Princess (31 page)

Her father sat down heavily at his desk and searched her face.

Her hands twisted in her lap. “No news, Papa?”

“No news.”

Thank God. He could still be alive.

“Cricket, the reason I’ve called you here is because, in light of Darius’s actions, Anatole feels it would behoove us to move the wedding up to tomorrow.”

She glanced quickly at Anatole. “Tomorrow! But that is impossible!”

“Why wait, Your Highness?” he asked curtly, his sapphire eyes glinting with anger as he knowingly held her gaze. “Pardon me for speaking frankly, but I was disturbed from the outset to learn that this information was kept hidden from me. With all due respect, sir,” he said to her father, “your Santiago will never succeed. Since the great conspiracy involving the Duc d’Enghien last year, Napoleon is extremely careful about his public appearances. Security at the coronation will be impossible to penetrate.”

“You don’t know Santiago,” she said.

He cocked his head toward her. “Can he make himself invisible? Is he immune to bullets?”

“Sometimes.”

“Even if he gets in, he won’t get out. He will be captured, and when the link between him and Ascencion is discovered, France will turn on this island with a vengeance. He cannot possibly succeed, and by failing, he has endangered you all, and made war all but inevitable. The certainty of my protection is your only hope. Our alliance must be sealed before news reaches the world that a man of Your Majesty’s inner circle tried to assassinate Napoleon. Sire, you will be instantly implicated.”

“What if Darius succeeds?” she broke in softly.

“He can’t succeed! You are missing the whole point, Your Highness,” he lashed out at her. “Don’t you care what happens to your father? To your people? Is this Spaniard’s miserable life all you care about?”

“Watch your tone, sir,” her father growled at Anatole in warning.

He looked over and the iron mask of his charm clanged back into place.

“Forgive me.” He went down on one knee in front of her and took her hand, putting on a pretty show for Papa. “After my first wife, Margaret, died, Serafina, I was so broken, I said I would never remarry. But when I met you and heard of Ascencion’s plight, I knew I must offer myself as the solution.”

“And we are grateful for your generosity, my lord,” her father said in a brooding tone, “but let us remind you that our daughter could win the heart of any man on the planet.”

“Papa.” She shot him a quick glance over Anatole’s golden head. He only used the royal “we” when his anger was stirred. Perhaps he was beginning to see through Anatole’s polished mask at last.

“Indeed she could, sir,” Anatole agreed softly.

Serafina gazed at Anatole, wondering if there was one shred of sincerity behind his sudden show of solicitude. She didn’t think so. All she knew was that she had to buy time until news came of whether or not Darius had killed Napoleon and survived. If he had failed, she would still need to marry Anatole, in which case it would be suicide to anger him.

She must manage him.

“Anatole,” she said, her voice at its softest and most feminine as she carefully laid her hand over his. “You know I am fond of you and honored to become your wife, but I see no need to rush things. Mama has taken such pains to make everything perfect for the day. I daresay she has taxed herself overmuch with all her work, and in her delicate condition. The food, the church, the choirs, the fireworks. Of course, you understand these matters better than I, but please, can’t we let the date stand?” She tucked her chin and offered him a shy smile, gazing at him.

Anatole stared at her, looking quite thoroughly enchanted.

She was aware, from the corner of her eye, of her father staring at her in astonishment.

“Please, Anatole?” she said cajolingly.

He stammered. “I—I—”

Just then, there was a knock at the door.

“Come,” her father ordered.

She heard veiled mirth in his deep voice. When Anatole looked over at the door to see who had come, Papa shot her a knowing wink.

Anatole stayed where he was, crouched down before her, holding her hand as if it were made of delicate china.

The palace steward opened the door, bowed, and brought the king a note. “Urgent, Sire,” he murmured.

Realizing that even here and now might be news of Darius’s fate, Serafina watched, her heart hammering, while Papa opened it. His eyes widened as he read it. Abruptly he shoved up out of the chair with a look of mixed joy and dread.

“Cricket, your mother’s in labor!”

“Good Lord!” she cried, jumping out of her chair past Anatole.

Papa was already striding across the room. “Anatole, we’ll have to finish this later. Forgive my indelicacy, but the babe was not expected for another three weeks. My wife is strong, but she is not a girl anymore. I must go to her!”

He swept to his feet. “By all means, Sire.”

“Me, too!” Serafina hurried after him, but Anatole grabbed her arm as she stepped over the threshold.

“A word with you, please, Your Highness.”

She was in the doorway, but her father was already halfway down the hall.

“Papa, wait!” she called in distress, loath to be left alone with Anatole.

“You two work it out for yourselves,” her father called with a wave of his hand. “Consider it a premarital lesson in compromise. But don’t forget I warned you, Anatole,” he added in a jaunty tone. “My girl always gets her way.”

Oh, damn,
she thought as her father disappeared around the corner. After that little display of her wiles in his office, Papa had no doubt concluded that she held Anatole in the palm of her hand, as she did so many others. In truth, she was not sure if the Russian’s fleeting, smitten expression had been real or false. She looked up to find him studying her face.

“Let us finish this business, my bride.”

She regarded him warily, saying nothing. Her chin was high as she leaned her back against the doorframe and folded her arms over her chest.

“Why do you want to delay our marriage?” he asked.

“Why do you want to move it up?”

He tilted his head, looming over her. He braced his hands on the door above her. “I’ll tell you why. Because I think you are scheming to discard me.”

“I am not.”

“You’d better not be. We are pledged to each other, you and I. I am not a man to be trifled with. You insult me, you insult Russia, for without my armies, the czar is nothing. You insult Russia, and Ascencion will lose the friendship of
all
the allies of the Third Coalition. No one will give this island the slightest relief when Napoleon comes. Not even England.”

“How do you know?”

He ticked them off on his fingers. “Naples is helpless. Sweden is too far away to care. Austria’s strength is wasted. England will only give gold. But Russia’s population is vast: We are the soldiers. We are the cannon fodder.”

She winced and looked away.

“That’s right, my sweet island rose. Human lives. That is the currency with which I’ve bought you.”

She refused to heed him.
My Darius can do it!
she thought in rebellion.
He will kill Napoleon and come back to me. I
know he will escape. He has to.

She had to get out of here. Mama was in labor. Suddenly she seized upon a solution.

“We cannot move the wedding up because I will not get married without my mother present. She will need time to recover from the birthing. Anatole, you must respect that.”

He stared at her for a long moment assessingly. “A baby is always born when someone in a family dies.”

She looked up at him in agony. What a cruel and horrible thing to say.

He cracked a half-smile. “Don’t imagine I will dote on you the way your father dotes on the queen.”

“I would not so deceive myself, Your Highness.”

He traced the curve of her face with one fingertip. “Anatole,” he whispered.

She closed her eyes, clawing for strength, for she was still knocked off guard by his cruel remark. “Anatole,” she repeated in a humiliating show of obedience.

Again she felt trapped by him and this time, Darius wasn’t coming to her rescue. Where did Anatole get his talent for intimidating her? She had always been headstrong, never easily bullied.

Had he intimidated his first wife this way?

She opened her eyes and they studied each other in hostility.

“You have never spoken of Princess Margaret before.”

“You knew of her.”

“I knew of her, but you never spoke of her. Were you in love with her?”

“Very much. As I am in love with you.”

She lifted a brow in astonishment, her jaw dropping open slightly.

“Are you so surprised?” he asked with a laugh. He touched her hair. “I am very attracted to you, Serafina.”

That is not love,
she almost said, but instead she thrust home for her opportunity. “Then indulge me, Anatole, and let the wedding date sit as planned.” She gave him one of her most deliberately dazzling smiles.

He smiled back at her, eyes bright and cold.

“Well,” he said softly, “persuade me, Serafina.”

She flattened herself uneasily against the doorframe, inching back as he drew closer. “What do you mean?”

“Ask me nicely. I think you know what I mean.”

She scowled up at him, barely biting back her opinion of him. “Will you let the date stand or won’t you?”

“If you let me kiss you,” he murmured.

Startled by his unforeseen request, she blushed and lowered her head, gooseflesh creeping down her arms. Fine, she thought, if it would buy her time for Darius.

“A-all right.”

He stepped closer and touched her face, tipping her mouth upward, one hand firmly securing her chin. She was very tense as she leaned against the doorframe, her hands behind her. She tried not to grimace or wince as he lowered his head and pressed his hard, cold lips to hers.

His kiss bruised her lips against her teeth but she forced herself not to pull away. He gripped her hair hard, painfully, resting his other hand on her shoulder, where it squeezed and pawed her flesh.

She inched back, longing for him to have his fill of her and be done, but he became carried away by his own ardor, laying siege to her. She fought disgust, refusing to open her mouth in spite of all his efforts. Her jaw was clamped, and she hated every stroke of his tongue upon her lips, but when she felt the jut of his erection pressing against her stomach, she froze, frightened now and seized by waves of sheer repugnance.

“That is quite enough, sir!” she gasped out, pushing past him.

She heard his low, rough laughter behind her as she fled, wiping her mouth on her arm in trembling revulsion.

“You’ve got a lot to learn, child,” he called after her. “But I’ll teach you to like it.”

Sometimes he told them to go to hell in Russian, sometimes in Spanish, English, Arabic, Italian, just to keep them guessing. Stoically, he had thwarted his captors’ every attempt to make him talk, answering their questions with nothing but a slight, cold, mocking smile.

They had been gentle. So far, he had only a black eye, a swollen jaw, and a few bruised ribs. Later, Darius knew, things would get rougher. For now, they were saving him for his audience tonight before the emperor.

His arrogance was in place like a shield. Behind it, he was calculating a second chance at killing Napoleon somehow when he was brought before him.

At the appointed hour, the big, apelike corporal with the reeking breath quit pummeling Darius’s abdomen. He was pulled to his feet, dragged from his cell, and herded outside. He stole a glance at the moon and thought of Serafina dancing in her garden.

He smiled to himself, disconnected from everything, then they shoved his head down, throwing him into another carriage.

I’ll get him this time. Just put me in the same room with the
little bastard.

After about an hour’s drive, they pushed him out of the carriage amid his guards, before a vast Baroque palace somewhere in the countryside. Uneasily, he scanned the landscape, taking stock of his surroundings.

Chin high, he was herded and prodded through the halls past gawking courtiers and ladies, driven ahead like a wild animal captured for some rich man’s menagerie. He swaggered and smiled coolly at the women just to irk his captors.

At the end of the gleaming hall, huge doors were opened before him and he was shoved into a glittering great hall. He caught his balance, chains rattling, then swaggered in slowly, shoulders squared, chin high. Straight ahead of him at a long banquet table sat the man he’d tried and failed to kill. Failed.

Worthless, worthless.

He stared insolently at Napoleon and Napoleon stared insolently at him, looking rather bemused.

Darius was ordered to halt in the center of the room. They were eating dinner. Silver tableware, he noted in the back of his mind. Somewhere up there had to be a usable knife.

Contemptuously, he glanced askance at his guards, then surveyed the others in the room.

La Beauharnais sat between her husband and her son, Eugène, former contender for Serafina’s hand. The empress and Eugène gazed at him in trepidation, but Napoleon’s brothers looked at him with a purely Corsican thirst for revenge in their eyes. He cast them a sneering smile, then, for the sake of insolence, let his gaze wander freely over the three Bonaparte sisters.

When his stare wandered to Princess Pauline, he found her avidly inspecting him. He arched one brow as her gaze slowly traveled down his half-bared chest.

“Hey, sweetheart, why don’t you come over here and get on your knees for me?” he called softly, giving her a look.

She gasped. Sounds of outrage filled the hall.

Darius smiled. Someone bludgeoned him in the backs of his knees and he fell. He was struck repeatedly.
Ah, childhood
memories,
he thought. As he waited for the beating to end, he mused to himself that anyone who judged that underfed Corsican hussy in the same league with his Princesa had obviously never seen Serafina and did not know what a real princess was.