The Stolen Brides 02 -His Forbidden Touch (8 page)

That delectable mouth of hers formed an O of
comprehension and surprise. “You would do that? Risk getting
wounded, risk your life … for me?”

He stared down at her, lost in those topaz
eyes that were brighter than the sun that warmed the air all around
them. Then he cleared his throat, finally found his voice. “I
should think a princess would be used to that—to having guardsmen
and retainers risk themselves to protect her.”

She shook her head. “Nay. There has been
little cause to—” She stopped herself abruptly, leaving the
explanation unfinished. “Nay.”

He wondered what she was leaving unsaid. And
why. “You need not concern yourself, Your Highness. No blood will
be shed. If I carry out my duty with any skill at all, we will be
in Thuringia before the rebels suspect that aught is amiss.”

And he fully intended to carry out his duty.
To keep his vow.

Every word of it.

“I see,” she said quietly.

They stood there an instant longer, scarcely
two paces apart, and he noticed for the first time that she wore
some kind of scent. The breeze carried it toward him, teasing his
senses. Jasmine, he thought. Or was it rose?

Refusing to give himself time to puzzle it
out, he turned on his heel and reached for the saddle on the
ground.

She moved past him. “I concede that we must
share a horse, but I will not leave these bags behind.” She picked
up one of the sacks and held it out toward him. “You will have to
think of a way to take them.”

Royce straightened, the saddle in his arms.
“I will?”

She blinked, apparently unaccustomed to
having her orders questioned. “Of course.” That polite, courtly
smile of hers reappeared. “It is what I wish.”

“It is what you … wish,” he echoed, one
brow rising. Evidently, Her Royal Highness was used to getting
whatever
Her Royal Highness wished. No matter how
unreasonable. She was a spoiled, demanding little female, just as
he had expected. A girl who had been indulged by too many people
for much too long.

And he was having none of it.

“Very well, Princess.” Imitating her smile,
he placed the saddle on Anteros’s back, then came back and reached
out for the bag in her hands. “Allow me to see what I can do.”

She looked relieved as she handed it
over.

Until he opened the sack and started pawing
through it.

“What do we have here?” He held up a pair of
blue silk slippers embroidered in gold. “Pretty.” He tossed them
over his shoulder into the snow.

She uttered a squeak of surprise.

“And so are these.” He discarded a lavender
pair. “And this is quite lovely.”

“What are you—”

A plumed hat sailed over his shoulder. “And
these … and oh, this must have cost a great deal.”

“W-What …” She sounded as if she could not
breathe as hats, hose, veils, and feminine frippery quickly
accumulated at his feet. “What … what …”

The pile was nearly knee-deep when he
reached the bottom of the sack. “And this, Your Royal Highness, I
am certain you could live without.”

A small mandolin hit the snow with a
discordant
twang
.

The princess had been paralyzed—until the
instrument fell. She lunged forward to rescue it, sputtering. “How
dare you … how
could
you … I will not tolerate—you will
stop that this instant!”

He ignored her, draping the now empty bag
over one shoulder and picking up another. “I am merely complying
with your wishes.” He shrugged. “I am taking the bags.”

He found the next sack filled with—of all
things—books.

She gasped as he started discarding them. “I
said you will cease at once!” She scrambled to scoop them up before
they could hit the snow. “At once, I say! Cease!”

He paused, a slender volume of verse
dangling from his fingertips, and lifted one brow. “Is there a
problem, Your Highness?”

She straightened, struggling to balance the
mandolin with an armful of books, clutching them all to her
bosom.

For the first time in his life, Royce wished
he were a mandolin or a book.

She stalked toward him and snatched the slim
volume of poetry from his fingers. “You … you …” She seemed
incapable of speech for a moment, as if she could not find words
vile enough to describe him.

Then she found them. “You are a barbarian!
Some sort of Mongol beast! How
dare
you come charging into
my life, unasked, unwanted—”

“Hardly unasked, Your Highness,” he said
calmly. “Your father—”

“Appointed you to serve as my protector. The
important word being
serve
. Your position does not give you
the right to flout all law and custom and even simple courtesy!”
Her voice shifted to an icy, regal tone, her gaze glittering. “You
and I,
sirrah
”— she emphasized the term, addressing him as
if he were a servant—”need to come to an understanding. If we are
to … enjoy—”

He suspected she had wanted to say
endure
.

“—each other’s company for the next two
weeks, I must ask you to remember your place.”

He dropped the heavy sack on the ground,
barely missing her dainty royal foot. “My place?”

“Aye. Though you have been gone from Châlons
for some time, you are, in fact, one of my subjects. I must insist
that you treat me with proper deference.”

His own pride ignited his temper. “You can
insist all you like, Your Highness, but my
place
is wherever
I want it to be. I am not your servant and I am not
anyone’s
subject. I have been a free man for four years. Your father saw to
that.” He rudely turned his back and went to finish with Anteros’s
saddle. The point about her useless belongings had been made. He
would argue about it no more.

“My father? What do you mean?”

He choked out a humorless laugh, tightening
the cinch. “There is no need to pretend you do not know.”

“Know of what? All I know is that four years
ago, you disappeared from Châlons quite suddenly. Without saying
farewell to anyone.”

Royce went still. His fingers clenched
around the reins. “Your father never told you why I left?”

“Nay, he said naught to me. Or to anyone.”
She paused. “Did my father have something to do with your
disappearance?”

Royce could not move, could not even turn to
study her face, to see if she was lying. He knew she was not. The
way she waited so expectantly for an answer told him that.

By nails and blood, Aldric had said naught?
To anyone?

Shock and disbelief slammed through him. All
this time, he had believed that Aldric told
everyone
of his
banishment and disgrace. That he had been made an example. Why
would the old warhorse keep it secret?

He could think of no reason, except that the
king did not wish to shame him publicly.

Struggling for breath, he finished buckling
the saddle, trying to sort out his confusion. It was unnerving to
learn that he had been mistaken all this time. Disconcerting that
he could not puzzle out the motive behind Aldric’s silence.

But if the king had seen fit to keep the
matter quiet, Royce saw no reason to drag his family name and honor
through the mud. “I had … reasons for leaving.”

“And I would like to understand them. I wish
you to explain.”

She did not phrase it as a question.
Evidently, she had inherited not only her father’s tendency to be
demanding and impossible, but his arrogance as well.

He turned and pierced her with a glare. “And
what makes you think that your every
wish
matters so much?”
he asked hotly. “Up in your palace on a mountaintop, milady, all of
your wishes may have come true, but you are out in the world
now—and those of us who live down here do
not
exist merely
to satisfy your every whim! We have lives and minds and wishes of
our own. You cannot simply hand down demands from on high and
expect everyone to gleefully dance to your tune. You cannot treat
people like puppets. You cannot ask the impossible and then destroy
them when they fail to—”

He cut himself off abruptly, chagrined that
he had almost given her the answer she had demanded. He was
not
going to discuss the intimate, painful details of his
past with her.

Clenching his jaw, he held her gaze, daring
her to press him further. “I left. Now I am back. My reasons are my
own. Have you any other questions?”

She held his stare, then turned aside and
set her books and mandolin atop the sack he had discarded. “Only
one,” she bit out. “If you hold some sort of grudge against my
father, why did you agree to serve as my escort to Thuringia? Why
risk your life to protect me?”

“I should think that would be obvious,” he
snapped, his temper making him less than careful in his choice of
words. “You mean a great deal to me, Princess—a great deal of land,
a castle, and coin. I have been promised a generous reward.
That
is what I am risking my life for.”

She picked up one of the hats he had tossed
to the ground, brushing snow from the delicate fabric. “Thank you
for explaining,” she said frostily. “So kind of you to make clear
exactly what sort of man you are.”

He spat a curse. “I would not expect you to
understand. You, who have never had to worry about a place to sleep
for the night or where your next meal is coming from. Your whole
life has been”— he cast a scornful glance at the costly belongings
piled around her—”books of verse and blue silk slippers.”

She lifted her gaze to his, her eyes still
glittering. “Tell me, Sir Royce, are you this offensive to everyone
you meet, or are your ill manners strictly reserved for
royalty?”

“I have not been hired for my charming
personality, Princess. I do not have to be pleasant to you. I do
not even have to like you. And I certainly do not have to bow and
scrape like one of your palace lackeys. All I have to do is get you
to Thuringia in one piece and deliver you into the waiting arms of
Prince Daemon.”

“Aye,” she said slowly. “That is what you
are being
paid
to do.”

“Excellent, Princess. I am glad we agree on
one thing.” Turning his back again, he finished tightening the
saddle and securing his own belongings. “Because this is not going
to be a pleasure trip or a summer cruise down the river in your
royal barge. There are people out there”—he jerked his head toward
the distant mountains—“who may want to kill you. I intend to
prevent that from happening. Whether
you
like it or not,
your father has placed me in charge, for your own safety. And if I
am to protect you, I must insist that you obey my orders. Without
question.”

“I will try to be … accommodating.”

It sounded as if the words had been pried
from between her teeth. He had the distinct impression that she
liked him even less than he liked her.

Which suited him fine, he decided. Let her
despise him. It would be better that way. Safer. He
needed
barriers between them. A boundary that he would not allow himself
to cross.

Not even for the sweet temptation of tasting
those ravishing lips.

“Good.” He glanced up at the sun, high
overhead. “Then gather up whatever you can fit in
one
of
those bags of yours, and let us be on our way.”

T
he sun dipped low
behind them, gilding the fields of winter wheat that passed in a
blur as Sir Royce’s stallion carried them swiftly across the plain.
The light struck bright sparks from the lakes that dotted the
countryside and danced over the distant, snowcapped peaks.

Ciara had removed her fur-lined gloves and
almost wished she could take off her cloak as well. The air here
felt mild, rich with the earthy promise of spring. As they cantered
through the broad, flat lowland that separated Châlons’s western
mountains from those in the east, a steady breeze warmed her cheeks
and mischievously plucked strands from her neatly braided hair.

The sun’s heat, the destrier’s smooth gait,
and the rhythm of his hoofbeats might have lulled her to sleep, but
she held herself stiff and straight, trying to keep as much space
as possible between herself and Sir Royce, uncomfortably aware of
the solid wall of muscle at her back, of the musky scent that
enveloped her. Both so unfamiliar. So foreign. So …

Male.

Even after an entire day of riding, she
still felt shocked by the feel of his hard-sinewed legs pressed
against hers, his heavy arm around her waist.

And by an unforgivable thought that kept
bothering her conscience. A desire. What Sir Royce might call a
wish.

A wish to push the black-haired lout off the
first and tallest cliff that presented itself.

The idea held such appeal, she found herself
fighting a smile. From the moment Sir Royce first looked at her,
she had guessed that he lacked manners, but she had not suspected
that he possessed a knave’s heart to match his black eyes. Until he
proved it to her.

Thus far, she had managed to endure his
behavior. She had even obeyed his order to sacrifice most of her
possessions, taking only what he called “practical
necessities.”

Which included a few of her beloved books.
And her mandolin.

She had refused to compromise on that. The
instrument now hung from Sir Royce’s saddle, bouncing between his
metal shield and a battle-ax.

That small victory almost made up for having
to share a horse with him.

Almost.

She realized that riding this way was
necessary so that he could protect her. But she was not accustomed
to such … such …
intimacy
. Especially not with a
man.

She did not like the way she fit so
perfectly against him, the top of her head neatly tucked beneath
his chin. ‘Twas why she had refused to remove her cloak, despite
the sun’s warmth.