Frantic, Evangeline yelled, “I want to be warm. Let me get closer to the fire.”
Dominic hesitated.
“Shut up.” Shorty took another step.
Evangeline couldn’t shut up. Her chance was walking away. “Come on, Dominic, don’t be such a bastard.”
There was a clatter, an audible gasp, and when Evangeline glanced around she saw Brat horrified, Shorty triumphant, everyone waiting.
Dominic strode back. He grabbed her by the back of her hair and half lifted her. “I take back what I said. You are stupid.”
Pain brought tears to her eyes, and she whimpered. “And cold. Please . . .”
“Kill her,” Shorty chanted. “Kill her, kill her.”
Dominic opened his fist and let her fall. Drawing his dagger, he lifted it above her, and for one terrified moment Evangeline looked death in the face.
With a downward slash, he cut the rope holding her to the pole. “I’ll kill her when she’s served her purpose,” he snarled at Shorty, and stalked out, leaving a tremulous silence. Men trailed after him, then Brat, until only Shorty and a small contingent remained.
Evangeline drew a quivering breath. She watched the humiliated Shorty out of the corner of her eye. She scooted toward the fire.
When she was close enough that the warmth struck her on the face and she could see the glowing bed of blue coals, she drew from her bosom the heavy leather pouch she’d filched from Shorty.
And threw it into the flames.
Sixteen
Grinning with obnoxious delight, Dominic slapped Danior with an open palm. The small, vicious circle of revolutionaries laughed, but Danior didn’t care. Laughter meant nothing; survival was all that counted.
“I give you the respect, my prince, due your noble House of Leon.” Dominic slapped him again.
Danior’s hand flashed out and caught Dominic’s wrist. “Where’s the princess?”
Dominic looked at his captive wrist. “You’re so strong, Danior.” He snapped his wrist free. “But I’m stronger.”
“No one’s beat you tonight.” Rafaello stood at Danior’s right side, Victor at his left.
“It’s not going to happen, either.” Dominic jerked his thumb toward the crest. “She’s eating stew and warming herself by the fire. I’m doing you a favor by killing you, Danior. She’s a bit of a handful—”
A flash lit the night skies, and the percussion rumbled the ground beneath their feet.
As one, the pack of rebels turned uphill, their features illuminated by the grand flare. Other, smaller explosions followed.
“What the hell?” Dominic stepped away, then swung back to Danior and pointed an accusing finger. “It’s that princess of yours!”
“Ethelinda?” Evangeline had been in that explosion? A high scream rent the air, piercing Danior with its anguish. “By God, if you’ve killed her—”
“Brat.” Dominic broke into a run.
Without a thought to the mob, Danior followed on Dominic’s heels, running across the dark barrenness. Behind him, he could hear men panting as they ran. Near the looming cliff, weathered rock cracked as it threatened to rupture. Dominic increased his speed. Danior kept pace. Stones defined the shadowy path they trod. Dust swirled in the air. Dominic’s steady stream of cursing led him over the shattered pieces of an overturned boulder. They rounded the corner. The faint starlight allowed Danior to see nothing but a tangle of forms, inert or slowly moving within an oblong of stone. There was no fire, only a few flame-lit splinters burning randomly around the site.
Was Evangeline dead?
No, the rebels had kept her alive to try her. She had to be alive.
“Ethelinda!” he shouted. Men shoved him from behind, Dominic’s men, streaming into the campsite, exclaiming and cursing. He raised his hands to his mouth and yelled through his cupped fingers. “Evangeline?”
Someone grabbed him by the arm and squeezed. “Quiet.”
Her voice, hoarse, weary, and desperate-sounding. Her scent, wrapping him around, close as his cloak. Her scent, spice and citrus and some indefinable fragrance undeniably hers. He would know it anywhere by the tug she induced on his senses.
Elation jolted him. He grabbed her, felt her fine bones beneath his hands, enveloped her in a hug. “Ethelinda.” Then, without reflection, he pushed her away and shook her. “Don’t you ever scare me like that again.”
She coughed and struggled in his grasp. “We have to go.”
Immediately he contained that peculiar euphoria, subdued that abrupt surge of fury. What was he thinking? Of course they must go.
He looked around, trying to locate Victor and Rafaello. He could recognize nothing in the darkness and confusion. It was a man shrieking in a high tone, his declaration of pain mixed with searing invective toward Evangeline. A few people moaned; more cursed and called.
Soon someone, probably Dominic, would light a torch. Danior had to get Evangeline away.
At his right side, Rafaello said softly, “We’re here, master.”
Danior relaxed infinitesimally. Thank God for Rafaello and his ability to see like a cat in the dark. “Does one of you have the supplies?”
“I do.” Rafaello sounded completely self-satisfied.
Then someone lunged at the princess. Some black material enveloped her head. She struggled and gave a muffled shriek. Danior grabbed for her attacker, but she was set free as suddenly as she was seized.
“Her Highness had a glowing cinder in her hair,” said Victor in a low voice.
“I thought I’d got them all.” She sounded shaken, more fearful than Danior had realized. “Are there any more on my back?”
Danior twisted her around. “None.”
“Fire flew everywhere. I rolled in the dirt to douse it.” She drew an audible, quivering breath. “Please, can we just—”
Danior hoisted her off her feet and onto the stone that blocked their path. “Stay there.” He leaped over and presented his back. “Climb on.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, she slid her arms around his neck and hooked her legs around his waist, and they were off.
Danior almost laughed at the elegance of their escape. Everyone had run inside the camp, trying to discover what had happened, who’d been hurt, if their meager possessions had survived. He and the princess, Victor and Rafaello, raced outside without interference, and if that shout he heard as they cleared the boulders was Dominic ordering a search for them, it didn’t matter. The rebels weren’t in position, the darkness that had worked to their advantage now worked for Danior, and he had no intention of stopping until they were far, far away.
He had his princess; by Santa Leopolda, let no one try to take her away.
Sighting off the North Star, he started downhill toward the cover of the trees. “We’ll take the direct route to Baminia. With luck, we’ll cross the border by daybreak.”
Victor and Rafaello trotted at his heels, working to keep up with his huge strides while maintaining the silence years of stealthy combat had taught them.
Evangeline clung to him. The high, dry air hurt his lungs, and the strain of carrying her quickly made itself known, but he never slowed until they reached the tree line.
Then he lessened his pace and paid more attention to where he put his feet. The stunted trees of the higher elevations soon gave way to the lush coniferous cover, rich with scent. He cast a learned gaze at the round of moon hovering just above the horizon. It rose earlier this night than last and in two nights would be full, but the trees would shield them from hostile eyes while the light helped him pick a trail through the forest—a forest he knew well from his time fighting the French. From this point a dozen ways led into Baminia and Serephina, and the rebels had no idea which way they would go.
Still he pressed on. Those explosions had been a gift to help them escape. He had no intention of wasting such a boon.
Yet Dominic’s accusation returned to haunt Danior. It’s that princess of yours, he’d said. But she couldn’t
have . . . could she?
Off in the distance, they heard a faint rumble.
“What is that?” she asked.
“A waterfall,” Danior replied. “Jean Falls, one of the biggest.”
“Jean Falls,” she said wistfully. “It sounds beautiful.”
Using the cover of its noise, Victor said, “I want to know what caused those blasts.”
“Oh, I did that, I threw a sack of musket cartridges on the fire.”
Evangeline spoke so matter-of-factly that it took Danior a minute to react. “A sack of musket cartridges,” he repeated.
Rafaello hustled closer, creating a careless disquiet of snapping branches and sliding pine needles. “Your Highness, where did you get a sack of cartridges?”
“And how large was it?” Victor challenged her with his tone.
“I suppose a sack is too big a word.” She sounded thoughtful. “It was more of a . . . you know . . . one of those little leather bags men carry their powder in.”
“A cartridge pouch,” Danior clarified.
“Yes. I saw it hanging on Shorty’s belt when I kicked him between the legs. When he fell, I knelt beside him. I pretended I was sorry—men always believe women must be sorry, regardless of how much they deserve the boot—and I stole it from him while I was apologizing.”
Shock quivered in Rafaello’s tone. “With all due respect, Your Highness, I didn’t know a lady of your cultured antecedents knew how to kick a man.”
“Yeah, much less where.” Victor seemed considerably less horrified than his compatriot. “Restrain me from ever getting too close to your mule kick.”
“When you think about it,” she said, “it was ironic that I blew up their camp with their own gunpowder.”
Danior wavered between being appalled and proud. How could he explain this sheltered girl’s talent for survival? The nuns were supposed to have taught her needlepoint. “Do you sew?” he asked.
“Of course!” she said, insulted.
Danior wished her answer comforted him more.
“Really, we could expect nothing less than an explosion from this princess.” Victor kept his voice down, but his sarcasm could not be tamed. “If she’s going to climb out a convent window and down the side of a cliff to get away from you, master, I suspect a little gunpowder in the fire is all in a day’s labor. She claims she’s not the princess. Perhaps she’s telling the truth.”
“Yes!” Evangeline almost leaped off Danior’s back.
“No.” Danior kept a good grip on Evangeline and a tight rein on his fury, but he coldly noted Victor’s opinion, and more important, that he felt secure enough to voice it. “I don’t make mistakes. You, my princess, wrote a letter claiming you weren’t called to be my wife and fulfill the prophecy, but you were sure good things would come to me.” The thought of her missive and its naively cheerful tone, made him want to take fate by the throat and force it to do his bidding.
From the day he was born, he had been fated to be the prince to reunite Baminia and Serephina. Every day he had taken pride in his destiny. Nothing could stop him. Reunite the two countries he would, regardless of rebels, his father, the princess’s mother, and the princess herself. Even fate. “When we questioned your teachers, they said you seemed troubled in your spirit before you disappeared. And so I should hope, for you left the school at Viella taking your dowry.”
“But I told you how I got my money.”
“Oh yes,” he said caustically. “You inherited it from the old lady you worked for.”
She shifted uncomfortably on his back, and he could feel her heart begin to pound in her chest. “Y . . . yes.”
“Little girls who are raised in a boarding school by nuns are notoriously inept when telling lies. They stammer and generally act as guilty as a thief.”
She jumped. She literally jumped, her body convulsing with remorse. “I didn’t steal the money!”
“It was your dowry, to be spent preparing for the wedding, not on an adventure so dangerous it’s put all our lives at stake!”
Her hands tightened on his shoulders; her thighs tightened on his hips. “I didn’t choose this adventure, you chased me into it, so don’t try to put the blame on me. And the money wasn’t a dowry. I wasn’t lying. Leona left it to me, only . . . only I . . . well, she didn’t exactly die.”
Seventeen
The only sounds in the forest were the ceaseless drumbeat of the waterfall, the march of feet, and the almost audible tension of curiosity. Evangeline shouldn’t be saying such things in front of his bodyguards, but the damage was done. Danior could only hope she spun such an outlandish tale that they would find it impossible to believe. And if he goaded her, most certainly she would.
With meritorious poise, Rafaello asked, “If she didn’t die, how could she leave it to you?”
“She told me she was tired of the dull life in England, and the next day she vanished. I searched for her, but she was very old and determined, and I fear she walked into the sea and let the current take her.” Evangeline’s voice shook with the telling; this was no poorly thought out tale, but one into which she poured her heart and soul. “I reported her disappearance to the authorities, and when they read the will I discovered she’d left me her entire fortune.”
“Convenient,” Danior said.
Evangeline cuffed him on the side of the head. “Don’t say that. I loved her. She saved me!”
The waterfall was getting louder, masking the sound of their voices, or Danior would never have allowed the conversation to go on. But Evangeline spun a good tale. Even he was interested, and so he permitted her the smack—she would say he deserved it for some brutish act or another—and allowed Rafaello’s next query.
“From what did she save you?”
“The orphanage,” Evangeline answered.
For the first time, Rafaello’s civility toward his princess broke down. “Uh-huh. Master, let me fall behind and check for trackers.”
What would have been a straightforward request a week ago now seemed weighted with calamity, and Danior didn’t hesitate. “We’ve left them behind, so let us remain together for now.”
Rafaello barely stifled his astonishment, although whether it was real Danior could not venture to guess. “As you wish.”
Victor didn’t believe the princess now and had never believed, yet she obviously entertained him. “Your Highness, you inherited a fortune from the old lady who saved you from the orphanage. So what was the problem?”
“Leona’s solicitor, the most pompous man in East Little Teignmouth”—by Evangeline’s tone it was clear she despised him—“told me the bankers would wait until the body turned up, or for a decent interval, which was seven years, before they could declare her dead, but once the death certificate had been passed through the courts, I’d have a considerable sum of money. Enough money to last my whole life.” She paused painfully. “If I used it wisely.”
Victor cackled. “That’ll be the day when a woman can use money wisely.”
“I meant to, I really did,” she said. “He talked me out of it.”
As they neared the base of the waterfall, a faint mist swirled in the moonlight and moss hung from the trees. “The solicitor talked you out of it?” Danior questioned.
“He pointed out that I was no longer young, that I had never been pretty, and that no one knew what my background could be.”
She sounded so much like she believed the tale that Danior was moved to tighten his grip, not painfully, but in an attempt to comfort her.
Heedlessly, she charged on with her yarn. “For all anyone knew, my parents could have been murderers, and at the very least they were vagrants or gypsies. But Mr. Isherwood said if I were careful with my money, I would never have to hire myself out again, and perhaps some decent man would deign to take me as his wife.”
“How kind of him,” Victor said.
“He was a widower, and he rather leered at me.”
Victor cackled again, but this time it sound
ed a little sympathetic. “Such advice would send any woman flying to the shops.”
Danior cleared his throat.
“If this tale were true,” Victor added hastily.
“Yes. Especially since the solicitor was quite right on all counts. I’m twenty-four, no man had ever found me irresistible, and if I waited all those years for that money, by the time I got it even Mr. Isherwood could begin to look good.” She sounded impossibly earnest. “I was sorry about Leona, more sorry than I can express, but she used to urge me to follow my dreams. I couldn’t leave her when she was alive, but, well . . . I took the strongbox.”
“You stole the strongbox?” Victor clearly relished the word. “From where?”
“Mr. Isherwood allowed me to assist in crating up Leona’s possessions and to contract the men who would take the boxes to auction. The men didn’t realize the contents were supposed to go to Glastonbury, not Avebury, and when I went to inquire about the strongbox, Mr. Isherwood said he had misplaced it. I don’t know even now if he knows how easy it was to find his hiding place.”
“Our princess. Stealing.” Rafaello sounded winded.
“It wasn’t stealing,” Evangeline lashed. “Everything was mine! And Mr. Isherwood had already dipped into the money. If there’d been nothing left in the end, who would have cared that I had been cheated? I’m not the princess.”
What a lie! Danior thought. She was good at this, and he couldn’t allow her to continue unchallenged. “You are a very imaginative princess.”
Her exasperated sigh quivered through him. “Didn’t you see my dress? It’s from London. So are . . . were . . . my bonnets, gloves, and luggage. I bought them all in London, then I took accommodations across the Channel, engaged guides to show me Bordeaux and Toulouse, and hired a private carriage to bring me to the spa. I enjoyed it all very much.”
“Until the bomb,” Danior said.
“Until about an hour before that,” she corrected. “When I saw you.”
She sounded stanch, yet her head bobbled against his shoulder. She seemed to be growing heavier.
At first he thought it was because he was tiring. Now he realized her muscles were limp. As the night wore on and the excitement of their escape wore off, it appeared she at last had been driven to the limit of her endurance.