by Princess
“He’s dangerous!”
“You can’t stop me!” she flung at them.
She hauled the stall door open, threw Jihad’s reins over his midnight neck, then by sheer willpower climbed up onto the stallion’s back, riding astride. She gathered the reins and urged the horse out of the stall.
“Get out of the way or be trampled,” she ordered the boys.
They fell back. She ducked her head leaving the stall. Jihad tossed his head in excitement.
“Your Highness, where are you going?” the eldest boy demanded.
She urged Jihad crashing out of the stall, then they were galloping out into the night, heading for the promontory over the sea.
She would be with Darius forever.
Jihad’s gallop was like the wind. Her head reeled with speed and recklessness.
Bareheaded and dripping with rain, she stood at the edge of the promontory, the night wind whipping her ruined dress around her, jagged rocks and the endless sea two hundred feet below her.
She had waited here for countless hours in the past, searching the horizons for his ship, always waiting for him to return to her.
But this time he wasn’t coming back.
She dropped to her knees.
If she died, no one could fight a war over her.
If she died, she could be with Darius forever.
And if she took her life, his sacrifice would have been all in vain.
He had died to save her; her willful death would be a betrayal of everything he had stood for. He had abandoned her, cursed her with the burden of a life that would never know joy or love again.
“You heartless Gypsy thief,” she whispered at the sea.
She crumpled down onto the rocky ledge and wept until there were no tears left in her.
The three Genoese fishermen were terrified of him. Darius shot them brooding, intimidating glances now and then to send them back to work and to dispel their curiosity about him—the wild-eyed madman who had commandeered their small boat and threatened to slit their throats if they didn’t sail him immediately to Ascencion.
He sat against the bulkhead on deck, drowning in humiliation, his knees drawn up, arms wrapped around them. It was only hours now before he would see his Serafina. Knowing that helped him manage his fear and his terrible craving for her.
He had a lot to think about to pass the time. His experience in Milan had changed him, knocked the illusory ideals of honor right out of him, dissolved all those air castles and lies he had fed from for so many years. He was no knight; he could no longer pretend that he was. No, he was ruined again, a creature of instinct and survival, as he had once been on the streets of Sevilla, and he knew what he needed.
He didn’t care anymore if it was wrong.
He was going to take her for himself. Just take her. No one else could have her, he thought, the edge of instinct bristling inside him. She was his.
Even though he had failed and would never deserve her. Even though Lazar was going to disown him. Even though he did not know how to be anybody’s husband and was terrified he would be like his father, possessive of her, controlling. She was his and nothing else mattered.
His.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
On the eve of her wedding, Serafina was an empty shell of her former self.
There was no point in hoping anymore. If Napoleon were dead, the whole world would have heard about it by now. If Darius were alive, he’d have sent some kind of news.
She was to marry Anatole in the morning. None of it felt real. Had Darius died alone? Had he suffered much? Had his last thoughts been of her? The questions had no answers. Not knowing what had become of him was worse than just hearing the awful truth once and for all.
She sought an opiate in slumber. Little hothouse flower who could not stand her pain, with contempt she watched herself progressing, as the days passed, from wine to whiskey to laudanum. Her doctor prescribed it.
The stable boys had told the head groom what she had done, taking Jihad out for a gallop in the rain. That excellent servant had, in turn, felt compelled to warn her parents of her dangerous behavior. They had come to try to have a talk with her. The sight of them made her sick, so in love. In the tragedy of Darius’s self-sacrifice, they had turned to each other. Her loss, her devastation was the same event that somehow brought the two of them closer together—as had their new baby, to whom Serafina was coldly indifferent.
It was a boy and they were calling him Lorenzo. She didn’t care. Why should her mother be the one giving birth to what was obviously a love child, unplanned, an accident? It was scandalous. The woman was nearly forty. For two decades, her mother had had the devotion of one of the two best men in the whole world. Would she never get her chance at happiness? Embittered by life at the age of twenty, she had turned away from her parents’ attempt to reach out to her and include her in their perfect little world. She observed herself acting just like Darius, evading all their concerned questions by saying merely that she was not feeling herself. They had despaired of cracking her open and had sent the physician to examine her.
She had not stood for his prying, either. She could have given him her diagnosis in three words: Darius is dead. She was dead inside, comatose. But laudanum was her angel of mercy.
Sweet dreams brought Darius back to her, the feel of his honey-gold skin, the sound of his scoffing laughter, his bittersweet, molasses smile—and then he would vanish again.
Cruel, she thought. Cruel.
She lay now in her canopied bed. Two candles had burned down to stumps on the twin night tables, the wax pooled and sculpted into bizarre shapes.
She had not meant to fall asleep so early again tonight. It had been barely nine-thirty when she crawled into bed. She had meant to read for a while, but she couldn’t concentrate and the book weighed too much to hold up. Her arms were too weak, her body so heavy, her eyelids almost too weighty to lift. Laudanum made her so tired, though the dose was mild. If she gave in to the urge to sleep, perhaps she could conjure him again to come to her in her dreams, her demon lover.
Her last thought before drifting off had been that she could sleep her life away under the white, pristine snowfalls of Anatole’s homeland.
Oblivion. Blackness. No pain.
Hours passed.
The soft click at the wall did not altogether pierce her sleep. Very distantly, she was aware of her pet monkey chirruping to himself, but that was not unusual. She dreamed she was at the bottom of a great, black crypt, sleeping, with a mile of earth between her and the light.
Princesa.
Ah, she understood what this blackness was. She was in Darius’s tomb with him. Her dreaming brain wound the thread of a story for her. She followed it like Ariadne, the princess in the Minotaur’s labyrinth. He was here somewhere in the dark, if only she could find him. He was lost in this maze and she had to save him. He was waiting.
She called to him in her dream and the three musical syllables of his name echoed down the long black corridor like a singsong whisper, a sigh, Daaariusss.
He answered her call in his soft, lulling voice. “Princesa, awake. I am here.”
No, I do not want to wake, she thought in anguish, for she could feel that she was getting closer to him. She had to glimpse his face one last time, even if it was horrible, even if he were the Minotaur in the maze and would kill her when she found him.
Soft notes rose around her as a hand brushed guitar strings, like a breeze over a moonlit lake. She opened her eyes and saw a tall, shadowy silhouette through the gauzy white netting of her bed.
She stared, not sure if she was awake or dreaming. She didn’t dare breathe for fear that the beloved apparition would vanish.
As if the netting formed a magic circle into which he could not cross, he walked around the foot of her bed, lean and graceful, never taking his luminous eyes off her.
“You are so beautiful, I ache,” he whispered, “here.” He laid his hand on his heart, staring at her as he sl
owly glided nearer.
She clutched the sheets, pulling them higher over her chest, her eyes round as she stared at the ghostly revenant. From the netherworld, he had come to take her with him. They would be together for all eternity. She need only give him her soul. As if he did not already possess it.
“Don’t be afraid.”
“Are you real?” she breathed, her heart pounding.
Sauntering around to her right, he came to stand at the head of her wide bed. She stared in amazement as his sun-browned hand parted the mosquito netting.
When he placed his knee on the bed, the mattress bowed under his quite solid weight.
“You tell me,” he breathed, and leaning down, he kissed her mouth, a satin caress, his warm, living breath blowing gently against her lips.
She gave a strangled cry and threw her arms around his neck. He pulled her to him in a crushing embrace as he stood beside the bed. His arms were hard and real and warm around her, the chafe of his dark, scruffy day-beard rough against her neck. Shaking uncontrollably, she barely knew what she was saying, squeezing his arms, clutching at his flesh, willing him not to disappear.
“Oh, God, Darius, Darius, tell me you’re real, my God, tell me you’re alive!”
He stroked her hair, his hands trembling. “Shh, angel, I’m here. I’m real.”
“Oh, tell me you are alive!” she cried, still only half able to believe it. She was laughing, crying, sobbing all at once. “Are you hurt? Let me see you.”
Hands shaking, she pushed back and grasped his shoulders, holding him at arm’s length, her gaze traveling swiftly over him. He was bruised, a little gaunt, and his clothes were in tatters.
“Serafina, I’m back. I’m all right,” he said forcefully.
She looked into his eyes, holding his gaze for a moment as the reality of it sank in. Her eyes filled with tears. Without a word, she flung her arms around him and held him with all her strength, squeezing her eyes shut.
She breathed him, filling her nostrils with the musky, male scent of him; the feel of him in her arms was ecstasy, so warm and strong and sure. Alive. Miraculously alive.
Over and over she breathed her thanks to heaven, running her hands all over Darius to assure herself he was not an illusion. She clung to him.
He wound his arms around her waist, soothing her. She clung to him as he rocked her gently. “Shh, it’s all right now, angel. I’m here.”
She hugged him tighter with tears of sweet relief streaming down her face, too overcome with emotion to speak.
He had come back to her, just as he always had in the past. Battered but unbowed, he had fought his way back from the grave. He was alive . . . and that could only mean that Napoleon was dead.
By God, he had done it.
He had put the tyrant of the age in his grave, and walked out of the lion’s den unscathed.
The great Santiago had performed the impossible.
Again.
“Oh, you blackheart!” Rearing back to stare fiercely into his midnight eyes, she shoved at his chest. Before she gave him any part of a hero’s welcome, she would bloody well give him a piece of her mind. “How could you do that to me?” she cried. “How could you lie to me all that time, then go out to get yourself killed? I thought you were dead. You have put me through hell. Pure hell!”
He just stared at her, looking lost, and gave a tiny shrug. “I’m sorry. I had to protect you.”
“You had to protect me,” she echoed. She threw up her hands. “How am I to stay angry at you when you give me an answer like that?”
“Don’t be angry. Please. Not tonight. I’ve just been to hell and back. I’ve been beaten up, shot at, rode a horse until it didn’t get up anymore, then I walked about sixty miles, and I swear it was all for you, Serafina.” He held her gaze from under his forelock. “You’re all that matters to me.”
“Oh, Darius.” She shook her head at him, petting his hair out of his eyes. “My beautiful madman, I am never letting you out of my sight again.” She pulled him tenderly into her embrace.
He slid his arms around her waist, laid his head on her shoulder, and pressed his face into the crook of her neck, leaning on her. She tightened her protective embrace and cupped his head against her shoulder.
“What will we do now, darling?” she whispered.
He shook his head. “I am utterly out of plans.”
“What of Tyurinov? I must know that much. My wedding is in . . .” She glanced over her shoulder and squinted against the dim illumination in the room at the mantel clock, then she turned back to him with a sniffle. “Nine hours.”
“No, it isn’t! You’re not marrying him, ever!” He pulled back with a scowl. “You were never going to marry him! You’re not a chess piece, Serafina, and I would never let you be used for one. I longed to tell you before to ease your worries, but I couldn’t risk it. If you had known what I intended— admit it—you would have done anything to stop me. You would have gone to your Papa to get your way, but it was your father’s overhasty agreement to the match that caused all of this. Anatole Tyurinov is more of a brute than you or your father yet realize, but tomorrow, I tell you, the truth will come out. Now, kiss me, damn it.”
She obeyed gladly. “I love you, you brilliant, fearless . . . lunatic,” she murmured, hugging him hard. “I owe you my life.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he said, then he snuggled against the crook of her neck and let out a soft, wistful sigh. “Just let me stay here.”
She kissed his hair. “You’re not going anywhere,” she whispered. “Lie down with me and rest. You are exhausted. I’ll call for food and drink—”
“All I want is you.”
His sweet, simple statement pierced right through her heart. She pulled back and took his face gently between both her hands. “Oh, my poor baby,” she said softly. “Look at you. What have they done to you? You’re a mess. You have a black eye. Your jaw is swollen.”
“Mm-hmm,” he murmured. He had begun kissing her neck, running his hands down her sides to hold her by the hips. “Kiss it for me?”
She did, cupping his face carefully. “I can’t believe you’re here. Oh, God, I wanted to die without you. Darius, say we will never be parted again. Say you won’t scare me again. . . .”
He dipped his head and wove a necklace of kisses for her from one ear all the way across her throat to the other. “I love you, Serafina. That’s the reason I went there. I have never loved another but you.”
Surely she was dreaming, but she never wanted to wake. She tilted her head back in ecstasy as her eyes brimmed. “I love you, too. So much.” Her hand slid down from his face to his chest. She began stroking the V of smooth, honey-gold skin where his shirt was torn.
His embrace tightened and her caress moved lower, savoring each taut ridge and plane of his flat, sculpted stomach. A tremor moved through him as she stroked him. She closed her eyes. She felt her skin heating under his caresses, her breathing deepening.
“God, I missed you,” he whispered as he slid his hand under her breast, cupping its weight. He lowered his head, gazing at the sight of her breast in his hand through her thin muslin night rail. His downcast stare was so pensive she kissed his forehead.
He lifted his head and stared straight into her eyes. Neither she nor he moved. Desire leaped between them like lightning in the silence. He murmured her name. Then he took her face between his hands, tilted his head slightly, and kissed her mouth.
He tilted his head the other way and kissed her again. She felt his need rise up from deep in the core of him in one massive wave. It was stronger than she had ever felt it before.
He began slowly easing her down onto her bed. He kissed her with exquisite gentleness as he laid her on her back and covered her with his hard, powerful body.
Resting on his elbows, he cradled her head in both hands and covered her face in soft, tender kisses, her eyelids, her brow, cheeks, and chin. He gave her a long, very sweet kiss, then lifted his head an
d stared down into her eyes, his beautiful lips moist and swollen with kissing.
She saw fire in his eyes, agonized need, and a question. In answer, she cupped her hand around the nape of his neck and pulled him down hungrily to her, opening her mouth wide for his kiss.
He moaned softly and took her mouth in hard, claiming possession. He rose up onto his hands over her, still kissing her. Slowly, he drove his body against hers. He swept his torn, gunpowder-stained shirt off over his head, muscles rippling all down his belly. She bit her lip as her gaze skipped down to the enormous bulge in the front of his breeches. He gave her a shadow of his arrogant half-smile as he cast the shirt away with a flick of his wrist.
Her heart tripped as he moved over her again. He bent to kiss her breast through her night rail. His breath was hot through the white muslin, his hair like silk, his bronzed skin like velvet under her caress.
He gathered her night rail in both his hands, pulling it higher up over her legs. Kissing her, he nipped at her lower lip, coaxing her mouth open wider still for his deepest kiss. She molded her hands over his muscular arms, caressing him, marveling at his sinewy power, but there was a little shivery thrill of fear mixed in with the admiration. She would never really tame this man.
No one would.
He moved back a small space and gently lifted her night rail off over her head. She was struck with an unprecedented bout of shyness. Lying naked before him, her hair fanned out over the pillow, she felt her face heat with a deep blush. Inexplicably, she wanted to cover herself with her hands. She didn’t know why—she had never been shy in front of him before. But this time was different, and they both knew it.
Darius paused and sat up, tilting his head as he gazed at her with a half-smile, tender warmth in his eyes. He ran his hand down her leg, his touch sure and smooth. “You’re ready for this,” he murmured in assurance.
“Yes, I think so. I know I love you. Yes,” she said again decisively.
“Relax.” He smiled softly, then leaned down and kissed her belly, holding her gaze. His long lashes swept closed and he kissed her hip, then each of her thighs.