The Runaway Princess (26 page)

“Really, this isn't necessary,” Evangeline said.

And he put it in her mouth while she was speaking. It melted in sugary goodness across her tongue.

“See? I know how to romance a woman. Especially you. I'll bring you confections every day. And jewelry. There's a shop.”

He repeated the drill, running inside.

As she waited, Marie Theresia's words danced in her head.
You have fulfilled the prophecies, and I believe God brought you to Baminia to be the princess for our people
.

Troubled, Evangeline watched as Danior came out with a gaily decorated box. He climbed in and shoved it into her hands.

She just held the superfluous present and tried to explain. “Danior, really. It's not what you think.”

Impatient with her hesitation, he took the box and unwrapped it. Inside, a necklace of pearls glowed like beads of moonlight set with an emerald clasp. She'd never seen jewelry like this. A week ago she would have been ecstatic just to hold them. Now they made her feel faintly ashamed of herself.

Danior looked at her in expectancy. “Good, huh? See? I know what women like. When we're together, it will never be like it was in that place, ever again.”

Something tightened in her chest. She'd struck Danior in the one tender spot where he had no armor, and he was bleeding. The blow had been inadvertent, but the blood was still real. “You are not your father,” she said.

“No! That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm not. I have control of myself, and now that I know the consequences of losing that control, it will never happen again. I swear to you, Evangeline—”

She placed her hand across his mouth before he could finish his oath. Looking into the blue eyes she adored, she said, “I just . . . I want you. I want you the way you were in Blanca, in that dark hole where you held nothing back from me. I want it to always be that way. I didn't run because you loved me honestly. That was the reason I wanted to stay.”

He shoved her hands aside, and frustration vibrated in his tone. “Then why did you run away from me?”

Carefully she placed the box top over the pearls so she wouldn't have to look at them again, and took his hands. “Would you love me . . . no.” She tried again. “Would you want me if I weren't really a princess?”

“Love you, want you—haven't I proved that I
need
you?”

That
was the truth. He did need her, for without a princess he could never be king.

I believe God brought you to Baminia to be the princess for our people
. No doubt Evangeline didn't understand the will of God. And perhaps Marie Theresia did.

“Then I will tell you the truth. I am your princess, and I will marry you tomorrow.”

Two fires roared in two fireplaces in the royal bed
chamber, yet Evangeline shivered in her chemise as she watched four young and bustling maids pour hot water into the highbacked copper tub. The palace was old, drafty, massive, and medieval—just as she'd imagined it. Candelabras held long beeswax candles that provided shimmering pools of light and accented the dark corners. The furniture ranged in age from a new gleaming banquet table bought and placed in the dining hall for tomorrow evening's festivities to the thousand-year-old bed slept in by the very king and queen who fought so wickedly and divided the country.

That tall, broad bed stood sentinel over this bedchamber, drawing Evangeline's gaze until all she could think of was Danior and the kiss he had given her in the coach. It had been sweet and chaste, a touching of mouths without even a hint of passion.

She'd been astonished until he set her away from him and looked at her. Then she'd understood. Color blazed along his cheekbones, his blue eyes
flamed like the hottest part of the fire, and his body gave off heat in waves. “If I touch you,” he said, “I will take you in the coach as we drive down the Royal Way in Plaisance with all our subjects waving and cheering.”

“That'll give them something to cheer about,” Evangeline had quipped.

He didn't seem to see the humor in that, but she suspected he might be in some discomfort.

She, oddly enough, didn't find his ready arousal threatening. Rather, a thrill quivered through her. She'd done it, taken the final, irrevocable step. She'd declared herself the princess and placed herself into Danior's hands forever. She would be a queen. His queen.

Her excitement had lasted until the coach had crossed the River Plaisance and she'd seen the Palace of the Two Kingdoms.

Then reality set in.

She had read about state dinners; she had never participated in one. She had read about how to receive foreign dignitaries; she had never greeted one. She had read about behavior appropriate to a princess; she had never been one.

Now she was, and she dared not fail in any detail.

“Your Highness?”

The littlest maid smiled and bobbed curtsies at Evangeline until Evangeline realized the girl was speaking to her. “Yes?”

“Would you like to test the water?”

Evangeline moved to the side of the tub and wondered briefly if there was a proper princessly
way to check the warmth. Then common sense took over, and she dipped in her finger. “It's perfect.” She smiled at Tacita, one of five maids assigned to her by the extremely stately housekeeper.

Evangeline had wanted to ask how she was supposed to keep five maids busy. Then she thought perhaps Ethelinda would know, so Evangeline had shut her mouth and smiled, and just kept smiling through meeting the majordomo and the butler and the scullery maid and the old governess who hugged her with tears in her eyes and exclaimed how she'd grown. The whole thing had been an ordeal, she didn't remember half their names, and Danior had whisked away to speak to the prime minister who had to first express his pleasure in meeting the princess again after an absence of so many years.

So she could cross one thing off her list of worries. She
did
resemble the princess.

But how did a princess survive the unending scrutiny? Half the palace had come to watch as she consumed the dinner brought her on a tray. The capon on a bed of some kind of grain had been flavored with rosemary, but she couldn't really savor it while the cook, the butler, and the kitchen staff opened their mouths every time
she
took a bite.

Even now she still had five pairs of eyes watching her every move until she wanted to run back up into the mountains and use the hot springs for a bath.

Especially when Tacita tried to tug away her chemise.

Evangeline tugged back.

“I must bathe you, Your Highness,” Tacita said in her soft, melting voice.

“I must bathe myself, thank you,” Evangeline answered, firm as any proper English matron.

Tacita's lower lip trembled, her eyes filled with tears, and she looked around at the other maids as if needing support.

Softening her tone, Evangeline added, “I've been too long without a maid, and I prefer my privacy. But you can lay out my clothing if you like.”

“As you wish, Your Highness.”

But Tacita's tone left Evangeline in no doubt that she was sorely disappointed. Evangeline didn't care. She wasn't going to show herself naked for anyone.

Or—almost anyone.

“Is there a screen or something we can put—
you
can put here?” She indicated a spot between the tub and the rest of the room.

“Of course, Your Highness.” Tacita waved at the other maids, who sighed gustily, and hurried to do Evangeline's bidding.

The screen they brought was Chinese, constructed of hardwood, polished to a high gloss, and inlaid with mother-of-pearl and carved pieces of jade. The jade alone probably cost more than all the money Leona had left her, Evangeline decided, and she wanted to ask for another. One fit for a counterfeit princess.

She restrained herself while they placed the screen to provide a private alcove, complete with a tub and drying cloths, draped across a chair and warming before the fire.

As the last maid reluctantly stepped out of the alcove, Evangeline removed her chemise while
watching for Tacita's return. She wouldn't put it past the little girl to try and do her ablutory duty regardless of Evangeline's command.

Cautiously, she spread the chemise over the top edge of the screen—and jumped when it was jerked down from the other side.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” Tacita cried. “It has been decreed that your clothes shall be preserved in a museum, so all the people can see how you suffered on your journey to Plaisance.”

“The silk gown, too?” Evangeline asked, horrified.

“Especially the gown.” Tacita tapped on the screen. “Are you ready for me to wash your hair?”

“I'll do it.” Evangeline stepped into the tub too hastily, and the fragrant water sloshed back and forth, right to the edge. Half-panicked, she tried to calm the splashing; in her life she had, after all, spent her time cleaning up after others. She looked guiltily at the edge of the screen, but over by the bed she could hear Tacita and the others exclaiming about the condition of the chemise.

Heat eased her tight muscles and worked into her bones as she lathered a cloth with milled bar soap and washed as rapidly as possible.

She hurried, she told herself, because she fretted that the maids would make up some excuse to peek around the corner.

Actually, she knew better. She hurried because she feared Danior would tromp in, making it clear to one and all they were already lovers, disconcerting her and sending the maids off to spread the word. He was the kind of man who would do such
a thing deliberately to make her think she had no choice but to marry him.

As if that would influence her.

She didn't enjoy being so self-conscious, but she could live with that. What she couldn't live with was the anticipation of tomorrow. Right now, Marie Theresia and her silly advice seemed far away and long ago, and all Evangeline could think was—what if Danior is wrong? What if the crystal case was magic? She had dreamed of really being the dearly beloved princess, of having a home, of being part of a family that could trace its roots back into the mists of antiquity.

But in the end, she had given herself not for the country or for a home or to the Chartrier family but to the prince.

The prince. A man to depend on.

A man so driven by the sense of his own infallibility that he could look at her and see a princess. She could fool him forever. He'd never know she was truly Evangeline Scoffield of East Little Teignmouth, Cornwall—unless that damned crystal case wouldn't open.

That nightmare preyed on her nerves.

She lathered her hair.

The other nightmare was almost more vivid. The one where the real princess, a lovely, elegant young woman with the slight glow of a halo around her head, interrupted the ceremony with the announcement that Evangeline was a fraud, and Evangeline was hauled off by a constable and stuck in jail until she rotted. Or was killed. Danior, she imagined, would come by at regular intervals to mock her until
the execution. After all, that was what happened to Lady Jane Gray.

She ducked for a rinse. As she came up, she watched with horror as the water sloshed to the edge again—and over. The puddle spread across the shining waxed floor toward the priceless Chinese screen. She wrung out her hair, knowing she should call Tacita or one of the other maids to wipe it up. They were her servants.

But the real princess wouldn't have been so untidy. A real princess wouldn't have this empathy for those who labored for their living.

She heard giggling from beyond the screen, and that settled the matter. She didn't need five maids squatted around her bathtub wiping up the mess she'd made.

Evangeline got on her knees and stretched long, reaching for a drying cloth—and Danior said, “Lovely.”

She sat down so hard the water splashed out again.

He stood beside the screen, one hand gripping the edge as if to shove it out of the way.

Her hand shot out, palm toward him, fingers spread. “Don't!”

“Don't what? Don't be here? Don't come closer? Don't take off my clothes and join you?”

The giggling beyond the screen got more intense. He snapped his fingers at the maids, the giggling stopped, and the door to the bedchamber opened and shut with a weighty thud.

Alone. She and Danior were as alone as they had been in the hot springs, for Danior had decreed it so and no one disobeyed the prince.

The washcloth wasn't big enough to cover her breasts, but Evangeline gave it a valiant try, using the water to plaster the flimsy linen to her chest. “I was going to say, don't move the screen. But yes, to all of those.”

The formal jacket and cravat he'd worn earlier had been discarded, his satin waistcoat hung open, his shirtsleeves were rolled up. He looked more like the Danior who had been her traveling companion and less like the crown prince of Baminia.

No wonder the maids had been giggling.

“You shouldn't be here.” She tried to sound firm and decorous, a possibly futile exercise while sitting stark naked in a rapidly shrinking tub.

He snorted and slipped out of his waistcoat. “Where you are, my dear, so am I. I could scarcely bear to let you out of my sight long enough to speak to that long-winded old noodle for fear when I got up here, you'd have decamped again.”

Stupidly, she was hurt by his distrust. “I said I was going to marry you!”

He hung his waistcoat over the screen. “You've said a lot of things, most of them lies.”

“If you feel that way, then why do you want to marry me?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she wished them back. Despite the way he mouthed those sweet words of love, she knew he didn't
want
to marry her. He
had
to marry her.

Evangeline clutched the washcloth as he came to kneel at the side of the tub.

“Why do I want to marry you?” He stirred the water with his finger like a warlock brewing a potion. “Because you have seen me at my worst and
loved me in spite of it. Or maybe because of it. I don't understand, but I'd be a fool to let you go.”

His hand crept toward her leg, and she caught it between her own. “For a man with no neck, you're really rather good with words.”

“You don't believe me.”

She held his palm flat and turned it up to the light. It was broad and strong, with bright red blisters under each finger as if he'd rowed down that river after her. “I believe that if you found out I was a commoner, all my virtues would be for naught.”

“You mean, if you were really Evangeline Scoffield of East Little Teignmouth, Cornwall?”

“That's what I mean.”

He grinned, so sure of himself that she wanted to smack him. “Thank God, I'll never have to make that choice. It would be impossible for me to give up the only woman who wants not the prince but the man.”

He was right, and she ached with the knowledge that he didn't feel the same intense love for her.

His voice got deeper, rumbling with gratification. “In the coach, you said you wanted me the way I was in Blanca, all crazy for you and holding nothing back.”

She touched each of his blisters gently, as if she could cure them, not with a royal touch but with a loving touch. “What kind of woman would want to run mad in your arms while you carefully maintain your control?”

“You little innocent. All of them—except you.” He shushed her when she would have argued with him. “I was always afraid that if I lost control, even
once, I would be like my father, desperately seeking my manhood in one woman after another.”

“Danior, you don't need to worry about that. You have the moral strength of ten men. You are the embodiment of resolution. You have been tempered and tried by fire, and you are everything a prince should be.” She got a good grip on his thumb before she added, “Besides, if you seek satisfaction with another woman, I'll cut off your royal jewels.”