Linda Needham (8 page)

Still he eyed the contents of the room, his right hand flat against his thigh, as though he had a knife hidden nearby, ready to use on an assassin who might be lurking behind every corner.

“Then what are all these crates doing here?”

She walked past him and patted the top of one, just for good measure. “This is only the staging area. It’s
where I pack up everything as it comes in before storing the items safely downstairs.”

“What sorts of things do you have here, madam?” He rattled the lock on a leather-strapped crate, disdainful and impatient.

“Well, statuary, pottery, wood carvings…for example”—she drew a key from the ring in her pocket and popped open the lock on one of the iron-bound chests—“this contains some very old, very important Boratanian weapons that were looted from my family’s castles during and after the war.”

“If they were looted from your country years ago, Princess, how did they end up in your possession?” He lifted the rounded lid off the nest of excelsior and rested it carefully against the chest.

“I bought a few and some were given to me as gifts. Guilt works very well. But the most effective of all has been just plain stealing them back.”

Wexford narrowed his gaze at her. “What did you say?”

Perhaps she had just confessed a sin he hadn’t found in her dossier. No going back now; he would learn of her exploits sooner or later. He was bound to be suspicious of everything she did or said. Especially after she’d played such a childish game with him that morning, sneaking out of her chamber merely because she could, and because she knew it would gall him.

“You heard me right.” Feeling a bit like a thief unloading ill-gotten goods at the pawnshop, she folded back the wad of packing material and removed the long canvas bag. “Whenever I see an item that I recognize as having been stolen from Boratania in her hour of dire need, I simply confiscate it on the spot.”

He stared bluntly at her. “You must be mad, Princess.”

“Furious, if you must know.” Though she had learned long ago to curb her anger and to just do what she knew was right. “You’d be furious, too, if your fellow peers thought nothing of walking off with your family’s treasures.”

That seemed to catch him by surprise. He laughed without an ounce of humor. “I suppose I would, Princess. But—”

“Whether they realized it or not, Wexford, the looters not only made off with items of incalculable value, but in the process they seized the history of my kingdom. As though they had erased its past from all memory.”

“That’s called the spoils of war.”

“I call it stealing, my lord.”

“Indeed.” He gingerly pulled the sword from the canvas sleeve, then gripped the weapon firmly, raised it masterfully in his large, bronze hand.

Her warrior protector.

The ancient blade was long and broad and made of black iron. And he wore it magnificently well. The handle had once been highly filigreed, though now it was well worn, its gems smoothed and bright.

“You’re holding Boratania’s ceremonial sword of state.” She found herself smiling up at him as she traced her fingertip down the length of the blade toward the hilt, startled at the thrill it sent through her arm, as though it had somehow come alive in Wexford’s hand.

He lowered his dark gaze to her, his breathing steady though suddenly deeper. “It’s quite remarkable, Princess.”

“It’s very old.” Caro swallowed hard and pulled her hand away, easing the heady jangling only slightly. “According to my records it dates back to at least 583, when the house of Grostov was established. Though the rubies weren’t set into the handle until about 1182. To commemorate the king’s impending crusade into the Holy Land.”

Wexford lowered the blade from its angled, upward thrust at the ceiling. “Joining King Richard, I assume?”

“Unfortunately, the king died of a fever and never quite made it out of Boratania. His son and heir was only an infant at the time, which set off a seventeen-year regency, so nothing came of the crusade but the rubies in the sword. And a crown and scepter.”

“Do you intend to put the crown jewels of Boratania on display at this exhibition?” The amazing man then flicked his wrist and caught the sword by the hilt, the blade tip pointing toward the flagstone floor.

Show-off
, she wanted to say as he extended his arm. The lout didn’t deserve the satisfaction.

“The Boratanian crown jewels will remain safely locked in the undercroft until the day of my investiture. After that, I’ll be taking them home with me to Boratania.”

For some reason, that seemed to catch the man off guard. “You’re planning to leave?”

“That’s the point of all this, Wexford. After my investiture, I’ll be returning to my homeland.”

“Ah, yes. Your ten square miles of Boratania.”

And how close she was to going home after all these years.

“My very own ten square miles, Wexford. With two castles, three old castle towns, a half dozen
manor houses and numerous farms.” She held out the canvas sleeve for Wexford, watched as he tilted the tip of the blade into the opening and sheathed the sword with a flourish.

Aware of his gaze on her, she replaced the sword and then the packing in the crate, which she locked with a resounding
snap
.

“Are you sure all your treasures will fit when you get there?” He circled a bank of crates, thumping them as if they were melons.

“I know exactly where everything came from and where everything will go. Every candlestick and tapestry. I’ve been planning this for years and years. I’ve recorded it all in a master log.” Always delighted when anyone showed the slightest interest in her collection, Caro pointed to the pair of granite corbels sitting atop her worktable. “These belong on the facade of the opera house in the town of Ebeling.”

He eyed her like a wolf as he continued his circling. “You mean to put them back?”

“I mean to completely restore every inch of Boratania after I become empress. At least my ten square miles of it.”

He picked up one of the granite corbels as though it were made of papier-mâché, not solid stone. “Have you rescued all of the crown jewels?”

“Half of them. The scepter and the ancient ceremonial sword I just showed you. I’m still missing the orb and the crown itself.”

“Rescued from whom?” He upended the corbel and studied the base.

“From whom, indeed?” The whole matter still rankled when she thought of it, still brought a blot of anger to her cheeks. “The scepter was hanging in the
throne room of my Danish cousin, King Frederick III.”

He set the corbel beside the other, frowning at her as he walked toward her. “You broke into the king’s palace and stole the scepter?”

“I didn’t have to break in. I was attending a royal birthday party and I recognized it amongst a display of other weapons. I exclaimed loudly enough for all to hear how grateful and delighted I was that my dear cousin had been keeping my family’s precious ceremonial sword safe for me for all this time. Then I had one of my footmen immediately remove it from the wall. It was on its way to England the next morning.”

He had been peering down at her, as serious as a judge, when he suddenly broke into a huge bellow of laughter that rang on and on, until he was wiping at his eyes with his sleeve.

“You’re quite the thief, aren’t you, Princess? A brazen daylight robbery in front of a hundred witnesses! And poor old Frederick, without a boot to stand in.”

“Whatever it takes, Lord Wexford,” she said, not knowing what to make of his expansive amusement. “Besides, it was just a scepter. Brass, not gold, studded with a few barely precious gems. Not that it matters. Frederick had known all along that the scepter was mine. And that I was right to reclaim it.”

His humor had cooled, though his gaze hadn’t, nor the tip of his finger that he touched to her chin. “’Being right,’ Princess, will make you enemies quicker than anything else.”

“Not Frederick. And I can’t possibly take the time to care, Wexford.” Or to wonder at the growing flush that seemed to emanate from their point of contact,
that seemed to be gathering between her breasts and spreading out from there. Utterly undone and thoroughly overexposed by the man’s nearness, Caro dashed around him to her main work area. “Um…well, and back here…I haven’t cataloged any of this yet, though I’ve had some of the items for months. I’m falling more behind every day.”

And bloody hell, Princess, I seem to be following you like a lamb to slaughter.

Drew had always prided himself on keeping a cool, professional distance from the objects of his assignments, no matter how beautiful or seductive, no matter the temptation or the willingness of the woman.

Yet, here he was, less than a half day into the job and he was near slavering after this one, sniffing at her fragrance, his eyes forever wandering over her curves and angles.

“Are you all right, Wexford?” Her voice slipped through him from around a tall stack of crates.

“Just…yes, Princess. Looking at this”—he picked up a brass object, then set it down again with a clunk—“this bowl…thing.”

Or whatever.

Drew had been surprised to see that the work area looked more like a jumble shop than her tidy storage space, with pottery and tools and rolled-up lengths of fabric. A worktable stood in the center, a thick loose-leaf book lay open in the center, flanked by two lamps and an inkwell.

“As you see, Wexford, it’s a bit of everything, all of it waiting for me to enter into my logbook.” She reached into an open barrel and pulled a rectangle of muslin, unwrapping what appeared to be an old
book. “This is a late seventeenth-century book of Boratanian game birds. It was illustrated by Jan Romigliov, published by Kuehn and Company of Tinlincken—”

“And stolen from whom?” Drew hid his amusement by leafing through the fine engravings, unable to ignore the soft, rosy scent of her morning bath rising off her nape.

“Actually, Wexford,” she said with a glittering, sideways glance as she whirled away from him, lavender on blue, “I found the book on a junk wagon in Edinburgh.”

“A lucky find.” Though he doubted that she would have stopped at grabbing the book off the queen’s own lap, if she’d come across Her Royal Majesty reading it.

“I’m always on the lookout for…ughhh.” He turned to see her hoisting a great iron piece from the bottom of another crate.

“Bloody hell, Princess!” Drew wrestled the iron weight out of her hands and clunked it onto the floor beside the worktable. “Good lord, madam, it’s an andiron.”

“Which once resided on the hearth of the banner hall at Croff castle.”

He swiped a stray rag around the head of the andiron. “It’s dusty and full of soot, madam. How do you know where it came from?”

“Believe me, I know exactly.” She muttered as she flipped through the pages in her logbook, found her place and pointed to a carefully printed line. “Here’s the description from Count Croff’s last will and testament dated 1829: ‘iron with brass fittings, eighteen inches tall, of a Boratanian beehive and bee design.’

He died alongside my father. So we know it belonged to him at the time of the siege. Since he died without heirs, his goods would have come to the crown, therefore anything in this document is fair game.”

“Princess, you’d have made a fine lawyer.”

“Too many rules to follow.” She turned up her nose and tossed him a grin as she went back to her rummaging.

He studied the pages of the madwoman’s hefty logbook: her neatly printed hand, precise and strong, minute details and historical descriptions, each carefully scribed into the long columns.

Dates and times of her various crimes of passion. The logbook was tabulated into categories.

Would that the clerks at the Factory kept their intelligence records with as much organization and detail.

“Can I give you a hand here today, madam?”

She frowned as she clunked a brass pot on the table. “You must have better things to do, my lord.”

Anything to keep you safely indoors, Princess, and out of range of an assassin.

And closer to me.

“If you’re going to be here, madam, so am I. You might as well put me to work.”

All the better to keep his thoughts in check. She was fast becoming an impossible distraction, and though the place looked a hodgepodge, there actually might be clues to the threat against her.

“Well, then,” she said, as she poured a shilling-sized pool of beeswax-scented oil into the center of a flannel rag, then started shining the bowl, “would you mind setting the andiron right here next to the pot?”

He didn’t mind at all, not even carrying this bloody chunk of cast iron for the second time. Ross had been right to envy him, and this particular mission, at least at this particular moment.

Most of their assignments didn’t smell a tenth as good as Caro, or sound as sweet as her laughter.

She set a primitive wooden coffer on the table beside the logbook. A beehive adorned one corner of the flat lid, a trail of bees danced along the edge.

“You won’t believe where I found this one, Wexford.”

“If I said the pope’s sideboard, Princess, would I be far off the mark?”

She laughed again. “It’s an ancient relic coffer. It belonged to the church of Saint Hildebrandt. As far as I can tell, it’s been empty for centuries.” She lifted the brass latch and carefully propped the lid backward against the inkwell. “See…empty. And interesting only to me. Which is why I can’t believe that Lord Peverel, my very own acting chancellor, was harboring it in his library.”

“Old Peverel?” Another innocent victim of the lunatic princess. “What did he say when he saw it marching out the door? Or did you simply put him to shame as well?”

“I doubt he’s even noticed. I’d come to drop off some papers at the time, but he wasn’t home.” She had turned to rustle inside a nearby crate and now returned to the table with a tarnished silver candle
stick, a small ruby red glass cruet, and another book. “I found these in his library, too. I guess no one is immune to a little looting.”