Princess Charming

by Pattillo, Beth

  “Dare I hope you’ve brought anything to eat?” His pleasure at the course of events felt too marvelous not to share, but she was holding her head high and her tense shoulders rested very close to her ears. Something was wrong.

  Nick was a master at bored indifference. He wiped the smile from his face and calmly, without hurrying, swung his legs over the edge of the mattress to pull on his breeches. He stood and buttoned them before he slipped his arms into the sleeves of the smock and pulled it over his head. Dressed, he turned toward her but kept his distance. “Is something the matter, princess?”

  She looked confused and scared, and that was not how she had appeared when he’d finished making love to her earlier. Nick stepped toward her, and Lucy lifted her chin higher. Always a very bad sign.

  “The Selkirks are here. I met them in the taproom when I went down to request a tray.”

  “Is Mrs. Selkirk ill? Or is it more trouble with the soldiers?” Guilt knotted his stomach. “We can return to Nottingham if necessary.”

  “No.” Lucy waved off his question. “It’s nothing like that. They simply brought someone to speak with me.”

  “You appear to have seen a ghost.”

  “Not a ghost. A thug. Our friend Tully, to be exact. Tully of the red cap.”

  Nick’s pulse accelerated, and his muscles tensed. If the man thought he would take Lucy from him now, he was sorely mistaken. He’d bested him more than once, and he could easily do so again. Nick reached for his boots. “Why the devil isn’t he in Australia or the colonies? Crispin assured me he’d seen him aboard ship.”

  Lucy remained by the door, and alarm bells pealed in Nick’s head. She seemed strangely unafraid of the thug’s presence.

  “Apparently he convinced the captain he was in Lord Sidmouth’s service and was released. What I’ve learned today is that he is in someone else’s service as well.”

  Nick frowned. “He’s either extremely brave or incredibly foolish to play both ends against the middle.”

  “You’ve not asked me where his other loyalties lie.”

  Nick paused. There was something disturbing in her tone, but her face was impassive. “For whom does he work, princess?”

  Her lower lip quivered for an instant, and fear shot through him with an icy flame. She bit her lip to stop it from trembling. “He works for the cause of reform, Nick. Just as I do.”

  Nick sank back down onto the mattress, confused. “Then why did he pursue you so doggedly? I don’t understand.”

  “The more interesting question is why the Selkirks brought him here today.”

  “And why did they?” A sudden, fine sweat broke out on his forehead.

  “Tully knows who informed Sidmouth about the meeting. He was there, in an anteroom, when the information was shared.”

  Nick was glad he was sitting. His knees felt weak. “Whom did he name?”

  “Need you ask?”

  For a long moment, there was silence.

  “No. I guess not.” Oh, God. He’d not known his chest could hold so much pain. He’d been accused, tried, and convicted within the space of a moment. His pulse thundered in his ears. There was no point in denying his guilt, and certainly little use in offering explanations. He had offered all the reason a man needed that night in the dark above the Selkirks’ home.

  Lucy’s shoulders, which had been so stiff, now sagged with pain. “Why, Nick? Why would you endanger innocent women and children in such a manner?”

  His spine stiffened, even as a yawning pit of despair opened in his midsection. Knowing his story, could she not see why he’d been compelled to act? “I did nothing to endanger the reformers. It was for their protection, actually. You are naive, Lucy, to think that such a meeting held no possibility of violence.”

  Her cheeks were stained pink with anger. “The only violence was that committed by the king’s soldiers.”

  “There was no way to know that.” And it was true, but even as he justified his actions, he couldn’t force the picture of the grieving mother keening over her dead son from his thoughts.

  Lucy studied him pityingly, as if he were a small, dumb animal. Resentment stirred, but it was mixed with guilt and a foreboding sense of doom. Of course it must end badly. Things always did for him.

  “If what you did was so sensible, so honorable, then why didn’t you tell me of your visit to Whitehall?”

  Her question pierced him, and he could only stare blankly at her for several moments. “You don’t know what it’s like.” Nick felt as if he were sinking, the water rising with each passing moment. He must make her understand. He had not fought so hard and conceded so much only to lose her.

  “It was too dangerous not to inform Sidmouth. I protected you the best way I knew how.”

  “Protection?” She laughed bitterly. “Funny, Your Highness, but I don’t feel protected. I feel distinctly betrayed.”

  As he’d known she would. It was the very reason he’d kept his secret to begin with. Now he could see that his choice had not been between Lucy’s safety and his losing her, as he’d thought, but between Lucy’s safety and her love. Much higher stakes, but he would follow the same course again without hesitation. With pain, he saw in his mind’s eye the young mother thrusting her babe toward him, begging for his assistance, and suddenly the rightness of his decision did not seem so clear.

  “We can resolve this, Lucy.” Strength had returned to his legs as he willed it to, and he rose from the bed, moving toward her. “I know you feel I’ve betrayed you—”

  “Betrayed me?” Her eyes flashed with incredulous, bitter laughter. “Oh yes, Your Highness, you have betrayed me, and I might someday be persuaded to forgive you for that. You are my husband, after all—for better or for worse, is it not?”

  Hope shot through Nick. “I did what I believed to be right.”

  Lucy continued without any heed for his reply. “But your betrayal of me is nothing to your betrayal of the reformers.” Her words slapped him, and he stood, stunned.

  “You are angrier that I’ve betrayed your cause than that I’ve betrayed you?” Nick couldn’t hide his incredulity.

  Lucy’s face, which had reddened, now paled. “You don’t understand what you’ve done, do you?”

  Her accusation stung. “I am not a simpleton, Lucy. I am aware of the cost of my actions. It was I, you’ll recall, who walked through that square in the aftermath, searching for you.”

  “You think the aftermath is finished? Do you think the dead and wounded from the rally are the only consequences?” She stepped toward him, her fists clenched at her sides. “Now that the soldiers are gone, the local magistrates will begin their investigations. Arrests have already been made. Men will be transported, if not hanged, merely for their presence at the rally, and their wives and children will be left to starve.”

  Nick’s stomach felt like a ball of lead, but he refused to show remorse. He would not grovel in apology, not for protecting the woman he loved, even if she rebuked him for his actions.

  “They knew the risks when they attended the rally.”

  “The committee assured them it was safe.”

  “Then the committee is exceptionally naïve.”

  “I am one of the committee.”

  “I rest my case.”

  He should not have said the last, he knew it instantly. Beyond his own guilt, he could see Lucy’s remorse in her eyes. She felt as responsible as anyone, perhaps more so.

  “Then you are not sorry? You have no regrets?” she asked.

  “None.”

  He wanted her to rail at him, to scream and fling the basin and pitcher at his head. He wanted the passion she’d revealed to him earlier, in their lumpy marital bed.

  Instead, she fixed him with an icy stare. “I’m returning to Nottingham with the Selkirks.”

  “The devil you are!” Nick exploded. “It would be foolish in the extreme, if arrests are being made. I’ll see you to London, and we will be extremely discreet until the uproar h
as died down.”

  “No.” The word was quiet but implacably final.

  His heart raced. “Lucy, you are my wife.”

  “You may change that as soon as you wish.”

  “How? By divorce? By annulment?” Surely she did not mean it. “We have lain together as man and wife, and I have no desire to end our marriage.”

  “And I have no desire to begin it.” She turned toward the door, her hand on the knob. “You will release me from the wager.”

  She didn’t want him. The truth struck him between the eyes with the glancing force of a blow. And alongside her rejection came another revelation: There was no way to bridge the difference between them. She could not understand his most deeply held convictions, and he could not accept hers. What common ground could they possibly find?

  “You are leaving me, then?”

  “Yes.” She paused. “The marriage lines—if they were to be lost, there would be no proof of our union. My stepmother can easily persuade Mr. Whippet and the curate to blot our names from the parish register.” She smiled cynically. “He has done it before, when the reward was sufficient.”

  Nick watched, dumbfounded, as she slipped quietly from the room. The door closed behind her with soft finality, and Nick stood immobile. He could not betray his beliefs merely for the pleasure of her love, any more than she could forsake her convictions for his. Dear God, she had left him with an escape, and he might run if he wanted. How was he to find happiness in such a marriage? Would it not be better to end the torment for both of them now and save them years of pain? Since the moment she’d struck him with the door, his life had been spinning out of control, but the same woman who had sent him reeling had just given him the means of righting himself.

  It would only cost a small part of his soul.

  Nick fell full-length on the bed. With a growl, he turned and began pummeling the blasted mattress into submission.

  Chapter Eighteen

  LUCY CLUTCHED the edge of the wagon seat as Mr. Selkirk’s oxen rumbled over the earthen track that led to his cottage. If thrown into a pond, she would surely sink, for the horrible truth of Nick’s betrayal weighed in her stomach like a stone. Nick had no understanding of what he’d done. Or he comprehended but was too blind to accept the consequences of his actions. He was not a stupid man. What could possibly have possessed him to inform Sidmouth of their plans?

  But she knew the answer to that question all too well, and her heart ached with the knowledge. His past had shaped his decision, wrong-headed as it was. Lucy wanted to hate him. She wanted to despise him, and she could for a few minutes, but her fury was difficult to sustain. It kept entwining itself with vivid images of a young boy hiding in a cold cave, his mother and sister nowhere to be found.

  Lucy knew why Nick had done it. She even understood his typically masculine reasoning. The question was not whether she could understand. The question was whether she might come to forgive. And if she forgave him, could she forgive herself for depending upon a man destined to betray her?

  The cart ascended the hill, and she smiled wanly at the sight of a candle burning in the Selkirks’ window. Tom bounced from the back of the cart even before it stopped moving, but Lucy waited until Mr. Selkirk drew the oxen to a stop. It was then that she noticed the horses. They stamped restlessly, their bridles jingling. The four beasts had been tethered to a post and were jostling for position near the grass that covered the side of the Selkirks’ cottage.

  “Stay here, my lady,” Mr. Selkirk admonished her, but Lucy took no heed. She followed him as he approached the cottage and ducked under the lintel.

  “Are you Jack Selkirk?” A tall soldier stepped forward from the fireplace, and Lucy cast a quick glance around for Mrs. Selkirk. She spied her at the end of the long dining table, wiping her eyes with a corner of her apron.

  “Aye, I am he.” Mr. Selkirk drew up his bony shoulders, and Lucy’s stomach sank even farther.

  “Jack Selkirk, by order of His Highness, the Prince Regent, the occupants of this household are to be placed under arrest and taken to London.”

  Lucy gasped. London meant Newgate. Mrs. Selkirk burst into tears, and Lucy went cold. “What are the charges, sir?” she demanded, stepping forward.

  “Sedition, inciting a riot, the usual list.” The soldier seemed almost bored. At that moment, Tom, who had been caring for the oxen, appeared in the doorway.

  “You can’t arrest Mr. Selkirk,” Lucy protested. “He’s done no wrong.”

  The soldier bristled. “We can arrest him, miss. And you as well. We’re under orders to take up the entire household.”

  His words hung in the air, and then in a heartbeat the main room of the cottage burst into a frenzy of motion. A second soldier grabbed Lucy’s arm, and Tom leaped forward to fight him off. Mrs. Selkirk screamed. Lucy fought as the soldier dragged her from the house. In another moment, she was thrown over his saddle, the breath knocked from her lungs. The horses reeled, and the party set off into the darkening night.

  NICK DETERMINED to leave immediately for London. Let Lucy Charming have her precious reform and leave him in peace. In fact, he descended to the taproom for the purpose of settling his account with the innkeeper, but in a desperate bid to squelch the pain of losing Lucy, he allowed himself to be waylaid by one tankard of ale, and then another, until the sky grew dark, and he was too foxed to travel, even by hired carriage.

  The innkeeper must have poured him into the lumpy bed, he deduced the next morning when he awoke with a pounding in his head. He stumbled to the washbasin, poured water from the pitcher, and shoved his face beneath the cool liquid. When he came up sputtering, his head still pounded, but he was awake.

  Unfortunately, he was also awake to the memories of the past few days and bitterly aware of their consequences. At some point, he would have to retrieve Lucy. As he dressed and dried his face and hair, this inevitable truth stared him squarely in the face. As a point of honor, he could not bribe Mr. Whippet to blot their names from the parish register. Annulment and divorce were out of the question as well. Honor prevented him. That, and the fact that he was desperately in love with her. Honor forced him to admit that, too. He had lost enough already. He did not intend to lose Lucy as well. Nick sighed. A better man would release her from her vows. Apparently there was a limit to his heroism.

  He had expected the taproom to be rather deserted at this mid-morning hour, but a buzz of voices greeted him as he crossed the threshold. A large group of men clustered near the bar, their voices echoing off the inn’s thick stone walls. The innkeeper saw him, raised a tankard questioningly, and chuckled. Nick’s stomach rolled, and he shook his head.

  “Thirty or forty at my count,” a barrel-chested man was informing his listeners. “The soldiers rounded ‘em up last night. Some women, too. Mrs. Selkirk even, God bless her soul. If the old duke were here, he’d not stand for it, no matter that they said he was queer in the attic.”

  Nick’s chest constricted, and his heart began to pound as furiously as his head.

  “The gaol won’t hold them all,” another man said.

  “‘T’ain’t Nottingham gaol where they’ve gone. The magistrate ordered them sent to London to be tried for sedition.”

  This information was greeted with a gasp and an air of resignation from men who knew all too well the ways of the ruling classes.

  “That’s it, then, isn’t it?” a younger man asked, looking at the others, all of whom were older than he. “They’ve gone to Newgate. It’ll be Australia or the rope.”

  “Or the colonies.”

  Nick’s throat went dry, and he wished he’d accepted the innkeeper’s offer of a pint. What had happened to Lucy when the Selkirks were arrested? Surely she would have possessed the good sense to seek refuge at her family’s estate. Even with the duchess in London, there must be servants there who would look out for her. Where else would she go?

  “Can you tell me how to find Charming Hall?” he asked the man nearest him. His r
equest brought all other conversation to a standstill.

  “They won’t be hiring, lad, more’s the pity,” the man replied. “The duchess turns off more servants than she takes on. Best look for employment in town.”

  “No. I must find the estate.” At Nick’s insistent tone, the other men eyed him with interest.

  “Are you looking for someone, then?” the man asked, measuring Nick with an appraising eye.

  “A member of the family.”

  “The family is in London. Except for Lady Lucinda, and she’ll be in London shortly as well, I expect.”

  Nick’s shoulders tightened. “What do you mean?”

  The man paused. “What’s your interest in the Charmings? We hold great store by Lady Lucy. All we have left of the old duke. Is it her you’re wanting to speak with?”

  Nick decided that the truth would serve him better than a lie. “Lady Lucy is my wife.”

  The laughter that erupted from the group was long and hearty. “Aye, of course,” the youngest man said, wiping tears from his eyes, “and I myself am married to Queen Charlotte.” The men shared the joke, slapping one another’s backs with enthusiasm.

  “What do you mean she is shortly to be in London?” Nick demanded, patience at an end. He grabbed the man by his jacket. “Tell me where my wife is!”

  The laughter died. “Easy, lad,” one of the older men said. “I did hear a rumor that Lady Lucy married some foreign fellow two days ago. But I gave it no credit. Some folderol about a prince that filled my wife’s head with foolish dreams.”

  Nick drew himself up to his full height. “I am Nicholas St. Germain, Crown Prince of Santadorra. And Princess Lucinda is my wife.”

  One man started to laugh, and the others hushed him. The original speaker, evidently the leader of the group, stepped toward Nick.