The Barefoot Princess (7 page)

She had not been kind.

And she knew it.

And he knew it. He would be mad.

She inched toward him, one foot placed carefully after the other.

He said nothing.

She sneaked a glance at his face.

He didn’t look mad. It was worse than that.

He looked disappointed.

“Your Highness? Poppa?” Her voice quivered.

“Come here, Amy.” He even
sounded
disappointed.

Oh, no. She felt sick in the pit of her stomach. Daddy hadalways been her champion, but she had never been so bad before. Her walk across the antechamber seemed to take forever. When she stood right in front of the throne, she stared fixedly at the buckles below the knees of his formal breeches and waited for him to tell her to go cut a switch from the willow tree in the garden.

“All right, daughter.” His hands came into view. He picked her up and sat her in his lap. “Tell me what happened.”

He still loved her. Poppa still loved her. He smelled like tobacco and he was warm and kind. She buried her head in his chest and choked, “That stupid prince deserved what he got. He’s a big old stupid…boy.”

“I don’t doubt that, but what specifically did he do this time?” Poppa didn’t wrap his arm around her.

That was stupid old Rainger’s fault, too.

“He said…he said…” Amy took a deep breath. “He said I killed my mother the queen.” She held her breath, waiting for Poppa to deny it.

He said nothing.

“He said it’s my fault she’s dead and she must be sorry when she looks down from heaven and sees what a”—she could hardly get the words out—“a dirty, ill-mannered girl I am.”

“Rainger is not someone to reproach a child for being dirty or ill-mannered.” Poppa’s voice had a snap to it. “When he was your age, he was both.”

“He still is, and mean, too! He thinks just because he’s the crown prince of Richarte and betrothed to Sorcha and older than any of us, that he’s better, but he’s not!”

“So since you’ve felt the pain he’s caused in his cruelty,and because you’re smarter than he is, you won’t want to emulate him.”

Amy’s little bubble of self-congratulation popped. Poppa
wasn’t
on her side.

“Amy, let’s not pretend that you’ve been an exemplary child today.” He sounded very grave and very kingly. “Your grandmamma has good reason for wanting to have you disciplined, and so you shall be.”

Amy never cried when she was disciplined, but she cried when she disappointed her father.

Now big fat tears worked their way out of her eyes and down her cheeks.

“Your grandmamma would tell you that you shouldn’t lose your temper because you’re a princess. I’m not your grandmamma.”

“You’re the king!”

“Yes, I’m the king, and I tell you you shouldn’t lose your temper because you say hurtful things and wound other people’s feelings.”

She put her head on his shoulder and sniffled horribly. “I guess I shouldn’t.”

“And because if you attacked someone bigger than you and meaner than you—and there are many people like that in the world—he might seriously hurt you. I don’t want that, and I would consider myself negligent if I didn’t command you to never physically attack anyone again.” He put his handkerchief to her nose. “Blow.”

She did.

“Why are you crying?” he asked.

She didn’t want to know, yet she had to find out the truth.She had to, because she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t. “Did I really kill Mama?”

“My dear daughter.” Tilting her head back, he wiped her eyes and smiled into her face. “Your mother died when you were born, but you didn’t kill her. She died because she loved you so much, she was willing to risk everything to have you.”

No one had ever talked about her mother before. When she asked questions, her sisters got all weepy and her grandmamma had tightly folded her lips and told her to be quiet for once. Amy had never dreamed her beloved poppa would take her on his knee and tell her stories, but she had to interrupt. “She loved me? But Poppa, she never met me.”

“Yes, she did. She held you cradled within her for nine months. You moved in her, she fed you with her body, and after she delivered you, she held you in her arms.”

“Oh. It’s a great honor that my mother the queen loved me so much.” Amy’s confidence rose. But when her father didn’t reply right away, she faltered, “Isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is. When someone loves you so much she will die so you might live, it is an honor—and a responsibility.”

Amy wanted to groan. Not another responsibility!

But Poppa looked grave. So grave.

So she kept her voice small. She felt small. “I guess so. What do I have to do?”

“Live your life in a way that’s worthy of that great offering. Be strong. Help those who are less fortunate. You’re a very smart girl.” He tapped her forehead. “Use that intelligence to make someone happy.”

“Do you do that?”

“I did—with your mother. She and I loved each other so much we used our intelligence to make each other happy. We spoke without words.” When Amy would have interrupted to ask what he meant, he put his finger on her lips. “We shared a soul. She still lives here”—he tapped his chest—“in my heart. I want that for you. For every one of my daughters.”

“I can do that.” She sat straighter on his lap. “I can use my intelligence. What else, Poppa?”

“Most important of all, be true to yourself.”

“Okay.” She hesitated, then asked, “How do I do that?”

“Listen to your heart. Follow your instincts. Believe in what they tell you, and do the right thing.”

“Okay.” Now she understood.

“Sometimes it’s not easy being a princess.” He hugged her.

“I know that. I have to wear nice gowns all the time and get my hair curled and wave to the poor children and learn deportment and never have fun riding the big horses—”

“That wasn’t quite what I was going to say. I was going to say that it’s not easy being a princess, but as long as you live in a way that honors your mother, you’ll be a person I’m proud to call my daughter.”

More responsibility! Now she had to live her life in a way that was worthy of her mama’s sacrifice, and she had to become someone Poppa was proud to call his daughter. Still, she supposed she had escaped pretty easily…

Hadn’t she? “What is my punishment?”

He studied her long face. “What does Grandmamma usually do?”

“Sometimes she sends me out to cut a switch off the willow tree and whips me with it.”

“No. I won’t do that,” he said decisively.

“She makes me write stuff on my slate.”

“Stuff?”

“Stuff like I will not kick Prince Rainger really hard in the knee.”

Poppa sort of choked, then he cleared his throat and said decisively, “That’s not fiendish enough. You know, don’t you, that as king, I have access to devices of torture and war?”

Her eyes widened until they hurt. She nodded.

“But I’m your father.” He put her on her feet before him. “I love you, and I don’t want to permanently injure you or keep you in the dungeon for too long.”

She swallowed. She braced herself.

He stood. He picked up his scepter. He drew himself up to his full kingly height, and made his pronouncement. “You will be nice to Rainger, to your sisters, and to your grandmamma—”

Amy caught her breath in dismay.

“—for three days.”

“Oh, Poppa!” She put her palms together prayerfully. “Let me go cut a switch!”

“No,” he said sternly. “You have to be nice for three days to your sisters, your grandmamma, and the prince.”

“I could write a hundred sentences. A thousand sentences.”

She thought she saw a glimmer of a smile.

“Be nice to your—”

“Sisters, Grandmamma and yucky ol’ Rainger. I know.” She dragged herself over to the tall, heavy door. With great effort, she tugged it open. She looked back at her father.

He still stood on the dais in front of the throne. He held the jeweled scepter. His hair curled over his forehead andaround his ears. His sideburns edged his jaw. He looked very kingly—and very patient.

“All right, Poppa, I’ll be nice.” Before she snapped the door closed, she said, “But I won’t like it.”

Chapter 8

O
utside, a sudden spring rain cast itself at the high windows. Wind rattled the casements. The small mound of coals in the stove smoldered, giving off enough heat to take the chill off the cellar. A tallow candle cast a feeble glow over the chessboard and a stench into the air. Miss Victorine did her handwork by the light of a tin lamp filled with oil, and it smelled, too.

Jermyn saw Amy strolling toward him, a seductive roll to her hips, discarding her clothing as she walked. She was smiling, teasing him as she stepped out of her petticoats and stood clad in her sheer chemise. Her nipples showed through the cream silk, puckered with desire for him—

Amy’s disagreeable tone shredded his fantasy. “My lord, you have been staring at the chessboard for a full five minutes. Would you like me to make your move for you?”

He jumped like a lad with his fingers caught in the jam pot. The rickety chair beneath him groaned.

“Now, Amy, you must be patient with His Lordship,” Miss Victorine chided. “He’s spent the day manacled by his ankle and he’s ready to snarl like a lion.”

“More like a small, ill-tempered badger,” Amy muttered.

Jermyn looked across the long length of the table at her. He sat on one end, she sat on the other. She wore a most contrary expression, and her eyes sparked with irritation.

She made it most difficult to indulge in a dream about her. He wished, just once, she’d give him something to work with—a flirtatious glance, a beckoning smile.

“Lord Northcliff will be better tomorrow when the ransom arrives and he can be set free,” Miss Victorine said serenely.

“Tomorrow?” For one moment, he forgot about Amy and her stubborn refusal to cooperate with his whimsy. “Are you sure it will be tomorrow?”

“If your uncle follows directions, then the ransom will be delivered tomorrow and you’ll be set free.” Amy smiled at him with relish.

She liked holding him in her power. She liked having men jump at her command. She wasn’t soft and sweet and pretty, the way he liked his women to be. She was clever. She was sharp-tongued. She was too angular, with elbows that poked at her sleeves and thin collarbones instead of plump shoulders. Her face was handsome rather than pretty, and he would have said she never smiled, except that she did.

She smiled when she gazed at Miss Victorine.

She might be—was!—misguided in her attempts to extort money from him, but he couldn’t doubt her sincere affection for the older woman. Nor, unfortunately, could he doubt Miss Victorine’s crushing poverty.

He glanced at the plump figure in the rocking chair. A yellowing cap topped Miss Victorine’s white hair. He recognized the shawl around her shoulders—he had admired the pattern when he was a lad. Now half the fringe was missing, giving it an oddly toothless appearance. She huddled within the wool’s embrace as if she were cold, yet when he demanded Amy add more coals on the fire, Miss Victorine had waved her hand before her face and claimed to be too warm. She moved stiffly and he could see a bruise on her bare arm from his rough handling, yet her gnarled fingers flew as she created her beaded lace.

The beaded lace that grew as slowly as Amy claimed it did.

Perhaps in one way at least, Amy was right. Somehow Uncle Harrison had signally failed when it came to the care of Miss Victorine, and that led Jermyn to the worry that he failed in other ways, too. Jermyn should have kept a closer eye on the proceedings on his estate. Perhaps, if Uncle Harrison had been truly negligent, Jermyn could forgive Amy’s unpleasantness…if not his imprisonment.

He gave her the kiss of peace, and slid his hand down her arm and up her skirt, and kissed her lips that smiled on him while she begged his forgiveness…

Blind with lust, he moved his knight.

“My lord, that was a careless move and I beg…oh!” Leaning over, she studied the board intently. “How very clever of you. I had not seen that stratagem before. Let me think how to counter it.”

Clever? He had been clever? Perhaps the life of dissipation he led hadn’t caused all his mind to atrophy.

He blinked.

From whence had that thought come?

He looked across the table. Did he even have to ask? After only one day, Amy had put ideas into his head. It had to be her influence. It couldn’t be that all along, he’d been secretly aware he was shirking his duties.

“How will I be set free?” He hoped they had concocted a stupid plan. That would give him the chance to feel infinitely superior.

“After Miss Victorine and I are gone from here—” Amy began.

“You’re running away?” A taunt softly spoken.

“Yes, rather than stay here and have you order that we be flayed alive, we are leaving.” She challenged him with her sarcasm and her logic.

“I can’t imagine he’d have us flayed alive, dear.” Miss Victorine’s forehead puckered. “That seems to have gone out of style with the rack. I believe Lord Northcliff would have to be satisfied with hanging us.”

“True, my lord?” Amy laughed in his face.

Who was this shrew with her fine accent and her saucy mouth?

He bent his attention to the chessboard. With a dark glance and in a voice laden with innuendo, he challenged her. “It has occurred to me there are other ways to kill a woman.”

Amy chewed at her lower lip and apprehensively stared at him as if not quite comprehending.

Was she truly so innocent? Or was this an act by an actress unparalleled in performance?

Certainly Miss Victorine, the perennial spinster, continued work as if undaunted, picking up her threads, stringing her tiny beads.

“Like…torture?” As if he were an odd, mysterious creature, Amy watched him from the corners of her eyes as she made her chess move.

“Some might call it torture.” He laughed, a short, rough outburst. Yes, sitting here indulging in fantasies about an untutored, criminally minded female was certainly torture. “But you were telling me how I would be set free.”

“Oh.” Amy straightened. “You’ll have no problem getting free and back where you belong. Your home is only across the channel.”

“So I
am
on Summerwind.” As the day had dragged on, he’d started to wonder. It was impossible to tell through the high windows, and this witch could have put him in any cellar anywhere and lied out of spite.

He moved his pawn.

“That you are.” Amy moved her bishop. “The key to the manacle has already been placed in a drawer in your house. After we’re away, we’ll send a note to your uncle telling him where, and you’ll be free as soon as he gets over here with it.”

He pretended to scrutinize the board while surreptitiously studying her.

She wore most the spectacularly dreadful clothes he’d ever had the misfortune to view. He’d seen two gowns, which he suspected had originally been Miss Victorine’s and remade to fit Amy’s slender figure. The material had been turned by a seamstress with an excellent hand, yet the style was still old-fashioned to the extreme, and the colors had faded from blue to gray and from pink to white. The cloth drooped dispiritedly over petticoats that he supposed must be wool, or her stockings were, for he had twice caught Amy scratching the back of her leg with one lifted foot, and occasionally she shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

He should have been happy to know she wore a sort of hair shirt. Instead the thought of her wool petticoat led him to musings about what else she wore, which led to speculation that a woman so unfeminine would refuse to wear a corset, which led to the knowledge that beneath the petticoat she probably wore nothing at all, which led to the fact that while his mind scorned her for her surely masculine determination to right what she perceived as a wrong, his body recognized that she was, indeed, a female.

“Well?” Amy tapped her foot.

He shoved his queen into the path of Amy’s oncoming piece.

“That was an excessively stupid move, my lord.” Amy’s displeasure was palpable. “Either you’re a mediocre player or you’re being gentlemanly and letting me win the game, and neither seems likely. Of what are you thinking?”

He was thinking very hard that if she was his he would clothe her in the finest silks and linens to protect that delicate skin…and that led back to vivid fantasies and such discomfort that he desperately longed for a wild ride across the island or a grand drinking spree with his friends or even a simple walk in the sun.

During the two months he’d been on his estate waiting for his leg to heal, he had suffered incredible boredom. He hadn’t realized how lucky he was to eat well, to exercise as he wished and, most of all, to see the sun, the trees, the horizon. He was almost insane with the desire to be free—and of course for the scornful, contrary, righteous Amy.

When he was free, he would forget about her in another woman’s arms…or perhaps he would find Amy and show her what happened to a female who dared to defy the marquess of Northcliff.

He tapped his fingers together and smiled.

He stripped off her ugly gown and cupped her breasts with his hands, examining the shape and color of her nipples. They were as soft and light as a peach…no, they were brown and puckered with desire for him…

“My lord, you look half asleep.” Miss Victorine put her beading down on the table. “Shall we leave you?”

“Sleep at this hour? Absurd. It can’t yet be nine o’clock!” In London, he had spent many nights carousing until the dawn.

“That may be true for you, but I am an old woman and need my sleep.” Miss Victorine stood.

He stood also, a gesture of respect he found he didn’t regret.

“I’ll go with you.” Amy hurried to Miss Victorine’s side. “We’ll leave Lord Northcliff the candle. He can read.”

He glanced at the small pile of old books they’d brought him. He was familiar with all of them.

“No, no. I’ll be fine and our guest should not be left alone. You two children stay here and finish your game.” Without apparent fear, Miss Victorine came close and hugged him.

Amy lunged toward them, then when he returned Miss Victorine’s embrace, she halted. She moved to the cabinet that housed her pistol, placed her hand on the drawer, and stared at him meaningfully.

He could scarcely contain his annoyance. He had learned his lesson this morning. Miss Victorine was fragile. He would never hurt her again.

Cupping her hands around his cheeks, she looked into his eyes. “It has been so good to have you as my guest again. Do come back soon…” She cast a guilty glance at Amy. “Oh, dear. I forgot. I won’t be here, but I wish you won’t be such a stranger to Summerwind. The village and the farms would be glad of a visit from their liege lord.”

Again he glanced at Amy. He saw exactly the sneer he expected. He knew her opinion of him.
Bored, indolent, without honor or scruples
—

“I’ll do that, Miss Victorine.” Leaning down, he brushed a kiss across her sagging cheek.

“Dear boy.” Miss Victorine’s voice quivered. “I have missed you.” With a last hug, she took the lamp and departed.

The darkness hugged the small light of the candle, yet still he couldn’t escape Amy’s accusing stare. “Liege lord, indeed. You don’t know how to be a liege lord.”

“I am the marquess of Northcliff. We have been the liege lords of this area for five hundred years. My father passed down the knowledge necessary to be Northcliff.” Yet he’d neglected his obligations, and her scorn stung. So he asked cruelly, “What did your father teach you? Or do you even know who he is?”

She advanced on him so fast, he thought for a moment he could actually get his hands on her. But she stopped a few, vital inches short. “My father
told
me to be true to myself, and do the right thing. He
showed
me the meaning of duty and sacrifice. I
learned
the lessons my father taught me. It’s too bad you didn’t do the same.”

My God! She whipped him with her words, showed not an ounce of the respect due his position! “Is it better to be a gentlewoman who has fallen on bad times and allowed the bitterness of labor to poison you?”

“Is that your new theory about me?” She snorted. “I wonder what other nonsense you’ll concoct to explain your imprisonment here?”

“There are a hundred things that could have made you who you are, but one thing remains inviolate. You are a
ridiculous
girl.” He used a disdainful tone he hoped made clear he wished to call her other, less elegant invectives.

“Life is a
ridiculous
exercise performed by the bored, the hungry and the desperate. And I’m stuck with you.” She glanced around. “I can’t go upstairs yet. You’re a dreadful chess player.”

Stung, he replied, “Actually, I’m one of London’s best.”
When I’m not playing against a female. A female that makes my blood spring to the surface and hunger swim right beneath the skin.

“London is a city of fools, then.” Her gaze landed on Miss Victorine’s handwork. “Beading would keep you entertained.”

“No…it…wouldn’t.” He spoke through his teeth.

Picking up the small, complex piece, she shook it at him. “Come on, my lord. Think how satisfied you’d be to show that I’m wrong about anything.”

“I am not a woman.” But she was. He loved the way she wrapped her shawl over her bosom as if shielding herself from his gaze would protect her from his lust. Her action was futile and showed little experience with men—or perhaps too much.

“No, you’re one of the bored.”

She was damned right about that. He knew she was baiting him. He knew he shouldn’t succumb to her gibes. Yet he was bored. And lustful. And desperate. “All right.” He made his decision briskly. “Show me.”

Amy looked startled, then suspicious.

“What?” He lifted spuriously innocent brows. “You’ve convinced me.”

“You’re being too pleasant.”

“Some people actually call me a charming fellow.”

“Debutantes.” She imbued the word with scorn. “Am I right?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t believe them,” she advised. “They’re flattering you. They’re after your ring on their finger.”

That was what he believed, too, but she believed it in a different way. A disparaging way. One that plainly told him she couldn’t imagine a moment when he was ever charming.