And at last she responded to his unspoken demand, turned and looked up at him. He leaned against the rail, his hands folded before him, his dark gaze fixed on her. It seemed as if he summoned her across space, demanding she submit to him.
That was wrong. She was a princess—and not just any princess, the crown princess, a woman destined to be a queen. She did not submit, not to him, not to anyone. Yet they could have a marriage of mutual partnership. She would tell him, and he would listen. He was a reasonable man. Or at least—Arnou had been a reasonable man.
All she could see now was open water. The wind blew the sails full and whipped her straw bonnet off her head. Only the ribbons tied around her chin kept it from blowing away. Catching the brim, she moved toward the cabin, knowing full well Rainger would follow and follow soon, for like flint and spark they ignited each other.
Their cramped cabin held a narrow bed with a straw mattress, a small round table with two chairs and a lit lantern swinging on a hook. Rainger had paid dearly for this booking, and for that reason the captain had ignored the fact that they had no chest, no clothes, no linens, and he had provided bedclothes and blankets to keep them warm.
Removing her battered bonnet and cloak, she hung them on hooks against the wall. She hesitated with her hand on the breeches she wore beneath her skirt. She’d grown used to wearing them. She liked them. No—she loved them. No wonder men wore them. They provided a protection skirts and petticoats never could. For her, they bestowed freedom of a sort she’d never imagined. Clad in her breeches, she’d sung in a tavern, she’d visited ladies of the night, she’d bartered with a horse trader, and she’d loved every minute of it.
But she had to return to being a woman and a princess, and that meant discarding the trappings of a boy.
So she did. She removed her shoes and her breeches. Yet... in light of Rainger’s brooding gaze, she wondered if she’d made a wise decision... .
She changed her mind. Standing, she grabbed her breeches, lifted her skirt, stepped one foot in the leg—and the door opened.
“While you’re at it, take off everything.”
At the sound of Rainger’s rough command, she stumbled backward and fell into the seat.
He shut and locked the door behind him. His menacing gaze had not lightened.
She smiled at him anyway. “I was putting them on.”
“Why?”
Because you’re looking at me as if you’re a wolf and I’m a tasty rabbit. And she didn’t like being a rabbit.
Carefully she freed her foot. Agreeably she said, “If there’s one thing I learned today, it’s that we need to talk, and although we’ve been married only a day, I already know we won’t talk if I take off all my clothes.”
“That’s funny.” He leaned against the door and removed his boots. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned since I met you, it’s that talking is overrated.” Unbuttoning his trousers, he dropped them and his underdrawers in a single motion.
“It’s easy to tell what your purpose is.” With his cock at full attention, how could she doubt it? Standing, she brushed her hands at her gown. “But before things spin out of control, Rainger, I’d like to say that what happened today was—”
Without finesse, without warning, he stepped over to her, shoved her skirt up, and lifted her off her feet. He wrapped her legs around his hips and held her with his arm under her bottom.
Their bare parts met and she jumped from shock. He burned her with his heat and when she looked into his eyes, she saw why. He was furious. He was tense. He was anguished.
Anguished? But why?
“Today I thought you were dead.”
“Since I’m the last princess left to you, I can see that would be upsetting.” She held her breath, waiting for him to deny it.
“When I saw that shot in the grove, I imagined... the worst.” His chest heaved. He backed her toward the wall.
The wood was hard and chilly through her clothes. “I thought you were dead, too.” She shivered as she remembered the sight of his body landing hard on the ground, the horse galloping away, and Godfrey charging.
“Yes. We both came too close. Never again.” Rainger’s fingers clenched her thighs. “I am never going to fear like that again.”
Talking. Yes, they were talking. Unfortunately, he was also rubbing himself against her. She shifted, trying to get away, and discovered the friction felt good in any spot.
“When Godfrey was on the ground, you should have run away,” Rainger said.
“You’re not making sense. I was safer close to you.” She was wide open and vulnerable to him and he was making her ache with need. “Safer there than chasing down the road and running into the next group of assassins.”
“You should have hidden.”
“But I couldn’t allow Godfrey to kill you.”
“I can take care of myself.”
Rainger spoke so abruptly, so harshly, she flinched. That sounded as if he was rejecting her. Rejecting her help.
Yet over and over, he ground his erection into her sensitive tissues, pinning her between him and the wall, pinning her between desire and the yearning to communicate. Her words came in tiny gasps. She could scarcely speak in sentences. “I almost saw you... killed today, too, and that’s why I say we need to... talk.” Her breasts were tightening to the point of painfulness. Her loins were warming and growing moist. “Oh, please, Rainger, talk to me.”
“I have a better idea.” His voice was guttural. With his hand under her bottom, he adjusted himself, found the entrance to her body, and worked his way inside.
The sensation caught her by surprise. This was not the long, drawn-out, tender possession of their wedding night. Tonight he seemed larger, stretching her, moving on her, making her whimper in frightened anticipation. This was hot and desperate and needy, an act to be done in a hurry. He was on fire and the blaze communicated itself to her.
She tried to move, to meet his plunges, to grab her satisfaction, because suddenly, urgently, she needed to come now.
But he held her pinned, pumping his hips in deliberate, sweeping thrusts. Each time he pushed in, the pressure was like hot needles of anticipation. She gritted her teeth, no longer a woman in pursuit of anything but sex, and more sex, and more sex, until all the thoughts and memories had been dissolved by a primal rhythm and a reckless mating.
His face grew dark red. The cords and veins of his neck strained with the effort. He gazed down at her as if trying to possess her mind as he possessed her body. It was almost as if he wanted to take her again for the first time, or imprint on her what it meant to be his.
The heat between them grew.
Her hands clutched his shoulders, not because she feared he would drop her, but because she didn’t know where she was going. She was drowning in rapture, powerless to fight against the current, but wanting... wanting...
The spasms, when they struck, were overwhelming, a tidal wave of climax that caught her, carried her along, and slammed her onto shore.
And he rode the wave with her, groaning out his greed for her.
When the motion slowed, when it stopped, he stood gasping, pressing her against the wood.
She was trembling, covered with perspiration, unable to comprehend something so violent and so savage.
With a primitive grunt, he lifted her away from the wall and carried her to the bed.
With his erection still embedded inside her, he carefully laid her across the mattress. It was wet between them, proving he had come, yet still he was hard. Still he filled her body and filled her passions.
She had reached satiation.
Yet if he wanted to take her again, she would let him. More than that, she would delight in him.
Bending over her, he opened her bodice. Picking up her cross, he held it in his palm. He closed his eyes, and a tremor shuddered through him.
“What is it?” she asked. “Are you in pain?”
“In pain? God, yes. Sorcha, listen to me.” He caught
her face in his hands. “I have instructions for you.”
“What are you talking about?” Why was he using that tone? He was pulling her out of her blissful respite and dragging her back to the real world. Not the real world where they saved each other’s lives and afterward talked together, but the real world where he’d made a fool of her and burned her sisters’ letters.
“I’m talking about you. You’re never again to dress in boy’s clothes. You’re never again to go to a whorehouse or a low tavern.”
She tried to struggle up on her elbow.
He subdued her with a thrust of his cock, then another, then another. When her hips rose toward him, when she clutched him with her knees, he spoke again. “You’re never again to smile at another man. You are never again to trade horses for any reason.”
She didn’t understand him. She didn’t know why he lectured her when they could be just... just talking. Communicating. Together. “Why are you so angry? I don’t understand.”
“You’re never to put yourself at risk again. Never. Never. Never.” He punctuated each word with a movement of his hips.
No matter how much she wanted to argue, the friction he created inside her made her writhe with pleasure. She forgot what she wanted to say, why he made her so angry...
Until he said, “Tell me you love me.”
“I love you.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear.”
And although she waited for him to answer in kind, that didn’t happen. Instead she discovered that Rainger could make love without stopping and that he could drive her beautifully crazy.
And, in the cold light of morning, she realized that once again he had manipulated her.
Chapter 23
Queen Claudia, the dowager queen of Beau montagne, sat huddled in a blanket in her bedchamber, watching the snow whip across the courtyard below. She hated winter. She hated the wind, the snow, the cold, the icicles hanging off the eaves, the starving deer, the dead flowers... When she had finally finished her task here and turned the kingdom over to her granddaughter, she was going to move somewhere warm. Italy, perhaps, or Spain. She would sit on a veranda in the middle of winter. She would smell the roses and watch the peasants beg for money. If they impressed her with their story, she might even give them a coin or two.
She was an excellent judge of a good story well told. Since the rumors started whirling that Rainger and Sorcha had been married and were returning, the imposters had been scuttling out of the woodwork to tell their tales. She had heard more melodrama and nonsense in the past two months than any normal woman heard in a lifetime.
And why did she listen to them?
Because it was winter, it was cold, and nothing could heat her old bones except a good bout of laughter.
There. Outside at the gate. There was another young couple. They spoke to the guard and, as usual, the guard looked up at her for direction.
And, as usual, she indicated that the guard should allow the couple to cross the courtyard and enter the palace.
The strange man took the woman’s arm and pointed out where Queen Claudia sat.
The woman jerked her arm away from him and stalked along the shoveled walks.
Interesting. Either they were playing a different version of “Rainger and Sorcha are Reunited” or the female was fed up with the male.
Queen Claudia certainly understood that sentiment. A queen surrounded by males spent most of her time quashing grand male pretensions and petty male vanities.
But about the couple... she could judge nothing about them and their looks, for they were covered from head to toe in capes and hats and gloves.
The woman headed not for the grand and formal double doors that led into the foyer, but for the family entrance, a smaller door on the side of the terrace. A pretty bit of authenticity, and Queen Claudia was impressed enough to come to her feet, gather her cane, and hobble—these days, she always hobbled for a few minutes before she worked the kinks out—toward the door in her sitting room. It took more time than she liked. That infuriated her and made her rap on the wood harder than normal.
The door was opened at once by a young footman, still quaking from the last time she’d given him a tongue-lashing. He’d had the audacity to try and assist her when she had one of her spells. She had informed him that footmen did not touch the queen without permission.
Then she’d made him help her into her bed, thus assuring he would never lay a hand on her again.
She ought to have a bevy of ladies-in-waiting attending her, but she’d outlived them all and she didn’t have time to train new ones who were her age.
Besides, there was no one left who was her age.
Her gait was loosening now. By the time she got to the throne room, she’d be the freakishly healthy old crone feared and respected across Beaumontagne, Richarte, and beyond.
The footmen stationed at every door froze at attention as she passed. Peter opened the throne room for her and bowed as she entered. “Give me ten minutes, then show them in,” she told him.
He bowed again and shut the door behind her.
She eyed the throne and the steps leading up to it with virulent hatred. What short, insecure milquetoast of a king had designed those steps? And in marble. If Rainger and Sorcha didn’t appear pretty soon, Queen Claudia was going to fall down and break her neck. And then her grandchildren would have trouble, for she’d haunt them with a virulence that made her previous stringency seem like kindness.
Taking a breath and using her cane, she climbed the two steps, groaning from the pain in her hips, and lowered herself onto the throne.
Damn thing. It was covered with gold paint and colder than sitting on an ice sculpture. But it looked impressive, and when Peter opened the doors for the imposters, that was all that mattered.
The female stalked in first, head high, fists clenched, chin outthrust. She walked like the epitome of offended royalty—and Sorcha, dear, kind Sorcha, would never walk like that.
Queen Claudia’s heart sank. It always sank when she realized it wasn’t Sorcha, for no matter how much she denied it to herself, she always hoped that it was.
“Grandmamma—”
The girl’s voice was very good. Noble, clear, and she had a bit of an accent like someone who had lived in England too long and picked up bad habits.
“Did you really send that dilberry to find and marry me?” She pointed back toward the door, toward the rumble of two men’s voices.
“You sound like the princess Sorcha,” Queen Claudia said in a cold, clear voice. “You’ve only made one mistake. Sorcha would never burst into the throne room and speak to me in such a manner.”
“She would if she’d been through what I’ve been through.” The female removed her hat.
She sported hair the same color Queen Claudia’s had once been, and for a moment, a wave of memory dragged Queen Claudia back to the past.
“Darling, your hair... I must paint you, naked and glorious, with your hair draped around you. It is the color of sunrise.”
The pain bit deep into Queen Claudia’s shoulder, pulling her back to the present.
What a hell of a time for the old body to betray her.
She breathed deeply, waiting for the spell to subside and staring at the girl’s stormy face. When she could, she slowly rose to her feet. The female’s complexion was chapped with cold, her blue eyes were furious, and she wore the expression of a woman who had fought many battles—and won at least a few.
This was not the Sorcha Queen Claudia expected to return.
But she was definitely Sorcha.
Thank God. Thank God.
In a voice that revealed none of her exultation, Queen Claudia said, “Yes, I did send a dilberry to retrieve you.”
As she spoke, Rainger stepped inside, and he groaned. “Already?”
With a lightning glance, Queen Claudia checked him out. Yes, it was definitely Rainger. “I sent a princely dilberry. I’m sorry, but he was the only one available.??
?
“Obviously.” Sorcha removed her gloves and cloak and cast them on a side table.
Queen Claudia hadn’t expected to enjoy her granddaughter. Sorcha had always acted as if she feared the south wind. Now she looked ready to embrace the north wind himself. “Come, greet me properly.”
Sorcha strode up the stairs to Queen Claudia, pressed her lips to each of the queen’s wrinkled cheeks, and offered her arm.
“I ordered refreshments to be laid in the upper drawing room.” Rainger stood with his hands behind his back and watched the two women descend the steps.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sorcha said. “Can’t you see she can’t climb the stairs to the upper drawing room?”
He looked at Sorcha as if he wanted to strike her.
No, wait.
That wasn’t fury. That was hunger.
How fascinating.
“Rainger always was a snotty little scion of a noble family.” Queen Claudia gave him a toothy grin.” So tell me, what has he done now?”
“He’s married me.” Sorcha glared at him. “And I want an annulment.”
Chapter 24
Springtime came to Beaumontagne in a rush of color. The flowers bloomed, the birds fluttered and sang, the crops sprang from the ground—and the maps of war lay flat on the tables in the throne room while Rainger and his advisors talked about the strategy for invading Richarte. The discussion made Sorcha glad to sneak away from her ladies-in-waiting and into the garden just outside the castle walls. There she could sit alone and not hear the words “cavalry” “tactics” or “cannon.” Nor did she have to hear, “duty” “diplomat” or her least favorite remark, “With child?”
She walked the paths she had walked as a girl, breathed the air perfumed with familiar scents, and hoped that Rainger didn’t remember her favorite haunt. Because if he did, he would come to find her soon. He always did, insisting she stay at his side throughout the conferences of war, while the learned economists explained the workings of the treasury, and especially when the people came to welcome them back or plead a case for justice. He trusted her to tell him the truth, and needed her to learn while he learned so she could govern while he was gone.