The Runaway Princess (27 page)

His thumb jerked in her grasp, and while she congratulated herself on holding him in check, his other hand came up and snatched the washcloth off her chest. She snatched back, but he held it out of reach. “Stand up and get it,” he challenged.

She splashed water in his face instead.

His thumb disappeared out of her fist, and he tucked his hands under her armpits to bring her to her feet. “You need to be taught a lesson.” He gazed at her body, streaming with water, warm and scented, and added, “I'm going to teach you that lesson.”

Funny, the words were threatening, but she didn't feel threatened. She felt wanton and utterly relaxed, as if she'd been waiting for his action in anticipation. She smoothed her damp hand across his dripping face. “You're wet.”

“I know.” Drops splashed onto his shirt. “There was even water on the floor, and I knelt in it.”

She gripped his shoulders. “You'll have to take your trousers off.”

“So I will.” His hands slid around to her breasts. He cupped them, leaned to them, kissed them. “I've seen you in moonlight, now in candlelight.
Tomorrow morning, I'll see you in the clear light of day in our own palace.”

He suckled, and she shut her eyes. He didn't believe in magic, but he was wrong. When his tongue touched her, his lips pulling strongly at her nipple, he summoned that magic sensation of melting softness, inside and out.

But now she knew—she was a magician, too. She took him out of himself, out of control, mad with desire.

Together they made magic.

She pulled his shirt loose, unfastened his trousers, and let them drop. She slid her hands into his drawers, but he caught her.

“No, you don't.” He put her hands away from him and stepped back.

“Why not?”

“If you do that, it'll be a repeat of Blanca.”

“I liked what we did at Blanca.”

“So did I.” He pulled his shirt over his head and yanked his boots off. “But there are other avenues to explore, other pleasures I can give you, and when you touch me all I can think about is my pleasure.”

“When can I touch you?”

“Perhaps in a year or two.”

He stepped out of his trousers and peeled off his drawers, and whatever objection she wished to make vanished in a spell of forgetfulness. The first time she'd looked at him across the dining chamber at Château Fortuné she had thought him broad and strong as a peasant, a man who overwhelmed his clothing and made them insignificant.

Now, looking at him naked and in the light, her mouth dried and her skin flushed. Clothing was unworthy of this creature. His brawny shoulders were testaments to the strength that carried her up mountains and through forests. His scars were the badges of a hero. His chest and stomach rippled beneath a fine, dark fur that covered him in the shape of an arrow, directing her gaze downward, as if nature feared she might miss the magnificent sight of his erection if not given guidance. His thighs were a horseman's thighs, powerful, muscled and spare, and his feet were callused, rugged, feet that had tromped half a country and, if they had to, would tomorrow tromp the rest.

He let her look, and when she had surveyed him from top to toe, he said, “You like what you see.”

Somehow he knew how the mere sight of him stirred her; perhaps her body gave some clue. But even if it fed his conceit, she was compelled to give him tribute. “If you had been Adam in the garden of Eden, God would never have required that you clothe yourself.”

He laughed, his head thrown back. “If I had been Adam in the garden of Eden, the fall would have come at once, for you, Eve, are my temptress.”

She smiled too, but the cold pressed in, she was still wet, and gooseflesh swept her. He saw, and turning to the towels, he picked one up.

His back was the match of his chest, muscled and broad, tapering to narrow buttocks so taut that the skin clung and moved like fine silk. He had a small, colorful mark on his left cheek just below his waist; that startled her. When he brought a towel,
she turned him toward the light of the fire and ran her finger across it.

She'd never seen one before, but she knew it for what it was; a tattoo of a roaring lion. “It's beautiful,” she said.

“It's my emblem.” Wrapping her torso in the towel, he helped her out of the tub. “The emblem of the House of Leon. Now stand here,” he said, leading her to stand in front of the fire while he fetched the other drying cloths.

Suddenly shy, she held the towel tight against her breasts, wondering why no one sewed bigger towels, ones that would cover a person from more than the tips of her breasts to the tops of her thighs. How she appeared to Danior she couldn't imagine, with her hair wild and damp and her body silhouetted by the flames. It was almost as if she demanded that he notice her—and notice her he did. Even though he had just been looking at her stark naked in the tub, he stopped and stared at her with such pride that she thought herself as esteemed as the mountains and valleys of the Two Kingdoms themselves.

“You make me wild.” His voice was hoarse. “You say you want me as I am. If that's true, then you should be prepared, for I mean to have you every day and every night. I want to kiss you down here.” He brushed the triangle of hair that peeked beneath the towel. “I want to taste you on my lips when you come. I want to be inside you right now. I'll want to be inside you fifty years from now. And I'll make you want it, too.”

She already did want it. Her knees felt weak as he towel-dried her hair. He used another drying
cloth to blot her face and neck. He tugged away the towel she held, discarded it and began, with deliberate, leisurely strokes, to wipe the water away from her shoulders and arms.

How could she let him care for her in such an intimate way? She'd cared for herself her whole life, and in the past week she'd been forced to allow Danior to carry her, to rescue her . . . to heal her. Now he waited on her, devoting himself to her as if she were really royal and he were really only a man.

She tried to assume command, but he pushed her hands aside. “No. This is my privilege.”

The way he dried her was more like one long, tender caress. Her nipples puckered when he brushed them. The skin on her stomach tingled as he patted it, and she braced herself with her hand on his shoulder when he knelt before her and dried her intimately. He pressed so carefully, with such an expression of beatific innocence on his face that she might have laughed—if she'd had the breath. He rubbed gently at her thighs, her calves. He lifted her feet and found out she was ticklish. Then he turned her and started up the back of her legs, up to her buttocks.

And there he paused. He didn't move, he didn't rub, he just knelt behind her.

Time stretched out, silence grew thick, and she grew first abashed, then embarrassed, then when she remembered Dominic and his extraordinary bout of laughter, confusion and embarrassed anger began to bubble.

“What's wrong?” She tried to squirm around, but he grasped her and held her in place. “What are you looking at?”

He didn't speak, not even when she twisted and writhed.

Finally, when she was just about to reach around and rip his hair out, he kissed her bottom, first one side, then the other, and at last at the very base of her spine. “I'm looking at the most beautiful woman in the Two Kingdoms, and I thank God she is mine.”

Standing, he dried her, picked her up, carried her to bed, and made such love to her that she knew he had given himself to her wholly.

And later, before he left her, Danior leaned and murmured into her sleeping ear, “Even if you aren't really a princess.”

Evangeline wasn't eating.

Not the spicy sausage, not sizzling bacon cut so thin it was almost transparent, not the roasted trout swimming in a sour cream sauce, and not beef roast of royal proportions. She hadn't touched the potatoes, even though they had been prepared in ten different ways, nor any of the dozens of breads and cakes laid out on the great sideboard in the dining hail. Even when Danior coaxed her with blushing strawberries placed to her lips by his own hands, she had been able to swallow only a few before pushing him away.

“I'm too frightened,” she said.

And she was. She hadn't been this pale when he'd pushed her into that small dark hole in Blanca. He kept trying to reassure her, to tell her everything would be all right, but she wouldn't listen.

Everything
would
be all right. He knew it as well as he knew his lines in the Revealing Ceremony. “Evangeline.” He stroked her fingers, trying to infuse them with warmth. “We've faced everything
together. Bombs, revolutionaries, injuries—opening the crystal case will be easy as apples.”

Courtiers and servants stared at the royal couple ensconced in an alcove, but none dared interrupt their tête-à-tête.

“Have you got your implement?” she asked in a whisper muffled by the tapestries hanging around them.

He patted the pouch that hung from his gold corded belt. “It's right here.”

“What if that doesn't open it?”

“Then we'll take it to the Leon family stronghold and drop it from the tower onto the rocks,” he joked.

She covered her face.

Taking her wrists, he pulled her hands away and looked into her eyes. “Do you believe it's a magic case?”

“I don't know what I believe anymore,” she whispered.

Well, of course she didn't. Her whole life had been put topsy-turvy, and only he could right it.

“Do you believe m me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation.

“Then believe me when I tell you—today everything will be flawless.”

And it would.

The prince shall embrace his greatest fear and make it his own.

He chuckled when he remembered the prophecy and how blithely he predicted its import. Prophecies were slippery things clear only to wizards and saints, and the fear Danior embraced had nothing to
do with revolutionaries and everything to do with pride, folly, and love.

Looking at his folly and his love, he said, “Your Royal Highness Princess Evangeline, I swear to you we will open the crystal case together.”

She moaned softly. “But then we'll have to get married.” She leapt from one anxiety to another, barely considering the successful completion of one event before she moved on to another.

“And what if you spill the wine on your gown?” he quipped.

Her eyes rounded; she plucked at the heavy damask material, and whispered, “What if I do?”

She hadn't thought of that, and he cursed himself for adding to her distress. “It's your gown, and you'll be the queen. No one will dare reprimand the queen.”

That clearly offered no comfort, so he said, “The wedding is
our
wedding, and if you spill wine, I promise I will spill wine, too, and we'll start a tradition that will last another thousand years.”

“Yes. That sounds like a good idea.” She brushed at the medieval veil that covered her hair, and crinkled her forehead beneath the narrow blue band of ribbon that held it in place. “Danior, is a wedding legal if they don't use the right names?”

Sitting back, he examined his guileless bride. She wore the glorious silver wedding dress worn by the original queen over a thousand years ago, the queen's sky-blue gossamer veil, and matching embroidered silk slippers. A patina of age had dulled the materials, the queen had been a smaller woman, yet Evangeline wore the costume as if it
had been created for her. Not even her fear could dull the glow his lovemaking had imparted, and he smiled at her until she, too, recalled the night, the exchange of passion, his constant demands, her loving response.

“Stop that.” She glanced around at the people who waited at a discreet distance for her to finish her meal. “They already know we spent the night together. There's no reason to enumerate the fine points.”

“I didn't say a word.”

“You're obvious.”

“Only to you.” He adjusted the fur trim around her neckline, which he thought too low. “Every archbishop and priest in the Kingdoms petitioned to officiate at our wedding, and I granted every request. Our union will be thoroughly blessed in the eyes of God, and since He knows everything about us, including our true names, I believe our marriage will be most official.” He didn't wait for her reply, but stood and extended his hand. “If you're sure that's all you can eat, then we should go now. Our people are waiting.”

She put her hand in his waiting palm. “Danior, I have to tell you—”

Hastily cutting her off, he pulled her to her feet. “Tell me after tonight.” He summoned their armed guard. “Have you noticed Rafaello and Victor are not with us?”

So both Victor and Rafaello
were
traitors.

Evangeline could only remember the cocky smile on Victor's face when he'd called her like a dog on the street. She looked at Danior, dressed like
a medieval prince in the velvets and furs of a king dead almost one thousand years with a sword at his side, and wished she didn't have to tell him a truth that would so hurt him. “I saw them. Victor and Rafaello, I saw them in the city.”

To the unobservant eye, Danior remained untouched by the news. But Evangeline saw him pause for just a moment, saw his eyes half-close as he absorbed the blow.

Then, as calmly as if she had told him the weather, he accepted the heavy cloak with its massive train from the majordomo. As he wrapped it around her shoulders, he asked, “Where? Do you know what street?”

“At Honest Gaylord's bakery. Victor tried to catch me, but I escaped him . . .”
Into the convent garden, where you awaited.

“So they are lurking in the city. I suspected . . . that is, we had heard it was true.” Danior looked grim as he turned away to speak to the four massive bodyguards who surrounded them, none of whom looked anything like Danior.

All of Danior's brothers had betrayed him.

Returning to her, he confessed, “Don't fret. We have these good men to protect us, and Pascale to lead them”—the shortest man bowed to her when he heard his name—“as well as the royal guard and a great many men in plain garb who will mingle with the crowd. You will be safe.”

“Victor and Rafaello won't be shooting at me.” For they didn't share the same father.

“They might.”

Only if they miss you.

So now she had something else to worry about. Victor and Rafaello, Revealing, the wedding, the real princess, Danior discovering the truth . . . if Evangeline could just get through this day without divine retribution for her sins, she swore she would be the best queen the world had ever seen.

If she could just get through this day . . .

Danior fastened his cape with a massive gold brooch in the same shape and design as his tattoo. It comforted Evangeline; time and use had worn away the fine details of the mane and created a snub nose, but the roaring lion remained fearsome, its ruby eyes sparklingly alive.

Taking her by the hand, Danior led her from the palace, and when they stepped out into the sunlight, the force of the cheering almost blew her off her feet. She waved and tripped when her train wrapped around a corner of the stone balustrade.

Danior used her clumsiness as an excuse to wrap his arm around her waist, and the crowd yelled their approval.

She took no comfort in that. The crowd didn't realize the truth. A real princess wouldn't have tried to fall on her nose. As the people pelted them with flowers, Evangeline sniffled and said, “Danior, I have to tell you something.”

He sneezed and assisted her into an open carriage for their ride to the cathedral, then climbed in beside her. “You're allergic to flowers, too.”

“No, I—”

The coachman's whip whistled as he snapped it with flare. The high-spirited horses pranced and whinnied, and they started with a lurch. The
bodyguards, one at each corner of the carriage, walked as the royal carriage wielded its slow and steady way through Plaisance. People lined the streets, waving and shouting, some so overcome they wept with joy. No one seemed to notice Evangeline was the wrong princess, and although she searched the crowds, she saw no elegant, haloed woman who might be true royalty.

At Cathedral Square, a wooden platform had been built against the stone wall not far from the doors. An ancient escutcheon uniting the emblems of the Chartrier and Leon families hung above it. Purple velvet drapes provided a colorful backdrop for an oak table, stained with age, that stood center stage. Two chairs of great age and dignity rested on either side of the table, and when Evangeline saw them, she thought, “For the dignitaries.” Then she thought, “No, for me.”

The carriage stopped at the steps. Danior dismounted, and when he nudged the footman aside and helped Evangeline down himself, the rejoicing reached epidemic proportions. Evangeline tried to tell herself the crowd wouldn't cheer if they knew the truth, but their delight was contagious, and she beamed.

While the footman carefully assisted with her train, Danior murmured, “The last time we were here, my feet had so outgrown my body, I fell up the steps.”

“
You
did that?”

“It's a royal prerogative.” He kissed her hand so passionately and grinned at her so wickedly that a new round of revelry broke out.

Together they mounted the steps, and waved until Evangeline's arm hurt. The bodyguards took their places at the four sides of the platform. And Evangeline searched again for Princess Ethelinda. Again, she saw people she recognized. The Blanca villagers stood in a clump, waving back at her with Lauri holding Memaw so she could see. Honest Gaylord stood with his thumbs hooked into his embroidered suspenders, talking to his neighbor with a smirk on his broad face.

And a great number of nuns, representatives from probably every convent in the Two Kingdoms, made their way through the crowd toward the front. Soeur Constan.za led the entire group toward the front, speaking to the onlookers in such a manner they immediately moved aside. In the center walked Marie Theresia, who caught Evangeline's eye and smiled at her with grave satisfaction before turning her attention back to assisting an old nun—a very old nun by the look of her stooped shoulders.

Looking at that old nun, for one moment Evangeline was flung back in time, to England, where she saw an old, narrow, bony face, knowing eyes, a veined hand turning a book page—

The trumpets blew the fanfare. Evangeline jerked her attention to the great cathedral doors, where the archbishop stood with the wide, flat crystal case in both hands. The clear, carved stone collected the sun like a giant diamond, scattering light in fragments across the square. The crowd hushed, and Evangeline developed an uncomfortable lump in her throat. She didn't know why, only seeing the crystal case, knowing its long history and having a
chance to help the Two Kingdoms filled her with awe.

How could Princess Ethelinda give up her chance to do this? Where was she? Why wasn't she here?

Evangeline looked around, desperately seeking the unknown girl; sure that only foul play could keep her from her destiny. Evangeline almost called out to stop the proceedings; she gripped Danior's arm to demand his attention—and in the crowd, she caught the glint of sun off of gunmetal.

She reacted instinctively, throwing herself at Danior, sending him stumbling aside.

A single shot whizzed past her ear.

Danior took her down, crowded her under the table, used his body as a shield. People screamed. More shots rang out. Evangeline fought him, shouted, “No!” He shoved her further back, pushing her toward the back of the platform to the cathedral wall.

Frantic, she grabbed him by his collar. “Danior, listen. You have to let me protect you. I'm not really the princess.”

“I know.” He pushed her face down to the floor and held a hand in the middle of her back. He stretched up to knock the table over as a barricade. His hand gripped the edge of the table. But before he could bring it down before them, a barrage of shots rang out. He spun around like a top and fell.

At once he rose again, but he couldn't hold her now. She came up like a tigress protecting her cub. Blood covered his chest; she almost punched his face to knock him flat, when he caught her fist.

“Stop,” he said. “Listen!”

She paused, but heard nothing but yelling.

No more shooting.

Glancing swiftly around, she saw empty places in the throng, places where each assassin had stood and where country folk and city people alike had jumped them. In the middle of the crowd where she'd seen the first pistol aimed in their direction, a huge fight was in progress. Whoever had fired that shot refused to concede; whoever fought him demanded abject surrender.