Some Enchanted Evening (14 page)

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 news. Papers 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 purse 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."

Chapter 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.

Stopping, she put her hand to her forehead. And what a plan it was! He wanted her to pretend to be someone else. Someone she didn't know. And he gave her only the vaguest reasons, and probably lied about those. She had to assume his plan was dangerous. She had to refuse no matter how much pressure he put upon her. No matter how skillfully he pressed his lips to hers and indulged her in those stupefying and passionate kisses.

She started walking again, weaving slightly, and wondered if he had somehow drugged her. Surely that was the only explanation for her obsessive and wanton behavior. He had somehow taken over her mind.

She couldn't allow that to happen. When she and Amy had been thrown out of that school outside of Ware, Clarice had been a terrified child, suspicious of every stranger. The first winter had been lived between the shadow of two terrors — how would they live when the money ran out? And would they live at all, if assassins found them?

Desperation had given her the idea to sell the royal creams. Experience had taught her how to judge a man's character.

As time had gone on, some newspapers in England reported on the situation in Beaumontagne. Claudia read everything she could find, but details were sketchy and contradictory. Some said Queen Claudia had outmaneuvered the revolutionaries and returned to power. Other newspapers reported that rebels still roamed the countryside.

All Clarice knew was that Grandmamma hadn't yet placed the advertisement for her granddaughters to return.

So although Clarice had relaxed her guard, still she watched, and waited, for their chance to return home. That had been her goal for five years. She would not allow her fascination with the earl of Hepburn to distort her judgment.

As she rounded a corner, she saw the hem of a skirt whisking behind the hedge and resolved to ignore whoever it was. One of the houseguests was probably out here sobbing about some imagined slight.

But she couldn't resist glancing to see who had gone to such lengths to escape her.

Down a narrow path stood a small white gazebo, isolated by hedges and overgrown with pink climbing roses. Peeking cautiously from behind the blossoms, looking pinched and anxious, stood Millicent. Clarice would have respected her obvious wish for privacy and waved as she went by, but Millicent's face lit up, and she called, "Your Highness, oh, I wouldn't have wanted it to be anyone else."

And actually Clarice wouldn't have wanted it to be anyone else either. Millicent was nothing like her brother; obviously he'd slurped up all the arrogance and cynicism in the family. Millicent was quiet, genteel, and a pleasure to be around, while her brother was an obnoxious blackguard.

Clarice wouldn't think of him at all today. She certainly wouldn't talk to him today. Not if she saw him first.

Clarice hesitated at the break in the hedge. "Good morning, Lady Millicent. It's a beautiful morning for a ride. Would you like to join me?"

Immediately Millicent's face fell. "I thank you, but I don't ride well and I'd hinder your enjoyment of your beautiful stallion."

Drawing herself up haughtily, Clarice asked, "Am I so shabby that I judge my companions by their riding ability?"

"No! I never thought —" Millicent's face broke into a smile. "You tease me."

Clarice smiled in return. "I do."

"Come and sit for a moment, and we'll discuss the ball. Last night we didn't get a chance."

Discussing the ball was the last thing Clarice wanted to do — well, almost the last thing. She didn't want to talk to Hepburn either.

Although she would like to know if he was hurt. But she thought Millicent already carried too much of the burden of this ball on her narrow shoulders, and if discussing it helped, Clarice would do so.

After she discovered what had happened to Hepburn. Mounting the stairs of the gazebo, she craftily asked, "I trust your sister is well this morning? And your brother?"

Millicent looked mildly surprised. "Indeed, I believe they are."

"Good. Good." Clarice seated herself on a white painted bench. "You've seen them?"

"Seen Prudence? Surely you jest! She can't bring herself to rise before noon." Millicent seated herself also. "I tell the lass she's not royalty, but she doesn't listen to me. Did you sleep until noon every day?"

"Not at all. Grandmamma wouldn't allow it." Clarice wasn't really listening to herself. She was wondering how to press for more information about Hepburn. "We were to rise with the sun and walk vigorously out of doors for an hour, regardless of the weather, then eat a healthy breakfast as approved by Grandmamma, then . . ." She trailed off when she realized Millicent's eyes were rapt. Clarice shouldn't reveal too much about herself. Not that Millicent would knowingly betray her, but Millicent accidentally might say something to the wrong person, and that would be fatal — to Clarice, and to her sister. "That was long ago, and I'm not that princess anymore."

"What princess are you?" Millicent asked pointedly.

"A princess who is a peddler." A princess who would never discover Hepburn's fate.

"I've heard the stories of revolutions and wondered what happened to the people who are displaced." Millicent's gaze was warm and kind. "Now I know. They come to help me."

Clarice stared at the woman before her and wondered how she could have ever thought her plain. Empathy shone from Millicent's face, and her gentle understanding was balm to Clarice's battered soul. Impulsively she asked, "How have the men in Scotland been such fools as to let you remain unmarried?"

Millicent drew back as if she'd been slapped. "Not such fools, in fact." But color rose in her cheeks.

Aha. Millicent was not so unruffled. "Tell me true — has no man ever made your heart beat quickly?" Clarice asked.

Shrugging with elaborate indifference, Millicent said, "Even when I was young, I never harbored great hopes."

"About who?" Clarice asked craftily.

"About ... no one."

A clumsy evasion.

Millicent carefully avoided Clarice's gaze. "What man would be interested in me? I'm plain and dull."

Not plain, but unadorned. And as for dull, I find your conversation charming and your kindness unique, and you deserve more than to serve your family for the rest of your days."