The Barefoot Princess

  When he was little, he remembered learning the ABCs from Lady Northcliff. Her Ladyship had come over to the island every Thursday and taught the fishermen’s children. She’d looked like an angel, her dark hair curling around her face and her kind brown eyes. He remembered learning his first words, and how proud of him she’d been. Then she was gone. Gone suddenly and ignominiously, and no one taught the children again.

  No matter what people said, he would never understand what had happened to that lovely lady.

  He turned up the little path to his house and caught the slightest whisper of a familiar scent. He sensed a movement and, on edge after his last encounter, he almost struck out.

  Then a female voice whispered, “Pom? Is that you?”

  “Miss Amy!” He put his hand to his pounding heart. “What are ye doing here at this hour? ’Tis gone ten o’clock!”

  But he feared he knew what she was doing here. She knew His Lordship was free. She wanted Pom to recapture him.

  Instead she said, “I need you to go to the mainland tomorrow for me.”

  “Tomorrow?” He swallowed. This was too peculiar. “Fer ye?”

  “I want you to send this”—she shoved a small package tied in string into his hand—“through the post to Edinburgh, Scotland.”

  “Scotland.” He furrowed his brow as he thought. “That’s a long ways away, isn’t it?”

  “That it is,” she said crisply. “It’s imperative it goes tomorrow.”

  In the dark, he heard her fancy words and her noble accent more clearly. He mused, “When ye talk like that, so commanding and strong, I wonder who ye are and where ye came from.” Because for all that she had come to the island wet, dirty, and half dead, he knew she hadn’t escaped from the workhouse or the prisons.

  She dragged in a long breath that sounded like a sob.

  “Beg yer pardon, Miss Rosabel.” He was covered in mortification. “I’m drunker than I realized if I said that out loud.”

  “No. It’s all right.” She gave a sniff, and he thought she must have rummaged for her handkerchief. “Someone on the island has to know what should be done with me if…if the worst comes to pass.”

  “Ye mean if no ransom is paid and we’re taken fer our crimes.” He wanted to say that right now he had greater faith in their survival than he had an hour ago, but he’d already said more words tonight than he did in a normal week.

  “You won’t be taken.” In the dark, she groped for his hand. “No matter what happens, Pom, I want to tell you—I couldn’t have done this without your assistance, and I will never betray you or your kindness.”

  “I know, miss.” He pressed her cold, shaking fingers. “Maybe everything will come out fer the best after all.”

  “Maybe. But if the worst happens and I hang”—her voice grew stronger as she faced her fate—“I depend on you for two things. Try to protect Miss Victorine.”

  “Goes without saying, miss.”

  “And take this package.” She handed him another package much like the first. “Send it to Edinburgh, too.”

  “What’s in Edinburgh, miss?”

  She waited so long to answer, he didn’t think she would. Finally she said, “My sister. She lives not in Edinburgh, but in Scotland, and she’ll see this. It’s an ad that will run in the newspaper and tell her of my fate. I hadn’t realized it before, but she is very dear to me. After all we went through together, I would have her know of my death—and my eternal affection.”

  Scotland, two years ago

  “We’re princesses. When it’s safe for us to return home we’ll eat wonderful foods, wear beautiful gowns, and be respected and loved by all.” Twenty-two-year-old Clarice’s hair dripped from the rain, her lips were blue from cold, but her face shone as she huddled in her wet cloak before the meager fire in the public room of a Scottish inn.

  She really believed the litany she recited. As seventeen-year-old Amy saw it, that was the trouble. They had been gone from Beaumontagne for ten years, yet still Clarice really believed they would go back to the palace in Beaumontagne and resume their old lives.

  Perhaps it was easier for Clarice to have faith in a handsome prince. She was beautiful: petite, blond, curvaceous, with a face that made men turn on the street to stare.

  Amy knew she wasn’t ugly, but when the two sisters stood together, no man noticed Amy. It wasn’t a matter of contention for Amy—Clarice handled the attentions she drew with ease and tact, but sometimes things turned nasty.

  Yesterday they had turned nasty. Amy’s heart still pounded from their narrow escape, and she wanted to ride farther into Scotland.

  The foul weather thwarted them.

  She hoped it would thwart their pursuers, too.

  “Sorcha will return, also.” Clarice’s teeth chattered, but she still spoke cheerfully—and softly. “We’ll dance at elegant balls and be wed to handsome princes.”

  “If the choice in princes is as good as the choice in common men, it would be better to remain a spinster,” Amy said crossly. The longer they were on the road being chased by magistrates and irate customers, the less Amy believed the tales Clarice spun. She handed Clarice one of the pieces of bread the innkeeper had placed on the table. “Here, eat this.”

  Clarice took a bite, then grimaced.

  Amy held her piece down by the single candle the landlord had placed in the middle of the table. The bread was moldy, dotted with green specks, but the sisters were too hungry and too desperate to quibble.

  Glancing around, Amy found a ladle and filled a bowl from the mutton stew bubbling in a pot hanging on the hook. “Do you remember what just happened back there? You repelled an English magistrate, stole his horse, and that’s why we had to ride through one of the worst rainstorms in British history to cross into Scotland where we hope, please God, we’ll be safe.”

  “Sh!” Clarice glanced around at the empty public room. “That dreadful magistrate was beating the horse.”

  Amy lowered her voice, too. “He was beating his wife, too, and if he catches up with us, he’ll hang us.”

  “He won’t catch us.” Clarice’s cloak steamed from the heat of the flames, wreathing her face, giving her an ethereal guise.

  “You hope.” Pulling her spoon from her belt, Amy took a ravenous bite. It was hot, greasy, and it tasted…off. As if it wasn’t mutton, but some other meat about which she dared not inquire.

  She hoped it didn’t make them sick.

  She knew it didn’t matter. They had to eat.

  In a vehement undertone, she said, “I am sick to death of the constant travel and the furtive half lies and the awful food. If we’re not hanged, then we’ll die of exposure.”

  Clarice turned stricken eyes on her. “I didn’t know you felt that way.”

  “How could you not know?” How could Clarice be so dim-witted? Amy dropped a piece of bread into the stew and fed it to her sister.

  “You’ve never said anything before.”

  “Yes, I have, you just don’t listen to me.” Maybe Amy hadn’t really said what she thought, but she was in no mood to be fair. She suffered from that jittery sense, the one that she had developed in too many desperate flights from too many towns. She shoveled the food into her mouth, shoveled it into Clarice.

  Where was the innkeeper? Why hadn’t he returned from the kitchen?

  “You think I’m your silly little sister who knows nothing.” Amy pocketed the rest of the bread. “You think you have to shield me, but you can’t. I have to go into towns on my own to set up your arrival with the creams. I know how to find a place of employment. I know how to live on my own. For heaven’s sake, I’m seventeen years old, Clarice, the same age you were when we were thrown out of school!”

  “Have I been too protective, Amy?” The rain had dried on Clarice’s face, but now moisture slid down her cheeks. Hastily she wiped it away with her red, chapped fingers.

  Amy felt a pang of guilt, but she swept it aside. “Yes. Why can’t we pick out some perfectly
pleasant town, stop there, and open a shop? You could sell creams, I could sew—”

  “Because Grandmamma sent her messenger to warn us that assassins are after us.”

  “After five years, you think they’re still after us?”

  “Godfrey said that when it was safe to return to Beaumontagne, Grandmamma would put an advertisement in the English newspapers. According to the reports, Grandmamma is still alive and has gained control of the country.”

  “Probably scared the rebels to death,” Amy muttered.

  “Probably, but that’s not the point. She wouldn’t forget to call us back.”

  “No, not Grandmamma. She would never forget anything. So maybe she’s not really in control.”

  “And maybe the assassins are still after us. Remember what happened in that inn after we left boarding school?” At the memory, a hard shudder wracked Clarice.

  “Yes. Yes, of course I do.” A fortnight into their flight, they woke to find a man in their dark room. He was huge, with bulky shoulders, and a cloth covered his features. The blade of his knife gleamed in the moonlight, and he advanced on them, waving it in slow circles. The girls had screamed. The innkeeper had burst in. The assassin had knocked him down as he ran out the door.

  And when they explained to the innkeeper who they were and why they were being chased, he had growled, “Ye’re trouble, the both of ye. Out ye go! And don’t come back.”

  He’d thrown them out in the middle of the night. It had been a lesson in reality the girls never forgot, and the next day, they had spent some of their desperate coins on knives of their own. And in fact…

  Where was the innkeeper? Where was his wife? Why hadn’t they returned from the kitchen?

  “But that was five years ago,” Amy said. “We’ve been careful. Nothing’s happened like it since. They’re off our trail!”

  “I can’t take a chance. Not with your life or my own.” Clarice glanced toward the door. “Where is that innkeeper?”

  So she, also, was aware of the passage of time.

  “They’re taking an awfully long time,” Amy said.

  “If one of them goes out to the stable—” The princesses had groomed the young stallion themselves.

  “If the hostler goes in and tells them what a magnificent creature Blaize is—”

  The two sisters looked at each other in despair.

  They heard the clomping of footsteps along the passage from the kitchen.

  Amy snuffed the candle with her fingertips and tossed it aside. Picking up a heavy pewter candlestick, she put her back against the wall behind the door. She nodded at Clarice, who nodded back.

  The door opened with a long squeak, hiding the room from Amy’s gaze.

  “There’s one o’ them, Bert. The other’s probably upstairs stealing us blind.”

  Slowly Amy slid along the wall, taking care to remain silent and unobtrusive.

  Their tall, bony landlady stepped into the room, wiping her hands on her apron.

  Bert, slow, stout, ham-handed, followed his wife. “Nice horse,” he said. “Where’d ye get it?”

  “It was a present from my father.” Smiling with all the charm in her considerable arsenal, Clarice advanced on him. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

  “Yer father!” The landlady snorted. “Like ye even know who he is.”

  Ignoring her, Clarice continued to walk slowly toward Bert. “It’s such a foul night, Bert. I’m very glad for your kind hospitality.”

  Hypnotized by her smile, Bert reversed course and backed up—toward Amy.

  In a soothing tone, Clarice continued, “You have no other guests and you did already take our coin—”

  “We’ll take the rest of yer purse before ye leave, too, for we’re na keeping two o’ the likes o’ ye here. Right, Bert? Right?” The landlady turned to watch as Clarice herded Bert along.

  The landlady’s eyes widened when Amy stepped out of the shadows, candlestick raised.

  The landlady squawked.

  Amy brought the makeshift weapon down on Bert’s head.

  He dropped like a rock, thumping on the floor in a cloud of dust.

  Scowling, Amy lifted the candlestick again and walked toward the landlady.

  She fled, shrieking like a Beaumontagne windstorm.

  Amy dropped her weapon on the table and dusted her fingertips. “With any luck, the hostler’s in the stable and there’s no one to hear her.” Then, reconsidering, she picked up the candlestick again. “But we haven’t had any luck lately, have we?”

  Clarice knelt by the landlord and pressed her fingers to his neck. “He’s alive.”

  “Good. That’s one less crime I’ve committed,” Amy said grimly.

  “Why do they always have to be suspicious of us?” Clarice stood and pulled on her still damp gloves.

  “Because we don’t talk like them and we don’t look like them.” With jerky motions, Amy tied the dark hood over her sister’s head to cover the bright strands. Donning her own gloves, she said, “Come on. We have our bellies full. Blaize has a willing spirit. We can ride farther tonight.”

  Chapter 14

  “Amy, dear Jermyn is asking for you.” Miss Victorine came bustling up the stairs into the kitchen where Amy sat at the table, her hands cupping her forehead. “Do you feel well enough to go down?”

  “No.” A little terse. Lifting her head, she tried to smile. “That is—I’m afraid I’m still unwell and would hate to pass my illness on to him.”

  Miss Victorine’s eyes got big. “I thought you said your illness was a female problem?”

  “It is! That is, it was. But now I have a cough”—Amy hacked insincerely—“probably the result of spending too much time in a damp cellar.”

  “My cellar isn’t damp, dear.” Miss Victorine sounded huffy. “With the stove it’s quite comfortable.”

  “Dusty,” Amy offered.

  “If you really believe it’s disadvantageous to your health to go down, then in all honor we must free His Lordship or we will have his death on our hands.”

  “No!” Amy came to her feet. “No, no, no, we can’t free him yet!” If they freed him, he could grab her and subject her to more of his kisses. Force them on her, make her accept a passion she didn’t want to acknowledge.

  Miss Victorine sighed softly. Putting her arm around Amy’s shoulders, she hugged her and said, “Amy, you’re not ill. You’re avoiding Jermyn. I don’t blame you. I know that it’s unpleasant when we tell him he’ll not be released—”

  “It’s unpleasant? He’s unpleasant!”

  “He can be cajoled.”

  “Why should I cajole him?” Amy expected Miss Victorine to mention Lord Northcliff’s nobility.

  Instead she said, “Because we kidnapped him and put him in my damp, dusty cellar.” Playfully she pulled a strand Amy’s hair. “Now go down and talk to the boy. Offer to read to him. You noticed that first day that he’s very handsome. Perhaps you could flirt with him.”

  “Flirt?” Amy’s gaze flew to Miss Victorine’s in horror. “Oh, no. I can’t flirt with him. He’s…not to my taste.”

  “Really? I thought all those sidelong glances meant he was very much to your taste.”

  “You…you think that I indicated a liking…a preference…for His Lordship?” Had Amy unwittingly encouraged his attentions?

  “A reluctant liking,” Miss Victorine corrected.

  “I don’t want to like him.” Amy thought she’d been a shrew, but what did she know about men? Maybe they liked shrews.

  “No, of course you don’t. But sometimes nature has other ideas.”

  With a fair imitation of her haughty grandmamma, Amy said, “Nature does not command me.”

  Miss Victorine sounded not at all like Amy’s grandmother, but she still sounded implacable when she replied, “It does. Now go on down and see what he wants. It’s not as if you have to remain there.”

  Amy stared at the dark hole leading down to the cellar, then grabbed Miss Victorine’s arm. ??
?Come with me.”

  “If you insist, but my knee…” Miss Victorine winced. “It’s complaining with all the climbing up and down the stairs today. I did, after all, have to deliver his breakfast and his tea and his supper.”

  “Then of course, you must stay up here. You’ve done too much today already.” Amy steeled herself to descend the stairway and face the man whom yesterday she had kissed.

  Kissed! What a simple word to describe the panoramic pleasure he had shown her.

  And she’d let him. That was the truth that haunted her. She had fought him, yes, but she’d fought him like a girl, not poking his eyes or slamming his throat. She hadn’t wanted to hurt him—and how ridiculous that was. He hadn’t hesitated to use his strength against her. Not that he’d hurt her; quite the opposite. He’d forced pleasure on her and showed her things about herself she had never imagined. She couldn’t imagine looking him in the eye.

  Worse, she couldn’t look at herself in the mirror.

  For the first time in the year Amy had lived here, Miss Victorine examined her critically. “You need some color.” She pinched Amy’s cheeks.

  With her first flare of indignation at Miss Victorine, Amy flounced away. But before she descended the stairs, she turned back. “You never told me about his mother.”

  “I did, too.” Miss Victorine puffed up like an offended partridge. “I said we lost her.”

  “She wasn’t lost. She abandoned her family. At least that’s what he told me.”

  “It looked that way. She left and was never seen again. But I never believed it.” Miss Victorine seemed to drift away. “Never believed it. She was sweet and lovely. She was kind to me. She loved her boy and she loved His Lordship.” Abruptly Miss Victorine returned to the present. “Lady Northcliff couldn’t have walked away from them.”

  “Exactly what I said, but he—”

  “Imagine, if you will, what it was like for that little boy to have people believe his mother was light-minded and immoral.” Miss Victorine cupped Amy’s cheek. “He heard adults gossiping most cruelly. They forbade their children to play with him because his mother’s dissipation must have been passed on to him. The children taunted him, said how awful he must be that his mother ran away from him.”