by Princess
Before her eyes, Darius clicked onto full alert, turning his head toward the window, all traces of vulnerability and emotion vanishing, like a wolf scenting an enemy.
“Darius.”
“Shh.” He didn’t breathe, listening, his eyes sharp, his arms holding her protectively.
She despaired. “Darius!”
“One minute.” He released her and smoothly rose from the bed in silent, liquid grace.
Her gaze traveled over his nude, lean body. She stared, at a loss. He picked up his trousers on his way to the window, then glanced out discreetly from the side of the curtain.
“Come back, I’m sure it’s nothing,” she attempted.
He pulled on his tan-colored trousers, then narrowed his eyes as he dipped the curtain back slightly with two fingers. “It’s your brother.”
Of all the blasted nuisances! She lifted her gaze to the ceiling, striving for patience. “Darius, come back to me. This is no time to be distracted by Rafe and his ridiculous friends.”
“He’s alone.” His soft, cool tone sent gooseflesh tingling down her arms. He looked over at her, his ancient eyes full of death. “Something’s wrong. I can feel it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Colonel, the crown prince has come!”
“I’m right here, Alec,” Darius said to his aide, coming down the stairs, feeling oddly cool and collected.
Close call, he thought with a cold shiver as he strode across the foyer to the open door. God, he had nearly just made the biggest mistake of his life. What a way to ruin things that would have been, spilling his guts after the incredible afternoon of sex had brought them back together.
He felt damned guilty for walking out on her in the middle of everything, but, thank God fate had intervened and given him the means for a graceful exit before he said anything more. Never again would he let himself weaken like that.
Out on the cobbled drive, Prince Rafael sawed at the reins, halting his lathered bay stallion in a clatter of hoofbeats as Darius strode out to meet him.
“What is it?”
The youth flung down off the horse and ran to him. “Inside,” Rafe urged him, pulling him by the elbow toward the villa’s open door.
They stepped into the morning room. Darius saw Rafael’s hand shaking as he closed the tall, white door behind them.
“What’s happened?”
The young prince turned around, his face ashen. His chest heaved with exertion and he looked like he wanted to retch. “My maps. Last night—Julia.”
Darius drew in his breath.
“When I woke up, my maps were gone. Santiago, she’s gone!” he cried. “No one has seen her, not even her maid! I think she has gone to the French in the harbor! All she would’ve had to do is bribe some fisherman to row her out there. She could name her price and the French would pay it.”
“They won’t need to wait for Villeneuve, that’s for sure,” Darius said, eyes narrowed in thought. “Did you send word of this to your father?”
“No! You know he’d kill me, Santiago! He already thinks I can do nothing right! Besides, he’s been busy at the wall over the harbor—the first shots have been fired.”
“The king is there himself?”
“Yes, the old fool! He’s commanding the cannons personally. The French began some light shelling about two hours ago.”
His thoughts whirled. If the French had the maps, the shelling was surely just a distraction to hold attention on the harbor while they moved their men into the tunnels.
Rafe was turning white as he began to realize the implications. “The main tunnel in that quadrant leads out behind the wall. They’ll attack from behind . . . oh, God, Father will be trapped.”
“Let’s go.” Darius clapped him hard on the shoulder, but Rafael was frozen in place, staring at nothing, stricken.
“They’re going to die.”
“Not if we get to the mouth of that tunnel first. Come on!” He pulled the boy’s arm hard, dragging him away from the wall. “Alec!” he bellowed, and immediately began giving orders. He marched outside, called for a wagon, and had six horses hitched to it. “Be quick about it!” he barked, then he stalked to the magazine and slid the doors open wide. He ordered his men to load the wagon with all eight barrels of the gunpowder he’d brought here weeks ago.
Rafe visibly steeled himself and immediately got to work helping the men.
His mind crisp and crystal clear, Darius felt like himself for the first time since his humiliating failure at Milan. He marched back toward the house, intent on arming himself with his usual arsenal of weapons, and praying to God he might now redeem himself.
Sergeant Tomas appeared at his heels as he jogged up the wide, shallow front steps.
“What’s going on, Colonel?”
“Get your squad together and arm them well. We’re riding out and we may run into some fighting.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Leave five of your best men behind to guard my wife. The rest will come with us. You’ve got ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir!” The seasoned officer hurried off.
Thinking of his weapons, which were stowed in his small, spartan room upstairs, Darius stepped over the threshold, glanced up at the top of the steps, and stopped in his tracks, beholding a vision.
Scantily clad in her blue satin dressing gown, Serafina stood on the top step of the staircase, gazing down at him.
He caught his breath and stared up at his wife.
She held her head high with a calm, cool poise that was pure princess, but her translucent skin glowed after his savage loving. Her wild, sable mane was in disarray, but her eyes promptly caught him in their spell of stormy innocence, eyes the color of lilacs and eternity.
“You are leaving?” she asked, her soft, scratchy voice reined in to a careful tone.
“There is a crisis,” he whispered, an echo of an excuse he had tried to give her once, weeks ago. She hadn’t bought it then, either.
“I see.” She turned her face away to stare at her hand, lying limply on the banister.
Some men walked into the foyer behind him and asked him a question. Startled, he answered curtly and scowled at them. His blasted wife was in her dressing gown. They had no place here.
When they were gone, he turned back to her, raising his gaze. She had not moved. Her stillness terrified him.
“My darling, I have to go,” he said softly.
“I believe you.” She did not look at him, but gave a little shrug of defeat as she stared at her hand on the banister. “I’ll be here.”
He took a step toward her. “Serafina, I have to do this.”
“I know. These things come up. I suppose it’s part of being wife to the bravest knight in all the world.” At last she looked at him and gave him a slight, brave smile. “Be careful.”
“You’re not angry?”
“I’m proud of you,” she answered, tears filling her eyes. “But I do—I just—I think it’s important that we talk about this. Otherwise I don’t see that there is any hope for us.”
He said nothing, staring up at her.
Just then, Sergeant Tomas shouted to him from outside that the wagon was loaded and the twenty men were almost ready to ride. Serafina’s gaze flicked toward the door, then they looked at each other again. He was still rather marveling. Proud of me?
“Will we talk when you get back, Darius?” she asked point-blank.
He searched her eyes, his heart pounding like the drums of war. “All right,” he lied smoothly, nodding. “I have to go now.” He couldn’t bear to see her a second longer—it was like looking at an angel whose face shone like the dazzling sun. He pivoted and began striding away.
“You’re lying again!” she cried softly behind him.
He stopped, midstride, but he did not turn around.
“How could you look in my eyes and lie?”
Slowly, he turned back and lifted his gaze to where she still stood at the top of the stairs.
Her face had reddened, and hot, vulnerable tears welled in her beautiful eyes. He made himself cold inside.
“You’re right. That was a lie,” he said. “I’m glad I didn’t tell you. You weakened me for a moment, but I will never tell you, and believe me, you don’t want to know.”
“Then we are finished.” Her shoulders slumped as she lowered her head. “You don’t love me. What a fool I am. A naive, gullible fool.”
“I don’t love you?”
“You don’t. You didn’t want this marriage. I forced you into it. I was a fool ever to think I could make you happy. You won’t share yourself with me, you won’t be honest with me. All you do is manipulate and lie. You’re stronger than me, you’re smarter than me, and every chance you get, you break my heart, so just go, do what you have to. You’re never going to love me, Darius, I give up.” She sat down on the step where she had been standing and buried her face in both hands.
He stared at her for a long moment, fighting the quickening of anger within him. “I don’t love you?” he repeated quietly.
“You said once that you did, but it must have been a lie.”
“No, you’re the one who lied to me on that point, sweetheart,” he said in cold, building anger.
She looked up again, tears in her eyes. His own words had surprised even him. He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t. The hurt was still balled inside him, yearning to strike out.
“What are you talking about?”
Anger swept up from inside him as he walked closer, glaring up at her. “The first night we made love. You said you loved me. Me, and I trusted you,” he wrenched out, striking his chest with his fist like a penitent. He heard the catch of anguish in his voice, but he didn’t care anymore. “But the truth came to light the minute you found out I failed in Milan, didn’t it? That’s right,” he said with rich contempt in answer to her look of dawning dread. “You threw me out your door. You only gave yourself to me because you thought I was the big hero! You wanted a champion, the dragon-slayer, eh?” He held out his arms at his sides, presenting himself, then dropped them. “Well, I tried to be that man you wished for, but I missed the bloody shot. It was a hard shot. But that didn’t matter to my Princesa. I failed to fulfill your fantasy. You don’t give a damn for me, Serafina. And how could you? I don’t blame you. How could anyone? I know what I am.”
“What are you?” she whispered, staring at him, her face pale.
“You want to know? You want to know about your knight, Serafina?” he asked in cold, bitter insolence. “Can you even comprehend? I don’t think you can, my little sheltered Princesa.” Searing pain seeped up from the deepest, blackest core of him.
“Tell me.”
“You want to know? You want to know how it feels when your mother’s been running out on you since you were two years old, and doesn’t give a damn what happens to you or who hits you when she’s gone, or how it feels when she doesn’t come back anymore? Do you want to know how it is when your father won’t let you have a new set of clothes for four years so that other children won’t talk to you, only throw rocks at you and call you dirty and skinny, because he says you don’t deserve to have any friends?” he snarled, the words slashing from him like a killer’s knife, vile as poison on his tongue. He was going down in flames. “How about getting thrown out on the street when you’re ten years old? I could tell you all about that. Are you sick yet? Are you ready to throw up yet? But I’m not done, no, Princess, that’s when the fun only starts. Because then come the back-alley fights for survival and scavenging for food off garbage heaps. And you wind up sick enough to die from some half-rotten thing that you’ve eaten, so you swallow your pride and go to the almshouse for help, but you can’t stay there because one of the monks won’t stop putting his hands on you. And then eventually you figure, there’s only one thing I’m good for, what the hell? Do you follow me, Serafina? Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
She placed her hand over her mouth as she stared at the floor, crying, listening to his words that charged on like a maddened bull, barbed pennants flying from its black hide.
“You’re thirteen years old and you’ve seen things to keep you jaded for three lifetimes. You’re hardened, and lying’s a necessity, and you survive because you lie so very well. You don’t care what you have to do or say. You don’t let anything touch you. You don’t dare need anyone and you don’t trust anyone in a million years, not even the angel God sends to save you.”
She sobbed, holding her head in both hands.
His chest heaved. “I am empty, Serafina. I am nothing and I have nothing to give you.”
But for the sound of her crying, there was a terrible silence.
“Well, now you know. Happy?”
She looked up, crying like her heart was broken. He could see her shaking.
“I don’t expect you to be here when I get back. Wife,” he added bitterly as he turned to go.
He barely heard her whispered plea. “Don’t leave.”
He turned around, glaring at her from under his forelock. He felt naked in front of her.
She stood up and began walking down the stairs, taking them one by one, like a child. She looked so unsteady he thought she might fall down them, so he went up to her. She sat down on the middle step and leaned against the spindled banister.
She eyed him as he wearily crouched down near her. He thought she looked frightened of him, but when he lowered himself to her eye level, she put her arms around him like she would never let him go. She clung to him and laid her head on his shoulder, still crying softly.
“Don’t go away from me now,” she whispered.
He closed his eyes. The feel of her arms was warm, wonderful. He inhaled the vanilla-citrusy perfume that clung in her hair, then he sighed.
“You’re the only pure thing in my life, Serafina,” he said, his voice soft but heavy. “All I ever wanted was to build a kind of wall around your little garden world and let you be safe there, and happy. A little paradise just for you.”
She pulled back and stared at him, agony and heartbreak in her red-rimmed eyes, an anguished smile on her trembling lips, and he knew what he had to do. A match with this girl? This royal creature, this angel? What hubris had ever made him think himself worthy of her? His heart sank to subterranean depths, but it was the only solution.
“Protecting you, Serafina, is the one thing that I can look back on and take pride in,” he forced out. “I’ve done my best by you. At least, I’ve tried to. But look at what’s happening to you. Look at what I’m doing to you now. You should never cry, butterfly. You should never have loved me—”
She clutched at his shirt, protest swimming in her violet eyes.
“But that is your nature,” he went on gently, stroking her hair again. “Pure love, joyous and giving. That’s my angel. How lucky I have been to watch you grow and share your life.” He shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “I never should have reached for you, knowing what I am, knowing I could only contaminate you. It was unforgivably selfish of me. But I needed you so.”
“As I need you,” she whispered, holding on to two fistfuls of his shirt, as if she could already sense what he intended.
He wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. “I must give you up now, my Serafina. You know it’s time to say goodbye.”
“No, Darius! You’re wrong!” she whispered frantically. “I need you here.”
“No, you still don’t understand,” he said, beginning to lose patience. “There is something . . . deeply wrong inside of me. I don’t know what it is, I only know it can’t be fixed and it can’t be helped—”
“Yes, it can! Together we can—”
“No! Look at what I’ve done to you. Throwing your food against the wall like a bedlamite?”
She winced. “I only did that to get your attention.”
“Drinking? Taking laudanum? I heard about that. You nearly destroyed yourself. I nearly destroyed you.”
“But, D
arius, I thought you were dead! You are my love, my best friend! I was distraught!”
“What about this afternoon?” he whispered angrily. “Rutting with you like the whore of Babylon?”
“I wanted you.”
“Serafina! That’s scarcely the point.”
She caught his face between her hands and stared pleadingly at him. “Darius, stop this. I know you’ve suffered things I’ll never fully understand, but I love you. Yourself. I don’t want a champion, I want you, and I accept it—”
He jerked away, growing angry and bewildered. “I said no! Can’t you hear? You can’t still want me. What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m not going to hurt you. Let me love you.”
“I can’t do that!” he cried as he stood up, poised to flee. “Don’t you see? I can’t! I don’t know how!”
She didn’t flinch, holding on to his hand. “You can. You’re my Darius—you can do anything. You did it before. You’re just afraid. Quit running. I’ll never catch you unless you let me. Let my love heal you, Darius.”
She caressed him and her gentle touch snapped the last of his control even as its softness slid down into the core of his being.
“Why are you trying to destroy me?” With a strangled cry, he grasped the silver medal of the Virgin and ripped it off his neck, chain and all, throwing it far over the banister. “I can’t do this! I never wanted to marry you!” he ranted at her, his throat straining, his eyes wild with anguish. “Why are you so cruel to me? Why do you make me wretched for what I can’t have and what I can’t be? Why couldn’t you leave me alone? Why couldn’t you let me die in Milan like I wanted?”
“No, Darius!” she said in dread, then she tried to slip past him. “I’ll get the medal. You put it back on—”
“I don’t want it,” he said in a voice out of hell, teeth clenched. He gripped her by the shoulders, shut his eyes, and pressed his blazing lips to her forehead.
“Darius,” she whispered.
He moved his face against her smooth brow. “I love you, Serafina. And for that reason,” he whispered, “I release you. I release you from this bond of blood. Go now, while I am strong enough to let you.”