Lakota Princess (16 page)

“But I can’t tell you that. I—”

“Cannot? Or will not?”

Estrela sighed. “Black Bear,” she said as she gave him an odd look. “I feel a little funny.”

That set him to gazing at her. His glance scanned over her, from the top of her head to the high black boots she wore.

“You
are fine,” he said. “I see no wounds.” Estrela nodded, but repeated again, “I still feel a bit odd.”

He strode toward the horse then. “Here,” he said, reaching up toward her. “I will help you from this horse.”

But it was too late. All he heard was a muted sigh before she slid off the horse, not because of his command, but rather because… Black Bear looked down at her. She had fainted.

He took a deep breath, unaware that in his glance, all his emotions toward her; his love, his admiration, his devotion, his anger shone readily there for anyone to witness.

They made an odd picture, the Indian and his woman, one, tall, bronzed warrior standing practically naked, holding the petite, blond Englishwoman in his arms. They were bound, these two and he clasped her to him amid the backdrop of golden, falling leaves, and the dark bark of trees. Her long, blond curls fanned back against him in the slight breeze, entwining with his own darker hair until one noticed that the blond and black strands blended together, forming a new color that shone as naturally and as grandly as the golden surrounds of trees, leaves, and grasses.

Had anyone observed them at that moment, he would have witnessed a powerful and compelling vision; for the two young people, together, united, became a part of and yet were more than the grandiose and expansive beauty exploding all around them that was Green Park, that was England.

And Black Bear, holding her, gazing down at her, suddenly realized that he would not run away from her. He could not. Not now. Not ever.

He loved her that much.

It was a startling and sobering awareness for him.

And Black Bear, completely honest with himself, despaired.

Chapter Nine

King William and his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Kent, Princess Victoria’s mother, had little love for one another. Truth be told, only a few short days before, at the King’s birthday party, King William had risen, in response to a toast and had wreaked vengeance upon the Duchess in a most horrible and public denouncement.

He had decried her, stating she had caused him great embarrassment; saying she was keeping the Princess, Victoria, from him; denouncing the Duchess as unfit to raise the Princess; calling the Duchess incompetent; and moreover, accusing the Duchess of listening to ill-conceived counsel, stating she was surrounded by evil advisers.

Evil advisers indeed!

The dark, shadowy figure of a man smirked, raising his glass in a mock toast to the dying embers of the fire, whose smoke billowed upward toward the small chamber’s chimney.

Evil advisers!

Why
he
was probably the only one in all of England who had the foresight to advise the country’s affairs correctly.

King indeed!

Hadn’t that one’s father lost the American continent? Weren’t King William’s British forces, even now, struggling with her other colonies? Wasn’t England threatened with the loss of her powers if someone didn’t act? And act now?

Ah, the Duchess of Kent. What was he to do with her? If she didn’t handle her daughter prudently, if she continued to mock the King within his own territory, Her Grace stood every chance of losing her daughter’s favor. And if she lost her daughter’s trust, so would end her political influence over the child, so would end his.

He
at least had noticed the Baroness Lehzen, young Victoria’s governess, spreading her influence over the unwilling Princess, that Baroness taking up a camp in direct opposition to her Grace’s own policies. And why had the Duchess dismissed Madame de Spath, the Baroness’s ally? Because Madame had discovered the liaison between himself and the Duchess and had dared to speak of it?

He sighed. Such matters were trivial to him. Didn’t Her Grace realize how attached the Princess had become to Madame de Spath? Didn’t she understand that Victoria would only see her mother’s actions as cruel? That the young Princess would ultimately condemn her own mother?

Evil advisers.

The King’s statement could only apply to one man, Sir John Conroy, that pompous Irishman. It was he who had ill-advised her Grace, disaffecting the woman toward the King, accumulating His Majesty’s wrath by encouraging her to flaunt herself in front of the English populous as though she, herself, were monarch, not the King.

Drawing a deep breath the dark, shadowy figure nodded. He knew he should be more lenient with the woman, but it was becoming difficult to do so. He tried to calm himself, tried to tell himself that he could not expect much from the Duchess, yet he was not successful in these attempts and with tremendous force, he slammed his fist down on the table at his side, causing the glass there to jump up before it came down hard, shattering into a hundred pieces.

Still, the man didn’t move.

It couldn’t be worse. Not even her Grace’s brother, King Leopold of Belgium, could cause this much havoc.

Leopold? Belgium?

The man’s stomach twisted. Why had he thought of that country? Why had he thought of that man? Such memories induced visions of another entire series of problems. It reminded him that he could not allow any sort of Belgian influence within the court of England, not in the past, and certainly not now.

The man tensed, the very shadows in the room echoing the strain. He could not fail. He could not allow England to unite with Belgium in her civil war against the Dutch. For if such an alliance ever occurred, all would be lost, for him, for his homeland, the Dutch Netherlands.

And to think, after all these years, he was still fighting Leopold’s influence within the English court. He thought he had rid the country of that influence nineteen years ago when he’d stolen Leopold’s own child away, the night the future Queen, Charlotte, died in childbirth. Leopold’s sympathies, even at that time, aligned with Belgium in her disaffection with Dutch Patriots.

The man shook his head.

Was he to let all his efforts slip away then, simply because the Duchess of Kent kept overstepping her influence?

No, he could not. He had worked too hard, too completely, now and in the past, to achieve his present position of power through which he could advise England on her own foreign policy. He could not let such hard work go to waste.

The man smirked. He remembered all those years as though they had only happened, his fear of Leopold, his conviction that the child, Estrela, must never be allowed to ascend to the throne of England. For through her, Leopold would rule all of England, uniting England and Belgium.

But it had never occurred. He had ensured it.

It had been easy, in those early years to convince the King, George III, to sequester the twin babe, his great-granddaughter, away. After all, the man had been insane. It had only required a few choice words spoken to a select group of people.

The Prince Regent, on the other hand, had proved to be more difficult to control; that one requiring strong counsel and proof in action. Thus had been born the constant threats to the Princess’s life, some staged, some real. For only in this way could the Prince Regent be persuaded to hide the child.

The silent figure of a man suddenly laughed, though the sound was hardly infectious.

Well, he’d done it. He’d forced the powers that be to do his bidding all those years ago. And if he had done it then, he could do it now.

It only required that he mend this situation between the Duchess of Kent and the King. He would need to talk with her, to convince her to cease her flamboyant ways. He could not allow Her Grace to lose influence with the Royal Court, with the Princess. For then what would his own position be?

The man sighed. Such was the matter of whim. He had no time for it. He had other problems to attend to, other things that required his attention, other matters to resolve—like that of the Princess Estrela.

What was he to do about her?

Rotten luck, that’s what it was. Didn’t he have enough to think about without adding worry of
her
to his already full itinerary?

He had thought the young Lady Estrela’s quick murder would put at least one problem to an end.

It should have been a simple thing. He had hired good assassins. Twice they had failed. Twice they had blundered.

Something he could ill afford. Hadn’t he just yesterday been forced to kill them both? For their knowledge of her, for their knowledge of him.

Foiled. How was he to know some wild Indian would rush to her assistance, twice, and, amid stray bullets, save the young lady’s life?

He snorted.

His plans had been too-often thwarted of late. With everything else he had to worry about, he didn’t have time to spend on a would-be Princess who didn’t even know her own true identity. Her quick murder must be accomplished. And soon. He had too many other matters to which he must attend.

He must hire other assassins and soon.

Already the Duke and Duchess of Colchester suspected the Lady Estrela’s aristocratic heritage. Luckily the Duke’s search for that young lady’s identity would come to nothing, since there were no clear-cut records of her existence.

Hadn’t he ensured that condition long ago? Hadn’t he, himself, burned all records of her birth?

Still he worried.

The Duke of Colchester could be a determined man, the wild Indian an entirely unknown quality. What if they stumbled onto—

The dim, gloomy figure arose.

He hadn’t considered her upbringing; the loyal Earl of Langsford, his staff, his household of long ago. The old Earl was gone now. But there were other people there, loyal servants who would remember her. Would any of them know of her royalty?

He must seek them out, each one, he must eliminate them all. He could take no chances.

He would have to set out to the country at once—there to hire assassins, there to eliminate anyone who had been with the Earl ten to fifteen years ago.

Ah! The duties he had to perform. Did no one else see it? Did no one else know? Was it always to be upon his own head that lay the exalted future of England? Of his beloved Netherlands?

He felt heavy with the weight of responsibility. What he would do he did as his patrotic duty. But he must act quickly. All must be quieted. All must be murdered. Only in this way could England be saved from herself.

There was no one else.

And as the Lord was his witness, no one would stand in his way.

Rising, he advanced toward the fire, stirring the dead embers as though it were a cauldron pot.

‘
Twas highly symbolic.

And with this thought, he laughed, the evil sound of it carrying to every part of his small, sparsely furnished chambers. And even the fat, fearsome ravens outside took wing at the horrible sound.

Chapter Ten

Estrela gasped. She stared, her eyes widened. She’d never seen anything like this. She’d never witnessed anything so—

What was the man about?

He sat upon a horse, his long hair, unbound, falling well below his shoulders, the blue-black strands of it fluttering slightly in the wind. His chin jutted forward, his face lifted proudly, his eyes watched everything about him.

But that wasn’t why she stared. He…his clothing. She gulped.

He was dressed as…he was… Where was his Indian clothing? His buckskin shirt, his leggings, his breechcloth? He wore no moccasins on his feet and the conspicuous absence of quiver on his back, bow in his hand seemed altogether strange. He looked more foreign now than he had ever appeared to her in the past. He looked English. He looked like a gentleman. Goodness help her, he could have been an aristocrat by the manner in which he now appeared.

At that moment, he shifted his gaze to look toward her coach, and Estrela ceased to think. She groaned.

It was the only sound to be heard in the otherwise quiet coach. Even Anna, seated across from her, who was watching the same thing, said nothing.

They were sitting, she and Anna, in the Duke of Colchester’s carriage, a barouche that comfortably held four people. As was common for the English aristocracy, the Duke had spared no expense in making this carriage as beautiful and as ornate as possible. White satin curtains trimmed with gold hung at each window. The curtains could be pulled back to afford the person inside a view of the out-of-doors or they could be hung down straight, giving privacy to those inside.

Estrela chose the former, her gloved hand holding the curtain back while she peeped outside. She rested her cheek against the polished, mahogany wood that adorned the inside of the coach and lay in trim all around the window. The dark, red velveteen seat upon which she sat cushioned her weight in luxurious comfort.

“What do ye suppose t’ man is up to?” It was Anna who spoke.

“I don’t know except that I—”

He jumped off his horse at that moment, dismounting Indian-style, swinging one leg in front of him, up and over his mount, the action at complete variance to the manner in which he dressed. And Estrela in reaction to him, flung the satin curtain down and straightened away. She looked wildly about the carriage.

She heard the approaching crunch of boots—not the muffled sound of moccasined feet—against the cobbled drive, and she gulped. What was she to do? What could she say to him?

She hadn’t seen him, hadn’t spoken with him in well over a week. After the incident in the park, she hadn’t known what to do, so she took to her chambers. She did not come down for meals, for entertainment, nothing, no communication until now.

She had tried to hide, from him, from herself, from a would-be assassin. But it hadn’t worked. During the past week, she’d become more and more certain of just one thing: She needed Black Bear. Now more than ever. And the terrible part of it was that she dared not do anything about it. For she must, must send him away from her—somehow.

She fidgeted. What was she to do? She’d been more content to live without him before…but now…