Their excuse was that none of her past transgressions could be proven. That they couldn’t punish her for her father’s sins. That even if she had a shady past once, she was reformed now, one-hundred-percent trustworthy and the best in the business.
“Shall we?” she was asking with unbridled optimism, nodding toward the safe door that protected the crown jewels.
He wished he could say, When hell freezes over. Instead, he stepped up to the iris scanner. “Istvan Kerkay,” he said for the voice recognition software. And with a soft hiss, the hydraulic lock opened.
The lights inside came on automatically. He motioned for her to proceed first. As outraged as he was, he was still a gentleman.
She gave a soft gasp.
He didn’t blame her. The sight had the same effect on him, and he’d been in here hundreds of times. In glass cases that lined the small chamber were the most important treasures of the kingdom. The crown without which there could be no coronation and no new king. The specter. The Queen’s tiaras. A ceremonial sword with a gold-and-diamond handle that he remembered his father wearing when he’d been a kid. A robe woven from threads of gold, once worn at coronations but now put away for all prosperity as it had become too fragile to even touch.
There were other treasures. The most important of the Queen’s jewels took up one long case. Another held the signet rings of all the old kings.
She moved to stand in front of the main case.
“None of those will be going anywhere, you understand,” he told her. “There’s a law forbidding any of the coronation jewels to leave the country.” If the Queen traveled to visit other heads of state, she usually took one of the lesser crowns or a simple tiara.
She nodded, but seemed distracted, as if she’d barely heard him. From the corner of his eye, he caught her fingers twitching. She was flexing her hands inside her gloves.
Probably thinking that he’d open one of the cases and let her take something out for closer examination. The temerity of her—He stepped back, ready to get her out of the vault. Everything about her being in there shouted wrong and went against his most basic instincts. “So now that we’re done here …”
That green-gold gaze flew to him, still filled with awe. Her delicate nostrils were trembling. “One more minute, please.” She wasn’t exactly begging, but she was close to it. There was a luminous quality to her all of a sudden, as if what she was seeing was lighting her up from the inside.
He understood exactly how she felt and resented having even this small thing in common with her. But he couldn’t deny that he had felt like this dozens of times in the past when he stood over a new discovery. No amount of time would have been enough. And he wasn’t about to indulge her, in any case.
“Maybe another time,” he said, but thought, Not as long as I live and breathe.
She walked out as if leaving physically hurt her, moving as slowly as possible, glancing back frequently.
He sealed the door behind them and made a show of setting the locks, then pointed toward the back of the treasury. “I was thinking a few paintings and dresses.” A number of those had been severely damaged over the centuries and had to be extensively restored. Save a few square centimeters here and there, little of them was original.
She looked back toward the vault and drew a deep breath before turning her attention to him. “I understand that you’re reluctant to let anything go. But we have to keep in mind that whatever I take to the Getty will also be going around the world to represent your country.”
She was making a play on his pride. Smart, but she wasn’t going to trap him as easily as that. “Be that as it may, the safety of the artifacts is my first concern.”
“And mine, as well.” Her chin came up, her eyes challenging him to bring up her past.
Of course, she could easily dismiss anything he said as malicious rumor. A prince did not stoop to repeating rumors in any case. He said nothing.
“I was thinking some of the artifacts left behind by the Brotherhood of the Crown,” she told him after a moment, wiping the small, triumphant smile off her face so fast he might have imagined it. “They make a compelling story. Eight brothers, princes, coming together to save their country. They were brave and dashing. It’s very romantic. I think their story is perfect to introduce Valtria to an American audience.”
Definitely not artifacts of the Brotherhood. She was beginning to give him a headache. He’d returned from an overseas trip only that morning. He was tired and irritable, a dozen things clamoring for his immediate attention. He didn’t have time for this.
“We have plenty of chances to discuss all that later. Now that you’ve seen the treasury, you should probably go and see the Royal Museum.” Let her be somebody else’s problem for a while. Her charm couldn’t do much harm over there. She could ask for all she wanted, and the museum director could promise anything she could hoodwink out of him. All final decisions on the items that would go on tour were Istvan’s. He could and would overrule any promise that felt injudicious to him.
She threw a disappointed, longing glance toward the wall of safety boxes and the other vaults, then gathered herself. “Of course. The museum is on my itinerary.” She looked around one more time. “Do you have some sort of an inventory of everything that’s in here?”
“Color catalogs.” A fine set. He’d put them together.
“I would love to take a look.”
“I’ll have them sent over to your hotel.” After he decided which catalogs she could see.
He called a guard to escort her to the museum and stay with her. Then he took one last glance at the room, to make sure nothing was missing, before he headed back to his office.
But when he was sitting at his desk at last, ready to tackle his correspondence, he realized he was completely exhausted. He’d flown home on the red-eye from Brazil where he’d given an address at a conference as the head of the European Society of Social Anthropology. He could never sleep on anything that moved, forget the first-class fully reclining seats of the plane. He had motion sickness, worse than the plague for someone who traveled as much as he did.
He glanced at his watch. Maybe he could squeeze in thirty minutes of rest. He was used to taking short breaks like this when out in the field on a dig. They often had to work around the clock to beat collapsing tunnels or bad weather.
Going up to his suite would have taken too much time, so he simply let his head rest against the back of the chair, stretched his legs in front of him and folded his hands over his abdomen. But far from refreshing, his sleep was restless, his dreams disturbing.
He woke to desperate knocking on his door some time later, blinked hard while he ran his fingers through his hair, then adjusted the collar of his shirt as he sat up straight. Cleared his throat. “Come in.”
Chancellor Egon burst through the door, breathing as hard as if he’d been doing laps around the grand ballroom. His eyes were wide with panic. “Miss Steler is missing.”
“Is she now?” And good riddance. Things were looking up. She had probably assessed their security system, realized it was beyond her and given up whatever thieving plans she’d been nursing. Istvan’s heart was suddenly lighter as he looked toward the upcoming week.
“We—” The Chancellor wrung his hands, apparently thinking this was some great tragedy. He was rather attached to the idea of the artifacts touring, his flying in for each opening and giving one of his interminable speeches on Valtrian glory. “We—”
“What is it?” Istvan glanced at the antique clock on the wall and realized he’d slept a lot longer than