The Prince Kidnaps a Bride (19 page)

“I’m not simple, I admit that. Arnou is less intelligent than me.” He bobbed his head in artful imitation of the role he’d played for so many weeks. “But no one could have guarded you on your trip across Scotland with more dedication.”

“I would have to say you are simple. Possibly even moronic.” Her poor, worn boots were dry, warm, and polished. She shoved her feet inside and laced them with the same vigor she’d shown for her petticoats and her garters. “You’ve just told me you deceived me and married me only because I was your last chance to win your kingdom, and you’ve protected me because if I die, your chance to be king dies with me.”

Rainger walked over, looked down at her as if that proved his superior position, and said, “You asked for the truth.”

She leaned back, folded her arms over her chest, and looked up at him with as much insolent confidence as she could muster. “Because it makes everything that came before a lie. Arnou protected me and married me for
me
. For the first time in my life, someone was kind, was dedicated, to
me
. Not to my position as princess. Not to what I could do for him. Not to honor tradition or to make a profit. Now I’m the half-wit, for believing that I’m pretty or lovable or worth dying for. You
are
simple for believing I will ever forgive you.”

His face grew cold and still and in his lethal gaze she caught a glimpse of his true self—a ruthless prince who would stop at nothing, sacrifice everything, for his vengeance and his position. “Last night you swore you would make me your consort. You swore you’d fight your grandmother and your prime minister for me. You swore you loved me.”

“I swore I loved Arnou.” She clenched her fist. “Arnou is dead.” And she mourned him. God, how she mourned him!

Jumping to her feet, she shoved Rainger aside. She picked up his leather saddlebags, usually so hefty and cumbersome she could scarcely lift them, and shook the contents onto the floor. A coil of rope, a pistol and shot, a corked bottle, and a blanket spilled out onto the floor.

And two sealed letters.

“Don’t. Wait. The saddlebags are too heavy.” Rainger rushed up her side. “Let me—”

She slammed her elbow into his sternum.

He doubled over with a gasp.

“The ladies at Madam’s told me how to do a few other things besides blow the hornpipe—a pleasure you’ll never enjoy, at least not from my talented lips.” She picked up the letters. She looked at her sisters’ dear, familiar handwriting. Her eyes filled with tears, making her realize how precarious was her hold on her poise. “But now that you’ve trapped me, secured your position and your army, and ensured your crown, I’m sure there’ll be other women ready and willing to perform that service.
Don’t
let any misplaced loyalty to our wedding vows stop you.” She stalked toward the doorway. “But, of course, a vow made for expediency need not be kept. Kings have been proving that for generations. And that, you bastard, is why there are revolutions.” She slammed the door behind her.

Rainger rubbed his breastbone and tried to catch his breath. As exit lines went, that was impressive—but he’d sworn he would allow no man to speak to him with such contempt ever again, and certainly not the woman he’d made his wife. Certainly not the wife he’d courted, caressed, and kissed.

She wasn’t going to get away with this.

He stalked to the door, flung it open—and heard Sorcha running down the stairs, sobbing as if her heart had broken.

Quietly he shut the door.

He rubbed his eyes. Both his eyes.

That conversation hadn’t gone quite as well as he had hoped.

But damn, she did look good in a dress.

C
lutching her precious letters, Sorcha stumbled down the stairs and into the taproom. She glanced around the chamber, which had been so merry last night. She saw men. Men speaking in low, pained voices. Men sitting around the long tables holding wet cloths to their heads. Men with bloodshot eyes and shaking hands.

She contained her sobbing long enough to glare at them. She hated men. All of them. Stupid men. All of them. Horrible, stupid, rude, disgusting, stupid, stupid, stupid...

Whirling, she headed for the kitchen. She hoped it would be empty.

It wasn’t. The women were there. Women who looked as hung-over as the men. Women moving slowly about the kitchen. Tulia frying ham and sausages. Grandmother Sancia stirring a pot of oatmeal.

No one was eating.

All eyes turned to Sorcha. Everyone observed her wild hair, her blotchy complexion, her trembling lips.

“Oh, my dear,” Tulia said. “Was it that bad?”

The innkeeper’s sympathy was the last straw. Sorcha didn’t care who saw her, who heard her; she couldn’t contain the flood any longer. Letters in hand, she sat down at the table, buried her head in her arms, and once again gave way to a flood of tears. She cried for her father. She cried for her sisters. She cried for the years of loneliness. She cried for herself, because she had believed, truly believed, that people were noble and kind and if she looked for the good in them, she would find it. She cried because the belief had been cruelly betrayed.

When her sobs finally began to dissipate, she felt a hand slip into her empty one. It was a fragile hand with twisted fingers and delicate skin. Lifting her head, she looked into Grandmother Sancia’s wise, sad old eyes.

“Stop crying, now,” Grandmother Sancia said. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“Let me button your gown.” Roxanne helped her out of her cloak and fastened the buttons Sorcha had been unable to reach.

Tulia handed Sorcha a large white handkerchief. “Blow your nose, Your Highness.”

“The phrases
Blow your nose
and
Your Highness
do not go together.” Sorcha blew. “Don’t call me
Your Highness
. Not yet. Call me Sorcha. Just Sorcha.”

“Every woman cries after her wedding night.” Grandmother Sancia squeezed Sorcha’s fingers. “It gets better.”

Sorcha glanced around. The women, all the women, surrounded the table, nodding.

“At first, it’s painful and messy, and he falls asleep immediately afterward, but truly, it does get better.” Rhea smiled encouragingly.

“Oh.” They were talking about... “Oh.”

“Even if it doesn’t get better, it only lasts a second or two.” Pia sighed hugely.

The women nodded harder.

“Then all you have to worry about is a wet spot on the sheets,” Ora said.

“On your side.” Roxanne’s quip brought a round of laughter. Laughter that quickly died as they watched Sorcha, waiting to see how she would react.

“It’s not that.” But Sorcha’s lips trembled, and she didn’t know how to tell them the problem.

She shouldn’t complain. They knew who she was. They knew who Rainger was. But like Rainger, they didn’t care how she felt about the match. They only cared about themselves.

Sorcha couldn’t even blame them. They looked to her and to Rainger for the end of their exile. They wanted her to be happy because they wanted to go home. They would rather believe she hated his lovemaking than to know she hated
him
.

“He’s not too quick. It took hours.” She inhaled, her breath still wavering from her bout of tears.

“Yes. A clumsy slow man is worse than a clumsy fast man. Horace, God rest his soul, lived long enough to be both.” Grandmother Sancia made a bottoms-up gesture toward Tulia.

Tulia tapped the wine keg, poured a pewter cup full, and slapped it on the table before Sorcha. “Drink. It’ll make you feel better.”

Sorcha looked at the sealed letters, her sisters’ letters, in her hand. She saw how battered they were from their long journey in Rainger’s saddlebags. And she drank. She drank all the wine.

Tulia filled Sorcha’s cup again.

Grandmother Sancia tapped the table with her finger. Tulia filled a cup for her. Looking around at the other women, she said, “We should all have a drink.”

As the cups were filled and passed around, Sorcha tenderly broke the seal on Clarice’s letter.

In her elegant script Clarice wrote all the things Sorcha wanted, needed, to say to her. She said she missed Sorcha desperately, that she worried about her constantly. She told Sorcha how she and Amy had survived by selling Grandmamma’s cosmetics to anyone who would buy them.

Sorcha read between the lines and recognized the desperation that must have brought them to such a pass.

Gently Clarice broke the news that Amy had run away, but assured her they were in communication and that Amy was all right. She talked about the baby she and Robert would have, and she closed with the prayer that soon they would be together.

Sorcha cried and hugged the paper as if somehow Clarice could feel her affection.

Then, with less care and more eagerness, she tore into Amy’s letter. She could almost feel Amy’s enthusiasm as she read the sharply slanted script. Amy had had an adventure, one that involved kidnapping a marquess and capturing a villain. She blurred over the details—Sorcha resolved that one day soon she would hear everything about Amy’s escapades—but one thing was clear. Amy adored her marquess... and they, too, were going to have a baby.

Sorcha’s baby sister was going to have a baby. Sorcha counted the months on her fingers. Amy would have the baby
soon
.

Once more Sorcha put her head down on the table and sobbed.

She’d missed so much of her sisters’ lives—lives she now knew had been difficult and vulnerable. She hadn’t saved them from starvation or fended off attackers. She hadn’t vetted their husbands. She hadn’t seen them wed.

Most important, she cried for relief.

Her sisters were alive and well. For the first time in years, she could let go of the frantic worry that they were destitute or hurt or dead. Her joy was so great it was almost heartrending.

She used the huge handkerchief until it was damp. Then Tulia thrust a cold wet towel at her and Sorcha pressed it to her swollen eyes.

The table was covered with cups. Women sat on benches, staring morosely at Sorcha.

Sorcha shrugged, smiled with wobbly reassurance, and worked to completely regain her composure.

“Well, here’s the proof there are no good men,” Pia said in a lugubrious tone. “If the prince can’t make his wife happy, there’s no hope for any of us.”

“It’s not that my husband is quick.” Salvinia shoved her cup back and forth in short, forceful gestures. “It’s that I don’t know when he’s put it in.”

A burst of nervous laughter followed that pronouncement.

“Is it really so small?” Roxanne was wide-eyed.

“Like a new potato,” Salvinia assured them. No wonder her brown eyes were sad.

Sorcha sniffed into the handkerchief. “That’s not Rainger’s problem. In fact, one of the prostitutes at Madam Pinchon’s said he was well endowed.”

“He’s already visiting whores?” Tulia asked in horror.

“No, I was visiting them.” Sorcha cradled the wine between her palms, stared into its depths, and wished she could get Rainger’s bare face out of her mind. “He came to tell me it was time to go and Eveleen looked him over and told me he had a large cock.”

All the women in the kitchen took a drink of their wine. Tulia blotted her upper lip and murmured, “Hot flash.”

“It’s that, from the moment he had me cast out of the convent—”

The women gasped in horror.

That gasp gave Sorcha a great deal of satisfaction. “It’s true. He’s a villain. He set fire to my cell so I had to leave or face putting the convent in danger.”

“That’s rather clever,” Rhea said thoughtfully.

Grandmother Sancia coughed and, with a jerk of her head, indicated Sorcha.

“For a man, I mean,” Rhea added hastily.

“But Your Highness, I don’t understand.” Looking puzzled and mutinous, Roxanne said, “If it’s not too small and he’s willing to take the time and the noises you were making last night weren’t complaints—”

Ora thrust a plump elbow in Roxanne’s skinny ribs.

“I just want to know what’s wrong with him!” Roxanne insisted. “Sorcha, why are you so mad at him?”

“I’m trying to tell you,” Sorcha said impatiently. “He chased me out of the convent. He tricked me into letting him travel with me all the way across Scotland. He lied to me about who he was and what he wanted. Worse than all that, when he burned my cell he burned my sisters’ letters, too.”

“The other princesses?” Grandmother Sancia drew back in horror. “He burned Prince Clarice and Princess Amy’s letters?”

“Yes.” Sorcha relished blackening Rainger’s character. “I didn’t know if Clarice and Amy were alive or dead.” She saw the women’s anxious expressions and assured them, “They are alive.”

In thanksgiving, the women looked to the cross that hung above the table.

“I thought my last link to my sisters had turned to ashes. I cried about those letters. He
saw
me cry.” Sorcha sniffed at the memory of her tears barely withheld. “And do you know what?”

Every woman in the kitchen shook her head.

“He had new letters in his saddlebags the whole journey and until this morning, he never, ever let me know they were there.” Sorcha indicated the letters on the table, leaned back, and waited.

“Men!” Grandmother Sancia shook her bony fist toward the taproom.

“Well-endowed or not, he deserves to be strung up,” Salvinia said with some regret.

“He’s as spoiled a prince as everyone back in Richarte claimed.” Tulia filled Sorcha’s cup to the brim.

“He’s a... a reprobate.” Sorcha stared into the depths of her ruby wine with such heat the liquid should have simmered. “He’s a... a wretch. He’s a miscreant. He’s—”

“A whoreson,” Roxanne said.

Tulia shushed her.

But that was exactly the term Sorcha had been searching for. “Yes. A whoreson! A filthy, slimy whoreson. A disgusting lousy—”

“Dilberry,” Ora said.

“Yes. A dilberry.” Sorcha didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded awful. “He’s a ghastly, repellent dilberry.”

“Devil’s dung,” Grandmother Sancia said.

“Certainly he’s devil’s dung.” Sorcha relished the phrase. “A steaming, stinking pile of devil’s dung.”

“A gravy-eyed frig pig,” Phoenice said.

“Yes, he is the worst, most horrible gravy-eyed frig pig I’ve ever seen.” Sorcha made her pronouncement with a great deal of zest.

Roxanne put down her cup. “Actually, I think he’s rather handsome and important-looking.”

Every woman in the kitchen turned and glared at her.

“Gravy-eyed and a frig pig,” Roxanne said hastily. “I don’t know how I missed it.”

“I don’t know how you did, either.” Sorcha showed them Clarice’s letter. “Clarice is married to Robert, Lord Hepburn, of MacKenzie Manor here in Scotland. Do you know where that is?”

“MacKenzie Manor sits just outside the town of Freya Crags.” Tulia turned to Ora. “Your husband rides down that direction when he buys mutton. How far would you say it is?”

“From New Prospera to Freya Crags is only a day’s ride on a good horse,” Ora answered.

Sorcha stood. “You mean if I leave now, I could see Clarice tonight?”

“Yes, but Your Highness, you can’t go by yourself.” Phoenice’s alarm transmitted itself to the other women, who shook their heads. “Prince Rainger may be a gravy-eyed frig pig, but he’s right. Count duBelle’s assassins—”

Grandmother Sancia spit on the floor.

Tulia rushed to clean it up.

Phoenice continued, “Count duBelle’s assassins would find you an easy target. We’re not going to lose you now.”

“No, you’re not,” Sorcha assured her. “I don’t intend to get myself killed, so give me a well-armed escort. I ride to Freya Crags immediately.”

As soon as Rainger finished dressing in his new garments—and he was very thankful to wear clothes that fit him—he hurried down to the taproom.

There he found the men gathered in small, worried groups. Father Terrance. Montaroe the innkeeper. Vernon the butcher. Chauncery the tailor. Alroy, Savill, Paul, Octavius. Two dozen men packed the room and all of them were glancing at the kitchen, then up the stairs, and when Rainger stopped in the doorway, Montaroe said with false heartiness, “Please, Your Highness, come in.”

“Where’s Sorcha?” Rainger wanted to get this issue of her unhappiness settled right now.

“She’s in the kitchen with the women.”

Rainger started after her.

Father Terrance stopped him with a forceful hand on his arm. “She’ll be all right. They’ll take care of her.”