Prince Charming (11 page)

When his black stallion was led from the royal stables, he crushed out his cheroot in the sculpted stone urn full of sand left at the foot of the stairs for that purpose, and mounted up. He tossed the groom a coin and rode off, soon passing through the fashionable section of the city with its tall pastel houses to a seedier quarter.

Glancing behind him to make sure he had not been followed, he dismounted before a filthy tavern with a brothel above it. He gave the boy posted out front a murderous look of warning before leaving his stallion in his care, then stalked slowly inside, ready to reach for the knife at his belt in an instant.

The tavern was dim and stank of stale bodies and smoke, vinegary wine and urine. He stalked up to the bar, nodding at the innkeeper.

“Is Carmen working?”

Drying a glass with a soiled towel, the man eyed his fine clothes, met Orlando’s icy gaze, then jerked a nod toward the narrow wooden stairs. “Room six, milord.”

“Thank you.” Orlando set a coin on the bar and walked to the staircase, glancing at some of the thuglike characters sitting in sullen silence in the dark, nursing their ales and cheap gall wines in the middle of the afternoon. When he found room six, he listened at the door, rolling his eyes impatiently upon hearing the young pair rutting vigorously inside.

He pounded once sharply on the door with the heel of his black-gloved fist. “Cristoforo,” he said in a low, harsh command. The noise inside stopped. Then he heard worried whispering. He grasped the doorknob and rattled it. “Get dressed. Now.”

More frantic whispering from inside.

“I have to go. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

“But Cristoforo!”

“I have to do as he says, Carmen!”

“Why?”

“Do you think I can pay you on my wages alone?”

“Let him go, Carmen, or I’ll slit your pretty throat,” Orlando said silkily into the crack of the door. He had no doubt the black-haired young beauty was worth every cent.

“C-coming, Your Grace!” the young chef called in a worried tone over the girl’s indignant cry at his threat. “It’s all right, I’m coming right away!”

Orlando heaved an impatient sigh and paced in the dingy hallway, the carpet ratty and red under his black boots. He smirked at the sound of beds squeaking inside the rooms all up and down the corridor. A few moments later, the young, wiry underchef Cristoforo came out of room six.

Orlando caught a glimpse of the lovely, olive-skinned Carmen, her nude figure shadowy behind Cristoforo. All of perhaps seventeen, she had a lithe body and red-rouged lips, and he could tell by one glance that the boy had probably never given her satisfaction. Orlando sent her a smoldering look of promise. She scowled at him in reply and slammed the door in his face.

Smirking, Orlando turned to Cristoforo, a tall beanpole of a youth with a shock of bright red hair, mussed. His cheeks were patches of scarlet, considering where Orlando had found him.

“So sorry to interrupt. Your day off, I take it?” Orlando asked gently

“Yes, sir,” the lad mumbled.

“Then I don’t suppose you know what happened this morning.”

“Sir? No, sir.”

Orlando stared at him for a moment, tempted to sink his knife into the youth’s stomach where they stood. Instead, he clasped him by the back of the neck and walked him toward the stairs, his pace companionable, his grip relentless.

“His Majesty has sailed away on a leisure voyage to Spain, my lad. I would like to point out that you are not among his galley crew. This upsets me, Cris.”

His brown eyes flew open wide. “I didn’t know, sir! I didn’t know! Oh, God, sir! Was there no warning? How are we going to—”

“Shut up,” he snarled.

Behind his freckles, Cristoforo’s face paled. Indeed, Orlando thought, the boy knew the danger of crossing him or failing him in any way.

“No, His Majesty gave no warning of his plans.” Mollified, Orlando flicked a piece of lint off his black sleeve. “Fortunately, I have arrived at an alternative solution.”

“Thank God!” the boy exhaled in relief. “It’s not my fault, sir, how can I help? What would you have me do? Sir, I’ll do anything, just don’t—”

“Walk down the steps before I throw you down them,” he softly interrupted.

The lad gulped and obeyed. At the bottom, he turned and stared at Orlando. “Sir, y-you’re not going to hurt Carmen, are you?”

Orlando smiled. “That’s up to you, Cris. Are you ready to help me? Do you think you can avoid another blunder?”

“Y-yes, Your Grace,” he croaked in a whisper.

“Good. Then let’s start rehearsing exactly what you’re going to say when the time comes for you to tell the prime minister how Prince Rafael has been paying you to poison King Lazar.”

  
CHAPTER  
FIVE

Flaming torchères lined the long drive as the curricle drawn by two prancing white horses joined the queue of carriages waiting to deposit guests before the fancifully carved pink-marble entrance of Rafael’s pleasure dome.
Oohs
and
aahs
slipped from Dani’s lips as she stared at the peacocks marching with tails unfurled and the albino deer grazing on the park lawn. Then she gazed up, wide-eyed, at the fanciful striped Moorish spires and the bronze cupola, gold against the starry indigo sky.

Straight out of the Arabian nights, it looked like a magic castle all made out of candy, she thought in wonder. Already she could hear the orchestra’s lively music pouring out from every arabesque window, could feel the thrumming excitement in the air.

There were jugglers on the lawn, jesters in motley with bells on their tripointed caps. The night hung like blue velvet around her under a jeweled vault of diamond stars, and the sea breeze blew balmy against her face after the day’s heat.

She looked everywhere eagerly, unable to help the tingling frisson of pure girlish anticipation that bubbled through her. It was difficult to keep her mind on the seriousness of her mission here tonight.

Earlier in the day, after leaving the jail, she had ridden back home to try to come up with an appropriate means of transportation to the ball. To solve this problem, she had “borrowed” Count Bulbati’s fancy curricle and matched horses. Her neighbor never went out at night; she hoped he wouldn’t notice they were missing. Then she had gone home to retrieve the one gown she owned that might pass for a ball gown.

Her tiny bodice was of light blue silk. From the high waist fell an overskirt that parted in the front to reveal a white petticoat beneath, which was embroidered with pink flowers below the knee. She was fairly sure her gown was a few years past fashion, but it was nearly fine enough, and besides, the long fitted sleeves covered her lightly bandaged right arm, while the petticoat was long enough to completely conceal the fact that beneath the gown, she was dressed for hard action down to her spurs.

Once she had rescued Gianni from Prince Rafael’s palace, she would have to make a quick change in order to go create the distraction in the city square which would divert more soldiers away from the jail, so that Mateo and the others could make their escape. She would need to scramble out of the gown, put on her black shirt and vest and the infamous mask, grab her sword, and ride.

Ahead, she could see that some of the guests were costumed. She was glad she had brought along a blue satin half-mask that matched her gown. It would help her blend into the crowd, because the one thing that could throw her carefully made plans into ruin was if Prince Rafael saw her and remembered her.

Glancing around, she brushed off that worry as best she could. There were so many people present—and so many smart, stunning ladies—she was certain she could slip through the crowd unnoticed. At last, it was her turn to go in. She gave her name at the entrance. The stately old butler lifted a brow, but politely gestured her in.

She passed rows of servants who skipped forward to take the gentlemen’s hats or pointed the ladies in the direction of the lounge, but she passed them all silently, a rush of exhilaration in her veins.

Unaware she was holding her breath, she walked slowly, step by step, into Prince Rafael’s pleasure palace.

Dizzy with the music and the wonderful aromas of foods and perfumes, she felt like she was floating. She stared about her, wide-eyed and marveling.

Everything was
so beautiful
. It was like entering a dreamland.

The chandeliers looked like mountains of delicately carved ice. The floor below her was black and white marble, like a great chessboard. The walls were hung with red silk embroidered with golden pineapples. There was particolored confetti raining in clouds from above, and when she glanced up, she saw two girls on trapezelike swings, their slim bodies draped in gauzy trailing silk. They swung slowly over the crowd in huge arcs, back and forth, laughing and sprinkling confetti.

Around her, radiant ladies greeted each other with easy, elegant gaiety, but Dani stood alone. Tilting her head back, she looked up and up and up, past the colored rain of confetti, past the girls on swings. The ballroom lay directly under the famous soaring dome, which she had only ever glimpsed from outside at a distance. From floor to apex, the dome must have been a hundred feet high, she thought in amazement. She squinted in fascination at the distant frescoes painted on the dome and nearly gasped as she picked out the Arcadian orgy depicted, naked nymphs entwined with sporting satyrs and randy gods.

Abashed by the tauntingly obscene images—just the sort of art she would have expected from
him
—she moved her gaze down the sides of the dome.

Girding the bronze base of it, well obscured by shadows, she could just make out a winding gallery, a kind of narrow walkway from which the crowd could be observed. She saw a lone figure standing there—aloof and above—motionless.

She felt, rather than saw, who it was.

A quiver passed through her limbs as she sensed the menace in this place beneath all its glittering beauty. Her senses vibrated like finely tuned strings at the sight of the prince’s dark figure there above the crowd, but it brought her back to her purpose.

Where could Gianni be?

The flow of the crowd was pressing her up along the receiving line. She heard murmurings around her.

“Chloe Sinclair—isn’t she divine?”

“Look at that gown! It must cost a fortune.”

“The toast of the London stage!”

“I heard they met in Venice when he was on Grand Tour.”

The woman holding court at the end of the receiving line was a radiant, sugar-spun confection of a creature, a pink pearl here in the heart of Rafael’s magical palace. Dani was awed by Chloe Sinclair’s beauty amid her dawning realization that the woman was the prince’s mistress—his doxy, his demimondaine—and that she, of the great Chiaramontes, was about to be presented as though to a queen to this creature who had crawled out of heaven knew what London gutter.

Dani looked around in distaste, trying to get out of the way, but curiosity kept her in the line. She had never seen a genuine scarlet woman before.

Chloe Sinclair appeared somewhere between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. Her delicate face was flawless, her hair the gold of bright new coins. She had sky-blue eyes and a perfect little beauty mark just above the corner of her mouth. Her skin’s milky whiteness was enhanced by her gown of white silk, but the round, spectacularly lowcut neckline made the traits of her person which had no doubt attracted Rafe the Rake’s interest embarrassingly obvious. Dani fought the urge to whisk the shawl from her shoulders and cover Chloe Sinclair’s large bosoms with it.

Glancing around, she could see that though many of the guests were bedazzled by Ms. Sinclair’s glamorous beauty and fame, a few others here and there looked as appalled as Dani felt.

Really, what was His Highness thinking, appointing a woman of the theater as his hostess? Lord knew how many other representatives from the finest families he had offended with this schoolboyish slap in the face to propriety.