The Runaway Princess (13 page)

The only sounds in the forest were the ceaseless
drumbeat of the waterfall, the march of feet, and the almost audible tension of curiosity. Evangeline shouldn't be saying such things in front of his bodyguards, but the damage was done. Danior could only hope she spun such an outlandish tale that they would find it impossible to believe. And if he goaded her, most certainly she would.

With meritorious poise, Rafaello asked, “If she didn't die, how could she leave it to you?”

“She told me she was tired of the dull life in England, and the next day she vanished. I searched for her, but she was very old and determined, and I fear she walked into the sea and let the current take her.” Evangeline's voice shook with the telling; this was no poorly thought out tale, but one into which she poured her heart and soul. “I reported her disappearance to the authorities, and when they read the will I discovered she'd left me her entire fortune.”

“Convenient,” Danior said.

Evangeline cuffed him on the side of the head. “Don't say that. I loved her. She saved me!”

The waterfall was getting louder, masking the sound of their voices, or Danior would never have allowed the conversation to go on. But Evangeline spun a good tale. Even
he
was interested, and so he permitted her the smack—she would say he deserved it for some brutish act or another—and allowed Rafaello's next query.

“From what did she save you?”

“The orphanage,” Evangeline answered.

For the first time, Rafaello's civility toward his princess broke down. “Uh-huh. Master, let me fall behind and check for trackers.”

What would have been a straightforward request a week ago now seemed weighted with calamity, and Danior didn't hesitate. “We've left them behind, so let us remain together for now.”

Rafaello barely stifled his astonishment, although whether it was real Danior could not venture to guess. “As you wish.”

Victor didn't believe the princess now and had never believed, yet she obviously entertained him. “Your Highness, you inherited a fortune from the old lady who saved you from the orphanage. So what was the problem?”

“Leona's solicitor, the most pompous man in East Little Teignmouth”—by Evangeline's tone it was clear she despised him—“told me the bankers would wait until the body turned up, or for a decent interval, which was seven
years
, before they could declare her dead, but once the death certificate had been passed through the courts, I'd have a
considerable sum of money. Enough money to last my whole life.” She paused painfully. “
If
I used it wisely.”

Victor cackled. “That'll be the day when a woman can use money wisely.”

“I meant to, I really did,” she said. “He talked me out of it.”

As they neared the base of the waterfall, a faint mist swirled in the moonlight and moss hung from the trees. “The solicitor talked you out of it?” Danior questioned.

“He pointed out that I was no longer young, that I had never been pretty, and that no one knew what my background could be.”

She sounded so much like she believed the tale that Danior was moved to tighten his grip, not painfully, but in an attempt to comfort her.

Heedlessly, she charged on with her yarn. “For all anyone knew, my parents could have been murderers, and at the very least they were vagrants or gypsies. But Mr. Isherwood said if I were careful with my money, I would never have to hire myself out again, and perhaps some decent man would deign to take me as his wife.”

“How kind of him,” Victor said.

“He was a widower, and he rather leered at me.”

Victor cackled again, but this time it sounded a little sympathetic. “Such advice would send any woman flying to the shops.”

Danior cleared his throat.

“If this tale were true,” Victor added hastily.

“Yes. Especially since the solicitor was quite right on all counts. I'm twenty-four, no man had ever found me irresistible, and if I waited all those years for that money, by the time I got it even
Mr. Isherwood could begin to look good.” She sounded impossibly earnest. “I was sorry about Leona, more sorry than I can express, but she used to urge me to follow my dreams. I couldn't leave her when she was alive, but, well . . . I took the strongbox.”

“You
stole
the strongbox?” Victor clearly relished the word. “From where?”

“Mr. Isherwood allowed me to assist in crating up Leona's possessions and to contract the men who would take the boxes to auction. The men didn't realize the contents were supposed to go to Glastonbury, not Avebury, and when I went to inquire about the strongbox, Mr. Isherwood said he had misplaced it. I don't know even now if he knows how easy it was to find his hiding place.”

“Our princess. Stealing.” Rafaello sounded winded.

“It wasn't stealing,” Evangeline lashed. “Everything was mine! And Mr. Isherwood had already dipped into the money. If there'd been nothing left in the end, who would have cared that I had been cheated? I'm
not
the princess.”

What a lie! Danior thought. She was good at this, and he couldn't allow her to continue unchallenged. “You are a very
imaginative
princess.”

Her exasperated sigh quivered through him. “Didn't you see my dress? It's from London. So are . . . were . . . my bonnets, gloves, and luggage. I bought them all in London, then I took accommodations across the Channel, engaged guides to show me Bordeaux and Toulouse, and hired a private carriage to bring me to the spa. I enjoyed it all very much.”

“Until the bomb,” Danior said.

“Until about an hour before that,” she corrected. “When I saw you.”

She sounded stanch, yet her head bobbled against his shoulder. She seemed to be growing heavier.

At first he thought it was because he was tiring. Now he realized her muscles were limp. As the night wore on and the excitement of their escape wore off, it appeared she at last had been driven to the limit of her endurance.

He was almost glad. At least he knew she wouldn't run off again.

“Will we see Jean Falls soon?” she whispered.

Her breath feathered his hair and slipped across his face, warm and spicy, reminding him of the kisses they had shared—and the kisses yet to come. “We won't see it at all. I came this way because—”

“Please. To come so close and not see it!” She sounded as disappointed as a child deprived of a treat.

He shouldn't humor her, he told himself. The spongy ground underneath his feet received their footsteps and sprang back up. He had planned this route for just that reason, for in the daylight, there would be no trace of their passing.

“Danior, please.”

For a woman who had displayed so little in the way of feminine wiles two nights ago, she displayed a remarkable aptitude for manipulating him. And with peculiar insight, he realized he held a remarkable susceptibility to her manipulation.

With a gesture to his men to stay, he moved slowly and with deliberate caution toward the creek
formed from the waterfall. He scanned the open area alongside it, but nothing moved, and so he stepped out of the shadows and into the pale luminescence of moonlight.

He felt her intake of breath. She pushed away from him, and he let her down. She stood leaning against him, her face lifted toward heaven, her lips slightly parted and moist as mist fogged the air.

Above and beyond them stretched the limestone cliff, polished and scoured, channeled with gullies that plunged down its face. Within each gully a waterfall slipped like a liquid chain of silver music. From the highest point above them dropped the greatest cascade of all. The water dropped without interruption from the highest point, constantly flowing, flying, singing tribute to the moon. At last the water crashed and splintered across the rocks in an eternal crescendo.

Danior had seen the cliff and the falls before. He'd prowled these mountains, learned to use the noises and disguises of nature. But engrossed in the business of staying alive and driving the enemy from his lands, he had failed to take the time to note the beauty. Only now, looking at the elation on Evangeline's upturned face, did he become aware of the wonder his childhood had never allowed.

And that made him weary and too well aware of the distance he'd traveled and the innocence he'd lost.

Now, at last, he permitted himself to think what the rebels might have done to his princess. Had they beaten her? Raped her? She'd been pure before; had they used her in the basest way they knew? He would kill them if they had.

He looked at her again, and this time he saw the smudges on her forehead, the dirt on her cheeks. Her hair stood up in wild profusion all around her face except in one spot; there it seemed to have been slashed close to the scalp. He touched the ends; they crinkled beneath his fingers, and he smelled the faint scent of burning.

He remembered now. The cinder had done this damage.

With his thumb, he tried to wipe the darkest smudge off her cheek. She flinched away from him.

A bruise. She'd been hit by something—or someone.

Fury twisted along his veins like liquid fire. He would make Dominic sorry for this. He would make him pay.

Taking care not to frighten Evangeline with his outrage, he touched her cheek again, soothing away the hurt, and with a slight wince, she let him. “Evangeline, we can't stand out here anymore,” he whispered, and grasped her wrists to move her.

She gave a gasp of pain and fell against him. “Don't!” When he let go, she whispered, “They tied my wrists. The rope . . .”

He felt the stickiness of blood beneath his fingers, and looked at the wounds. Blood circled each wrist, dried and blackened in the moonlight.

He would kill Dominic. He would rip his arms out. The bastard. The pitiless bastard.

He had thought her brave and worthy to be his bride. Now a voice in his head mocked,
She is quite worthy, indeed.

Cradling her hands in his, he asked in a tender voice, “What else did those—what else did the rebels do to you?”

“Not too much.” She drew a shuddering breath. “Dominic wouldn't let them.”

“Noble of him.” Danior would still kill him.

“Just a slap or two, and everyone got a chance to pinch at me.” Her hand went to her throat. “I didn't like it, but I wasn't . . . they didn't . . . nothing happened.”

An ignoble, niggling bit of tension inside him eased. She said she hadn't been raped. He didn't have to worry about his Baminian honor, or the fact that his firstborn might not be his.

“Danior?” She looked into his face, and not even the moonlight could hide the exhaustion that dragged her down. “Do you believe me?”

“Of course I believe you,” he said gruffly, disgusted that he'd not thought to reassure her. “Princesses do not lie.”

Although she did. She had lied from the first moment she'd seen him at Château Fortuné. She had lied about her past, her background, her very self. Yet he believed her about this. “Neither do I,” she answered, sticking to her tale of mistaken identity with a persistence he might have admired in another. That she convinced him she always told the truth must make her a liar of the highest order.

Turning his back he squatted before her, and she slid her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist as if they'd been traveling in such a manner for years. Standing, he shifted her on his back, his hands sliding along her thighs to better support her.

She adjusted herself, trying to help him, unselfconscious about touching him, and he realized a deeper relief. She would not face their wedding night with loathing. Indeed, she liked him well enough that he could overcome any resistance she had to mating with him.

Keeping to the moss, he strode back into the forest. Rafaello and Victor stepped in behind him, and they made their way down the hill, keeping a parallel course to the creekbed. As the song of the waterfall faded, his thoughts turned more and more to his predicament.

She aroused him. She always aroused him. He hadn't expected that from a political marriage; he had sworn he would be faithful to his princess, regardless of any indifference to her face and form. Now he found himself wanting to lay her down on a bed of pine boughs and make love until the lies and pretenses and protocol between them had been burned away, leaving only two bodies, two people entwined.

Her chin jolted on his shoulder, and she whimpered.

She was exhausted. He knew it, yet as the first sharp edge of jeopardy faded, here he was, erection straining at his buttons in some asinine, callous denial of the danger they all faced. His mind coldly weighed their peril; his body complained in blithe unconcern.

His stomach clenched. If he weren't careful, he would turn into his father.

But no. Danior had sworn he would never be such a libertine, and for that reason he eternally maintained a watch over himself.