Princess Annie (19 page)

Slowly, silently, still clasping the handles of their baskets, Annie and Phaedra made their way back to the palace. Once, along the way, the princess stopped to retch into the ditch.

When they reached the same gate they’d passed through before, the guard hesitated to admit them, peering at them through the bars.

Before Annie had a glimmer of what Phaedra planned to do, the princess pushed back her scarf and raised her head. “Admit us at once,” she commanded.

Recognizing her instantly, the guard reddened to the roots of his hair and fumbled to work the lock and open the gate. “Yes, Your Highness,” he babbled. “I didn’t know it was you, honest, I didn’t—”

Pale and shaken though she was, Phaedra swept through the opening in a grand and regal fashion. Annie followed, images of the murdered man bleeding in the fountain next to the market filling her mind. Her innocent, romantic illusions were gone and her heart was broken.

Rafael was not a storybook prince, as she had always believed. He was, instead, a despot, the head of an army of fiends. But that wasn’t the worst of it, oh, no—the most terrible thing was that Annie knew the truth about Rafael and loved him in spite of it. Which meant that she was either a madwoman or a monster in her own right.

Phaedra and Annie had almost reached one of the rear entrances to the palace when Chandler Haslett appeared, looking harried and furious. “Where have you been?” he demanded.

To Annie’s surprise, and apparently, to Chandler’s as well, Phaedra dropped her basket of oranges and went sobbing, into his arms. “It was terrible!” she wailed. “We were nearly killed!”

Chandler hesitated, obviously not sure where to put his hands, his gaze linked with Annie’s, and then embraced the princess in a gingerly manner. “What happened?” he asked again.

Annie bent to gather Phaedra’s oranges and put them back in the basket. After the chaos she’d just witnessed, she needed to have some semblance of order, however small. “There was a riot,” she said simply. “At the marketplace.”

Chandler gripped Phaedra’s shoulders and held her away from him. “Are you all right?” he rasped, and Annie knew the question was meant for both of them.

“I suppose we will be, eventually,” Annie answered sadly. Then, carrying Phaedra’s basket as well as her own, she proceeded into the palace, leaving the princess to weep against her future husband’s shoulder.

Once inside, Annie immediately sought out the rear stairway that led to the attics and the servants’ quarters. The room was empty, as before.

Annie took the china doll she’d bought at the market from her basket—miraculously, it had survived the episode intact—and laid it beside the rag doll resting on one of the cots. That done, she put one of Phaedra’s oranges on each of the beds and hurried out.

In her room, she took off the borrowed clothes, folded them carefully, and set them on the chest at the foot of her bed. Then, wearing only her chemise, Annie crawled between the covers, pulled them over her head, and wept until there were no tears left to shed.

Annie didn’t go down to dinner that night, nor did she eat the breakfast Kathleen brought to her room the following morning.

The maid gathered up the little stack of clothes Annie had worn to the marketplace the day before and hugged the garments to her chest. “It was kind of you to leave the doll, miss,” she said. “Little Nancy, she’s sure the angels brought it. She lost her mama to a fever last year and thinks a lot about such things.”

Annie, who was sitting in bed with her knees drawn up and her back to the headboard, closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed. “Did you ever wish you could be someone else—just stop being yourself and step into another person’s life?”

Kathleen looked puzzled, bless her. “No, miss. It would be foolish to think of such things, when there’s no way of doing them—wouldn’t it?” She paused and glanced toward the table, where she’d left a tray. “Won’t you please eat something, miss? It isn’t good to go hungry.”

Just the thought of food made Annie’s stomach do a somersault. The memories of the incident at the marketplace were still too fresh in her mind, and her heart was in pieces, jagged pieces that speared her insides like splintered glass.

She shook her head and Kathleen reluctantly left the room, taking the purloined garments with her.

The next morning, a formal announcement was made: The princess’s engagement ball had been postponed for a week. Annie wondered, somewhat cynically perhaps, how important that news would be to the merchants in the marketplace. Or to the friends and family of that slender, earnest young dissenter, who had died so ingloriously in the fountain pool.

For the first time since they’d met at St. Aspasia’s, Annie and Phaedra found that they had little to say to each other. Phaedra kept to her room during the days to come, playing endless games of solitaire, by Kathleen’s accounting, and refusing visitors. Annie spent most of her time in the garden beneath her terrace, trying to sort through her thoughts and emotions and making friends with the yellow cat.

She was there, in fact, when the clamor of many horses and men at the front gates indicated that the prince had returned from his travels.

Annie stood, then sat back down on the bench, then leaped to her feet. She wanted to see Rafael immediately, and never again, as long as she lived. She yearned to fling her arms around his neck and, conversely, to do him lasting and painful injury.

She heard the gates creaking on their iron hinges, heard the hooves of many horses on the cobbled driveway. She paced, damning Rafael with one breath, adoring him with the next.

Annie had been suffering in this state for about a quarter of an hour when the prince himself appeared at the edge of the little garden, his plain clothes dirty and rumpled, his hair shaggy, his jaw scruffy with the start of a beard. His gray eyes glittered with restrained passion, weariness and a benevolent malice.

She started toward him, her pulse leaping, then stopped herself, locking her fingers together. Like so many dark angels, Rafael was beautiful to look upon.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked, though that was the least of her concerns.

Rafael arched one eyebrow and scratched his chin. Although the beard lent him a certain roguish charm, Annie reflected, somewhat fitfully, she liked him better clean-shaven. “The head of the palace guard told me,” he said. His tone was quiet, controlled, and there was something ominous in the way he folded his arms. Plainly, other things had been said as well. “Is it true, Annie, that you and Phaedra dressed as servants and went to the marketplace on your own?”

Annie squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and took one step backward. Her emotions were a confusing tangle—joy, because Rafael was home safe, trepidation, because she knew she and Phaedra had done a dangerous and stupid thing, for which he would certainly call them both to account, and lastly, a deep-seated, indignant wanting that could not be denied. Rafael was either a cruel leader or a heedless leader, or both, and innocent people were suffering because of him. And still Annie loved him.

“Yes,” she answered evenly. “That is true.”

Rafael’s right temple pulsed, and Annie sensed the burgeoning anger in him, but the prince did not move from where he stood. “What in the name of heaven would induce you—
even you
—to do something so outrageously, recklessly foolish?”

Annie’s stomach wobbled as she recalled the terror of that afternoon; she saw blood unfurling in gossamer folds in the fountain pool, turning the water to pink and then to scarlet. “Rest assured, Your Highness—I most certainly do regret the impulse that took me to that dreadful place.” She backed up to the bench, where the yellow cat usually sunned itself, and sank onto the cool stone surface. Despite the weakness that came from remembering all she had seen in that horrid place, Annie met his gaze directly, and continued with conviction. “Your people are justified in rising up against you. You are a tyrant, Rafael St. James, with no apparent compassion for the citizens of your own country.”

He whitened, beneath all that road dust and beard stubble, and Annie knew her words had struck him deeply. His right hand clenched at his side, and he started to speak, then stopped himself. Finally, he came and sat down on the bench next to her, though not too close. “Tell me what happened that day,” he said, in a quiet voice. “Tell me what you saw.”

Annie looked away for a moment, struggling to keep back tears of disillusionment, pain and the awful, lingering fear. Her throat constricted, and it took some effort to finally answer. “We were children, Phaedra and I, when we went off to the marketplace,” she said sadly. “Children, wearing disguises and looking for mischief. We bought a few small things and walked over to the square to peek in the shop windows. As we were passing through the market again, on our way home, we saw a man—he was very young, a student, probably—making a speech by the fountain.” She paused, her cheeks coloring, and would not let herself look away from Rafael’s face. “He was opposed to your government. While he was talking, soldiers suddenly converged on the square on horseback—it seemed they came from every direction—and they behaved as though they’d gone mad.” At this accounting, Rafael closed his eyes for an instant, and he braced himself visibly when Annie went on. “One of them shot the student, and he fell into the fountain, bleeding.” She stopped again, to swallow the bile that had surged into the back of her throat. Her hands were knotted in her lap, white-knuckled. “They tore the marketplace completely apart, your soldiers, trampling goods and terrifying the people. I’m sure others must have been killed or injured, besides the first man.”

They were both silent for a short, terrible interval. Finally, Rafael spoke, his voice gruff and stricken. “And you believe I commanded that such a thing be done?”

Annie studied his gaunt face and felt a crushing relief, followed just as quickly by sorrowful resignation. “No,” she said gently. “I don’t believe that. But those were
your men,
Rafael. They were wearing your uniforms, riding your horses, carrying your swords and guns. You must bear a grave responsibility in this matter, there can be no denying that.”

He rose swiftly from the bench, turning his back on her, and Annie saw defeat in the set of his strong shoulders. She ached to comfort him, and yet she could not—would not—align herself with his government. “I’m not trying to deny anything,” he said, after a very long time, facing her again at last. “There is, of course, nothing I can do to change what has already taken place. But I can promise you one thing: The men involved in this will be relieved of their duties and brought to trial.”

She merely nodded.

Rafael’s expression remained grave, and he pointed a damning finger at her. “You’ll give an accounting for your own actions as well, Annie Trevarren. God knows, I’d like to shake you for putting yourself and my sister in such peril, but I shall resist the temptation and write a long letter to your parents instead. I believe Patrick will be interested to know what his eldest daughter has been up to since her arrival in Bavia.”

Annie swallowed and did not raise the valid argument that Phaedra had actually planned their adventure.

She couldn’t help thinking of the loud and lengthy lecture she would be subjected to if her parents got wind of the risks she’d taken for the sake of curiosity. No doubt her allowance would be cut off for a while, and she might even be hauled home and confined to the house in Nice. Although Charlotte and Patrick were both quite intrepid in their own right, and while they had always been tolerant of minor acts of derring-do, such as climbing trees and walking along the tops of stone fences, they had never cultivated outright recklessness in their daughters.

What Annie had done would surely try their patience.

Rafael gazed at her for a few moments longer, his expression utterly unreadable, and then left the garden. “Barrett!” Annie heard him shout.

It had been one hell of a homecoming, Rafael thought glumly, an hour later, settling back in the copper bathtub that had been brought to his chamber, set close to the fire, and filled with steaming water. His country, his entire
life,
for God’s sake, was crumbling about his ears. He’d spent upward of a week either in the saddle or sleeping on the hard ground, and all he’d thought about, practically every moment of that time, was Annie Trevarren.

He reached for the shaving mug and brush that rested, along with a straight razor and a snifter of brandy, on a small table close by, and began to lather his face. The fascinating Miss Trevarren had had a rude awakening in the marketplace, it was true, and the experience had obviously changed her thinking in a number of ways.

Take her opinion of one Rafael St. James, prince of Bavia, for instance, he reflected ruefully, gripping a small mirror in one hand now, taking the razor in the other, and carefully shaving his throat and the underside of his chin. Annie had certainly revised her romantic ideas where he was concerned, and doubtless there would be no more scandalous talk of wanting him to bed her.

Rafael shook off the razor and attacked his beard from another direction. He should have been relieved to have Annie out of his hair, but instead he was disappointed. Being separated from Annie had only heightened her charms and, accordingly, his resolve to resist her had lessened considerably during their time apart. It did him injury to know that she thought of him as a tyrant who deserved to be overthrown, but learning of the travesty his own soldiers had committed in the marketplace had been agonizing.

Annie was quite right; even though he hadn’t known about the incident, let alone given the order for it, the army was his to command, and he bore an undeniable culpability for its actions. It made him sick to his soul to imagine what other brutalities his men might have engaged in, without his knowledge, on other days, in other cities and villages.

No wonder the people did not trust the gestures he’d made since he’d come to power.

Rafael finished shaving, set aside the razor and mirror and reached for the snifter of brandy. There were some two hundred troops garrisoned within Morovia’s walls, and he had Barren’s word that they would be assembled at sunrise, in front of the palace, for review. At that time, Rafael would give the men who had raided the marketplace a chance to come forward and admit their guilt, though he doubted that anyone would do so. In the meantime, Annie and Phaedra would be standing on one of the palace balconies, well-protected, of course, pointing out as many of the offenders as they could recognize.