Page 18 of Happily Ever After

At Midnight

Flicka von Hannover

Boudicca,

Queen of the Celts.

Flicka laid in her bed in the Prince’s Palace in Monaco, staring at the silk and velvet canopy above her.

She had to fight back.

Her ancestors had led armies into battle, riding a horse at the forefront. They had planned strategies and won wars. They had held castles against insurmountable odds.

She wouldsurvive this, and she would save herself and Raphael’s baby growing inside her and Alina, too. And she wouldn’t be Pierre’s broodmare, laboring out child after child for Monaco.

Flicka was a princess. She very well might be descended from Boudicca, warrior queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe. Flicka was related to every other bloodthirsty warrior monarch throughout history, so why not Boudicca,too? Boudicca had led an uprising against the Roman Empire, defeating legion after legion with her band of wild Celts.

What would Boudicca do?

She’d scream into the wind, strap her sword on, jump into her chariot, and kick some Italian ass.

Which was just what Flicka needed to do.

She would not allow Pierre Goddamn Grimaldi, The Rat Bastard, to rip her child from her body.

Or to feed herpoison to kill and expel it.

She thought about that.

Pierre was exactly the type to try something so sneaky and underhanded as putting abortion drugs in her food. His ancestors had lied and murdered to take control of Monaco. He’d been rather blasé about his idea of poisoning Prince Rainier IV. Would he go so far as to instruct the kitchen to salt her food with abortion drugs?

If Flicka threatenedPierre’s ability to become the Prince of Monaco, he might do it. Even when she’d been little and Pierre had come over to her and Wulfie’s house, he’d talked about when he would be the Prince.

Her heart felt heavy.

So, she would have to make sure that she didn’t eat anything laced with poison.

She should keep Alina away from the cookies, too, just in case.

She refused to think that Pierre mightthreaten Alina with any harm. Surely, he wouldn’t do such a despicable thing.

Yes, Flicka needed some Boudicca in her soul.

Boudicca became the ruler of the Iceni Celts after her husband, the king, had been killed in battle.

Flicka stopped thinking about the dead husband part.

Somewhere out there, Raphael was alive.

Surely, without Flicka and Alina as hostages, he had been able to fight hisway to freedom, and he was coming to save her.

She was counting on him.

It was interesting, though, that Boudicca’s dead king was yet another example of how kings and princes didn’t live particularly long lives in her family. Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, had been only forty-two when he’d died.

Pierre should watch his damn back, just in case Flicka went all Henry the Eighth on him.She had the Tudor genes for it.

Flicka lay in the bed and stared at the ceiling for a while, as she usually did due to her genetic insomnia, but for the last two weeks, she’d needed more sleep than usual.

Growing a baby is hard work.

She nodded off sometime around one in the morning, sleeping fitfully and tangled in the sheets, and she didn’t hear her bedroom door open in the dark an hour later.