The Runaway Princess (8 page)

She exorcised the tempting fantasies, and answered calmly, “Then I'd be fat, and I wager you would not like me like that.” She took her bite.

To her surprise, his gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips, then to her bosom. “I wager I would.”

She choked on the barley. Danior stood and, grasping her arms, lifted them over her head. “Say something.”

“Pig,” she gasped—and found her airway unclogged and her heart thudding in her chest. Danior seemed to have an exorbitant appreciation of her bosom.

At the clatter of boots on the stairway, he looked around, and when Rafaello appeared in the arched doorway, he walked toward him with every evidence of pleasure. “Good man.” He grasped Rafaello's hand and shook it warmly. “Did you have any trouble?”

“There were a few more rebels than I cared for,” Rafaello admitted. “But I handled them.”

“Did they follow you here?”

Rafaello frowned. “Never!”

“I didn't doubt you,” Danior said. “Sit down and eat. The good sister will bring you food to break your fast.”

The men sat together, a cluster of virility. Soeur Constanza brought Rafaello a wooden bowl, Danior took up his silver spoon, and as they ate they spoke
in lowered voices, leaving her in virtual isolation to finish her barley. She did so efficiently, scraping the bowl clean.

Soeur Constanza must have been watching, for as they all finished, she whisked the simple bowls away. “If you gentlemen would come with me, I will show you to the guest quarters.”

“What about . . . Miss Scoffield?” Danior grinned at her, clearly convinced he had found a use for her alias.

He thought he was so diverting.

“The ladies stay among us, separate from the gentlemen. Miss Scoffield will be given a chamber suitable for a pilgrim.”

“Do you have one with a lock?” Danior asked.

Evangeline shot to her feet. “You're a madman!”

Even the serene Soeur Constanza looked shocked. “A lock?”

“She'll try to escape if she's not locked in.”

Soeur Constanza looked from one to the other. “I . . . we don't have locks. We're a convent!”

“You must have one somewhere.” Danior sounded revoltingly rational. “This was a castle once. There must be a dungeon.”

“Long filled in.” Soeur Constanza quivered with indignation.

“He's mad,” Evangeline said to her. Danior ignored both Soeur Constanza's consternation and Evangeline's aside. “A storage room?”

“It's on the level below with the kitchen, and filled with garden tools and broken furniture. You can't ask a gentlewoman to stay there.”

He had that flinty look Evangeline had seen him wear in her bedchamber the night before. “I'm not
asking
her to.”

The autocrat was back, and she was so very, very tired. Did they have to resume their struggle
now
?

“This is most irregular, sir, and quite impossible.” Soeur Constanza fluttered like a plump pigeon facing a wolf. “I'm afraid I'll have to report this to the Reverend Mother herself.”

“You do that. In the meantime, I'll take Miss Scoffield down to the storage room.”

Evangeline tried to sidestep him, but he caught her
arm. Mostly by accident, she trod on the top of his foot.

He seemed to suspect she deliberately provoked him, for the veins on his forehead stood out, he opened his mouth to shout—then with a look at Soeur Constanza, he shut it. In English, he said, “I'll not forget this.” He marched Evangeline toward the stairwell.

“What are you going to do, Your Highness?” she taunted. “Starve me? Abduct me? Lock me in a storage room?”

He turned his head. He looked down at her and smiled.

Her breath caught in her throat, and blood rushed to places it had no business being. Whatever he was thinking, it wasn't torture.

“Maybe we should get married here and now,” he said.

Picking up her feet, she kept pace and rapidly recited, “According to legend, the prince and princess must be married on the day of Revealing.”

His smile deepened. “I wonder how would Miss Evangeline Scoffield of East Little Teignmouth, England, know such an obscure myth?”

She scowled at him. “Study. Long hours of study.”

The stairs seemed steeper going down than going up, and once at the bottom they had several doors to choose from.

“Not the kitchen,” Danior murmured, “although you would be happiest there. Here, I think.” He walked her toward the door in the deepest shadow of the entry hall, and, sure enough, light leaked through a keyhole.

“There's no key,” she pointed out triumphantly.

“So I see.” He smiled again, that smile that meant he would enjoy taking a bite out of her. “Well, if it can't be found, you'll have to sleep with me.”

“I will not!” Except she hadn't got her way about much since she'd met him, and she wouldn't wager a single shilling on winning this—not even if any of her shillings had survived the fire.

He ignored her spurt of defiance with the contempt it deserved, turned the latch, and pushed the door open. A window spilled sunshine into the good-sized room, filled with a conglomerate of tools, broken furniture, and dust. Lots of dust. He had found his storage room filled with everything a convent could need or had ever needed.

He examined the chamber critically. “Yes. This will do.”

It
would
do. The dust she could handle. A closet she could not. Breathing a sigh of relief, she sagged against the wall.

Walking to the window, he put his hands on the high sill and looked out, then looked back at her. “It's a sheer drop, with jagged rocks at the bottom. Tsk,” he said with spurious sympathy. “There's no escape that way.”

Automatically sarcastic, she said, “Maybe I can fly.”

“No. I've clipped your wings.”

His certainty jarred and infuriated her. Clipped her wings, had he? He couldn't even begin to know of what she was capable—and she wasn't going to tell him.

“You'll need a bed,” he decided.

“Please, I don't want to inconvenience anyone. Let me sleep on the cold bare floor.”

“Or the table,” he pointed out amiably. “It's long enough. I could shove this coil of rope and those gardening tools off, and you could sleep there.”

“You are such a swine.”

He took her by the arms and swung her around.

She clenched her teeth. “Have you decided to take vengeance?”

“For what? Because of what you think? What a woman thinks is the most insignificant part of her. No, I only care what you do, and I direct your actions now.”

He steered her stiff, protesting figure into the center of the floor, then hooked a short stool with his foot and dragged it from under the table. “Sit.” Allowing her no choice, he pressed her down.

Driven to protest by a last, weary remnant of defiance, she said, “It's dirty.”

“The dress is beyond redemption. Now sit still.”

She looked down at her lap, at the beautiful, stained skirt, and stroked it lightly with her fingertip. She was—had had to be—a thrifty soul. She could turn the fabric and find enough unmarred material to make a shawl. Or . . . a handkerchief.

He left the room and didn't see her swift rush of tears, and she controlled them promptly. Not for anything would she show him weakness now. Instead, she propped her elbow on her knee and sank her chin into her cupped palm to contemplate escape. But only because she felt she had to. Without help, there was no way out of this convent, and besides, where would she go? She was in the middle of nowhere.

From out in the entryway, she heard a splash from the well, then the rattle of chain and the creak of the windlass as Danior brought up the laden bucket. Returning, he blocked the doorway and contemplated her, the bucket dripping in dark splotches on the wooden floor. Then he walked toward her with the intent and purpose she'd come to recognize.

She was a hedge that needed shaping. He was the shears.

He put down the bucket and knelt before her, eye-level, and she stared at him with as much menace as she could contrive. He whipped off the cravat that hung limply around his neck. He dipped it in the water, wrung it out, cupped her head in his hand and washed her face with speed and efficiency.

When she emerged, sputtering and damp, she gave voice to a sudden, horrifying suspicion. “You have children!”

He rinsed the limp cravat in the bucket. “Why do you say that?”

“Because you scrub like a parent!”

“We have a number of orphans in Baminia.” He wrung out the cravat again.

She flinched back.

Taking her hand, he cleansed it thoroughly. “I occasionally serve in the orphanage.”

She had to know without a doubt. “So you're not a parent?”

“I have had only a few liaisons, and with those I took much care. I have fathered no children. You will not have to bring up my bastards.” He watched her with too much comprehension. “I am not my father. Is that what you wanted to know, Evangeline?”

Yes, although not because she disliked the thought of raising a strange child. Rather, it was a sudden, unnamed distaste at the thought of Danior's closeness to the mother of that child.

He smoothed the cool water up her arm, and his ministrations felt almost good.

So she rushed to divert his attention. “Why do you work in the orphanage?”

“Because I, too, am an orphan and know that occasional attention can make the difference between a king and a . . . revolutionary.”

She examined him from several angles. He appeared to be serious. “I'll bet they hate to see you coming if you wash faces like that.”

“Only the little ones, and they forgive me quickly enough when I carry them on my back.”

As he had done her. Of course he had to deliberately remind her of that, and inadvertently remind
her of how very grateful she would have been if someone, an adult of any kind, had taken even a passing interest in her when she lived at the orphanage.

She imagined the scrawny children with their odd-colored eyes riding on his back, and thought how they must adore him. If she weren't careful, the scrawny orphan she had been would come to adore him, too. “You treat me like a child.”

“You almost nodded off in your barley. You're not capable of taking care of yourself.”

A sputter of laughter escaped her. “I've been taking care of myself for more years than I can remember.”

“Of course you have.” He washed her other hand, then lifted it and placed it on his mouth. “Your Highness.”

His lips formed the two words, his breath touched her fingers, and each syllable felt like a kiss pressed to her palm. She snatched her hand away, but his face remained level with hers. Weariness ringed his eyes with dark, yet still he challenged her. And although she desperately fought, she slid toward the warm, deep blue comfort of his gaze.

“Mother Leopolda says it is permissible to lock Miss Scoffield into the storage chamber.” Soeur Constanza's voice broke the bond and conveyed disapproval, all at the same time.

Evangeline sprang back and bumped her head against the table.

Danior whipped his head around and glared through narrowed eyes.

Rubbing the sore spot on her skull, Evangeline contemplated her luck. If Soeur Constanza and her
companion had been a mere minute later, she might have committed herself to Danior's madness. But much as Danior might wish to, he couldn't command Soeur Constanza to leave them alone.

Torn between satisfaction and relief, Evangeline said, “You can't bully a nun.”

He looked back at her, his gaze lethal, which she took as an agreeable sign that she'd annoyed him.

And of course, he couldn't let her savor her trivial victory for long. “You have the key, Soeur Constanza?”

The elderly nun lifted the heavy iron key dangling from an equally large and forbidding ring.

“We'll lock her in, then.” He rose, took the key, and tried to slip it into his waistcoat pocket. The key could be wedged in; the ring could not.

Evangeline grinned. How lovely to see him frustrated about this, at least.

Soeur Constanza gestured at the young nun who stood behind her, eyes fixed downward in an excess of meekness. “We've brought food for Miss Scoffield in case she grows hungry during her incarceration.”

Evangeline's grin faded. “Incarceration?” Nothing about this was really funny. They were going to lock her in.

“We also have a pallet for her which must be brought down,” Soeur Constanza said. “Perhaps, sir, since you are the one who has made this unusual request, you could trouble yourself to carry it?”

“It's the least I can do.” With a threatening frown at Evangeline, he followed Soeur Constanza.

Evangeline breathed a sigh of relief as he left.

“He
is
overpowering.” The young nun seemed to read Evangeline's mind as she carried the tray into the room and placed it on a clear spot on the table. “He breathes all the air in a chamber.”

“Yes. Yes, that's exactly it!”

The girl appeared to be sallow, but perhaps that was the effect of the unrelenting black robe and the long gray scarf over her head. Tufts of hair stuck out at her forehead, giving her a fey appearance, yet now that Danior had left she seemed sure of herself.

“Not that I'm in awe of him.” Evangeline struggled to her feet. “Only he saps at my resolve, and he offers these nuggets of temptation . . . but you don't know about that.”

“I'm a nun, not a saint.” The nun lifted her gaze to Evangeline's.

Serephinian eyes. The memory of Danior's words jumped out at Evangeline. Serephinian eyes, just like her own.

Suspicion sharpened Evangeline's voice. “Who are
you
?”

“I'm Marie Theresia, a postulant here at the convent.” She tucked her hands into her sleeves, looking totally at home with her impending vows of poverty and chastity. “Who are you?”

Evangeline's brief rush of conjecture died. The girl was almost a nun. “I'm Evangeline Scoffield of—” Exhaustion struck her hard. She'd been saying this for so long. No one believed her. Right now, she almost didn't believe herself. Sinking down again, she put her head on her knees. “I'm nobody.”

“Nonsense.” Marie Theresia pressed her palm to Evangeline's shoulder. “We are all somebody in God's eyes.”

“No, we're not.” Evangeline's breath puffed back into her face, and her skirt muffled her declaration. “Most of us are ardent nobodies, living forever in the shadow of a somebody because it's easy.”

“But not you.” Marie Theresia sounded as if she could read Evangeline's soul.

“No, not me. I recklessly struck out to become a somebody.” Evangeline confessed her greatest sin. “All my life I prayed to be somebody.”

“There's no shame in that.”

“Yes, but I see now I should have been more specific.”

Marie Theresia chuckled warmly. “Your companion seems to want you to be who you are.”

Evangeline lifted her head. “Not who I am. Who he
thinks
I am.”

Marie Theresia knelt before her, her round cheeks glowing. “God has brought you here, and I want you to be who you really are. Your companion will, too, someday.”

“No, he won't. When he realizes who I really am and what he's done . . .” Evangeline cringed as she imagined the resulting outburst. Catching the little nun's hand, she begged, “Sister, would you help me get away?”

Marie Theresia tugged. “Away?”

“Yes. That man is half-crazy and half—”
Aroused
. “Well, he's half-crazy. He kidnapped me!”

“He did it for your own good.” Those Serephinian eyes shone with admiration.

For that beast! Evangeline sat all the way up. “How do you know that?”

“This convent houses a few Frenchwomen, a few Spanish women, but most of us are Serephinian or Baminian.” Marie Theresia clasped her hands together before her, and smiled a joyful smile. “We know who he is, and we know who you are.”