The Runaway Princess (11 page)

Danior stared up at the rope dangling from the
storeroom, down the sheer cliff and into a coil on the ground.

Rafaello stood beside him, his complexion blanched, his gaze fixed on the wicked boulders scattered at the base of the tower. “The princess is mad.”

“More than mad.” Danior shoved the lock of hair off his forehead. She was crazy, insane, totally feckless and without concern for her own safety.

“We could have found her at the bottom.” Rafaello turned even paler. “All bloody and whimpering . . .”

“Don't think about it,” Danior said. As usual, Rafaello was squeamish Unusually, Danior found himself to be a little squeamish at the thought of
her
, lying broken and lifeless . . .

Danior used to think he understood women. In fact, he had flattered himself into believing he understood them very well. On the whole they were a simple gender, delighted by little tokens of affection and awed by a man's wisdom and attentions.

Some men disagreed with Danior. Victor told him bluntly that women only acted amiably because he was a prince. Victor said that when women were on a manhunt, they dissembled and simpered. After a man had been bagged, he claimed, they became bold and disrespectful.

But that didn't explain Ethelinda.

She hadn't bagged him. Quite the opposite. Just to evade him, she'd run like a fawn into the most hideous danger. When had the gentle girl changed so much? He remembered her well, all smiling grace and amiable goodness, obedient and mild . . . and somehow she'd become this termagant.

This woman.

He had never been particularly enthralled with marrying a Serephinian. His country and hers had quarreled for generations, and every good Baminian knew that Serephinians were light-minded, interested only in the trivial, and given to unsteady morals. Yet the prophecy had correctly predicted both his birth and Ethelinda's, and the people of both kingdoms had taken that as a sign that the terms of Revealing would come to pass. In his youth, Danior rather relished being the one on whom all hopes were pinned. Now he was older, the responsibility weighed on him, and he was impatient to reign—over
two
kingdoms.

If only the woman Evangeline would cooperate!

At Château Fortuné, he had pursued her to her bedchamber, listened to her ineptly told tale, then tried to seduce her.

Stupidity. He'd frightened the girl with his impetuous appetite, an appetite that had taken even him by surprise.

But my God, if he could have had her, he now would have been glad for it. She wouldn't have descended that rope, risking her life and falling into rebel hands.

Instead, she would be in his arms, contented from his lovemaking, and, when he was done stroking the shell of her ear, kissing the wide sweep of her mouth, suckling on those magnificent breasts, she would be looking forward to the next lovemaking.

His frustration at his own stupidity made his blood race, and deliberately, he turned his mind away. By Santa Leopolda, she was
not
hurt. She was only captured, and that because she had been reckless and wayward. He should have suspected her plan, but . . . with his gaze, he measured the distance between the window and the ground.

No. He never should have suspected
this
.

When had Ethelinda become the kind of woman who would climb down a cliff to escape her true destiny? He rubbed a tight muscle in his neck. To escape
him
.

Damn the girl!

“Master.” Victor knelt at the edge of the forest, his face bent close to the ground as he examined the footprints crushed into the young grass. “Four men were here, but come and look at this.”

Vibrating with anger and fear, Danior strode to Victor's side.

“A bloody footprint. She cut herself on the rocks on the way down. As long as they make her walk, and as long as she keeps bleeding, we can follow.”

Danior looked into the darkening forest. It would be evening soon. The shadows were lengthening,
and the kidnappers had an hour's head start on them. But Victor was the best tracker in Baminia, and he would find Ethelinda somehow.

Then it would be up to Danior to free her.

A kerchief fluttered in the breeze, caught on a bush's branch. Below, a chunk of cheese lay smashed, and a loaf of bread was covered with ants. “She lost her dinner. She'll be hungry.” A thought that unduly distressed him. For all the slenderness of her waist, Ethelinda had shown a surprising dedication to her dinner. He had thought to lure her with the promise of his chef's skill; he did not like to think of her hungry. “We need supplies.”

“We'll have them.” Victor straightened and pointed to a contingent of four nuns approaching from the convent.

Soeur Constanza walked in the lead, carrying a pair of boots, socks stuffed into each one. Marie Theresia assisted an old nun, hobbling and bent. And a young nun led a donkey laden with traveling bags.

Danior had admitted his identity to the good sisters, and now he was reaping the benefit. They were coming to his rescue. “We can't use the donkey,” he decided. “It'll slow us down.”

To his surprise, the old nun heard him and lifted her head. Her voice sounded clear across the distance, and her blue eyes pierced him. “It's not for you, young prince, but for us. We're making our pilgrimage to Plaisance.”

Danior stared over Soeur Constanza's head at the old woman. “In the midst of a revolution?”

“No one can hurt me. I go with God's authority.”

“You could wait.”

She smiled slowly, as if his ignorance amused her. “Regardless of any danger, Your Highness, all of your subjects will be leaving their homes and making for Plaisance. You know well that in three nights, the moon will be full.”

It was true. After the night of the full moon, the day would dawn that had been prophesied a thousand years ago by Santa Leopolda herself, and Danior knew his people would crawl to Plaisance to witness the miracle. Yet the holy lady wasn't taking his advice to stay home, nor was she offering to help him, and his princess had been kidnapped.

Dominic would hold Evangeline, waiting for Danior to come after her, and when he had them they'd be tried at a sham tribunal for the crime of being royal.

Danior had to get her before Dominic reached his stronghold. “There won't be a Revealing if I don't find the princess.”

“There won't be a Revealing if
we
don't get to Plaisance, either,” the nun answered without a speck of deference to his position as her prince. “You'll need a blessing, my prince, before you can open the crystal case.”

Something regal in her manner reduced him to the role of sulky boy in knee breeches, and he replied rather more sharply than he should. “If you are not there to bless us, I'm sure the archbishop will be glad to substitute.”

“Whether
I
am there matters not a bit, and the archbishop, you'll find, will not be able to help you in your need.”

He didn't understand her, and he didn't care for the way her lids drooped or the barely visible gleam of intelligence in her eyes. She knew something. The old woman knew something he didn't know, and she relished her insight and his ignorance in a manner that lifted his hackles. And every moment he spent arguing, Evangeline slipped closer to a trial and execution.

The old nun must have read his thoughts, for she demanded, “Why are you dallying with me? You should be rescuing your princess. She has been lost before; you dare not lose her again.” She pointed a crooked finger at Soeur Constanza, who lifted a bulging bag from the donkey. “Soeur Constanza will give you the lady's boots, and some supplies, as many as you can carry and still move quickly.”

She offered help, yet this old woman who had spent her life in the convent was telling him how to outfit his expedition, and while she was none too tactful, she was furnishing the inventory, and the bag looked like the size he would have packed.

Stiff with reluctant gratitude, he stood with his hands hanging by his side. “You're most generous.”

“Take the boots,” the old nun commanded. “Take them.”

Soeur Constanza lifted his hands and placed the boots in them, then turned and handed the sack to the silent Victor.

“Find she who would be your queen.” In a voice that allowed no doubt, the old nun said, “There'll be no other chance.”

The little party moved along, and the first whisper of old wives' tales winnowed into his mind.
Tales of the holy woman who had foreseen the schism of her beloved countries, taken their treasures, and uttered the prophecy that drove him in his quest today.

As Soeur Constanza moved to join the little band, Danior caught her arm. “Who is she?” he asked.

“Our mother superior.”

“And?”

In the tone she had used to announce dinner, Soeur Constanza said, “A thousand years ago the saint came to live among us, and she is with us still.”

“The saint,” he repeated, not believing it, not daring to disbelieve.

“Of course. Our mother superior is the living incarnation of Santa Leopolda.”

His paralysis allowed her to break free.

With a lift of her snub little nose, she straightened her robes and strode away.

Stunned, he watched them as they found. the path to Plaisance. The mother superior—Santa Leopolda, if he believed Soeur Constanza—turned as she entered the woods, and across the distance he saw the spark and the warning in her gaze.

Recalled to his duty, he hurried in the other direction, after his lost princess.

For one horrified moment, Evangeline thought Dan
ior had watched her descend from the tower and now held her in his arms. Danior—but in a scarf that covered the lower part of his face. But this man's frigid blue eyes crinkled as he smiled with genuine amusement, and Danior, she knew without a doubt, would not be entertained at her escapade. Nor would he be holding her so tightly that he bruised her.

“Your Highness.” The man spoke cultured Baminian in a voice as low and warm as melted honey. “How good of you to come out to meet us.”

The rebel Dominic. She opened her mouth to scream. Off to the side, she saw a flash of steel, and someone jumped at her with a bare blade. “Die, princess,” a man's voice rasped.

Dominic swung her away. “Not yet.”

Two tall men, the other members of the party, shoved their short, knife-wielding companion aside. “Let's get away from here first, fool.”

“Wait.” As they hustled her into the forest, Evangeline dug her heels into the mixture of humus and pine needles beneath her feet.

Dominic wrenched her arm to keep her abreast of him.

“Wait! You don't understand. I'm not the—”

Shorty attacked from the side and smacked her across the face. “Shut up.”

Without a thought, Evangeline kicked him between the legs. He went down like a lead weight. For a moment she thought his companions would surely kill her, but the two tall men burst out laughing. She scarcely dared look at Dominic, but when she did she found his frigid gaze fixed on her, observing her, weighing her.

This man hated her with an intensity that shook her to the bone, and that gave her the impetus to do what she had to. Dropping to her knees, she hunched over the purple, squirming Shorty. “I'm so sorry.” She wrung her hands. She clutched at his shirt. “Did I hurt you? I didn't mean to hurt you.” She grappled with his belt, playing the role of the woman appalled at her own temerity and all the while thanking God for the friends she'd made at the orphanage. The ones who had picked pockets on the street.

Gasping, Shorty held his groin and glared at her.

“Is it bruised? Let me see.” In an artlessly inadvertent movement, she slammed her fist against his hand.

He howled and squeezed his eyes shut.

And she lifted a weapon from his belt and slipped it into her bosom, then wrung her hands
close by her chest in what she hoped looked like ladylike distress. “Please forgive me. I'm just so clumsy.”

That sent the hyenas into new paroxysms of hilarity.

“Yes, interesting.” Dominic lifted her to her feet, tied her hands in front of her, and yanked her on a leading rope through the brush. The two hyenas had followed, laughing more as she protested that she wasn't the princess, they had the wrong woman, and why didn't they let her go? Dominic ignored her, releasing branches to slap her face until she quieted.

After about a half hour, they heard a thrashing behind them, and Shorty puffed up behind them.

He walked with a limp now, and he carried a grudge. “Kill her.”

He shoved Evangeline's shoulder, and she stumbled on the rocky ground. The cut on her heel opened again. The blood was sticky against her skin, and sand shifted into the hole in her heel.

“Kill her,” he repeated. “She's useless. Look, she can't even walk.”

“Please, kill me,” Evangeline said. “That wouldn't be the worst thing that's happened to me lately.”

Clearly unimpressed with her bravado, Dominic kept walking, dragging her along. “She's our bait for the prince, and when we have them both, we'll purge the country of royalty.”

They traveled for hours. Dominic, Shorty, and the two bodyguards passed through the underbrush, their brown leather breeches and vests blending with the forest. Each one carried a primitive musket, a long knife, and enough gunpowder hung in sacks
from their belts to blow up a city. Despite the weight of their arsenal, they walked without a sound.

Not Evangeline. She gasped in the thin air. Her side had a stitch. Her aching calves told her they had been ascending steadily. The trees of the forest were tall and mighty in the lower elevations, but the higher the little band went, the more the thinning trees struggled to survive. Short and withered, they showed the wear of constant wind in their branches, and each deformity was more grotesque than the next. Thoughts of enchanted forests, of hoary evils that lived beneath bark and limb, crowded Evangeline's mind.

Then they rose above the tree line, and towering boulders watched like ancient giants. Sweat beaded her brow from her exertions, yet the wind struck chill, and she shivered convulsively. No thought of escape entered the exhausted recesses of her mind. All she knew was that she needed to rest.

But she couldn't because of the despot who led them tirelessly. That despot who put her through this torture. Dominic.

Shorty shoved her again and cackled when she fell to her knees. “Some princess.”

“Am not,” Evangeline muttered. She felt as if she'd been denying a royal heritage forever. And with the same results.

She was ignored.

Shorty said, “Look at her, weak and whiny. She can't keep up with us. She's accustomed to luxury. Kill her, Dominic, and put her out of her misery.”

Dominic waited while she dragged herself to her feet again. “She's smart enough to want to get away
from Danior. That alone makes her of interest to me.”

She didn't want to be of
interest
to them. She especially didn't want to be of interest to
him
.

Darkness had already come to the lower elevations, and the sun's rays crept up toward them bringing the promise of a cold night. They headed straight for a barren cliff, chiseled by the winds that blew off the snow-capped peaks, its only decoration a series of ribbonlike waterfalls cascading down from the glaciers. Mammoth crags clustered at the base, then spread across the landscape like a giant's building blocks, and dirty patches of snow huddled in their shadow. The site was ugly, detached and hard, just like the men who surrounded her.

One of the hyenas tweaked her hair. “If you're going to take her to the lair, at least cover her eyes.”

“Why?” Shorty's eyes shone with fanaticism, and he moved like a weasel, his body constantly in motion. “She won't be coming out again.”

The hyenas laughed, and Evangeline blinked away a rush of weak tears. Her feet hurt, her face ached where Shorty had hit her, her wrists were raw from Dominic's rope, she was desperately thirsty, and no one cared. Victor and Rafaello had treated her well because they thought she was the princess. These men treated her crudely for exactly the same reason.

“I thought Robin Hood lived in a forest,” she mumbled in English.

“Robin Hood was a fool. Give money to the poor! Better he should have spent it to overthrow the king,” Dominic answered in English, without looking bark.

She was glad. If he'd seen her astonishment, he'd have laughed at her again, and she found his bitter amusement harder to take than blows. He spoke English, and he knew an obscure English legend. How? He was both more casual and more dangerous than the other men. He frightened her to the depths of her soul.

A bird called nearby, and Evangeline's head swiveled to catch sight of it.

Ugly bird. It was Shorty, lips pursed, wrinkled throat vibrating as he produced the most beautiful call she'd ever heard.

“I keep him for a reason.” Dominic spoke to her as if to an equal, while treating her like a despised prisoner.

Pebbles skittered down one of the towering slabs of rock, and a boy of about fifteen slid into their path. He was dirty and ragged, a scarf hung loose around his neck, but his eyes gleamed and his teeth shone sharply. “You got her.”

And it wasn't a boy, Evangeline realized, but a girl.

“Did you ever doubt it?” Shorty asked.

“No,” the girl said, but her worshipful gaze was fixed on Dominic.

Dominic reached out and ruffled her short hair. “Good to see you, brat.”

The girl beamed.

“Now, pull up your kerchief.”

“It itches.” But she obeyed, dragging the rough wool over her fine features. “Anyway, she's not leaving here.”

The tether must have jerked in Dominic's hand, for he said, “You didn't think we could let you go, Your Highness?”

“I'm not the princess,” she said for the thousandth, millionth time.

“Then no one will care when we slit your throat, will they?” he answered smoothly.

She wished he would stop smiling. “This is the second time I've been kidnapped in two days.”

“Then nothing should come as a surprise.” Passing her tether to Shorty, he strode forward to the men stepping out from a crevasse in the central cluster of boulders.

They glanced at her, but their gazes returned worshipfully to Dominic. They slapped him on the shoulder, spoke in congratulatory tones, but for all their camaraderie it was clear he was the center of their universe. This man led their rebellion.

Then he presented her with a wave and a sardonic bow, and they let loose a cacophony of catcalls and huzzahs. They strolled toward her, surrounding her like a pack of prowling wolves, pinched her cheeks, her breasts, her rump, and laughed uproariously as she tried to cover herself. Her helplessness reminded her of the orphanage, but not even there had the humiliation been so great. When she slapped at their hands, they slapped back, stinging her with their amusement and making her wish she. could flatten them all.

But there were too many to fight, and if she tried, they would know she should be watched. She'd already made a mistake with Shorty; she dared not make another one.

So she whimpered and whirled, trying to confront each one of the circle of faces that moment by moment grew more vicious.

Then that clear, warm, generous voice said, “Enough.”

The torment halted as suddenly as it had begun.

“Bring her here.”

Shorty jerked on her tether, breaking through the chafed skin on her wrists and gloating as if each drop of blood sizzled with his revenge. He shoved her forward to stand in front of Dominic.

“Now you know.” Dominic looked at her, no longer smiling, his eyes blue and frozen as the glacier on the heights above. “Stay quiet and we'll judge you and perhaps give you a quick death. Try to escape, and we'll pluck your eyes out and leave you as carrion.

“But . . . why?”

“You dare ask that, between the harm the old king and your mother did? These people are my people. They have suffered, and they remember.” The last gleam of sunset draped the clouds in royal purple and crimson, and lit the cruel, sharp face above the scarf. “The sins of the father, my dear . . .”

“I'm not the princess.”

“You're consistent, I'll say that for you.” Dominic snapped his fingers, and his people rushed to surround him. He handed her tether to the fifteen-year-old. “Here, brat. Tie her to the post and keep an eye on her. She's not as stupid as she looks.”

Brat visibly drooped. “We're not going to kill her now?”

That hateful smile appeared on Dominic's face again, and he mocked, “She'll want to die with her prince.”

The girl perked up. “Have we captured him, too?”

“Captured His Royal Highness the Crown Prince Danior?” His head thrown back, Dominic laughed aloud. “That is surely beyond even our feeble capacity. No, we'll let him come to us. Victor is the best tracker in the two kingdoms, and the non-princess left ample proof of her passing. Her shoe is torn and her foot is bleeding.”

He knew. He knew how Evangeline had suffered, and he had been glad because it had furthered his cause.

She had thought he looked like Danior. He didn't look anything like Danior. Danior could never look so callous.

“No one's to touch her. No one's to hurt her.” Dominic looked around at the men, but his contempt lashed at Evangeline. “She's not worth our spit. I want every first-shift man watching for His Royal Greatness. You're not to interfere with his progress. Every second-shift man should be resting, preparing for the capture and our tribunal. Remember, the prince is a fighter, too, trained by Napoleon just as we were. Now get to your positions. Tonight will win all.”

Half the men scattered into the gathering darkness. Dominic, Shorty, and the bodyguards led the other half through the stone-lined crevice. The girl followed them, and of necessity, Evangeline followed her.

The narrow, crooked path led them around through the stones and into an open space against the cliff. A low fire burned in the middle of a rough circle formed by more stones, some stuck straight up, taller than Dominic's head. Some were scattered
and toppled to lay flat and spread with blankets. A corner was formed where a particularly tall crag shouldered up against the cliff. A pole stuck out of the ground, and Brat led her there.

Impassively, she tied Evangeline's hands close to the pole and left her. With a low groan, Evangeline sank to the ground. Just sitting was the greatest pleasure she'd ever experienced. She lifted her foot and squinted at her sole, but it was too dark to see more than the dark blot where the blood had oozed out. Not that it mattered. A shudder shook her as pain, chill, and dread jerked at her tightly strung nerves.