He caught her arm before she reached the door. “You understand nothing. I’m under no obligation to explain myself to you or to anyone.” Yet he had a need to. The man inside the title desperately needed her understanding. “A man is dead, a good man, an honest man, a man I hunted with, gambled with. His wife is left with her grief and the grief of her children and I can do nothing. Nothing.”

He tossed her arm aside, then strode back down the stairs. Eve watched him disappear into the side garden.

For a moment she stood where she was, breathing hard, close to tears. She took a deep breath, another, then went after him.

This woman, damn her, was making him forget who he was, what he had to be. There was a distance that had to be maintained between his feelings and his obligation, between the man and his title. With his family, in private, it could be different. Even with his closest friends the reserve had to be put into place when necessary. He couldn’t afford to allow himself the luxury of being too—what had she said?—human, when the responsibility was so great. More now than ever.

He’d lost a valued friend, and for what? Because of some vague and violent statement by a nameless group of terrorists. No, he didn’t believe that. He tore a blossom from a bush as he passed. A man was more than a stalk to be broken on a whim. There had been a purpose, and Seward had been a mistake.

His father had been the target. Alexander was as sure of that as he was of his own name. And Deboque, the animal, had been the trigger.

“Your Highness.”

He turned and saw Eve. The garden flowered around her, ripe, lush and tropical. It suited her name, he thought, as she did. But with the first Eve it had been the fruit that had been forbidden, not the woman.

“I want to apologize.” She said it quickly. For her, apologies, like mistakes, were easier to swallow than to speak. “When I’m wrong, I’m often very wrong. I hope you’ll believe that I’m sorry.”

“I believe you’re sorry, Eve, just as I believe you meant what you said.”

She opened her mouth to contradict, then shut it again. “I guess that has to do for both of us.”

He studied her a moment, aware she was still angry, and angrier still that her conscience had forced her to apologize. It was something he understood perhaps too well, the frustration of having a temper and being forced to restrain it. “A peace offering,” he decided on impulse, and offered her the flower. “It doesn’t sit well with me to have been rude to a guest.”