“What are they?”
“I’ll explain in the coach—”
“Tell me now or Rafe will throttle me for bringing you into this!”
“Orlando is not the heir to the di Cambio branch of the royal family, Elan,” she said rapidly, lowering her voice. “He merely assumed that identity in order to explain his resemblance to the king! His real father is King Lazar! He is the product of a brief—very brief—liaison between the king and a Florentine baroness.”
“Oh, my Lord,” he said, eyes wide.
“This baroness—Baroness Raimondi—tried to pass Orlando off as her husband’s child, but the baron never quite believed it. Orlando looked nothing like him. This is the sworn statement of Baroness Raimondi’s faithful old maidservant, called Nunzia, who was also Orlando’s nurse.”
“But—a servant’s testament, Your Highness? What weight will it carry?”
“Along with this, enough to prove that Orlando is a liar.” She held up the second document. “Orlando’s birth certificate, registered under the name Raimondi. If we give Don Arturo reason to at least doubt Orlando and question him, we may be able to find a chink in that demon’s armor.”
“All right, but I still say Rafe’s going to throttle me,” he muttered, wasting no more time trying to dissuade her.
Dani paused only to whisper an order in her stout, matronly maid’s ear.
“Right away, Your Highness!” the woman called after her, but Dani was already marching out with Elan.
As their carriage raced through the streets to the Rotunda, the main parliamentary building, Elan told Dani of Prince Leo’s arrival and almost as sudden disappearance from the bishop’s custody. She mused with creeping dread on the realization that Orlando had all of the ruthless intelligence, strength, and magnetism of the Fiore men, but none of their goodness.
Drawing up to the Rotunda, their coachman had to fight his way through the huge crowd that had gathered outside as word of the shocking scandal of the bishop’s murder and the prince’s arrest spread. Everyone knew of the antagonism that had existed between the two.
Springing down from the coach, brushing off servants and guards, Dani and Elan ran up the front steps. The inside of the Rotunda was almost as thronged as the piazza just outside, but as royal princess, Dani was allowed through the male crowd, and Elan followed her closely.
Angry voices rang out from the floor of the Roman-style senate.
“This is a travesty! How dare you place the crown prince in chains?” demanded the navy admiral, who had always liked Rafe.
“He was caught red-handed at the scene of the murder!”
When she came to the top of the stairs that led down into the argument area called the well, Dani froze in horror at what she saw.
Below her, the floor of the senate had erupted into a violent spectacle.
Don Arturo presided, standing at the rostrum, denouncing Rafael in a state of flushed excitement. Other cabinet ministers lined the side tables, all shouting, arguing, and waving their hands. Some had risen out of theirs seats. Orlando was there, in black as usual, swaggering arrogantly back and forth across the senate floor with a slow, pacing stride, his arms crossed over his chest, glancing frequently at his younger half-brother with a mocking smile.
Rafael, crown prince, future king of Ascencion, had been forced to stand like a common criminal at the spindled, crescent-shaped wooden podium adjacent to the rostrum.
Dani could not believe her eyes. Her love, her prince—in chains, as though this were France twenty years ago, choked with its red rage, and not placid, prosperous Ascencion. His always-impeccable clothes were torn, his mouth was grim, there was murder in his eyes, and his dark gold hair hung loose and wild. He looked barbaric, like a captured Samson.
Dani charged forward, not even knowing what she was going to do.
“The whole cabinet was present the night King Lazar warned that if you did not marry one of the five selected brides, you would be passed over for the throne, and that your brother, Prince Leo, would be named your father’s successor in your place!” Don Arturo thundered at him as Dani ran down the stepped aisle. “Now that you have cast aside your father’s will in the matter of your marriage, isn’t it true, Your Highness, that you sought to make it impossible for the king to disinherit you by doing away with your own brother? Where have you stowed the child’s body?” the man bellowed.
In answer, Rafael stared at him in utter contempt but said nothing, too proud, too soaringly arrogant, Dani realized, to speak a word in his own defense. His silence expressed more than any words his contemptuous reproach for the proceedings.
As she came closer, she thought that he would betray at least a glimmer of relief to see her, even though they had just clashed over Mateo. But instead, he stared at her, going pale, at the same moment that Orlando turned in his pacing and stopped, leering at her with a slow, evil smile that grew.
Elan tried to stop her as she shoved past the black-clad Orlando and marched straight to the rostrum with a holy rage making her tremble. Too furious to speak a word, she lifted the folded birth certificate and the nurse’s testimony up to Don Arturo.
The prime minister gripped the sides of the wooden platform and peered down his nose at her like a thundering judge. “Women are not permitted in this building, Your Highness.” He looked up at the senate. “Perhaps now an age of filthy decadence and vice is over, and we may return to the customs that made this country great!”
“Take these papers and read them, if you are wise,” she ordered him through gritted teeth.
Something in her scathing, fiery stare made him hesitate. Reluctantly, he reached for the papers and unfolded one, peering down at its contents.
“Daniela.”
She looked over at Rafael, who had spoken her name so softly. She heard him in spite of the din. She went swiftly to him while, a few feet away, Elan argued vehemently with the guards to unchain him.
When she gazed up into his dark green eyes, she saw rage and humiliation and doom. “You are not safe,” he said. “I want you to walk out of this building and leave Ascencion immediately. Try to reach my father before Orlando does. Warn him.”
“No, I’m not leaving you here alone to them. I love you!” Tears sprang into her eyes as she reached up and laid her hand on his cheek. “I did not betray you, Rafael, I never would—”
He pressed his face against her palm, the green-gold depths of his eyes stormy. “Dani, if you have ever loved me, leave. Don Arturo is out for my blood, and Orlando has served me up to him on a silver platter. There is nothing to stop them from coming after you next. Tell Elan to go back to the old di Cambio citadel. I believe Orlando has hidden Leo there. I have a feeling my brother is alive. I think Orlando is waiting to see if he can use Leo somehow as his trump card. Tell Elan, whatever happens, he’s got to save the boy.”
“I will help Elan find him—”
“No! You are not to set foot on those grounds. The whole fortress is rigged with traps.”
“You forget you are talking to the Masked Rider.”
“Dani…it has happened just as my father always said,” he whispered.
“No, don’t give up hope now, my darling,” she ordered softly. “There is more reason now than ever before to fight for our future.”
He looked questioningly at her.
Her gaze swam with tears of love, but she quickly forced a wry tone before she broke down crying. “Now, for God’s sake, get off your royal high horse and use that silver tongue of yours to argue in your own defense.”
“Dani, do you mean—” he began.
“What are you lovebirds chatting about?” Orlando broke in, swaggering toward them with a mocking look.
They stared at each other, both ignoring him.
Dani’s steady gaze bespoke her love to him. She was aware that Orlando was trying to listen in on their conversation. “I did not betray you, and I’m going to prove it to you,” she whispered, but her next words were intend
ed for Orlando as well as him. “You see, Rafael, that day on the docks, weeks ago, when I said goodbye to the Gabbiano brothers, I asked Mateo to investigate Orlando’s background for me. The reason Mateo came back today was to deliver proof that your kinsman is not what he claims.”
Orlando’s eyes narrowed. “What proof?”
Her fight was up as she looked over frankly at him. “You’ll find out soon enough, Your Grace. I have just handed it over to Don Arturo.”
“Daniela,” Rafael said in a tone of utter command, “get out. Now.”
At the warning in his deep voice, she looked questioningly at him.
Go Leo, Rafael’s intense stare seemed to say. Reading the fierce desperation in his eyes, she had no choice but to obey. Backing away before she lost the strength to leave him there in the clutches of his foes, she grasped Elan’s wrist and tugged him along with her. Rafael sent his friend a hard look, jerking a nod toward the exit.
“I’ll explain when we’re outside,” she murmured to the viscount.
Elan did not argue. The two of them ran out, climbing the steps of the aisle, her earlier care for her delicate new condition forgotten. All that mattered was saving Rafael from this mob. She and her unborn baby were in God’s hands, she thought as they shoved their way out of the Rotunda and back toward the carriage.
As they made their way toward the waiting vehicle, Dani drew in her breath with a jolt of hope to see that her maid had followed her instructions and had wasted no time bringing her everything she needed.
Behind the coach Elan and she had arrived in, her white mare was saddled and waiting. The maid handed her a small, neatly folded stack of black clothing as Dani scrambled up into the coach alone, quickly pulling the shades while Elan waited.
Scarcely a moment later, she burst out of the coach in black breeches and shirt, riding boots and black leather gauntlets. No mask covered her face, while her hair spilled in a simple ponytail down her back. The crowd saw her thus and roared. Elan was staring at her in astonishment as she leaped onto her horse, her rapier at her side.
“Show me the way to the di Cambio citadel!” she shouted, waving him onto his horse.
“Yes, Your Highness!” he jerked out, commandeering the nearest guardsman’s horse.
“Get out of the way!” Dani shouted at the crowd.
People began backing out of their path while a handful of the Royal Guardsmen dutifully took to their horses and followed her, looking equally stunned by her transformation.
At the far end of the square, there was much less congestion in the streets.
“This way!” Elan shouted, pointing.
Dani gave her mare’s sides a squeeze and raced at a gallop onto the King’s Road.
The senate had broken out into an even greater chaos than before as Don Arturo and the other cabinet members surrounded Orlando in a low-toned but apparently furious conference behind the rostrum. Rafe watched, his heart pounding, as Don Arturo questioned Orlando.
Though he could not hear all their words clearly over the din, he saw the prime minister angrily waving under Orlando’s nose the paper that Dani had brought, then Don Arturo handed it to the minister of finance, who was standing beside him.
Rafe prayed the revelation would cause them to doubt Orlando enough to unchain him and bring this farcical but potentially deadly trial to a close.
The minister of finance inspected the paper, then stared at Orlando in amazement and handed it to another of the king’s advisers. Don Arturo asked him a question that Rafe could not make out.
“Is it my fault who sired me?” Orlando retorted loudly enough to be heard.
“But why would you conceal your true birth from all of us?”
“Would you wish the world to know it if you had been born an unwanted bastard?” he replied caustically.
“Does the king know you are his son?”
“You’ll have to ask His Majesty,” he answered with a sneer. “Why are you questioning me? That man right there is the one with the blood on his hands!” he cried, pointing at Rafe. “To hell with the lot of you! I have done nothing but my duty and I’m not going to stand around here and be insulted!” Pivoting grandly on his heel, Orlando began striding toward the exit.
“Stop him!” Rafe yelled, wrenching and clashing against his chains. The few guards standing around rushed him, trying to hold Rafe back. “Stop him, damn you! He’s making his escape, you fools! Stop him, if you want to save Leo’s life!”
Orlando tossed him a slight, cold smile over his shoulder as he jogged lightly up the steps of the aisle, and Rafe felt a sickening spiral of fear twisting down into his stomach, for he knew with an innate certainty that Dani had not obeyed him. She had not gone to prepare to leave Ascencion. When had he ever known her to flee a fight when her own were in danger? No, she had surely gone with Elan to find Leo. He knew it; he could feel it. And he knew the reason why she would act with such reckless courage—because of her love and her absolute loyalty to him.
He recalled the image in his mind again of finding her in the villa with Mateo, and saw it in an instant in a completely different light. He had read an illicit liaison into it, not a brotherly hug. Good God, how could I have doubted her? Guilt blasted him, salt in the wound of his panic. Instead of leaving Ascencion on his orders to protect herself, she had stayed to try to save him, and now death in the form of his black-clad half-brother was gusting after her like a poisonous wind on her tail.
Orlando had too many reasons to destroy Dani. She had rejected his advances; now she had brought proof against him to Don Arturo, and if Rafe had understood her properly, she was even now carrying Rafe’s child, the future king, which made her an obstacle in Orlando’s path to power.
He had to get out of here. He had to protect her. But he was hopelessly trapped.
“Don Arturo!” he bellowed in a rising crescendo.
The prime minister looked over from his harried conference with the others.
“Come here,” Rafe ordered through gritted teeth, his eyes ablaze.
Warily, Don Arturo approached.
“What do you want?” Rafe growled. “Name your price.”
He squinted up at Rafe angrily. “What?”
“Do you want my life in exchange for your nephew’s? Is that what will finally satisfy you? You shall have it. Hang me for treason, murder, any charges you care to contrive—”
“Contrive? Nothing is being contrived here, Your Highness. You were found at the scene of the crime, standing over His Excellency’s very body—”
“He is going to kill my wife, man! Let me go and save her. That is all I ask—”
“Who?”
“Orlando!”
“What are you trying to put over on me? He’s not going to kill anyone.” He shook his head bitterly. “I’m going to get you this time, Prince Rafael. You killed Bishop Justinian and you have been poisoning the king!”
“Don’t be absurd! Look at me! I am no murderer!”
“You’re not getting out of this. Orlando brought me a witness, you see—your creature from the royal kitchens. Only, you had your minions murder the lad before he could reveal your plot!”
“Is that so? Orlando was the one who told you I’ve been poisoning my father?”
“That’s right. He was the one who found you out and brought the truth to me.”
“But Don Arturo,” Rafe said, “you and I were the only two who knew the king was ill. Don’t you recall? He didn’t even tell my mother—he didn’t want her to worry. So how could Orlando have known? He knew Father was sick because he was the one administering the poison.”
Don Arturo stared at him with a look that was torn between horror and disbelief. When he spoke, his voice was weak. “Orlando already warned me you would try…to pin your crimes on him.”
“Damn you, man, I am innocent! He’s the one who killed the bishop, and he’s the one who will rule Ascencion if you don’t let me go this instant. What will it take?”
“D
o you seek to bribe me?” he hissed, shaking off his uncertainty. “There is no price high enough for my nephew’s life!”
“I see. This is still all about Giorgio. Very well. Then you shall have my life in exchange, but for the love of God, don’t take Leo’s life or Dani’s or my babe’s that she is carrying. You know that, whatever my faults, I am a man of my word. Let me go after her and I swear to you I will come back and stand trial for any crimes you wish to charge me with.”
Rafe growled in caged fury when Don Arturo stubbornly shook his head. The minutes were ticking by while he stood chained here knowing Orlando was inching nearer to Dani. Rafe searched the ceiling, then took a deep breath and looked at the prime minister. “I will sign a confession to all of it. Only let me go and save her.”
A light of vengeful triumph sparked in Don Arturo’s eyes. “You will sign a confession?”
“Yes. Give it to me and unlock these chains.”
“And a writ of abdication? Will you sign Ascencion over to me until the king’s return?”
Rafe stared at him, paling. “I do not know if you have been plotting with Orlando from the start.”
“And I don’t know if you tried to speed up your succession to the throne by poisoning your father.”
“I would never do that! He is my father!” he wrenched out.
“And he is my friend.” Don Arturo stared at him.
“Just let me go and save my wife,” Rafe pleaded. “I will come back and you may deal with me however you see fit. She’s going to die if you don’t let me go! I’m begging you, Don Arturo.” Rafe stared at him, trembling, distraught.
“You’re begging me,” he murmured. “Perhaps you and I are going to have to trust each other in this.” Then he lifted his chin and stretched out his hand and snapped impatiently at his assistant, beckoning. “Bring me ink and paper.” Don Arturo stepped over to the table and spent a few minutes penning a page, which he lifted, blew dry, and held up for Rafe.
With a knot in his stomach, Rafe scanned the damning words, barely absorbing them, though he knew they were designed to divest him of his crown and his very life. It didn’t matter. He took the quill pen, dipped it in the ink, and signed his full name without a heartbeat’s hesitation.
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