And Luc settled her onto a stone bench that was cold beneath her legs.
"Put your head down," he demanded. And it wasn't as if she could fight him as he nudged her shoulder down with his hand.
"Breathe in. Out. With me." He knelt beside her, inhaled and exhaled slowly until she was matching his rhythm, until the darkness in her vision had receded.
She started to sit up.
"Easy." He kept a hand beneath her elbow.
How was she going to explain her panic attack? She couldn't go back out onto the lawn. Couldn't face all of this. How could Tirith have asked this of her?
Tears pricked her eyes. Her breath rattled in her chest as she fought them off.
"I need a horse," she said on a soft laugh.
And then realized exactly what she'd done. She'd admitted she wasn't Tirith.
Maggie loved horses. Tirith tolerated them.
"I don't think there are any on the guest list."
She stared at him, stunned.
"I've been compared with an unflattering animal numerous times, so I'm probably the best you're going to get." He said it so gravely that it took her a moment—and the quirk of his lips—to realize he was joking.
"You aren't surprised."
He shook his head. "I made you out yesterday at the ribbon cutting."
"Before or after the kiss?" She hadn't meant to ask that, not really.
Something sparked in his eyes, but he looked away. "Perhaps I'll tell you another time." He brought a pointed stare back to her. "Would you like to tell me why I'm hiding in the hedgerow with Princess Margaret?"
"It's Maggie. And I...can't." The story was Tirith's to tell.
"Then perhaps you'll tell me why you suffered a panic attack just now?"
Maybe Luc shouldn't push sohard. She'd barely recovered her breath.
He'd reacted without thinking when he'd been walking to meet her and saw the panic clear as day on her face. But it was the tears after she'd calmed her breathing that had cracked something inside of him.
Unfortunately, there were five hundred people waiting on the lawn and among the rosebushes, each one eager to shake the princess's hand.
Each one with a pocketful of money to donate to the right cause.
He needed her to go back out there.
He glanced past the guards who'd faded back but stood under the shade tree several yards away.
"I don't suppose Tirith explained what was riding on the next few days?"
She shook her head.
"And she's not coming back?"
"Not for ten days."
He was doomed. Ernest would never forgive him.
