Command Performance

  wandered away.

  “Sharper than he looks,” Eve said under her breath, but was weary enough to accept defeat. “Russ?”

  “One of the guards took him back to the hotel.” Bennett touched her shoulder. “His nerves are a bit shot, that’s all. The doctor gave him some tranquilizers.”

  “Now we’ll take you home.” Alexander took her arm. Bennett flanked her other side. “My father and the rest of the family are anxious to see for themselves that you’re all right.”

  * * *

  She was fussed over, pampered, as per doctor’s orders, and put to bed by the Bissets’ old nanny. The woman who had cared for Alexander’s mother, for him and his brother and sister, and now for the third generation, clucked and muttered and had hands as gentle as a baby’s. They were curled with arthritis, yellowed and spotted with age, but she undressed Eve and slipped her into nightclothes effortlessly.

  “When your dinner tray comes, you will eat.”

  “Yes, Nanny,” Eve said meekly as her pillows were fluffed and piled behind her.

  The old woman settled beside her and picked up a cup of tea. “And now you will drink this. All of this. It’s my own mixture and will put the color back in your cheeks. All my children drink it when they are sick.”

  “Yes, Nanny.” Even Prince Armand had never awed her as much as the silver-haired, black-clad old woman with the Slavic accent. Eve sipped at the mixture, expecting the worst, and was surprised by a nutty herbal taste.

  “There.” Pleased with herself, Nanny nodded. “Children always think medicine will taste nasty and find tricks to keep from taking it. I know tricks of my own.” Her stiff skirts rustled as she shifted. “Even little Dorian asks for Nanny’s drink when he’s feeling poorly. When Alexander was ten, Franco took out his tonsils. He wanted my tea more than the ice cream.”

  She tried to picture Alexander as a child, and only saw the man, so tall and straight and proud. “What was he like, Nanny, when he was little?”

  “Reckless. Thunderous.” She smiled and the symphony of wrinkles on her face deepened. “Such a temper. But the responsibility was always there. He learned it in the cradle. He seemed to understand even as a baby that he would always have more than other men. And less.” As she spoke, she rose to tidy Eve’s clothes. “He was obedient. Though you could see the defiance in his eyes, he was obedient. He studied hard. He learned well. Both he and Bennett were fortunate that their personalities were so markedly different. They fought, of course. Brothers must, after all. But they became fond of each other early as people.”

  She kept a sharp eye on her patient, and noted the tea was nearly finished. “He has the intensity of his father, sometimes more. But, then, the prince had my Elizabeth to share with him, to soothe him, to make him laugh at himself. My Alexander needs a wife.”

  Eve’s gaze rose slowly over the rim of her cup. She was warm and growing drowsy, but she recognized the look in Nanny’s eyes. “He’ll have to decide that for himself.”

  “For himself. And for Cordina. The woman he chooses will have to be strong, and willing to share the burdens.” Nanny took the empty cup. “Most of all, I hope she is capable of making him laugh.”

  “I love to hear him laugh,” Eve murmured as her eyes fluttered closed. “Does it show, Nanny? Does it show that I love him so much?”

  “I have such old eyes.” Nanny smoothed the sheets before she dimmed the light. “And old eyes see more than young ones. Rest now and dream. He’ll come to you before this night is over, or I don’t know my children.”

  She knew them well. Eve stirred and sighed and saw Alexander the moment she opened her eyes. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, her hand in his, watching.

  “Nanny gave me a magic potion.”

  He kissed her knuckles. He wanted to go on kissing her, holding her close and tight against him until the nightmare had faded completely. With an effort he kept his fingers light, as well as his voice.

  “It brought the color back to your cheeks. She said you’d be waking soon and would be hungry.”

  Eve pushed herself up. “She’s right. I’m starved.”

  He rose and walked to a tray at the foot of the bed. “She ordered your menu herself.” He began to remove covers. “Chicken broth, a small lean steak, fresh greens, potatoes mixed with grated cheese.”

  “Enough torture.” Eve laid a hand on her stomach. “I haven’t eaten since breakfast. I’ll start anywhere.”

  “The broth, I think.” He placed it on a tray.

  “Oh, it smells wonderful.” Eve picked up the spoon and began to recharge her system. He sat in silence while she worked her way through the soup. He could remember every word of Reeve’s report.

  Though tests still had to be run, it was almost certain that the bomb had been the same type as the one planted in the Paris embassy. If anyone had been in the office, or even within twenty feet of the door, it would have been fatal.

  Eve’s office—where he had once seen her sitting so competently behind her desk.

  Security believed that Eve had not been meant to be harmed. Hence the warning. The bomb had been used to terrorize, to confuse, to undermine. But if she hadn’t been quick enough …

  He wouldn’t think beyond that. She was here now, unharmed. Whatever he had to do, she would remain that way. When she’d finished the broth, he removed the bowl and replaced it with the main course.

  “I suppose I could get used to the pampering.” The meat was pink and tender inside. “It was so sweet of everyone, even your father, to come in and see me, to make sure I was all right.”

  “My father cares for you. All of us do.”

  She tried not to make it mean more than it did. He did care. She’d felt it in the way he’d held her when he’d reached the grove. Maybe, just maybe, he even loved her a little. But she couldn’t push him, or herself. It was best to deal with other things.

  She toyed with her potatoes. “But I really do feel fine now, Alex. There’s no need for you to go to the trouble of disconnecting the phones.”

  “It’s already done.” He took a bottle of wine from a bucket and poured two glasses. “There won’t be any need for you to speak with anyone outside the palace tomorrow. Brie and her family are moving in temporarily. I’m sure the children can entertain you.”

  “Alex, be reasonable. I have to talk to my people. They must be frantic. You have no idea how overblown theater people can make things. And getting my office back into shape is going to take days.”

  “I want you to go back to Houston.”

  Slowly she set her knife and fork on the tray. “What?”

  “I want you to take your troupe back to America. I’m canceling the performances.”

  She hadn’t realized she had the energy for anger. “You try that and I’ll sue your royal tail off.”

  “Eve, this is no time for ego. What happened today—”

  “Had nothing to do with the theater and little to do with me. We both know that. If it did, I’d be no safer in Houston than here.”

  He was through with logic. In this, with her, there were only feelings. “I don’t want you here.”

  The quick slice of pain hit its mark. She let it pass, then picked up her knife and fork again. “It won’t do any good to try to hurt me, Alexander. I won’t go, and neither will the troupe, not until all four performances are finished. We have a contract.”

  His French was harsher and a great deal more explicit than his English. He rolled into it as he rose to pace the room. She’d learned enough in her Swiss boarding school, particularly in the dorms, to understand him perfectly.

  “Nanny mentioned that you had a filthy temper,” she said, and continued to eat. The fact that she’d finally seen it loose pleased her. He wasn’t so controlled now, she thought. So she would be. “The wine is excellent, Alexander. Why don’t you sit down and enjoy it?”

  “Merde!” He swung back to her, resisting the urge to fling her tray and its contents on the floor. “This
is not a game. Do you know what I went through when I thought you might be dead? That you might have been in that room when the bomb went off?”

  She set her utensils down again and lifted her gaze to his. “I think I do. I go through much of the same every time you go out in public. This morning I stood at that window and thought of you. I didn’t even know how long you’d been gone.”

  “I didn’t want to wake you.”

  “I’m not asking for explanations, Alex.” Her appetite gone, she pushed the tray away. “I’m trying to make you see what I was feeling. I looked out at the sea, and I knew you were somewhere, tending to Cordina. Somewhere I couldn’t be, somewhere I couldn’t help you. And I had to get dressed and go out and go on, when in the back of my mind was the fear that today would be the day I’d lose you.”

  “Eve, I’m so surrounded by guards that sometimes I think they’ll smother me. The security on all of us has been doubled since the bomb in Paris.”

  “Is that supposed to comfort me? Would it comfort you?” He said nothing, but came and removed the tray from her lap. “You want me to run away, Alex. Will you run away with me?”

  “You know I can’t. This is my country.”

  “And this is my job. Please don’t ask me to go.” She held out a hand, watched him hesitate, then come back to take it. “If you want to be angry with me, wait until tomorrow. All through this hideous day I’ve wanted you to hold me. Please stay with me tonight, Alex.”

  “You need rest.” But he gathered her close.

  “I’ll rest after,” she murmured, and drew him down with her.

  Chapter 10

  Her office looked as though it had been bombed. Somehow, even living through it, being told about it, reading the story in the paper, Eve hadn’t been prepared for the stark reality of it.

  She’d kept her word and had stayed away for twenty-four hours—mainly because she’d been given no choice. Now she stood at the doorway, or what was left of the doorway, and looked at what had been her office.

  The debris hadn’t been hauled away, by order of the police. They had sifted and searched through the ashes and rubble throughout the night of the bombing, the day she’d been kept away, and the night she’d lain restless and anxious to get back to work. If there had been a sense of order to their investigation, Eve couldn’t see it.

  There was a hole in one wall, taller and wider than she, so that Eve could see that the small, unoccupied room beyond had problems of its own. Shafts of wood were burrowed into the plaster or lay heaped on the floor. Her file cabinet was a mass of twisted metal, the contents ashes. The carpet was gone, simply gone, with the floor beneath scarred and scored. The window had been boarded up so that no light seeped through. The repair crew was coming that morning, but she had wanted to see it for herself, before it was swept clean.

  She didn’t shudder. She had thought she would when she had been walking down the hall. The fear she had expected, had been willing to accept, didn’t come. In the hole left by fear, anger came, ripe and deep and cleansing.

  All her files, her notes, her records—destroyed. She stepped in and kicked aside a lump of ceiling. Weeks, months, even years of work reduced to rubble in a matter of seconds. Some things could be replaced; other things were simply irreplaceable.

  The picture she had had on her desk, her favorite one of her and Chris; it was part of the ashes. Gone, too, was the play she had written and the one she’d been working on. The tears that sprang to her eyes weren’t of sorrow, but of fury. Her work might have been rough, maybe it had even been foolish, but it had been her work. Lack of confidence and her own self-deprecating humor had caused her to file it away under F for Fantasies.

  Now that dream was gone, blown apart by someone who didn’t even know her. They had taken away pieces of her life, and would have taken her life, as well, without a second thought.

  They would pay, she promised herself as she stood among the wreckage. Somehow, someway, she would see to it personally.

  “Eve.”

  With the back of her wrist she swiped at her eyes before turning. “Chris!”

  In that instant she was only a younger sister. The emotion and need swamped her as she scrambled over the wreckage and into her sister’s arms. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’m so glad.”

  “Of course I’m here. I came the moment I heard.” Chris squeezed tightly as relief came and the hours of dread through her traveling eased. “I went to the palace first. I’ve never seen so much security there before. If it hadn’t been for Bennett I might still be arguing with the guards at the gates. Eve, for God’s sake, what’s going on?”

  “It’s gone. Everything. The picture of us at the opening of my first play. It was on the desk. The little china cat Mom gave me when I was ten. I always took it with me. There’s nothing left of it, nothing at all.”

  “Oh, baby.” Holding tight, Chris surveyed the room over Eve’s shoulder. Unlike her sister, she did shudder, for what might have been. “I’m so sorry. But you’re safe.” Anxiously, she held her at arm’s length to study carefully. “You weren’t hurt?”

  “No, no, I was nearly out of the building. Reeve said it was just a small plastic bomb. Not much range.”

  “A small bomb,” Chris repeated in a whisper, and pulled Eve against her again. “Just a small one.” Her own anger surfaced as she gave her sister a quick shake. “Eve, do you know how it felt to hear about it on the news?”

  “I’m sorry, Chris. Everything happened so fast, and I guess I wasn’t thinking straight. I should have called you.”

  “Damn right you should have.” Then she let it pass, knowing what Eve’s state of mind must have been. “Brie did. Prince Armand called Dad personally. He was all for hopping on the first plane and dragging you back to Houston.”

  “Oh, Chris.”

  “You’re safe—only because I convinced him we’d have better luck getting you to listen to me.”

  “I’ll call him. Honestly, I never thought the news would get to the States so quickly.”

  “I want the whole story, Eve, not the watered-down, public relations version I got on the six o’clock news.” Chris’s voice took on the firm maternal tone she had developed when Eve turned fifteen. “You can give it to me while I drive you back to the palace to pack.”

  “I’m not going back, Chris.”

  Chris stepped back and pushed her short, thick hair away from her forehead. “Now listen—”

  “I love you,” Eve interrupted. “And I understand how you must be feeling right now, looking at all this.” She paused to take another scan of the room herself. The fury came back full force. “But I’m not running away. I came here to produce four plays, and by God, I’m going to produce four plays.”

  Chris started to shout, then checked herself. The one way you never got through to Eve was with orders. “Eve, you know how much I respect what you do, what you can do, but it’s painfully obvious that Cordina isn’t safe right now. This isn’t worth risking your life over.”

  “The bomb wasn’t planted for me. They only used me to get to the Bissets.” She laid a hand on her sister’s arm. “I can’t go, Chris. I think once I explain everything, you’ll understand.”

  “Then you’d better explain real good.”

  “I will.” With a smile Eve kissed her cheek. “But not here. We’ll use the theater manager’s office.” Eve urged Chris out into the hall, taking a quick look at her watch as they went. She intended to be back to work within the hour.

  Twenty minutes later they were seated on a neat gray-and-rose sofa, working on their second cup of coffee. Chris drank hers black, using the strong, slightly bitter taste to soothe her nerves.

  “Deboque.” Her cup clattered in the saucer before she set it down. “All these years later and he’s still causing such pain.”

  “From what Alex said, he’ll never stop.” As long as he lived. Eve pushed the thought away. She had never thought she could ever wish anyone dead. “I don’t even know w
hat kind of man he is. Evil, certainly, and I’d guess obsessed. The person who called spoke of justice—he spoke of it both times. Deboque’s kind of justice won’t be met until Prince Armand is destroyed. Reeve thinks the bomb in the theater was a show of strength. Chris, what’s really frightening is that I know—somehow I’m sure—that the next target is going to be one of the Bissets.” She thought of Alexander and pressed her lips together. “It could be any one of them, even one of the children. That’s why Reeve and Brie have moved back into the palace for now.”

  Chris was silent while her loyalties warred inside her. “Eve, you know how I feel about the Bissets. They’re a second family to me. But no matter how much I care for them, you come first. I want you home, away from this.”

  “I can’t leave. One of the reasons is the troupe and what we’re trying to do here. Please hear me out,” she continued as Chris started to speak. When she subsided, Eve rose. She had to move. Time seemed to be pressing in on her from all directions. “I have a chance to prove something here, to myself, to you and Dad, to my industry.”

  “There’s nothing you have to prove to me, Eve.”

  “I do. You took care of me.” She turned back, her emotions a little shaky. “You were only five years older, but when Mom died, you did everything you could to fill the void. Maybe I wasn’t always aware of what you were doing or what you gave up to do it, but I am now. I guess I need to show you it was worth it.”

  Chris felt her eyes fill and quickly shook her head. “Do you think I’ve ever doubted it? Eve, I did nothing more than be your sister.”

  “Yes, you did. You were my friend.” She came back to take both of Chris’s hands. “Even when you didn’t believe, didn’t approve, you stood by me. What I’m doing here is as much for you as it is for me. I’ve never been able to explain that to you before.”

  “Oh, sweetheart.” Chris’s fingers tightened on hers. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything for a minute. Just listen. A lot of people in the business chuckled behind my back when I first got started. Spoiled heiress out for a fling, that sort of thing. And maybe it was close to the truth at first. I never did anything worthwhile in my life before the troupe.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “That’s absolutely true.” She had no problem accepting the truth, or using it to push herself further. “I skimmed my way through school doing the least amount of work possible. I lounged around during the summer doing nothing at all. I watched Dad wheel and deal, I watched you take your education and turn it into success with your gallery, and I picked up another magazine. With the theater I started to find a goal, without realizing I’d needed one. Chris, when I stood on the stage for the first time, it was like a light going on in my head. Maybe my place was behind it, not on it, but I found the goal. It took a couple years after the troupe was formed for people to stop laughing. Now I have a chance to do something extraordinary. I can’t give it up.”

  “I never knew you felt this way.” Chris ran her hand over the back of Eve’s. “I do understand, and I’m proud of you. I always have been, but I’m prouder than ever. I believe you can do something extraordinary, but the timing’s off. Six months from now, a year from now, when things have settled down—”

  “I can’t leave, Chris. Even if they tore the theater down, if every one of my troupe went back, I couldn’t leave.” She had to draw a breath to say it, to say it out loud and calmly. “I’m in love with Alexander.”

  “Oh.” Because the wind had just been knocked out of her, Chris said nothing else.

  “I have to be with him now, especially now. Once I thought the troupe was everything, but as important as it is, it doesn’t come close to how I feel about him.” She paused a moment, realizing what she was saying had been there all along—she just hadn’t known it. “You don’t have to tell me that nothing can come of it—I’ve already figured that out for myself. But I have to be with him as long as I can.”

  “Once I’d thought that maybe you and Bennett … I’d even gotten a kick out of imagining the two of you. But Alexander.”

  “I know.” Eve rose again. “The heir. I’ve loved him for years. I managed to do a pretty good job of muddling that fact, even to myself, but there it is.”

  “I’d wondered a couple of times if you might have been a bit infatuated.”

  “I’m old enough to know the difference,” Eve said with a smile.

  “Yes.” Sighing, Chris sat back. “Does he know how you feel?”

  “I haven’t told him, but he’s a very astute man. We’ve both been very careful not to mention any four-letter word beginning with l. Yes, I think he knows.”

  “How does he feel, Eve, about you?”

  “He cares, perhaps more than he intended, less than I’d like. It’s difficult to read Alex. He’s had so much practice harnessing his emotions.” She took a deep breath. “Besides, it doesn’t matter.”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because it can’t matter.” She was a practical woman, or so she told herself. A realist. “I said I knew nothing could come of it, and I can deal with that. I’m a professional. My career takes a great deal of my time and energy. Even if Alex weren’t who he is, I doubt if we could come to terms. I don’t have time for marriage and a family. I don’t need them.”

  “I’m going to take more convincing than that—and so are you.”

  “I really don’t.” How many times had she given herself this lecture over the past week? “A great many women don’t want marriage. Look at you.”

  “Yeah.” With a low laugh Chris sat up again. “Eve, the only reason I’m not married and the mother of six is that I never met a man who was more important to