Princess Charming (30 page)

Indeed, time and time again, he’d breached the walls she’d constructed in the wake of her father’s scandalous death to keep others at bay. Against good looks alone, she might have held fast. She could steel herself against charm. But when those things were combined with generosity to climbing boys and a heartfelt grief for a lost mother and sister, what could be done? Lucy was lost, had been lost, for longer than she cared to admit. She was thoroughly, irrevocably in love with him.

His repeated offers of marriage were all too tempting. Surely, though, after the previous day’s rally, his convictions would be softened, and she would win their wager, and they would part company. She only hoped her untimely accident had not detracted from the effects of a peaceful reform rally. Perhaps she would even travel to Santadorra for the day when Nick granted universal suffrage in his realm. The thought cheered her, even as she knew that once they parted, it would be too painful to see him again.

She was deep in her reverie, distracted, and so it was a moment before she noticed that the snoring had stopped, and Nick had opened his eyes.

“Hello, princess.”

The appellation brought tears to her eyes, but Lucy silently reprimanded herself. She had no more desire for a future with a prince than she had believed one possible with a gardener.

“Why are you here?” Prickliness was her only defense against his delicious closeness and her own unruly feelings.

“So that I can watch over you.” He smiled ruefully and rubbed his face with one hand. “Not the most effective keeper of a vigil, I must admit.” He levered himself up on one arm so that she looked straight up into his warm mahogany eyes. “How are you feeling?”

She willed the tightness in her chest to ease, because Nick, caring and concerned, was far too tempting. “Rather woozy, I’m afraid. But I can manage. Is it morning?” She didn’t want to think about how she felt, physically or otherwise. Feelings were too dangerous, too disconcerting, especially when they centered on Nick St. Germain. Especially when she knew that it was time to let him go.

Nick glanced toward the candle and then in the direction of the half-open door and the voices coming from the main room. “It must be dawn. Or nearly so.”

“And why isn’t Mrs. Selkirk in here beating you with her broom? Or ordering Tom to throw you out the front door?” In Lucy’s experience, Mrs. Selkirk was as high a stickler in her own way as the patronesses of Almack’s.

“She had her hands full with the other young woman, I suspect. I told her I’d stand guard over you.”

“Other young woman?” His words made no sense. “Nick, what’s happened?”

He hesitated, and the candlelight revealed the indecision in his eyes.

“Nick, is something amiss?” Panic stirred within her. Her head injury, Nick in her bed, another woman in the Selkirks’ main room. Something must have happened at the rally, but what?

“How much do you remember?” His question was carefully phrased, and Lucy paused to consider her answer just as
carefully. Even with a bruised head, she could play verbal cat-and-mouse.

“Remember about what?”

“About the rally.”

Lucy was silent for a moment, and she frowned so that he would think she was searching her memory. In truth, she recalled very little, but obviously something quite important had happened, and Nick wanted to use her lack of information to his own advantage. Had she hit her head in the square? Her last memory was of pushing through the crowd as she hurried to the speaker’s platform. Perhaps she had tripped and fallen.

“So you don’t remember the rally, then.”

“I remember moving toward the front of the crowd.”

“But nothing after?”

He started to turn away, but Lucy reached up and captured his chin in her fingers. His skin was rough with a night’s growth of beard. For a brief moment, she considered running her palm over the stubble across his jaw. For an even briefer moment, she made the mistake of looking into his eyes. His gaze caught hers, and he tensed beneath her fingertips.

“Please, Nick. This is too important for games. What happened?” Lucy dropped her hand, willing away the power of the attraction to him that made her heart beat in double time.

“The dragoons were called in.” His voice was even. Too even.

“How could they have known? There was no public declaration beforehand. Lord Sidmouth would hardly have sent troops unless he had direct confirmation. There were no spies involved in the planning. I am sure of it.”

Nick’s face was impassive. “Surely you realized the risk that something like this would happen.”

“Did a riot break out? There was concern about the men from one of the other shires. They have been unruly elsewhere, but their leaders swore an oath they would not disrupt the rally.”

“No, Lucy. The lads caused no trouble.”

She wished she could tell what he was thinking behind that unemotional mask. “What then? Tell me, Nick.” Her head throbbed, worry and tension knotting her neck and shoulders.

“I didn’t see the cause of the trouble. I was trapped behind Mrs. Selkirk.”

His veiled expression gave nothing away. “Then the rally was cut short? Well, we will try again, perhaps in another place, although Nottingham was ideal.”

“Lucy, it was a great deal more than cut short.”

Her heart seemed to stop. “What do you mean?”

Nick looked troubled, an unaccustomed expression for him. “The troops charged the crowd.”

Lucy’s breathing stopped as well as her heart, and then she sat up, ignoring her swimming senses. She must go to the square. It required little imagination to envision the damage that mounted soldiers could inflict upon an unarmed peasantry.

“They must be stopped.” She swung out of bed, reaching for the bedpost and then realized there wasn’t one. Her hand swung through empty air, and she pitched forward. She braced herself for impact against the stone floor, but at the last moment a pair of strong arms caught her, and she was hauled against Nick’s chest.

“You’re shivering,” he said. With one hand, he jerked the counterpane from the bedstead and wrapped it around her. “You need to be in bed.”

Lucy clung to Nick as if he were the only solid thing in the world. “Were they hurt, then?” Her voice sounded small in her own ears. She despised it when her voice sounded small.

“The Selkirks? No.”

“Not the Selkirks. The people.”

“Which people?”

“Any of them.”

He hesitated. Dear God, it was worse than she’d feared. “Are there dead? How many injured?” She wanted to pound his chest, to force him to tell her, but she doubted Nick would respond to such measures, and she was too weak to hit him properly.

“Two dead. A boy and one of the speakers who got tangled in the bunting and fell from the platform.” The platform to which she’d been determinedly moving, Lucy thought, choking back tears.

“And injured?”

“A great number.”

It seemed unreal. A thing not to be believed. They had planned so carefully. The soldiers had acted without provocation, she was sure of it. The mere threat of the common people assembled sent Sidmouth and his ilk into panic. But how had the Home Secretary known? He would never act on mere rumor. Someone, someone creditable, had communicated the reformers’ plans to Whitehall.

Lucy dropped her fingers from Nick’s shoulders and stepped back, willing strength into her limbs. “At least now you see the justice of my cause.” She had wanted to win the wager with Nick, but never would she have imagined proving victorious in such a horrible manner. “A terrible price to pay to win a mere wager, but at least some good may come of it,” she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. “The men of England must return home and wait for justice another day, but their brothers in Santadorra will join the ranks of voting men.”

Nick dropped his arms, and Lucy missed the warmth of his embrace keenly. “What are you assuming, princess? That the irresponsible actions of a company of soldiers will change my views? Surely I’ve shown myself more steadfast than that.”

Cold enveloped her, sending chills through her chest and down her limbs. She clutched the coverlet more tightly about her.

“When soldiers attack their own citizenry without provocation, then it is indeed time for reform. Even you cannot argue that point.”

He arched a brow. “Without provocation? A thousand men assemble in a town to demand the repeal of established law, and that is not cause for the government to worry? After what happened to the aristocracy in France, it is only prudent.”

Lucy could hardly believe her ears. “You have not changed your mind, then?”

He shook his head. “I have not, and tomorrow we will wed as our bargain decrees.”

White-hot fury ripped through her. “I will not marry you, Nick. I will maintain my betrothal to Mr. Whippet.”

His lips tightened into a firm line. “A commitment you have no intention of honoring. You made this wager of your own free will, Lady Lucy. It is not very becoming to accept the consequences so churlishly.”

Lucy flushed. He was right, even if he was not just. She could acknowledge that, but she was not yet ready to concede. She needed time to think, to plan. Her head ached, not just from her injury but from the complicated mess her life had become.

“If we are to be held to a gentleman’s standards, Your Highness,” she drawled his title, “then let us be held to them indeed. Your presence in this room is unseemly.”

“Unseemly?” His cheeks reddened with anger, but the effect did not last long. He quickly brought his response under control. “I suppose you are right, princess. Filled with irony, but right nonetheless.”

He turned to go, and Lucy’s heart ached. Why couldn’t he see? Why wouldn’t he believe the evidence of his own eyes and ears? The past should never have that strong a hold on the present. Despair settled over her, enveloping her as surely as the coverlet covered her from head to toe. If the devastation he must have seen in the market square could not change him, then nothing could.

“Are you certain you still want to wed?” she called after him and winced at the fear in her voice. “You do not have to marry me, Nick. I release you from the wager.” How could she bear it, to be married to a man whom she loved desperately but who did not love her?

He turned in the doorway, his fingers curled around the frame. “But I do not offer you release, Lucy. At least,” he paused, and his gaze held hers, filled with dark promise, “at least, not yet.”

NICK PASSED through the main room as quickly as possible without glancing at any of the occupants. Mrs. Selkirk called after him, but he continued through the door and out into the gray dawn. He should have brought the leather vest that fitted over his smock, for the morning air was quite cool. Perhaps it was just as well. Waking up to Lucy Charming in his bed had made him altogether too warm to begin with.

She would be the ruination of him. He saw that now and could even smile at the humor of it. Their first meeting had been highly symbolic, and he would have been better prepared for this eventuality if he’d understood the symbolism at the time.

No more wagers, he’d bragged to Wellington. No more heroism, and less than ten minutes later he’d been forced to eat his words when he’d bashed the burly thug over the head with a flowerpot. Lucy Charming was the cause of each transgression, and now she’d been the cause of his biggest sin of all. It was a sin against honor, and one from which he’d always prided himself on abstaining.

Still, he had lied.