The Runaway Princess (4 page)

If he were indeed mad, then he played his delusion with a cool logic she might admire . . . if only she were not the object of that delusion. “I'm not the princess, and I'm not lying!”
Or not much.
“I've got a copy of the will in my bag. It's a good will, it really, really is. Perfectly legal. If you'll just let me get it . . .”

He caught her as she tried to step around him and into the open area of the room. “Let me tell you what I think. I think you are the spoiled daughter of the House of Chartrier.”

She would have protested again, but he held up his hand. “I listened to you,” he reminded.

“But you don't
believe
me. You haven't seen this princess in twelve years, but you think you know her.”

“The evidence points to your true identity. You have been attending the convent school near Viella, just across the Spanish border. You recognized me in the dining room and retreated to your room to make up a plan—an inadequate fabrication which you were ill-equipped to tell.”

“I didn't feel the need to explain myself to a madman.” She asked suspiciously, “And why do you want this princess so badly?”

“I don't feel the need to explain the obvious.” He mocked her with her own words. “You know you panicked when you saw me holding the penknife I sent you as a present for your fifteenth birthday.” He nodded toward the desk where the contents of her secretary were scattered willy-nilly.

“I panicked because I thought you were going to stab me.”

He smiled, a slight lift of the lips. “Only a fool would hurt you.”

She hated this. He sounded so sensible, so . . . so . . . uncrazed. If he kept talking, he could almost convince her she
was
Ethelinda of Serephina.

But even if she assumed he was sane, there was still the nagging question of his identity. Choosing her words carefully, she asked, “If I were truly the princess, and I recognized you in the dining room, why would I flee in alarm?”

“I weary of your foolish questions,” he said disdainfully.

“Humor me.”

“You would flee”—he said repressively—“because you know I am Danior. Danior of the House of Leon.”

With a sinking sensation, she realized she was familiar with the name. “Danior of Baminia?”

He nodded. “Your betrothed.”

Evangeline backed toward the corner of the chamber.
“But you can't be a prince. You can't!”

Danior's heavy, dark eyebrows rose. “Why not?”

“Because you're too . . . too . . .”
Big. Broad. Muscular.

She'd seen pictures of princes in her books. Lots of them. Princes wore capes lined with robin's egg blue silk that they threw carelessly over one shoulder. They wore velvet caps trimmed with soft feathers. They trod so lightly that the ground was grateful to hold their weight. They were slender, graceful—and charming.

A prince did not wear unremitting black and white, like any gentleman of fashion. He did not have thighs as thick and sturdy as Roman columns and arms like a Roman centurion. He certainly did not stomp like a giant staking out his territory, so that the floors groaned and the crockery rattled.

The crockery
was
rattling as Danior moved toward her, obviously not charmed; his mouth compressed into a thin line. “Why not?” he rapped out.

“You have no neck,” she blurted, pressing up against the nightstand beside the bed.

He reached up and touched the knot of his plain white cravat. “Of course I have a neck. How else would I swallow?” As if he realized what he'd said, he tossed his hand out in disgust. “You're talking nonsense, and
I'm
defending myself.” He glared down at her. “It has been twelve years since I've seen you, yes, but I was fourteen on the day I bid you good-bye, and I think I have not changed significantly since then. If my looks displease you, I am sorry, but that is no reason to try to evade your duties. As time goes on, I am sure we will grow accustomed to each other's appearance.”

She had two choices. She could either go back to her “he's insane” theory, or she could accede that this peasant-built man was Danior of Baminia. She feared the latter was the truth, and she sighed as another of her lifelong fantasies, that of the elegant prince, writhed in a short and painful death. “So you think I look different?”

“Of course you look different. You were a child, totally unformed and undeveloped.” His gaze swept her quickly from head to toe, then returned to linger on her generous bosom, displayed as attractively as possible by the cut of the gown. “Although I never expected you to grow so . . . tall.”

Tall? She could have sworn he hadn't been going to comment on her height, and fascination definitely sparked in Danior's eyes. Behind her, she fumbled with the handle on the water jug. “Why not?”

“Hm?”

Yes. That was interest, compounded by that possessive gleam she'd seen in the dining room. Her alarm returned and doubled. “Why didn't you expect me to grow so tall?”

“Oh.” He looked her in the face. “You were such a short little thing. Don't you remember how our people chuckled when we stood together?”

She had to be firm. She had to be. “No, because I wasn't there. I'm not your princess.”

He stared at her as if deep in thought, then nodded once, rigidly. “And obviously, I'm not your prince.”

Her heart lifted for one brief moment before he continued.

“I forget that you are young, and wish perhaps that your life had not been arranged from the moment of your birth. So I wifi give you romance.” Darnor sank to his knees before her and took her free hand. “Princess Ethelinda, wifi you honor our betrothal and after the ceremony of Revealing, marry me in the Cathedral at Plaisance?”

Evangeline stared at the top of his bowed, yet not humble, head, and she realized she'd never been in such trouble in her life. Not when she'd been a hungry waif. Not when she'd been put to work at the orphanage. Not even two months ago when she'd slipped away from East Little Teignmouth in the deep of night.

Danior said, “Together, we can reunite our two kingdoms and create prosperity for our nations.”

She was in trouble because she wanted him to be Danior of Baminia. She wanted to be Ethelinda of Serephina. And more than anything in the world, she wanted to believe she had a home to go to,
where people looked to her with hope and affection and considered her the fulfillment of a prophecy.

She swallowed. Her grip on the pitcher loosened, and her hand reached around to hover above his head, almost touching the thick black sweep of hair.

With one word, she could change her life. She wouldn't have to go back to England and start a bookstore in loneliness and obscurity. She remembered every tale Leona had told about the Two Kingdoms. Perched on the spine of the Pyrenees, Baminia and Serephinia had once upon a time been united. A foolish quarrel had split them, and although never had there been actual combat across their shared border, the peoples cordially despised each other. According to the prophecy of Santa Leopolda, Prince Danior and Princess Ethelinda were fated to bring their countries together again, but for some reason—Evangeline looked at Danior and thought she knew why—the real princess had written a letter denouncing her heritage.

And here, conveniently, stood Evangeline, who spoke the Baminian language and knew their customs and history. She could fool everyone into thinking she was the princess, and no one would ever know the truth.

She stood on the brink of the greatest adventure of her life. The adventure she'd always dreamed of.

She opened her mouth to say, “Yes, I will marry you.”

Instead, what came out was, “I am Evangeline Scoffield of Cornwall. I'm a commoner, an orphan, and I'm going to go back to England and open a bookstore.”

The substance of adventure, when compared to the dream, contained just a little too much gritty reality for plain Evangeline Scoffield.

Yet adventure clutched her by the hand, and its name was Danior. His grip tightened, and deliberately, he lifted his head and looked into her eyes.

Determination. The man vibrated with determination. “I will marry you,” he said, “if I have to cross all of Hell's rivers to do it.”

“Might be necessary.” Behind her, she groped for the ceramic handle, and she heaved the pitcher in a wide circle. Water sloshed as she tried to crack Danior in the head, but he buried his face in her ribs. When the weight of the swinging pitcher threw her off balance, he caught her midsection under his shoulder and stood with her.

With grim satisfaction, he said, “You are a very predictable woman, Ethelinda.” And he tossed her on the bed.

The pitcher clattered to the floor as she brought her hands up, but nothing could hold off the full weight of his descent. It was like having a log fall on her, and despite what he said, there was nothing noticeably noble about this log.

“I said I would wed you.”

She tried to adjust so she could get her hands out from beneath him.

Effectively, he moved to crush her deeper into the feather mattress. “I want you to remember, this isn't my chosen method of courtship.”

“I didn't think you were courting me . . . her. I thought you were telling.” She squirmed. “I can't breathe.”

He didn't reply. He just moved against her, securing her with his weight and his hands. And she really
couldn't
breathe.

It was like before. Like at the orphanage, when she had stood up to the headmistress and her cohorts. Charitable women, they called themselves, who ran a “school.” Hags, Evangeline had said; bullies who slapped the younger girls if they wet the bed or cried out with a nightmare.

That was where she had learned that courage would be punished, and dreams never came true. How had she forgotten that lesson?

It was dark beneath him, and the feather mattress extended around the sides of her. She was suffocating, and she gasped and strained, shaking with fear. “Danior. Please.”

Abruptly she was released. She lay gasping, sucking in the air that had seemed too thin, and staring at Danior's scowl. He hovered as if waiting for a trick, and when she didn't move, he said, “Interesting. Did they lock you in the closet in that school you attended?”

“Sometimes.” Realizing he wasn't going to attack again, she sighed and relaxed.

His fingers slid along the jut of her jaw, lifting it to its former defiant position. “We didn't pay them to do that.”

“
You
didn't pay them at all.”

Pulling his hand back, he stretched out on his side, and watched her in an attitude of vigilance. “I can scarcely believe you dare to look at me through those eyes and insist you are English.”

The mattress dipped in his direction, and she struggled not to roll into him. “I
am
English.”

“You speak English very well, it is true. And you behave too much like an independent woman for your own good. But”—he brushed a feather of hair off her cheek—“you have Serephinian eyes.”

Jolted, she tried to sit up, fighting the well-aired mattress, which wished to envelop her. Bracing herself on her elbows, she watched him vigilantly as she replied, “They're odd, yes. But what do you mean, Serephinian eyes?”

“Slanted eyes, the color of mahogany. Eyes inherited from the first queen of Serephina. The queen who was conquered by a Moor, and who in turn conquered him.”

“Indeed?”

A whisper of memory tugged at her mind. The sight of an old woman with flame-blue eyes looking down at her eleven-year-old face. Taking her chin and lifting it. Turning it from side to side in austere analysis. Saying to one of the hags in charge, “I'll take her.”

Danior did much the same, stroking her chin with his thumb, scrutinizing her features. “The queen and the Moor left a combined legacy of legendary beauty and ruthlessness in my country—and in yours.”

Defensively, she drew her knees up to her chest. “Who am I supposed to be? The legendary beauty, or the ruthless conqueror?”

His heavy, dark brows snapped together. “I do not think, Ethelinda, this is the time for levity.”

She hadn't been trying to be funny. She had been trying to protect herself from mockery. And from that testy, proprietary manner with which he
handled her. “I suppose it's not out of the realm of possibility that my parents were from Serephina.”

Picking up her carelessly thrown stole, he ran it through his fingers.

The sight of the fragile lace in his broad hand gave her an odd sensation, almost as if he were threatening her. “I don't remember my parents.”

His fingers paused. “I know.”

“It's not so bad being an orphan, once one gets used to it.” Fighting the drag his weight created, she moved back toward the headboard. “It taught me to be self-sufficient.” They were in her bedchamber, this self-proclaimed prince and a counterfeit princess, and they were alone. He had wrestled her onto the mattress. When she had demanded release, he had done so, true, but he had also first made a rather oblique comment. What was it?
This isn't my chosen method of courtship.

“You don't know me well,” she said, “and certainly you have no reason to be concerned about a mere stranger.” She glanced at him from beneath her lashes. He wrapped her stole around his neck and flung the end over one shoulder in an extravagant gesture.

He should have appeared effeminate. Instead, the lace contrasted with his black jacket. The fringe trickled down his broad back. Incongruous decoration on a stolid statue of a man. “But you needn't worry that I'll be unable to care for myself.”

She scooted toward the edge of the bed and lowered one foot toward the floor. “I am quite practical. This adventure was only a temporary aberration in the even tenor of my life.”

Her toes had just touched hardwood when his hand grasped her other ankle. “Much as I admire your attempt to divert me from my purpose by reminding me of the tragedies which have ruled your life and your rather touching attempt at bravado, I find myself unmoved—
Princess
.”

He emphasized the title with what Evangeline considered unnecessary vigor. “You also seem to be skeptical about our need for you in Serephina and in Baminia.”

“But you see, you've made a mistake.” She tugged at her ankle.

“I am the crown prince of Baminia, and I do not make mistakes.” His fingers pressed deeper, compressing the bones. Sitting up, he continued speaking relentlessly, confident as only a man who had never made a mistake could be. “As prince, I frequently mingle with my people, and I would never mistake a commoner for nobility. So luckily for you, I am well aware of not only my own duty, but of yours, and I possess the means to enforce your obedience.”

His eyes burned like the flame in the hottest part of the fire, and she could almost see the air between them waver in the heat. Compelled by the kind of appalled curiosity that made onlookers crane to view a carriage wreck, she asked, “What means are those?”

“I have the strength. I have the determination.” Taking her hand, he pressed it between his legs. “And I have this.”

Ignorant as she was of anything but instruction from a book, it took her a moment to realize what the shape beneath his trousers indicated.