Lydia paused and peered over her glasses. “If you keep a low profile, everything should be fine. Unless you’ve forgotten your phantom. Have you?”
Victoria shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but inwardly she knew she still cared for the man. How could she forget the man who had taught her what it meant to be a woman? To fall in love.
How could she forget the bittersweet memories of the man who had changed her life forever?
“Go, my dear,” Lydia said quietly. “You will never know peace until you do.”
Victoria reached for the large quilted bag that had become part of her wardrobe. “He didn’t try to find me in Baronovia, why would he care to see me now? Besides,” she said with a shiver, “what if he doesn’t want to remember me? What if our night together never meant anything to him?”
“He didn’t find you because once your father told you he’d arranged your marriage, you didn’t want to be found,” Lydia reminded her. “Once you see the man again, you can close the book on the past.”
“I can’t, Lydia. It would only break my heart.”
“So you still care for this man?”
Victoria smiled sadly. “More than you’ll ever know,” she said softly, as if to herself. “But the fact remains, that whoever he was then, or whoever he is now, he is forever out of my reach.”
WHEN Lieutenant Commander Dan O’Hara entered the headquarters of the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General Corps, it was abuzz with excitement over a newspaper account of the upcoming party that had been pinned to the office bulletin board. It wasn’t every day a member of the JAG corps married a European duchess, he heard someone say. Or that he had brought her home to set up housekeeping in the United States.
Dan stopped to glance at the newspaper clipping. He had received an engraved invitation for the party. Wade and May Stevens had also invited the JAG and his staff to celebrate the purchase of their first home in the United States.
Lieutenant Lester Howard whistled as he glanced over O’Hara’s shoulder. “To tell you the truth, sir, I wouldn’t have bet a nickel the commander’s marriage would have lasted this long. After all, his wife is a duchess and Stevens was her bodyguard.”
The comment, uttered into a sudden silence, quickly drew an audience. To his dismay, a dozen pairs of eyes focused on Dan.
Dan shrugged. The Stevenses’ courtship had had its ups and downs in the early stages when Wade had been the duchess’s bodyguard. But judging from the look on their faces, things have never looked better. “Why not?”
“Heck, his wife is a duchess, that’s why. How’s she going to settle for living like the rest of us?”
“Maybe because Stevens saved her life,” Dan said dryly as he turned to go to his office.
“It’s just like a fairy tale,” Lieutenant Linda Kimball, the junior officer in charge of administrative affairs, said enviously. “You were the best man at their wedding, weren’t you, sir?”
“Right.” Dan took a last look at the invitation and headed for his office. Just remembering his stay in Baronovia and the woman he’d met at the Stevens wedding made his body warm and his heart ache. He might have come up empty when he’d tried to find her before he left, but forget her? Never.
“Wait up a minute, sir,” Howard called after him. “So what’s a real palace like?”
A barrage of questions filled the air.
Dan tried to focus on Howard’s question. He thought of the ornate guest room with its lush wine-colored velvet drapes, upholstered furniture to match and the lace curtains at the windows. There had been a bed large enough for a family of four to sleep in. And a portrait of a dour Baron ancestor that had looked down on him from over the large fireplace where a fire smoldered. As luxurious as the setting had been, he hadn’t been able to sleep.
A glance out the window had taken him outside to a woman he would never, in this lifetime, forget.
“Nice, but formal and a little intimidating,” he finally answered. “I couldn’t wait to get home where I can put my feet up and have a cold beer.”
“What’s the duchess like?” Linda Kimball asked wistfully. “Is she as beautiful as they say?”
“Let’s just say she’s not like the girl next door,” Dan said wryly. He waved off any more questions and backed into his office.
What continued to surprise him after all this time was that eighteen months later he still thought about the ethereal woman he’d encountered in the Baronovia palace gardens. He’d wondered on and off why he hadn’t been able to find her the next morning. Maybe, he thought as he stared into his blank computer screen, she had been just a dream.
A burst of laughter outside Dan’s open door distracted him. He glanced up in time to see a female junior officer being kissed under a giant spring of mistletoe left hanging after the recent office Christmas and New Year’s parties.
Cheered on by laughing bystanders, the kiss was lasting longer than Dan thought necessary. To make him really uncomfortable in his nostalgic state of mind, the kiss served to remind him of a night that, by all logic, he should have forgotten long ago.
He wasn’t a ladies’ man, but he hadn’t been a hermit, either. His mystery woman hadn’t been the only woman in his life, but she was the one he couldn’t forget.
There had been something so special about her that he had searched for her among the guests. On the chance she was a member of the bridal party, he looked for her during the wedding rehearsal and at the dinner that followed. To add to his frustration, the pomp and circumstance of the wedding had prevented him from actively searching for her. He couldn’t have exactly asked if anyone knew a woman of her description; young with long, auburn hair and a body that had been made to fit in his arms, could he?
“Commander?” A knock on the open door broke into Dan’s reverie.
It was Howard again. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but we were trying to decide what kind of gift would be appropriate for the commander’s housewarming. We figure it has to be something special for someone like the duchess.”
“Suit yourself. I’m planning on giving them a toaster.” He motioned for Howard to close the office door so he could get back to work.
Instead of opening the file on his desk, Dan decided it was time to get his mind off the past. He needed to map out his New Year’s resolutions and stick to them. And they didn’t include daydreaming about a woman who might not have been real. Who, if she had been real, hadn’t been interested in seeing him again.
With a last look through the glass door of his office at the celebration going on outside, Dan turned on his computer and drew up his first New Year’s resolution. After all, he told himself with a glance at the waiting file, it had to be smarter to plan for the future than to wait for his future to come to him. A methodical man by nature, he spent the next half hour drawing up a five-year plan.
Bottom line, he mused when he finally checked the printout of his plan and closed down his computer, he was in his thirtieth year and it was time to settle down. Ergo, he would marry when he turned thirty-five and have two children by the time he was forty—that is, if his wife were willing. At that age he would be old enough to choose a wife wisely. As for children, he assured himself as he mentally flexed his arm muscles, he would still be vigorous enough to play baseball without looking like a complete fool.
In retrospect, he should have known fate had a way of laughing at the plans of a mere mortal man.
TWO WEEKS LATER, Dan stood on the doorstep and admired the Stevenses’ new address. The redbrick house on the outskirts of D.C. had green-and-white shutters and showed its distinguished lineage.
Bushes flanking the green doorway were lit with ropes of tiny bright lights. A welcome sign hung over a large