The Stolen Princess

by Anne Gracie

“Husband!” she declared with loathing. “I don’t want a husband.”

  “Not even if it will save your son?”

  She gave him an anguished look. “How would it work?”

  “If you married Gabriel, you’d once again become an English citizen. And since he has excellent family connections”—he gave his brother a direct look—“we’d use those connections to put pressure on the government to delay.”

  “Delay!” she exclaimed. “What good is delay? If I understand you correctly, in the end, you will still have to hand my son over to a murderer!”

  Nash gave her a shocked look. “Princess, I assure you, the English government may be riddled with imperfections, but in matters of creative delay we are unmatched.”

  She bit her lip and considered his statement. “How much of a delay do you think you could manage?”

  “Until forever,” Nash said with pride.

  She gave him a doubtful look. “Forever?”

  He made a careless gesture. “At least until your son is of age.”

  “Or until Count Anton dies?” Gabe asked.

  Nash inclined his head. “Indeed.” He narrowed his eyes at his brother. “But not if you murdered him, Gabriel. That would complicate things enormously.”

  She looked at Gabe anxiously. “I don’t want you to commit murder.”

  “Then your only alternative is to commit matrimony,” Gabe responded.

  She flung him a resentful glance, cornered and desperate.

  Gabe felt for her…almost. He was determined to convince her. Now that they were in London he wouldn’t put it past her to simply disappear. Her notion of staying at a hotel had given him a jolt that had shocked him.

  He had to get her to promise to marry him. A promise would hold her. “If it will save Nicky, is there really any choice?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think. I need time,” she said unhappily.

  Gabe looked deep into her eyes and saw she was terrified.

  He wondered yet again what her husband had done to her to make her so fearful of marrying again. He had to reassure her. He wouldn’t hurt her, he would treat her tenderly…

  “It would be purely a matter of convenience,” Nash said, and Gabe had the urge to strangle him again.

  “If that was what you wanted,” Gabe amended quickly with a hard look at his brother.

  Nash’s brows rose. He said coolly, “Don’t think of it as a marriage; think of it purely as a legal maneuver, like a chess gambit. A marriage between you and my brother would block Count Anton’s petition for custody of the boy and mire it in legal arguments, thus giving our government an excuse to delay.” He waited a moment and added, “It’s my considered opinion that it’s the only way to keep your son with you.”

  He rose. “Gabriel, you were right about the fly in the ointment. I’ll leave you two to discuss it in private. It seems to me that there are matters between you two that need to be settled before any agreement can be made. I’ll see you at dinner, which is in—” He consulted his pocket watch. “—fifteen minutes.”

  “What did he mean about the fly in the ointment?” she demanded as soon as the door closed behind Nash.

  “Nothing. Just a beautiful fly with lovely green eyes. And the most sweet-smelling ointment,” Gabe said soothingly. “Do you remember the smell of the ointment? We have fond memories of ointment, you and I.”

  She gave him a flat stare.

  “Or at least I do,” he finished hastily. She was obviously not in the mood for seduction.

  “You see, this is why I have such strong doubts about any agreement we might make,” she told him. “You don’t take women seriously.”

  “I do take women serio—”

  “You take women like Mrs. Barrow seriously. You took your great-aunt Gert seriously, but not me. You never listen to me.”

  “I do—”

  “You ignore my expressed wishes and ride roughshod over my decisions and I cannot and will not put up with it.”

  Gabriel was shocked. “But that’s not how it is at all.”

  “It is. And when I object you tease me and play seductive games and pretend it hasn’t happened. Like now. I have serious concerns—I told you repeatedly before any of this came up that I had no intention of remarrying—and then you talk to me of ointment! And call me a pretty fly! As if my concerns are foolish female nonsense. Well, back in Zindaria men told me my fears that someone was trying to kill my son were foolish female nonsense, and they were wrong and I was right and I won’t put up with being treated like a ninny!” She stormed to the window and stood with her back to him. Her chest heaved and her spine was rigid with tension.

  She was close to tears, he saw. And she was right. Gabe felt chastened and remorseful. He hadn’t meant to belittle her, just coax her into a happier frame of mind.

  Had he really been such an overbearing bully? He hadn’t meant to be. He’d honestly done what he thought was right.

  But he could see how it must look to her.

  “It comes from years of being an officer,” he said ruefully. “One is expected to decide what is best for everyone under your command. It becomes a habit.”

  He swallowed. “And the teasing, I don’t mean to demean you at all. It is simply my way. What Great-aunt Gert used to call my ‘lamentable and ill-timed tendency to levity.’ It seems to have gotten worse.” He took a deep breath and said resolutely, “But I am willing to change. I don’t know if I can,” he confessed. “But if you marry me, I promise you I’ll try.”

  There was a long silence from the window embrasure. “I quite like your frivolity at times,” she said eventually. “You make me laugh, and I know I’m too serious. But I think sometimes you use frivolity to hide something deeper.” She turned and looked at him. “It’s a way of dealing with the darker side of life, isn’t it? Of showing gaiety in the face of darkness, or skimming over the surface instead of looking into the abyss.”

  He swallowed, feeling like an insect on a pin. Facing an abyss. “Perhaps. Sometimes. And sometimes it’s just…I can’t help myself. I’m sorry if it annoys you.”

  She gave him a searching look, then a faint smile. “Sometimes it makes me want to hit you!”

  “Then hit me,” he said at once. “I have a very thick head and—” He broke off and said ruefully, “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?’

  She smiled properly now. “Yes, but I don’t mind. I don’t care how frivolous you are as long as you listen. And you are listening, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” God, yes, he was listening.

  She crossed the room and sat down again, smoothing her skirts and folding her hands in her lap before she began. “You’ve been honest with me, so I’ll try to explain my position,” she said. “I know I haven’t always made the wisest choices, but deciding for myself is a new experience for me—a very new and precious experience.

  “All my life Papa decided everything for me—what I did, what I wore, what I learned, ate, who I met—for every hour of every day. And then, when I was just sixteen, I married Prince Rupert of Zindaria, who ordered my life even more closely and rigidly than Papa.

  “And then they they both died within two months of each other, and for a full year I remained trapped in that rigidly ordered life, until my son’s life was threatened, and I didn’t know who I could trust, so I had to decide for myself what to do because there wasn’t another soul in the world I could rely on to protect me.

  “So I made a decision—the first and probably the most important one of my life—not a very courageous decision, I admit, to flee, but it was my decision, and we did it—we ran.

  “And every day of the next eighteen days I made decision after decision for myself and my son. And some were good and some were mistakes, but they were mine, too, and I learned from them.”

  She looked at him, “There hasn’t been a lot in my life that is truly mine. But I learned something in that time: deciding for oneself can be terrifying. But it’s also exhilarating. We got
here, Gabriel. I got myself and my son, alone and unaided, across Europe. And I’m proud of it.

  “So don’t treat me as a foolish child. I was kept that way by my father and then my husband, but I vowed never to return to that state again. I planned never to marry, never to make vows of obedience and duty to any man.” Her voice broke.

  The speech had upset her again and she rose from her chair and took an agitated few steps around the room. Gabe watched, having no idea how to convince her. The only thing he could think of to do was to grab her and kiss her and not stop until she agreed to marry him.

  But something told him she might not welcome that approach just now.

  She said, “I understand why my marriage to an Englishman is necessary…”

  Gabe held his breath.

  She chewed her lip, gave him a troubled look, and said, “Perhaps I should ask your brother to find me another candidate.”

  “Another candidate?” Gabe was stunned. “What other candidate?”

  She made an impatient gesture. “I don’t know. Someone who won’t care what I do, who won’t try to order my life, who will let me go my own road. It doesn’t really matter, does it? Not with a marriage of convenience. Your brother might even consider it. Marriage to a princess with connections to half the royal families of Europe could be quite an asset to a rising diplomat’s career.”

  “You are not marrying my brother!” Gabe exploded.

  “Well, no, he was just a case in point,” she explained.

  “You don’t need any case in point—you’ve got me!”

  She frowned. “But you said yourself, you have the habit of command.”

  He stared wildly at her. How could she even think of marrying someone else? “I’ll change,” he said.

  “No, you won’t.”

  He swallowed. “Probably not enough for your liking, but I promise you I’ll try.”

  She frowned, puzzled and disturbed by his apparent determination to marry her. “It actually sounds like you want to marry me. Why?”

  He gave her a blank stare. “Why?” he said in a strangled voice.

  “Yes, why? You’ve known me less than ten days. Why would you want to make a convenient marriage with a woman you hardly know, who doesn’t want to be married, and who won’t promise to love you or obey you?

  It was a good question. He ran a finger around his collar. He cleared his throat. His mind was completely blank. “Er—”

  The dinner bell rang. “Dinner,” he exclaimed gratefully and gestured toward the door. “Aunt Gosforth hates to be kept waiting.”

  She didn’t move. “When you’ve answered my question.”

  Gabe searched for an answer that would satisfy her. The truth would frighten her off, make her run a mile. He knew because it had frightened him half to death.

  Outside he could hear people coming down the stairs, gathering in response to the dinner bell.

  “Gallantry,” he said at last. “Pure, disinterested gallantry. I can’t bear to see a woman and child in distress. And I have no plans to marry anyone else. If a convenient marriage is the price of your safety, it’s a small price to pay.”

  She eyed him thoughtfully. “And you don’t mind that I will not promise to love or obey you? That for me it will just be a—a chess tactic?”

  “No, I don’t mind that at all,” he lied with conviction.

  She hesitated, then held out her hand. “Then let us shake on this agreement; we shall make a convenient marriage, a paper marriage, and we shall be completely honest with each other from the start.”

  “Absolutely, honesty from the start,” Gabe agreed, uttering the lie with aplomb.

  He had no intention of letting it remain as a paper marriage. He felt a slight pang of guilt at lying to her, but repressed it. It was almost the truth.

  For some reason she was fearful of putting herself into the hands of a man. Obviously the fault of that clod Prince Rupert.

  She needed to learn that with Gabe, she was safe.

  Gabe’s position was clear also; just not wholly and completely stated. He would try to change his autocratic ways—or at least to listen to her views. He would protect her and her child with his life. And he would marry her.

  He could hardly repress the surge of fierce emotion at the thought: his wife.

  He grasped her outstretched hand and shook it. “But that’s not the way to settle a bargain such as this,” he said. “I’m a traditionalist.” And he drew her into his arms.

  She stiffened warily and stretched her head back away from him. “What are you doing?”

  “What do you think I’m doing? What’s the expression: seal the bargain with a kiss.”

  “But we shook on it.”

  “Yes, and now we’ll kiss.” He could just take the kiss, he knew, but until now, all their previous kisses had been surprised out of her: stolen. Now, suddenly he wanted a simple, honest kiss from her, a kiss to make a bargain on, a kiss that bore a promise.

  “We don’t need to kiss,” she insisted, her spine braced in resistance against the arm he’d slipped around her back.

  He still held her right hand in his right hand, the handshake caught between them. His knuckles grazed her breast. He didn’t think she’d noticed.

  He noticed. A good part of his attention was on that faint teasing graze of skin against cotton, with warm, soft breast beneath.

  He shifted his stance slightly and felt the back of his hand slide against one aroused, hardened nipple.

  A shiver went through her at the touch and she glanced down at their linked hands. She’d finally noticed. Her eyes darkened and flickered back up to him. She moistened her lips.

  His body instantly reacted. So did she.

  She moved, trying to tug her hand free, but he didn’t let go and all her movement did was drag his knuckle back across the thrusting nipple. She gasped.

  “You’re determined on this kiss, aren’t you?” Her breathing made her bosom rise and fall.

  “Yes.” The slight, teasing movement of each breath against the back of his hand drove him wild. He fought to control his body.

  “Why? You agreed this would be just a paper marriage.”

  “To the world, this has to look genuine,” he reminded her. “If we want people to rally around to support us against Count Anton’s legal petition, we’ll need to gain their sympathy.”

  Her brow puckered as she considered his words.

  “There’s bound to be a lot of comment on the hurried nature of this wedding. Opinion will fall into two camps; either I have impregnated you and am making an honest woman of you, or we are so madly in love we cannot wait. Either way it will be regarded as a love match, and the world adores lovers.”

  Her body had softened unconsciously against him as she accepted the truth of his interpretation. He continued, “However once the news of Count Anton’s petition to have your son returned is out—and it will get out—the sharper minds among the ton will wonder about this sudden and convenient marriage. So we must convince them—all of them—I am talking about Aunt Maude, and my friends, and everyone—that this is real and that we are in love. Lovers under threat are even more romantic. Count Anton won’t stand a chance.”

  “Your brother knows it’s false.”

  “Nash is a diplomat. He can keep his mouth shut,” Gabe said, hoping it was true. He barely knew his brother but he was generally a good judge of character. Despite their bitter history, Nash as an adult had surprised him.

  She bit her lip and he tried not to groan. She said, “So we need to pretend to be in love?”

  “I think it’s a good idea,” Gabe said in a dispassionate voice. His body was racked and aching with desire.

  “And we start from this moment? With a kiss? To seal the bargain?”

  “Yes, and to help us to get into the spirit of things,” Gabe said, amazed at how disinterested his voice sounded. Now! his body was roaring silently. Take her now!

  She swallowed. “Very well.” She licked
her lips and raised herself on tiptoe. Gabe lowered his head to meet her, but though it cost him every shred of control at his command, he didn’t take her mouth; he wanted her to come to him.

  She hesitated, her mouth a bare inch from his. He could feel her soft breath on his skin; she was panting gently. She gazed into his eyes, searching, wondering, uncertain. She was aroused, he could sense it, smell it, but she showed no awareness of it.

  She pressed her lips lightly against his and pulled back, watching for his reaction. He didn’t move, didn’t release her, just waited. And tried to remember to breathe.

  She touched her lips to his again, and this time she didn’t pull away. He felt the light touch of her tongue and he opened for her. She wasn’t ready for anything more yet and didn’t take up his silent invitation but she kissed him hard, pressing her lips openmouthed against his, mouth to mouth and breath to breath. And body to body.

  It was enough. It was more than enough considering he couldn’t take her here and now.

  His knuckles were trapped between them, pressed against her breast. He kissed her back, forcing himself not to take control. His knuckle moved lightly back and forth against her rock-hard nipple and she shuddered and recoiled and pulled back.

  He released her instantly. She staggered and he caught her by the waist and steadied her.

  She stared at him wide-eyed. Looking shocked and on the verge of panic.

  “So that’s it,” he said in his driest, dullest voice. “The bargain is settled. We will make a convenient marriage and do our best to fool the ton into believing we are lovers.”

  At his mundane response she calmed visibly. Yes, that’s what frightened her, he thought. Passion. Prince Rupert must have been a clumsy oaf indeed to treat this treasure of a woman carelessly.

  Gabe was not such a fool. He knew a priceless gift when he fished it off a cliff top. He would lavish care on her.

  Once she was his, he would seduce her with every shred of power in him. He would do his damnedest to burn this paper marriage in the flames of passion and forge it into something precious and enduring.

  He had to teach her to love him.

  Because, God help him, he loved her.