Some Enchanted Evening (13 page)

"My kisses
are
valuable. I don't waste them on just anyone."

Not surprisingly his reply heightened her rage. "Did you imagine that I've never been kissed before? I have — and by better men than you!" It seemed very important that she tell him that.

In a deep voice that sent messages she didn't want to hear, he said, "Better men, perhaps . . . but not better lovers."

She froze like a rabbit sighted by a wolf. "How would you know that?"

"I pleased you, and you were surprised." He leaned one hand against the wall beside her, his attitude negligent yet watchful. "Did you think I couldn't tell?"

She swallowed, trying to cure her suddenly dry mouth. She could still taste him on her tongue, smell him on her body, and the heat of him resounded in her mind. Damn him. How could this man, this lord, with his nefarious plans and his overbearing manner, be the one who marked her with his passion? "You promised . . ." What had he promised? "On the road here, you said you recognized the trouble facing me because I'm unmarried, and you promised you would not damage my reputation."

"True, I promised to have a care for your reputation." A slight difference, but telling. "I didn't promise I wouldn't try to seduce you."

He exasperated her. "Would you please tell me the difference?"

"A reputation is what others think you've been doing. A seduction is what you've really been doing . . . with me ... if you're lucky."

"Conceited lout."

He glanced out the window. His eyes narrowed. He looked back at her. "I know my worth."

"Conceited, and . . . and ... I can't let you . . . you seduce me! I'm a princess. I have to take part in a dynastic marriage!"

Again he glanced out the window. "Even a princess should be allowed a little pleasure sometime." His gaze lingered on something,
someone
, outside . . . and he forgot her. As easily as that, all of his concentration switched away from her, and she was glad, for his eyes grew cold. He looked as if ... as if he could kill now, as if he had killed before, and without a thought to the consequences. Placing his hand on her shoulder, he pressed her against the wall. "Stay here."

She shivered at his abrupt change from lover to executioner, yet she kept her tone cool and composed. "My lord, what is it?"

Ignoring her, he strode to the candelabrum and blew out the flames, leaving the corridor lit only by the moon and by distant candles. He went to the window and vanished behind the drapes.

She caught her breath at his behavior. Was this proof of his madness?

But no, for outside she could see a line of trees on the ridge behind the manor, and there a man sneaked from shadow to shadow, moving toward the well-lit portions of MacKenzie Manor. It might be a footman returning from an assignation with his lass, or one of the laborers walking home . . . yet he moved with skill and stealth, blending into obscurity like a man at home in darkness and isolation.

Then, for one moment, as he ran from one shadow to another, the moon shone full on his face, and she thought she knew him. "Who is that?" she whispered, and started forward.

"I said, stay there!" Hepburn's voice whipped like a lash. Stealthily he slid the window open. "Clarice, go back to the others."

"Should I send someone . . . ?"

"No." So suddenly she was breathless, his attention came back to her. In a tone that too clearly told her he hadn't given up, he said, "We'll talk tomorrow. Go." Moving like a serpent, he slipped out of the window and dropped to the ground.

She didn't obey him. Convinced he must have been hurt — not that she cared — she ran to the window and peered out.

She could see nothing, hear nothing in the shadow of the house. Hepburn was gone.

She glanced up toward the other man. Like an apparition, he, too, had disappeared.

Both men were gone, vanished as if they had never been.

The stranger heard the thump as something, or someone, struck the ground. His head swiveled. The sound had come from the old wing of MacKenzie Manor. Slipping behind a tree, he stood still and silent and scrutinized the house he'd been watching the past twelve hours.

There. At the window. A young lady leaned out and looked below her, then inspected the landscape as if seeking . . . him.

His gaze sharpened.
Could she be the one
?

She drew back and hurried away toward the drawing room and the company of other guests.

Then he detected movement in the shadows below the window. Someone had seen him. Someone who moved with the same practiced stealth as he did — hunted him.

He recognized the way the man ran, low and fast, keeping his face down. He recognized it, because since his escape from the dungeon, men had ceaselessly hunted him.

They would capture him. They would kill him. If they could find him.

Slowly he slipped backward, following the escape route he had already scouted out. He made no sound. He left no mark.

He was Prince Rainger of Richarte.

He had come to find a princess.

THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE

Five years before

Clarice stood outside the gate of the exclusive girls school that had been her home, and Amy's, for three years. It was an imposing building on large, well-kept grounds. In the summer tall oaks shaded the girls as they took their constitutionals. Now winds stripped the trees of their leaves. The branches scraped the gray sky with bony fingers. Winter was coming.

Here Grandmamma had secretly placed Clarice and Amy when revolution convulsed their country. Here they had been educated, treated like . . . like princesses among the students. The headmistress had not revealed their identities, but Mrs. Kitling had fawned over them and given guests significant hints as to their importance.

Now, clinging to the bars of the fence, Clarice stared across the grounds, trying to understand the events that had led up to this ignominious ejection.

Amy tugged at her arm. "Clarice, are we supposed to go home now? To Beaumontagne? Can we go home?"

"I don't know." Clarice looked at her sister, twelve years old, gawky with adolescence and not comprehending the day's events. How could she comprehend? Clarice herself didn't understand. "I don't know. I couldn't talk to the headmistress. She refused to speak to me." Refused! As if Clarice were an insolent serving girl requesting an interview.

In the last few months Mrs. Kitling's deference had been disintegrating. She had been making snide comments about taking charity cases, and her expression when she gazed on them had been pinched and sour.

More important, where were Grandmamma's letters? Every month since she had sent them away, she had written to report on the progress of the revolution, to give them news about Sorcha, to admonish them about the correct behavior for princesses, and to demand letters in return. Four months had gone by with no word.

Clarice pressed her forehead against the cold bars. She hadn't allowed herself to think it, but . . . what if Grandmamma was dead too? What would they do?

Amy persisted. "Where are Joyce and Betty? They're our serving maids. They're supposed to take care of us."

"I don't know. When I asked about them, no one would answer me." Indeed, the three teachers who had escorted them to the gate had avoided her gaze and pretended not to hear her questions. Clarice had never felt so helpless in her life. Not three and a half years ago when the revolutionaries had overthrown the capital. Not three years ago when Grandmamma had sent the princesses away, separating Crown Princess Sorcha from her sisters for safety. Not even last year when word had come that their father had been killed in the fighting.

Unaware of Clarice's dark rumination, Amy buzzed and bothered like a midge. "Joyce and Betty are ours. We brought them with us."

Clarice took Amy's mittened hand and patted it. "We don't own them. But I do wish we had spoken to them before we . . left." She shivered. She and Amy couldn't stand out here like beggars. As the morning progressed it was getting colder. The few of their clothes she'd managed to hurriedly bundle together were stuffed in a pathetic little carpetbag at her feet. Their velvet cloaks and stylish bonnets wouldn't save them from impending rain.

Caution and yearning mingled in Clarice. "I think we have to go home. We have to find Sorcha and go home. We don't have a choice. We have nowhere else to go, and . . . and maybe Grandmamma needs us" She drew Amy along the grassy edge of the lane. "We don't have any money right now" — not a single pence — "but we will beg shelter at the inn in Ware."

"What if they won't give it to us?"

With a confidence she didn't feel, Clarice answered, "They will."

"But what if they don't?" Amy insisted. "Remember that time we saw those children in the workhouse? They were ragged and dirty and skinny, and some of them had sores, and that one boy had a broken arm wrapped in rags. Remember? What if they put us there?"

Of course Clarice remembered. How could she forget?

Then the call of a familiar voice saved Clarice from answering. "Please, Your Highness, wait!"

Clarice turned back to see Betty running across the lawn as fast as her girth would allow. She wore neither cape nor hat, and the carpetbag she clutched bumped against her knees.

"Betty!" Conscious of a great relief, Clarice reached through the bars and grasped her maid's cold hands. "Thank heavens! I was worried about you. Are you ready to go? Are those your things?"

"Ah, nay, Your Highness." Betty glanced over her shoulder as if fearing discovery. "They're yours. Your creams and potions from Queen Claudia, and more of your clothes and clothes for the little princess."

Amy demanded, "Aren't you going with us?"

"I can't. Mistress won't allow me, nor Joyce, neither. Mistress said . . . she said we could make ourselves useful helping the other girls. To ... to defray the expenses you two caused when . . . when the money stopped coming." Betty stammered to a halt.

Sharply, Clarice asked, "What do you mean, the money stopped coming?"

Betty lowered her voice. "About six months ago. The servants have been whispering about it."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Perhaps Clarice could have talked to Mrs. Kitling, explained that . . . that . . . she didn't know what she could explain. But she could have tried to work something out.

"You're a princess. I didn't know she would toss you out," Betty said miserably.

"But she can't force you to stay. Neither one of you. Come with us," Clarice urged.

Betty gazed down at the bag in her hand, then started shoving it through the bars. "Your Highness, I haven't... I can't." In a low tone she said, "I'm afraid"

Clarice drew back. "Oh." She understood only too well. She was afraid too.

"I... I don't want to starve or freeze or" — Betty looked up, misery clear in her eyes — "have to do something for money that moral women shouldn't do."

Amy didn't understand what Betty meant.

Clarice did. Clarice understood only too well, and the thought of her little sister walking the streets in a prostitute's garb produced a pain in her chest that took her breath away. She, Princess Clarice of Beaumontagne, had never had to take responsibility for herself in her life. Now she had to care for Amy. She had to get them home before disaster struck — and disaster had already overwhelmed her country.

Amy shoved her bonnet back. Her black hair flew around her face. "But Betty, we don't know how to travel alone. You have to help us."

"I will." Digging in the voluminous pocket of her apron, Betty brought out a handful of coins. Thrusting it through the bars, she said, "It's all the money we could put together in the kitchen. Me and Joyce gave everything we had. The others put in too. If you're careful it'll keep you through the week."

The week!

With trembling hands Clarice accepted the coins. "Thank you, Betty. You've helped us immensely. If someone comes to the school from Beaumontagne, tell them . . . tell them we're on our way home. Now go back in. It's cold, and you have no cloak."

"Yes, Your Highness." Betty curtsied, then ran toward the house, stopped, and curtsied again. Her simple brow knit at the sight of her princesses. "God speed You on your way."

"No!" Amy lunged after her, her skinny arm reaching through the bars. "You awful, horrible —"

Clamping an arm around Amy, Clarice dragged her down the road.

"What are you doing?" Amy demanded. "Grandmamma told her she was to take care of us, and she's abandoning us. And you're letting her!"

"I'm not letting her. I'm bowing to reality. She's not going to go with us. And if you'll recall, the last thing Grandmamma told us was that a princess is brave no matter what the circumstances, kind to her inferiors, and invariably polite." Clarice gave a quivering sigh. "So I was obeying her directive."

"Grandmamma's directives are dumb. You know that. Who wants to be a princess anyway?" Amy yanked away from Clarice's grasp. "Especially now when it's all trouble, and no privileges."

"It's who we are. Princesses of Beaumontagne."

Surly, Amy said, "We don't have to be. We're out here by ourselves. We could be anyone we wanted"