The Runaway Princess

  He was almost glad. At least he knew she wouldn’t run off again.

  “Will we see Jean Falls soon?” she whispered.

  Her breath feathered his hair and slipped across his face, warm and spicy, reminding him of the kisses they had shared—and the kisses yet to come. “We won’t see it at all. I came this way because—”

  “Please. To come so close and not see it!” She sounded as disappointed as a child deprived of a treat.

  He shouldn’t humor her, he told himself. The spongy ground underneath his feet received their footsteps and sprang back up. He had planned this route for just that reason, for in the daylight, there would be no trace of their passing.

  “Danior, please.”

  For a woman who had displayed so little in the way of feminine wiles two nights ago, she displayed a remarkable aptitude for manipulating him. And with peculiar insight, he realized he held a remarkable susceptibility to her manipulation.

  With a gesture to his men to stay, he moved slowly and with deliberate caution toward the creek formed from the waterfall. He scanned the open area alongside it, but nothing moved, and so he stepped out of the shadows and into the pale luminescence of moonlight.

  He felt her intake of breath. She pushed away from him, and he let her down. She stood leaning against him, her face lifted toward heaven, her lips slightly parted and moist as mist fogged the air.

  Above and beyond them stretched the limestone cliff, polished and scoured, channeled with gullies that plunged down its face. Within each gully a waterfall slipped like a liquid chain of silver music. From the highest point above them dropped the greatest cascade of all. The water dropped without interruption from the highest point, constantly flowing, flying, singing tribute to the moon. At last the water crashed and splintered across the rocks in an eternal crescendo.

  Danior had seen the cliff and the falls before. He’d prowled these mountains, learned to use the noises and disguises of nature. But engrossed in the business of staying alive and driving the enemy from his lands, he had failed to take the time to note the beauty. Only now, looking at the elation on Evangeline’s upturned face, did he become aware of the wonder his childhood had never allowed.

  And that made him weary and too well aware of the distance he’d traveled and the innocence he’d lost.

  Now, at last, he permitted himself to think what the rebels might have done to his princess. Had they beaten her? Raped her? She’d been pure before; had they used her in the basest way they knew? He would kill them if they had.

  He looked at her again, and this time he saw the smudges on her forehead, the dirt on her cheeks. Her hair stood up in wild profusion all around her face except in one spot; there it seemed to have been slashed close to the scalp. He touched the ends; they crinkled beneath his fingers, and he smelled the faint scent of burning.

  He remembered now. The cinder had done this damage.

  With his thumb, he tried to wipe the darkest smudge off her cheek. She flinched away from him.

  A bruise. She’d been hit by something—or someone.

  Fury twisted along his veins like liquid fire. He would make Dominic sorry for this. He would make him pay.

  Taking care not to frighten Evangeline with his outrage, he touched her cheek again, soothing away the hurt, and with a slight wince, she let him. “Evangeline, we can’t stand out here anymore,” he whispered, and grasped her wrists to move her.

  She gave a gasp of pain and fell against him. “Don’t!” When he let go, she whispered, “They tied my wrists. The rope . . .”

  He felt the stickiness of blood beneath his fingers, and looked at the wounds. Blood circled each wrist, dried and blackened in the moonlight.

  He would kill Dominic. He would rip his arms out. The bastard. The pitiless bastard.

  He had thought her brave and worthy to be his bride. Now a voice in his head mocked, She is quite worthy, indeed.

  Cradling her hands in his, he asked in a tender voice, “What else did those—what else did the rebels do to you?”

  “Not too much.” She drew a shuddering breath. “Dominic wouldn’t let them.”

  “Noble of him.” Danior would still kill him.

  “Just a slap or two, and everyone got a chance to pinch at me.” Her hand went to her throat. “I didn’t like it, but I wasn’t . . . they didn’t . . . nothing happened.”

  An ignoble, niggling bit of tension inside him eased. She said she hadn’t been raped. He didn’t have to worry about his Baminian honor, or the fact that his firstborn might not be his.

  “Danior?” She looked into his face, and not even the moonlight could hide the exhaustion that dragged her down. “Do you believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you,” he said gruffly, disgusted that he’d not thought to reassure her. “Princesses do not lie.”

  Although she did. She had lied from the first moment she’d seen him at Château Fortuné. She had lied about her past, her background, her very self. Yet he believed her about this. “Neither do I,” she answered, sticking to her tale of mistaken identity with a persistence he might have admired in another. That she convinced him she always told the truth must make her a liar of the highest order.

  Turning his back he squatted before her, and she slid her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as if they’d been traveling in such a manner for years. Standing, he shifted her on his back, his hands sliding along her thighs to better support her.

  She adjusted herself, trying to help him, unselfconscious about touching him, and he realized a deeper relief. She would not face their wedding night with loathing. Indeed, she liked him well enough that he could overcome any resistance she had to mating with him.

  Keeping to the moss, he strode back into the forest. Rafaello and Victor stepped in behind him, and they made their way down the hill, keeping a parallel course to the creekbed. As the song of the waterfall faded, his thoughts turned more and more to his predicament.

  She aroused him. She always aroused him. He hadn’t expected that from a political marriage; he had sworn he would be faithful to his princess, regardless of any indifference to her face and form. Now he found himself wanting to lay her down on a bed of pine boughs and make love until the lies and pretenses and protocol between them had been burned away, leaving only two bodies, two people entwined.

  Her chin jolted on his shoulder, and she whimpered.

  She was exhausted. He knew it, yet as the first sharp edge of jeopardy faded, here he was, erection straining at his buttons in some asinine, callous denial of the danger they all faced. His mind coldly weighed their peril; his body complained in blithe unconcern.

  His stomach clenched. If he weren’t careful, he would turn into his father.

  But no. Danior had sworn he would never be such a libertine, and for that reason he eternally maintained a watch over himself.

  Yet if he didn’t distract himself, and soon, all his restraint would be for naught. He would send Victor and Rafaello away and pounce on Evangeline. On poor, exhausted, bruised Evangeline.

  Turning his head, he spoke to his men. “Damned rebels. When they jumped on me from the trees, they almost ripped my arms from my sockets.”

  “They cracked my head half open,” Victor added enthusiastically. “And I suspect I shall bleed on and off all night.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Rafaello joined in. “They slammed me against a rock. I think they broke my ribs.”

  Danior relaxed a little of his tension. This kind of talk he understood; a comparison of wounds, a bit of boasting about who had sustained the most damage. “All in all I think they were saving us for later, like spiders who have caught too many flies.”

  Evangeline sucked in a breath. “I don’t feel well,” she choked, and her hands fell away from Danior’s neck.

  Eighteen

  Evangeline never actually lost consciousness. She heard Danior’s cry, and felt hands, Victor’s or Rafaello’s, grab her as she fell. They laid her out on the ground on a c
loak, and the chill woke her completely. “I’m well,” she said.

  Danior paid no attention. “She’s not well.”

  “She’s a lady,” Rafaello said. “She’s too delicate for this grueling trek.”

  Victor snorted. “She claims she’s not a lady.”

  She tried to sit up, but nausea lapped at her, and she sank back. “I just couldn’t listen to that gruesome report.”

  “We were trying to distract you,” Danior said in obvious irritation.

  Turning her head away, she groaned.

  His hands reached for her, touched her with remarkable gentleness, skimmed over her throat, her shoulders, down her arms. “You are hurt.”

  She didn’t care how impersonally he was handling her, she wasn’t about to let him run his fingers over her torso and points in between. “It’s my foot!”

  The hands stopped. “Of course.” Standing, he stepped away, and spoke to the bodyguards in a low tone.

  She lay on her back and looked up at the sky, trying to imagine a gown of such smooth velvet accented by a handful of twinkling silver spangles. She couldn’t. She shivered weakly, her teeth clinking together.

  Ever vigilant, Danior twitched the edge of the cloak over her. She fingered it. Rough wool, the scent of wood smoke and tobacco—it must have come from the camp. Rafaello or Victor had filched it.

  An argument ensued, and she heard, “A cut foot!” uttered with great indignation. And, “Dominic will be watching there.”

  Wrapping her hands around her arms, she wished desperately to be back in England with its scuttling clouds and constant fogs. She wasn’t some delicate lady, but neither was she a hardened veteran of war. Her swoon humiliated her, yet she was bruised from rough hands, her wrists burned from the rope, and her foot throbbed with such intensity that she feared a killing infection.

  When she’d lived in East Little Teignmouth, she’d read the tales penned by Thomas Aquinas of religious martyrs who died for their honor or their savior, and she’d imagined how she would embrace the stake and ignore the tortures.

  Now she knew she wasn’t brave. For relief from her pain, she would confess any sin, betray any secret. She had lived a small life, and a small life was all she could handle. She was a coward.

  “Evangeline.” Kneeling beside her, Danior opened the sack and rummaged among the contents. “I’m taking you to a village nearby.”

  But while she might comprehend she was a coward, she felt a remarkable aversion to letting Danior know. “I thought we had to go to Plaisance.”

  “We will. Open your mouth.”

  “What?”

  He popped a piece of hardtack between her lips.

  She should have been indignant to be fed so offhandedly, but the crunchy biscuit settled her stomach. Sitting up on one elbow, she chewed slowly and swallowed.

  “Better?” Danior’s voice was a rumble above her head as he tucked the cloak tightly around her, hoisted her up, and held her against his chest. “Rafaello and Victor will first lead our pursuers astray. Meanwhile, we’ll get to Chute, and there bind your foot.”

  Her arms wrapped around his neck. “But the border . . .”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll make it.”

  Rafaello moved in very close, and spoke with such elegant diction that she could almost see a prince’s robin’s egg blue cloak. “You mustn’t fret about your wounds, Your Highness. The master has the royal touch.”

  “Enough, Rafaello,” Danior interposed pleasantly enough, but beneath his voice flowed an undercurrent of molten steel. He shrugged the shoulder with the bag slung over it. “I put more faith in the supplies the sisters gave us.”

  “Of course, master,” Rafaello said.

  “We’ll meet three days hence in Plaisance.” Danior spoke quite pleasantly, but it was clearly an order. “Go with God.”

  “And you, master.” Rafaello melted into the forest’s shadows.

  Victor was different, of course. Nothing elegant about him. Instead he ruffled Evangeline’s hair and in a voice that grated like fingernails on a slate, he ordered, “Watch out for him. If anything happens, I’m holding you responsible.”

  The man never wavered from his mistrust, and* Evangeline discovered she took an odd comfort in his consistency. “You would.”

  “I would,” he confirmed. Then he, too, faded into the darkness, leaving her alone with the prince.

  Immobile, Danior strained to listen to the night sounds of the forest. The creak of the treetops in the wind, the scuttle of small creatures in the underbrush, but from the bodyguards, no sound as each man made his way into the lonely depths of the forest. They were assigned to protect their royalty, and from what Evangeline had seen, they did so ungrudgingly.

  Yet it gave her an odd sensation to know another human would offer his life for hers, especially when she’d so recently faced her own cravenness.

  “Danior, I’m really—”

  “Sh.” He stood still another minute, then, carrying her in his arms, he started toward the west. They came to the creek, and as he sought a crossing clear of trees, Evangeline thought he lingered in the moonlight.

  “Someone will see us,” she murmured.

  “Yes,” he said. “Be quiet.”

  They slipped into the forest on the other side, and he walked confidently west until they ran into a well-traveled path: The character of the timberland changed. The spicy pine gave way to the drier scent of cork oak.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “Sh,” he said again.

  He seemed driven, moving quickly, paying little attention to their surroundings. His carelessness struck an odd note with her; she’d grown used to having him constantly scouting for peril.

  They crested the ridge, and she looked down on a village nestled in a mountain valley.

  “Chute?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes.” He paused again in the open, then walked down the hill. “Be silent now,” he instructed. “Say nothing.”

  Mystified, she nodded.

  The path curved. He walked straight—into the trees.

  She wanted to speak, to question him, but she knew he must be up to something. He sat her on a flat stone and stealthily crept back to the path. He squatted there, watching.

  She could see his silhouette against the moonlight on the path, and she marveled at his immobility. The cloak didn’t mitigate the chill or the unyielding quality of the rock. The eerie atmosphere made her restless, and she ached all over.

  At last he came back to her. Without a word he knelt before her. She put her arms around his neck, and he lifted her again. She almost groaned from the pain in her aching biceps and abused joints. But he didn’t complain. So neither would she.

  Now again he set a pace like the one she was used to; watchful, covert, almost inaudible, yet smooth and swift. They were ascending again, for the wind carried the pine scent, and her perception of wildness increased. They were leaving civilization behind, and she and Danior were the only humans awake in this world of untamed creatures and primitive trees. She thought she saw glowing eyes peering at them from the brush, but she clung to Danior, amazed by her confidence that he would keep her safe.

  Then she woke with a start to find him settling her into a mound of pine boughs and tossing the cloak over her. “Stay put,” he murmured and disappeared into the darkness.

  Cold and alone, she blinked painfully at the stars shining down through the branches, and she wondered if she was truly awake even yet. She could hear the burbling of water, smell a faint odor of sulfur. Mist floated past in endless wisps like London fog that had lost its way. There wasn’t a waterfall, so where . . . ?

  Lifting her head, she looked around. She lay on the edge of a clearing caused by a pool that arose from seemingly nowhere. Ferns draped the shoreline, steam rose from it, and as she watched, bubbles rose to the surface.

  She sat up. A hot spring. Danior had brought her to a hot spring. She’d read of such things—she’d read of almost everyth
ing—but she’d never seen one.

  She’d never bathed in one.

  The thought gave birth to action. Huddled under the rough cloak, she stripped off her wretchedly inadequate evening slippers and her stockings. She slipped the elegant rag of a gown off her head. She untied her petticoats and wiggled out of them, and plucked at the fine linen chemise that covered her from shoulders to knees.

  But no. She would retain the chemise.

  Chill nipped her as she discarded the cloak across a bush. Holding onto a trunk, she stood painfully, and limped to the pebbly shore. The ground beneath her feet was pleasantly warm, for the heat of the earth huddled close to the surface, undeterred by the frigid night air. Traveling with Danior was like living the life of Marco Polo. She discovered one thing after another.

  She stuck the toe of her injured foot in the water. “Hot!” She jumped back a little, then inched her toe in again, then all her toes. It was hot, beautifully hot, just like the luxurious bath she’d taken at Château Fortuné with servants carrying steaming buckets and a fine bar of milled French soap to wash with.

  So what if she didn’t have the soap?

  Shivering, holding her breath, she inserted her whole foot. The laceration stung like a thousand bee stings. Every sinew clenched, and tears flooded her eyes. Gradually, the sensation eased. She inhaled the steam off the pool, and edged deeper. Her other foot, her ankles, her aching calves . . . her eyes closed, and she allowed the warmth to work its magic on her sore muscles.

  She had died and gone to heaven.

  She giggled when she realized how far she had fallen, that she considered a private moment in a pebble-bottomed mountain hot spring a celestial treat.

  The pool was wide, with a weak current that flowed toward an outlet hidden in the shadows, yet when she reached the middle, she found it only as deep as her knees. Substantial stones jutted from its depths here and there, and she placed her palm on one of them and languidly lowered herself into the water.