Princess Charming (34 page)

Lucy nodded in agreement. “It will take far less time than that to untangle this mess, I can assure you.” She whirled and marched back toward the inn.

NICK YAWNED and stretched, replete with well-being. The room was dim, but enough light peeked through the small window to reveal Lucy’s absence. Rolling onto his back, he cursed the lumps in the mattress. The next time he made love to Lucy, it would be in a proper bed, with a proper mattress, although, truth be told, he’d not noticed the condition of the mattress earlier. He smiled a delicious smile, full of satisfaction. He doubted Lucy had had any complaints either. He was in the process of scooping up his breeches and smock from beside the bed when the door opened, and she entered. He smiled at her and knew himself a man besotted.

“Dare I hope you’ve brought anything to eat?” His pleasure at the course of events felt too marvelous not to share, but she was holding her head high and her tense shoulders rested very close to her ears. Something was wrong.

Nick was a master at bored indifference. He wiped the smile from his face and calmly, without hurrying, swung his legs over the edge of the mattress to pull on his breeches. He stood and buttoned them before he slipped his arms into the sleeves of the smock and pulled it over his head. Dressed, he turned toward her but kept his distance. “Is something the matter, princess?”

She looked confused and scared, and that was not how she had appeared when he’d finished making love to her earlier. Nick stepped toward her, and Lucy lifted her chin higher. Always a very bad sign.

“The Selkirks are here. I met them in the taproom when I went down to request a tray.”

“Is Mrs. Selkirk ill? Or is it more trouble with the soldiers?” Guilt knotted his stomach. “We can return to Nottingham if necessary.”

“No.” Lucy waved off his question. “It’s nothing like that. They simply brought someone to speak with me.”

“You appear to have seen a ghost.”

“Not a ghost. A thug. Our friend Tully, to be exact. Tully of the red cap.”

Nick’s pulse accelerated, and his muscles tensed. If the man thought he would take Lucy from him now, he was sorely mistaken. He’d bested him more than once, and he could easily do so again. Nick reached for his boots. “Why the devil isn’t he in Australia or the colonies? Crispin assured me he’d seen him aboard ship.”

Lucy remained by the door, and alarm bells pealed in Nick’s head. She seemed strangely unafraid of the thug’s presence.

“Apparently he convinced the captain he was in Lord Sidmouth’s service and was released. What I’ve learned today is that he is in someone else’s service as well.”

Nick frowned. “He’s either extremely brave or incredibly foolish to play both ends against the middle.”

“You’ve not asked me where his other loyalties lie.”

Nick paused. There was something disturbing in her tone, but her face was impassive. “For whom does he work, princess?”

Her lower lip quivered for an instant, and fear shot through him with an icy flame. She bit her lip to stop it from trembling. “He works for the cause of reform, Nick. Just as I do.”

Nick sank back down onto the mattress, confused. “Then why did he pursue you so doggedly? I don’t understand.”

“The more interesting question is why the Selkirks brought him here today.”

“And why did they?” A sudden, fine sweat broke out on his forehead.

“Tully knows who informed Sidmouth about the meeting. He was there, in an anteroom, when the information was shared.”

Nick was glad he was sitting. His knees felt weak. “Whom did he name?”

“Need you ask?”

For a long moment, there was silence.

“No. I guess not.” Oh, God. He’d not known his chest could hold so much pain. He’d been accused, tried, and convicted within the space of a moment. His pulse thundered in his ears. There was no point in denying his guilt, and certainly little use in offering explanations. He had offered all the reason a man needed that night in the dark above the Selkirks’ home.

Lucy’s shoulders, which had been so stiff, now sagged with pain. “Why, Nick? Why would you endanger innocent women and children in such a manner?”

His spine stiffened, even as a yawning pit of despair opened in his midsection. Knowing his story, could she not see why he’d been compelled to act? “I did nothing to endanger the reformers. It was for their protection, actually. You are naive, Lucy, to think that such a meeting held no possibility of violence.”

Her cheeks were stained pink with anger. “The only violence was that committed by the king’s soldiers.”

“There was no way to know that.” And it was true, but even as
he justified his actions, he couldn’t force the picture of the grieving mother keening over her dead son from his thoughts.

Lucy studied him pityingly, as if he were a small, dumb animal. Resentment stirred, but it was mixed with guilt and a foreboding sense of doom. Of course it must end badly. Things always did for him.

“If what you did was so sensible, so honorable, then why didn’t you tell me of your visit to Whitehall?”

Her question pierced him, and he could only stare blankly at her for several moments. “You don’t know what it’s like.” Nick felt as if he were sinking, the water rising with each passing moment. He must make her understand. He had not fought so hard and conceded so much only to lose her.

“It was too dangerous not to inform Sidmouth. I protected you the best way I knew how.”

“Protection?” She laughed bitterly. “Funny, Your Highness, but I don’t feel protected. I feel distinctly betrayed.”

As he’d known she would. It was the very reason he’d kept his secret to begin with. Now he could see that his choice had not been between Lucy’s safety and his losing her, as he’d thought, but between Lucy’s safety and her love. Much higher stakes, but he would follow the same course again without hesitation. With pain, he saw in his mind’s eye the young mother thrusting her babe toward him, begging for his assistance, and suddenly the rightness of his decision did not seem so clear.

“We can resolve this, Lucy.” Strength had returned to his legs as he willed it to, and he rose from the bed, moving toward her. “I know you feel I’ve betrayed you—”

“Betrayed me?” Her eyes flashed with incredulous, bitter laughter. “Oh yes, Your Highness, you have betrayed me, and I might someday be persuaded to forgive you for that. You are my husband, after all—for better or for worse, is it not?”

Hope shot through Nick. “I did what I believed to be right.”

Lucy continued without any heed for his reply. “But your betrayal of me is nothing to your betrayal of the reformers.” Her words slapped him, and he stood, stunned.

“You are angrier that I’ve betrayed your cause than that I’ve betrayed you?” Nick couldn’t hide his incredulity.

Lucy’s face, which had reddened, now paled. “You don’t understand what you’ve done, do you?”

Her accusation stung. “I am not a simpleton, Lucy. I am aware of the cost of my actions. It was I, you’ll recall, who walked through that square in the aftermath, searching for you.”

“You think the aftermath is finished? Do you think the dead and wounded from the rally are the only consequences?” She stepped toward him, her fists clenched at her sides. “Now that the soldiers are gone, the local magistrates will begin their investigations. Arrests have already been made. Men will be transported, if not hanged, merely for their presence at the rally, and their wives and children will be left to starve.”

Nick’s stomach felt like a ball of lead, but he refused to show remorse. He would not grovel in apology, not for protecting the woman he loved, even if she rebuked him for his actions.

“They knew the risks when they attended the rally.”

“The committee assured them it was safe.”

“Then the committee is exceptionally naïve.”

“I am one of the committee.”

“I rest my case.”

He should not have said the last, he knew it instantly. Beyond his own guilt, he could see Lucy’s remorse in her eyes. She felt as responsible as anyone, perhaps more so.

“Then you are not sorry? You have no regrets?” she asked.

“None.”

He wanted her to rail at him, to scream and fling the basin and pitcher at his head. He wanted the passion she’d revealed to him earlier, in their lumpy marital bed.

Instead, she fixed him with an icy stare. “I’m returning to Nottingham with the Selkirks.”

“The devil you are!” Nick exploded. “It would be foolish in the extreme, if arrests are being made. I’ll see you to London, and we will be extremely discreet until the uproar has died down.”

“No.” The word was quiet but implacably final.

His heart raced. “Lucy, you are my wife.”

“You may change that as soon as
you wish.”

“How? By divorce? By annulment?” Surely she did not mean it. “We have lain together as man and wife, and I have no desire to end our marriage.”

“And I have no desire to begin it.” She turned toward the door, her hand on the knob. “You will release me from the wager.”

She didn’t want him. The truth struck him between the eyes with the glancing force of a blow. And alongside her rejection came another revelation: There was no way to bridge the difference between them. She could not understand his most deeply held convictions, and he could not accept hers. What common ground could they possibly find?

“You are leaving me, then?”

“Yes.” She paused. “The marriage lines—if they were to be lost, there would be no proof of our union. My stepmother can easily persuade Mr. Whippet and the curate to blot our names from the parish register.” She smiled cynically. “He has done it before, when the reward was sufficient.”

Nick watched, dumbfounded, as
she slipped quietly from the room. The door closed behind her with soft finality, and Nick stood immobile. He could not betray his beliefs merely for the pleasure of her love, any more than she could forsake her convictions for his. Dear God, she had left him with an escape, and he might run if he wanted. How was he to find happiness in such a marriage? Would it not be better to end the torment for both of them now and save them years of pain? Since the moment she’d struck him with the door, his life had been spinning out of control, but the same woman who had sent him reeling had just given him the means of righting himself.

It would only cost a small part of his soul.

Nick fell full-length on the bed. With a growl, he turned and began pummeling the blasted mattress into submission.