Miranda Jarrett

by Princess of Fortune

  “Because it’s right,” he said. “Listen to your own heart, Bella. You can decide this for yourself. We’ll have not one day, one night, but a lifetime of them. Damnation, I love you, and if you love me as you claim, you’ll marry me.”

  Her hands were shaking as she placed her palms on either side of his face, holding it so there’d be no chance he’d look away from her.

  “Yes,” she said with a fierce joy. “Yes, Captain Lord Greaves. Because I love you, I will marry you, and nothing—nothing—will ever change my mind.”

  His only answer was a deep, wordless growl as he swept her into his arms and carried her away from the rubies and the coins and her past, and to the bedchamber and the future they’d share together.

  Darden sat at the smallest table in the back of the inn to discourage any of the other patrons from sitting with him. He was too on edge for company, nor did he want to risk babbling more than he should to a stranger. With great deliberation, he ran the thumb of his glove along the rim of his glass before he drank from it. The White Roebuck might be the height of fashion for travelers along this part of the river, but it was far below his usual standards, and he wanted to make that as clear as he could to all around him.

  Not that any of them would notice such a nicety. The taproom was crowded with revelers of every sort, from common laborers from the fields to sailors and wherrymen to foppish young gentlemen with overdressed milliners on their arms. The fiddle screeched like a caterwauling cat, and the laughter and drunken singing was enough to destroy the soul of a man of feeling like himself. Only his muse could make him suffer so; only his dear Isabella could draw him from the city to a den such as this.

  The notice in the newspaper had been succinct: “After attending the theater at Covent Garden, Her Royal Highness Princess Isabella of Monteverde has withdrawn for a sojourn to the country.” Most people who read that would imagine the princess as a guest at the grandest of country houses, perhaps even traveling to Brighton as a guest of the prince at his gaudy pavilion.

  But Darden knew better, because he knew Tom Greaves. With the princess in his keeping, there was only one place they’d go to escape their misfortunes in London, and that would be Willow Run.

  Darden sipped his brandy, trying not to recall his only experience at the family’s cottage. The old earl had invited him once—from pity, Darden had always thought. Because he wasn’t particularly good at the roughhouse games favored by the earl’s four sons, he’d retreated to the stable to amuse himself. But when Greaves and his brothers had caught him idly swinging one of the dogs from a rope to see if it could fly, they had tied the same rope through Darden’s breeches and suspended him from the oak tree, letting him hang there screaming and cursing for punishment until the earl himself had come to cut him down.

  No, Willow Run had not been a favorite place of his childhood, any more than Greaves had been a favorite friend.

  But Darden was sure he could find the way back to the shabby old cottage, even after so many years. He hadn’t quite figured out what he’d do once he got there, how he’d separate Isabella from Greaves long enough to speak with her alone. But he would do it, and this time he wouldn’t falter. He’d come this far, and he wasn’t going to turn back now.

  There was some sort of fuss near the door to the inn, and with halfhearted interest Darden leaned forward in his chair. Through the haze of tobacco smoke, he could see an elderly man leaning on his cane, followed by a small, dark lady in a black cloak, her exceptional beauty dimmed by obvious exhaustion. Though Darden could not hear their conversation over the din, it was clear that they were arguing, the lady in particular gesturing dramatically. At last the innkeeper appeared to have his way, and the ill-matched pair were shown to a table and bench close to Darden’s own. Now he could overhear them, and to his surprise they were speaking in Italian—low, angry, aristocratic Italian.

  “You know we decided it is better these people do not know who you are,” the older gentleman was saying. “Not until we can first discern how the English regard us.”

  The lady snapped open her fan, an extravagant arc of painted ivory and black lace. Her profile was maddeningly familiar to Darden, a memory he couldn’t quite place.

  “But you must agree, Romano,” she continued, “that the captain of that shameful boat had no right to abandon us here in this—this place.”

  The gentleman gently waved his hand through the air, striving to calm the lady. “The captain did what was necessary, Your Majesty. The boat was taking in too much water to continue, and for your own safety and convenience he put us ashore to wait at this inn while he made his repairs.”

  “This inn.” Her voice would have withered dirt. “This sty is more accurate. I ask you, Romano. How am I to find my dearest daughter in London if I must be made to languish in such a dreadful spot? I knew I should never have sent Isabella alone to such a barbaric country. She is too gentle, too tender for such a rude place, and besides, she lacks the basic cleverness necessary to deal with the English. I knew the moment she had sailed that I’d made a hideous mistake.”

  “Which is precisely why we have made this journey to find her, Your Majesty,” Romano said, his voice slow and soothing. “Soon, very soon, you shall be reunited with Her Royal Highness, I assure you.”

  “Forgive me for interrupting, Your Majesty.” Darden bowed deeply, striving to contain his excitement. “But if it is Her Royal Highness the Principessa Isabella di Fortunaro that you seek, I believe I can assist you.”

  The queen didn’t answer, merely staring at him as if he were the lowest insect imaginable.

  “Might I ask your name, sir?” Romano was slightly more polite, but only slightly.

  “I am Ralph Darden, Marquis of Banleigh.” Darden bowed again. “Your servant, ma’am. I have had the honor of your daughter’s acquaintance, and can count myself as one of her few true friends in this country, especially now that she is in such danger.”

  “Saints in heaven!” The queen gasped, pressing her hand to her bosom. “My daughter is in peril? How? Why?”

  “I believe she is safe for now, ma’am, thanks to the selfless devotion of her friends.” Darden nodded modestly as he reached for the quick courage in his glass. All was fair in love and war, wasn’t it? To come across his princess’s mother like this was the rarest gift of fate. It wouldn’t hurt to have the queen on his side, and if he had to steal a bit of Greaves’s glory to do so, why, who would know? “In fact, the princess is in hiding very near to this spot.”

  The queen rose, sweeping her cloak around her as she snapped her fan shut. “Then take us to my daughter at once, Lord Darden. At once!”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Isabella’s dream was short but terrifyingly intense.

  Her mother’s fingers were like claws on her wrist, dragging her down the longest hall of the palace, their images reflected over and over in the row of tall gilt-framed mirrors. Isabella’s heels slipped and slid across the marble floors and tangled in her skirts and her arm was jerked so hard it hurt clear to her shoulder. Yet though she cried for Mama to slow and let her catch her breath, she only quickened the pace, giving Isabella’s arm an extra jerk for emphasis.

  “You have shamed us, daughter,” she said, hissing like an angry dragon. She was prepared for court, her hair dressed high and powdered white and her glittering red skirts held out stiffly on either side by panniers, with a long train flicking behind her like that same angry dragon’s tail. “We put our trust in you, and this—this!—is how you betrayed us!”

  Isabella tried to protest, but when she opened her mouth no words would come out, as if her mother’s fury were a curse that had left her mute, or maybe, simply, she’d no explanation that this dragon version of her mother would accept.

  But before she could decide, they’d come to the throne room, the walls lined with enormous frescoes in which generations of Fortunari mingled with ancient pagan gods and goddesses. To Isabella’s horror, the paintings came to life, the
huge figures thumping their painted swords and scepters on the marble floor and scowling their displeasure down upon her, and she gasped and shrank back.

  Mama gave her an impatient shove. “Tell them what you have done, Isabella. Tell them why you betrayed them all.”

  The dream-Isabella was quaking with fear, yet at last she dared to find her voice to face those angry ancient Fortunari looming over her. “All I wanted was love….”

  She woke with a jolt, wild-eyed and clutching at Tom’s bare arm. The room was dark and disorienting, the sheets and pillows on the bed smelling of mildew, and it took a long moment for her to recall that they were at Willow Run, and no longer in London with the comforting glow of the lights in the streets. No wonder it was so dark, and so strangely quiet, too, here in the country.

  She took a deep breath, struggling to control her racing heart. It was done, over, she told herself firmly. It wasn’t real, but only a dream, and even the worst dreams didn’t have the power to hurt you once you were awake, especially when they were fueled by her own uncertain conscience.

  She curled closer to Tom, and he shifted in his sleep, slipping his arm protectively around her waist. She shouldn’t feel guilty about marrying him, or being happy. He loved her, and she loved him, and not even a thousand years of her dead ancestors in a nightmare could change that. She sighed and closed her eyes as she nestled against Tom, relishing the closeness and security that she always found with him. No, nothing was going to scare her away from Captain Lord Greaves.

  But there—there was the knocking again, and her eyes flew open. This wasn’t a nightmare, and it wasn’t the giant painted Fortunaro in the frescoes thumping their swords at her. This was real.

  “Tomaso?”

  “I heard it.” He was already rolling out of the bed, tugging up his breeches and reaching for his pistols and the belt with the long sailor’s knife in what seemed to her to be the same instant. “You stay here, lass. I’ll go be the lookout.”

  “I will not stay here alone.” Now she was out of bed, too, groping about the floor in the dark for her clothes. Finally she gave up and pulled the coverlet from the bed, wrapping it around her like a musty head-to-toe cloak. She pulled her loose hair free, letting it fall down her back. “You did that before, when the thieves came to my room at the Willoughbys, and I’m not going to be left behind again.”

  A little spark showed he lit the candle in the lantern by the bed. “You’ll be safer back here.” He glanced at how she was dressed, or rather, undressed. “Especially garbed like that.”

  “I won’t stay here alone, Tomaso.” After the nightmare, there was no way under heaven she’d do that. “I need to be with you.”

  He smiled over the lantern. “And I need you, too, sweetheart.”

  She grinned back, dipping a little curtsy in her makeshift robe. “And if you try to leave me behind, Tomaso, I’ll follow.”

  “You are a trial, Bella.” He sighed, swiftly checking the flints on the pistols. “Very well. If you must come along, then keep to the shadows behind me. Likely it’s only some stray animal, anyway.”

  But the knocking came again, at the front door of the cottage, and neither of them believed it was an animal.

  “Take care, love,” she said softly. Pistols and a knife, but he hadn’t bothered with a shirt: if that didn’t tell her he believed in the danger, than nothing would.

  “Oh, lass,” he said, his grin now lopsided as he tucked one of the guns into his belt. “We’ve come this far. I’ll hardly do anything foolish and risk losing you now, would I?”

  Yet she wasn’t so sure as she hurried after him, her bare feet making no sound. He carried the lantern in one hand, a bobbing light through the darkness, and a pistol in the other, while Isabella scurried after him, hugging the coverlet tightly around her as she ducked beneath the ladder. She told herself that villains like the Trinita didn’t bother to knock, that she and Tom were likely in no real danger, yet as she huddled obediently in the shadow of the ladder, she still whispered a little prayer to keep him safe.

  With the pistol in his hand cocked and ready to fire, Tom pressed close to the door so whoever was on the other side couldn’t see him through the nearby window. The knock came again, louder, more full of bluster.

  “Who goes there?” called Tom in his most commanding captain’s voice. “Give your name, or be gone.”

  “It’s Darden, Greaves,” came the muffled reply from the other side of the door. “Will you open now, and not keep me moldering on your infernal doorstep?”

  Isabella frowned. Darden? Here? It made no sense. But how had he tracked them to here? Uneasily she pulled the coverlet higher over her shoulders, the security and peace she’d felt since they’d come to this little cottage rapidly evaporating.

  “Don’t you know the hour, Darden?” asked Tom, making no move to unbolt the door. “Hardly the proper time for calls.”

  “What I have to say to the princess can’t wait,” said the marquis. “She’s there with you, isn’t she?”

  Tom swore softly. “Who else is out there with you, Darden?”

  “Who else?” He was nervous, stalling, which made Isabella nervous, too. “Why do you think there’s anyone else with me, Greaves?”

  “I’m not a fool like you, Darden. I can hear them shuffling about beside you. So who the devil are they?”

  A face suddenly appeared at the window not far from the door, pressing close to peer inside. Ghostly pale in the lantern’s light, the features were distorted by the uneven old glass and broken up by the tiny diamond-shaped panes.

  But it was enough for Isabella, who did not know whether to believe her eyes, or fear she was once again in the nightmare’s grasp.

  “Mama? It cannot be, not here, not now,” she whispered hoarsely. “Mama?”

  “I say, Greaves, you really must open,” Darden said. “I’ve Her Royal Highness the Queen of Monteverde here with me, and it doesn’t do to keep—”

  So it was her mother, and with a little cry Isabella rushed to the door, pulling frantically at the lock to open the door.

  “What in blazes are you doing, Bella?” demanded Tom as he tried to pull her aside. “Have you lost your wits entirely?”

  “It’s my mother, Tom,” she sobbed. “I saw her through the window, and now Darden says it’s true! She’s come for me, I know it, I know it!”

  At last the lock gave way, but as she tried to pull the door open, Tom held it with his shoulder, and she howled in protest.

  “No, Bella,” he warned. “Darden’s played us false before. You have no reason to believe this is your mother, other than—”

  “Isabella? Daughter?” came the voice in Italian from the other side of the door. “Open that door at once, I say!”

  “You see, it is my mother, Tom!” she cried, and pulled the door open. “Mama!”

  She would scarcely have recognized the woman on the cottage doorstep, the Marchese di Romano beside her. It was her mother, but her mother much changed, smaller, older, more haggard than Isabella could ever have dreamed. Gone were the jewels and the richly embroidered gown, the elaborate hair and artfully painted face. Instead her mother wore a plain dark traveling gown and cloak, and her severely pinned chignon was actually streaked with gray.

  Much changed on the outside, yes, but not within.

  “Isabella.” Her face contracted with shock and disapproval as her gaze raked Isabella from her bare toes to the top of her disheveled hair. “What has become of you, daughter?”

  Without waiting for Isabella’s reply, the queen turned on Darden. “You said she was safe. You assured us she was with suitable friends, in good keeping, and yet here she is, the Principessa di Fortunaro, a slattern dallying in the hay-loft with some baseborn English stable-boy!”

  “Forgive me, ma’am.” Darden ducked his head miserably. “Affairs have clearly been, ah, altered since I received my last assurances.”

  “Mama!” Too late Isabella realized how she must appear to her mo
ther. “Mama, this is not what it seems, not at all! This is Captain Lord Thomas Greaves, Mama, and he is a good, fine, honorable gentleman, the son of an earl, and the man who has protected me and saved my life over and over. We are in disguise to evade enemies, Mama. That is why we are dressed like this.”

  Tom looped the lantern on an iron hook beside the door, uncocked the pistol in his hand and bowed. “Your Majesty, I am honored.”

  But the queen refused to notice. “Isabella, you have not only betrayed my trust in you, but you have ruined yourself in the process. Who would have you after you have debased yourself with this?”

  “Mama, please!” Her mother hadn’t been changed at all by what had happened, but Isabella was stunned and ashamed by her callousness. How could she be so rude and unfeeling toward Tom—toward anyone?

  “‘Disguise,’ ha. Since when has nakedness been a disguise for any decent person? If ever I needed more proof that the world is in an immoral, disgraceful shambles, then you, daughter, are it.”

  “It’s not disgraceful, Mama, and neither are we!” Isabella cried, shamed for her mother’s sake, and because it was Tom, her Tom, the sting of her self-absorption seemed extra sharp. Why couldn’t she have been born to an ordinary mother, instead of a beautiful queen who placed her rank before everything else?

  “I love him, Mama,” she continued, “and he loves me, and I have agreed to marry him, and remain here with him in England. Now please, come inside, so we—”

  “So you can put the kettle on and make me a nice dish of tea, like every other good English wife?” Her mother sniffed with disdain, her eyes narrow. “I prefer to remain here under the stars in the sky, Isabella, rather than beneath the roof of your sinful hovel. Marry him, indeed.”

  “Yes, ma’am, marry,” Tom said, biting each word as he fought to control his temper. “I love your daughter, and I believe I can make her as happy as she will me.”