The Runaway Princess (25 page)

Wrapping her hands around her knees, Evangeline peeked out and saw everyone rise to their feet.

“She's not the princess,” Honest Gaylord said in disgust. “She's Eleanor's daughter from across the water.”

“Eleanor was the princess's aunt,” the woman said tartly. “Don't y' think the princess could resemble her, too?”

Evangeline held herself very still, trembling with the need to get away, yet knowing it was safest to remain. Boots and shoes, gowns and trousers strode past. Voices called, seeking the counterfeit princess. Victor shouted, Rafaello charmed everyone he could, but they couldn't find her. They searched down the street, in the alley, down toward the river.

The original crowd gradually dispersed. A new crowd gathered, intent on getting the first bun free. Congratulating herself on the success of her ploy, Evangeline scooted out from under the table, and cautiously stood.

Honest Gaylord kept serving buns. If he saw her, he didn't say. The people snacked, then bought; all was calm. Elaborately casual, she picked up her half-eaten turnover from the table and moved toward the street she'd first come down. She had a mission. She wanted to get back to the Serephinian side of the river. She wanted to see if anyone there remembered the woman called Eleanor, or knew her ultimate fate.

She'd walked perhaps half the way when Victor rounded the corner toward her. She stopped.

He stopped.

She glanced around. There was nowhere to go except back up the street, or down a narrow, shadowed alley.

She looked back at him, at his eyes lit up with unholy amusement. He smiled—a smile of wicked amusement, looking far too much like Dominic. “Your Highness! Enough games. You've had your fun.” He patted his thigh as if she were a dog to be summoned. “Come now, girl, let's go.”

She threw the turnover at him as hard as she could. Her feet discovered flight. She tore into the alley and raced along, through garbage and around discarded barrels. Behind her, she heard Victor shouting, and she only ran faster. The alley forked. She took the left passage, and almost immediately it narrowed yet more. The shadows deepened. A blank wall of blush-colored stone rose twelve feet on one side. On the other side, a series of dark doors marched along. She tried two. Both were bolted.

She heard Victor calling. He followed like a rat after its cheese. She ran, but she had to do something, before the stitch in her side overcame her, before the pain in her foot grew unbearable. She dove into a small alcove in the wall, and in the alcove she found a small door. She threw her body at it, but it held true. Pounding with the flat of her hand, she cried, “Open, please open.”

A melodic feminine voice spoke on the other side. “As you wish.”

Evangeline couldn't believe it. Someone had heard her. “Hurry.”

“A moment, my sister, I must find the key.”

“He's coming.” Evangeline leaned against the door and slapped it again. “He's coming.”

The door opened and she fell into a garden, stumbled forward, and collapsed onto a graveled path.

Behind her, she heard a solid thunk, and the rattle of a lock. She turned and looked, and Marie Theresia, the postulant from the convent on the cliff, stood smiling before the closed doorway. “She told us you would come here, and you did. Santa Leopolda be praised!”

Victor slammed into the door, bringing Evangeline
to her feet, wild and hunted.

“Don't worry.” Marie Theresia took her hand and patted it. “He can't get in here. And listen”—she lifted one finger as Victor moved along, pounding on other doors—“he's not sure where you disappeared.” The little postulant's black-and-white habit stood out among the tangle of pink climbing roses and blazing yellow coreopsis. No wind ruffled the atmosphere here, and dianthus scented each breath. Tiny apples hung in tight green bunches from mature trees placed to give shade to paths and benches. Bees buzzed, tasting each blossom on their way to the row of hives along the outer wall.

“Yes.” Evangeline panted. “Good. Thank heaven.”

“Indeed, you should. You are destined from above.”

Lately, Evangeline had heard too much about her destiny. She had had the sensation of being swept along by her destiny. And she feared she faced her destiny once again. Rubbing her palm against her
sweaty forehead, she asked, “
Who
told you I would come here?”

“Why, Santa Leopolda, of course.”

Evangeline's pounding heart slowed and her breath became slow and even, but she was too tired to comprehend the little postulant. “Santa Leopolda is dead.”

Marie Theresia only smiled as she drew Evangeline's arm through her own. “You don't mind that I call you ‘sister,' do you? I feel that we are sisters.”

“No.” Evangeline glanced at the top of the twelve-foot wall. She couldn't hear Victor anymore at all. Had he gone on, or did he listen for the murmur of her voice? She drew Marie Theresia away from the wall, moving toward the building of blush-colored stone, which it enclosed. “In God's eyes, I suppose we are sisters.”

“Exactly.”

Here, the sounds of the city were muffled, lost in the width and depth of a broad enclosure where plants flourished, cherished by their caretakers. Here, serenity slipped like a jewel along the golden chain of days, each blending into the other until peace permeated the earth, the plants, the very air.

“This is a convent,” Evangeline guessed. “This is the garden.”

Marie Theresia gazed around with pride. “Beautiful, isn't it? It's our sister city convent, the original convent of Santa Leopolda. It was here that she placed the crowns and scepters in the crystal case.”

Evangeline tested Marie Theresia. “And you talked to her this morning.”

“Yes, this morning. Yesterday morning. She's our mother superior, you know.”

Evangeline relaxed. The girl seemed normal enough, bright and without a hint of madness. Surely she meant that each mother superior was given the title of Leopolda—although that still didn't explain how she knew Evangeline would land here when Evangeline hadn't known it herself.

Tugging her along a path toward the tall fountain in the heart of the garden, Marie Theresia said, “We just arrived.”

“For Revealing?” Evangeline guessed.

“I
have
to be here for Revealing. Ours was a very uneventful trip. I hope your journey was the same.”

Evangeline sagged as she remembered Danior, Dominic, the hot springs, the village, the rebels . . . Danior. “Not exactly.”

“How foolish of me,” Marie Theresia chirped as cheerfully as one of the birds in the trees. “You're the princess. You must be tested by adversity.”

“I've been tested enough to be the princess, but in fact I am not.” Evangeline knew she sounded a little touchy, but this princess thing had caused her no end of trouble.

Marie Theresia plucked a dozen long-stemmed coreopsis, and added a few snowy white daisies. She detoured into the rose garden, and with the knife at her belt, she cut two perfect blood-red blossoms. “What is a princess?”

Evangeline looked sharply at the plump, girlish face under the wimple. Marie Theresia wasn't a halfwit; Evangeline knew that from their former conversation. Yet today, Marie Theresia seemed distracted, flighty, and definitely a little odd. “A princess is the daughter of a king and a queen,”
Evangeline answered without a doubt. After all, she'd given the subject a lot of thought.

“No, you're wrong.” Marie Theresia arranged the armful of flowers. “A princess is one who is noble of demeanor, who is kind, modest, willing to put her people's welfare before her own, regardless of the advantage she might gain.”

Evangeline couldn't believe it. A postulant who waxed philosophical. “No,
you're
wrong. There are plenty of women like that, rich and poor, and if the king and queen and all their children were killed, they still wouldn't be princesses. To have even the remotest possibility of being a princess, one must be born into a noble family.”

“Who decides nobility?” Marie Theresia added a spray of stiff greenery sprinkled with tiny white flowers to serve as a background for her bouquet. “If a family is noble, and believes that their line is noble because of God's sanctity, might not God wish to change his blessing if the occasion demands? Might not God have different fates planned than mere mankind determines?”

Evangeline felt trapped by the question. Leona had been quite clear in her faith, and nothing Evangeline had read about the other religions had contradicted those teachings. There was only one answer to Marie Theresia's question, and although she mumbled, Evangeline knew nothing could change this eternal truth. “God is almighty.”

“Exactly! God works in mysterious ways, and even the wisest prophets are wrong sometimes.” Hooking her arm with Evangeline's again, Marie Theresia pulled her down the twisting path toward
the courtyard around the fountain. “You have fulfilled the prophecies, Evangeline, and I believe God brought you to Baminia to be the princess for our people.”

They walked around the corner into the courtyard, and Danior rose from the bench where he'd been sitting. “That's what I believe, too.”

Danior. Dear Lord, Danior. Evangeline had braced herself to never see him again. She'd waved good-bye and turned her face resolutely onward. Then he'd sabotaged her, creeping into her mind with admonitions about the two countries, about how the revolutionaries would destroy the land and the people if Revealing didn't occur, and she'd come to Plaisance. To this moment which, if Marie Theresia was to be believed, had been foretold by the mysterious Santa Leopolda.

Danior stood watching her, daring her to take flight and promising, with the tension of his body and the expectation of his eyes, that he would run her down. He
wanted
to run her down, to work off his frustration at her intransigence with a hard chase.

Yet it seemed that every time she ran from him, she instead ran right to him. And how could she run away from the big, rough-looking man when she carried his image with her always?

Marie Theresia pressed the flowers into Evangeline's arms. “White for purity, gold for nobility, and red for the blood you've spent getting to Plaisance. This is for the princess that you are.”

 

Funny to be here again, captured by Danior and carried along toward the fate she'd fought so hard
against. Time had run out. Tomorrow was Revealing. And she had to decide soon what she would do. Today. Now.

Danior was not making it easy on her. He sat between her and the door of the royal carriage, his long legs stretched out as a living barrier to freedom. He had bathed, he wore clean clothes with an absolutely magnificent waistcoat of royal purple, and his beard had been shaved to display his stubborn, offended, set-in-granite chin. His arms were crossed over his chest and his mouth was set. He stared straight ahead—not at her, not outside—but straight ahead at the buttoned red satin upholstery.

He was the crown prince of Baminia again, elegant and royal and much, much too arrogant.

Evangeline shuffled the flowers from one arm to the other. The rose thorns poked at her, and the stiff greenery chaffed her, much like the words Marie Theresia had spoken.

Might not God wish to change his blessing if the occasion demands? Might not God have different fates planned than mere mankind determines?

Evangeline was Serephinian, and apparently the daughter of a noble house. Possibly even the cousin of the princess, and if that were all the truth, she would bow to destiny and claim her place at Danior's side.

But if Honest Gaylord and his cohorts were correct, she was also the daughter of a barrel-maker. A respectable man, and well-liked, but a barrel-maker nonetheless. Evangeline had to weigh Danior's pride in his royal line against the consequences of refusing his suit.

And the only way she could do that was to talk to him, and breaking the frigid silence took all her courage. Jiggling her foot against the floor, she said, “Your Highness?” Then, “Danior?”

No response.

“Have I angered you?”

He gave no indication that he heard her.

She took a breath. “Well, of course I have, that's obvious, and I'm sorry.”

His shoulders hunched.

She was getting nowhere. Looking out, she saw people lining the streets, staring as the royal coach made its way to the Palace of the Two Kingdoms. When they spotted her peering out at them, they waved with such vigor that she didn't know how they remained on their feet. This was what the citizens of the Two Kingdoms wished, that their prince and their princess be in the city, waiting for tomorrow with as much anticipation as the people experienced.

Our appearance will calm the rumors of a lost princess, Evangeline thought. Especially when it's reported Danior fetched me from the convent. They'll think he stashed me there on purpose.

Danior. She peeked at him. He looked positively grim, but she had to try again. “It hasn't been an easy journey for either one of us, but we've learned a lot about each other and I think perhaps . . . that is, when I ran away this time, I think you were worried.”

As if she'd turned a tap, his head snapped around and his eyes flashed. “Worried?”

She flinched from the single word roar.

“Of course I was worried. Revolutionaries scouring the countryside, men who you'd already humiliated seeking you with retribution in their hearts, and you think I might be worried? I was frantic!”

At least he was speaking to her once more. Shouting at her once more.

“Running was stupid,” she admitted. “The first time I ran away without realizing how vengeful they were. This time I ran away because—”
Because I made love to you, and you made love to a princess.

What she had not said hung in the air like a wisp of smoke rising from a barely kindled fire. She blinked away a sudden onset of inexplicable tears.

Danior's fury visibly died before her eyes. He looked away from her, and a dark color stained his cheeks. He looked like a man whose dream had died, yet when he turned back to her, determination etched his face. He grabbed her hands in his grip, the first time he'd touched her since he'd taken her from the convent, and he squeezed them tightly. “Was it that bad?”

She winced. “What?”

He released her to chafe first one hand, then the other. “I know it wasn't what you dreamed. What woman dreams of making love in a dark hole? And we were dirty and it was rough and uncouth, and I was too hurried, but I thought you—I couldn't see you, of course—but I thought you liked it. At least to a point. At least as far as I was able to tell . . . in the dark . . . and I was excited beyond belief.”

He didn't understand. He thought he had frightened her with the demands of his body, when it was
her fear of disappointing him that drove her away. “No, that wasn't why I ran. I did like it.”

He disregarded her so completely that she might not have spoken. “I'm usually better than that. I promised to romance you—remember, back in your bedchamber at Château Fortuné?—and I know how to do this courtship thing right.”

“I wouldn't hold you to that!”

“Women like to be courted.” He was back to deciding what she thought, making kingly statements and not listening to a word she said. He rapped on the roof of the coach, and immediately it slowed. Even before it had come to a complete stop, he was out the door and running across the street to an old woman who stood hawking confections before her shop.

Even the wisest prophets are wrong sometimes
. So Marie Theresia had asserted. Did she mean that Santa Leopolda had not seen the whole truth? Evangeline was meant to be the princess?

She watched as Danior spoke to the old woman, waving his arms in big circles. He stuck his hand in his pocket and poured coins into her palm. The candy maker looked toward the carriage and grinned a toothless grin as he plucked a gaily decorated tin out of her display. Then she insisted on winding it in a ribbon while Danior shifted his feet impatiently.

Snatching the tin, he ran back to the coach. It tilted under his weight as he climbed in. Sliding off the ribbon, he popped the lid and selected a marzipan made in the shape of a seashell.