Royal 02 - Royal Passion (47 page)

Mara saw the muscle that stood out in the prince's jaw, saw his hands clench into fists. She tried to sit up, saying imploringly, “Roderic—"

He heard the appeal, and his features relaxed. He glanced down at her, then, seeing her struggles, moved swiftly to raise her. His arm was an iron band of support across her back as he drew her pillows behind her, placing them with a practiced hand.

"My son, as you can see,” Angeline said quietly to André, “has been caring for Mara since her injury. He has become quiet adept."

"Men do not ordinarily frequent the sickroom of a lady."

"Some men,” she corrected gently. “There are also those who have no fear of infirmity, men who are equal to any task."

André refused to be mollified. “I still wish to speak to my daughter. I must ask to be left alone with her."

Roderic faced him. “Mara is in no condition for a long discussion of events that she has already explained once to you in writing."

"But she is in a condition to receive the kind of rough addresses you were pressing upon her? I should call you out!"

A duel. The prospect filled Mara with horror. “Papa, no! Roderic—"

"I am at your disposal, sir. However, it might be more to the point if you will come with me to my apartment where I will undertake to answer whatever you may wish to ask."

"Very fine, but I prefer the truth."

There was a close silence in the room. The tension vibrated in the scented, overheated air. It was a grievous insult, one for which any other man, at any other time, might well have answered with his life. Mara reached out to touch Roderic's arm with tears of distress in her eyes.

He did not disappoint her. His tone even and deliberate, he said, “I will naturally adjust the facts only so much as is necessary to enhance the good opinion you hold of me, sir."

Mara looked at her father. “What he is more likely to do by far is to shade the truth to protect me, leaving himself exposed. Otherwise, if you will listen, there is none who can better explain what has taken place."

"Oh, I know,” André” said, flinging up his hands in querulous defeat. “An explanation couched in high-flown words and phrases so that the meat of it has to be searched out like picking a dragon's teeth. But if he can overlook an insult gratuitously given in his own house, I suppose I can at least hear him out."

Her father stepped to the bed and, with awkward care for her injuries, gave her a hug and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Promising, with a defiant glance at Roderic, to return later, he went with the prince from the room.

Mara watched them go, one straight and tall and golden-haired, the other thick of waist, graying, and infinitely dear. The tears spilled over her lashes.

Angeline stayed behind, moving to straighten the bedclothes, setting Roderic's mandolin aside and rescuing Mara's book from under an extra pillow. Her busyness was an act of tact. Mara wiped her eyes on a corner of the sheet, impatient with her own weakness, as she turned to the older woman.

"Do you think they will come to blows?"

"They will try each other, but should not become dangerously at odds so long as Roderic maintains a degree of control."

"But can he do that against such provocation?"

Angeline paused to give her a warm smile. “You should know as well as any. No one else, I would venture to guess, has tried him quite so completely."

"I would have thought his father—” Mara began, then stopped since the comment was hardly complimentary.

"Well, yes, but you have attributes—for provocation, you understand—that Rolfe lacks."

Mara gave her a faint smile, then turned her attention to a piece of nonexistent fuzz on the bedclothes. “Where is the king?"

"Being a man of some discretion, and a most frustrating instinct for trouble, he left me to greet your father alone."

"He didn't mind, that he is here, I mean?"

"As to that, he may, but I will never know it unless he should judge that I am unhappy with his lack of jealousy."

Mara leaned her head back on her pillows, looking up into the canopy of her bed. “Is nothing ever simple and straight-forward with him, or with his son?"

"Oh, yes, often, usually when ordinary people would use a certain delicate circumlocution."

Mara made a wry face. “In those difficult moments of embarrassment or—"

"Or desire?"

"Yes."

"Forgive me, I seem to have caught the habit from them,” Angeline said with a shake of her head. “Is there anything you need?"

How easy it would be to keep Roderic's mother there talking, merely for the pleasure of saying his name, of learning more about him. It would do no good, and was painful in its way.

She summoned a smile. “No, thank you."

"Then I must go and see to having a room prepared for André. I would send Juliana to you, or Trude, but I expect it would be best if you tried to rest, perhaps napped a little."

Mara nodded. After a moment she heard the door click shut behind the older woman. She had never felt farther from sleep. What were Roderic and her rather saying to each other? She did not dare think. She could not remember ever seeing her father so upset. Not the least reason, she thought, being because Roderic's accusation had struck home; her rather had felt some stirring of guilt for allowing her and her grandmother to jaunt to Europe unprotected. It had been the grinding season when they left Louisiana, the season when the sweet juice of the cane from plantation fields was made into sugar. The process required close supervision, particularly this year when the yield was important to repair their fortunes affected by the panic. Still, André's worry left him open to the charge.

What did her father think of what she had done? Did he feel differently toward her? It did not seem so. The way it looked, he had instead transferred the entire blame to Roderic. She could not allow that. She must make certain as soon as possible that he understood her own part.

It was, perhaps, a good thing that de Landes was dead. In his present humor, André might well have decided to horsewhip him, or to call the man out also. The duello was banned in Paris, as in most of the world, but gentlemen incensed because of slights to their names or their persons could circumvent the regulations easily enough. In New Orleans it was not at all uncommon for men to be killed on what they were pleased to call the field of honor.

Pray God that Roderic did not quarrel with her father. With pistol or sword, it was impossible that he should be bested by the older man. Unless, of course, Roderic permitted it out of misguided conscientiousness.

It was not his fault. The blame was hers entirely. He might claim otherwise, might suggest that he had planned her seduction in order to relieve her of the guilt, but she knew better. Just as she knew that the blood of Nicholas de Landes was on her hands. She had killed a man, and nothing that Roderic could say would alter that fact. It was something she was going to have to live with for the rest of her life.

The door swung open and Juliana swept into the room. “Are you asleep? I thought not. Maman said I must let you rest, but I suspected you were in here alone fretting yourself to tatters. You must not, you know."

"Mustn't I?” Mara asked with a wry smile, though she was willing enough to be beguiled.

"What's done is done; nothing can change it. You must turn your thoughts toward tomorrow, and the day after. Life is life, and you must live it."

The gypsy influence. Mara wondered if Juliana realized it. “That's easy to say."

"But difficult to do? You begin by forgetting. And then you interest yourself in something else. My problems, for instance. Did you think you were the only one who had any?"

"What I think is that you are a great deal like your brother."

"You've only just noticed? But I was telling you about Luca."

"Were you?"

"Pay attention, Mara. Do you know what that earringed scoundrel has had the impudence to do? He has had himself appointed as my official bodyguard. As if I needed one!"

"By Roderic?"

"Who else? And the king will not rescind it.” Juliana took a turn about the room that sent her skirts flying in a wide sweep.

Watching her, Mara said, “I can see why Luca did it; he is obviously besotted with you."

"Oh, yes, to the point that he publicly repudiated all claim to my hand!"

"He was forced to it."

Juliana's face took on a look of scorn. “He could have defied the cadre and my brother, as well as my father."

"Could he and retain his principles, his worth as a man?"

"He didn't have to come crawling back."

"He came to bring information Roderic needed and his help. What I don't understand is why he was sent away in the first place, why your father insulted him so. It doesn't seem like King Rolfe to harbor such prejudice. Could it be that it was a trial by fire?"

"Naturally, and he passed it to my father's satisfaction, but what of mine?"

Troubled, Mara was silent until the other girl stopped striding about and turned to look at her inquiringly. Then she said, “What of Luca? To appoint him your bodyguard is to encourage him, or so it seems to me, though it may be the same as with Crown Prince Arvin, a means of throwing you together so that you conceive a disgust for one another. Still, if it has the opposite effect, what will be the outcome? You are a princess, he is a gypsy."

"There is nothing in the laws of Ruthenia that forbids marriage between royalty and a commoner. It has happened before."

"Perhaps, but the need for alliances, for protective agreements between countries, usually means a marriage of state to cement them."

"Such alliances mean nothing; they are as easily broken as any other. The world is changing. That sort of diplomacy is hopelessly outdated."

"Would you become a gypsy woman, then, and roam Europe in a caravan?"

"I might, but Luca, if he wished, could make a place for himself with my brother, become someone of importance in the government of my country."

"It seems he wishes to do so. And now what of you? What do you want?"

Juliana gave a toss of her head, then the irritation left her face to be replaced by a somber shadow. She made a helpless gesture with one hand. “If I knew, I would attempt to get it. But I don't."

Juliana succeeded in her aim, which had been distraction. When she had gone, Mara lay staring at the fire across the room, thinking. The world might be changing. Alliances between royal houses might be a thing of the past. One thing remained the same, however. Princes did not wed their mistresses or the women who tricked their way into the royal bed. Pride must refuse that choice, even if common sense did not. But if, because of a vow given in a moment of self-blame, Roderic should seek to wed her, she trusted she would have the strength to refuse.

"I would like to go home as soon as possible."

Mara had meant the words to be a firm statement of fact. Instead they had a tight, defensive sound.

"Why,
chére
?"

André, sitting in an armchair before the fire in her bedchamber, looked up from his newssheet to peer over his spectacles at her where she sat in a chair across from him. It seemed everyone spent half their time reading the columns of print these days, trying to discover what was happening with the new republic and its leaders.

"It isn't a sudden decision. I wanted to go before, weeks ago."

"But I've been here such a short time—what is it, eight, nine days?—not nearly enough time to reacquaint myself with the city. The theaters are opening, the opera houses, the restaurants. It's been twenty years since I sampled these pleasures in Paris itself, and I look forward to them."

Her father, after that first explosive quarrel, had come to terms with Roderic. They seemed to understand each other on some entirely masculine level. Within a day or two André had become accustomed to the peculiar household and had fitted himself into it with remarkable ease, exchanging tales with the cadre and joining them on some of their visits to the upper rooms of the restaurants, making himself agreeable to the guests who had begun to come and go again. With Angeline he was part gallant and part childhood friend. They often sat reminiscing, and sometimes he served as her escort about the city. Rolfe accepted his presence with equanimity, without effusiveness, but also without a trace of jealousy.

Mara forced a smile. “It's springtime in Louisiana, my favorite season. The fruit trees will be blooming, and the honeysuckle and rambling roses. The clover will be high. It will be planting time, and you know you don't want to miss that."

"My overseer is a good man. I gave him his instructions before I left as I had no idea how long I would be gone. In any case, I'm not sure you are fit yet for the return journey."

"I will be before long, perhaps another week."

He put down his newssheet and took off his spectacles, folding them and attaching them to the watch chain that looped across his waistcoat. “Mara,
ma chére
, are you certain you know your own mind? I thought—that is, I had assumed you and Roderic—"

"No."

"What do you mean, no?"

"The prince has not asked me to marry him, and, in any case, I don't wish it."

"You don't wish it.” He stared at her, a frown gathering between his brows before he repeated, “You don't wish it. You didn't want to marry Dennis Mulholland when he had compromised you in the summerhouse. Now Roderic has done much more, but you don't care to be wed to him either. What, may I ask, will it take to please you in a husband?"

"I don't know, Papa,” she said, leaning her head back on the chair cushions, closing her eyes. “I only know I have no need of a man who will marry me out of a feeling of obligation."

"Such scruples do you credit, but are they wise?"

"That doesn't matter."

"It matters to me. I'm your father, and it's my duty to see that you don't ruin your life over this unfortunate affair."

She turned her head to look at him. “You forced me to become engaged to one man out of that fear. I will not allow you to do the same thing again. Please don't interfere, Papa. Just take me home soon."