Prince Incognito (3 page)

Come to think of it, who was he? Fighting back against the throbbing in his head, he tried to think, but the pain only pounded louder, the blanket of darkness heavier. He
tried for a moment to resist it, then gave in to its pressing darkness.

TWO

L
illian left the soldier sleeping on the cushioned bench and headed for the pilothouse, where her father was bound to be sulking at the wheel, resenting her for rescuing the man. After helping her squeeze the soldier into an old T-shirt, her mother had gone belowdecks, where the 52-foot sloop housed three cabins, two bathrooms and the freshly stocked kitchen. Night had fallen,
and Lily knew her mother was tired from the events of the day. No doubt she’d gone on to bed.

Padding silently up the steps to the pilothouse, Lily heard her father’s voice and realized he was on the phone. Not wanting to interrupt him, she held back, trying to evaluate how long he might spend on the call.

“Ha! I wish it had been a dolphin. I’d even take a shark. No, this time she
rescued a human. What’s that? Yes, you heard right. A person. A soldier, actually. He was injured in all those explosions. Now he’s passed out on deck with some sort of concussion.”

Lily listened intently, hoping to discern how upset her father really was about her new project.

“If he has a name, I haven’t heard what it is. His uniform said
Lydia.
Yes, right above his medals, like
it was his last name.”

Heart thudding hard, Lily wondered if her father might learn something that would help identify the man she’d rescued. She and her parents had sailed to Lydia to visit her uncle David, who was a general in charge of the Lydian Army. If that was who her father was speaking to, he might well know their mystery soldier’s identity.

Her father sucked in a breath.
“But, Dave, we’re already twenty miles out to sea, and he’s unconscious. If I throw him overboard, he’ll drown.”

Lily clutched the doorframe and ducked back, suddenly aware that her innocent intentions had turned into serious eavesdropping. Her uncle David wanted the soldier tossed overboard? Surely her father would talk him out of it.

“I understand. Yes, yes, I see your point. I don’t
know much about those kinds of injuries myself, but we don’t want him lingering for days just to die on our boat. No, she didn’t have any luck with the horses, and she’s still torn up about that. I suppose it’s better this way.”

What? Was her father actually planning to push the man overboard? He’d die for sure! Lily tried to think. Her father was upset with her for rescuing the soldier
in the first place. She’d overreached his favor already, so there would be little use begging him to change his mind. Besides, she’d learned over the course of their visit to Lydia that her father’s older brother had tremendous influence over her dad—far more than she had.

As Michael Bardici went on about the soldier’s injuries, and his fears that the soldier might awaken in a terrible rage
and murder them all in their sleep, Lily tiptoed back to the injured man’s side. He’d roused earlier, when he’d taken the pain relievers she’d given him. If those had gone to work, maybe she could wake him up all the way. He’d have to defend himself against her father. She didn’t see any other way out of the situation.

Crouching by his side, she patted his uninjured cheek. “Excuse me, sir?
You’ve got to wake up!” He emitted a low moan, but didn’t move. She shook his shoulders. If she could just rouse him, surely the strong soldier would be able to ward off her father, even in his injured state.

“Please—you’ve got to wake up.” She bent close to his ear. “My father wants to toss you overboard. We’re way out into the Mediterranean. There’s nowhere to go if you go overboard. You’ve
got to wake up!” She shook him hard, her alarm increasing as she heard footsteps crossing the deck behind her.

“Lillian.” Michael Bardici’s voice was stern. “What are you doing?”

She turned to confront him, not caring if desperation showed on her face. “This man is under my protection.” She wished her voice wouldn’t tremble.

“He’s injured. He probably won’t live more than a couple
of days. Your uncle explained to me about these blast injuries. They explode a person from the inside—”

“His ears were fine. That means the impact of the blast wasn’t strong enough to cause internal injuries.”

“Then why won’t he wake up?”

Lily groaned. The man behind her on the bench was rousing. She’d watched his eyelids flutter. Given another minute, he might be able to pull
himself from his pain-filled sleep.
If
she could buy him another minute.

Backing against the bench, she spread her arms wide as though to physically block Michael Bardici from reaching the prone soldier. “He’s recovering. He just needs time.”

“And then what? He’ll awaken in a fit of terror and kill us all.”

“No, he won’t.”

“You don’t know that. You don’t know him. Your
uncle David recognized the name from his uniform. He was part of the insurgent uprising that caused all that commotion in Sardis. Don’t you see, Lillian? We can’t trust him. He’s dangerous.”

“He’s a human being. If you toss him overboard, he’ll die. That’s called murder, and it’s illegal.” She didn’t bother to mention that it went against the Bible’s teachings. Her father didn’t share her
faith, and she’d learned not to try to foist it on him.

“It’s not illegal if it’s done in self-defense.”

“He’s not threatening you.”

“Not now, but if he wakes up and tries something, he could overpower all three of us. Besides, if I don’t do it, David said he’d drop everything and take care of the man himself. You saw the explosions in town. Your uncle has his hands full. He
shouldn’t have to come out here and clean up the mess I never should have let you make in the first place.” The words sounded more like something her uncle David would say, and Lily realized her father was likely quoting his older brother. “One little push, Lily. That’s all it will take.” He advanced slowly until he was less than an arm’s length away.

Lily could feel the tears streaming
down her cheeks, and the rising helplessness that had overcome her when her father’s horses had begun to die. She would have done anything to save the horses, but there had been nothing she could do.

She wasn’t going to let it happen again, especially not to a human being. “You
can’t.
You just can’t. We’ll put in at the next port and I’ll leave him off there. I don’t care where it is. Find
me a beach somewhere, and I promise I’ll leave him, but you can’t just push him over in the middle of the sea.”

Even as she spoke, begging for her father’s mercy, his expression hardened. He reached past her, getting his hands under the soldier’s shoulders.

“No! You can’t!” She tried to pry his arm away. The soldier groaned and blinked. He was waking up!

But he was too late.

Her father shoved his shoulder between her and the half-conscious soldier, scooping his arm under him, tilting him toward the rail.

“No!” Lily held the soldier’s shoulders, fighting to keep him on the boat.

“Let go.” Michael pulled her hands free and got an arm under the man’s torso, leveraging him up even as the awakening man grasped the air in front of him.

“Don’t do it!”
Lily pounced atop the bench, throwing all her weight into the tug-of-war.

Her mother gasped from the direction of the below-deck stairs. “Lily! What are you doing?”

Startled, Lily looked up just as her father caught her by her shoulders, plucking her up and tossing her back toward her mother. She scrambled back, shocked by her father’s behavior. He’d thrown her across the boat! She
found her feet as her father got his arms under the soldier and, with one giant heave, tossed him over the side.

“No!” Lily screamed as she leapt across the deck. Kicking off her sneakers, she bounded onto the bench and leapt over the rail, diving into the Mediterranean water. A moment later she rose and looked frantically about. The sea was fairly calm, but they’d been cutting through the
water at a good clip, and had no doubt passed the spot where the soldier had gone overboard.

Spotting something white—his T-shirt, perhaps—she kicked her legs out and swam toward it, just as her mother’s screams carried through the air, and a life preserver flew past her head, its rope unfurling behind it.

The rope splashed across her just as her right leg kicked down, catching the
cord in a tangle. For one terrified instant, she realized it had twined around her leg. Then the dogged progress of the boat through the water pulled the line taught, dragging her backward with it. She tried to scream, to gulp a breath, anything, but the overwhelming force pulled her through the sea, poring water into her nose, her eyes, her mouth.

She tried to reach the rope to untangle
it, but the press of the water was far too great for her to fight against. With sinking terror, she realized there was nothing she could do to free herself. The sun had set and the night was dark. Would her parents even be able to see what had happened? Even if they quickly realized they needed to haul her in, by the time they got the boat stopped, she’d likely be drowned.

* * *

Shock
rippled through him as he hit the water, snapping him into the full consciousness that had evaded him as he’d tried to pull himself from sleep moments before. Where was he? What had happened? Acting on instinct, he clawed upward for air, and saw the stars twinkling down from the night sky above.

A scream caught his attention, and he saw a woman throw a life preserver. It fell just short
of him, and he cleared the distance to it in a couple of strokes. Grabbing hold, he got his head up enough above the water to see.

There were arms in the water.

No, more than arms, there was a woman. Her leg was caught on the rope to his life preserver, and the moving boat hauled her backward through the water, facedown, helpless.

He recognized her brown hair, her pale pink top.
He’d glimpsed her before through pain-dulled eyes. It was the woman who’d given him water and made his pain go away!

Pulling on the rope, he hauled her toward him, and looped one arm under her torso. Gently, he lifted her up and shoved the flotation device under her head. He peeled back the long brown hair and found her face just as she gasped a breath and belched up seawater.

“Can
you hold the ring?”

She coughed, but clutched the flotation device with white-knuckled fingers.

“Hold tight.” He knew he had to get her leg untangled, or risk her being pulled back under again. Fighting the current created by the moving boat that tugged them relentlessly forward, he pulled himself along the loose length of rope, caught hold of where it had pulled taught, and held it
behind her, creating enough slack to allow him to squeeze it back past her heel, and work her foot free.

He dropped her foot and swam back to her head, balancing himself above the life preserver, level with her eyes. “Are you okay?”

She coughed and looked like she was trying to nod.

He peeled back more of the sodden hair that covered her face. She really was beautiful, even half
drowned.

Whoever was running the boat had gotten it slowed down considerably, and voices were yelling something, but he couldn’t make out what.

“Here.” He eased the woman onto his shoulder as he held tight to the rope. “I’m going to pull us up.”

She clung to him, her head slumped against his neck, her rattling breath easing as she tightened her grip on his shoulders. “Stairs,”
she said, and coughed again. “Stairs—at the stern.”

He didn’t doubt there were stairs at the back of the boat, but he wasn’t about to let go of the rope to go looking for them. The night was too dark, the sea too vast and the boat was still cutting through the water, though more slowly now.

“I’ve got you. Just hold on tight.” Pulling hand-over-hand up the rope, he moved them closer
to the boat, until he kicked the hull with his boots and fairly walked up the side, rappelling against the sailboat.

The woman clutched him tighter as they rose out of the water and the ship tipped slightly from their combined weight.

“Can you climb aboard?” he asked the woman as he got one hand on the rail.

“No. You first,” she whispered. “If I get onboard, he’ll only push you
over again.”

Unsure of whom the woman referred to, he nonetheless heaved one shoulder over the rail.

Hands pulled at the woman in his arms, but she held on to him tightly as he rolled them both over the railing and scrambled to standing on the deck.

“Lily.” An older woman reached for the girl he’d rescued, but she shook her head and shoved him toward a doorway that led down stairs
to the lit cabins belowdecks. He obediently headed in the direction he was pushed.

“Lillian.” A man stepped in front of them, barring the way.

“He can have my room.” The waterlogged young woman pleaded, her voice trembling. “Let him be. We can leave him at the next port.”

But the man looked angry, and regarded him with a scowl.

Straightening to his full height, he returned
the man’s glare. He couldn’t remember who he was, but he was nearly certain he could take the older man if it came to a fight.

The man must have realized it, too, because he stepped aside, his mouth set in a grim line.

She pushed him ahead of her, down the stairs, and guided him into a comfortable-looking full-size berth and en-suite bathroom.