Royal 02 - Royal Passion (15 page)

They lay on the floor in the long gallery where they had been practicing tumbling. Even acrobatics had palled, however, mainly because Mara had laughingly refused to be their pupil any longer, pleading that there was too much work to be done. She had ushered in a tray of apple tarts and coffee at midmorning when she had brought in her mending to do by the gallery fire, but she could think of nothing else that might relieve their ennui.

"What we need,” Michael said, staring into the flames in the great fireplace with his chin resting on his hands and his thin face serious, “is a good war. Not a large one, just a small one with a nice skirmish or two."

Estes sighed, “Yes, one with a few villages to capture, preferably with plenty of maidens, pretty ones."

"Or even only passably pretty,” Jared said.

"Just not quite plain,” Jacques agreed.

"Wives. Not maidens, but bored and frustrated wives. I remember once in the lowlands—"

"Ahem,” Michael said, clearing his throat with a warning sound. Estes, after a quick glance at Mara, ducked his head, leaving his tale unfinished.

"They are rising in Poland and Parma, rioting in Venice and Vienna, agitating in Berlin, Milan, and Rome,” Trude said in disgruntled tones. “Why is it that with all the nice little revolutions in Europe, we have to be stuck in Paris?"

"In Paris!” they groaned as one, and the cry was only half-mocking.

"I've had better sport,” Estes said with deliberation, “in a cockpit behind a fourth-rate bawdy house in a two-cart town in the Croatia. Fourth-rate? I am not sure, not at all, that it could be rated so high. The women in this house were so ugly they wore their unmentionables over their heads and their kerchiefs over their—"

"Ahem,” Michael said.

"Why don't you throw the dice?” Mara suggested tactfully.

"None of us has anything to be won or to lose,” Jared said.

Jacques, rolling over so that he lay on his stomach at Mara's feet, looked up at her. “Of course you could offer a prize, say a kiss..."

"Brilliant, brother, brilliant,” Jared exclaimed, roused to sudden interest as he raised himself on one elbow.

"Sorry,” Mara said, her tone brisk. She knotted her thread at the end of her darn and snapped it off.

Estes said, “I am so tired of playing the knucklebones and watching Michael move his
petits
soldiers around on his chessboard that I could—"

"Ahem,” the rest of the cadre said.

"Complaints?” Roderic asked in gentle tones from where he had entered the room with nearly soundless steps. “Such injustice that any man should suffer dull lassitude for my sake. What will it take to return you to pleasure in my service?"

"The gods preserve us,” Estes breathed, and it was a true prayer.

"Jared, could I trouble you to move sufficiently to bring the swords?"

"Holy mother of us all,” Jacques whispered, and got to his feet, wiping the palms of his hands on his trouser legs as his twin brother sprang up to do Roderic's bidding. The others exchanged glances and pushed themselves slowly erect.

The swords were brought. They had long, slender blades chased in a Far Eastern design and fitted to silver and brass hilts. Supple and lethal, they had no buttons on the tips, which were commonly used for practice at swordplay, nor did the cadre fit them with any. Coats and boots were removed and sleeves rolled to the elbows. Then without the least protection for face or body, they faced each other.

"To first blood only. Strike well but lightly."

The apathy in the room had been most effectively banished. In its place was agitation allied to a curious gleeful apprehension and stark determination. They knew one and all that, in the heat of the fierce striving to win, anything could happen, minor to serious injury, disfigurement, maiming, even death. Mara sat mesmerized, unwilling to appear the coward by leaving, uncertain she would be able to watch.

The most amazing thing to her was the pairing. Roderic's cousin Michael faced Jared, and the other twin, Jacques, stood in front of Estes, leaving Trude, their female member, to face the prince. It had not been at her own choosing, or even by default, but had been the direct order of Roderic.

What was his thinking? As a gentleman, did he intend to allow her to inflict some small injury upon him? It did not seem likely, since at no time had Mara seen the woman treated as anything other than one of the cadre. And even if he did, could Trude bring herself to do it, feeling, as Mara suspected, the way she did about her leader? Could it be perhaps that Trude was swordsman enough to provide a challenge, one Roderic wished to test? It seemed a possibility since she possessed an unusual agility and strong wrists. It was possible, however, that if Roderic was the superior of them all, as indicated by their comments, he might feel Trude was safer with him. But how would he protect himself without injuring her? How could he allow himself to be defeated and still keep the respect of his cadre? Or how could he defeat Trude without drawing blood?

"Ready?"

"Ready,” came the answer in a ragged chorus.

"Salute!” When the swords had swept up and down again in unison, the prince went on, “Our Chére will give the signal."

Surprise held Mara speechless. She had not thought that he had even noticed she was there. Then as she realized they were standing, rigidly waiting, she picked up the heavy white linen table napkin she had just finished mending and held it out, tented, from her fingers. “
En garde
,” she said, and let the napkin fall.

The swords clanged together with a musical dissonance, scraping, grating, springing apart. The movements were as stylized as a ballet and appeared hardly more strenuous. And yet within seconds drops of sweat appeared on their faces and their breathing became loud over the soft shuffle and slide of their footsteps moving back and forth. Still, every person in the deadly contest was fit. Each moved with oiled precision as muscles strained and bent in a thousand difficult exercises and improbable tasks. At no time had Mara been made more aware that they were a unit, trained and directed for fighting in concerted effort, than in this moment when they were striving against each other.

Their concentration was intent, confined to the glinting sword tip and the appraisal of the person facing them. As the minutes ticked past, the apprehension seeped away, to be replaced by a dependence on skills well learned and a growing exultation. Grins appeared at the parrying of a finely aimed thrust and at the counterblow. A comment or two was made, mostly ribald. The swordplay became more daring, more spectacular. The blades tapped together in a peculiarly even rhythm, musically chiming, suddenly clanging, at some swift feint or aborted riposte.

A pale gray light fell through the delicately tinted glass of the high windows. It gave the faces of the contestants a ghostly pallor and colored their clothing with shifting shades of yellow and lavender and rose. It lent a curious sense of unreality to the scene, as if those touched by it were bloodless shades of themselves or else trespassers from some more violent time. In the dimness the sparks as the blades scraped together were bright orange.

Then Jacques lunged, drew back. Estes gave a great and histrionic cry of despair, clasping his arm. “Pinked, and by a child with a child's move. The shame of it, the shame!"

"You let me do it on purpose, you randy old man,” Jacques accused, “because you hoped to have Mademoiselle Chère wrap you up in her napkin."

"Wounded in arm and the quick of the heart, too! How could you think such a thing?"

"I know you. Besides, I thought of it myself."

"Insolent puppy. I have half a mind to take up my sword again and thrash you."

"You can't,” Jacques returned smugly."I have first blood. It's over."

But it was not over for the others. They fought on while Mara indeed wrapped the Italian's arm up with her napkin. The wound was fairly deep, but by no means serious. Estes crowed over his opponent about the attention he was getting from Mara, then strutted about with the piece of white linen around his upper arm as if it had been a decoration for valor or a mark of favor. He paced the floor, making pointed comments on the swordplay of the others like a spectator in a theater box, but instead of annoying them, it seemed only to add to their fighting fury and the atmosphere of strained hilarity. At the open doorway a crowd had formed. It was the servants, attracted by the clash of swords. They spoke among themselves, exchanging comments, exclaiming at a particularly cunning thrust. Mara would not have been surprised to learn that they were also contracting a discreet wager or two.

Michael and Jared were closely matched. Their swords winked blue light, slipping, slithering, endlessly tapping. Abruptly, Jared attacked. Michael parried in quinte and drove into a riposte. Jared recoiled, but in the movement Michael's blade tip slashed across his hand. Jared cursed without heat and dropped his sword.

So intent was Mara on the injury to Jared that she did not see the end of the match between Trude and Roderic. There was a flurry of swirling blades caught from the corner of her eye, then Trude was standing with her sword tip resting on the floor, staring at the prince with one hand held to her face.

Mara moved forward with quick steps as Roderic stepped back. Before she reached Trude, however, the young woman slowly lowered her hand to look at the blood on her fingers. The wound was small, no more than a scratch. It would not even leave a scar, but Trude was white, swaying on her feet. She raised her hazel gaze to Roderic.

"You never do anything without a reason,” she said on a choking breath. “Why?"

"Think,” he recommended.

Her voice cold and yet bewildered, she answered,"I would rather not."

"That is your prerogative."

At the doorway, the servants scattered as before a tidal wave, scurrying about their business. Juliana entered the room in impetuous style with her rose silk skirts swirling and the plumes in her rose velvet hat floating in the breeze of her passage. “Where, pray, are the brigands? I heard the din the instant I entered the house and flew to the fray. Don't tell me they have been routed already?"

"There were no brigands,” Roderic said shortly.

"No brigands? Burglars, stranglers, footpads, then, sneak thieves, assassins? Come, there must have been someone to inflict such carnage!” Her tones were strident, with anger masquerading as irony. It was prompted, Mara thought, by concern that had proven to be needless.

Most unwisely, Michael said, “It was only a cure for boredom."

"One likely to be permanent! I suppose if one of your number complained of headache the rest would cut off his head!"

"You are becoming quite a scold,” Roderic said, drawing her fire from his man. “Viragoes are not to the taste of many men. Are you so certain your Prussian is following?"

"Leave Arvin out of this!"

"Gladly, except that we must weigh the effects on your temper of his coming or, alternately, his failing to show himself."

"I am not the only one grown acerbic. If I had known how frustration would affect you, I would have shut the door on you and your ladylove last night and gone quietly away."

"Would that you had,” Roderic said, unperturbed, “or that you had never come."

"If you mean to make me feel unwelcome, you have succeeded to admiration, but it won't serve,” Juliana declared in magnificent scorn. “Here I am, and here I stay!"

Mara did not wait to hear more. Gathering up her mending, she skirted the group and moved out of the room. She thought Roderic watched her go, but, if so, he made no attempt to detain her.

Roderic's words to his sister seemed to indicate regret that they had been interrupted the night before. Would he have preferred that there had not been an opportunity for the heat of the moment to fade, for a cooler head to counsel caution? Certainly she must feel that way. She had come so close to completing her task, and so painlessly. How strange it seemed. She had known that there was more of the temptress in her than she had imagined after the incident with Dennis Mulholland—there must be or he would never have behaved as he did. Still, she was surprised to think that she had been quite undismayed by the idea of giving herself to the prince in those moments; it had seemed natural, indeed, almost inevitable. The feel of his arms around her, the tenderness of his kiss, the stirring of the blood she had felt, had been a shock to her somehow. She had resigned herself to seducing the man; she had not expected to enjoy it.

It seemed almost depraved then, the degree of disappointment she felt that her object had not been accomplished. It was the fear, the feeling of precious time slipping away, that made her so emotional, or so she tried to tell herself. She only half-believed it. No matter. There were only eleven days left. Eleven days. She must make them count.

Mara had not been in her bedchamber for more than a few minutes when a knock fell on the door. It was Juliana who entered at her call. The blond girl hesitated in the doorway, her teeth set into her bottom lip.

"You may tell me to go away if you like and I wouldn't blame you. I was rude to you just now, but it was not intentional. I am afraid that in our family we have a tendency to speak our minds with unblushing frankness. It can cause difficulties."

"Please come in."

"Thank you.” She turned in a whirl of skirts to shut the door carefully behind her.

"I have been thinking this morning,” Mara said, “that you will wish to take over the running of your brother's house. Perhaps that is what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Good heavens, no! I am not at all domestic.” Juliana's expression was blank.

"I would not usurp your privileges as well as your rooms."

"Please do. Please. From what I remember of this house from my last excursion here, you have produced wonders of refinement. I would not dream of interfering."

"Then ... how may I help you?"

The other girl shrugged. “I don't know. It was an impulse to come to you, to tell you that I didn't mean to hurt you just now. I was interested solely in puncturing the conceit of that brother of mine. He is entirely too sure of himself."