Princess Annie (15 page)

“Rafael—”

“Arrange for the journey,” Rafael broke in coldly, “or step down from your position. The choice is no more complicated than that.”

Barrett picked up his coffee cup and hurled it toward the fireplace. It shattered on the hearth, and tiny shards of china exploded into the air. The door of the study, made of ancient wood several inches thick, shuddered on its hinges when he slammed it behind him.

Calmly, Rafael picked up his pen and continued writing. He’d been hard at work for several minutes when a second visitor stormed the citadel.

It was Lucian, the intractable, still visibly ruffled from their confrontation the day before, but smiling with his usual insolence. “I hear Barrett’s in a foul mood,” he remarked, after some cheerful reflection. “I take it he’s against your grand plan to bestow your royal presence upon the adoring rabble?”

Rafael frowned. “Eavesdropping again? That’s getting to be a bad habit with you, Lucian.”

“It can be a vital skill, for a second son.” Despite the early hour, Lucian went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff drink. Rafael’s still-sensitive stomach turned. “Barrett’s right, you know,” Lucian continued. “Leaving the keep at this point is a genuinely stupid thing to do. Almost certainly suicidal.”

Rafael gave up all pretense of working and folded his arms. “I’m sure you’d be crushed to see me go on to my reward,” he said, giving the words a wry and bitter twist.

Lucian laughed, spreading the fingers of his right hand and pressing it to his chest. “I would be devastated,” he said.

Something tightened within Rafael, but he’d almost throttled his brother the day before and he did not wish to give in to those primitive instincts again. He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment and spoke in a moderate tone. “I don’t have time for this, Lucian,” he said. “Make your point, if you have one, and get out.”

Raising his brandy in a mocking salute, Lucian smiled savagely. “Congratulations are in order, Your Highness. I’ve decided to marry.”

Despite the enmity between the two of them, Rafael was relieved. He knew Lucian did not share his devotion to the people of Bavia, and once the little rogue was assured of an adequate income, he would surely agree to settle elsewhere with his bride. For his part, Rafael would sleep better, once Lucian and Phaedra were both safely out of the country.

He lowered his gaze to the document on his desk, not wanting Lucian to see that he was pleased. “You must introduce me to your bride,” Rafael said, as if distracted. “In the meantime—”

“Oh, but you know her already,” Lucian replied, with wicked relish. “I’m going to marry Annie Trevarren.”

Rafael had guessed what Lucian would say, a moment before the name fell from his brother’s lips, but knowing hadn’t prevented an ugly gorge of fury from rising within him. “Forgive me for pointing up the obvious,” he said, after only the briefest hesitation, “but Miss Trevarren has already made it plain that she despises you.”

“I can change her mind,” Lucian answered confidently. “I’ll start by apologizing for all the
terrible
things I’ve said and done of late. Then I’ll show her how noble I am, demonstrate that even though my brother trifled with her virtue and then spurned her affections,
I,
Lucian St. James, am willing to uphold the family honor by taking her to wife.” At a low, contemptuous sound from Rafael, he smiled broadly and leaned against the edge of the desk, much as Barrett had done earlier. “You don’t think it can happen, do you? Well, consider this, Your Highness: After you’ve perished at the hands of the rebels, lovely Annie will need consoling. She’ll be grateful for my tender sympathies, and we both know, don’t we, Rafael, how easily gratitude can be mistaken for love?”

Terrible images whirled through Rafael’s mind—he saw his own grave, not on the hillside next to Georgiana’s, but at the edge of some blood-washed battlefield. He saw the fiery Annie, weeping for him, envisioned Lucian hovering at her side, waiting like a scavenging bird, catching her when she was most vulnerable. And he knew that to warn Lucian off now would only feed his determination to make his plan succeed.

Rafael was silent.

Lucian crossed the room, filled a second snifter, brought it back and set it down in front of Rafael. “Will you not drink to my happiness, Brother?”

By some miracle, Rafael kept himself from knocking the snifter to the floor in a fit of rage or flinging its contents into Lucian’s smug face. Instead, he spoke calmly, coldly. “Report to Barrett within the hour,” he said. “He’ll assign you a horse and a bedroll for the journey.”

Lucian’s smile evaporated. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve just been conscripted,” Rafael replied. “You are now a soldier in the Bavian army.”

“You bastard,” Lucian breathed. He’d gone white to his hairline and probably his knees as well. “You bloody gypsy
bastard!
You can’t do this to me!”

“I can do it,” Rafael said, “and I have. Now, report to your commanding officer or I swear by all that’s holy, Lucian, I will have you locked up.”

“You know I’m not a soldier! I’ll be killed—”

Rafael leaned to one side. “Guard!” he called, and instantly the door opened and one of Barrett’s burliest men stepped over the threshold, bowed and awaited the prince’s command. “Well?” Rafael inquired, his gaze fixed on his brother’s face. “Will you show yourself to be a brave man, or a coward?”

Lucian had turned a disturbing shade of gray and broken out in a cold sweat in the bargain. Rafael might have taken pity on him, if it hadn’t been for Lucian’s earlier boasts about the plans he’d made for Annie Trevarren.

“Rafael, in the name of heaven—”

“Choose.”

Lucian closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again they glittered with a new and much deeper hatred than ever before. “I’ll serve in your damnable army,” he muttered. “But watch your back, Your Highness, because I’m going to make you suffer for this.”

Rafael spoke to the guard. “My brother wishes to help defend his country,” he said dispassionately, never taking his eyes from Lucian’s face. “See that he’s outfitted as a soldier.”

The moment Lucian and the guard were gone, Rafael fell back in his chair, staring at the glowing amber liquid in the crystal snifter Lucian had set before him so triumphantly. And even though he wondered if he hadn’t gone too far this time, he had to smile when he thought of his spoiled younger brother wearing rough clothes and sleeping on the ground.

Annie endured a second seemingly interminable fitting of Phaedra’s wedding gown that morning in the solarium. The third time she looked for Rafael on the balcony, he was there, standing in the same spot as before.

Annie’s heart quickened at the sight of him, like a bird taking wing. Her first instinct was to lower her eyes demurely, but her native stubborness prevailed and she held his gaze. She had meant everything she’d said the previous evening, after pushing Rafael into the fountain pool, and it would be foolish to pretend that nothing had happened.

Rafael waited, in silence and shadows, while Miss Rendennon, unaware of his presence this time, completed her endless rituals of pinning and snipping, tugging and twisting. Even when the dressmaker had gone, he didn’t speak or move.

Wearing only her chemise and a pair of cotton stockings, Annie was painfully conscious of Rafael’s gaze, yet she felt triumph, for even from that distance she sensed his desire. Slowly, resisting the maidenly urge to cover herself in haste, Annie put on the pink shirtwaist and black sateen skirt she’d worn to the fitting.

When Rafael made no move to come down the stairs, Annie climbed them herself, her heart pounding, her cheeks aching with heat, and stood facing him.

His gaze remained fixed on the floor below, and his powerful body exuded both tension and restraint. A pulse leaped along the edge of his jaw.

Annie hesitated, then took a step nearer, laying a hand on his arm. Even through the fabric of his shirt, she could feel the sudden hardening of his muscles and the heat of his flesh. He started to wrench away, then stopped, turning his head toward Annie at last.

She saw anger in his eyes, and the profoundest of sorrows. Their need for each other shimmered between them, like a heat mirage.

“I came to say good-bye,” he said, after a long, charged silence.

Annie had expected recriminations, arguments, even fury from Rafael, anything except that quiet, unemotional farewell. She let her hand slip from his arm, too stricken to speak.

Rafael reached out and touched her hair, but the gesture was an unwilling one, and he quickly withdrew. “I’ll be gone a week or ten days,” he said. “In the meantime, soldiers will escort you and Phaedra and Felicia to the palace in Morovia to prepare for the wedding ball. During that time, I want you to put aside all your foolish fancies about me.”

By biting her lip, raising her chin and thinking defiant thoughts, Annie managed to prevent herself from bursting into tears. “Are you in love with Miss Covington?” she asked. That was the one thing that would have turned her from her course; she would not interfere if Rafael had given his heart to another woman.

He hesitated, just long enough, and when he averted his wondrous silver eyes for a fraction of a moment, Annie knew the truth.

“Suppose I am?” he stalled.

Annie folded her arms and smiled, waiting.

“All right,” Rafael snapped, in a harsh undertone. “I love her! Are you happy?”

“Ecstatic,” Annie replied. “You’re lying.”

He swore, grasped her chin in his right hand—another grudging gesture—and bent his head to touch her lips with his own. The contact was featherlight at first, but in the space of an instant, it became a deep, ferocious, soul-jarring kiss.

Annie was transported, conquered, thrilled and terrified, and when Rafael finally tore his mouth from hers, she sagged against him, unable, for the moment, to stand on her own.

He murmured an oath as he held her, but hold her he did, and Annie smiled into the hard warmth of his shoulder. Rafael did not belong to Felicia or to any other woman; she’d seen it in his eyes when he’d tried to lie, and felt it in his kiss. He wanted her, Annie, and as stubborn as he was, he would not be able to resist his own nature for long.

As if he’d somehow managed to divine her thoughts, Rafael gripped Annie’s shoulders and held her a little distance away so that he could glare at her. He gave her a slight shake, but she knew somehow that he was more exasperated with himself than with her.

“Damn it,” he hissed, “it would serve you right if I took you to my bed this minute and showed you what it means to surrender to a man!”

Annie felt her eyes widen. “I think I know,” she said loftily. But she didn’t, of course, not really, even though she’d seen the act of love once, in a book of erotic drawings one of her classmates had smuggled into St. Aspasia’s.

Rafael laughed, but there was no joy in the sound. It was a low, harsh bark of fury and frustration. “You think you know?” he taunted. He took her hand in his and pressed it to the long and frightfully hard bulge at the front of his breeches. “Feel the reality, Annie,” he commanded. “Imagine taking me inside you—
deep
inside you—”

Heat suffused Annie, body and soul, and she nearly swooned, she was so overwhelmed, but she made no effort to pull away. Even though touching Rafael that way terrified her, it also made her want him more.

Quietly, boldly, she turned the tables. “Imagine
being
deep inside me,” she told him. “Think how it would be, Rafael.”

He released Annie with a furious motion and turned his back on her, and she watched, fascinated, full of joy and power, while he struggled with emotions she could only guess at. Tentatively, she laid her hands on his shoulders, felt him flinch beneath her touch as if her fingers had burned his flesh.

“I’m not afraid,” she said softly.

Rafael tilted his head back, but he did not turn to face Annie. “Well, I am,” he replied hoarsely, and then he strode away, leaving her there on the balcony to stare after him.

Annie stood still for a few moments, breathless and flushed, then hurried off in the opposite direction. She did not regret anything she’d said or felt or done, but the sensations were new to her, and powerful, and they raged inside her like a sweet storm. She hurried down the stairs and out of the solarium, stopping only when she’d reached the privacy of her bedchamber.

There, she tore off the confining dress and the petticoat beneath, replacing them with her beloved breeches and shirt. After adding boots to the ensemble, Annie left the keep, by way of the kitchen, heading in the opposite direction of the stables, where there was a great deal of activity. If she didn’t keep moving, if she didn’t find a way to dispel the frightening energy that had gathered in her middle when Rafael kissed her, and then pressed her hand to him, she was certain she would explode.

The important thing was to
do something,
to avoid standing still and thinking at all cost.

Beyond the kitchen was a vegetable garden and beyond that, a chicken yard and a variety of small, ramshackle sheds. Annie made her way past them, toward the high outer wall, with its crenelated top. No trees were allowed to grow near the structure, for obvious reasons, and a close examination proved that there were no handholds in the ancient stone.

She’d gone less than a mile when she found a gate hidden behind a cascade of thick ivy.

The iron latch was rusted, and Annie struggled with it until she was breathless, until her hair was tumbling down and her shirt was damp with perspiration. Finally, however, her persistence paid off, and she was able to slide the long bar to one side.

The gate’s hinges were almost as recalcitrant as the latch had been, but she managed to haul it back far enough to peer through the opening.

At first, Annie was disappointed, because she’d expected to see open countryside, and the distant ocean, on the other side. Instead, she found a dark, cavelike room, full of dust and cobwebs and spiders. After making sure that the gate wasn’t going to close behind her, entombing her in that cool and spooky place, she took a few steps inside.