Enchanted (16 page)

Rumbold puzzled for a moment over the proper response and then replied, “This is the Age of Glory. We are men of action.” The marquis bowed again and shuffled off to his escorts, who instantly caught him up in whispered queries as to what had provoked more than a two-word reply.

Velius approached and bowed to the dark young woman in green whose trembling hand now clasped Rumbold’s. “Forgive me. I need to borrow my cousin for a time.”

“Yes, Your Grace.” The girl curtseyed low and excused herself.

“For what?” asked Rumbold when they were clear of the receiving line. “How much time?”

“Oh, I’d say the better part of a
week.”
Velius nodded toward the stair. “At least until sunrise.” He breathed a short laugh and shook his head. “Fool.” If his cousin said anything after that, Rumbold didn’t hear.

She was a vision in a silver dress, though he missed her without the finery. He missed her quick wit and easy smile. He missed her laugh. He longed to coax one out of her, but he couldn’t rush things. She would feel uncomfortable around him at first. As a man he was still a stranger to her; not just his title forced the distance between them. It was a distance he would not tolerate for long.

Enchanted, he moved closer, slowly, drawn to her. Minglers moved aside and voices hushed. She was just so... pretty? He had thought so with his frog’s eyes, but as a man he knew it. Yes, she was pretty, but so were many of the women who had paraded themselves before him that evening. Something beyond pretty radiated from inside Sunday. The folds of her dress called to him, the curve of her wrist beckoned, the silver pins scattered through her hair winked in invitation. She was beautiful. He wanted to tell her so every day for the rest of his life. Starting tonight.

“Miss Woodcutter.” He had not meant to be so loud. Had the music stopped?

She looked up at him
—up
at him!—with those eyes as blue as the cloudless summer sky, and just as empty of recognition.
“It’s me
!” he wanted to scream. He wanted to laugh, to cry, to scoop her up in his feeble arms and take her back to the Wood, back to their well, back to where they had fallen in love. Where she had healed him. Where she had given him the one thing he had never known he was missing and had made him whole. Where he had been born again. Where he had chosen life, for her. All for her. He wanted to fall to one knee and ask her the question that would bind her to him forever. He was the crown prince. She couldn’t say no.

But binding only meant obligation, not willingness. He needed to take his time. Make her comfortable. Make peace with her family. Make her love him. And yet, how could he justify forcing her to fall in love with a man
he
still didn’t really know? The boy he had been did not deserve her. And the man he was now ... would start with a dance. One dance.

She curtseyed, a proper curtsey that a Woodcutter’s daughter had little business knowing. As exquisite a picture as she made, he wished she hadn’t.

Patience.

She loved him, he reminded himself. She already loved him, or he would not be here standing before her. Taller than her.

“Your Highness,” she said coldly.

Breathe. Air in. Air out.

One dance.

T
HE CROWN PRINCE
of Arilland was asking her to dance. Sunday disguised her trembling hands in the folds of her gown and quickly swallowed the urge to vomit.

She had not prepared for this moment. She had hoped that this evening, and both subsequent ones, would be uneventful and quickly done. The sooner it was all over, the sooner they could all sit around nice bowls of stew, talk about the weather, and console Mama in her disappointment. Monday would go back to her palace, Wednesday to her tower, Friday to church, and Saturday to the Wood. Sunday would learn her magic lessons well enough and then Aunt Joy, too, would float away on the same stormy wind that had brought her to their door.

The prince was still there, hand held out to her, awaiting her reply. Turn and run, or stay and face the music?

She would have run, had there been anything left for her to run to.

Sunday took the prince’s hand, and he led her to the center of the room. His fingers were thin and soft, like Monday’s. She stared at the gold medal on his breast; fear more than decorum kept her from looking directly at him. He must have known of their connection; there were many Woodcutters in the land, but none with such ridiculously named daughters. Even if he had been too young to remember it, the prince could not have grown to adulthood without knowing his role in Jack’s demise.

Was this a gesture of mending ways between their families?
In a perfect world, maybe.
Was he completely and utterly ignorant?
Certainly possible.
Was this his way of demonstrating to both her family and the world that he always got what he wanted?
Almost definitely.

The orchestra started a waltz, and she mentally counted off the three-beat time.
Oh why me,
Sunday chanted silently with every movement.
Oh why me, oh why me, oh why me
...Over and over again as they turned eddies in the sea of beautiful people, over and over again—until she slipped and said it aloud. Her eyes widened in horror.

“I’m glad you asked,” said the prince, casually, as if they’d been conversing all evening. “I need to know something, and you look like you have enough wit to answer my question honestly.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.” It was a natural reaction to curtsey at the title, and Sunday stumbled. The prince deftly spun her around to cover up the misstep.

“My fault,” he said quickly. “Are you ready for my question?”

She nodded sternly.

“Do I look as stupid as I feel?” he asked.

Sunday bit her lips together and swallowed the laugh, which died as a snort in the back of her throat. One did not laugh at His Royal Highness. After a few more mental counts of three beneath the constellations of candles and crystals above, she felt calm enough to reply. “You could wear a sackcloth,” she said, “or nothing at all. No one would ever think you looked stupid or be traitorous enough to say so.”

“Exactly,” said the prince, “which is why I’m asking you. I think myself a relatively good judge of character, and you seem the type of person who does not lie casually.”

They’d only just met; how on earth would he know such a thing? Was it a challenge? “In that case,” said Sunday, “you look fine. Very smart. Very handsome. As a prince should look. Although...”

“Tell me.”

It
was
a challenge! All right, then. She had costumed herself for her mother’s sake, attended this circus overflowing with strangers, and despite her inner turmoil had somehow attracted the notice of the crown prince himself. He had invited her to dance his first dance. He had taken her hand and not let go. He had asked for her honesty, and she didn’t have the energy left to be anyone but herself.

“There is a rather large chunk of your hair sticking out on the left side.” In truth, his hair stuck out a bit everywhere, but the left side was slightly more dramatic than the rest.

“I knew it!” the prince said through his teeth. “Damn nuisance. There’s no help for it.”

There’s no help for either of us.
Sunday hoped he couldn’t feel her hand trembling in his. “I’m sure if you smoothed it down quickly, no one would notice.”

“You said it yourself, Miss Woodcutter: everyone would notice. They will all say I am too vain for my own good.”

She took in every syllable he uttered, but his eyes spoke to her in other words. He knew. He knew they were both pawns in a game long played by their elders, and he was as desperate as she to change the rules. “I would do it for you,” she offered, “but then everyone would say I was too familiar.”

The prince threw back his head and laughed loudly. Sunday tensed in his arms. Every eye in the room turned to them, and every other mouth whispered her name. She was instantly reminded of her place in the world. Perhaps it was a good thing. She had been feeling entirely too comfortable with this man who was supposed to be her enemy. She felt her cheeks turn instantly red, which no doubt sent more tongues wagging.

“I love that you blush.”

“Why did you do that?” Sunday whispered.

“Because everyone was looking,” he said, “and now everyone assumes that you are too familiar, so you must dance every other dance with me after this. In order to save yourself the humiliation of dancing with a lunatic all night, you have no choice but to tame my wild locks.”

“Scoundrel.” His playfulness drew her in. She reached out a hand and gently coaxed his chestnut hair back behind his ear. It was thick and silky, and her grooming was over with far too quickly. His eyes never left her face; they continued to tell her things she wasn’t sure she was ready to hear.

Half the room gasped. Sunday didn’t care. She saw no harm in letting a handsome, powerful man adore her for a while. She looked the prince straight in the eye and returned his smile, and they danced on. In that moment, she was the most beautiful woman in the room.

Too soon, the dance came to an end. The prince stepped back, released her, and bowed. A chill swept over her. She was surprised to find that she wished she were still in his arms, still talking, still smiling, her body still engaged in an activity that distracted her from the sadness and complications of her life. He had shocked and confused and embarrassed and scared her, but she had
felt
those things. She’d been nothing but numb for so long; it was blissful beyond belief to feel anything at all ... and even better to feel so admired.

Without his support, her hands were free to tremble once again. She grabbed a handful of skirts and curtseyed, noticing how clean and unworn his shoes were. He probably had a new pair for each day of the year.

Even as he bowed, those intense eyes never left her; she could feel the heat of them. It would take her a few seconds to rise, and then those bright and shining shoes would be on their way to some other corner of the room, dancing on some other part of the floor, brushing against some other skirts, setting some other woman’s blood boiling for entirely different reasons. He had promised her other dances, yes, but Sunday could guess the weight of a wayward prince’s promise. There was no sense getting her hopes up only to have them dashed again. The only intentions she trusted were her own. At the moment, even those were suspect.

He did not leave. They both just stood there in the middle of the floor, memorizing each other. The musicians awkwardly tuned their instruments. Sunday stared back into those dark eyes, braver now, looking for answers to questions she had no right to ask. She could not quit the dance floor until he escorted her off, but he made no move to do so. A new song began, and a few brave dancers took up the rhythm. The prince remained exactly as he was. Had he taken ill? Again?

“Do you want to know why I danced with you?” he asked into the music.

“Why?”

He leaned into her, and her heart raced. He did not touch her again, but she could feel his breath stirring the soft hairs beside her ear. He smelled of fire and ash, wood smoke and secrets. Sunday remained still, her hands clenched in her skirts. The room blurred. There was no crowd, no music, no castle, no ceiling of candlelit stars, no time. There was only his voice. “I want to be one of your stories.”

Sunday lost her grip on the perfect magical control she’d been maintaining for the last two days. A seam beneath her arm gave a little, and the curls went limp in her hair. A silver ribbon slipped from Wednesday’s ministrations and fluttered to the floor between them.

Her eyes were not the only ones that followed the prince as he knelt to retrieve the ribbon. Instead of returning it to her he let it lie, a limp river of sparkling moonlight across his palm. “Stepping away from here will be like going into battle.”

Sunday stayed focused on the ribbon. He hadn’t really danced with her. He wasn’t really saying these things. He would return her ribbon, and she would vanish back to her worn linens and quiet tower and slightly less-than-normal reality.

“It is customary for a soldier to accept a lady’s favor before going into battle. Would you do me the honor?”

He was joking. He had to be joking. This was some mischievous scheme to make a mockery of her and her family, but for the life of her, Sunday couldn’t figure it out. She should refuse. She should turn away and leave. But he had been nothing but kind to her. He had made her welcome and made her smile. He had made her forget, for one unforgettable dance, about the pain and the numbness that awaited her outside these walls. She liked him. The only person she could hate for that was herself.

“That’s an awfully long pause,” he whispered. “Please say something.”

“Yes.”

It was more of a breath than an answer, but it was all she could manage of either. She lifted the ribbon from his hand without touching his skin and tied it around his left arm, near the shoulder. Her fingers were too clumsy to fashion a bow, so she tied a simple knot and pulled it tight, letting the ends of the ribbon trail down past his elbow. Sunday knew what it meant. Every woman who held this arm tonight would remember that shed been there first.

This time she did step away. She stared at the hem of her silver gown, which matched the favor he now brandished. She did not want to look into the crowd and discover how many enemies she had just made. Sunday experienced a dreadful moment of inadequacy.

A slender man appeared at Rumbold’s side, with blood-violet eyes and hair as black as night. “May I present my cousin Velius Morana, Duke of Cauchemar. He will escort you back to your family.” Sunday curtseyed again; she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her much longer. “Look after her,” the prince said to Velius.

“My pleasure,Your Highness.” Velius took her arm and led her off the dance floor, back to her stern mother, her princess sister, and the throng of strangers hovering around them who suddenly wanted to know everything about her. She hesitated. The duke placed his body between her and the rainbow of onlookers.