By Royal Demand

GABE CONSIDINE looked up from his desk, his hard steel-blue eyes meeting those of his younger brother. "So tell me I'm crazy," he invited him curtly.Marco's frown turned into wry amusement. "You're crazy." Gabe got to his feet and strode across to the window, looking out across the walls, still intact, that surrounded the castle. For almost a thousand years his forebears had lived in the Wolf's Lair and protected the trade route crossing the mountains between the rest of Europe and the small principality of Illyria on the Mediterranean Sea. Forty years previously, civil war, treachery and death had driven his grandparents, the incumbent Grand Duke and Duchess, to fight with partisans in the mountains until their deaths in an ambush. Although Gabe and his siblings had been born in exile, Marco knew that he felt a strong sense of obligation to the people who had suffered so long, secretly hoping that their lord would come back to them.Gabe's richly textured voice showed no emotion when he said, "Then come up with a better idea.""What about good old-fashioned threats?'Marco's voice deepened into a music-hall villain's sneer. "Tell me where the necklace is or I'll bankrupt you and throw your mother out into the snow.""Her mother's dead. And threats will be more effective if she's here, unable to get away.""A prisoner, you mean," Marco said flatly.Gabe shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time a woman's been held prisoner here.""Mostly they were hostages rather than prisoners." Gabe, Marco and their sister had grown up steeped in stories of their Illyrian heritage. One such hostage had joined the ranks of their ancestors by marrying the ruling Grand Duke.Marco asked, "What if Sara refuses to admit she stole the necklace?"Gabe lifted a black brow to devastating effect. "Then I'll do whatever's necessary to get the Queen's Blood back."The stark, medieval name of the necklace containing some of the most valuable rubies in the world still lifted the hairs on Marco's skin. "Strange that any woman would happily wear something with a name like that."His brother gave a sardonic smile. "Women like pretty things, even those with a barbaric history. And the Queen's Blood is more than pretty -- it's magnificent, unique and irreplaceable. Flawless rubies that size are no longer being mined. And then there's the mystery of how they got from Burma to Europe, and who set them in solid gold. Some unknown Dark Age genius? Or is the necklace the sole remaining work of an unknown civilisation?"Marco gave a snort of laughter. "Come on, now, don't tell me you believe that old story -- that it was made inAtlantis?"His brother's mouth twisted cynically. "Hardly. But, given all that, not many women would care that the original owner died on the mountainside a few kilometres from here, stabbed in the heart by the leader of a band of brigands. Of late, I find I have some sympathy with him."Marco understood the cold self-derision in his brother's tone. Falling in love with a woman, only to have her steal the priceless Considine heirloom, was definitelynotlike his cynical, hard-headed brother, noted around the world for his ruthless logic and brilliance. Oh, Gabe had had affairs, but they were always discreetly conducted, and the thought of him actually falling in love was -- well, difficult to imagine!It had been an unlikely romance -- a man of ancient heritage with the world at his feet, and a woman from nowhere, struggling to make a career as an interior designer.Yet Gabe had taken one look at Sara Milton and fallen head over heels, breaking every rule in his book with a whirlwind courtship pursued almost entirely in the full spotlight of the world's media.Two weeks after their engagement had been announced to an incredulous public, he'd insisted that Sara wear the Queen's Blood at a ducal wedding in the south of France.It was a night he'd never forget, Marco thought grimly, and not only because thDonald, Robyn is the author of 'By Royal Demand ', published 2006 under ISBN 9780373125593 and ISBN 0373125593.