Princess (39 page)

“Pick one.”

She lifted her gaze to his tense, angular face. “Why do you have all these rings?”

“I just do.”

“Ah,” she said coolly, stung. “Top secret. I guess I should get used to it.”

“That’s right. Pick one and let’s get on with it.”

Remembering the monstrous diamond Anatole had given her, she promptly chose the plain gold band. She slipped it on her finger and furrowed her brow to discover the ring fit perfectly. She slid him a suspicious look.

“It fits. Good,” he clipped out. “Then let’s get this over with.” He jumped down from the carriage, not waiting to help her down. As he walked toward the church, he tossed the velvet box to her maid. “Catch.”

“What’s this, sir?” Pia asked in bewilderment.

“Something to put away for your retirement. Loyalty, Pia,” he chided. “Some of us do know how to reward it.” He jogged up the steps and strode into the church.

Serafina gritted her teeth and followed him and they were wed. Alec and Pia were witnesses. The only guests were the guardsmen and a few other servants, plus one pious old widow who happened to be visiting her dead husband in the church graveyard. Serafina’s emotions were in an uproar. At the altar, she held on to Darius’s arm because now he was all she had.

Even as she sought his strength, she chafed under the knowledge that now he was her guardian in earnest, her lord and master, too. He’d better not even try pulling rank on her, she thought.

As the plain ceremony progressed, she watched the priest’s lips moving but could not quite absorb any of it. She had gotten her way, but it sure didn’t feel like it.

When the moment came for Darius to slip the gold band on her finger, he glanced at her for a second, meeting her eyes. She thought of making love with him last night, the way they had stared at each other then, when they had been one with each other. Heat, longing rushed through her body. She saw in his eyes a flicker of some raw, fiery turmoil, but he veiled his expression and turned away, tall and gorgeous, ever unattainable, his profile perfect and emotionless. The man of her dreams—hers forever now—and he hated her.

“I now pronounce you man and wife. Well, go on, kiss her,” said the kindly old priest.

Santiago jolted a bit as if he’d been dozing on his feet through the whole thing. She clenched her teeth, knowing he was deliberately baiting her.

Her new husband leaned down and gave her a perfunctory kiss on each cheek. The gesture was so smooth and meaningless, she felt as though she had been slapped, not kissed. Tears of hurt and anger sprang into her eyes, but she was determined to be as coolly unemotional and in control as he. She took his arm when he politely offered it and led her from the church, his mask of aloof correctness firmly in place, neither of them smiling.

Back into the carriage again, and she was beginning to hate herself for ever thinking he would let her get away with this vile deed—trapping him like a common country wench out to snare the squire’s son.

She tempered the guilt with reminding herself of his lies. Surely what she had done was no worse than his many falsehoods. She stared out the window while the coach rolled on toward the yellow villa.

Earlier, Darius had snarled at her that he had bought it from the crown before leaving for Milan. Why a man who had thought he was going to die needed a house, she did not know, but what was the point in asking when she knew he would only lie?

Morbidly, she found herself dwelling on horrible images of the war to come. Blood on her hands. Their demon-love was cursed, like her cursed face.

When they arrived, her husband of half an hour ignored her to deal with his men, his horses, anyone but her. She walked slowly up the wide, shallow steps to the villa, glancing morosely at the misshapen, overgrown topiaries and the peeling yellow paint. She stopped inside the foyer, remembering the way it had looked when she had last seen it—smoke-filled, blood-spattered, chaotic. Wounded and dying men strewn over the floor, it had been a battleground.

Her gaze wandered over the walls, where curling streaks left by soap remained from the cleanup job afterward, but there was no blood or ashes left to see, thank God. She went heavily up the stairs to the pink bedroom.

Standing in the doorway, gazing at this room, she suddenly wanted to cry, wanted that beautiful, blackhearted liar to hold her. She walked over to the bed and sat down on it. Last time she’d slept here, she had been a virgin.

In misery, her gaze fell to the floor and wandered across the tapestry rug of the pastoral idyll, the celebration of youths and maidens dancing around the maypole. She remembered the hiding place beneath it. Nothing in her world was what it appeared, she thought. Nothing.

A lump of sorrow rose in her throat. Who were they fooling? This marriage was never going to succeed.

Why hadn’t she seen the obvious before she undertook so rash a feat? Last night, blind love must have had her intoxicated, relief and desperation must have muddled her wits. Just because he was her husband now did not mean he couldn’t leave. It only meant he’d have to make up some unassailable excuse before he could walk away without compunction, then he would be free to go. God knew he was resourceful at making up excuses. She supposed she had better start bracing herself somehow for his exit. She would have to be strong, because his last vanishing act had nearly destroyed her, and she could not, would not go through that devastation again.

Hearing his voice in the courtyard below as he impatiently ordered his troops about, she walked numbly to the window and spied on him around the curtain.

He sat astride his magnificent and mean-spirited black stallion. The setting sun rippled through the horse’s black mane and tail, and through Darius’s jet-black hair. It warmed his skin to burnished amber.

He looked like a god, her husband, she thought coldly. Oh, she could not resist that man. It was one more excellent reason to despise him. He had used those gorgeous looks of his against her, and his soft, irresistible voice to lull her lax morals into a trance, and his delicious mouth—

All of a sudden, Darius glanced up, as though he’d felt her stare. He saw her at the window. When their eyes met from across the cobbled yard, she felt his flash of hostility. He gave her a harsh look and wheeled the horse away with smooth, Spanish mastery, the reins in one hand, his spurred ankles flexed.

Arrogant, insolent heathen! she thought angrily. Why was he acting like the one who had been wronged? How dare he?

She pivoted and marched away from the window, eyes blazing. She was the Princess Royal and, by God, she was not budging from this room until that insolent Spaniard came to grovel at her feet. How she chose to handle this conflict would set a precedent for the rest of their marriage. She did not intend to live the rest of her life being the dupe of his lies.

If he must be free, let him leave, but if he intended to stay, he was going to have to meet her halfway.

She called to Pia to help her change out of her traveling clothes into a simple country dress, for they had work to do. The villa needed much repair if it was to serve as more than a temporary residence. For her part, she was claiming the pink bedroom for her own territory. Where that Spaniard would make camp, she neither knew nor cared—or so she told herself. The stable would be a fitting choice, she thought. He was certainly not sharing a bed with her.

Julia thought she had forgotten how to pray, but from the moment Rafael was out of sight she pleaded with God.
Let
Anatole be gone—let him be on the ship. Don’t kill this child.

True to the prince’s word, the physician came quickly to aid her. The kindly man walked her back to her rooms, avoiding the crowds.

After a nerve-racking wait, she found that, indeed, God heard the prayers of Jezebel, or perhaps it was merely that a larger destiny awaited the young future king.

Rafael stopped by her door about two hours later and regretfully informed her he had been too late to demand justice of Tyurinov. He had galloped hard all the way to the port, only to find the Russians’ ship had just set sail. He was apologetic.

She put her arms around him and held him as hard as she could, her eyes squeezed tight.

The boy didn’t ask questions, didn’t try to get in her door. He simply hugged her in silence for as long as she wanted him to, then he murmured goodnight and said that he would check on her tomorrow.

As he walked off down the hall, she leaned in the doorway, watching him, her arms folded over her chest. As if he could feel her stare, he turned, saw her, and sent her a little farewell wave with a secret smile. She held up her hand in a slow, answering wave, and knew then that she had to have him.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The walls that girded the yellow villa’s acreage had once seemed to embrace him and Serafina, shielding their fantasy love from the harsh outer world, but a week into their disastrous marriage, those same walls marked the boundaries of his cage. He was trapped.

I’ve got to get out of here.

Darius cantered his black stallion through the gray mists of dawn. Jihad’s exercise comprised a brisk lap around the property’s wide perimeter. The wall streamed past like a long, gray ribbon unraveling on Darius’s right as the horse’s strides ate up the soft, rolling ground.

The situation with his new wife remained much the same: They spoke little, and then with cold courtesy. In the past, it had been an advantage that they were so much alike, both obstinately proud and wily, but now it locked them at odds, each playing a waiting game to see who would be the first either to apologize or to walk out.

Beyond the villa’s walls, things were almost as glum. France had declared war. A handful of ships from the Franco-Spanish navy had begun blockading Ascencion to weaken them for Villeneuve’s as yet unknown date of arrival.

With the French ships riding at anchor just beyond the boundaries of Ascencion’s territorial waters, a fighting line of the king’s frigates was arrayed for the island’s defense. So far, no shots had been fired. For now, it remained naught but a great naval staring contest not unlike his marriage, Darius thought.

The diplomats were working feverishly to arrive at a peaceful solution, but the whole island was battening down for a siege. Parliament had declared rations and a curfew in the towns. Rumor had it that the king itched to attack.

Darius could well imagine Lazar longed for a worthy adversary on whom to vent his wrath, the true sources of which were his daughter and his formerly most-trusted man.

The French were also demanding that Darius be handed over to face trial, but this Lazar staunchly refused. There was no proof but the word of one disgruntled young traitoress that the lone assassin in Milan had been Darius Santiago, respected diplomat for the court of Ascencion, and son-in-law to the king. Indeed, Lazar had played at outrage over the accusation, naming himself and twenty of Ascencion’s leading nobles as Darius’s alibis for the days in question—and who dared call King Lazar di Fiore a liar?

Darius knew Lazar still considered him a vile, amoral seducer of innocents. The king’s defense of him was merely a political consideration, or perhaps to protect his baby girl, because if there was one thing Darius knew for certain, it was that he, along with the parrot, the cat, and the monkey, was Her Highness’s kept pet.

Two days ago, however, he had received a temporary lift out of the morass of his emotions in the form of a letter from a British intelligence colleague and friend, Sir James Richards. On leave in Sicily, Richards had sent Darius warning that Prince Tyurinov might not have left the area. It seemed that the glorious Anatole had brought his ship to port at Malta, where he had somehow received warning that Czar Alexander had issued orders to seize him the moment he returned to Moscow. The Russian ship had remained there, but no one had seen Tyurinov himself for a couple of days.

Richards had also invited Darius to visit him in Sicily if he was interested in being part of what the Englishman termed “an intriguing undertaking.”

Darius could not imagine what it was, but he longed to go— longed for any work to do.

Richards was an excellent agent and weapons expert, and no doubt had something ingenious up his sleeve. Darius mulled the intriguing undertaking constantly, as now. He slowed the stallion to a trot, then tugged on the reins, halting as they came to the ridge overlooking the field and the lake where Serafina and he had picnicked, what seemed eons ago.

His gaze traveled over his lost paradise, shrouded in mist. The distant tree line in the background sprawled, irregular, against the paling sky.

He ought to join Richards’s team, he reasoned, for what was the point in his being here? On those rare occasions when Serafina even looked at him, it was with bitterness, hurt, and angry reproach in her beautiful, violet eyes. He knew she despised him, but what could he do?

He felt paralyzed, helpless, and plain scared.

God, what had he done to his life? he thought heavily. He’d known from the day she was born that Serafina di Fiore would be his downfall. Once more, his prescient Gypsy senses had proved right. He was still reeling from the first time he had kissed her, yet somehow, suddenly, here he was, husband to the goddess of the age. He could exact his husbandly rights whenever he wanted, only he was terrified to go near her. Terrified of the accusations that would come hurling out at him if he gave her the chance to speak. He didn’t want to hear how useless and false and what a failure he was. Not from her. Any day now, his rare, gorgeous butterfly was going to lift her wings and fly away from him. He was just waiting for it. That’s what a female did when you needed her.

With his full iron will, he was determined to master his need for her for once and for all, become invulnerable again, yet he knew it was his very silence that was driving her away.

If you don’t talk to her, you are going to lose her for certain.

The thought made him impatient. What could he say to her now, when every word from his mouth she judged a lie?