Princess Annie (37 page)

“Relax,” the princess interrupted. “It’s only temporary—a rinse I read about in some musty old volume I found in the library. It’s made from herbs. I’ve already gathered the ingredients.”

Annie rolled her eyes. “Thank heaven I’m no taller than you are—you’d probably want to cut me off at the knees so I’d better suit your bloody plan!”

Phaedra shook a finger. “A lady never stoops to profanity,” she scolded, in a perfect imitation of Sister Rose at St. Aspasia’s.

“Not unless she’s had the poor judgment to get herself mixed up with you, Phaedra St. James!” Annie gathered her skirts and swept past the princess, into the shadowy interior of the cave. They were on the other side of the wall, within the keep’s grounds, before she spoke again. “Has it occurred to you, in the midst of all this scheming and sneaking about, that Rafael will be furious
with me
when he finds out you’ve eloped and I’ve helped you to do it?”

Phaedra was unruffled. “Rafael adores you. He’ll go into a rage, of course, but it won’t last.”

Annie sighed and started back toward the castle. “I don’t like this.”

“Really? I think it’s exciting.”

“You would.”

As they neared the heart of St. James Keep, Annie realized that, blessedly, the hammering and sawing had ceased. Tears of frustration, fear and weariness stung her eyes, but she held them back by sheer force of will.

“The hanging is tomorrow,” she said.

Phaedra slipped a comforting arm around Annie’s waist and squeezed. “Yes. But you needn’t see it. I plan to stay inside until it’s over and the poor wretch has been taken away for burial.”

Annie thought of Josiah’s remark in the infirmary that morning.
She probably wishes they’d take the poor bugger somewhere far away to do him in, so she wouldn’t have to watch and listen
.

“Rafael will be there, won’t he?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” replied the princess confidently. “I daresay it will turn his stomach, but Rafael is determined to allow the Bavian people their chosen justice. Besides, his honor alone demands that he see the thing through to its end.”

Annie felt like lying down in the sweet summer grass and weeping. She, too, would attend Peter Maitland’s hanging, and watch steadfastly until it was over, for Phaedra was right. Rafael would not wash his hands of the prisoner’s blood, like a modern-day Pontius Pilate. Annie could do no less, for she was, in her heart, his mate, and must stand by him in whatever way she could. Besides, she, too, had had her part in the drama. Now she must remain onstage until the final curtain fell or bear forever the memory of her cowardice.

“You look ghastly,” Phaedra remarked airily, when they reached the edge of one of the rear gardens, a place of tangled vines and crumbling statues scarred with moss. “Are you all right?”

“No,” Annie replied. “I am not all right. But that simply doesn’t matter at the moment, so don’t concern yourself.”

Phaedra stepped in front of Annie and clasped both her hands. The princess’ face glowed with earnestness. “You
are
doing the right thing by helping me escape St. James Keep, Annie, I swear it!” she whispered.

“If I didn’t think so,” Annie said coolly, “you may be sure that I would not have agreed to participate in the first place.”

Phaedra smiled, gave Annie’s hands another squeeze, kissed her lightly on the forehead and turned to hurry away. She vanished into the overgrown garden like a wood sprite, leaving Annie to wonder, for one fey moment, if she’d imagined the whole encounter.

Annie had dinner in her room that night, with Kathleen for company. The keep was fairly bursting with wedding guests, and Annie was in no frame of mind to socialize. In fact, she felt as if
she
were the condemned, Anne Boleyn or Catherine Howard, on their eve of doom.

“There’s a babe growing inside you, I think,” Kathleen said gently, when Annie had choked down all she could of a meager supper and pushed her plate away.

There had been too many shocks that day for Kathleen’s words to startle Annie overmuch. “Yes,” she said. “Did Cook tell you?”

“Oh, no,” Kathleen said quickly. “I worked it out myself, by the look of you. And I knew, I confess, that the prince came to your room at the palace, the night of the princess’s engagement ball.”

Annie was too weary to be embarrassed. “I suppose that’s common knowledge,” she said ruefully.

Kathleen brightened. “Certainly not, miss. It’s just …” The glow in the maid’s skin took on shades of deep pink. “It’s only that I changed the sheets myself.”

Elbows on the edge of the table, Annie lowered her face to her hands. “What am I going to do?” she murmured, asking herself, Kathleen and whatever benevolent angels that might be tarrying nearby.

“Tell the prince, first of all,” Kathleen said. “This might be just the news he needs to turn him from the terrible course he’s set for himself.”

Annie lowered her hands and stared at the young woman she regarded as her unquestioned equal. Perhaps even her superior. “It won’t work,” she said despairingly. “Lucian told me today that Rafael will hang from that very same scaffold when the rebels finally take the keep. And he’s probably right, damn him.”

Kathleen was still of good cheer. “His Highness wants a baby more than anything in the world. His wife, the Princess Georgiana, was with child when she died. They say it compounded his grief a hundredfold, knowing he’d lost an heir as well as the woman he loved.”

Annie’s sorrows deepened, for somewhere along the line Rafael’s losses had become hers as well. Even this one, though it was personal and part of a past she had not shared with him.

“This news might be nothing more to Rafael than another burden,” Annie said. “You are not to tell him there’s a child, Kathleen. Or anyone else.”

“But—”

“I mean it,” Annie insisted. “For now, this is our secret.”

Kathleen was clearly opposed to Annie’s decision, but she bit her lip and nodded her unwilling compliance.

CHAPTER 19
 

E
ven before the first pinkish gold fingers of dawn crept into the courtyard of St. James Keep, a crowd had gathered. Sickened, clasping a borrowed shawl close around her shoulders, Annie scanned the gathering for Rafael and finally found him on the study terrace. Mr. Barrett stood, in full military regalia, at his side.

Annie was not Rafael’s princess and thus could not stand next to him at any formal occasion. Still, she loved him as much as any wife had ever loved a husband, and his child was already taking shape inside her. She hurried back across the courtyard, into the great hall, up a rear staircase and along the hall to the study doors. Guards were posted, and when Annie tried to pass between them, they barred her way with crossed rifles and glares.

She fell back on bravado. “Let me in, this instant!” she commanded.

The guards looked at each other, then at Annie.

“Sorry, miss,” one of them said. “Orders from Mr. Barrett himself. No one goes in.”

Annie started to argue, but before she got more than a few words out, one of the study doors opened and Rafael appeared. He looked as though he’d lost weight, just during the night, and he was pale as the ghost of Hamlet’s father.

His gray eyes lit on Annie, narrowed, and then he smiled slightly. “Let her pass,” he said, with resignation rather than welcome, and Barrett’s men complied.

Once they were both inside, Rafael closed the door again.

“How did you know I was out there?” Annie asked.

Rafael cocked an eyebrow and sighed. “I saw you in the courtyard and guessed that you were on your way.” He paused to run splayed fingers through his still-unbarbered hair. If someone didn’t take the shears to him right away, he’d soon be every bit as bushy as Tom Wallcreek, the rebel. “Go back to your room, Annie. A hanging is not a pleasant thing to witness.”

Color pulsed in Annie’s cheeks. “Do you think I
want
to watch, like some of those ghouls down in the courtyard?” she hissed, moving past the prince toward the entrance to the terrace. “You, of all people, ought to understand that it’s a matter of honor—if my testimony brought this on, I can do no less than see it through to the wretched finish.” She did not mention her other motive in attending the execution, the need to share Rafael’s sorrows as well as his joys.

Rafael caught her arm before she’d gained the terrace. Outside, in the cool stillness of that new morning, the crowd erupted with a raucous hurrah.

The prince closed his eyes for a moment, then looked deep into Annie’s very soul and said, “I release you from that responsibility. Go—please.”

Annie shook her head. “I’m sorry, Rafael, but even you haven’t the authority to override the dictates of my conscience.” “I don’t have time to argue,” he said, as another jubilant cry rose on a swell of quiet. Annie wondered if the spectators would enjoy the wedding as much as the hanging. They were bound to, she decided, for the holy sacrament of marriage was to be turned into a circus before their eyes. She felt a stab of guilt for the part she meant to take in the deception.

“Nor do I,” Annie replied. “Let me stand with you, Rafael. If you refuse, I shall simply take myself to another balcony.”

The prince clasped her hand, muttered something better unheard and dragged her off toward the terrace. She stood a little behind Rafael, and to the side, her fingers still tightly intertwined with his.

Peter Maitland had already been led up the stairs to the scaffold. He stood rigid in the soft, chilly light, a strangely romantic figure with his hands bound behind him. Annie watched, not even allowing herself to blink, as a hood was fitted over his head. Beside him, a priest spoke words Annie couldn’t hear and made the sign of the cross.

The noose was put into place, and Annie locked her knees. She stole a glance at Rafael and saw that he was standing as stiff and straight as the prisoner, and his face, in profile, was bloodless.

The hangman, who wore a hooded robe and mask for anonymity, turned to look up at Rafael, his eyes invisible behind two narrow slits in the cloth covering his face.

Rafael’s fingers tightened painfully on Annie’s hand, but she did not flinch. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the prince raise his other arm in response to the hangman’s unspoken question.

The executioner nodded, checked the noose and finally took hold of a wooden lever with both hands. There was a shriek of wood grinding against wood, and then the trapdoor gave way under Peter Maitland’s feet. He fell through the opening, and could be seen dangling beneath the scaffold at the end of the taut rope.

It might not have been so terrible if he hadn’t kicked and struggled and spun, if Annie had not seen the wet stain on the front of his trousers. She forced herself to watch, barely able to keep her head above the level of consciousness, until the swinging body went still.

The instant Maitland’s corpse had been cut down, however, Annie sank to the floor of the terrace in a dead faint.

Only moments had passed, she supposed, when she awakened to find herself in Rafael’s arms. He carried her to the couch in the study and laid her down, and Mr. Barrett soon appeared with a brandy snifter.

“Drink this,” Rafael commanded in grim tones, taking the glass from his friend’s hand and pressing the rim gently to Annie’s mouth. “You’ll feel better in a few minutes.”

Annie refused the brandy, mindful of her baby and knowing the liquor wouldn’t stay down anyway. “I’m … I’m sorry,” she said. “I tried so hard to be strong.”

A look passed between Rafael and Mr. Barrett and, at the prince’s nod, the faithful soldier left the room.

“And you succeeded,” Rafael replied, with a sort of tender ruefulness. “God in heaven, Annie Trevarren, what a woman you are, and how I wish I were going to live to make you my princess.”

The unexpected words revitalized Annie, sent a surge of glorious strength and courage flowing through her. She hardly dared ask, but the question that sprang to her lips was of such grave importance that she couldn’t stop it. “Are you … are you saying that you love me?”

He kissed her forehead. “Devotedly. And with a passion that is positively unholy. But it isn’t to be, and you know that as well as I do.”

Tears blurred Annie’s vision, and she battled them valiantly, for she would not have used weakness or wiles to hold Rafael. For that same reason, she did not tell him about the child they’d conceived together.

“Then I will stay here, and die beside you,” she said rashly. Even as she uttered the words, however, Annie knew she could not sacrifice her innocent child. Not even for its father’s sake.

“You must know I won’t permit that,” Rafael told her. Then he kissed her again, this time on the mouth, and with such tenderness that pieces of her heart broke away and tumbled into the fathomless reaches of her soul. “There’s a ship waiting off the coast. Saturday, after the wedding, you’ll be taken aboard with the bride and groom.” When Annie started to protest, he touched her lips with an index finger and added, “Whether you want to go or not. Pack your things, Annie—you’re going to France.”