Princess (33 page)

Her breathing deepened as she stroked higher up his thigh. “Beautiful stranger, I won’t let them hurt you. Was it lonely in your cell?”

He closed his eyes so she wouldn’t see his building fury as she slipped her warm, soft hands inside his torn shirt, caressing his chest, his sides, his belly. He knew exactly what she was doing, using him to strike at Serafina’s very heart.

Somehow he forced himself to sit still, but he decided on the spot that he despised this woman more than all the others put together.

He flinched when she laid her hand on his groin, stroking him through his breeches. “My goodness, no wonder you are so arrogant,” she purred. She slipped under his arm and into the circle formed by his bound wrists.

She sat on his lap, straddling him, and she slid herself against him, kissing his neck.

He swallowed hard.

“Don’t you want me?” She teased his earlobe roughly and whispered obscene invitations.

He had to get the hairpin.

Kissing his neck, she paused when she felt his hands slide over the curves of her backside, an exploratory caress through the thin silk of her peignoir.

“Ahh,” she whispered in smug triumph. “I knew you’d change your mind with a little persuasion.”

He ran his chained hands slowly up her back. “Pauline, Pauline,” he crooned softly, “how could I resist? Your beauty is legendary.”

She moaned for him, trailing her hands over her stomach and up to her breasts, touching herself. He kept talking to distract her as he ran his fingers up the back of her neck and through her hair until he reached the hairpin. “Maybe others can’t satisfy you,” he whispered, “but I’m going to give it to you like you’ve never had it, hard and fast and very deep. Would you like that?”

While she moaned and writhed with eagerness, he slid the jeweled hairpin out of her hair and maneuvered it between his fingers. He wiggled it around until he felt the pin’s tip strike into the hole.

“What’s your pleasure, my lady? Do you want me on top of you? Do you want to ride me? Shall I tie you down?” It was a familiar speech, one he had given many times, but tonight he laid it on thick, amused at how wild it drove her. “Maybe I should put my prick here,” he whispered, caressing the cleft of her backside through the thin silk. “Would you like me to sodomize you, Pauline, hmm?”

“Oh, you are wicked,” she breathed, all over him.

“Very,” he murmured. Behind her back, he felt the mechanism of the first lock spring free with a tiny click. He endured her kiss as he picked the second lock and pulled the manacles off his wrists. He pulled back from her, clamped his left hand on the back of her neck and his right over her mouth.

She froze, her eyes wide, staring at him in shock.

“Hold still and don’t make a sound, or I’m afraid I shall have to break your neck.”

She choked on a gasp.

“Agreed?”

She nodded, the blush of lust draining from her face. For a moment, he listened for the guards outside the door, but they were quiet.

“Give me your right hand.”

She obeyed. He slipped one of the manacles on her wrist.

“Get off of my lap. Slowly. We’re going over to the bed.”

Her eyes flared.

“Not for that,” he scoffed.

She slid carefully off his lap, never taking her eyes off him. He reached for the discarded blindfold and replaced his hand swiftly with it, using the length of black silk to gag her. He edged her across the room. Reaching her well-trafficked bed, he secured the chain around a bedpost, then clamped the other manacle to her wrist.

“Now, then.” He loomed over her, one hand wrapped lightly around her throat in warning. “How do I get out of here? When I lower the gag, you will answer. Do not attempt to lie to me. If you scream, I squeeze. Clear?”

Eyes round, she nodded.

Slowly, he lowered the gag, staring fiercely at her face.

“Through that door,” she gasped, nodding toward a small door. “My maid’s room. It connects to the service corridors, but I am not familiar with them.”

He pulled the gag up over her mouth again, satisfied. He was unarmed, but if he could evade the legions of guards and escape the grounds of the Mombello Palace, he could remedy that soon enough. He could take the first carriage he met on the road, race back to Pavia, and ride the dapple gray all the way back to the coast.

“Good enough.” He searched the room for anything he could use as a weapon. A hefty pewter candlestick was the best he could find. Holding it like a bludgeon, he crossed to her maid’s door and paused, glancing back at her. “Oh, by the way, since I know you’re dying to ask, Serafina
is
more beautiful than you—a thousand times more beautiful, more desirable, and infinitely more kind. She is a true royal princess.” He looked her over in contempt. “You’re just a cheap slut with a tinsel crown. And yes, I am her lover.”

She kicked at him, cursing at him through the gag. He cast her a cold smile over his shoulder, then slipped out.

As he stole silently into the service corridor, it flashed through his mind that he could try one more time to locate and kill Napoleon.

Are you mad? Forget the damned heroics and get the hell
out of here.

One hand trailing along the warm, smooth wall, he slipped down the hallway, moving soundlessly. He ducked into a broom closet as two maids came down the hall, absorbed in conversation. When they had passed, he crept out, heart pounding, and went on his way, jogging lightly down a flight of stairs at the end of the hallway. He knew that it would be difficult but possible to jump from the lower-story window if he could not find a door that led outside.

At the bottom of the steps, he found a door and inched it open. He glanced out, his grip white-knuckled on the pewter candlestick. The only person in the hall was a liveried footman, dozing at his post at the door to a salon.

Darius opened the door wider.
“Psst.”

The footman roused himself and looked over. Darius beckoned to him.

Moments later, Darius emerged from the service hall in light blue livery and powdered wig, a tray on his shoulder complete with a few empty silver-lidded plates. He walked out slowly, his stride stately, his face tucked slightly against the tray while he furtively watched for any means of escape. He felt ridiculous, but as he passed courtiers and ladies laughing together, no one paid him any mind.

Turning a corner, he came into another long corridor with no exit in sight. A chambermaid came out of a room ahead and hurried down the hall. She looked at the covered plates on his tray then gave him a disapproving glance.

“What took you so long? Kitchens slow tonight?”

Startled, he nodded.

“Well, you’d best hurry it. They’ve been working up an appetite in there planning their little war, and are none too pleasant, I can tell you,” she muttered.

“Merci,”
he said.

She walked on. Darius looked ahead to the open doorway, his heart pounding, the hairs on his nape bristling under the hot, itchy wig, at his sixth sense’s whispered proddings. Whatever was in that room, he had a feeling it concerned Ascencion, his king, and him.

At that moment, he heard shouts in the hall behind him, running footsteps. In the flash of an instant, he was sure he was caught. But before he could even steal a covert glance, three soldiers stampeded past him.

“Get out of the way, lackey!” They flung into the room. “Emperor, the prisoner has escaped!”

“What?”

There was a scouring blast of French curses. All Darius could do was stand aside, his head ducked behind his tray, as France’s highest-level generals rushed out of the room with Napoleon marching in their midst. They stampeded by and disappeared around the corner of the hall. Darius was so frozen he wondered if his heart had stopped beating.

“You’re late,” the last one in their group said to him. The squat, ugly commander waddled angrily over to him. “What’s under the lids?”

Darius kept his head ducked as he lowered the tray from his shoulder on one hand. He reached for one of the silver lids.

“Just . . . this.” He smashed the lid in the fat commander’s face, felling him.

Quickly, he dragged the unconscious man into the now-empty room and locked the doors. Whipping off the irritating wig, he strode to the room’s vast center table and found himself staring down at a huge map of Europe, adorned with colored pins.

Red pins stuck out of the tiny shape of Ascencion near the boot of Italy. Darius stared.

Of course. The west shore! That is where they will strike.

Rapidly, he scanned the loose pages of notes, memorizing every detail. Numbers, armaments, supply lines. He studied the last page he found most closely.

In order to land the troops on Ascencion, France needed the ships of her newest ally, Spain. However, Spain’s navy was not what it once was. The full attack could not be launched until Admiral Villeneuve was through with Horatio Nelson.

Destroying Nelson was Bonaparte’s first priority, he read, for even with Ascencion’s fleet added to the combined Franco-Spanish navy, no invasion of England could succeed so long as England’s fearless admiral roamed the seas.

Just then, Darius heard more shouts in the hall. He put everything back where he’d found it so they would not know their battle plans had been discovered. Rather than going back out into the hall, he went through a pair of tall white doors and found himself in a dark music room. He exited the far end of it and came out in another hallway. Crossing into a sumptuous salon, he locked the doors behind him and heard more shouting, too close for comfort.

He strode across the room and opened the window, glancing down at the fifteen-foot drop. He climbed onto the ledge, braced himself, and plummeted. Landing with a curse, he rolled in a flower bed, sprang up, and ran for the gates, his heart beating like it would burst. The Mombello Palace was surrounded by sprawling grounds. He sprinted across open lawns, glad for the cover of darkness, but acutely aware that he was unarmed.

Panting, his lungs burning so much he vowed he would give up his cheroots if he ever got out of this alive, he came tearing up to the gates, where three of the sentries accosted him. He had no patience for them. He attacked the first one who blocked his path, sent him reeling with one square blow to the chin, and stole his sword.

He turned on the others, fighting furiously, pressing his skills to the limit as two more joined the fray. He dropped two of them with a wide, sweeping arc of the blade, but the third man tackled him from behind and tried to choke him. Fighting for air, finally Darius flipped the man over his shoulder and let out an angry cry of exertion as he killed him with the sword.

Sweat ran down his forehead, stinging his eyes. Quickly, Darius wiped his brow with his forearm, realizing he was still wearing the ridiculous powder-blue velvet livery. Circling with the last man standing, they engaged, blades clanging, just as the sentries’ mounted captain came galloping onto the scene astride a white horse.

Darius dodged the blow as the captain swung his sword at him. As he turned, vulnerable for an instant, the man on the ground lunged at him. Darius whirled to parry and struck his opponent with a riposte. He thrust the sword in deeper with a cold look of ferocity as the soldier fell to his knees.

He turned to fight the captain on the horse. In short order, he left him bleeding with his men. Pulse throbbing, Darius opened the great iron gates, caught the horse with a few soft words, and swung up into the saddle.

A moment later, he galloped through the gates astride the white horse to freedom.

Despair.

Serafina sat for hours in the picture gallery, staring at the portrait of Darius, the life-sized original from which the miniature copy on her mantel had been made.

He seemed to dominate the long, echoey hall, daring all challengers with his fierce onyx stare. Against the canvas’s dark background, his white coat and silver sword glowed with the light of his innate nobility, the knightly purity within himself that only Darius had never been able to see.

Six days and they had heard nothing.

She let out a long, careful sigh. When she finally had the strength to drag herself away, she got up, moving brittlely. She crossed the floor, skirts whispering like a ghost. She paused at the foot of the painting, kissed her fingers, and pressed them to the corner of his portrait. Her limbs were so heavy it was an effort to lift her arm. She then exited the gallery at the far end.

Continuing down the hall in a slow, trancelike walk, she heard the muffled shouting of many male voices coming from one of the rooms ahead. When she turned the corner, she saw that a large crowd of young men had gathered in the billiard room. The room must have been jammed full, for dozens of them were standing in the hallway outside the room. Repeatedly, they applauded and whistled, letting out cheers and almost angry shouts of agreement.

Suddenly Serafina paled at the sound of her brother’s angry, grief-stricken voice above the rest. “Santiago is an inspiration for us all! Are we cowards? This policy of peace at any cost is a disgrace to our manhood! You see what is happening—my sister is being sold to buy us protection from a bully! Are we going to stand for it?”

She listened in dawning horror.

“The Russians mock us as cowards, and well they should if we are unwilling to fight our own battles!” he went on.
“This
marriage is against her will!”

Heart hammering, she ran to the billiard room, shoving her way through the pack of males. They turned to her in surprise.

“Principessa!”

“Let me through, you fools!” She pushed angrily through their midst and stalked into the billiard hall. She could barely believe what she saw.

About two hundred young lords and officers were crammed into the room, rallying around her brother. Their collective mood of hair-trigger excitement was palpable in the air. Eyes were bright, faces flushed. They seemed on the verge of riot, one more eager than the next to prove his manly prowess, and she, Serafina realized to her dread, was the banner around which they had been rallied.