Chapter One
Appearance
Maxence
In the rear bathroom of the private airplane, Deacon Father Maxence Grimaldi braced his hands on the teak countertop and stared into the mirror at his own dark eyes.
Dree was going to see him differently soon.
Beyond the oversized porthole window, emerald forests and pastel granite streaked the crumpled Southeast Asian landscape in the afternoon sunlight. The engines near the tail of the Bombardier Global 5000 growled through the walls and the floor under Max’s feet.
The black shirt Maxence wore had a square ecclesiastical collar, into which he’d inserted a white tab that marked him as a Catholic religious. He lifted his hands and touched the pristine square, intending to pry it loose and tuck it into his suitcase since he wasn’t going to need it for the foreseeable future, but he paused.
The black shirt and white tab sometimes seemed to be a suit of armor he wore, and other times, a disguise. Either way, he donned the ecclesiastical garb willingly for months at a time, trying to live up to the ideals it represented.
His hands returned to the wooden bathroom counter as he hesitated, drawing out these last few moments before he stripped off the shirt.
His cheeks and jaw weren’t gaunt under the black scruff of his thick, two-day beard, just a little harder than usual. Max had only been in the field for a month this time. When he returned from extended missions of six months or longer, his eyes sank behind his too-prominent cheekbones as his ribs surfaced along his sides. Losing thirty, forty, or even fifty pounds over the course of one of those charity ventures didn’t concern him because he packed muscle on again when he returned to Europe.
As soon as he’d boarded the plane in Kathmandu, a flight attendant had handed him a plate piled high with sandwiches before they’d even begun to taxi toward the runway. The savory scent of roasting meat had wafted from the galley soon after they’d taken off. He suspected that a memo went out among his friends and staff to press food upon him because it seemed to be a coordinated effort.
He was still staring at the white tab embedded in the square opening of his shirt collar.
Moping in a bathroom was pathetic.
Besides, once Maxence’s feet hit the soil of Monaco, he no longer held the position of deacon in the Catholic Church, at least according to that odd clause Pope Vincent had inserted into his ordination. That clause had been a compromise among Maxence, who’d desperately wanted to be ordained as a priest, Pope Vincent, who’d understood his vocation, and Max’s uncle, Prince Rainier IV of Monaco, who’d insisted Maxence not be allowed to take Holy Orders until Monaco’s line of succession was assured.
He suspected it was less of a compromise than a Faustian bargain.
Max grabbed the stiff collar insert and wrenched it loose, tossing it in the outside pocket of his toiletries bag. Several similar white strips in there rattled as it hit them. He unbuttoned the top few buttons of his shirt and dragged it off over his head then yanked the rest of his clothes off before stepping into the shower.
Hot water cascaded over him, easily the best shower he’d had since his stay in the rectory before he’d decamped for the rural areas of Nepal nearly a month before. He soaked and soaped a loofah and scrubbed the rounded, creased muscles of his body until the layers of dirt, dried sweat, and every flake of dead skin sluiced off and ran down the drain. Scraping off the thick shadow of his beard over the sink took another few minutes.
These transitions—from who he wanted to be to who he was—felt like taking off a mask. The revelation of his true self always held an instant of revulsion before he remembered he had never really been anything else.
In the bedroom adjoining the bath, a garment bag had been stowed in the closet for him, and Maxence dressed in the clothes inside: a navy-blue Armani suit in a wool and silk blend with a sleek, modern cut. His clothes were more fashionable than his friend Arthur’s conservative, Saville Row suits that Max had borrowed in Paris. Dree’s impression of him might change now that he wasn’t dressing to Arthur’s dowdy taste.
Yes, Dree’s impression of him was about to change drastically.
He paused while buttoning the immaculate white shirt and sighed, but it was necessary.
Around his wrist, he buckled his Patek Philippe watch, a Christmas gift from Arthur that had cost more than most high-end sports cars, a solid and sensible gift.
Last year, Maxence had given the Englishman a half-wild, tiny puppy he’d picked up on the streets of Kinshasa because, though Arthur was a classic introvert, Max had sensed a desperate loneliness in his friend that had deepened over the years. Ruckus had been a very spoiled dog until Arthur had married. His sensible wife, Gen, had trained Ruckus and given him the calm attention and exercise he’d craved.
The same could be said about Arthur.
Max left his collar unbuttoned and his Hermès tie in the pocket of the garment bag. The flight had five more hours before they reached Nice.
Quentin Sault, head of palace security, had brought reinforcements when he’d shanghaied Max back to Monaco, so he’d also commandeered the larger of the two jets allotted to the royal family. The Bombardier flew at just over a thousand kilometers per hour, much faster than a commercial jet.
Maxence straightened his shirt cuffs under his suit jacket and risked a glance at the mirror again.
With the shower, a shave, the Italian suit, and a few minutes to reacquaint himself with who he’d been born to be, the man looking out of the mirror at Max was a cosmopolitan sophisticate, versed in the minutiae of upper-crust society manners and at ease driving an Italian supercar, lounging in a palace, or flying on an elaborate private plane, such as he did now.
Dree would soon discover for herself what Maxence Grimaldi was really like, and he felt his brows lower without even an intention of frowning.
Max tossed his laundry back into his duffel bag because he was still accustomed to picking up after himself after a month in the field, then he emerged from the bathroom.
