Royals of Danovar: The Complete Series Read online

  An hour later, the rafters were in place. Simon crossed his arms to look at them, pleased with the clean lines of the roof. “Were I the smug sort, I’d say something along the lines of I told you so. Because I told you so.”

  She rolled her eyes and twisted her rings around on her finger. “Whatever,” she muttered, but good-naturedly.

  He glanced at her hands. If she kept twisting her wedding ring like that, she would lose it, and the thing had been in his family for generations. With exaggerated motions, he carefully took his own wedding band and signet ring off and put them securely in his pocket, hoping she would follow suit. Instead, she narrowed her eyes again, rammed her rings down on her fingers nice and tight, and then picked up a hammer to start working on the ladder.

  “That’s not the best placement,” he called when she wedged it up into the middle of the treehouse’s unfinished floor.

  “Where would you suggest?”

  “The far side would be more practical.”

  “Oh yes, that’s why people build treehouses—because they love practicality, not fun.” She started nailing the ladder in place with a toothy smile aimed at him.

  He shook his head, amused, but by the time they’d finished the treehouse that evening he had to admit she was right. The prototype did look more unique and fun with the ladder coming up through the middle of the floor like that. A guard with good timing brought them a cooler full of beer and Simon waved Penelope over to a bench so they could sit back and take in their day’s work.

  “You were right about the roof,” she said grudgingly after a few sips.

  “And you were right about the ladder,” he replied. They tapped their cans together in acknowledgement of a job well done as they admired the treehouse.

  “That looks damn good, if I say so myself,” Penelope told him. “And I wouldn’t have been able to do nearly as good a job on my own. How did you get to know so much about treehouse construction anyway?”

  He considered how much to tell her. The topic had always been a bittersweet one for him, wrapped up as it was in his father’s death. But he’d seen today how good a team he and Pen made and he decided to trust her with the whole truth even though it made him feel vulnerable as hell. “My dad and I built one when I was seven,” he said, his tone both wistful and heavy. “We spent the whole summer, hammered each and every nail ourselves. We were going to celebrate by spending the night in it right after he got back from a big trip to the Middle East. But he was killed there, and my mother and I were asked to move back to our ancestral lands, as our house had been part of Dad’s allotment for his ambassadorial position. Just like that, the treehouse we’d spent all summer building was gone, just like he was. That was the first time I realized how precarious a home truly is when you’re in our line of work.” He took a sip of his beer, waited a moment for the emotions to fade. It had been decades since his father’s death but every time he told the story a little piece of him felt like he was still standing there, bags packed at his feet, staring up at the treehouse that neither he nor his father would ever see again. “My signet ring is actually made from one of that treehouse’s nails,” he said. “I found a way to keep at least a little bit of my father, a little bit of my home, with me forever.”

  Penelope laid a hand on his arm and they sat in companionable silence for a moment, crickets chirping gently around them. “Well, you’re certainly great at building treehouses, and I love how passionate you were about this one,” she said after a moment. “I have to wonder though—since you obviously love building so much, why didn’t you become an architect or an engineer or contractor or something? Not that I’m ungrateful you chose to be my king instead, of course.”

  He shrugged. “I chose law because I thought it would help me better serve the Crown. Plus my father was devoted to the same profession and I always wanted to make him proud.” He reached in his pocket for his signet ring, needing to feel it on his finger again, missing that piece of his father and his old home.

  It wasn’t there.

  Frowning, he checked the other pocket, then his shirt pocket. He found his wedding ring but his signet ring wasn’t anywhere on him. Trying to tamp down his panic, he set his beer on the sidewalk and walked back toward the treehouse, kneeling down to sweep his hands across the grass in the failing light.

  “What’s wrong?” Pen asked, standing up behind him.

  “My signet ring. It must’ve fallen out of my pocket.” It had to be around here somewhere. He’d get a metal detector, outfit a whole squad of guards with them to sweep the area. He’d find it. He had to.

  “Oh no,” Pen murmured, and knelt beside him to help search. But the orange glow of sunset was almost gone, and there was nothing but dirt under his fingers.

  “Your Majesties,” said a voice from behind them.

  “Not now,” he snapped, unable to keep the growing panic out of his voice.

  “My apologies, but this can’t wait.”

  Something about the guard’s tone made Simon stop searching and sit up. At his side, Pen did the same. “What is it?” she asked cautiously.

  “It’s all over the evening news,” he told them, obviously uncomfortable with the information he was imparting. “A woman is claiming her baby is Nathaniel’s. The Castle is looking into it now, but if it checks out…”

  The meaning hit Simon like a load of bricks. He stared at the guard for a long moment before he could manage to voice the words. “Then the baby is the rightful heir to the throne.”

  Penelope would be unseated. The role he’d chosen, the life he’d given up everything for, would be gone. He and Pen would have to divorce and he’d return to Danovar empty-handed, or they’d stay married and he’d have to find the same sort of unfulfilling work serving the new King as he’d faced in his old homeland.

  In the space of a single moment his world crumbled around him yet again, and he was a little boy again staring up at a treehouse that would never truly be his.

  14

  A week later, Penelope stood beneath the treehouse and tried to look regal and calm, even though what she really wanted to do was wring either her hands or someone’s neck. The treehouse had finally been spotted by the castle’s higher-ups yesterday. Apparently they—whoever they were—were worried that it was unsafe for a king and queen to be cavorting in, and they’d brought in a structural engineer first thing this morning to review it top to bottom before Pen would be allowed back in. The woman and her team were up there right now, muttering and measuring, determining whether or not the project she and Simon had so lovingly created would need to be destroyed.

  But truth be told, she was at least a little bit grateful to have this distraction—because the treehouse wasn’t the only thing of hers and Simon’s that could be destroyed soon. The two of them, along with the rest of the whole castle staff it seemed, had done nothing but worry and research for the last week ever since that woman had come forward with the boy she claimed was the former king’s heir. It had been ascertained that she was in fact one of Nathaniel’s old girlfriends, and the timeline for the child’s birth did match up for having been before his abdication. So if he was truly Nathaniel’s son, he could in fact be the new King, and Penelope would get the boot post-haste.

  As would Simon. And what would he do then? Stay with her even though it meant giving up yet another home, even though it meant finding less fulfilling work? Or would he leave? If it came down to that, she hoped she would have the strength to tell him to divorce her. She didn’t want him trapped in a life he wouldn’t have chosen just for her sake. She knew how much his work meant to him, how badly he wanted a meaningful role in his service to royalty. The thought of their marriage ending tore at her, had been tearing at her all week, but she was resolute. She wanted him to be happy more than she wanted herself to be happy—and in a way, that only made things worse, because it meant she had fallen in love with him just in time to give him up forever.

  “Are you almost done?” she shouted into t
he treehouse. Her voice sounded frayed and snippy to her own ears. Regal and calm, she reminded herself, and tried to moderate her tone. “I’d love to hear any updates.”

  “Just a few more minutes. Your Majesty,” called the irate structural engineer without even looking up from her work.

  Pen frowned. She’d heard that pause before Your Majesty. She doubted it had been intentional, but the claims of a surprise heir had made everyone uncertain lately. That was why her coronation had been delayed too. She could only hope that the castle’s agents found Nathaniel—who was rumored to be off cavorting in some nudist colony in the Swiss Alps now—quickly, so they could perform a DNA paternity test on the child and get Pen’s life out of limbo. The toddler and his mother had already been secreted away in another wing of the castle until the matter was settled.

  Her fingernails dug into her palms and she started pacing in hopes of working off some of her anxiety. Funny how not too long ago she would’ve been thrilled to be booted from the throne. Now, the prospect of losing her post as Queen felt like her whole life was slipping through her fingers.

  The ladder creaked as the engineer descended. Pen marched over to meet her and waited, forcing herself to keep her chin lifted and meet the woman who would decide her treehouse’s fate eye-to-eye.

  The woman dusted off her hands. “Looks okay,” she said in a grudging tone, and everything in Penelope soared. It was a sign. It was a good omen, it had to be. If the treehouse could emerge unscathed, maybe she could too. “But,” the engineer continued, holding up a hand, probably sensing Penelope’s intent to spontaneously hug her, “when you’re building in higher trees like this one, you’ll need to make a few extra modifications for stability. My team will take two or three days to fix it up and do final checks and then you should be good.”

  “I want to see the blueprints,” Pen said immediately. She hoped to sell this treehouse through her toy store. If it needed alterations for higher trees, she’d have to put a kit together for that purpose to go with the treehouse plans.

  The woman hollered at a team member and soon Pen was poring over the designs, marking down notes and planning the best approach for her kit. By the time the engineer’s team finished for the day and left, Pen was satisfied she could make the treehouse safe for both low and high trees when she sold the final product. Feeling better than she had all week, she turned to head back to the castle.

  Kicked up by her toe, something metallic flipped through the grass. She bent down to examine it. A grin broke over her face when she recognized Simon’s ring, and she scooped it up as gently as if it were a baby bird. He would be so thrilled to have this back. He’d been wrapped up in his research lately, coming to bed late and barely having any time to so much as talk to her, but maybe this could break him away from his worries at least a little.

  She turned to head toward the castle again, intent on dragging Simon out of his library cave by force if need be, but spotted him walking toward her before she’d even taken a single step. Her smile widened. Yet another good sign. “Simon!” she shouted, waving her hands to get his attention.

  He spotted her and strode over, a grim look on his face. “They found out about the toy store,” he said before she could tell him the good news.

  She blinked as the words sunk in. “What do you mean?” she asked hesitantly, dreading his answer.

  “Parliament found out you still own it. They also found out about all the toy patents.”

  “But I got those under a pseudonym! How could they even find them?” she protested, and then flushed. She’d used an assumed name because it made her feel less vulnerable if the toy designs didn’t sell or had some flaw she hadn’t discovered, but when Parliament found out it must’ve made it seem like she was trying to go behind everyone’s backs to make secret profits.

  Simon saw her thoughts play out across her expression and nodded. “They’re discussing now whether you broke any ethics codes, but to be honest, whether or not they find any grounds to accuse you of formal violations—which they probably won’t—it still casts more doubt on your loyalty to your position as Queen and your stance on education reform.”

  Everything in her wilted. “But… we were going to make it so I didn’t profit from the sales anymore, so that everything would go to charity,” she whispered.

  Simon put an arm around her shoulders. After days of minimal contact with him, the gesture made her feel a little warmer, but even that couldn’t calm the storm of sick anxiety in her stomach. “I started the process, but it takes time,” he said, “especially with everything else that’s been demanding my time this last week.” He finally spotted her hand, still fisted around his ring. “What do you have there?”

  All the joy of the moment drained, she opened her hand and offered it to him. “I found your ring,” she told him, her tone lifeless. As soon as he took it, she turned and started toward the treehouse’s ladder. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I’m going to be good company this evening,” she told him. “I need some alone time to process all this. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

  15

  Simon stared up after Penelope, his signet ring clutched in his hand. She’d given him back a piece of himself while she was in her darkest hour. That smile on her face, the way she’d seemed to shine when he’d first approached her earlier—that had been because she’d found this, because she’d been excited for him despite the storm going on in her own personal life. And now she was climbing into their treehouse alone, to spend the night out in the freezing cold because she was worried she’d be “bad company.”

  He put his ring back on, stepped to the ladder, and climbed up after her.

  This was all his fault. Well, not all of it—he wasn’t the one responsible for a potential surprise heir, after all—but if he’d just realized what she was going through and supported her when she needed him instead of burying himself in his research the way he always did when things went wrong, she might not be so despondent. He’d been hoping to find some sort of loophole in the law, some way to prove that the baby couldn’t be the heir or to give Penelope more security in her place as Queen, but while he’d been closeted away in the royal library she’d been on her own.

  He couldn’t change the past week, but he had to let her know she didn’t have to be on her own anymore.

  He popped his head through the entrance and found her already huddled under one of the giant quilts they’d brought up here. “I’d like to be alone too,” he announced, pulling himself up. “Maybe we could be alone together?”

  She smiled softly and raised an arm, pulling the quilt up in invitation. He went to her and settled down behind her. Her warmth pressed up against him after having gone for a week with so little physical contact—it felt like going home at the end of a long day. When she shivered in the cool air of the Esconian evening, he tucked her into his arms and curled himself around her. Sunset bled into dark as he wordlessly held her, and after an hour, Penelope finally spoke.

  “I want this life,” she admitted in a whisper. “And I’m so scared it’s all going to be taken from us.”

  A tear trickled down her cheek and he kissed it away. “Me too,” he told her.

  She turned her head to kiss his cheek, her breath soft on his ear. She hesitated a moment, then kissed him on the mouth. He deepened the kiss, caressing her, wiping her tears gently with the pads of his thumbs, trying to comfort her with his body the way he couldn’t with his words. They undressed each other slowly, carefully, their movements highlighted by the moon’s silver cast. He held her tight against him as they lay on their sides. He reached around to her chest and slid his fingers across her pebbled nipples, then reached further down, stroking and caressing until her breath came in deep sighs and quiet moans. She slung a leg back over his hip, opening herself to him, and he eased into her inch by inch until he filled her.

  This, this, was what he’d been missing the past week. By closeting himself away from her, he’d deprived them both of the comf
ort of intimacy during a time when they needed it more than ever. He made it up to her now, with his slow, deep thrusts, with the way he whispered her name in the starlight as he came inside her, with the way he let his body tell her how much he loved her.

  Love. He hadn’t thought it could happen this quickly, but there could be no other word for what he was starting to feel for her. He loved Penelope Alcott, and he would fight for her right to be Queen with every breath he took. He wanted to make love to her just like this for the rest of his life. He wanted to support her, to be the one she turned to when she needed help. He wanted her, just her, forever.

  They lay under the quilt and recovered until it was too cold to stay outside. Then they cleaned up, gathered their things, and headed for the castle. Simon held Penelope’s hand as they walked and she clung to it like it was a lifeline.

  At the edge of the gardens, they nearly ran into a woman out walking with a little boy. He was two or three, and when he caught sight of the treehouse around the side of Simon’s leg, he gasped and stared at it in rapture.

  “Treehouse! Go see? Please, please?” he begged his mother.

  The harried-looking woman sighed and turned to Simon. “I’m sorry, he’s had way too much sugar today, I’m trying to get all his energy out so he can sleep but—” her words tapered off as she seemed to recognize the King. She flushed and bowed shallowly, with an uncertain look on her face.

  Simon smiled, though it was a bit strained. He really didn’t have the energy to do anything but go to bed right now, preferably with Pen cuddled up at his side. “I’m sorry, the treehouse hasn’t been cleared quite yet,” he told the pair. “The structural engineer said she needs to double-check a few more things before it’s ready for people to go inside.”

  The little boy promptly flopped down on the grass, tilted his head back, and bawled like his heart had been broken. The mother, obviously exhausted herself, tried to scoop him up but he squirmed away. When he skinned his knee upon landing back on the sidewalk, she looked nearly ready to cry herself.