The Barefoot Princess

“That was never my intention,” he said. “Rather, I’ll follow in my father’s footsteps and take an inappropriate foreign girl…as my wife.”

  “Pardon me?” Amy bobbed up out of her chair like a cork. “Are you talking about me? I’m not marrying you.”

  “Dear boy, unless you have a special license, the vicar would have to call the banns for four weeks first.” Miss Victorine’s forehead crinkled. “Unless—”

  “Exactly.” Jermyn took Amy’s wrist and with a bow, kissed the pale skin over the blue vein.

  She jerked free, but not before he felt her pulse racing. “What do you mean?” Her gaze traveled from one face to the other.

  “The wedding arch,” Mertle said.

  “Why, the wedding arch is so pagan, and it hasn’t been used for years,” Miss Victorine chirped like a plump, cheery pigeon. “Do you suppose it still works?”

  “Oh, it works,” Mertle said.

  “What wedding arch?” Amy demanded belligerently.

  “It’s an old tradition on the island,” Jermyn told her. “Down by the beach past the village stands a rock arch wide enough for a man and a woman to walk through. When they do, they’re wed for a year.”

  “Or until they have a ceremony in the church,” Miss Victorine reminded him firmly.

  “Or until they have a ceremony in the church,” he agreed.

  “Or until the first child is expected,” Pom said.

  Miss Victorine tittered.

  Amy sounded absolutely aghast. “The first child?”

  “Come, Amy, I’ll show you.” Catching her wrist again, Jermyn dragged her toward the door. She set her heels, but he caught her other hand, and her heels slid along the floor.

  “I won’t walk through the wedding arch with you,” she said.

  “The arch is traditionally used by grooms with reluctant brides, for the arch is tall enough for a man with his woman on his shoulder.” He overpowered her. He knew damned good and well that was the only way he’d win this fight, and besides, he rather enjoyed it. He had turned the tables on the vixen. Now she danced to his tune.

  “Oh, no.” Amy fell back and twisted her arm, trying to get free. “Oh, no—”

  As they reached the door, he bent and put his shoulder in her stomach. As if she were a sack of potatoes, he swung her up and over.

  Amy shrieked and gave his back a good hard thump.

  He dropped her down until her rear sat uppermost on his shoulder and her head dangled almost to his trousers, and kept walking.

  “Miss Victorine!” she shouted.

  “I’ll come as fast as I can, dears!” Miss Victorine called from the doorway.

  “Shame on you for appealing to an old lady for rescue.” Jermyn grinned as he strode toward the village. The night was cool and clear, the stars twinkled in the black sky, a half moon lit the road at his feet.

  “My lord, I won’t be wed in such a way.” Amy thumped him again.

  He grunted. “I didn’t ask you if you would be wed. I told you that I would wed you.”

  With a wave in their direction, Mertle ran past them headed straight for the pub.

  “I’m not one of your peasants to be used for a year and then discarded.” Amy clutched his waistcoat in her fists.

  “I don’t think you’re a peasant at all.” They reached the outskirts of the village and people began to pour out of the pub. “I think you’re a nobleman’s bastard daughter or an educated lady who ran into difficult times or a dispossessed princess—”

  “What?”

  “And we’re using this method rather than going to the church because I can’t wait four weeks for the banns to be called nor even a week to obtain a special license. Miss Victorine won’t let me take you any other way, and I will have you in my bed this night.”

  Her fists pulled at the thin material of his shirt in frustration. “Since when does the mighty marquess of Northcliff care what Miss Victorine Sprott has to say about his actions?”

  “The marquess of Northcliff has been brought low and made humble by the revelations of the past ten days. Only one thing has kept me from a total collapse of pride—you and your seduction most gentle.”

  She hated his tone. It sent a shiver up her spine and made her want to wrap her arms around his waist instead of pounding on him and clawing at him. Better to tell him the truth right now and save her pride than to succumb to infatuation. “I’ll tell you who I am. Since I was twelve I’ve traveled the roads and byways of England as a peddler. I ran a scam with my sister, selling face creams and cosmetics to poor, delusional women who want to imagine they can be beautiful. I’ve rubbed elbows with thieves and beggars.”

  He halted.

  She must have said the right thing at last. She had convinced him. He would go away and leave her alone…

  Carefully he slid her off his shoulder and stood her on her feet in the grass beside the path leading to the beach. He supported her until she regained her balance, and when he looked down at her, his shoulders blocked the sky. “Did your tough act frighten away those thieves and beggars?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” The villagers followed them like children after the Pied Piper.

  “If you were as dissipated as you claim, you wouldn’t have marked me with your virginity.”

  Maybe his other women could deal with such remarks. Maybe other women wouldn’t mind if the whole village heard him. Amy glared and shouted, “Shut your muzzle!”

  “Then you stop trying to convince me you’re something you’re not.” He lifted her again, into his arms. The rocks slid under his boots as he descended the slope toward the beach. “You’re a lady. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But with every well-articulated word and every fastidious instinct, you prove to me that your past has been a sheltered one.”

  “It has not!”

  “At least part of the time.” His heels sank deeply into the sand.

  The breeze from the sea was brisk and steady, tugging at her hair and raising goose bumps on her arms. She could hear the excited murmur of voices behind them. Her every sense sparkled, yet reality lagged one step behind. Nothing in the last few weeks, not even last night, had prepared her for this. Marriage. With the marquess of Northcliff. With the man she’d taken as a lover. It wasn’t possible.

  “There it is.” He stopped and made his announcement as if she would be delighted. “Since pagan times, the people of Summerwind have walked—or been carried—through that arch to be married. I won’t be the first Edmondson to use it to legalize my union.”

  On the rocky outcropping that framed the beach stood a stone arch, taller than Jermyn, wide enough for two to walk through. The arch itself was shaped like two heads, one taller, one shorter. That had to be the reason the absurd marriage superstition had developed. Yet she could see the stars through the opening, twinkling like merry eyes, and she uncovered a bit of superstition in her own soul. “I can’t marry you.”

  He started walking again. The man was like steel lace: complicated, difficult to handle, and strong. Strong in his body, strong in his mind.

  “I’m not who you think I am.” As a last-ditch defense, she told the truth. All the truth. “I’m one of the exiled princesses from Beaumontagne.”

  He slowed. “Are you?” He didn’t question her, didn’t scoff at her. Instead he seemed to weigh the possibility—and find some satisfaction in it.

  “Really. I am.” She gritted her teeth and admitted, “I have a duty to marry for my country.”

  Now he smiled, a glint of white teeth in the pale moonlight. “Are you trying to convince me that you would wed a prince chosen for you?”

  “Well…well, I have to!” she sputtered.

  Even in the darkness she could see the twinkle in his eyes.

  How did he know about Grandmamma? Why did he appear to believe that she was a princess but not that she would do as she was bid?

  When had he gotten to know Amy so well?

  Looking over his shoulder, she saw a line of peo
ple silhouetted on the rocks against the stars. The villagers. She saw a large lump of a man pushing his way toward the front, saw a head bobbing by his shoulder, realized that Pom had carried Miss Victorine from her cottage so she, too, could be here. Amy wanted to yell for help, but they weren’t here to help her. They were here to bear witness to their lord’s marriage.

  She faced forward; the wedding arch loomed above them. Jermyn stepped out of the sand. Steadily he climbed the rocks. The arch rose higher and closer. She stared, hypnotized, seeing her fate coming inexorably toward her. Toward them.

  As the arch loomed above them, she grabbed a handful of his hair. “My lord, don’t do this. You’ll regret this for the rest of your life.”

  Throwing back his head, he laughed a full-bodied, joyful laugh. “My dear Princess Disdain, I would regret this for the rest of my life if I didn’t.”

  Chapter 19

  “How could you believe me when I said I was a princess?” Amy struggled against the rope that bound her wrists. “What kind of fool believes such a tale?”

  “This kind of fool.” Jermyn sat opposite her in the boat, wielding the oars. Pom sat behind him, wielding another pair. “The kind of fool who trusts his uncle to handle his affairs without supervision because he’s too arrogant to imagine anyone would cheat him and certainly never would try to kill him. You’ve taught me lessons with a heavy hand, and I’m grateful. I’m alive because of you.”

  Too swiftly the boat moved across the sea, taking her away from Summerwind and toward the kind of life she dreaded. Toward Jermyn’s estate and Summerwind Abbey. It wasn’t yet midnight, still clear, still cool, yet it seemed as if her life had been chopped in half. One moment she’d been an independent woman, free of all entanglement, the next she’d been carried beneath an arch and pronounced a wife by the village vicar.

  By the vicar, for heaven’s sake! How was it possible that a sweetly spoken, mild-mannered, elderly Church of England vicar could authenticate a marriage based on a pagan rite?

  “You’re learned, you’re intelligent, you seize life by the horns and shake it until it gives you what you want. You show a vast indifference to the condition of your garments.” With a laugh in his voice, Jermyn said, “You’ll be the despair of Biggers.”

  “As if I care what your valet thinks!” She couldn’t see Pom, but she heard a snort and she thought he must be having the time of his life.

  “There’s that, too.”

  In the starlight and moonlight, she could only faintly see Jermyn, but she could definitely discern the flash of his teeth. He was enjoying himself. The cad!

  He continued, “You don’t give a farthing what anyone thinks of you. You have the courage to speak honestly. No, more than that, you consider blunt speaking to be your right. You’ve raised tactlessness to an art.”

  Like a petulant child, she snapped back, “So have you.”

  “Yes, but I’m a man and everyone knows men are great hairy beasts scarcely tamed by civilization.” He sounded quite cheerful about his failings. “I know of only one other woman who has even some of your attributes, and Lady Valéry is an elderly duchess, so convinced of her superiority that she doesn’t require the usual methods to show the world her importance. Her Grace is wealthy, she’s privileged, she’s lived a long life blessed with husbands and lovers, she’s traveled the world…when you’re as old as she is, I imagine you’ll be just like her.”

  Amy opened her mouth to retort.

  He interrupted her summarily. “Except for the husbands and lovers. I’m not leaving you alone.”

  He made it sound like a threat. He’d put her down in the boat to help Pom push off the beach, and just because she leaped free and started running, he’d tackled her and tied her wrists. She’d be spitting sand for a week.

  “Most of all, you don’t wait for anyone else to take action.” Jermyn had the impudence to sound admiring. “You saw an injustice and you moved to correct it.”

  “Without success!” He’d used his handkerchief under the rope to protect her from chafing and he’d taken care to tie the knots firmly yet without cutting off her circulation.

  “Yet you tried and if my uncle hadn’t already been trying to kill me, you’d have succeeded. You’re my inspiration.”

  “Inspiration?” She didn’t want to be an inspiration. She wanted to be free. “To do what?”

  “To take you and wed you before you could regroup and flee.”

  So she was a victim of her own audacity! Grandmamma would call that justice.

  Grandmamma would also sit in icy judgment of this marriage. “You might think that we’re married,” Amy said with false confidence. “But in Beaumontagne, no member of the royal family is married unless both are members of our state church.”

  “And what is your state church called?”

  “The Church of the Mountain.” She tugged at the rope again. The handkerchief slipped, but the knots remained firm. “We lived isolated for too many years to be subjects of the Roman Catholic Church, and our archbishop always officiates at the royal weddings.”

  “So we’ll have three weddings,” Jermyn announced coolly.

  “Three?” With every minute that passed, her life spun more summarily into a whirlwind of madness—and Jermyn stood at its center.

  “One under the arch, one in the Church of England, and one in the Church of the Mountain. I hope you don’t mind waiting on the ceremony in Beaumontagne. We’re going to be busy for the next few months trapping my uncle as he tries to kill me.”

  “But I’m not a member of the Church of England, and you’re not a member of the Church of the Mountain.”

  “You’d be surprised the dispensations that can be obtained when deed is already done—and, of course, the proper price is paid.”

  “So I don’t have a choice.”

  “No, of course not. It was a courtesy query, nothing more.”

  Why had she imagined he was attractive? He was absolutely the biggest, most complete and utter jackass she’d ever had the bad fortune to meet.

  “Why do we have to go to Summerwind Abbey tonight? Why couldn’t we have waited until I at least combed the sand out of my hair?” She heard the whine in her own voice and realized she’d been reduced to petulance. With any luck at all, she’d become a nag and make Jermyn a dreadful wife.

  “Didn’t I tell you? We’re not going to Summerwind Abbey. We’re going to the honeymoon cottage Biggers prepared for us on the estate.”

  “You know you didn’t tell me, and how did you know to have Biggers prepare a honeymoon cottage?”

  “Because last night, when I made you mine—”

  “Shush. You didn’t!”

  “All right. Last night when you made me yours—”

  She definitely heard Pom snort.

  “I decided it would be a permanent possession involving every kind of vow and binding known to man.” Jermyn’s teeth flashed in the moonlight. “Including apparently, rope.”

  The cliffs of Jermyn’s estate loomed higher and closer.

  “That’s why I left Miss Victorine’s cottage this morning. Because I wanted Pom to take a message to Biggers. I wouldn’t have abandoned you if I’d known there was trouble brewing.” Jermyn brought in the oars. Leaning forward, he clasped her fingers. “Believe me, I’m not going to lose you now.”

  With great ceremony, Jermyn lifted Amy into his arms and carried her across the threshold of the large cottage. He kicked the door shut behind him—and for the first time since her pagan wedding, she found herself speechless.

  So this was what a fortune could buy. Tall white wax tapers, lit so recently droplets hadn’t yet formed to run down the sides. Fresh flowers arranged in procelain vases, filling the air with the scent of spring. A fire blazing in the fireplace. A magnificent Oriental rug of cream and gold and blue. A sumptuous cold repast laid on a white linen tablecloth, and two gleaming wood chairs pulled close for intimate conversation. Billowy gold curtains over the windows. And in the corner
, the covers turned down on a wide bed where more billowy gold curtains could be pulled to form a love nest for two. All in a gardener’s cottage.

  If Amy had an ounce of romance in her soul, she would be sighing with gratification. Instead, she said acerbically, “All that’s missing is the love poem.”

  Jermyn deposited her in a chair by the table. “I’ll order a pen and ink for you.”

  How neatly he turned the tables on her! Holding up her wrists, she said, “Untie me.”

  “Not yet, my love. I need to speak to Biggers—”

  Jermyn was leaving her alone? She subdued her leap of anticipation.

  “—and I’m afraid I can’t trust you to remain here.” Reaching under the table, he brought out a coil of rope.

  Frozen with shock, she stared. This could not be good.

  Stepping behind her, he looped the rope around her and the chair. The rope settled at her waist, holding her arms in place, her back against the wood.

  Too late, she sprang into action, kicking and fighting.

  For all the notice he paid, she might have been an actress performing on cue. He tied a knot behind her, caught her ankle, looped the rope around her leg and the leg of the chair, caught her other ankle, and performed the same service.

  With a few flicks of the wrist, he had subdued her.

  The knots, of course, were secure.

  “Do you think you tied me well enough?” she asked sarcastically.

  “I know.” His voice rang with fake empathy. “For a ordinary woman, I would call this excessive restraint—but you, my princess, are no ordinary woman.” He dropped a kiss on her cheek. “Biggers is waiting. I promise I’ll be gone only a moment.”

  He walked out into the night.

  She stared venomously at the closed door.

  She should have waited to make her break.

  She should have realized that, after she put a manacle on his ankle, he would enjoy restraining her.

  She should have seen that pistol on the bed stand sooner…quickly she surveyed her surroundings and mapped her route. Across the wooden floor, across the rug, to the bed. She could do it. She knew she could.