Princess Charming (38 page)

“You will free her, then?” Esmerelda asked. “She does not deserve this.”

“You have my word, madam.” Nick could perhaps have been more kindly to the girl, but he was still too appalled at the family’s treatment of Lucy to be very forgiving.

“Then I will go.” She stepped between the two men and walked toward the street.

“A moment, madam.” Nick might despise the girl for her complicity in her mother’s sins, but he could hardly let her go traipsing across London alone. “My carriage stands ready. It will convey you to Mayfair and can set you down near Nottingham House without undue notice.”

Esmerelda’s cheeks flushed with gratitude, and Nick saw a glimpse of what the girl might have been like, had she not been so worn down by her termagant of a mother. Esmerelda murmured her thanks and then disappeared into the waiting carriage. Nick turned to Crispin once again.

“I’ve half a mind to find my gardener’s smock and bribe my way into Lucy’s cell tonight.”

“You can’t, Nick.” Crispin laid a hand on his arm. “Not unless you want to jeopardize her freedom. I know patience appears to be a very small virtue at present, but you must be high-minded a bit longer.”

Nick’s shoulders slumped as they turned toward Madame St. Cloud’s door and lifted the knocker. Patience had never been numbered among his strongest attributes. A moment later, the door opened, and Henny squealed with delight at the sight of her two favorite customers.

IT TOOK THE better part of two days to put the plan into place, and Nick felt every hour of the forty-eight as if they were his last. The only thought that saved his sanity was the knowledge that Lucy rested comfortably in two well-furnished rooms inside the prison. Nick’s plan was costly, and his debt to Crispin mounted with each passing hour. A basket of food, a dress, a bottle of brandy—one by one each found its way to Lucy Charming’s new abode.

At long last, though, the preparations were complete. Late in the morning of the fourth day since Lucy had been imprisoned, Nick and Crispin emerged from Madame St. Cloud’s, hailed a hackney, and set off for Newgate.

THE SUMMER sun grew increasingly warm as the day lengthened, but Nick’s restlessness had passed. Now that the rescue had begun, his nerves were as calm as the surface of a Santadorran mountain lake on a still day.

“There’s another one,” Crispin said as they watched a young boy, dressed in the familiar black clothes of a chimney sweep, slip through the doors to the prison.

“How many in all?” Nick asked.

“Fifteen. Mr. Cartwright said that every boy in the school demanded to be a part of the rescue.”

Nick glanced at Crispin. “Are you sure you want to be a part of this? It’s quite illegal.”

Crispin laughed. “Illegal it may be, but I began this bumblebroth with my matchmaking schemes, and I will see it through.”

Nick could not match Crispin’s lighter tone. “Thank you, my friend.” He forced a smile. “Perhaps someday I might play matchmaker for you.”

“You always were the vengeful type,” Crispin shot back with a grin, and then his face grew serious. “Be happy with her, Nick. She was made for you, you know, and you for her.”

A knot formed in his solar plexus. “I’m quite aware of that, my friend. I can only hope that the lady has come to the same realization, along with a generous measure of forgiveness.”

A sharp rap on the carriage interrupted their exchange. Nick glanced around and came face-to-face with his father. Without waiting for an invitation, King Leopold wrenched open the door and vaulted into the hackney.

“Cris!” Nick knew who the culprit was immediately.

Crispin did not flinch. “Humor me. I seem to be having a streak of good fortune when it comes to furthering alliances.”

“Good morning, Wellstone,” his father said, nodding to Crispin. “Nick.” The one syllable managed to convey a lifetime of parental disapproval.

Crispin cleared his throat. “I know what you said, Nick, but be reasonable. Your chances of leaving the country greatly improve if you can use your father’s consequence as a smokescreen.”

The king regarded Nick with concern. “Lord Wellstone has told me everything.”

Nick wanted to ignore his father, but the truth of Crispin’s words rang in his head. Which mattered more, his pride or Lucy’s life? He’d already answered that question when he’d accepted that he must return to Santadorra.

“Splendid.” Nick tried to keep the sarcasm from his voice, but old habits died slow deaths. “Then we shall have plenty of time for you to lecture me regarding the proper behavior of a prince. It will be another half hour, at least, before all of the climbing boys are inside the prison.”

“Good. Then that will give me ample time to say how pleased I was to discover that my son had married a reform-minded hoyden in an Anglican ceremony, without consulting his sovereign and father.”

Touché, Nick thought. “You wanted me wed. You and Prinny concocted the scheme. I merely saw it through to its completion.”

The king barked with laughter. “You give no quarter, do you, lad? But then, by Jove, you ask none either.”

The words brought Nick up short. He’d so recently thought the very same about Lucy. They were alike, he realized, in a flash of clearheaded insight. Neither of them willing to compromise. Both passionate, in their own ways, in defense of their beliefs.

“What’s done is done.”

“Bedded her, have you?” The king eyed him shrewdly.

Nick bristled. “Have a care. She is my wife.”

“I do not seem to be the one who needs to have a care for your wife,” his father shot back. “It is not my bride in Newgate.”

“No, yours is buried nicely beneath some funeral pyre.” The caustic words shocked even Nick, but he met his father’s gaze without flinching. They had avoided the past for far too long, he could see that now. He had fled from Santadorra, and his father had let him run, sending him to England to school. Then it had been too painful for them to share their feelings. Now it was in all likelihood too late.

“Enough, Nicholas. I came to mend fences, not to topple them. Still, if you are untrained in the art of reconciliation, the blame lies at my door.”

His father’s matter-of-fact words stopped Nick cold. “And you, sir, are the expert peacemaker who might teach me the trade? Pray, tell me where you learned your craft, for I should like to study there myself.”

His father’s cheeks reddened. “I learned in Santadorra, where you have not set foot in years. I learned as I rebuilt my life and re-established justice for my people.”

His father might try to make Nick feel guilt over the abandonment of his country, but it would not work. “You know my feelings on that matter.”

“And yet you married,” the king remarked, his eyes narrowing. “Why is that, Nicholas? You have always informed me your intention was to allow the line to die out. With no heir, Santadorra will revert to Spanish control. And yet you have married, and you have bedded the girl. An heir may already be on the way. I confess I find such behavior extremely puzzling at best, and inconsistent at worst.”

Nick bristled. “It is you, sire, who let the line die that night in the palace. You sent your family alone into the mountains. Surely you knew what the outcome would be.”

For once, his father did not respond with an angry outburst of his own. Instead, silence reigned inside the carriage for several long, cold minutes.

Nick watched his father, who turned to the opposite window of the carriage and gently drew back the curtains. His gaze was fixed on whatever foot traffic passed in front of the shops.

“There was no hope for you in the palace.” His father’s voice was flat, and he did not turn to face Nick.

Nick spoke before he could stop himself. “A fortunate happenstance, then, that you should emerge unscathed.”

“Unscathed!” The king jerked the curtains closed, and the sound of ripping cloth rent the air. “Wife and daughter dead, son lost in the mountains, and a knife wound in my belly. I would hardly call that unscathed.”

“Compared to what Mother and Jo suffered, it was nothing.” The wound that had festered for so long opened, and Nick could contain it no longer. His father’s shoulders slumped then, and he looked old. The sight jolted Nick.

“Why do we continue to do this, Nicholas? After all these years, one would think our bloodlust would be sated, but we cannot even occupy the same carriage without the urge to draw one another’s cork.”

Nick shrugged to hide the pain that knifed through him. Time and time again his father had made politely worded requests for forgiveness. Nick had always thought them insincere, but now, with the passage of time, and with his own sins against Lucy weighing heavily on his mind, he began to doubt his assessment of his father’s pleas. Perhaps the king had regretted his actions. Perhaps
 . . .
but no. The price was too great. To admit that he might have been in error about his father would be to acknowledge his own fault in their long separation.

“If you do not care to offer me your assistance, you may tell me so at once,” Nick said. His father turned from the window, and in the clear light of day, Nick could see the signs of age that lined his brow. Looking into his father’s countenance was like staring into his own face several decades into the future, as sure a resemblance as the one on the dorrian. It was an eerie feeling.

“You have always been and will always be my son.”

“Yes.” Nick acknowledged ruefully. “For good or ill, our lives will always be bound together.”

Crispin, who had been silently observing the interchange, spoke. “The last boy has entered the prison. I’ll slip around the corner to speak with Mr. Cartwright.” He looked at Nick. “Then we may begin.”

Nick nodded, and Crispin slipped from the carriage. His father eyed him thoughtfully. “You have set yourself a herculean task, have you not? Tell me, how does your radical wife feel about being a royal princess?”

A smile sprang to Nick’s lips, but concern for Lucy smothered it as quickly as it came. “Let us just say she has yet to
 . . .
accustom herself to the role.”

His father chuckled, a sound from Nick’s childhood, and one fondly remembered. “She sounds a great deal like your mother.”

Nick inhaled sharply, and his father nodded in sympathy. “We may speak of her, Nick. She is only dead, not damned.”

“Only dead? You say that very casually.” The carriage seemed to be growing smaller by the moment.

“No, I say that peacefully. Once you have accepted the past, that it cannot be changed, then it becomes much simpler to let it go.”

“Of course no one can change the past,” Nick said stiffly.

“You believe that you can.”

His father’s words caused him to shift restlessly in his seat. “What a ridiculous notion.”

“Is it?” The king’s gaze pinned him like a butterfly in a schoolboy’s collection. “Then why all the rescues, I wonder? Why the incessant need to play the hero?”

Nick hated that his motives were so transparent, especially to his father. “Practice makes perfect, perhaps?” he asked and then winced. The quip revealed too much.

“Yes. I suppose so.” His father turned toward him. “You know, Nicholas, there was nothing either one of us could have done differently.”

“You could have come with us.”

“And then they would have killed us all.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Son, I am the King of Santadorra. The rebels had no eyes for anyone else. Their purpose was to murder me and my family. By staying behind, I gave you, your mother, and sister a chance to escape.”