Penelope & Prince Charming (2 page)

Damien studied the square church and cluster of whitewashed, thatch-roofed houses before letting the velvet curtain fall. So this was Little Marching. After weeks of grueling travel, he had arrived at last.

“And she is here?” he asked.

“Yes,” Sasha said. His former tutor touched his neatly trimmed beard as he always did when he was nervous. “Somewhere.”

Damien instructed the coachman to halt in the village square. Rufus, one of the footmen, jerked open the door and made an exaggerated bow. Damien climbed down before the other footman, Miles, could whip the cushioned step stool under his feet. Both footmen shot Damien a disappointed look.

The village was silent as Damien strolled a little way along the cobbled square, past quiet houses with blank windows. He knew the villagers watched. How could they not? He was a stranger here, an object of interest.

And what an object. The hired chaise was painted a luxurious, shiny black, the spokes of its wheels picked out in red. The four horses were gray, perfectly matched, and sported purple plumes on their headstalls. The plumes drooped now from the long journey, but Sasha had insisted on plumes. Damien’s own horse, midnight black and bred from the finest stock, was tethered behind the carriage.

Damien’s tall footmen, Rufus and Miles, were Nvengarian to the hilt, with black hair, blue eyes, and bright blue, military-style livery. Sasha dressed in a Bond Street suit, over which he wore his red and gold sash of office as the prince’s advisor.

For traveling, Damien had remained casual—a linen shirt and riding breeches with boots and a coat shrugged on over all. His black hair hung free, and like all Nvengarians, he did not wear a hat.

But even in subdued dress, his six-and-a-half-foot height and broad shoulders made people take a second look. He did not belong there, and the watching square made sure he knew that.

Damien glanced at a long, low building of crumbling stone on one side of the square. “Is that the tavern?” he asked his footmen in Nvengarian.

Rufus and Miles, the experts on country taverns, nodded.

Rufus and Miles had discovered that the best thing about world travel was beer. From Bucharest to Austria to the Low Countries to England, no matter what language the natives spoke, the two young men could make understood the words “tavern” and “beer.”

Now they stood to attention on each side of the inn’s door while Damien ducked inside. Sasha followed, then the two footmen brought up the rear.

Damien found a typical English tavern, low-ceilinged
with a smoking fireplace, settles along the walls, and tables bowed from years of use. On this warm afternoon, the room was mostly empty, as farmers were still in their fields and villagers worked at their trade.

The benches were half-filled with older men, grizzledhaired grandfathers taking refuge in a pint of ale and banter with friends. As Damien entered, every man lifted his head and stared.

Damien had been in English country taverns before. But on those journeys he’d been alone. The locals had looked him over, then stoically accepted him as another traveler. He’d never before entered a tavern with his entourage.

The patrons studied Rufus and Miles and Sasha and Damien. The silence grew hostile.

Sasha looked back at them, aghast. “On your feet,” he cried, “for the most Imperial Prince Damien Augustus Frederic Michel of Nvengaria.”

The landlord, who’d come forward at their entrance, stopped in his tracks. Someone snorted. Dark mutters began.

“Why do they not stand?” Sasha hissed to Damien in Nvengarian. “Why do these peasants not bow?”

Sasha liked people to bow. In palaces across Europe, Prince Damien was greeted with bows and curtsies and, at times, downright groveling. But then, Damien was handsome and rich and well liked. He was known for his generosity; plus, he was a crack shot, an athletic rider, and reputed to be one of the best lovers in Europe.

He was admired for his handsome body, his intelligence, his energy, and his interest in everything from new inventions to pretty tavern wenches. Good times were never far behind whenever Damien of Nvengaria visited.

But this time, once they’d reached England, Damien had traveled incognito, or as incognito as Sasha would let
him. Sasha loved pageantry and was dismayed whenever people did not recognize Damien.

But then, poor Sasha had been locked in a dungeon for fifteen years. He’d dared to defend Damien once upon a time, and Damien’s father hadn’t liked that. Damien, who’d likewise been locked in a dungeon and knew how it felt, indulged Sasha whenever he could.

“They are not peasants,” he told Sasha now. “If you call an English farmer a peasant, he will skewer your balls on his pitchfork.”

The smaller man whitened. “Truly?”

Damien looked back at the hostile faces. He smiled. “Rufus, remind me of that magic phrase, will you?”

Rufus grinned. He drew himself up and said in his thickly accented English, “Drinks for everyone.”

Men shifted. The air thawed. Damien announced to the landlord, “Your best ale for every man in the room.”

He reached into his coat pocket and drew out a pouch that clinked. The landlord and patrons suddenly grinned.

An hour later, the place had been transformed. Rufus and Miles played a loud game of dice in the corner with three of the locals. Damien’s coachman stood in the doorway, one eye on the carriage, one on the comely barmaid who brought him ale.

Sasha was immersed in a crowd of half-drunk listeners while he tried to explain in his accented English the entire history of Nvengaria.

Damien drew the largest group with his warm smile and store of off-color stories. The men of Little Marching laughed and slapped each other on their backs. The ale kept coming.

The commotion attracted the attention of the other villagers. The butcher and the blacksmith shed aprons and shut up shop to join the throng. A few farmers drifted in from their fields. Boys came to ogle Damien’s coach and riding horse, and women peered into the tavern to ogle
Damien. The landlord’s daughter gave him sly looks from under her lashes.

But Damien had not come for a dalliance. He had a task to complete before Midsummer’s Day, or all would be lost. He turned to his fifteen new best friends and asked, “Tell me, is there a house called Ashborn Manor nearby?”

He got fifteen garbled answers, but most agreed that he should ride out of town to the north a mile or so.

He rose, remarkably steady on his feet, and made them all a courtly bow. The villagers scrambled to rise and bow back, with varying degrees of success.

Damien returned the bows and strolled out of the tavern. The villagers shouted their good-byes.

“Wait, my friends,” Rufus slurred from inside the tavern. “Before I go, I teach you Nvengarian dance.”

The tavern roared with laughter, then the clapping began.

The black horse shook its head and snorted as Damien approached.

“A little longer, my friend,” Damien murmured, stroking him. “And you can go home.” They both could.

Damien untied the stallion from the carriage, mounted, and rode off to the north.

“What on earth are they doing?” Meagan asked.

Meagan and Penelope paused on the road that wound down the hill and into the village. A strange carriage with horses sporting purple plumes stood in the street in front of the tavern below. A line of men were issuing from the door of the tavern, their hands on each others’ waists. Occasionally, they’d wave their arms or kick their feet, making an odd chanting sound.

A few of the women who’d been peeking into the tavern were swept into the line. Other villagers, including the vicar, came out of their houses to watch.

“Should we go down?” Meagan asked worriedly.

“I am not certain.”

They were distracted from the dancing villagers by the sound of hoofbeats on a curve of the road hidden by a stand of trees. A man on a black horse came suddenly around the curve, riding straight toward them.

The horse was one of the finest Penelope had ever seen. Her father’s love of horses had taught her to appreciate good horseflesh. She saw that this one had every conformation point in balance, a sheen to its black coat, and a rippling midnight tail.

The man on its back was also the finest she’d ever seen. He was taller than any she knew, including Meagan’s father. The stranger had wide shoulders and a broad chest, yet he rode well for a large man, moving in perfect time with his horse.

Tight trousers, Meagan had said. This man wore duncolored breeches that molded to his limbs. Black boots hugged muscular calves, and his hair, black as his horse’s, gleamed in the sunlight. His face was square, his skin bronzed. A black frock coat emphasized the powerful build of his shoulders and the tapered tautness of his abdomen, the tails sweeping back to reveal narrow hips.

“Oh, my,” Meagan said. “Oh my, oh my, oh my.”

Penelope’s heart beat in strange, thick strokes, as though something had taken hold of her body and squeezed it tight. Time seemed to slow, sound and vision melting like hot glass.

The horse was upon them. Penelope knew she should move, but she was frozen in place. Meagan, timid of horses, lifted her skirts and scurried to the side of the road.

At the last minute, the man stopped the horse, pulling it to a skidding halt two steps from Penelope. A puff of dust rose from its hooves, and the horse tossed its head, bathing Penelope in a warm
whuff
of breath.

The man turned the beast, a movement that put his firm thigh and leather boot right in front of Penelope. She
found her gaze riveted to the line of muscle of his bent knee, the supple folds of the boot around his ankle.

She forced her eyes upward. The man had a face of raw handsomeness, tanned as though he’d spent much time out of doors. It was a square face, cheekbones high and masculine, with a fine shadow of unshaven beard along his jaw. He wore gloves, expensive gloves, if she were any judge, over large and powerful hands.

She suddenly wondered what those hands would feel like on her body.

She went rigid with shock, wondering why she’d suddenly wondered such a thing. And yet…

The man looked down at her with eyes of intense blue, and smiled.

Penelope’s knees went weak. This man knew how to smile. He did not merely lift his lips, he put every ounce of sincerity into it. He could make anyone on the receiving end of that smile happy she’d climbed out of bed in the morning. A girl would get up extra early if she thought she’d have a chance of seeing him smile like that.

Even better if he smiled from the pillow next to her.

Penelope jerked her thoughts from that treacherous place. The thoughts had come unbidden, and yet she could not stop them flooding her mind. His large hands in her hair, his smile as he leaned over her in the dark, his kisses on her lips, his voice whispering her name.

She shivered, hard, and the visions dissolved. But threads of them lingered, leaving her body hot and tight.

Meagan had crept forward to peer over Penelope’s shoulder. “Who is he?”

Penelope had no idea. She’d spent three seasons in London and had never seen anything like him. She’d have remembered
him.

And yet, she suddenly had the strangest feeling she did know him. Some thought deep inside her mind clicked, as though it were, well,
satisfied.

The man bowed from the waist. “Good afternoon, ladies.”

His voice was low and rich, his English just accented enough to send another shiver down Penelope’s spine.

“Oh,” Meagan breathed happily. “He’s foreign.”

“Meagan, do not be impolite,” Penelope said, her own voice strangled.

“‘Tisn’t impolite. It is a fact.”

The man’s smile widened. Both girls heaved a little sigh.

“Do you know a house called Ashborn Manor?” he asked.

“Of course we do,” Meagan answered brightly. “We’ve just come from there.” She pointed. “It is that way.”

“Excellent.” He sounded as though her answer was the most important news in the world to him. “Will you show me?”

Panic worked its way into Penelope’s throat. “We do not know you, sir,” she began, but at the same time Meagan said, “Of course.”

He chuckled as they glared at each other. His laughter was a low, silken sound. “I wish to reach the house before my entourage finds me. Will you ride with me?”

He looked straight at Penelope. Or maybe he did not. Meagan was standing nearly on top of her.

“You must, Penelope.” Meagan giggled. “I am afraid of horses.”

Meagan stepped away, leaving Penelope alone in front of the large horse and the man’s devastating smile.

He held out his hand. “Please. I would be most grateful.”

He bent a little in the saddle, stretching his hand to her.
Ride away with me,
his eyes said.
Just for a little while.

Against her wishes, Penelope imagined sitting on the horse with him, his strong arms surrounding her and keeping her safe. They would canter off to lands unknown, and he’d feed her strawberries, following them with kisses as gentle as snowflakes.

Her vision took them to a meadow, where she’d lie on the grass and he’d loosen her bodice, leaning to kiss her bared shoulder.

She gasped, stunned by the thoughts that kept invading her mind. His blue eyes twinkled as though he’d put the thoughts into her head himself, and knew what they did there.

Meagan was saying, “He is quite courteous. I vow, Pen, I do not know how you can refuse when he puts it so nicely.”

“Because we do not know him,” Penelope said weakly.

“Oh, Penny, where is the harm?”

Penelope took a deep breath. “I still don’t think—”

Meagan grabbed her sleeve, dragged her a few steps away, and began whispering furiously. “If you do not wish to make his acquaintance, you are plain mad. He is the handsomest man I’ve ever seen in my life, and he’s obviously rich—and foreign. We should show him that English people are hospitable, should we not?”

“Yes, but—”

Meagan did not give her a chance. “Think upon this, Pen. He’s bent upon visiting the house. Right now. What do you think is happening up there?
Right now?”