The Runaway Princess

  “Of course. Our mother superior is the living incarnation of Santa Leopolda.”

  His paralysis allowed her to break free.

  With a lift of her snub little nose, she straightened her robes and strode away.

  Stunned, he watched them as they found. the path to Plaisance. The mother superior—Santa Leopolda, if he believed Soeur Constanza—turned as she entered the woods, and across the distance he saw the spark and the warning in her gaze.

  Recalled to his duty, he hurried in the other direction, after his lost princess.

  Fifteen

  For one horrified moment, Evangeline thought Danior had watched her descend from the tower and now held her in his arms. Danior—but in a scarf that covered the lower part of his face. But this man’s frigid blue eyes crinkled as he smiled with genuine amusement, and Danior, she knew without a doubt, would not be entertained at her escapade. Nor would he be holding her so tightly that he bruised her.

  “Your Highness.” The man spoke cultured Baminian in a voice as low and warm as melted honey. “How good of you to come out to meet us.”

  The rebel Dominic. She opened her mouth to scream. Off to the side, she saw a flash of steel, and someone jumped at her with a bare blade. “Die, princess,” a man’s voice rasped.

  Dominic swung her away. “Not yet.”

  Two tall men, the other members of the party, shoved their short, knife-wielding companion aside. “Let’s get away from here first, fool.”

  “Wait.” As they hustled her into the forest, Evangeline dug her heels into the mixture of humus and pine needles beneath her feet.

  Dominic wrenched her arm to keep her abreast of him.

  “Wait! You don’t understand. I’m not the—”

  Shorty attacked from the side and smacked her across the face. “Shut up.”

  Without a thought, Evangeline kicked him between the legs. He went down like a lead weight. For a moment she thought his companions would surely kill her, but the two tall men burst out laughing. She scarcely dared look at Dominic, but when she did she found his frigid gaze fixed on her, observing her, weighing her.

  This man hated her with an intensity that shook her to the bone, and that gave her the impetus to do what she had to. Dropping to her knees, she hunched over the purple, squirming Shorty. “I’m so sorry.” She wrung her hands. She clutched at his shirt. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She grappled with his belt, playing the role of the woman appalled at her own temerity and all the while thanking God for the friends she’d made at the orphanage. The ones who had picked pockets on the street.

  Gasping, Shorty held his groin and glared at her.

  “Is it bruised? Let me see.” In an artlessly inadvertent movement, she slammed her fist against his hand.

  He howled and squeezed his eyes shut.

  And she lifted a weapon from his belt and slipped it into her bosom, then wrung her hands close by her chest in what she hoped looked like ladylike distress. “Please forgive me. I’m just so clumsy.”

  That sent the hyenas into new paroxysms of hilarity.

  “Yes, interesting.” Dominic lifted her to her feet, tied her hands in front of her, and yanked her on a leading rope through the brush. The two hyenas had followed, laughing more as she protested that she wasn’t the princess, they had the wrong woman, and why didn’t they let her go? Dominic ignored her, releasing branches to slap her face until she quieted.

  After about a half hour, they heard a thrashing behind them, and Shorty puffed up behind them.

  He walked with a limp now, and he carried a grudge. “Kill her.”

  He shoved Evangeline’s shoulder, and she stumbled on the rocky ground. The cut on her heel opened again. The blood was sticky against her skin, and sand shifted into the hole in her heel.

  “Kill her,” he repeated. “She’s useless. Look, she can’t even walk.”

  “Please, kill me,” Evangeline said. “That wouldn’t be the worst thing that’s happened to me lately.”

  Clearly unimpressed with her bravado, Dominic kept walking, dragging her along. “She’s our bait for the prince, and when we have them both, we’ll purge the country of royalty.”

  They traveled for hours. Dominic, Shorty, and the two bodyguards passed through the underbrush, their brown leather breeches and vests blending with the forest. Each one carried a primitive musket, a long knife, and enough gunpowder hung in sacks from their belts to blow up a city. Despite the weight of their arsenal, they walked without a sound.

  Not Evangeline. She gasped in the thin air. Her side had a stitch. Her aching calves told her they had been ascending steadily. The trees of the forest were tall and mighty in the lower elevations, but the higher the little band went, the more the thinning trees struggled to survive. Short and withered, they showed the wear of constant wind in their branches, and each deformity was more grotesque than the next. Thoughts of enchanted forests, of hoary evils that lived beneath bark and limb, crowded Evangeline’s mind.

  Then they rose above the tree line, and towering boulders watched like ancient giants. Sweat beaded her brow from her exertions, yet the wind struck chill, and she shivered convulsively. No thought of escape entered the exhausted recesses of her mind. All she knew was that she needed to rest.

  But she couldn’t because of the despot who led them tirelessly. That despot who put her through this torture. Dominic.

  Shorty shoved her again and cackled when she fell to her knees. “Some princess.”

  “Am not,” Evangeline muttered. She felt as if she’d been denying a royal heritage forever. And with the same results.

  She was ignored.

  Shorty said, “Look at her, weak and whiny. She can’t keep up with us. She’s accustomed to luxury. Kill her, Dominic, and put her out of her misery.”

  Dominic waited while she dragged herself to her feet again. “She’s smart enough to want to get away from Danior. That alone makes her of interest to me.”

  She didn’t want to be of interest to them. She especially didn’t want to be of interest to him.

  Darkness had already come to the lower elevations, and the sun’s rays crept up toward them bringing the promise of a cold night. They headed straight for a barren cliff, chiseled by the winds that blew off the snow-capped peaks, its only decoration a series of ribbonlike waterfalls cascading down from the glaciers. Mammoth crags clustered at the base, then spread across the landscape like a giant’s building blocks, and dirty patches of snow huddled in their shadow. The site was ugly, detached and hard, just like the men who surrounded her.

  One of the hyenas tweaked her hair. “If you’re going to take her to the lair, at least cover her eyes.”

  “Why?” Shorty’s eyes shone with fanaticism, and he moved like a weasel, his body constantly in motion. “She won’t be coming out again.”

  The hyenas laughed, and Evangeline blinked away a rush of weak tears. Her feet hurt, her face ached where Shorty had hit her, her wrists were raw from Dominic’s rope, she was desperately thirsty, and no one cared. Victor and Rafaello had treated her well because they thought she was the princess. These men treated her crudely for exactly the same reason.

  “I thought Robin Hood lived in a forest,” she mumbled in English.

  “Robin Hood was a fool. Give money to the poor! Better he should have spent it to overthrow the king,” Dominic answered in English, without looking bark.

  She was glad. If he’d seen her astonishment, he’d have laughed at her again, and she found his bitter amusement harder to take than blows. He spoke English, and he knew an obscure English legend. How? He was both more casual and more dangerous than the other men. He frightened her to the depths of her soul.

  A bird called nearby, and Evangeline’s head swiveled to catch sight of it.

  Ugly bird. It was Shorty, lips pursed, wrinkled throat vibrating as he produced the most beautiful call she’d ever heard.

  “I keep him for a reason.” Dominic spoke to her as if to an equ
al, while treating her like a despised prisoner.

  Pebbles skittered down one of the towering slabs of rock, and a boy of about fifteen slid into their path. He was dirty and ragged, a scarf hung loose around his neck, but his eyes gleamed and his teeth shone sharply. “You got her.”

  And it wasn’t a boy, Evangeline realized, but a girl.

  “Did you ever doubt it?” Shorty asked.

  “No,” the girl said, but her worshipful gaze was fixed on Dominic.

  Dominic reached out and ruffled her short hair. “Good to see you, brat.”

  The girl beamed.

  “Now, pull up your kerchief.”

  “It itches.” But she obeyed, dragging the rough wool over her fine features. “Anyway, she’s not leaving here.”

  The tether must have jerked in Dominic’s hand, for he said, “You didn’t think we could let you go, Your Highness?”

  “I’m not the princess,” she said for the thousandth, millionth time.

  “Then no one will care when we slit your throat, will they?” he answered smoothly.

  She wished he would stop smiling. “This is the second time I’ve been kidnapped in two days.”

  “Then nothing should come as a surprise.” Passing her tether to Shorty, he strode forward to the men stepping out from a crevasse in the central cluster of boulders.

  They glanced at her, but their gazes returned worshipfully to Dominic. They slapped him on the shoulder, spoke in congratulatory tones, but for all their camaraderie it was clear he was the center of their universe. This man led their rebellion.

  Then he presented her with a wave and a sardonic bow, and they let loose a cacophony of catcalls and huzzahs. They strolled toward her, surrounding her like a pack of prowling wolves, pinched her cheeks, her breasts, her rump, and laughed uproariously as she tried to cover herself. Her helplessness reminded her of the orphanage, but not even there had the humiliation been so great. When she slapped at their hands, they slapped back, stinging her with their amusement and making her wish she. could flatten them all.

  But there were too many to fight, and if she tried, they would know she should be watched. She’d already made a mistake with Shorty; she dared not make another one.

  So she whimpered and whirled, trying to confront each one of the circle of faces that moment by moment grew more vicious.

  Then that clear, warm, generous voice said, “Enough.”

  The torment halted as suddenly as it had begun.

  “Bring her here.”

  Shorty jerked on her tether, breaking through the chafed skin on her wrists and gloating as if each drop of blood sizzled with his revenge. He shoved her forward to stand in front of Dominic.

  “Now you know.” Dominic looked at her, no longer smiling, his eyes blue and frozen as the glacier on the heights above. “Stay quiet and we’ll judge you and perhaps give you a quick death. Try to escape, and we’ll pluck your eyes out and leave you as carrion.

  “But . . . why?”

  “You dare ask that, between the harm the old king and your mother did? These people are my people. They have suffered, and they remember.” The last gleam of sunset draped the clouds in royal purple and crimson, and lit the cruel, sharp face above the scarf. “The sins of the father, my dear . . .”

  “I’m not the princess.”

  “You’re consistent, I’ll say that for you.” Dominic snapped his fingers, and his people rushed to surround him. He handed her tether to the fifteen-year-old. “Here, brat. Tie her to the post and keep an eye on her. She’s not as stupid as she looks.”

  Brat visibly drooped. “We’re not going to kill her now?”

  That hateful smile appeared on Dominic’s face again, and he mocked, “She’ll want to die with her prince.”

  The girl perked up. “Have we captured him, too?”

  “Captured His Royal Highness the Crown Prince Danior?” His head thrown back, Dominic laughed aloud. “That is surely beyond even our feeble capacity. No, we’ll let him come to us. Victor is the best tracker in the two kingdoms, and the non-princess left ample proof of her passing. Her shoe is torn and her foot is bleeding.”

  He knew. He knew how Evangeline had suffered, and he had been glad because it had furthered his cause.

  She had thought he looked like Danior. He didn’t look anything like Danior. Danior could never look so callous.

  “No one’s to touch her. No one’s to hurt her.” Dominic looked around at the men, but his contempt lashed at Evangeline. “She’s not worth our spit. I want every first-shift man watching for His Royal Greatness. You’re not to interfere with his progress. Every second-shift man should be resting, preparing for the capture and our tribunal. Remember, the prince is a fighter, too, trained by Napoleon just as we were. Now get to your positions. Tonight will win all.”

  Half the men scattered into the gathering darkness. Dominic, Shorty, and the bodyguards led the other half through the stone-lined crevice. The girl followed them, and of necessity, Evangeline followed her.

  The narrow, crooked path led them around through the stones and into an open space against the cliff. A low fire burned in the middle of a rough circle formed by more stones, some stuck straight up, taller than Dominic’s head. Some were scattered and toppled to lay flat and spread with blankets. A corner was formed where a particularly tall crag shouldered up against the cliff. A pole stuck out of the ground, and Brat led her there.

  Impassively, she tied Evangeline’s hands close to the pole and left her. With a low groan, Evangeline sank to the ground. Just sitting was the greatest pleasure she’d ever experienced. She lifted her foot and squinted at her sole, but it was too dark to see more than the dark blot where the blood had oozed out. Not that it mattered. A shudder shook her as pain, chill, and dread jerked at her tightly strung nerves.

  Unless she did something, something dramatic, she was going to die.

  She didn’t want to die cold, thirsty, and hungry, and most especially not if it made that heartless bastard happy. And for the first time since she’d been forced to flee the burning château, she wasn’t addressing her wrath toward Danior.

  “Build up the fire. Give the royal party an easy target.” Dominic roamed the encampment, blending with the darkness yet drawing the eye with his dynamic energy. He spoke to his men, laid a carelessly kind hand on Brat’s head. Everyone smiled as he walked past; they adored him, but Evangeline leaned against the pole and hated him with her gaze. Inevitably, he noticed. His eyes crinkled in that offensive smile, and he strolled over and sketched a humble bow. “Are our headquarters all you could wish?”

  She ought to be polite. She ought to debase herself in hopes of mercy. But she didn’t believe he had any, so she snapped, “Your headquarters are fine. Your hospitality suffers.”

  He placed his hand over his heart. “You have crushed me to the bone. What do you desire, Your Highness? A truffle, perhaps? Marzipan? A carafe of fine wine?”

  “Water.” Her tongue felt swollen in her mouth. “I’d like a drink of water.”

  He dropped his toady’s mask. “Why should we bother?”

  “It won’t advance your cause if I die miserable.”

  His eyebrows twitched together, and he examined her as if something didn’t add up. “You’re no fragile flower.” He tapped his leg with his fingers. “All right. You can have your water.”

  As he turned away, she said, “And bread. And stew.”

  He looked back. “Greedy.”

  “Hungry.”

  And cold. She watched as he spoke to one of the bodyguards. He didn’t get an argument, but the rebel did no more than walk close and toss her his boda bag. Her numb fingers fumbled and dropped it. Shorty lounged by the fire, and he laughed as she snatched it up and poured the thin stream of water down her throat.

  She didn’t really expect food, too, but when she looked up, Brat stood offering her a steaming bowl.

  “There’s no spoon, Your Highness.” Brat gave the title the same sneering inton
ation as her leader had.

  A chunk of bread floated atop the broth, and as Evangeline grabbed the wooden bowl she said, “I’ll use the bread.”

  Brat looked startled, but Evangeline knew how to make do. Those worthy people who endowed English orphanages seldom saw the need to coddle the children with unnecessary implements.

  The warmth of the earthenware bowl seeped into her frozen hands, and she whispered, “I would use the palm of my hand if I had to.”

  Tearing off a chunk of bread, she dragged it through the stew and brought up something brown and something white, and greedily consumed them. Rabbit and turnip, slightly scorched, totally unflavored, boiled in water. She had read much fancier recipes in Mrs. Buxton’s personal collection of Cornish recipes in East Little Teignmouth, but Evangeline didn’t really care. The plump Mrs. Buxton had never had occasion to realize how hunger added spice to a stew. Right now, Evangeline would have eaten anything.

  The food put new heart in her, and she scanned the camp again. A good number of the men had bedded down, although they weren’t asleep. They spoke in low tones to each other, the habit of furtiveness well established.

  The fire burned too far away for her to reach, and she desperately needed to get closer. That Dominic had granted her wish for food and drink boded well for her. If she could get him to bestow a last wish for a doomed woman, perhaps she wouldn’t be doomed after all.

  Or perhaps she would; she planned a desperate endeavor about which she had no practical experience.

  The decision came too soon. Before she had finished half the stew, she heard a bird call and saw every person in the rough enclosure pause. Dominic smiled that cruel smile and started toward the stones. “They have him.”

  “Wait!” Evangeline called. “Before you go—can I get closer to the fire?”

  Turning, he placed his fists on his hips. “Untie you? You’ll run.”

  “How can I? Your men are here.” She gestured around her. “You said yourself I’m not as stupid as I look.”

  Shorty stood and took a step toward her. “Let her freeze. It’ll be warm enough where she’s going.”