The Barefoot Princess (5 page)

Chapter 6

W
ith great care, Amy opened the cellar door. With ladylike demeanor, she descended the stairs. And as her reward, she had the satisfaction of catching His Mighty Lordship sitting on the cot, his knee crooked sideways and his ankle pulled toward him, cursing at the manacle.

“I got it out of your own castle,” she said.

Northcliff jumped like a lad caught at a mischief. “My…castle?” At once he realized what she meant. “Here on the island, you mean. The old ancestral pile.”

“Yes.” She strolled farther into the room. “I went down into the dungeons, crawled around in among the spider webs and the skeletons of your family’s enemies—”

“Oh, come on.” He straightened his leg. “There aren’t any skeletons.”

“No,” she admitted.

“We had them removed years ago.”

For one instant, she was shocked. So his family had been ruthless murderers!

Then she realized he was smirking. The big, pompous jackass was making a jest of her labors. “If I could have found two manacles that were in good shape, I’d have locked both your legs to the wall.”

“Why stop there? Why not my hands, too?” He moved his leg to make the chain clink loudly. “Think of your satisfaction at the image of my starving, naked body chained to the cold stone—”

“Starving?” She cast a knowledgeable eye at the empty breakfast tray, then allowed her lips to curve into a sarcastic smile.

“You’d love a look at my naked body though, wouldn’t you?” He fixed his gaze on her, and for one second she thought she saw a lick of golden flame in his light brown eyes. “Isn’t that what this is all about?”

“I beg your pardon.” She took a few steps closer to him—although she remained well out of range of his long arms. “What
are
you talking about?”

“I spurned you, didn’t I?”

“What?”
What?
What was he going on about?

“You’re a girl from my past, an insignificant debutante I ignored at some cotillion or another. I didn’t dance with you.” He stretched out on the cot, the epitome of idle relaxation. “Or I did, but I didn’t talk to you. Or I forgot to offer you a lemonade, or—”

“I don’t
believe
you.” She tottered to the rocking chair and sank down. “Are you saying you think this whole kidnapping was done because you, the almighty marquess of Northcliff, treated me like a wallflower?”

“It seems unlikely I treated you like a wallflower. I have better taste than that.” He cast a critical glance up and down her workaday gown, then focused on her face. “You’re not in the common way, you must know that. With the proper gown and your hair swirled up in that style you women favor”—he twirled his fingers about his head—“you would be handsome. Perhaps even lovely.”

She gripped the arms of the chair. Even his compliments sounded like insults! “We’ve never before met, my lord.”

As if she had not spoken, he continued, “But I don’t remember you, so I must have ignored you and hurt your feelings—”

“Damn!” Exploding out of the chair, she paced behind it, gripping the back hard enough to break the wood. His arrogance was amazing. Invulnerable! “Haven’t you heard a single word I’ve said to you? Are you so conceited you can’t conceive of a woman who isn’t interested in you as a suitor?”

“It’s not conceit when it’s the truth.” He sounded quite convinced.

She couldn’t believe him. He imagined he was gold-plated. “I’ve told you the truth. We’ve kidnapped you as just retribution for your thievery and your neglect.”

“I am not a thief.” He spoke through his teeth, so at least he had enough honor left that he was insulted. “I did not steal anything from Miss Victorine, and even if I did, what difference would it make? A beading machine? Of what value is that?”

Oh, he was so ignorant. So smug. Amy wanted to put him in a factory and let him stand there for fourteen hours a day making lace while cotton flew threw the air so thick it choked the lungs. For just one day, she wanted him to work for a living.

Taking Miss Victorine’s ball of twine and shuttle from the table, Amy dangled the tiny bit of beading and lace before him. “Ladies pay for beaded lace for their gowns and their reticules. The designs are intricate and difficult to learn. Do you know how long it takes to create an inch of beaded lace?”

“No, but I’m sure you’re going to tell me.” He couldn’t have sounded more bored.

“Miss Victorine is a very accomplished, and it takes her two hours.”

He pulled a long, scoffing face. “You exaggerate.”

“Do I?” Amy was starting to have fun. “Let’s see how quickly you can bead.”

“I do not bead.”

“Of course not. You’re a man and a lord. You have better things to do. Ride, box, hunt, smoke, drink, dance…” She glanced around the cellar. “What are you doing now?”

His white teeth snapped together like a shackled dog’s. “I can read…if you have a book.”

“Oh, we have a book. We have several. They’re old, well-read, and treasured. What we
don’t
have is money for precious beeswax candles.”

“Are you saying tonight I’ll sit here in the dark?” He sat up, his feigned relaxation gone.

“I’m saying Miss Victorine will sacrifice her lamp to you rather than allow you to sit in the dark, but it’s a dim, sputtering light at best, not at all what you’re used to. That’s why we bead. Once you learn, you can do it in bad light.”

“How difficult can it be if you can do it in the dark?” He laughed with light contempt. “But of course. It’s women’s work. It’s not difficult at all.”

It was obvious he held her gender in disdain, and not the condescending disdain so many men displayed. His contempt was pointed and angry, and she pitied any woman he chose as his wife. “Don’t be afraid, my lord. You needn’t worry you’ll make a fool of yourself.” Amy shook the small piece of lace and beads again. “We’ll start you out with the simplest design.”

He ignored her with arrogant indifference, slithering back on the cot like a snake settling onto a warm rock. “Tell me the truth. Did I break your girlish heart?”

“My lord, I don’t have a girlish heart to break.” She cast a critical eye over his lounging figure. “And if I did, it would not break over one such as you. Bored, indolent, without honor or scruples—”

“So I take by your scorn you really weren’t ever a debutante.” He had never been so insulted in his life, and by this girl, this creature…. Who was she who dared imprison and disparage the marquess of Northcliff?

Without the key for the manacle or a weapon for enforcement of his will, he couldn’t escape, so he bent his mind to discovering who this Amy creature truly was. If he discovered her weaknesses, he could escape. If she had no weaknesses, at least he would be entertained.

He lolled back on the cot, consciously cultivating the very picture of lazy decadence…because he enjoyed watching Miss Upright-and-Righteous get that sour-lemon look on her face. “Then who are you? Where are you from?”

“I’m Miss Amy Rosabel and I’m”—she hesitated, smiling slightly—“not from here.”

“No. You’re from Beaumontagne, I believe Miss Victorine said.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing Amy’s eyes widen in horror. “She told you that?”

“How else would I know?” Was she guilty because she had lied to Miss Victorine about her origins? Or was she appalled that he had discovered the truth? “You do have a trace of an accent, but I don’t recognize it.”

“What else did she tell you?” Amy leaned across the table at him.
“What else?”

“Nothing else. Why?”

“For no reason.” Amy leaned back. “I just thought—”

“You thought she had betrayed all your secrets.” At the revelation, he almost purred with delight, and he experienced more delight when she betrayed herself with the smallest shake of the head. “Or…not all your secrets, but the one big one.”

“I assure you, if I have a secret, it will do you no good to know of it.” She dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

“Not while I’m chained, anyway. But it gives my mind a puzzle to work on. Let me think, what do I know about Beaumontagne?” He delved in his mind for every tidbit of information about a country he had previously dismissed as insignificant. “There was a revolution there about ten years ago. The king was killed in battle. The country has been recovered by the dowager queen, but she’s so old, speculation exists she may be controlled by someone behind the scenes. A usurper of some kind.”

Amy folded her arms over her stomach as she listened.

So he was giving her a gut ache. Good. “There were children, but they disappeared during the furor and are assumed dead so even if the queen is in charge, there’s no one to inherit the throne.” As he thought, he tapped his lips with his finger. “And I suppose you might be”—he watched her tense—“a refugee.”

“I might be. Or I might be a wonderful actress who has turned my talents to imagining a past for myself that doesn’t exist.”

“Not an actress, I don’t think. If you had been, I would have moved every obstacle to make you my mistress.”

“You really are a swine.” Her lips might sneer, yet still they promised sensual pleasure.

“And you
can’t
have been one of my mistresses. I would remember that.” In fact, the whole of Amy sang to him like a siren luring a sailor onto the rocks.

He didn’t like wanting her, but he was a pragmatist. If he had to be locked away, better to have a gaoler who moved with gratifying sensuality, whose downy skin courtesans would covet, whose eyes challenged and beckoned. In a meditative tone, he said, “Although you’re not the kind of mistress I prefer. I prefer a woman of submission whose life is devoted to making me happy. Yet your green eyes are quite out of the ordinary. I fear I would not have been able to resist taking you.”

Those green eyes narrowed dangerously.

“With the color and the exotic slant,” he continued, “they’re almost like a cat’s.”

Her hands curled into catlike claws. “Do you always catalog a woman’s assets aloud to her?”

“Never.” He poked at her with a verbal stick. “But I’m bored, indolent, without honor and scruples. Remember?”

When he threw her own words in her face, her eyes sparked and again he thought Lucretia Borgia must have had eyes that color.
The color of poison.

This was a small retaliation for the humiliation of being chained, but he enjoyed himself excessively. “I suspect your hair, when unbound, is glorious.”

As he knew would happen, she lifted her hands to cup the thick black braid she had wound in a chignon at the back of her head. With that simple movement, she exposed her figure, her vanity, and most important, a womanly instinct she could not subdue.

He took ruthless advantage of the view, and scrutinized her curves. The backside he had earlier admired was matched by a small, high bosom and a narrow waist. “You have a fine figure.” Fortunately for his bored, unscrupulous self, she really did. “Although your gown is not at all the thing.” And what an understatement that was.

The style of the gown could have been his grandmother’s, with a gathered skirt, a bodice that was tight around her waist and up under her bosom, where it gathered it soft folds. The neckline was modest and made more modest by a draped shoulder scarf that hid even the hint of cleavage, and he found himself enmeshed in a flash of fantasy that involved his removing the scarf and sliding his hand inside the bodice…He caught himself and half smiled. Well, she
was
attractive and he
was
bored.

She suddenly realized that she posed for him—was it his smile?—for she dropped her hands to her side. “In what scenario of yours would I not be insulted to hear your judgment of my figure or my clothing?”

“As long as I remain here, I promise I’ll tell you my opinion.” His smile chilled. “It’s the least I can do to reward your hospitality.”

He could see she didn’t like that—that he would dare to turn the tables on her and speak his mind.

One morning spent without seeing the sun, chained by his ankle, had given him a new appreciation for the prisoners in Newgate. And the idea of spending an entire day here, an evening, a week, alone in a dim cellar with nothing to do, made him want to claw his way through the walls or go on a rampage that broke every piece of furniture in this room. But trying to claw his way through the walls would do no more than offer this wretched Amy creature amusement, and he’d already lost his temper once today. That resulted in a painful testing of the damned manacle’s strength when it jerked him off his feet. When he’d examined it, he’d seen a manacle that showed its age, but was stout enough to resist his every effort to knock it or saw it or pull it apart. He was definitely not going to test the health of his leg again. It still throbbed from the fall.

He wondered if she would get disgusted enough with him to let him go…but no, not this steely-eyed cat creature. Any woman who had imagined and executed so daring a scheme wouldn’t give way over a few words.

Instead she cast an eye about the room. With a grunt, she lifted the edge of the long table and dragged it so that she could sit at the end opposite his cot and be out of his reach. “Did you think I’d be shocked by your mention of a mistress and run away?”

“No.” He watched her lift the heavy weight and realized that for all her slight figure, she was strong. “You don’t hide your face or gasp in horror.”

“Every woman knows a man like you keeps a mistress.” Satisfied with the placement of the table, she dusted her hands. “
Miss Victorine
knows you keep a mistress.”

“But Miss Victorine would pretend she did not, and most certainly she wouldn’t allow the word to pass her lips. She’s a lady.” He watched Amy closely to see how the insult affected her.

It appeared to affect her not at all. “So she is.”

“You, on the other hand, may speak like a lady, but you haven’t been protected from the realities of life. As I talk to you, I learn so much about you.”

“What do you mean? Why should you care to learn about me?” She was disconcerted. Indignant.

He sat up slowly, allowing her to look him over, to contemplate how very much larger he was than she. “When I’m free and I capture you and send you to your hanging, I would like to know the type of female you are, so in the future I may avoid that female.”