Now, again, he watched her, his brown eyes steady and perceptive.
She’d been unconscious, defenseless, and the way he held her gaze rattled her, made her want to check her buttons and cover her face like a harem girl.
Then he smiled and started toward her.
A threat? He didn’t look like a threat, but neither had that sailor ...
The old lady beside her poked her in the ribs, and loud enough for the man to hear, declared, “He likes you.”
Brat blushed.
Blushed. For the first time in years, maybe in her life, she blushed.
The man knelt in front of Brat, still smiling, one hand knuckled into the ground for balance, one hand open, palm up, on the knee of his trousers. He looked harmless, friendly, open, and Brat relaxed under the unusual attention of an admiring man. Relaxed, until he said, “I’ve been watching you.”
Chapter Twelve
“I have needs that must be attended to,” Laurentia said haughtily. She and Dom stood at the edge of the high meadow, away from the main body of the festivities where the flat land gave way to the beginnings of the Pyrenees. One of the ladies’ conveniences had been set up just inside the shadow of the forest in an abandoned hut, part of a hamlet forsaken long ago, and she started up the rugged, winding path toward it.
“Wait.” Dom laid his hand on her arm, a warm and callused reminder of his presence. “I’ll scout out the area first.”
He waited to hear her objections, but she had lost that battle too many times. Without a word, she gestured for him to go. She didn’t even flinch when he touched his thumb to her lips and said, “Wise girl.”
Everything about him—his grin, his challenging stance, his tone of voice—was deliberate provocation. What was it about her that made him want to poke at her like a boy with a stick?
She laughed softly. A big stick.
She watched while he climbed the rugged path. To her, even his black trousers were a provocation, clinging to his thighs and buttocks in a manner that demanded attention. Her fingers itched to explore the firm muscles showcased there, and she found her mind wandering along pathways of exploration and discovery.
Fortunately for the last remnants of her good sense, he disappeared around a tumbled wall, and she caught nary a glimpse of him. Beneath the forest’s canopy, she knew, the village was old and wretched, the huts widely scattered, and whatever ghosts haunted it were undoubtedly annoyed by the nosy bodyguard poking about the tumbled stones and fallen roof beams.
When she saw him returning, she wondered what made him smile so wickedly. It couldn’t be that he knew his smile destroyed her resolve and turned her into a weak and pitiable creature. Most men weren’t so observant, and Dom was very much a man.
Yet the smile mocked her and her dignity. “Don’t be long,” he said.
“There’s no problem,” she assured him. “Weltrude scheduled all my duties for the morning, for His Majesty insists I be allowed time to do as I wish at my own festival.”
“Nevertheless, don’t be long.”
She didn’t like his tone, his assumption of authority, or the fact he was right, so she brushed past him without acknowledging him or his efforts. Unreasonable, she knew, even deplorable, but how much more deplorable was a woman who couldn’t look at a handsome man without desiring inappropriate behavior? Better he should think she was haughty than easy.
She walked cautiously, not wanting to trip and make a fool of herself, yet each sway of her hips seemed like a wanton invitation. And while it really wasn’t, she could feel his gaze on her as she walked over the pine needles littering the path. Rounding the corner and moving out of sight proved such a relief she placed one hand on the rough bark of a tree. Her heart raced as if she’d run up the hill, and she wanted to sit and catch her breath. But she didn’t dare; she wouldn’t put it past Dom to decide she was taking too long, leave his post at the bottom of the hill, and come to find her.
So she hurried to finish, and as she reached the last hut at the far end of the village, she heard a moan. She stopped, her mind flashing to the injured man she’d just treated. Had someone else been hurt? She thought the cry had come from behind those two walls, once part of a hut and still almost intact.
Another moan, followed by a woman’s scream. Someone . . . Oh, heavens above, was someone being attacked? Last night’s assault sprang into her mind, and panic made her gasp for breath. Someone needed help and she ... No, she wasn’t afraid. She was the princess.
Blind pride and pure determination pushed her into a run, and as she ran she fumbled with her handbag. No one was going to be abducted. Not on her birthday.
She barreled around the corner of the standing wall—and came to a complete and humiliating halt.
Dulcie writhed half-naked in the arms of some man who was obviously not attacking her.
No wonder Dom had been smiling.
In their lovers’ frenzy, they hadn’t seen her. Sweat beaded Laurentia’s forehead as she eased backward and out of sight. When she came to a large fallen boulder hidden in a grove well away from the action, she sank down and put her head in her hands.
Here paths wound up into the mountains through pine forests that stretched toward the highest peaks. Ivy climbed the rough trunks. As the forest thickened, badgers moved boldly from their dens to waddle about in search of prey, and Laurentia knew wolves and bears roamed the woods. Yet it wasn’t insentient nature that she feared, or the animals that lived by instinct alone. It was her, Laurentia, who hurt herself.
Stupid! She was so stupid! Rushing to rescue someone fortunate enough to be involved in passionate embrace.
Not fortunate enough, she corrected herself, wanton enough.
But she couldn’t even convince herself. Dulcie chose her partners with an eye to quality, and Laurentia envied her that. Envied her everything, if the truth be told. Dulcie had blossomed early, becoming tall and lushly rounded while Laurentia had been short and straight. And while maturity had eventually blessed Laurentia with a curvaceous figure, she hadn’t grown much taller, leaving her looking up while Dulcie flirted her way in and out of trouble. And in again—Dulcie had had to marry at sixteen.
“At least,” she’d boasted to Laurentia, rubbing her swollen belly, “I made sure I got caught with a duke.”
The duke died, the second husband died, and now Dulcie was a rich widow with three children she loved dearly and a wandering eye.
From the direction of the pathway, Laurentia heard passionate murmurs, then the tromp of boots as Dulcie’s lover strode away, apparently invigorated by their embrace. Laurentia scrunched herself into a little ball and kept watch in the direction of the path.
Which is why she didn’t see Dulcie until she spoke from behind her. “Your Highness! Spying on me?”
Laurentia jumped so hard she bumped her head against an overhanging branch, and Dulcie laughed.
Swinging around, Laurentia found her nemesis— and friend—standing downhill at the corner of a single, standing wall.
She was plumper than she had been at adolescence, her gown a little more daring, her hair a red so bright Laurentia could have read by its brilliance, but essentially she was the same Dulcie, studying Laurentia as if she were some silly little girl in need of guidance.
“Dulcie, how did you—”
“I was pretty sure you’d be too stunned to go far, so I searched.” Dulcie grinned. “You got an eyeful that time, didn’t you?”
It was too late to pretend she didn’t know what Dulcie was talking about, so Laurentia said, “I didn’t mean to!”
“What did you think was happening? Did you think he was killing me?” At the expression on Laurentia’s face, Dulcie laughed harder. “You did. You were going to rescue me!”
“I didn’t know it was you or I wouldn’t have bothered,” Laurentia muttered.
At that, Dulcie laughed hard enough for tears to smear the henna on her lids.
Laurentia watched morosely. One thing about Dulcie, sh
e might laugh now, but she wouldn’t tell anyone else. Laurentia knew that for sure; she had a tendency to make a fool of herself around Dulcie.
When Dulcie finally got control of herself, she said, “You should see your face. You look like my maiden aunt when she found out I’d delivered Sammie six months after the wedding.”
For some reason, talking about Sammie made Laurentia feel better. She was his godmother, and he was a charming boy of ten who adored her and the gifts she brought him. “I’m sure he came early.”
“Of course. Early babies always weigh ten pounds.” Dulcie scampered up the hill. “Your Highness, if you would permit me, I’d like to converse with you.”
Laurentia didn’t want to converse. She didn’t want to hear what Dulcie had to say. But on the occasions when she had not consented to let Dulcie speak, she’d gone into situations unprepared. As Dulcie had said on one such occasion, someone in Bertinierre had to tell the crown princess the realities of life, and no one else had the nerve.
Dulcie had a plethora of nerve and a lot of heart, so Laurentia might just as well let Dulcie get whatever it was off her extremely ample chest. Gloomily, she gave permission. “You may sit down.”
Perching herself on the stone next to Laurentia, Dulcie pulled a handkerchief from her sleeve, dabbed at her face, then turned to Laurentia. “Am I smeared?”
One eye had a smudge of black in the corner and Dulcie’s spontaneous tears of laughter had washed one cheek clean of rouge. “Here.” Prudently placing her pocketbook on the stone right beside her, Laurentia took the handkerchief. “Let me.”
Respect for the royal family ran deep in Bertinierre, and Dulcie hesitated. “Are you sure, Your Highness?”
“If I didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t have offered,” Laurentia said irritably.
As Laurentia rubbed at one cheek, then another, Dulcie said, “You’re taking this too seriously.”
“What too seriously?” Laurentia frowned at Dulcie’s cheeks, still unevenly colored, then scrubbed all the rouge away.
“This picking of a husband. You’ve been marching around here like some martinet on parade. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were Weltrude.”
Laurentia pinched at Dulcie’s cheeks. “Unfair.”
“Ow.” Dulcie jerked her head away. “You don’t need to enjoy that quite so much!”
“It brought your tender blush back.”
“Tender is right.” Dulcie touched her skin with her fingertips. “I wanted pink, not black and blue.”
Laurentia grinned at her, Dulcie grinned back, and Laurentia went to work trying to fix the smudges under Dulcie’s eye.
“You’ve got all these men, and all you do is official duties.” Dulcie looked right into her eyes. “You should be having fun.”
Laurentia had heard this before. “I can’t. I’m fixing the mess you made of your face.”
“Dom.” A little smile played around Dulcie’s cherry lips. “Dominic of Baminia, or so he says. That’s exactly who I’m talking about. He’s your suitor, and he’s following you about like a stud on the trail of a mare.”
Laurentia sucked in a breath to blast Dulcie for her crudeness.
Until Dulcie baldly said, “Bed him.”
Laurentia’s heart skipped a beat, then started thumping so loudly she feared she would cause the earth to shake. Bed him. Bed Dom?
“You can’t tell me you don’t want to,” Dulcie said. “I saw your disarray when you came into the ballroom last night. I saw the way you two stared at each other today, and when you say his name you look like my little girl drooling over a sweetmeat.”
Laurentia did not appreciate the description, especially since she feared it was true. “Having fun is not the same as bedding a man.”
“That’s a lie.” Dulcie settled back, leaning on her hands, and looked as satisfied as a pasha who had been serviced by a harem. “And unless I miss my guess—and I’m seldom wrong—your Dom definitely knows what he’s doing.”
“He’s not my Dom.”
“Don’t you want to bed him?” Dulcie asked encouragingly.
“Yes.” Laurentia hoped confession would ease her distress, but if anything it made her feel sillier. “But I’m like that with all handsome men. I just... want them.”
“All handsome men?” Dulcie’s mouth quirked. “Did you want Jaime?”
“Who?”
“That rather vigorous fellow you caught me with.”
Laurentia shrugged. “He’s not a man, he’s just a boy.”
“He’s twenty-two, old lady, and if you took a vote, every woman here would agree he’s the handsomest bow in the quiver.”
Laurentia tried to remember how Jaime had appeared when he had been presented to her last night, when his pants had been around his waist and his charisma had been directed at her. Tall and dark, with melting brown eyes and a tortured beauty ... “He’s too young.”
“What about that Persian, Kalil? Or Mr. Shanahan?”
Laurentia recalled the swarthy Easterner and the auburn-haired Irishman. “Very comely, but not like Dom.”
Dulcie grabbed Laurentia by the arm. “Yes... they... are. Better than Dom, even, because they haven’t got that scar across their faces.”
Indignant, Laurentia said, “The scar gives him character.”
“We’re not talking about character. We’re talking about sheer good looks.” Dulcie took a breath that raised her quivering breasts to new heights. “Now if we’re talking about a dangerous air, that’s a different tale entirely. Your Dom is positively mesmerizing.”
“He doesn’t want me.” Laurentia twisted the handkerchief in her fingers. “He’s just like Beaumont, all powder and no shot.”
“You mean he doesn’t love you, he only wants you for your ... position.”
Laurentia floundered before Dulcie’s obvious scorn. “Well... yes.”
“I can’t imagine being so blessed, Laurie, or being so bloody stubborn. A breathtakingly handsome man who knows how to give a woman a good time is after your money and your body—believe me, he’s not faking that—and you won’t even try him out.”
“I tried out one breathtakingly handsome man, and look what it got me.”
Dulcie smiled crookedly. “I know what it got you, Laurie. I tried to ride that horse myself. Your husband was a gelding, and unless I miss my mark”— she lowered her voice dramatically—“you’re still a virgin.”
“Sh!” Laurentia looked frantically around. She half-expected Dom to step out of the trees in high dudgeon because she hadn’t returned immediately. “For pity’s sake, be quiet!”
Dulcie was quiet, so quiet Laurentia realized she’d been tricked. “You didn’t know,” Laurentia said.
Dulcie wore a pensive expression. “Not for sure. How could I? I feel so bad for you.”
She truly did, Laurentia could see that and that, in general, made Laurentia want to hide herself under the nearest rock. Except she was sitting on the nearest rock, and it was too heavy. “That makes it worse. Suffice it to say, he did not choose to make me his wife in the fullest sense of the word. And Dulcie, I can’t tell you more.”
“Of course it shall be as you wish, Your Highness.”
“Thank you.”
“But I can speculate!” said the irrepressible Dulcie. “That wedding night must have been a hell of a disappointment.”
“I was only sixteen, I didn’t know everything”— Laurentia glared at Dulcie—“but someone had given me the details about being deflowered.”
“Who else was going to tell you?” Dulcie spread her hands in mock innocence. “I was just trying to help.”
“You scared me to death.”
“The first time’s a little painful, and you were such a whiny little girl.”
“I was not!”
“Were too.” Laurentia started to argue, but Dulcie lifted one finger. “We can’t sit here and squabble like infants.”
“Why not?” Laurentia asked. “We’ve had enough pr
actice.”
Dulcie poked the finger at Laurentia. “Because we’re trying to get you on your back with an experienced man above you so you can have a little fun before you settle down to marriage.”
“That’s what you’re trying to do.” Actually, the idea appealed more and more.
“You’re twenty-five and a virgin, Laurentia. This is a state emergency.” Dulcie looked as serious as Laurentia had ever seen her. “Listen to me. This makes what I’m telling you even more logical. At your age, any other woman has had a few little romps. A husband or two, maybe a dozen lovers. You’ve had nothing, and you owe it to yourself to find out what you’ve missed.”
Laurentia rolled her eyes.
“All right. You owe it to your future husband. He’s expecting to marry a woman of the world, not a little celibate.”
Dulcie could produce a good argument, so good she was beginning to make sense. “He’s expecting that our first child will be his.”
“It doesn’t matter if the first child is his, only if it’s yours. You bear the royal bloodline, not him. Don’t you dare let any husband of yours tell you different.”
With unshakable confidence, Laurentia said, “I know who I am, Dulcie.”
“You don’t have to take this Dom forever,” Dulcie continued persuasively. “Just test him out. It’s like buying a horse. You ride him, see if he has a good gait and staying power. If he doesn’t, you move on to another stud.”
“That’s an awful way to look at it!” Something rustled, and the hair on Laurentia’s neck lifted. “Be quiet!”
“Why?” Dulcie continued, blithely impervious. “That is what you’re looking for, a stud with good teeth and strong legs to give you children, and if he gives you a romp in bed, well then, all the better.”
Laurentia looked around at every bush, but she caught sight of nothing suspicious. No Dom, thank heavens. And much as she wished to, she couldn’t ignore Dulcie’s enthusiastic plans. “Yes, but how do I...”
“Smile at him, Laurentia. Bat your eyes like this.”
Dulcie fluttered her lashes like a bedouin in a dust storm. “Rest your hand on his arm. Lean against him. Lower your voice so you purr like a well-cared-for cat. Did I say smile?”