The Stolen Princess (23 page)

“'Twas his mam's favorite song,” Mrs. Barrow sobbed to Callie.

Rafe, Harry, and Luke stood to one side, watching.

“That boy will make a fine man one day,” Rafe commented.

Harry turned to look at Jim. “He already is.”

S
ir Walter sent word early the next morning that the count's yacht had sailed during the night, so a short time later they set off for London. They took two vehicles; Gabriel drove his curricle and Ethan drove a traveling chaise that had belonged to Great-aunt Gert. The other gentlemen rode.

Since no one was in a particular hurry, they took their own horses and completed the journey in a number of easy stages, stopping from time to time to stretch their legs and rest the horses. They also swapped around. From time to time Gabriel would take one of his friends up in the curricle, or they would drive and he would ride, or one of them would join Callie, Nicky, Jim, and Tibby in the chaise.

“It's rather fun, isn't it?” Callie commented to Tibby, “All this swapping around.”

“Yes, and to have such dashing escorts,” Tibby agreed. “Such a magnificent collection of men—it quite makes my heart flutter. They really are all extraordinarily handsome, don't you think?”

Callie smiled. “Yes, indeed.” The chaise took a bend and she caught a glimpse of Nicky, sitting with Jim and Gabriel having a driving lesson.

Tibby followed the direction of her gaze. “He's kind, isn't he? The boys worship him.”

“Mmm. I'm looking forward to our picnic in the New Forest,” Callie said brightly. “I've never seen so much food.” She didn't want to talk about Gabriel's kindness. Kindness was more dangerous than handsomeness.

Tibby looked at her. “I must say, Count Anton was not at all as I'd expected him to be.”

“I know. That's the trouble. He seems too good-looking to be so evil. It makes people unwilling to believe the worst of him.”

“Is there much family resemblance between him and your husband?”

Callie nodded. “Rupert's eyes were exactly the same as Count Anton's—that pale ice-gray color. Rupert's hair was darker golden in coloring and he was taller and broader: a big, handsome golden bull.”

“Rupert sounds quite attractive.” Tibby made it a gentle query.

“Yes, he was. Very.”

“I was so worried about you. You were so young, so sheltered, and the prince so much older. It was the time I most regretted being poor; not able to afford to travel with you to be at your wedding. You must have felt so alone.”

Callie stared out the window at the passing scenery. “You needn't have worried, Tibby. My wedding day was the happiest day of my life.”

“Oh, my dear, I am so glad.”

“I fell madly in love with Rupert, if not at first sight—as you said, I was very shy and naive—but in the weeks before the wedding. He courted me, showered me with jewels and expensive gifts.” Most of them were now sewn into her petticoat. She could not regret them, at least. They would give her and Nicky a new life.

“Rupert was charming and attentive and gallant.” She sighed, remembering. She'd been almost dizzy with the excitement of it all, the constant attention paid to her by such a magnificent golden creature. He was forty, but she hadn't thought of him as old, just glamorous and sophisticated. Godlike.

“It was like being Cinderella. Every day we'd go out driving in the streets of the city and he'd give me flowers and the people would wave and cheer and he would put his arm around me and kiss me, and oh, Tibby, it was like everything we'd ever talked about, everything I'd ever dreamed of. He was Galahad and Young Lochinvar and—well, you know what I mean—so romantic.”

“My dear girl, I am happy to know it. You have no idea what torments I suffered when your father took you away. To be married to a man so much your elder, I felt sure it could not be a happy union.”

Callie fell silent and looked out the window.

After several moments Tibby ventured, “It was, wasn't it? If he was everything you'd ever dreamed of…”

“No. It wasn't. I was playing make-believe.”

“Oh.”

“I learned later he didn't love me at all. He'd never loved me. He didn't even like me much. It was all for show, and because he was so handsome and charming and he was so experienced and I was just a stupid, dreamy, romantic, gullible child—” She broke off, the familiar, bitter taste of shame welling up in her throat.

Tibby placed her hand over Callie's. “I'm sorry, my dear, so sorry.”

Callie shook her head and tried to smile. “It's all a long time ago now. I was another person then.” She was relieved that Tibby hadn't asked how she'd come to discover that Rupert didn't love her. Not even to Tibby could she reveal that. It might be a long time ago, but some scars went deep. They could still cause pain.

“You are still young,” Tibby began. “You could try again—”

“No! I couldn't bear it!” She took a steadying breath and said in a light tone, “I won't ever make the mistake of marrying again. You have no idea how much I'm looking forward to directing my own life, choosing what I do or wear or eat or read. I won't give up my independence for anything.” She gave Tibby a bright smile.

Tibby, undeceived, said nothing, only squeezed Callie's hand.

Callie gazed out the window, forcing composure to return. She would not cry. She had wasted a lifetime of tears on Rupert.

Never again. Not on Rupert, not on any man.

Not even a kind one.

She caught a glimpse of the curricle up ahead. Rupert had been kind to animals and children, too. The way he treated Nicky was not a matter of unkindness—just insensitivity. He was hard on Nicky for Nicky's sake. He thought it the right thing to do.

The cruelty had lain in Rupert's inability to hide his disappointment in his son.

Not to mention his wife.

They entered the New Forest. It was quieter in the forest, the woods green and lush with new growth. The trees were less dense than she expected. There were even large patches of open space in which wild ponies grazed.

In Zindaria, the forest was darker, denser. Rupert's hunting lodge was deep in the forest. She'd only been there the once.

The worst mistake of her life.

He used to go to his hunting lodge often, almost every week. Sometimes for just a night or two, sometimes for longer. It depended, he'd said, on the game.

She'd thought he meant animals.

Women weren't allowed, he said. In those days she couldn't bear to be parted from him. She missed him with an ache that was almost physical.

He'd been gone a week and was expected to stay another week.

But at the beginning of the second week she'd been given some wonderful news. Her courses were normally as regular as clockwork and she was two weeks overdue. Her breasts were tender and a little swollen. And three mornings in a row she'd woken up feeling nauseous.

She thought she was ill, but her maid had become all excited when she'd been nauseous in the morning. She'd questioned Callie closely, then fetched the palace physician.

Callie remembered the joy she'd felt when she'd learned she was going to have a baby.

She was so excited she couldn't wait for Rupert to come home. He was desperate for a son, she knew. She'd ordered the carriage and had driven into the forest, to his hunting lodge.

She remembered every moment of that drive. It was spring, too, with new growth bursting all around her. There were snowy wee lambs with long, waggly tails, lanky, delicate foals hovering at their mother's side. In the forest she'd even caught a glimpse of a doe nuzzling a shy, leggy faun. The sight had brought her almost to tears.

She'd felt joyously at one with this new precious world, fertile, bounteous, successful: she was going to be a mother.

At the hunting lodge she hadn't let Rupert's servants announce her. She wanted to surprise him.

She did.

He was lying half naked on a thick fur rug in front of the fire. Sitting astride him was a naked woman, a voluptuous Valkyrie of a woman, with flowing golden locks spilling down her naked back and over her full breasts. She was bent over him, rubbing her breasts against his naked chest, saying in a breathy girlish voice, “Oh, Wupert, Wupert, I love you so much, my darling Wupert, I am so happy, so happy, so happy, my beloved ickle-wickle Wupert.” She spoke in Zindarian, but Callie had no difficulty in recognizing the imitation of her own English accent, nor the subject of this cruel mimicry.

Herself.

Callie stood frozen, unable to move as the woman went on and on, talking in a ghastly baby-talk imitation of Callie.

She vaguely remembered thinking at the time that she never had called him Wupert, nor said anything like ickle-wickle, or used that horrid baby voice. The rest of it—the accent, the words, the sentiments—were horribly, shamingly, accurate. She had uttered those very phrases to Rupert—but only ever in private.

The only way the woman could have heard them was from Rupert himself. Callie's soul shriveled with pain and mortification.

The more the woman gushed in cloying imitation of Callie, the more Rupert had laughed, deep belly laughs of the sort she'd never heard from her husband before, until finally he ordered the woman to stop, saying he got enough of that sickening pap at home, and reminding the Valkyrie that the reason he came here was to get away from all that. He wanted a woman, not a dreary, love-besotted child.

The dreary, love-besotted child had managed to clear her throat, drawing their shocked attention. They had made no move to cover themselves, just stared at her from the fur rug.

Somehow—she had no idea how—she had managed to keep her composure. Some shred of ancestral pride had stiffened her sixteen-year-old spine. She would not make a scene. She would rather die than show her hurt and distress in front of them, in front of the husband who had betrayed her so cruelly, and in front of that naked, golden, shameless creature who had imitated her so horribly.

In a cold little voice, Callie managed to announce that she had come to inform Rupert that she was expecting his child and that having done so, she would now return to the palace.

They still hadn't moved when she turned and left.

She had walked straight out in that same distant, frozen state—she still had no idea how she had managed to find her way back to the carriage. And once safely inside, once the carriage was moving swiftly back through the forest, the tears came.

She'd sobbed all the way home, great choking sobs that scalded her throat and almost rent her chest in two, weeping until it made her almost sick.

Over and over she heard the woman's voice scornfully uttering the precious endearments Callie had whispered into her husband's ear. Her memory was seared with the sound of Rupert's belly laughs.
Sickening pap,
he'd called it.

She had wept and wept. The forest was dense and dark and ancient and it absorbed her pain, as it had absorbed pain for millennia, and by the time the carriage approached the palace, Callie had no tears left.

How many people in the palace knew Rupert did not love her? Everyone, she decided. She'd made no effort to disguise her feelings. She'd been overflowing with love and happiness and she'd stupidly imagined the whole world shared her joy.

She'd made a complete and utter fool of herself over him.

Never again, she vowed.
Never.

And she'd kept her vow. By the time Rupert returned to the palace—two days later—and spoke to her, she had armored herself against him, against the shame deep within her that threatened to break out.

He'd made what he considered an apology: he told her that he was sorry she'd found him with his mistress, but that she had been informed that his hunting lodge was private. She should never have gone there. So that any distress or embarrassment she'd experienced was her own fault.

She had agreed. Calmly and quietly. Then she'd picked up her sewing in a clear dismissal.

He'd seemed relieved.

From then on she'd treated him with cool politeness. Two months after that vile day at the hunting lodge he'd congratulated her on finally growing up. He ascribed it to the maturity that came with pregnancy. Told her he was proud of her.

When Nicky was born, Callie poured all her love into her child.

Rupert hadn't come to her bed again until six months after Nicky was born. After all, her main purpose was to breed children. They'd coupled quickly, thoroughly, and more or less in silence, then he left. He came to her once a month, but she never fell pregnant again.

Later she'd heard that he'd told people that apart from her inability to provide him with more children, she'd become the perfect wife.

She stared out of the window at the New Forest. This was not the dark and silent forest of Zindaria, and she was no longer that miserable pregnant child, flayed by the folly of her own emotions. She was a widow, calm and mature, free to make the life she wanted for herself and her child.

And for her own peace of mind, it would not involve any man.

T
hey stopped for a picnic on a sunny patch of grass beside a gurgling stream. Behind them the forest spread, sun-dappled and quiet.