"I didn't have a personal chef," she snapped, annoyed at his constant suggestions that she had been pampered beyond earthly means. "Buntin and I took our meals in our suite, and they were the same meals everyone else in the wing received from the kitchens. I never lived extravagantly. Why, I never had any money at all. If I wanted something, a dress or a hat, a vendor had to come in and bring it to me, for I never went out to a shop."
"Who paid for it?" Michael inquired with only a hint of merriment.
Tatiana shrugged as if it were of no consequence. "They sent the bill to the palace, I suppose. My point is, I couldn't have bought a cup of chocolate with my own funds."
"Poor little princess," he murmured with mock sympathy, dumping the plateful of saltback and a couple of handfuls of peas into the boiling pot. Tatiana was surprised to find that she was a little hungry, but then she'd never missed a meal before, except when she decided to starve herself when the court wouldn't allow her to go into exile with her parents. She sat down on the floor, spreading the wet wool of her skirt out to the fire and regarding the pot hopefully.
"Have you never heard that a watched pot never boils?" Michael asked, and she looked up at him with some consternation.
"It's already boiling, isn't it? Isn't that when the bubbles break? And I am watching it, so that must be wrong."
"Only an aphorism, and a singularly foolish one, I'll admit. And I'll also admit that, for a princess, you have lived a benighted life."
She mistrusted his amused tone and turned the tables on him. "And you, I suppose, my lord viscount, grew up in dire poverty, without a penny to call your own."
"As a matter of fact," he replied calmly, stirring the soup with a wooden spoon, "I did, near enough."
He never lied, she knew that, but this was hard to credit. Eventually, grudgingly, she asked, "What do you mean?"
"My father was a gambler, you see. Terrible vice, gaming. Did you see any salt or herbs or anything else in that cupboard? This soup's entirely lacking in flavor."
Obediently she foraged deeper into the cabinet and found a packet of dried herbs and a box of salt, hardened now from the damp, and, triumphantly, a dusty bottle of vin ordinaire. As he added the spices and splashed a bit of wine into the soup, her curiosity won out. "Did he lose a great deal?"
"Everything. How old are the shoemaker's victuals, do you think? We'll probably be poisoned and die here in agony before morning. I spent a year in debtor's prison," he added. "My father was the debtor of course, but there was nothing to do but take me along."
"How awful," Tatiana whispered, thinking of the massive iron gates of the prison where Alexander sent dissidents. On her infrequent drives into Petersburg, she'd never been able to pass those gates without a shiver. But, as usual, Michael surprised her.
"It wasn't, really. At least the creditors had to stop harassing him, and there were occasional meals. There were several boys my age, and we ran in a pack. We were allowed out of the prison, for we hadn't been convicted of anything save for having improvident parents. We used to go down to the docks and carry luggage of the incoming passengers for tuppence. I thought I might pay down my father's debt." He frowned, whether at the memory or at the pallid taste of the soup he had spooned up she couldn't tell. "Of course, it would have taken a thousand years that way, but it gave me some purpose in life."
Tatiana felt very sad, thinking of Michael as a boy in ragged clothes carrying heavy baggage in exchange for pennies. But the story explained so much of the enigma that was Michael. After such a chaotic childhood—his mother and sister's deaths, his father's dissoluteness, his imprisonment and poverty—he could hardly be blamed for wanting to be in total control of his life. And, knowing that, she could hardly blame him for his antipathy toward her, for she supposed from the very first she had sent his life spinning into chaos.
But he seemed resigned to it now. He ladled some soup into a couple of bowls and set them on the low table. Then he poured wine into mugs and arranged one precisely on the upper right of each spoon. "Bon appetit."
She was so distracted she could barely taste the soup, which was just as well for there was precious little taste to the thin broth. Michael sat cross-legged on the floor across from her, remarkably handsome in his rustic shirt, the open neck showing a glimpse of bronzed skin and a spray of dark hair, his eyes glinting silver in the firelight. "Did you father pay off his debts?"
"No, he died in prison. Imagine if we had a crusty loaf and a crock of butter, how much better this would taste. Let's remember to pick a better stocked cottage next time, shall we?"
"Michael, tell me what happened to you," she said with exasperation, "after your father died."
"Oh, nothing gothic. The estate had to be let. It was entailed on me, of course, but the creditors had a better solicitor than I did, in fact I hadn't one at all, being only ten. So they leased the estate to a nabob just back from India, and the sum paid off most of the debts. There was a bit left over, so I went off to Eton—that's a school, or so the dungeon masters there like to pretend."
Tatiana thought of her life after the death of her own irresponsible father, the isolation, the shame. No wonder Michael had accepted her revelations without revulsion—he had suffered in the same way. "Are you still poor?"
He leaned back against the hearth and smiled lazily at her. Really, she thought suddenly, how comfortable he is. A week ago, she could not have imagined him talking so easily about his past, even turning it into an amusing tale for dinner conversation. She wondered if her kiss had loosened his tongue as well as his morals.
"No, you'll be relieved to hear, I am not still poor. I won back what my father had lost."
"With gambling? Why, Michael, I never would have thought it of you! Especially with the example of your father before you."
"I didn't gamble as he did," Michael replied with hauteur. "He was a gambler. I was a mathematician. I knew enough about the games to play the best odds. And when I began to lose, or when I'd won enough, I quit for the night. My father—another Nicholas, by the way—do you think there is something in the name that encourages irresponsibility?"
Before she had the chance to protest that her father Nicholas was merely a victim, he went on, "My father never learned to cut his losses, or to quit while he was ahead. So finally I had enough to evict the nabob from the estate. He left it bare, of course, and I still haven't furnished it, haven't had the time. But Devlyn Keep is mine again."
"Did you stop gaming then?"
"Once I'd got enough of the ready to buy back my London townhouse and some stocks on the exchange, I did. I purchased my commission in the 16th then and gave up gambling as a profession." He picked up his spoon again. "I still play faro and hazard and piquet occasionally, but gaming isn't a game for me even now, but a job. Counting cards and calculating odds don't make for the best evening's entertainment."
The best evening's entertainment, Tatiana thought mistily, was just this: sitting near a fire, drinking wine and eating soup with a very good friend. With a very good friend, she repeated to herself. And friendship was so much better than—than whatever they had tried out there in the rain. There was no danger in this, nothing to anger Michael and alienate him, nothing to force her into unsolvable debates about her future. How sturdy was friendship, how trustworthy, how comfortably limited.
She stole a look at Michael from under her lashes, wondering if he was also thinking about that hazardous embrace in the storm. Was he thinking of his hands skimming her body, his fierce kisses, the heat of his skin against hers? But as he returned her gaze, she dropped her eyes back to her mug and dissembled. "Well, I must say I am losing respect for French vineyards. This wine is nothing like we had at the palace. But I suppose the shoemaker hasn't the wine cellar that Alexander did. Napoleon sent wagonloads of his favorite vintage to the court when he was trying to take a Russian bride. Why, when we came back from Versailles, there was hardly enough room for us princesses left, for Napoleon had filled our coaches ful
l of bottles."
She had succeeded in diverting Michael's attention, and her own, from that dangerous memory. He took a meditative sip of his wine and asked, "How is it, if you were such an outcast at the palace, that you managed to join this caravan to Versailles?"
"Oh, that was my best lark." Tatiana's melancholy vanished. "I wasn't invited, of course. But I just packed up my trunk and had it delivered to the coach the morning of the departure. Hardly anyone at court knows me, so no one knew that I wasn't Princess Olga of Bashkir as I said when I got in the coach. Bashkir is quite far away, and there are several Olgas, so I was simply accepted as a legitimate passenger. I had a wonderful time on the journey and in France. I did have a few frightening moments, however, when the emperor paid special attention to me and I thought he might demand Princess Olga's hand. What would I have done then, not being Princess Olga at all? So I had to say something that annoyed him—"
"What?" Michael's tone combined dread and amusement.
"Oh, I just remarked that we were of a height together—he's very sensitive about his lack of inches, the emperor. Otherwise, he might have solicited for my hand, and Alexander would have said, but there is no Princess Olga of Bashkir, and Napoleon might have taken offense, and who knows what might have happened." Tatiana drew a deep sigh of relief, for even now her escape seemed much too narrow.
"So you came uncomfortably close to being made empress, did you?" Michael's voice was even, but she could tell he was grudgingly impressed by her consequence, impressed and perhaps annoyed.
"Oh, no, I couldn't have married Napoleon, even if I were Princess Olga. I would never do anything that might further that tyrant's ambitions."
"And would you marry to inhibit his ambitions?"
The major's sharp question echoed that issue they had tacitly agreed to ignore here in the cottage. With sudden anguish, Tatiana shook her head, willing the words away, for she knew now their quiet intimacy had been lost. What did he want her to say? What did he want her to do?
Her silence was perhaps more eloquent than anything she could have said. He rose easily and nodded toward the antechamber. "There's a bed in there. I put some blankets down, and it looks clean enough. I'll stay out here by the fire."
Without a word she picked up a candle and retreated into the next room. She stripped off her still-damp gown, distractedly dismayed to find that it had shrunk even as she wore it and by morning would not be decent. Sighing, she slipped on the nightshirt Michael had laid neatly on the bed. It was clean, but her skin had felt only silk nightgowns before and would be rubbed raw by the rough linen. She rolled up the sleeves and buttoned the neck and climbed into the primitive plank bed. She huddled in the blankets, wishing she were still in the warmth of the fire, the warmth of Michael's friendship. She wasn't the sort who cried, but if she had been, she would be crying now, for loneliness and hopelessness and the end of the happiest night of her life.
Chapter Ten
Devlyn was up at dawn, scouting their location and plotting their escape from French territory. If they made it to Cotentin without incident and reconnoitered with Dryden, they could be in England late that night. If something went wrong, well, they could try to make it to one of the Channel Islands, those insecure bits of English soil only a few miles across the water.
Devlyn pulled on the shoemaker's heavy cloak and walked out into the silence of dawn, when most of God's creatures slept dreamlessly. The early air was chill, with mist rising eerily from the forest. The gulf was hidden from view, for the cottage was set back from the road and out of sight of any neighbors. But Devlyn still took care as he surveyed the small holding. From a scrubby orchard spread out from the stable area, he gathered up a couple of pockets full of late apples for breakfast. They would have to do, for even were he willing to chance an encounter with a local grocer, he had only English currency. Guineas were acceptable to coastal merchants, who despite the war carried on a clandestine trade across the channel, but Devlyn had no desire to call attention to their foreign status.
As if abashed by its defection the previous afternoon, the sun was just rising a blushing pink when Devlyn saw the horse in the pasture beyond the orchard. He did not stop to wonder whose pasture it was or whose horse, or to examine his conscience to see if it would allow horse theft. He only glanced about to make sure he was alone with this gift from heaven and vaulted the pasture fence.
The horse probably belonged to the missing shoemaker after all, which made Devlyn's crime almost an act of mercy. She obviously had not been cared for in weeks, and had gone a bit wild. But the cavalry officer Devlyn knew horses better than people, and recognized that the mare longed for a little human attention. A few soft words, the offer of an apple, and she was his. Would that the human female were so obliging.
Like a pet dog, the mare followed him back to the stables, where he found her some dry hay and groomed her with an old brush. She preened under his attention, nickering gently and thrusting her head against his arm. She was young but sturdy, broad-shouldered and deep-chested, used no doubt for plowing as well as saddling. She took the bridle placidly, and the old saddle off the stall rail made her shy only for a moment. With a final pat, he left her munching on the hay, complacent now that the natural order was righted again.
Tatiana was up and washed and dressed in the long-sleeved blue woolen gown some unknown peasant girl had left here. The style was simple, as simple as the feminine form, tied at the neck with a bit of string, gathered in a bit at the waist, skimming her curved hips with discretion. She'd found a comb and tidied her hair, but a few curls escaped the confines of the length of lace she had torn from her own abandoned dress. Devlyn stood there in the doorway for a moment, watching her wrap a towel around the handleless pot and painstakingly transfer its boiling water to the mugs they had used last night for wine. Intent upon her task, she worried at her full lower lip and frowned prettily. She was dazzling, the golden highlights in her hair and skin glowing in the early sunlight, her delicate features only enhanced by the roughness of her dress. He waited for her completion of the unfamiliar task and the cessation of the sharp stabbing in his chest before making himself known.
She looked up at him with a cheerful smile, as if she had passed the night luxuriously after a delicious dinner in regal surroundings. But then, she was seldom less than cheerful—it was one of her more charming and more infuriating qualities. He wondered at the sort of disposition that could greet a morning of direst danger with such equanimity. But he felt oddly optimistic too, as if they were certain to get through the day without mishap, just because they were favored by some benevolent god—albeit one who was prodigiously tardy in making an appearance in their lives.
"Michael, I found some tea in the canister there. I know how you English like your tea in the morning. Buntin could never face the day without her cup."
He deposited the apples onto the table, anticipating and dreading her happy cries at his contribution. "Oh, how lovely! Now don't you think this breakfast will rival any we could have ordered? All of God's bounty is here before us."
"I would have ordered some scones and a little of God's creamery butter, but this will do, I suppose. Were you worried that I'd scarpered and left you here on your own?"
"Oh, I knew you wouldn't do that," she said with heartrending confidence. "You are my verray parfit gentil knight, aren't you? That's Chaucer, you know," she added kindly.
"Yes, I think I've heard of him." At Eton he had been forced to memorize the entire prologue of The Canterbury Tales, and doubtlessly could recite it now with the slightest prompting. "I captured us a verray parfit gentil horse, so we won't have to ruin our elegant footwear walking to town."
Tatiana fanned her tea, then picked up an apple and took a dainty bite. "How enterprising of you. But I have grown quite fond of our cottage, and am loath to leave it. Do you think we could just take up residence here? We could pretend to be the shoemaker's relations. You could take over his craft."
"Yes, I'd
be good at cobbling with my delicate hands, wouldn't I?" he said, turning his hands over to exhibit the blisters the night's rowing had raised over his calluses.
"And I could take over the orchard, and we would go along quite happily, don't you think?"
Her teasing suggestion sounded rather more pleasant than was safe for his sanity, which, of course, he'd long since given up for lost anyway. And he knew he could not give her the answer she didn't even know she sought with that longing glance, not yet. So more coldly than he had intended, he replied, "A princess become a peasant. I remember your cousin Marie Antoinette used to play at that, pretending to be a shepherdess when being a queen grew tedious. But then, this shoemaker and his countrymen beheaded her for such frivolity, didn't they?"
For a moment she was still, hurt, then she tossed her bright curls and favored him with a scornful glance. She was learning to dissemble, to hide her emotions, he thought sadly, and he had taught her that, by his example and by his expectations.
"Marie was beheaded because she had the misfortune to marry a doomed king. Her own actions might have been foolish, but had she been a model of sobriety, she would have faced the same end. For a bride of a king shares his fate as she shares his crown. That's the price she pays for her royal blood and her royal marriage."
Her hard tone was enough to remind him that Marie Antoinette was more than just a myth to her, as might be called up by an English matron to warn her daughter against the perils of impropriety. The doomed queen, though Tatiana had never met her, was her kin, a model of sorts, a precedent, God forbid. And if Tatiana saw the lot of a peasant as more appealing than that of a royal princess, she might have reason for that after all. It was her royal blood that complicated everything, for without it she would be of no use and could make her own fate. But then, were she not royal, he would never have met her, and her fate would be of no moment to him.
Royal Renegade Page 12