“Damien,” Penelope said softly. Damien glanced back at her, but his look was far from loving. “They did not have to come. And Egan was hurt.”
He looked at her for a long time. Something flickered in his eyes, but she could not read it. Abruptly, he turned away and walked onward. They did not speak of the matter again.
The next afternoon, as they neared the crest of the mountains, it began to snow.
“What the devil?” Egan muttered as the first flakes fell.
“It happens in these mountains,” Petri said laconically. “Late snowstorms, even in the middle of summer. Should be light.”
Sasha raised his head. He felt better today, though he still moved carefully. “This is not natural.”
“Magic, you mean?” Petri scoffed. “It snows here all the time. Won’t be much more than a dusting.”
Penelope felt the cold bite in the air and was not so certain. She recalled a winter she’d spent as a child in Scotland, at the country home of one of her father’s friends. The air had held the same crisp note, the breeze slight but not brisk, and the snow had fallen in a dense cloud for hours.
A thick blanket of snow had coated the land the next day, a playground for a young girl. But whenever she grew too cold, she could run back into the house, where her father waited, and sit by a huge fire toasting chestnuts and drinking hot, cinnamon-laced tea.
Here there was no shelter in sight. They’d spent the night at the bottom of the pass in a tiny cluster of houses that huddled around a common area for pigs and sheep. There had barely been room for them all to crowd into a loft of one of the houses, and the people had had no extra food to share. Damien had left them coin.
The village, if it could be called that, was ten hours behind them. They’d climbed steadily into the mountains, the air cooling rapidly as they went.
Despite Petri’s reassurances, the snow continued. At first it melted as it touched the ground, leaving barely a damp residue. Then the flakes fell faster, dusting the leaves and undergrowth with white powder. Imperceptibly, the snow began to stick to the ground, at first thin brushes of white against the dirt, and then Damien was leaving footprints as he walked.
An hour later, the snow flowed over the top of his boots. Penelope shivered, drawing her shawl tighter about her. Her gown was linen, not wool, garb for warm summer days. She twitched her toes in her boots, trying to keep the blood flowing.
Walking beside her, Egan rubbed his fingers together, then tucked his hands under his arms. “This cold gets right up me kilt.”
Penelope tried to answer, but her lips trembled too much to form the words. Egan unwrapped the plaid from his body and draped it over her shoulders.
“Not much farther,” Damien said. “The top of the pass is only a few hours away at most.”
But after another hour, the air was thick and white, the sun gone behind the tall mountains. The wind sprang up, and before long, the squall had grown into a full blizzard.
“We have to stop, sir,” Petri shouted.
Penelope could barely see Damien at the end of the reins that guided her horse. Egan bulked to her left, and Sasha’s horse was a black smudge on her right. She could not see Titus, though she knew he walked on the far side of Sasha.
“Not much longer,” Damien said without turning around.
Since they’d left the river, Damien had spoken only Nvengarian, as though he could not remember English words. Even when he talked alone with Penelope, he spoke his own language, expecting her to understand.
“You ought to have married Anastasia,” she’d said softly the night before. She’d stumbled over the words, trying hard to make her Nvengarian smooth. “She knows all about Nvengaria and can turn diplomats up sweet.”
“But she is not the prophesied princess,” Damien said, then kissed her and lay down to sleep.
Tomorrow was Midsummer’s Day. They had to be in Nvengaria tomorrow, to present themselves at the palace, to show Damien’s people that the prophecy worked. If they stopped now, they would arrive too late.
“Sir,” Petri said again.
Damien swung on him. “We are going on,” he shouted over the wind. “When we descend we will get out of this.” Petri stepped back, subdued.
The wind did not slacken. The ground continued to slope up and up and up. Damien had said it would flatten out, they’d ride along a ridge, and then take a steep, switchbacked path down the other side to Ovota, the first village on that side of the Nvengarian border.
But the path remained stubbornly rising, the wind increased, and darkness descended. Penelope shivered uncontrollably, despite the warmth of the horse and Egan’s plaid. She could not imagine how Egan fared in only his shirt and kilt and boots, but she could not bring herself to unwrap the plaids and give them back to him.
She could no longer feel her fingers. When she put her hand up to move the hair from her face, her glove came away smeared with blood from where snow had scoured the skin of her eyelids.
Egan saw. “Damien, damn it, man, we must have shelter.”
“Not much farther,” he insisted.
He might have encouraged them on into the wind if Sasha had not fallen from his horse and lain senseless on the ground.
Chapter Twenty-two
Egan and Damien found a woodcutter’s hut at the end of a track, deserted and cold, but the absence of wind and snow felt heavenly to Penelope. They brought the horses inside, as well, and Egan dug up an armful of leafy branches for them to nibble on. The trees, in full leaf, were as confused by the storm as the travelers.
The warmth of the horses and six human bodies packed together on the other side of the room began to thaw Penelope. Her fingers and toes burned, blood painfully squeezing through them. They huddled together, Penelope and Sasha in the middle, Damien and Petri on either side of them, then Egan and Titus on the outside.
Sasha had awoken. He slumped against Penelope, still shivering, barely able to hold the flask of brandy Egan had pressed on him.
“I am sorry, Your Highness,” he whispered. “I am a weak old man.”
“You are fifty-two,” Damien returned. “And we are all freezing.”
Penelope sensed his deep anger, not at Sasha, but at the storm and Alexander and the prophecy. He’d been forced into this journey, into the task of finding his princess and returning her to sunshine on Midsummer’s Day. He was angry at the time wasted at the Regent’s palace, the delay in procuring the special license, the time taken to perform the rituals, and the time needed to convince Penelope to come with him at all.
Damien had wanted to sweep in, snatch up Penelope, present her to the Nvengarians, throw out Alexander, and get on with ruling. They all had delayed him, Sasha with his fanatic adherence to ritual, she with her bleating about marriages of convenience, the Regent and various ambassadors demanding their time with the prince.
Even with hard riding, they’d never make it to the capital city of Nvengaria to stand in the palace courtyard and declare themselves Imperial Prince and Princess of Nvengaria. They’d already lost.
She whispered to him, “We can go on, Damien, the two of us. We’ll ride together. I can hold on.”
The wind shrieked just then, and the roof rattled like it would fly off at any second. In the darkness, Damien said grimly, “No, it would kill you.”
The blizzard howled, mocking them, and they sat in silence for most of the night.
Midsummer’s Day dawned with the blizzard still howling. In the cold of the hut, they unwrapped their supplies of meat and bread and shared brandy and water. They had plenty of coffee, its rich smell leaching from the packet, but no way to heat water to brew it.
Damien and Egan groomed and tended to the horses. They were not elegant beasts, but sturdy, country stock, bred for stamina in the mountains. Neither Petri nor Titus would help in these chores, because, as they had reminded Damien from the first day, they were body servants, not horse servants, and wouldn’t know one end of the animal from the other.
r /> “I know which end we want facing the wall,” Egan said, chuckling.
Horses, true to their natures, had rendered the air pungent, but no one wanted to venture outside to escape.
The day wore on. There was no sunlight, only a ghostly pale light that leaked around the door and through the cracks in the one window’s shutters.
Evening saw no cease in the blizzard. It raged on, pressing at the walls, threatening to peel away the roof. Sasha sat with his knees drawn to his chest, silent tears running down his face. “The prophecy is broken,” he whispered. “It is too late.”
As night fell on Midsummer’s Day, the day that was to seal Damien and Penelope together forever, she felt the prophecy ebb. The mindless need for Damien, the constant pull to him, began to dissolve.
She rose and went to him, where he stood peering through a slit in the shutter. What the prophecy made her feel was different from what nestled in her heart—caring for this man who’d risk anything to save his kingdom. But when the prophecy left him, he’d see in her only a plain English girl foolish enough to jilt gentlemen who condescended to ask her to marry them.
Fearing it would be for the last time, she slid her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder.
He turned and gathered her against him. They swayed together in silence, arms locked around one another. She knew the others watched them, felt the sympathy in their gazes as Midsummer’s Day slid away, and darkness filled the room.
The storm raged for three days. Then, as suddenly as it had sprung up, the wind died, the snow turned to rain, and then the clouds parted, revealing a half-melted world, filled with black, slick mud.
During those three days, they’d eaten and rested and kept each other warm without many words. Damien had spoken little to Penelope, and the morning the weather cleared, he did not even look at her.
Sasha looked the most brokenhearted of them all. As they walked outside, Penelope stretching out her arms and breathing the clear summer air, Sasha said, “Do not go on to Nvengaria, I beg you, Your Highness.”
“And leave it to Alexander’s mercy?” Damien demanded. “My place is there. I will not give it up to him.”
“But he will execute you.”
“Not without a fight, Sasha. I do not intend to meekly surrender to him.”
“Sasha has a point,” Egan broke in. He shook out his plaids and swirled them around his shoulders, a proud McDonald once more. “You can go back to England—or France or Rome or wherever the fancy takes you—and live on some estate with your wife and grow old and fat and happy. I have a fine house near Inverness, a bit drafty but lovely. You’re welcome to stay there as long as you like, your servants and Sasha, too. There’s some damn good fishing.”
Damien smiled, but the smile did not reach his eyes. “It is generous of you, but no. What you can do for me is take Penelope back to England. She does not need to remain for this, and I have dragged her about long enough.”
Egan hesitated, looking as though he wanted to argue, then he nodded once, strangely subdued. “I would be honored.”
“Sasha, too. He deserves some rest and good fishing.”
Egan nodded. Sasha jerked his head up, his eyes going round with hurt.
Penelope cleared her throat. “One moment, Your Imperial Highness.”
For the first time in days, he sent his gaze directly to her. His eyes had gone chill and blue and hard. “Something displeases you?”
“We are married. Prophecy or no, I bound myself to you with vows and you signed a license. We are also betrothed in the Nvengarian fashion, which you said was as binding as marriage. That means we are married twice over, does it not?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice neutral. “I will provide for you; you have no need of worry. Both now and after I am deceased. In fact, my London solicitors have begun to pay into an account for you ten thousand guineas per annum for you to use as you wish. It is bound in a trust so that any future husband would not be able to touch it. It is for your sole use.”
Penelope stopped, her prepared speech dying in her throat. “Oh.”
“You are a generous man, Damien,” Egan observed. “Can I marry you?”
“I do not want it,” Penelope choked out.
“You do,” Damien said. “It is the least I can do for you agreeing to marry me. I apologize that it has not been a marriage worthy of you.”
“Please cease speaking to me as though we have only just met,” Penelope said. “I am a princess of Nvengaria and your wife. I am coming with you.”
He did not look pleased. “I can face Alexander and his execution squad more easily if I do not have to watch out for you. I prefer to know that you are safely on your way to England and Little Marching.”
“I do not wish to be shunted aside like an inconvenient wife,” Penelope said. “Nvengaria is mine as well as yours now. I want to face Alexander, too.”
Sasha clasped his hands. “Well said, Your Highness. I will go with you, to laud your name.”
“No, you will not,” Damien snapped.
“I believe we have you outnumbered, sir,” Petri broke in. Titus stepped behind him, folding his arms to show his young muscles.
Damien swept his cold gaze over them. “The danger is not simply to me. Anyone who supports me will be suspect, and even if he does not kill you, you will live out your days in a dark cell. Egan he might escort to the border with an armed guard, but even he might be reported shot trying to help me escape.”
“Have more faith in me,” Egan said. “They’d not succeed, laddie.”
“You have provided solutions for all of us,” Penelope said crisply. “But what about our child?”
Damien stared at her. “What child? If you mean Wulf, he is not…” He broke off, going still.
“I mean the prince. Or princess.” Penelope laid her hand across her abdomen. “I am not certain which, of course.”
Damien was fixed in his place. His hair moved slightly in the summery breeze, but nothing else. He might have been a statue, carved and painted to stand there in the woods at the top of the pass, marking the road to Nvengaria.
Titus, catching on, whooped, his cry of joy echoing to the treetops. He threw up his hands and started moving his feet in a complicated Nvengarian jig.
Sasha’s eyes shone. “Splendid, blessed news. Offspring of the joined lines of the princes of Nvengaria. The child of the prophecy.”
“Congratulations, sir, ma’am,” Petri said, his grin wide.
Egan laughed loud and long. “Now that’s news that’s perked me up.” He removed a flask from his sporran. “A toast to Prince Damien and the Princess Penelope, and the fruit of their loins.” He winked.
Titus let out another whoop, and Petri joined him. The two linked arms and started running in a circle, first one way, then the other, chanting and singing.
“His name,” Sasha said, rubbing his hands, looking happier than he had in days. “The name is very important. I must do much research so we get it exactly right. And the rituals for the princess’s lying-in and the christening. There is much to do, much to do.”
“Hell,” Damien said.
The procession crested the top of the pass not an hour after leaving the woodcutter’s hut. Slick mud from the snowstorm slowed them at first, but as the day heated, the ground began to dry. When they reached the other side of the ridge, the path leading downward was completely dry, as though the storm had never touched it.
“Most definitely of magical origin,” Sasha said.
Penelope secretly agreed with him. The storm had been too localized, too abrupt, too strange not to have been helped along. It had lasted just long enough to ensure they’d not make it to Nvengaria in time, and had dispersed before their food and water supplies ran out. The storm had been meant to discourage, not to kill.
At the top of the hill they came out of the trees, and Damien stopped. He drew Penelope’s horse abreast of him, and said quietly, “Look.”
The la
nd dropped away in abrupt green waves, the folds thousands of feet deep. Pines thinned at the crest of the ridge, then grew dense and lush down the slopes, their heady scent thickening the air. Mountains rose stark on the other side of the huge valley, gray white cliffs jutting from the green cover of forest. A hawk soared just below Penelope down the hill, wings outstretched.
Far down in the valley, she saw the brief glitter of sunlight on water; farther north, she spied the spires of a castle gleaming in the sun among a fold of high hills.
Something stirred within Penelope, something deep inside her that had slumbered, she realized since the beginning of her days. It woke now, sending glorious emotion spinning through her, joy and excitement and wonder laced with a bit of fear and awe.
She drew a long breath, realizing that she smiled. Damien, watching her, caught the look.
“I feel as though…” She broke off groping for words. “Oh, Damien, I feel as though I am coming home.”
Damien followed her gaze across the valley to the castle. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I feel that, too.”
He reached up and pulled her down from her horse. His arm warm about her waist, he led her under the trees, out of sight of the others, who seemed to have made a tacit agreement not to follow.
His hot, rough kiss took her by surprise. Penelope let her hat fall to the ground unheeded, as he raked his hands through her hair and kissed her with the wildness she’d always felt inside him.
“I will never regret finding you,” he said. “Never regret marrying you.”
For answer, she twined her arms around his neck. He lifted her in hard arms and held her against a tree. Knowing what he wanted, and wanting it, too, she scraped her skirt up her legs, baring her skin to the cool mountain breeze.
Damien peeled open his breeches, and his heavy arousal landed against her abdomen. He lifted her, arms cushioning her against the rough bark of the tree.
There was nothing gentle about the way he took her. It was raw coupling, needy and taking. She let him have her, digging her hands into his shoulders, the cries in her throat caught in his mouth.