Despite that, his amusement dissipated like grains of sand into the ocean. Little did Danielle know the true state of his family.

  “Why did they have to come here?” she moaned.

  “One cannot fight against the destiny set before them,” he answered. He wondered if the observation was for her benefit or for his.”

  “We make our own destiny, Prince Akaba.”

  “Do we?” Lucien doubted that. Wasn’t his life the perfect illustration of a pre-destined path? When his father passed away, the throne of Dahomey would fall to him. A throne he had no wish to occupy.

  “Of course, Prince Akaba.”

  He shook the cobwebs from his mind. “Then your destiny is by my side as my queen.”

  “My prince, we have already discussed this. I will not be your queen.”

  You already are, Lucien thought as his eyes roved over her once more.

  “Must you look at me like that?”

  “How am I looking at you?”

  An embarrassed expression came onto her face and she turned away. “Never mind.”

  He grinned at her discomfort. “Eventually, you will bow to the inevitable.”

  She made a sound of mockery. “I cannot believe you have waited seven years in order to gain me as your bride. The world does not lack plenty of women who’d covet the honor of fulfilling the position.”

  “You underestimate your beauty,” Lucien told her. “Your mother had the kind of beauty capable of luring a thousand men to their deaths. You are her daughter. Don’t you think such loveliness would be passed on to you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Danielle returned bluntly.

  “Now you’re being modest, ma reine. Incredibly so.”

  “I never said I lacked admirers, Prince Akaba. I am not unaware that I hold a certain portion of my mother’s attraction that some men may be tempted by. However, it’s my sister, Arielle, who bears the most resemblance to our mother.”

  “Your eldest sister is exquisite,” Lucien agreed. “All the Bradford women are. But none of them are you.”

  Her eyes hardened like diamonds. “What flattery are you attempting to weave, my prince? For what purpose?”

  Lucien shrugged. “Flattery implies a hidden agenda. My desire to have you as my bride is not hidden. You’ve been aware of it for years even if you had forgotten.”

  “You speak solely of desire, Prince Akaba, but nothing of love.”

  “Love disparate from familial relationships is non-existent, ma reine,” Lucien told her with certainty. “Desire, base though it may be, is honest. Of all the women in the world I have met, you are the one I’ve craved the most.”

  “That is because you’ve never had me. And you never will.”

  Lucien groaned deep in the back of his throat. “Nothing whets a man’s appetite more than a challenge.”

  “And once met,” Danielle retorted as her gray eyes narrowed and hardened like stone, “he bores easily. I refuse to be an object of your boredom just as I dislike being the source of your fleeting desire.”

  “I’ve no time for this,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand. “I need to see my sisters. They must return home.”

  At her words, Lucien’s thoughts of conquest receded, usurped by sorrow which swelled in his breast. Hangbe, his mind whispered in mental agony.

  He blew out a harsh breath as he spoke. “I can tell you this: your father is not dying from a broken heart.”

  “What do you know of such things, Prince Akaba?”

  Lucien could have spent a day and a half enlightening her about the effects of a broken heart. It could maim you for the rest of your life. But it could never kill you. He knew that firsthand.

  “I know more than you think,” he decided to tell her without going any further than that.

  The door burst open, startling them. Archie Gordon stood within the doorway, his eyes aflame with green fire as he glared at Danielle across the room. To her credit, she did not cower before the sight of a tall, bristly Scottish man. In fact, she raised that proud little chin of hers and met his gaze unflinchingly.

  “How dare you threaten Mo Chrìdhe!” Archie stalked into the room with Marianne close behind.

  “You must be Archibald Gordon,” Danielle greeted in flat, conversational voice, as if this was an introduction and not a confrontation.

  “I’ll not have anyone bring harm to my wife.”

  Archie’s rage permeated the room. Lucien wondered if he’d have to protect Danielle. The Scottish man looked ready to tear her limb from limb. He understood it. Marianne was his wife, and no one threatened a man’s wife unless they wanted the wrath of God visited on their person.

  Had Danielle forgotten that? Her own father was an example. Lucien remembered Brutus’s devotion for Roseline. No one would ever have thought to offend that man’s lady.

  Perhaps Danielle hadn’t taken into consideration that men who loved hard were forces of nature to be reckoned with.

  Though Lucien desired Danielle he knew he could never come to care for her with an intensity as potent as Brutus, Archie, or any other man who possessed a whole heart. His heart had been shattered years ago. It would never heal. Discovering the futility of such a thing as romantic love had cured him of that long ago.

  Mildly, he watched as Archie repeated almost verbatim the words that Marianne had told her, adding, “Your sisters have proven to be an asset to this agency.”

  Danielle insisted, “I want my sisters returned.”

  “I want you tried for threatening my wife’s life,” Archie clipped out.

  Danielle’s eyes sparked, the gray orbs brilliant in her dark face. “My father is dying.”

  “In normal circumstances, Miss Bradford, I would sympathize with your pain. But frankly, I don’t give a—”

  “Archie, please!” Marianne interrupted.

  The man breathed noisily through his nose. “I don’t care,” he amended. His hands shook with controlled violence. “If you were a man, I’d tear you to pieces.”

  “You wouldn’t be able to lay a finger on me,” Danielle sneered. “Prince—,er, Lucien has already discovered that for himself.”

  A bit of Archie’s range petered out. “Lucien?” He turned and his eyes widened as if seeing him for the first time. “What happened to your lip?”

  “She did,” Lucien gestured in Danielle’s direction. “She attacked me with all the skill and dexterity of a mino warrior.”

  Archie stared disbelievingly as he focused once more on Danielle. “You threaten my wife and then you attack one of my agents?”

  Danielle’s prideful demeanor disappeared as she scowled. “Agent?”

  Lucien almost grinned. Didn’t see that coming, did you, ma reine? Her astonished gaze turned toward him. He shrugged. For five years he’d been a Pinkerton agent. Then, when Hangbe had gone missing, he’d resigned in order to become a client.

  “My wife,” Archie continued, “seems to think we shouldn’t let the incident go any further than with the people in this room. I, on the other hand, believe otherwise.”

  “You can throw me into any of your rat-infested prisons,” Danielle declared defiantly, recovering from the knowledge of discovering he was a Pinkerton agent. “Just as long as my sisters are brought back here so they may go home. My father needs them, and I will do anything, pay any price, in order to spare his life.”

  A frisson of excitement danced along Lucien’s skin. Now I have you, ma reine. Hangbe, I am coming for you.

  “You Bradford women are all the same.” Archie scratched his beard. “Stubborn, mule-headed—”

  “Beautiful,” Lucien interjected.

  Archie glared at him from over his shoulder. “Irrelevant, and you know that, Lucien.”

  Time now to intervene. Danielle had said the words he’d been waiting for. “Archie, I do believe I have the solution. It’s obvious that some sort of punishment is to be met out. If you’ll give me some more time with Miss Bradford—”

  Archie shook his head. “All right, Lucien. Come see me when you are through.” Taking Marianne’s hand gently into his own, he led her out of the room and closed the door.

  “Well, Prince Akaba. What do you propose that will mete out my appropriate punishment and satisfy all parties in exchange for my sisters?”

  Lucien straightened and then went to stand before Danielle. He put aside all else. It was time for Danielle to bow to the destiny that was hers from the moment he laid eyes on her.

  In a hard voice which surprised her, evident from the wrinkle in her brow, he announced, “You are going to become a Pinkerton agent.”

  Danielle laughed, a husky sound that titillated her ears. “Prince Akaba—”

  “This is no laughing matter,” he warned her, “Either you become a Pinkerton agent, or you go to jail. Everything I am about to tell you is true. You will become a Pinkerton agent because you are going to help me.”

  The words he dreaded admitting broke from the prison he had placed them in.

  “My twin sister has been abducted.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  The prince’s mercurial mood had altered once more. Danielle tried to ignore the man’s volatile disposition as well as the implications of what he demanded she become.

  A Pinkerton agent. The only way that would happen was through a marriage of convenience. Everything inside of her recoiled. Her blood thickened like molasses in her veins as she recalled why she detested the Pinkertons so much.

  These marriages had taken her sisters away from their father. She would not, could not, add to his pain.

  She gave herself a mental shake and focused once more on what he said.

  “Abducted?” The ugly word soured the back of her tongue. “By whom?”

  Prince Akaba moved away from her. He prowled the confines of the drawing room, his movements controlled, but underneath that surface calm, his tension remained a palpable entity. Reminiscent of a black tiger caged and searching for escape. “We’re not sure.”

  Danielle’s ears lifted at the verbiage. “We?”

  “My father and I,” he clarified. “He received a note of ransom while he visited France during his last diplomatic trip. My sister, Hangbe, according to our understanding, was in the care of the nuns of the convent. Two weeks ago, when the nuns who were to oversee her religious instruction came for her daily lessons, they found the room empty.”

  “That isn’t possible. Convents do not permit anyone to visit at night. Even in the day, no one is allowed but those purposed to be there.”

  “Yet, ma reine, my sister is gone.” Sarcasm dripped from his voice. “Surprisingly, no one has seen her.”

  “Impossible.” Danielle knew the distinctive sight of a tribal royal like Princess Hangbe would hardly go unnoticed.

  “Is it?” Prince Akaba slashed the air in a gesture of frustration. “Her disappearance leads me to believe there is political intrigue afoot.”

  Danielle had to agree. France’s truce with the kingdom Dahomey stayed as it was due to their desires for the exports of the country. However, France was more powerful than Dahomey in weaponry. Soon, France would do what it could to break the truce between the nations and conquer the kingdom for its own purposes.

  “You may be correct, my prince.” With cynical observation, she added, “These Western powers do not allow others to rule when you have something they want.”

  “So it would seem.”

  A thought niggled in the back of her head. “My prince, if the princess was abducted in France, then what are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be back in France?”

  The prince stared at the fire for a long moment. Firelight danced along the planes of his face, bringing into focus his brooding countenance. Prince Akaba was one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen.

  In other circumstances, she would have allowed him to pursue her. Yet, her mother’s warnings had stayed her. Now, years later, she found Roseline’s admonitions to be accurate.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8