He cut her off with a sharp gesture, stepping in front of her to look around outside. He saw no one on the snowy slope that curved away into a deep valley, no intruders or travelers anywhere on the white, sun-blazed foothills surrounding them. No danger in sight.
Only his horse Anteros awaited, tossing his head impatiently, looking well rested after his night in the abbey’s stable. A half-dozen bulky sacks lay on the ground next to him, along with his saddle and bridle.
Princess Ciara stepped out from the tunnel. “Why did you—”
“I did not yet tell you it was safe to come out,” Royce said, his tone curt.
She froze. “Of course,” she replied after a moment. “You are right to be cautious. I suppose I will have to grow accustomed to your... ways.”
“Not ways, Your Highness. Rules.” He turned to face her. “And you had best become acquainted with them right now. To begin with, I go through every door first, and you stay behind until summoned. I will not be trailing at your heels like one of your royal servants—”
“I do not—”
“And I want you in my sight at all times. There will be no wandering off. You will stay within reach, you will do your best to avoid attracting attention, and you will follow my orders without hesitation. Understood?”
Blinking at him in shock, she set down the brocade satchel she had carried from the abbey. “I am not accustomed to being addressed in this tone, sirrah. Or to being interrupted when I am speaking. Or to—”
“Then I would say the next two weeks should be full of surprises for you, Princess. Your father has appointed me your guardian—and you will find I care little for royal protocol when it comes to carrying out my duty. Have you any questions?”
A storm was brewing in those jewel-bright eyes. “Only one.”
“Aye?”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Is it safe for me to come outside yet?”
The sarcasm in her tone made him frown. “Indeed, Your Royal Highness,” he replied with exaggerated politeness, gesturing her forward with a sweep of his arm. “Please join me.” He turned and led the way toward his destrier.
Picking up her satchel, she followed him onto the snowy hillside. “Where is my mare?”
“I told the brothers to keep her. Anteros is more than strong enough to carry us both.”
“We are to share a horse? But why?”
“It is better this way.” He picked up the bridle from the ground. “Safer.”
He was no longer certain that was true. When he had made the decision this morning, he had not anticipated that the lady sharing the saddle with him would be so... enticing.
“But how will we carry my belongings?”
He slipped the bridle over the stallion’s head, casting a glance at her satchel. “I wear chain mail, helm, and armaments when Anteros carries me into battle, Your Highness. I do not think one bag will overtax him.”
“But what about the rest?” Setting down her satchel, she pointed at the sacks on the ground.
“All of these are yours?” he asked incredulously. He had thought they were foodstuffs being delivered to the abbey.
“Of course. I cannot travel for a fortnight without at least a few changes of clothes and—”
“We are not taking all of this with us, Your Highness. If you have belongings that you cannot live without in Thuringia, you should have sent them with the wedding procession.”
A spark flared in her eyes, belying the courtly, polite smile that slid into place as she moved toward him. “But if we were to bring my mare, you see, there would be no problem.”
“Aye, there would be. The mare would slow us down. Anteros has easily twice her speed.” His fingers tightened on the reins, crushing the leather as she drew close. Too close. “And if you were seated alone on her back, you would make a fine target. The rebels could put a crossbow bolt through your heart and be gone before we knew they were there. You would be dead before you fell from your pretty little saddle.”
She went pale and drew back from him, her right hand coming up to touch her left arm in an odd, protective gesture.
Smothering an oath, Royce turned and continued bridling the stallion. He had not meant to be so blunt in his explanation. She was not a squire or guardsman under his command; she was a princess. A sheltered, naive girl not used to the world’s violent ways.
And it was not her fault that the merest blink of her lashes set his every nerve on edge. Being churlish with her would accomplish naught.
Sighing in frustration, he glanced over his shoulder and tried to make her understand. “If we ride together, with you seated in front of me, my body will block any arrows or other pointy objects that might come flying your way.”
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.”
Chapter Four
* * *
THE 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.
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br /> 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.
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