Some Enchanted Evening: The Lost Princesses #1 Page 11

  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 did
n’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.”

  As they got to the main road, Clarice answered matter-of-factly, “It’s not that easy. We are who we’re born to be.”

  Amy amended, “We are who we make ourselves.”

  Clarice stood on the grass near a stand of trees. “When we get back to Beaumontagne, you’ll feel differently.”

  “No, I won’t.”

  Clarice looked up and down the thoroughfare. Brittle leaves gathered along the hedgerow and, swept by the wind, skittered down the empty lane. Gray clouds bunched ominously above. And she couldn’t remember which way to go to get to the inn. She had never paid attention before. She’d never had to. Someone had always taken her, fetched her, directed her…she was seventeen years old, and she didn’t have a clue how to find her way in the world. She had to support Amy until they could make their way home, and she didn’t even know which way to walk. She wanted to curl up into a little ball and cry.

  Then something live, something dark, sprang at her from out of the thicket.

  A man, tall, broad, menacing.

  Amy shrieked, “Go away!”

  He caught Clarice’s arm in a crushing grip. He dragged her toward the trees.

  She screamed, a single, long, thin scream.

  He pulled her behind the trunk of a tree. He released her. Before she could spring away, he said, “Don’t be frightened. Your Highness, do you remember me?”

  She did. That gravelly voice could belong to one man, and one man only. She put her hand over her racing heart. “Godfrey.”

  He looked unlike anyone in their country. He was blond, blue-eyed, with arms too long for his tall body. His hulking shoulders and thick waist would have been common on a stevedore, and his nose and lips looked as if they’d been rearranged by too many fights. But he wore fine clothes, he spoke like a courtier, and he had been with Grandmamma for longer than Clarice had been alive. He had been Grandmamma’s courier, her footman, her loyal emissary. Whatever Queen Claudia needed done, Godfrey did.

  At the sight of him, a weight lifted from Clarice’s shoulders. “Thank God you found us.”

  Amy wrapped her arm around Clarice’s waist and glared at the man. “I don’t know who you are. Who are you?”

  He bowed to them both. “I’m a servant to Dowager Queen Claudia. She trusts me completely.”

  Amy examined him suspiciously. “Really?”

  Hugging Amy, Clarice assured her, “Really. Grandmamma uses Godfrey for her most important messages to faraway lands.” Yet why was he here? Now? In agonized suspense she asked, “Is it Grandmamma? Is she—?”

  “She’s well.” His pale, small eyes drilled into Clarice, then Amy. “But the revolutionaries are overrunning the country, and she sent me to urge you to flee.”

  Clarice’s relief mixed with terror. “Flee? Why? Where?”

  “Men are hunting you. They want to kill you, to end the royal family of Beaumontagne. You must disappear into the countryside,” he said urgently, “and stay there until Her Majesty commands your return.”

  Amy still eyed him askance. “If we’re hiding, how will she find us?”

  “She told me—and only me—that she would place an advertisement in newspapers throughout Britain when it was time for you to return. You should not believe anyone else who finds you and tells you it is no longer dangerous. Without her written word, you may assume they’re traitors. In fact”—he dug in the pouch hanging from his belt—“I have her letter here.”

  Snatching it from his hands, Clarice broke her grandmother’s seal and read the brief instructions with a sinking heart. Handing it to Amy, Clarice said, “She’s very clear. Run and hide until it’s safe.” A fragile hope made her voice tremble. “But you’ll go with us, won’t you, Godfrey?”

  He drew himself up. “I can’t. I have to go and warn Sorcha.”

  For the first time in this long, dreadful day, Clarice’s heart leaped with joy. “Sorcha! You can take us to Sorcha!”

  For a moment he looked disconcerted. “No. No, I can’t.”

  Amy looked up from the letter. “But you just said you were supposed to find Sorcha too.”

  “My queen’s orders are that the crown princess is to remain separate from both of you.” His mouth drooped. “I am sorry, but you’ll have to go on your own.”

  “Grandmamma would never send us anywhere without a chaperon,” Amy declared.

  Godfrey viewed her with irritation. “Little princess, only in this time of desperation did she consent.”

  With the insistence of a spoiled child, Amy added, “We want to see Sorcha. She’s our sister.”

  He fearfully glanced around. “Your Highnesses, it’s for your protection as well as Sorcha’s, for I fear I’m being followed.”

  Clarice looked around. Before she had worried about the winter and how they would survive. Now she worried if they would survive.

  From the pouch, he withdrew a purs
e heavy with coin. He handed it to Clarice. “This will keep you through the winter. Now you must leave at once. Board the coach in Ware and go as far away as you can. Go. Hurry. Don’t look back.” He pushed them out of the thicket. “Trust no one.”

  Twelve

  Great minds think alike—especially when they are female.

  —THE DOWAGER QUEEN OF BEAUMONTAGNE

  Morning sun shone full on Clarice’s face as, dressed in her riding costume, she hurried through the meager gardens toward the stables. She had to get away from the giggling girls and their matchmaking mammas, away from the bold—and surreptitious—demands for her services, away from her own thoughts….

  Was Hepburn all right? Last night he’d jumped from that window and disappeared. Just disappeared. She’d gone into the drawing room and watched as the ladies played the piano and sang, but he’d never come in.

  This morning she had not heard the servants say he was injured, but she hadn’t dared ask about him for fear they would imagine more interest on her part than existed—and she didn’t need that kind of gossip to start. Not when…not when it was partially true.

  The gravel path crunched beneath her boots. A gentle breeze wafted in her face, luring her along. And she was glad to go. She wanted to see Blaize, to pet him, to saddle him, and enjoy the freedom she found only on his back.

  Because…she shouldn’t have let Hepburn kiss her. She didn’t even know why she had. Other men had grabbed her, pawed at her, ground their mouths on hers. It was then she showed them how swiftly her knee could make contact with their masculine parts. Never had the touch of their bodies been desirable.

  Yet the first time she had seen Hepburn she’d sensed the power and the drive of his sensuality would be irresistible. Her instinct had proved true. He was every bit as skilled a seducer as she feared. And he wanted something from her. He wanted her to do his bidding. He hadn’t even cared enough to lie about that. He had swept her away into passion, and all the while been cold-bloodedly plotting to reward her capitulation with himself. As if he were a prize to be treasured rather than a despoiler of maidens and a plotter of crazy schemes.