Penelope & Prince Charming (17 page)

It would be barbaric, as all things Nvengarian were—barbarism covered with a thin veil of civilized behavior. But then, Damien had once witnessed the marriage ceremony for the English. The woman promised to submit herself body and soul to her husband, something no Nvengarian woman would promise, and the man vowed to worship her with his body. Even the ring put on the woman’s finger was a symbol of bondage.

The Nvengarians went about it more blatantly. The bondage in Nvengaria went both ways—man tied himself to woman and woman to man, usually literally.

Sasha beamed and began. “I will say the words in Nvengarian and repeat them in English. That way, all may understand.”

Closest to Penelope and Damien stood Lady Trask, handkerchief at the ready to catch her motherly tears, Meagan, smiling hugely, and Michael Tavistock standing quietly behind her. The Prince Regent sat in his Bath chair behind Sasha, enjoying the procedure and anticipating the newspaper articles that would describe how he’d attended the betrothal of the famous Prince Damien.

Egan McDonald stopped behind Damien, throwing Damien an envious grin. Damien and Egan had shared women in the past,
but not this time
, Damien promised.
The lady is mine.

Mine.
The word felt wonderful echoing in his head.

Sasha began. The ritual consisted of chants about how these two people had come together in love and would be bonded in love. He sensed Penelope’s skeptical glance and looked at her.

Green-gold flecks swam in her eyes as she watched him. Warmth began in his belly as his gaze flicked to the
soft cleavage between her breasts. He wanted to dip his tongue there, taste the salt of her skin. He imagined easing her bodice down to reveal the dark tips of her breasts, which were already pebbling under his scrutiny.

His gaze traveled upward, taking in her long, delicate throat, her lips, her beautiful eyes. He met her gaze, finding the sharpness softened. The prophecy was stirring them again. After this ritual, they would be betrothed, and then would come the mating. His blood stirred in anticipation. He wondered whether the prophecy would have the patience to wait through Sasha’s chanting, because he certainly might not.

By the smirk on Petri’s face, his valet sensed Damien’s growing impatience. The man was positively gleeful. Damien had instructed him to have the bedchamber prepared and guarded, in case he had to rush with her there the moment Sasha finished.

Sasha droned on, the ceremony twice as long because Sasha stopped every few sentences to translate to English.

“Princess Penelope, do you agree to be bonded to Prince Damien, to share his bed, his troubles and his joys, his sorrows and his hopes, his children and his life?”

Penelope blushed. She glanced at Damien, and for one agonizing instant, he thought she would respond with a “No.”

She swallowed, looked at her mother, who quickly sniffled into her handkerchief, then squared her shoulders and said, “I agree.”

Sasha translated her answer to Nvengarian, and the room erupted in masculine cheers. The cheering went on and on, drowning out Sasha’s identical question to Damien and his own, “I agree.”

Sasha, his eyes wet with tears, took up the tray and offered its contents to Damien. Damien lifted the knife. “It will hurt only an instant,” he murmured to Penelope. “I promise.”

Her eyes widened. Gently Damien took her hand and turned it palm upward. Then, as quickly as he could, he slashed her palm straight across.

She winced, and he sensed Michael Tavistock start forward, to be blocked by Petri. Damien slashed his own palm, then clasped Penelope’s hand and lifted it to head height between them.

Sasha took up the rope, looped it three times around their touching wrists and tied it securely. Damien and Penelope faced each other. Sasha reached up and closed his hand around theirs, and shouted in Nvengarian. “They are joined!”

The room erupted in cheers again, coupled with stamping and hooting. Damien felt Petri clap him on the back, and then Egan, grinning widely.

“What happens now?” Meagan asked, her tone excited.

“Now we dance,” Sasha proclaimed, “and lead the couple forth to seal their betrothal in their first mating.”

The English guests expressed either shock or delight, and the Nvengarians went on screaming. Circles formed for the dancing, Nvengarian hands dragging the London aristocrats into the dance. Rufus and Miles seized the handles of the Regent’s Bath chair and swung him out to the middle of the floor.

Penelope and Damien were put into the middle circle, and married couples joined hands and danced around them. Outside the circle, the unmarried ladies and gentlemen danced. Men far outnumbered women in this group, thanks to all Damien’s Nvengarians, and they vied with each other to grab the ladies’ hands and twirl them about. Rufus and Miles had their eyes on a pair of giggling maids and showed off for them, dancing and leaping, Nvengarian style.

In the center of the circle, Penelope, still tied to Damien, held his hand and said very little. He moved with her slowly, letting the others wear themselves out in the
frenzy of the dance. He wanted to save his energy for the long night to come.

The doors of the ballroom suddenly blasted open, and a icy wind slammed through the room. Shouts of dismay and surprise echoed. Penelope turned to Damien, a question on her lips, then Damien grabbed her shoulders and shoved her to the floor just as something small and fierce and dark hurtled past them and crashed into the far wall.

“What in God’s name was that?” Egan cried. His hand dipped beneath his kilt and came up with a broad-bladed knife.

Penelope was trying to scramble up to look. Damien crouched protectively over her. “Stay down.”

“What about you?” she panted.

“Never mind about me.” The Nvengarian guards and servants had hurried to form a wall around Damien and Penelope, knives at the ready to face whatever it was that had hurtled into the room. Egan and Michael Tavistock joined them.

“Meagan,” Michael ordered over the din. “Take Lady Trask out.”

The Regent was whimpering with fear. He heard Meagan trying to coax Lady Trask away, but she was arguing, saying she’d never leave Michael.

“Perhaps it was just a large bat,” Penelope whispered hopefully.

“No.” Damien felt grim.

What had screamed past him, barely missing his head, had been a creature out of legend, a creature out of nightmares.
Logosh
were half demon, half human, changing from form to form at will. They dwelled in the Nvengarian mountains, cursed a thousand years ago, and lived high in cliffs, unseen by all but those unwary enough to stumble into their demesne.

Or at least, the legends claimed. No one had ever actually seen a logosh, and those who claimed to were usually
drunk or known to be insane. Glancing over the shoulders of his men, Damien understood that seeing such a being could turn a man mad.

It was man-shaped, about the size of a boy, and clung to the wall like some strange reptile. It crouched, facing downward, with fangs protruding the sides of its mouth. It hissed, drool sizzling where it ran across the creature’s chin.

“What on earth?” Penelope gasped.

It turned its head to follow her voice, then to Damien’s alarm, it sprang at them.

Ladies screamed and shoved one another out the double doors. Damien whirled as the logosh sailed over heads toward Penelope. He caught up the small ritual knife and held it ready, the only weapon at hand. His left wrist and Penelope’s right were still bound, but he dared not take the time to cut her free.

The creature soared overhead, lightning fast, and landed on first one wall, then the other. Sasha, whitefaced, stared upward in amazement. “A logosh. God have mercy, he’s sent a logosh.”

Egan McDonald slapped him on the back. “Well, whatever it is, laddie, it’ll taste the bite of Highland blade.” He raised his dagger and shouted. “To me! The best Scots whiskey to the man who brings it down.”

A dozen Nvengarian throats screamed a battle cry, and they launched themselves at the nightmare. The creature scuttled upward, and the men, sensing its wariness, surged forward, Egan running with them. “That’s it, lads. It’s no match for us.”

No wonder they called him the Mad Highlander,
Damien thought.
He’d fight the spawn of Satan himself.

The logosh hurtled itself upward with astonishing speed. It clung to the ceiling for an instant and dropped to land an inch from Damien.

Damien roared and struck out with the tiny knife as he
tried to shove Penelope behind him. Petri had been borne away by those chasing the damn logosh across the room. Sasha stared, frozen. Michael Tavistock was protecting Lady Trask.

Damien kicked, catching the creature in the stomach. The thing shot upward again and dropped straight down, slashing at Damien’s arm with its claws. Penelope tried to drag Damien from the thing’s path.
She’s trying to protect me, for God’s sake,
he thought distractedly.

Then Meagan rose up behind it, a large candlestick gripped between her hands. She brought the candlestick down,
thump
, on the logosh’s back. Or, the blow
would
have landed on its back had the confounded creature not twisted away. Meagan caught it on the shoulder, then all of a sudden, it was facing her.

Her pale face grew still. “Oh, dear.”

Damien slashed down with the knife, but the blade was too small to do much damage. Then Egan McDonald appeared out of nowhere and plunged his dagger into the creature’s shoulder. “Take that, hell-beastie.”

The thing snarled and shrieked and shot straight upward again. But it was hurt. It scampered along the ceiling, the men chasing it. It launched itself from the ceiling through an arched window with a shattering of glass.

“After it,” Egan shouted. “It’s wounded. We’ll hunt it ’til it’s dead.”

He hurtled out of the ballroom, the Nvengarians and more able-bodied Englishmen running pell-mell after him.

“I have not seen him that happy in a long time,” Damien mused to Petri, who had come panting up.

“They’ll get it for certain, sir. Jesus and Mary, was that truly a logosh? I thought they were make-believe, sir.”

Sasha still stared out the broken window, his mouth hanging open.

Damien dropped the knife, stained with black blood, to the tray. “Penelope, love, are you all right?”

She gave him a shaky smile. “I believe so.” She raised her hand, twining her fingers about his. “Look. We are still joined.”

It happened then. Damien’s control, held in check for weeks, snapped. “Petri,” he said in a tight voice.

“The chamber is ready, sir. I will guard it myself.”

Desire coursed through him, his veins raw with it. He closed his hand around Penelope’s wrist. She looked startled, but he read the same hunger in her eyes. “Time to consummate this betrothal, love.”

She could have asked many questions, beginning with “Now?” But she did not. Penelope, bless her, merely nodded.

He more or less dragged her out of the room, her slippers pattering on the floor as she strove to keep up with him. He passed the Regent, who was fanning himself with a large handkerchief, and Michael Tavistock, his arms full of a half-swooning Lady Trask. He swore Lady Trask had a calculating gleam in her eye.

Meagan had run to the window with the other ladies to cheer on the gentlemen. Sasha joined them, still in a daze, still bleating, “A logosh, by the saints.”

No one was left to witness Damien scoop his mate into his arms and carry her away. Usually, a gentleman and his newly betrothed were followed to the bedchamber by their friends and servants, who shouted and sang and made ribald jokes.

But only Petri followed them, in silence, up the stairs. The rest of the Nvengarians were out chasing the damned logosh, which, Damien thought, was probably just as well.

Penelope had sensed the change in Damien as soon as he’d turned to help her to her feet in the ballroom. His eyes were wild, the darkest blue she’d ever seen them, his face hard and set.

He carried her all the way up the stairs, though she was quite capable of walking them. Or perhaps she was not. Her blood pounded, and she was almost dizzy with desire.

Damien had sliced one loop of the rope that bound their hands, and it had dropped away as he lifted her, but Petri had caught it up and now tossed it on the bed. Looking at the thin rope innocently lying there stirred something inside her. She was bound to him, that’s what the ceremony said, and now she’d be bound to him on that bed.

Her hands went cold as she watched Petri deliberately remove Damien’s sash of office. He helped ease the coat from his shoulders, the sleeve of it shredded where the creature had caught him. She swallowed.

When Petri reached for the cravat, Damien waved him away. She understood enough Nvengarian now to follow their exchange. “Out,” Damien said.

Petri folded the coat over his arm and winked. “I’ll be right outside, sir.”

“Not too close.”

“Of course not, sir.”

With another knowing grin, Petri faded out the door and closed it softly.

“What if there is more than one?” Penelope asked, standing stiffly in the middle of the room.”

Damien paused in the act of tugging his cravat knot free. “What?”

“What if there is more than one of those creatures? Whatever it was?”

He resumed untying the knot and pulled the folds of the cravat from his neck. His bare brown throat came into view. “There should not have even been one. It is a creature from myth.”

“Another Nvengarian folk tale?”

He unbuttoned his waistcoat and untied the tapes of his lawn shirt. “The logosh. Legend has it that they were cursed a thousand years ago to live as half demon and half human, shunned by the rest of the world. But they are stories in books. They are not supposed to exist.”

“One has just made a mess of my mother’s ballroom.” She tried to sound calm, a stoic Englishwoman who could face anything, but the shake in her voice betrayed her.

He threw aside his waistcoat, and closed the distance between them. “Jesus, Penelope,” he breathed as he took her hands. “It could so easily have killed you.”

“And you.” She pushed at him. “It tore your arm.” She fingered the slashes on his shirt, which were pink with blood.

“He barely opened the skin.” Damien quickly slid out of his shirt, tossed it aside. She could feel the warmth he
radiated, and wanted more than anything to place her palms on his chest, her fingers playing in his black hair.

She touched the wound instead. He was right; it consisted of little more than parallel streaks through his flesh, not very deep.

“Still, it might take infection. You should wash this, perhaps make a poultice.”

She spoke distractedly. His broad chest covered hers as his hand slid behind her back. “Heal me, Penelope.”

His sweaty, salty skin was an inch from her lips. She kissed the round of his shoulder, then daringly licked it.

He made a raw noise, his hand tightening on her back. “I will need water,” she said.

She stepped away from his enticing body and went to his washbasin, where she found hot water waiting, probably ordered by the efficient Petri. A cloth hung nearby, which she wet and wrung out, and brought it back to him.

She had him sit while she washed his arm, drawing the wet cloth gently over the scratches. He watched her, closely scrutinizing with his blue, blue eyes, lashes flicking as he followed her movements.

“You understand what this bonding ceremony meant, did you not?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“Yes. We are betrothed, and now we may…” She broke off, face heating. She pretended to study his wound closely, rubbing away the already dried blood with her cloth.

“Not only that. We are joined as one. We are life mates. Bound to one another and responsible for one another.”

She glanced up. “But we are not married yet. I thought the wedding would take place in Nvengaria itself.”

“It will.” He smiled. “The ceremony we just finished was the only one in the old days. The priests who wandered in to tame the barbarians imposed their own marriage ritual on top of ours, which is why we have two. The Catholic priests, not foolish, saw that our bonding ritual
was important to us and agreed to let us keep it, as the betrothal ceremony before the Christian wedding. Of course, if they had not agreed to let Nvengarians keep their ceremonies, the priests would have been cut to pieces, and Nvengaria would still be pagan. The old ways are much revered.”

She shot a startled glance at him as she finished wiping away the blood and laid the cloth on a table.

“That is why children conceived after betrothal are not illegitimate,” he went on. “Because by Nvengarian custom, we are already married.”

“Oh.”

“But we are not married by English custom.” He touched her cheek. “So if you wish to run away, Penelope, you still may.”

She lifted her gaze. His eyes were dark, intense, waiting. “Do you wish me to?”

He stroked her lower lip with his thumb. “I need you. Not only for the prophecy, not only for Nvengaria.”

“To prevent you being killed,” she whispered.

“No, not even that. I need you for a far more basic reason than the one I came for.”

“You need a princess.” Her body swam with heat. “You came here to find a princess, any princess.”

“Perhaps I believed so when I started out from Nvengaria. Perhaps I still believed so when I arrived in Little Marching. I believed it until I saw you and I kissed you.” He cupped her cheek. “And then the world changed.”

“That was the prophecy.”

“I can blame many things on the prophecy. Sasha believes it guides the stars. I never meant for it to guide me. I never meant to love you.” He gave a mock sigh. “But I do, and so be it.”

“You always know the right words to say. You are always Prince Charming.”

He grimaced. “I do not feel charming at this moment. I am insane with wanting you. Any pretty words are accident.”

Her own blood felt hot, but she was suddenly shy. She thought of the beautiful, golden-haired Russian countess and the thin, Hellenistic baroness. “Why should you want me? I am plain Penelope Trask.”

He smiled. “Any man with eyes will want you. Seeing the shock on Egan McDonald’s face when he beheld you was worth my journey. He looked as though, I believe the English expression is, ‘a ton of bricks had fallen on him.’”

Her blush spread. “Only two gentlemen asked to marry me, and neither wanted me. Perhaps Magnus did, but in an unsavory way. He did not want me in particular, any young woman would have done.”

“If I ever see this Magnus, I will skewer him,” Damien promised. “Perhaps only two men proposed to you, Penelope, but I wager many more wanted you. They said nothing because you were an unmarried miss, but they wanted you. When they realize you are no longer an innocent, I will have to fight them off with a sharp sword.”

She laughed. “You are very charming.”

“I am not charming. I merely wish not to throw you on the bed too quickly and take what I want. You deserve for me to ravish you slowly.”

“I do not want to be slow.” She drew a breath. “I feel quite urgent.” She kissed his scraped flesh, which was clean now, and damp.

“Urgent.” His breath was hot on her temple. “A good way of saying it.”

She touched her tongue to the hard muscle of his arm. “What do I do?”

“Unfasten your bodice.” He threaded his fingers through her hair, loosening it. “I want to look at you.”

She obeyed. Her fingers were clumsy as she reached to unhook the five clips that held the bodice together in the back.

Damien tried to keep his impatience at bay. He should move slowly with her, introduce her to the world of pleasure at a gentle pace. But his arousal wasn’t having any of it. He wanted to be inside her, and the wanting grew more frantic by the minute.

He reached around her and pulled the placket apart, hooks tearing from the threads that held them. She gasped in surprise, but the look in her eyes told him she was just as needy as he.

“Take off the dress,” he said.

Obediently, she dropped the bodice from her shoulders, baring her arms and the half-stays that held her breasts snug, then slid the gown down her body, revealing a fine lawn underskirt. Quickly, she stepped out of the dress, then she shook it out and carefully laid it on a chair. He hid a grin at her practicality.

She returned to stand before him, lovely in her undress. The underskirt softly brushed her legs, revealing their outline, and her breasts lifted against the press of the stays.

“Would you like me to help you with your boots?” she asked.

His heart beat faster. Normally he did not consider removing boots to be erotic, but offered by his newly bound life mate, from lips full and red, it became suddenly desirable. For answer, he held out his left foot.

Penelope grasped his boot above his ankle. She bent, giving him a heady glimpse of the shadow between her breasts. Muscles in her slim arms worked as she tugged at the stubborn boot.

It came away all at once, and she staggered back a step and nearly sat down on the chair behind her. “Oops,” she said.

“Are you all right?”

She straightened up, looked at the boot in her hand, looked at his stockinged foot, and began to laugh.

It was a merry sound, true laughter, with none of the
strain of the last weeks. Her eyes lit, her red mouth curved, and her body shook in a delightful way.

In two seconds, Damien had his other boot off and was seizing her by the arms. She still laughed, holding the boot between them, and he kissed and licked her lips, dragging that laughter into him.

He wanted to tell her he loved her, but need swallowed all words and all thought. He took the boot from her and dropped it on the floor, then crushed his hands through her hair and pulled her against him.

He kissed her lips, her nose, her temple, her hair tangling in his mouth. He bit her shoulder, catching the lace strap of her stays in his teeth. Her thin fingers rubbed his arms through his shirt with a desperation that matched his own.

He unhooked the stays and pulled them from her body, catching the weight of her breasts in his hands. The points hardened, the skin dark as he flicked his thumbs over them.

She gasped, her eyes going heavy.

His need wound into a wild frenzy, something inside him screaming
finish it!

Damien lifted her and carried her to the bed. He laid her down, and she rose up on her elbows while he tore at the buttons of his trousers. He yanked the trousers off, then his stockings. He looked up to see her watching him with heavy-lidded eyes, her gaze traveling with interested thoroughness down his torso to his staff standing straight out, straining for her.

Her scrutiny would be flattering were he not so frantic. He climbed onto the bed, and she lay down, her hair fanning out against the pillows, her eyes dark under the canopy’s shadow. Her hands rested on either side of her head, soft and limp, not fighting him.

He unfastened the tape that held her underskirt, and drew the skirt down her legs. She wriggled her hips, help
ing him draw it from under her bottom. She wore nothing beneath it. Her legs were shapely, thighs plump, rounded calves filling out her silk stockings, slender feet in beaded slippers.

The golden hair between her legs already glistened with moisture. He lowered his head and licked it.

She jumped, her gasp loud in the quiet. She tasted as heady as she had in the river a week ago, sweet and salty, honey with a bit of spice. He’d dreamed of her taste every night, wondering how he’d keep his hands off her until the ceremony.

Now she was his, to do with as he pleased. He smiled at the thought. He drank her, then he flicked his tongue over the hardening nub at the swell of her sex. She squirmed beneath him. She was wet now, oh so wet, her thighs parting of their own accord, her body arching to his mouth.

As he backed away, his hand fell on the discarded rope, the thin, silken strand Sasha had brought all the way from Nvengaria for the betrothal.

Quickly, Damien twined his left hand through Penelope’s right one, and looped the rope tightly around joined wrists.

“We are one, we are bound.” He said the words in Nvengarian, at the moment unable to translate to English. “I to you, and you to me. Forever.”

She moved her fingers over his, caressing and slow, her eyes on the rope. Joined, bound,
one.

“Will you join with me all the way, Penelope?”

So polite he sounded, when he was aroused too much to stop himself.

She flicked her gaze back to him, her face still. She still had the chance to refuse him, to remain a virgin and daughter to her mother. He saw the flicker of indecision and what it meant for her to make the choice.

“I want to join with you,” she whispered.

His arousal throbbed once, wishing he’d get on with it.
“Excellent,” he said, his voice as calm as if she’d agreed to take a stroll in the country with him.

She smiled a little. “You like that word.”

“It expresses much. I will try not to hurt you.”

She sobered, her eyes going quiet. “I have heard that it hurts much.”

“It does not have to, if I take my time.”

Every muscle in his body screamed with impatience. He did not want to take his time, he wanted to pound himself into her,
now.

“Lift your hips a little,” he said. He dragged a small pillow to him from the cushion-strewn headboard. “I will place this under you, so. It will help me go in a little easier.”

She blushed, but let him arrange the pillow beneath her backside, tilting her hips upward, her knees a little apart.

Seeing her lying there, serenely waiting, her brow puckered with trepidation, wound his need to unbearable tightness. Her curls of hair were moist and ready, the petals of her parted, waiting.

He rubbed the folds gently, and their moistness increased, the scent of her heady.