The Runaway Princess

  “I never agreed to a wedding day, much less a wedding night.”

  “It’s not necessary for a princess to agree. She knows her duty.” The smile was gone, the sword of resolution unsheathed. “Now if these sisters will leave us, I would wash your dainty feet.”

  Her dainty feet were as gigantic as the rest of her, and she hated him for the mockery as well as for this relentless, ongoing single-mindedness.

  The nuns scurried from the room. With the sign of blessing and a quick dip into a curtsy, Soeur Constanza pulled the door shut, leaving an echoing silence behind her.

  Evangeline broke the silence, of course, broke it as quickly as she could. “I never expected them to leave us alone.”

  “Nor I.” Danior managed to instill a fair amount of consternation in his tone as he dug through the piles of crockery. “Soeur Constanza has no romance if she thinks I would take you for the first time in a storage chamber.”

  The world tilted on its axis again, and Evangeline grabbed the edge of the table. Why did he have to say things like that, so casually, as if their alliance was assured? As if it had been foretold and was inevitable? “I’m not the princess,” she whispered.

  He stepped close to her, holding a cracked basin in one hand. “If I thought that were true”—he skimmed his thumb across her lower lip—“still would not let you go.”

  Alarmed at the spark in his eyes, she moved backward and knocked the stool across the floor. The clatter embarrassed her.

  He didn’t notice. “Evangeline.” He followed her, his voice was warm, savory, like plum pudding at Christmas. “You want to kiss me.”

  “I do not!” She did, too. During the night’s long journey, she’d panicked about the danger, she’d moaned about her feet, she’d wished for more food, she’d wanted to wring Danior’s neck, yet always, always the memory of his kiss had flavored her every thought. “Kissing you is the last thing I ought to do.” She blinked. “Want to do.”

  One side of his mouth kicked up; half a grin, half amused at her denial. The other half . . . ah, that line of determination. He wanted her. That’s what that expression meant.

  And he thought he had every right to. He saw no reason for restraint.

  His cobalt eyes blazed with the kind of fire she could warm herself by, if she dared. “I’m not the prin—”

  He lifted the basin. She stumbled back one more step. The edge of the table struck her against the thighs. He reached past her and placed the basin on the table, and in one smooth transition wrapped his arms around her waist and swung her around.

  Now their positions were reversed. He rested against the table, trapped by the length of her body resting against his. Only she didn’t make the mistake of imagining he felt trapped. Quite the opposite. With his legs spread and his bottom resting on the tabletop, he had evened the difference in their heights. He’d tipped her off-balance, sprawled against him, breast to chest.

  He’d managed to match their loins together in a most explicit manner.

  He had no discretion at all. Of course, a man in his obvious state of arousal could not be discreet. But he could, perhaps, be a little more subtle.

  She tried to get footing, scrabbled to move her hips away. He leaned back, slid one hand down to her flank and pressed her even more firmly against him. The other hand moved up under the fall of hair on her neck. He tugged gently, turning her fevered face up to his.

  “Don’t be embarrassed.”

  God knew he wasn’t.

  He went on, “I’ve been in this condition since I saw you enter that dining room at Château Fortuné. All heads turned to look at you, and you ignored them so disdainfully, just like the princess you deny you are.”

  Chills skimmed along the surface of her skin, racing from nerve to nerve and igniting response where she should be indifferent. “I was acting.” Her hands curled against his shoulders; she tried to get her elbows beneath her to lever herself away.

  He moved his hand around to the front of her neck, lifting her chin, examining her pulse, checking her flight. Reminding her he knew how to block any move she might make. “You act like a princess.”

  She’d seen him in candlelight, in moonlight, in darkness. Now she saw him in daylight, and the play of sun and shadow brought definition to his face, sculpting the craggy nose, the jutting brow, the dark growth of beard on his square jaw. Not handsome. Oh, no. Not princely or graceful, but an earthy man who desired her and saw no reason to dissemble.

  “Evangeline.” He whispered her name, holding her still as he brought his head forward. “Evangeline.”

  Her eyes widened, transfixed by the half-smile that lingered on his wide mouth.

  And when he laid his lips against hers, she found that her faint, slack-jawed surprise allowed him to share her breath. Her eyes slid shut, weighed by tiredness, by resignation . . . by wonder.

  Slowly, as if he were testing her, his tongue entered her mouth. The intimacy still shocked her, yet she liked the sample of him, rich with the mingled flavors of comforting barley and sweet apples.

  She relaxed against him.

  “Content to let me lead?” he asked against her mouth.

  “Just this once.” The brush of their lips resonated along unexplored nerve endings.

  He clamped her closer, holding her in place. “I’ll guide you true, Evangeline.” Smoothing the hair away from her ear, he pressed her head onto his shoulder. “Comfortable?” He didn’t wait for the answer. His lips persuaded hers again, opening her wider, relieving any lingering qualms with pleasure conscientiously applied.

  And she liked it. She truly did. But it seemed very circumscribed, ardor that followed a formula. First, a press of the lips. Then a dab of tongue. Then a little more tongue. Then his broad hand sweeping down her neck to her breast . . .

  She took a hard breath as he cupped her. Her eyes opened, and she looked into—his eyes.

  They weren’t closed. He watched each one of her fleeting joys with the satisfaction of a man who knew he’d performed well.

  Oh, he did want her, she knew. His body didn’t lie. But he wasn’t driven by passion. He had himself under stern control, a prince seducing his princess into submission.

  The ass.

  The slab of body beneath her flinched, and he jerked his head back from hers. “Evangeline, your claws. You’re digging into me.”

  “So I am.” One by one, she removed her fingernails from the flesh above his collarbones. Then, driven by instincts newborn and squalling to be utilized, she tugged his shirt open and reached beneath it, to the abused skin, and massaged each wound with the flat of her hand. “I was overcome.” She spread his shirt wider still, baring a ruffle of dark hair across the breastbone. She paused, fascinated and surprised, then pushed on to her goal. She’d marked his skin with five little crescents, and with an incoherent murmur of contrition, she laid her mouth on them in a leisurely kiss compounded in equal parts of moisture, breath, and reprisal.

  Every muscle in his body went rigid, and from the corners of her eyes she checked his expression. His blue eyes flamed, his nostrils flared, his lips parted across teeth clenched against a surge of emotion. Then his hips lifted beneath her, and she knew that emotion to be passion.

  This time, he wasn’t in control.

  Twelve

  With both hands holding Evangeline’s bottom, Danior lifted her, spread her legs around his hips, and sealed them together.

  She’d overwhelmed his restraint, all right. She’d overwhelmed it too well.

  Her skirt remained between them only because her weight rested on it. Her feet lay on the table, her hands clutched his shoulders. The position utterly lacked dignity, and she didn’t care. All she cared about was the sudden hard pressure of him between her legs. She hadn’t known she wanted him there. She did. His hands moved along her buttocks, pressing them together, and she rocked against him, igniting the same flame in her that scorched him.

  Rational thought burned in the conflagration, leaving E
vangeline at the mercy of this sweet agony. Heat rolled through her in waves, linked to the thrust of his hips, the taut glitter of his gaze, the strength she experienced beneath her hands. This was like riding a wild horse; she didn’t know how to handle him, she didn’t know what he would do next, but each buck and lunge carried her further along some unexplored path, and she wanted the journey to go on forever. Yet she sensed it couldn’t, that somewhere there existed an ending that could satisfy her.

  “Please, Your Highness, please . . .”

  And as if the words brought him back to sanity, he stopped. She could almost see him reining in the passion, and she wanted to pound on him and shout, No!

  But she didn’t. She’d just discovered a well of passion in herself she hadn’t suspected; the established wariness of a lifetime didn’t allow her to exhibit any more of her emotions. Not until she understood them and where they would lead her. And then—maybe never.

  “Why do you call me that?” he asked. His voice had a rasp to it, as if he’d run too far or fought too hard.

  Tentatively she brought her legs around to the front of him. “Call you what?”

  “Your Highness.” He allowed her to slide down him.

  It was an excursion fraught with peril, with the friction of two bodies already overheated with a mixture of passion and frustration. She didn’t dare stop; she scarcely dared go on. She clung to the conversation, inane and aimless as it was, using it as a distraction. “You are a highness. Aren’t you?”

  “Not to you.” Her toes touched the ground, yet he held her for one last moment. “To you, I am Danior.”

  Yes, he was. In her mind, he was. Not a prince, not a highness. Just Danior, a man she knew too well on too short an acquaintance. When she thought about how well, she couldn’t meet his gaze, couldn’t contain the blush that covered her whole body.

  “Do you want me to let you go?” he asked.

  Now she looked at him. “Yes!”

  “Then, like you, I will demand that you call me by my name.”

  When your enemy is backed into a corner, that is the time to negotiate. Apparently, he had read the same sixteenth-century Italian mediator as she had.

  Well, of course. He was a prince, and princes had to know the fine art of parlay.

  “Danior,” he prompted.

  She couldn’t ignore the hands that still held her against him, or the fact that his arousal had not subsided. One had to know when to admit defeat. “Danior.”

  Without gloating—he showed more control than she did—he helped her stand on her own. She stood swaying, her knees shaking, but he kept her close with his hands on her elbows. “Look at me,” he said.

  She didn’t want to. To meet his eyes would be distressing and somehow dangerous.

  “Afraid?” he asked.

  Her gaze snapped to his. “Of you? No.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to fear me.”

  His chin was set, his mouth was straight, his eyebrows knit over his serious eyes. If she were given to alarm, his expression would have sent her scurrying.

  “I want you to realize how it will be between us. This marriage will not be polite and bloodless like most royal marriages. Like the marriages of both our parents. You and I have a fire between us, and what we’ll do will be heated and sweaty and beyond our control.” He corrected himself. “Beyond your control.”

  She didn’t care for that. “What about your control?”

  He smiled, a brief, restrained curve of the lips, and straightened. “I assure you, you wouldn’t like it if I lost control.”

  “You just did!” He had. She knew he had.

  “If I had totally lost control, my dear, you would be flat on your back with your legs in the air.”

  The crudity was somehow more menacing for his lack of inflection, but he calmly picked her up and moved to the bed. He sat her down, and her heart gave a thud. Was he going to join her after all? It would be adventure, just as she wanted, but she now knew the danger was too great. A beast lurked within him, cloaked by a thin layer of civilization. He even admitted it.

  And something lurked within her, too. A wanton? A madwoman? A woman so driven by loneliness that she responded to the first man who touched her?

  She pulled her legs up to her chest, shut her eyes, and wished she were back in East Little Teignmouth, ruining her vision as she pored over an ancient, blotted manuscript in safe solitude.

  Instead she heard a splash of water, and looked to see Danior filling the cracked basin from the bucket. He came back to her, sure, silent, almost kind, and set the basin on the floor. Sticking out his hand, he said, “Give me your foot.”

  She stared at him, then at his empty palm, without comprehension.

  “Your foot, Evangeline.”

  She didn’t understand him. Not at all.

  Grasping her ankles, he straightened her legs to dangle off the edge of the mattress. As efficiently as a nursemaid, he reached to her knee, untied her garters, and stripped her hose away. If this was seduction, he didn’t know how to go about it, she decided.

  Dipping her foot in the water, he used a rag from the ragbag to wash the calluses and leathery soles that should have proved she was not a princess but a woman who walked where she had to. He didn’t seem to see that, but shook his head over the bruises. “We’ll have you boots before we start again, I promise, and some thick socks to protect this delicate skin.”

  Her toes curled as he stroked across her sensitive arch, and she took back her condemnation of his seductive abilities. This service could prove beguiling if she let it. “Why are you doing this?”

  Placing her foot in his lap, he dried it and reached for the other. “Washing your feet?”

  “Washing my feet, giving me food, carrying me on your back. Why should you be so kind to someone you think is a runaway princess?”

  She thought he wasn’t going to answer, he paused so long.

  But when he did, she wished she hadn’t asked.

  “Because I want you dependent on me for everything—the air you breathe, the food you eat, the water you drink.” His voice hummed with intensity, his dark brows drew together, and his eyes lured her to believe. “When you marry me, I will give you everything.”

  “I can’t marry you. I’m not the princess.” But her voice faltered.

  “Your Royal Highness, it’s time to drop this facade of independence and remember who will be your strength for the years to come.”

  She swallowed, her independence threatened, not by him but by her own weakness. God help her, she had lost everything—her money, her clothing, her home. She didn’t know what she was going to do now, and this man was offering her an easy solution. Go and be the princess, no one will ever know, and she would have someone else to depend on besides herself.

  Danior must have been watching her, and seen too clearly the longing etched on her face. “That’s it,” he murmured. “Give in. It’ll be easy, you’ll see.”

  “Easy until the real princess shows up.” Evangeline offered her up like an offering on a silver salver. “Sooner or later you need to find out where she is.”

  “I have her.” He touched the middle of her forehead with the flat of his thumb, and she felt too clearly the calluses caused by experience and hard work. “I’ll addict you to the taste of me, to my scent and touch. When I’m done with you, you’ll be bound to me by the strongest fetter in my forge.”

  She suspected she didn’t want to know, but she had to ask. “What is that?”

  “Passion.” Still on his knees, he leaned over her and brushed a final, intimate kiss on her lips. “You’ll depend on me for passion.”

  Thirteen

  You’ll depend on me for everything, Evangeline. You’ll depend on me for passion.

  Evangeline woke to find herself clutching the pillow between her legs. But a sack of feathers was no substitute for Danior, and she was no substitute for his princess.

  Angry, aroused and dismayed, she sat up on the cot. Th
is had never happened before. Never. Nobody else’s kisses—not that there had been many—but none of them had excited her enough to weasel their way into her dreams. She’d read about amour. Mrs. Ann Radcliffe wrote novels of terror and mystery, and the youthful Evangeline had been addicted to them. A Sicilian Romance had thrilled her to her curling toes and The Mysteries of Udolpho made her swoon with adolescent delight.

  But this . . . this was something else. Obsession or passion or . . . Danior’s fault. Yes, this was all Danior’s fault! And if she didn’t get away from him there would be dire consequences.

  Like she’d give in and go to his bed, and he’d find out she wasn’t the princess and abandon her. Or worse, he wouldn’t realize she wasn’t the princess until it was too late, and all chance of uniting Serephina and Baminia would perish.

  The fate of two countries rested on her ability to get herself out of this convent and far out of Danior’s reach. Perhaps then when he searched, he would find the real princess.

  And Evangeline knew how to escape. She closed her eyes to shut out the sight she wished to ignore.

  A coil of rope. The iron ring from the key. A likely sized window, unencumbered by locks, protected by the sheer drop below it. And her own endurance and knowledge.

  She was no fair flower of the nobility to be protected and cherished. She was an orphan child, and on her knees she felt the calluses she’d earned through years of scrubbing orphanage floors. Her hands were the same, callused beneath each finger. She owned many fine pairs of gloves—or had, until that blast in her room, and she could blame Danior for that, too—and she liked them for more than the genteel air they gave her. They also hid the proof of her common upbringing.

  And her knowledge—all of it lurked there in the periphery of her mind.

  She knew how to descend the cliff on that rope. The native Swiss did it to rescue those who strayed too far from the beaten path and fell, mostly goats, although there were a few humans—those mad Englishmen who traveled the country on their Grand Tour. Evangeline knew this because Leona corresponded with one of the Swiss mountaineers.