Affaire Royale by Nora Roberts Page B

blinked the tears away. “I’d just as soon you had the common sense. It would get in my way.”
    “And Alexander? How do I—you,” she amended, “feel about him?”
    “Oh, Alex is okay.” He spoke with the tolerance of a brother for a brother. “He has the hardest road, after all, with the press forever hounding him and linking him with every woman he looks twice at. Discretion’s an art with Alex. He has to be twice as good at everything, you know, because it’s expected. And he has this roaring temper that he has to pull back. The heir isn’t permitted to make public scenes. Even private ones can leak out. Remember when that overweight French count drank too much champagne at dinner and—” Smile fading, he broke off. “I’m sorry.”
    “No, don’t be.” She let out a sigh because the tension was back. “All this must be frustrating for you.”
    “For once I’m not thinking of myself.” Then he stopped and took her hands. “Brie, when Father called me at school and told me you’d been abducted—nothing’s ever scared me like that. I hope nothing ever will again. It was as though someone drained the blood out of me—out of all of us. It’s enough just to have you back.”
    She held his hands firmly. “I want to remember. When I do, we can walk in the gardens again and laugh over the French count who drank too much at dinner.”
    “Maybe you could let your memory be selective,” he suggested. “I wouldn’t mind you forgetting the time I put worms in your bed.”
    Brie’s eyes widened as he continued to look at her. He was bland, innocent and attractive. “Neither would I.”
    “You didn’t take it very well,” he told her, thinking back. “Nanny gave me a tongue-lashing that left me raw for a week.”
    “Children have to be taught respect.”
    “Children?” This time he grinned and pinched her chin. “It was only last year.” When she laughed he hesitated a moment, then gave in to the need and pressed his cheek against hers. “I miss you, Brie. Hurry back.”
    She rested there a moment, drawing in his scents, making him familiar. “I’ll try.”
    He, more than anyone, understood that love had its own pressure. When he released her, his voice was light again, undemanding. “I’ve got to take the dogs back before they dig up the jasmine. Would you like me to walk you back?”
    “No, I’ll stay awhile. I have a fitting this afternoon for my dress for the AHC ball. I don’t think I’ll enjoy it.”
    “You detest it,” Bennett said cheerfully. “I’ll be done with Oxford and back for the ball.” Done with Oxford, he thought again. The idea was nearly too good to be true. “I can dance with you while I look over the girls and decide which one I’m going to devastate.”
    She laughed. “I believe you have all the makings of a rake.”
    “I’m doing my best. Boris, Natasha.” He called for the dogs and strolled out of the gardens with themscrambling at his heels.
    She liked him. It relieved her to know it, to feel it. She might not remember the twenty years they’d shared together as brother and sister, but she liked the man he was today.
    Sticking her hands in the pockets of her comfortable baggy slacks, Brie walked a little farther. The scents from the garden were mixed and heady, but not overpowering. The colors weren’t a rainbow, but a kaleidoscope. As she walked, she tested herself. Without effort, she could identify each plant. The same way, she mused, she’d been able to identify the artists of the dozens of paintings in the Long Gallery in the west wing.
    The artists, yes. But not the subjects. Her own mother’s face would have been that of a stranger if Brie’s resemblance to her hadn’t been so strong. Looking at the portrait, Brie had seen where she’d inherited the color of her eyes, her hair, the shape of her face, her mouth. There was no doubt that Princess Elizabeth de Cordina had been more beautiful than her daughter. Brie could look at the