Gallery Books A Division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10020 www.SimonandSchuster.com This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Copyright © 2011 by Johanna Lindsey All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Gallery Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. First Gallery Books hardcover edition June 2011 GALLERY BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc. The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com. Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lindsey, Johanna. When passion rules / by Johanna Lindsey.—1st Gallery Books hardcover ed. p. cm. 1. Mistaken identity—Fiction. 1. Title. PS3562.15123W46 2011 813'.54—dc22 2011012488 ISBN 978-1-4516-2837-1 ISBN 978-1-45162838-8 (ebook) Contents Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Chapter Forty Chapter Forty-One Chapter Forty-Two Chapter Forty-Three Chapter Forty-Four Chapter Forty-Five Chapter Forty-Six Chapter Forty-Seven Chapter Forty-Eight Chapter Forty-Nine Chapter Fifty Chapter Fifty-One Chapter Fifty-Two Chapter Fifty-Three Chapter Fifty-Four Prologue L EONARD KASTNER HAD BEEN thinking of retiring for good. He should have done more than just think about it. The timing was right. He had made more money than he had ever dreamed possible merely by using his talents. He was at the pinnacle of his career, his successes unblemished, and he’d never refused a job. His clients knew that. Details weren’t important. Half the time they didn’t provide them until he’d accepted a job. But he was finding his occupation more and more distasteful, and he was losing his edge. When you didn’t give a damn, nothing mattered. When you started to question what you were doing, it did. Long since wealthy beyond his needs, he didn’t need to take risks any longer and certainly didn’t need to take this particular job. But he had been offered more money than he could possibly refuse, more than he’d made in the last three years, and half of it had been paid in advance. And no wonder the fee was so enormous. This was one of those rare jobs the lackey who had hired him wanted his full agreement on before Leonard was told what was required of him. He’d never been hired to kill a woman. But he was going to end his career with an even more abhorrent crime, the killing of an infant. And not just any infant, but the heir to the crown. A political assassination? Revenge against King Frederick? Leonard hadn’t been told and he didn’t care. Somewhere along the way he’d lost his humanity. This was just another job. He had to keep telling himself that. He was not going to end his career with a failure. If he found the job distasteful, it was only because he liked his king and loved his country. But the king would sire more heirs once he was out of mourning and had remarried. He was still a young man. Getting into King Frederick’s palace during the day was easy. The gates of the palace, located in the courtyard of the old fortress that overlooked the capital city of Lubinia, were rarely closed. The gates were certainly guarded, but few were ever denied entrance, even when the king was in residence. He wasn’t. He had retired to his winter chalet in the mountains directly after the queen’s funeral four months ago to mourn in peace. She had died only a few days after giving him this heir that someone wanted dead. Leonard would have been stopped at the gates if he’d given the slightest hint of who he was, but he didn’t. He had a nefarious reputation, but it was under the false name of Rastibon. He had a price on his head in his own country and in several neighboring countries. But no one even knew what Rastibon looked like. He had been careful about that, always being hooded, meeting his contacts in shadowed back alleys, disguising his voice as needed. He had always planned to retire right here in his own country with no one ever suspecting how he had acquired his wealth. He lived in a prosperous section of the capital city. His landlord and neighbors weren’t overly nosy, and when asked about his work, he merely alluded to an export business in wine to explain his frequent absences from the country. Wine he knew. Wine he could talk about freely. But he made it clear he didn’t have time for idle talk, so he was generally considered an unfriendly sort and was usually left alone, which was the way he preferred it. A man in his profession couldn’t afford to make friends unless they were in the same profession. But even then competition would get in the way. It wasn’t as easy getting into the wing of the nursery, but Leonard was resourceful. He discovered which women had the care of Frederick’s heir and picked the night nursemaid as his target. Helga was her name. A plain-looking young widow, she had an infant of her own that she was still nursing, which is why she’d gotten the palace job. It took him only a week to woo her into his bed during her brief visits to her family in the city. But then he was a personable young man in his late twenties, somewhat handsome with his dark brown hair and blue eyes, and he even dredged up some old charm from the days when he hadn’t been a cold-blooded assassin. He was going to have to kill Helga, too, if he wanted to be able to retire in his homeland. If he let her live, she would be able to identify him. It took Leonard another three weeks to arrange a rendezvous in Helga’s room in the palace’s nursery wing on a night when the other nursemaid had time off and wouldn’t be there. Even though Helga had assured him that no one ever visited the nursery at night, other than the two guards who made their rounds twice nightly, she was still fearful of losing her job if he was somehow discovered there. After all, the number of guards stationed at the palace was doubled at night. But passion won in the end and the right doors were left open for him. He only had to remain hidden briefly until the two guards left the nursery wing. He didn’t kill the woman after all. That had been the logical thing to do. He had used yet another fake name with her, not to hide his intended crime, but to prevent her—or anyone else—from connecting Leonard Kastner and Rastibon. He had no intention of hiding his crime. Whoever had hired him would need to hear of it. But there was no reason to kill the nursemaid, too, when he could simply render her unconscious with a sleeping potion in her wine. He had a moment’s regret even over that. He’d grown fond of Helga in the month he’d known her. It changed his original plan quite drastically. It meant he wouldn’t be retiring in his own country after all, when she would be able to identify him. But he’d made this hasty decision just today, and the only sleeping powder he’d been able to find quickly was unfamiliar to him, so he didn’t know how long it would last, forcing him to hurry. He made another last-minute decision: to bind her hands behind her back so no one would think she was complicit in his crime. But worse, he couldn’t bring himself to kill the child there in the nursery where the woman would wake up and see it. She adored the king’s child, claimed she loved it now as much as her own. Leonard had intended to finish the job onsite. Much less risk involved. But after glancing at Helga lying on her bed, soon to wake, he began looking for a sack instead. He couldn’t find one in the main room. The royal infant was being raised in the lap of luxury, fed with golden spoons, her bassinet worth a fortune, lined in satin and the finest lace, circled with gems. A shelf was filled with fancy toys the baby was too young for. Numerous bureaus lined one wall, with so many clothes she would outgrow most of them before she could be dressed in them all. The nurses had no cots to sleep on in the nursery. They weren’t allowed to sleep while they were on duty, which was why the princess had two nurses. Each had a small room attached to the nursery where they slept when they weren’t on duty and cared for their own babies. In a corner of the nursery, Leonard saw a stack of pillows of every size imaginable, which were probably used when the baby was allowed to play on the floor. Leonard grabbed one of the larger ones from the bottom of the stack, cut it open along the seam, and pulled out the stuffing. Then he cut out three small air holes. It would serve his purposes. He lost no time stuffing the child into the pillow casing, though he did so carefully so as not to wake her. She was four months old. If the baby woke, she might cry. He had one long hallway and a narrow corridor to traverse to reach the stairway to the side door he’d entered from, and two guards to work his way around. Easy enough to do as long as the baby didn’t cry. The previous night he’d secured a rope to the fortress’s back wall, which faced away from the city. He’d left his horse near there tonight in a grove of trees. He’d made these preparations because the fortress gates were closed and heavily guarded at night, and he needed another avenue of escape. But the fortress walls posed another challenge. Although Lubinia wasn’t at war, several guards still walked those ramparts at night. Luckily for him, it was a moonless night. Lamps lit the courtyard, but they were a boon, creating shadows where he could hide as he slipped quickly across the courtyard. He made it to the fortress wall without incident and climbed the narrow stairs to the top. The baby still slept; the guards were presently on the front wall. A few moments more and Leonard would be out of the fortress. He had to tie the improvised sack to his belt because he needed both hands to climb down the rope. The sack swung slightly on his way down, banging once against the wall. A mewling sound came from it, not loud, and no one but he was close enough to hear it. Finally, he was safe, on his horse. He tucked the sack inside the front of his jacket. No other sound came from it. He rode hard over the Alpine hills, rode until dawn. He finally stopped in an open glade, far from any towns, far from any intrusion or pursuit. The time was at hand. He would do the deed swiftly. Each day since he’d been told what this job entailed, he’d been sharpening the knife he was going to use. He took the bundle out of his jacket, opened the pillow casing, and let it fall to the ground. He held the sleeping baby with one arm, drew the knife from his boot, and placed the blade against the tiny neck. This innocent didn’t deserve to die; the one who was paying him did. But Leonard had no choice. He was only the instrument. If not him, someone else would be doing this. At least he could make it as painless as possible. He hesitated a moment too long. The infant in the crook of his arm had awakened. She was looking directly at him—and smiled.