Princess Annie (14 page)

“You’re very much alive,” Annie said, grasping his upper arms and hauling him upright, “and it’s a good thing, too, for it’s certain you’re out of grace just at this moment.”

“Out of grace,” Rafael echoed stupidly, slurring the words and sagging against the back of the pew.

Annie had seen her share of drunks alongside the docks while sailing on her father’s ship, though her parents had done their best to shelter her, and she knew an accomplished rum-sucker when she met one. Rafael St. James was definitely an amateur.

“Get up,” she ordered, laboring in a largely fruitless effort to hoist the prince to his feet, “before you’re struck by lightning or something. Though, of course, you probably deserve it.”

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you,” Rafael inquired, staggering verbally, “that it’s foolish to coddle a drunk? Only makes them worse, you know.”

“I quite agree,” Annie said, breathing hard as she managed, at long last, to get Rafael up off the pew, “and once we’re out of this chapel, you’re on your own!”

He threw back his head and laughed. “You really think I might be smited by the hand of God,” he accused.

Annie headed for the door with very little help from Rafael, who was leaning heavily on her shoulder. “Smote,” she corrected. “Not ‘smited.’ And I’m taking no chances.”

They traveled the length of the center aisle and passed through the doorway into the courtyard, which was now lit only by moonlight and the glow of a few torches on the castle walls.

“I have a confession to make,” Rafael said.

“You might have thought of that in there,” Annie replied, indicating the chapel with a toss of her head. They were approaching a stone bench, next to the fountain, and Annie’s strength was flagging.
Just a few more steps,
she told herself.

Rafael drew in a great gulp of fresh air and promptly hiccoughed. “About my confession,” he persisted.

They were getting nearer and nearer their destination. Annie concentrated on the goal and said nothing.

“I used you, Annie.”

“I know,” Annie replied. Then, with a great and final expenditure of effort, she pushed Rafael St. James, prince of Bavia, into the small pool beneath the courtyard fountain.

He went in with a satisfying splash, and came up tossing his head and swearing. He was furious, but he was on his way to sobriety.

“You were right before,” Annie said sweetly. “One should never coddle a drunkard.” She started toward the castle doorway at a quick pace then, but Rafael caught up to her in only a few paces and wrenched her around to face him.

Annie might have been frightened of another man in a similar state of annoyance, but this was Rafael, and he was a prince, in his heart as well as his country. For the longest time, he just glared down into her face, breathing hard, his hair drenched and his pewter eyes smoldering with fury. When he spoke, however, his voice was not a shout or a snarl, but a near sob.

“Don’t love me,” he pleaded. “I’m the wrong man.”

She touched his pale, dripping face. “You don’t get to decide what I feel, Rafael,” she replied. “And believe me, if I’d had any choice in the matter, I certainly wouldn’t have lost my heart to you, of all people.”

Rafael removed her hand from his cheek, but only after planting a light, defiant kiss on her palm. “Who would you have chosen?” he demanded.

Annie raised her chin. “Not you.” She started to walk away, but he still held her wrist, and he drew her back so that she collided with him and felt the wetness of his clothes seeping through her dress.

“Who then?”

Annie thought quickly. “Someone honorable and brave—like Chandler Haslett, or Edmund Barrett. If one of them seduced a lady, they’d do right by her.”

Rafael’s face tightened, then relaxed again. It was an interesting spectacle and Annie enjoyed it. “Are you saying that I seduced you?” he asked.

“What would you call it?” Annie countered. “You might not have actually … well …
deflowered
me, but you most certainly took liberties. And now, of course, my reputation is ruined.”

He opened his mouth, clamped it shut again, then pushed his hair back from his face with an angry, abrupt motion of one hand. That freed Annie to walk away, and although Rafael didn’t try to stop her, he kept pace.

They were midway across the great hall which, fortunately, was empty, before he found his voice. “What do you want me to do?” he rasped.

Annie assessed her prince out of the corner of one eye. “I want you to marry me,” she said, calling upon all the boldness she’d ever possessed.

“What?”

Annie sighed. “To tell you the absolute truth,” she confided, as they proceeded toward the stairway, “I enjoyed the things we did. I want to do them all again—as your wife.”

“Annie!” Rafael sounded so shocked, so scandalized, that she had to smile.

“If you won’t marry me,” she said, pressing her advantage, “I shall have no other choice but to seduce you. Your virtue is not safe with me, sir.”

At that, Rafael stepped in front of Annie, blocking her way, glowering down into her earnest and upturned face. “Good God, woman, do you have any idea what you’re saying?”

“Of course I do,” Annie said. “You’re the only man I’ve ever loved, and most likely the only one I ever
will
love. Therefore, if you insist on staying in Bavia and getting yourself killed, I’ll just have to make the most of the time in between, won’t I?” With that, she moved around Rafael and left him standing, flabbergasted and sopping wet, in the middle of the great hall.

CHAPTER 7
 

A
nnie had already climbed the stairs and vanished into the upper regions of the castle before Rafael regained sufficient wit to move at all.

His flesh was clammy beneath his wet clothing and his stomach, unaccustomed to the vast quantities of liquor he’d consumed that evening, was doing a slow, ominous roll. Despite all that, his manhood had risen to embarrassing prominence and taken on the consistency of English oak, pressing painfully against the buttons of his breeches.

Rafael credited
that
to the scandalous things Annie had said to him in the courtyard—after pushing him into the fountain pool, no less. She wanted him, she’d told him so straight out, looking him in the eye the whole time.

These Americans. Even Georgiana had never been so bold, and she’d been a responsive woman.

Hoping he wouldn’t meet anyone, Rafael chose a circuitous route to his chambers, navigating the rear passageways and hidden staircases he knew so well. As little as a week before, he could have eased at least one of his maladies by sending for a woman, but now that was impossible. In a peculiar way, although he had no intention of marrying the little chit, he belonged to Annie Trevarren, as surely as he’d once belonged to Georgiana.

Passing Annie’s chamber—the room was some distance from his own and he had to go out of his way to do so—Rafael actually considered knocking on the door, going inside, and burying himself in the lush, supple warmth that was Annie.

Honor stopped him, combined with the fact that he was on the verge of losing the contents of his stomach. In his own quarters, a fire had been lit and the covers of the massive, lonely bed had been turned back. Rafael peeled off his wet clothes and stood naked on the hearth for several minutes, warming himself. His stomach had calmed down by that time, but his erection was as insistent as ever.

He was miserable, needing Annie so desperately, knowing he could not take her and still meet his own gaze in the mirror afterward.

Presently, he blew out the lamps and got into bed, staring up at the darkened ceiling. He would think of Georgiana, he decided, but when he tried, he couldn’t bring her image into clear focus. For several terrible moments, Rafael could not recall what his wife had looked like, and the realization filled him with panic and shame. And when the delicate features finally took shape in his mind, they were quickly gone, shifting and blurring and, in the end, fading away.

In the next instant, Annie’s face was before him.

Tears burned in Rafael’s eyes. “Georgiana,” he whispered, trying to bring her back, begging her not to leave his memory and his dreams and his heart.

All the while he knew the effort was futile; Georgiana was gone forever, and so was the child she’d been carrying at the time of her death. Rafael was no longer numb, thanks to Annie Trevarren, and it was impossible to go on pretending that his wife was only away for a little while, visiting friends or shopping in Paris or London.

She was never coming back.

For the first time since the nights immediately following his wife’s death, when all the brandy in Europe would not have dulled his sorrow, Rafael wept freely for Georgiana and for the part of himself that had turned to dust with her. It was a new and deeper phase of his mourning, a grief he had not known he felt. His suffering was keen-edged and raw; it loomed over him, took the shape of a dark angel, and he wrestled it the whole night through. He was broken over and over again, utterly defeated a hundred times. His soul was crushed, and there were times when he thought his mind would shatter with the pain, but for all his exquisite anguish, he was somehow purified by the experience. Somehow tempered to a new strength and resilience, like steel put to fire.

Come the light of morning, he was a different man than before; he’d met the dragons lurking in his own spirit, and done battle with them. Though sorely wounded, and tried to the very limits of his endurance, he’d prevailed.

In essence, Rafael had dragged himself out of Georgiana’s grave and clawed his way back to the surface. Out of incredible agony had come a new and fierce desire to live.

At dawn, Rafael rose, bathed his sweat-soaked, aching body in tepid water, and put on fresh clothes. Then, after breakfasting in the kitchen, to the consternation of the cook and her giggling minions, he went out to the stables and saddled his favorite horse.

Georgiana’s grave was on a high knoll, among many other St. James tombs, shaded by an oak tree and guarded by a circle of elaborately sculpted marble angels. From that sacred place, Rafael could see well beyond the walls of the keep to the glistening sea.

He crouched beside the alabaster headstone and rested a hand against it, but he didn’t speak. He’d already said his farewells to Georgiana, and he’d accepted her death. His visit that bright morning was a tribute to all they’d shared, and a promise to be strong, for she would have wanted that more than anything else. There was still much to be faced and endured before the penance of all the St. Jameses was served.

Perhaps an hour passed before Rafael returned to the keep, surrendered his horse to a groom, and made his way to his study.

Barrett appeared within minutes, looking unusually rumpled and not a little sheepish, and while Rafael was troubled by his friend’s disquiet, he quickly forgot it. He had other, more pressing matters, to deal with.

“I want you to put together a small detachment of men,” Rafael announced. “I’m going out into the countryside to get a firsthand look at the situation. I should have done it long ago.”

Barrett went white, and he set down the cup of coffee he’d brought with him on the corner of Rafael’s desk, nearly spilling the stuff in the process. His gaze sliced to Rafael’s face. “Have you lost your mind entirely?” he demanded. “There are people out there who want to kill you,
Your Highness,
and not in a quick and merciful way!”

Rafael settled back in his chair, one eyebrow raised. “Bavia is still my country,” he pointed out quietly, “and I am still its ruler.”

The other man leaned against Rafael’s desk, bracing himself with both hands, his eyes blazing with weary fire, his right temple pulsing visibly. “I will not stand by and see you commit suicide!” he rasped.

Rafael sighed, took up the pen he’d laid down when Barrett came in, and resumed work on one of the documents his personal messenger had brought from the capital during the night. “Your commitment to my safety is commendable,” he said, “but unless you mean to resign your post as head of the royal guard, you will obey any order I give you—regardless of whether or not you think said order is wise. Is that understood?”

Barrett did not back off. “No, damn you, it is not ‘understood’! You can take your bloody commands, and your royal guard, and—”

Rafael met Barrett’s furious gaze. “What would you have me do?” he asked. “Run away, whimpering and slavering like a kicked dog? Desert my people? You should know me better, after all this time.”

A spasm of pain moved in Barrett’s usually placid features. He thrust himself away from the desk with an abrupt motion and turned his back on Rafael for a few moments, while struggling with some inner turmoil. When he met Rafael’s gaze again, he had recovered somewhat.

“I know you well, my friend,” Barrett said. “But being cautious is not the same as running away, or abandoning those subjects who have remained loyal to you. I am merely asking you to—”

“You are asking me to stay within these walls until the rebels scale them. I might as well lie down in my coffin and await their arrival as do that, Barrett, can’t you see? I want to look upon my people with my own eyes, hear their words with my own ears, instead of trusting Von Friedling and the others to relay everything.”