Princess Annie

by Linda Lael Miller

  CHAPTER 7

  Annie had already climbed the stairs and vanished into the upper regions of the castle before Rafael regained sufficient wit to move at all.

  His flesh was clammy beneath his wet clothing and his stomach, unaccustomed to the vast quantities of liquor he’d consumed that evening, was doing a slow, ominous roll. Despite all that, his manhood had risen to embarrassing prominence and taken on the consistency of English oak, pressing painfully against the buttons of his breeches.

  Rafael credited that to the scandalous things Annie had said to him in the courtyard—after pushing him into the fountain pool, no less. She wanted him, she’d told him so straight out, looking him in the eye the whole time.

  These Americans. Even Georgiana had never been so bold, and she’d been a responsive woman.

  Hoping he wouldn’t meet anyone, Rafael chose a circuitous route to his chambers, navigating the rear passageways and hidden staircases he knew so well. As little as a week before, he could have eased at least one of his maladies by sending for a woman, but now that was impossible. In a peculiar way, although he had no intention of marrying the little chit, he belonged to Annie Trevarren, as surely as he’d once belonged to Georgiana.

  Passing Annie’s chamber—the room was some distance from his own and he had to go out of his way to do so—Rafael actually considered knocking on the door, going inside, and burying himself in the lush, supple warmth that was Annie.

  Honor stopped him, combined with the fact that he was on the verge of losing the contents of his stomach. In his own quarters, a fire had been lit and the covers of the massive, lonely bed had been turned back. Rafael peeled off his wet clothes and stood naked on the hearth for several minutes, warming himself. His stomach had calmed down by that time, but his erection was as insistent as ever.

  He was miserable, needing Annie so desperately, knowing he could not take her and still meet his own gaze in the mirror afterward.

  Presently, he blew out the lamps and got into bed, staring up at the darkened ceiling. He would think of Georgiana, he decided, but when he tried, he couldn’t bring her image into clear focus. For several terrible moments, Rafael could not recall what his wife had looked like, and the realization filled him with panic and shame. And when the delicate features finally took shape in his mind, they were quickly gone, shifting and blurring and, in the end, fading away.

  In the next instant, Annie’s face was before him.

  Tears burned in Rafael’s eyes. “Georgiana,” he whispered, trying to bring her back, begging her not to leave his memory and his dreams and his heart.

  All the while he knew the effort was futile; Georgiana was gone forever, and so was the child she’d been carrying at the time of her death. Rafael was no longer numb, thanks to Annie Trevarren, and it was impossible to go on pretending that his wife was only away for a little while, visiting friends or shopping in Paris or London.

  She was never coming back.

  For the first time since the nights immediately following his wife’s death, when all the brandy in Europe would not have dulled his sorrow, Rafael wept freely for Georgiana and for the part of himself that had turned to dust with her. It was a new and deeper phase of his mourning, a grief he had not known he felt. His suffering was keen-edged and raw; it loomed over him, took the shape of a dark angel, and he wrestled it the whole night through. He was broken over and over again, utterly defeated a hundred times. His soul was crushed, and there were times when he thought his mind would shatter with the pain, but for all his exquisite anguish, he was somehow purified by the experience. Somehow tempered to a new strength and resilience, like steel put to fire.

  Come the light of morning, he was a different man than before; he’d met the dragons lurking in his own spirit, and done battle with them. Though sorely wounded, and tried to the very limits of his endurance, he’d prevailed.

  In essence, Rafael had dragged himself out of Georgiana’s grave and clawed his way back to the surface. Out of incredible agony had come a new and fierce desire to live.

  At dawn, Rafael rose, bathed his sweat-soaked, aching body in tepid water, and put on fresh clothes. Then, after breakfasting in the kitchen, to the consternation of the cook and her giggling minions, he went out to the stables and saddled his favorite horse.

  Georgiana’s grave was on a high knoll, among many other St. James tombs, shaded by an oak tree and guarded by a circle of elaborately sculpted marble angels. From that sacred place, Rafael could see well beyond the walls of the keep to the glistening sea.

  He crouched beside the alabaster headstone and rested a hand against it, but he didn’t speak. He’d already said his farewells to Georgiana, and he’d accepted her death. His visit that bright morning was a tribute to all they’d shared, and a promise to be strong, for she would have wanted that more than anything else. There was still much to be faced and endured before the penance of all the St. Jameses was served.

  Perhaps an hour passed before Rafael returned to the keep, surrendered his horse to a groom, and made his way to his study.

  Barrett appeared within minutes, looking unusually rumpled and not a little sheepish, and while Rafael was troubled by his friend’s disquiet, he quickly forgot it. He had other, more pressing matters, to deal with.

  “I want you to put together a small detachment of men,” Rafael announced. “I’m going out into the countryside to get a firsthand look at the situation. I should have done it long ago.”

  Barrett went white, and he set down the cup of coffee he’d brought with him on the corner of Rafael’s desk, nearly spilling the stuff in the process. His gaze sliced to Rafael’s face. “Have you lost your mind entirely?” he demanded. “There are people out there who want to kill you, Your Highness, and not in a quick and merciful way!”

  Rafael settled back in his chair, one eyebrow raised. “Bavia is still my country,” he pointed out quietly, “and I am still its ruler.”

  The other man leaned against Rafael’s desk, bracing himself with both hands, his eyes blazing with weary fire, his right temple pulsing visibly. “I will not stand by and see you commit suicide!” he rasped.

  Rafael sighed, took up the pen he’d laid down when Barrett came in, and resumed work on one of the documents his personal messenger had brought from the capital during the night. “Your commitment to my safety is commendable,” he said, “but unless you mean to resign your post as head of the royal guard, you will obey any order I give you—regardless of whether or not you think said order is wise. Is that understood?”

  Barrett did not back off. “No, damn you, it is not ‘understood’! You can take your bloody commands, and your royal guard, and—”

  Rafael met Barrett’s furious gaze. “What would you have me do?” he asked. “Run away, whimpering and slavering like a kicked dog? Desert my people? You should know me better, after all this time.”

  A spasm of pain moved in Barrett’s usually placid features. He thrust himself away from the desk with an abrupt motion and turned his back on Rafael for a few moments, while struggling with some inner turmoil. When he met Rafael’s gaze again, he had recovered somewhat.

  “I know you well, my friend,” Barrett said. “But being cautious is not the same as running away, or abandoning those subjects who have remained loyal to you. I am merely asking you to—”

  “You are asking me to stay within these walls until the rebels scale them. I might as well lie down in my coffin and await their arrival as do that, Barrett, can’t you see? I want to look upon my people with my own eyes, hear their words with my own ears, instead of trusting Von Friedling and the others to relay everything.”

  “Rafael—”

  “Arrange for the journey,” Rafael broke in coldly, “or step down from your position. The choice is no more complicated than that.”

  Barrett picked up his coffee cup and hurled it toward the fireplace. It shattered on the hearth, and tiny shards of china exploded into the air. The door of the study, made of ancient wo
od several inches thick, shuddered on its hinges when he slammed it behind him.

  Calmly, Rafael picked up his pen and continued writing. He’d been hard at work for several minutes when a second visitor stormed the citadel.

  It was Lucian, the intractable, still visibly ruffled from their confrontation the day before, but smiling with his usual insolence. “I hear Barrett’s in a foul mood,” he remarked, after some cheerful reflection. “I take it he’s against your grand plan to bestow your royal presence upon the adoring rabble?”

  Rafael frowned. “Eavesdropping again? That’s getting to be a bad habit with you, Lucian.”

  “It can be a vital skill, for a second son.” Despite the early hour, Lucian went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a stiff drink. Rafael’s still-sensitive stomach turned. “Barrett’s right, you know,” Lucian continued. “Leaving the keep at this point is a genuinely stupid thing to do. Almost certainly suicidal.”

  Rafael gave up all pretense of working and folded his arms. “I’m sure you’d be crushed to see me go on to my reward,” he said, giving the words a wry and bitter twist.

  Lucian laughed, spreading the fingers of his right hand and pressing it to his chest. “I would be devastated,” he said.

  Something tightened within Rafael, but he’d almost throttled his brother the day before and he did not wish to give in to those primitive instincts again. He drew a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment and spoke in a moderate tone. “I don’t have time for this, Lucian,” he said. “Make your point, if you have one, and get out.”

  Raising his brandy in a mocking salute, Lucian smiled savagely. “Congratulations are in order, Your Highness. I’ve decided to marry.”

  Despite the enmity between the two of them, Rafael was relieved. He knew Lucian did not share his devotion to the people of Bavia, and once the little rogue was assured of an adequate income, he would surely agree to settle elsewhere with his bride. For his part, Rafael would sleep better, once Lucian and Phaedra were both safely out of the country.

  He lowered his gaze to the document on his desk, not wanting Lucian to see that he was pleased. “You must introduce me to your bride,” Rafael said, as if distracted. “In the meantime—”

  “Oh, but you know her already,” Lucian replied, with wicked relish. “I’m going to marry Annie Trevarren.”

  Rafael had guessed what Lucian would say, a moment before the name fell from his brother’s lips, but knowing hadn’t prevented an ugly gorge of fury from rising within him. “Forgive me for pointing up the obvious,” he said, after only the briefest hesitation, “but Miss Trevarren has already made it plain that she despises you.”

  “I can change her mind,” Lucian answered confidently. “I’ll start by apologizing for all the terrible things I’ve said and done of late. Then I’ll show her how noble I am, demonstrate that even though my brother trifled with her virtue and then spurned her affections, I, Lucian St. James, am willing to uphold the family honor by taking her to wife.” At a low, contemptuous sound from Rafael, he smiled broadly and leaned against the edge of the desk, much as Barrett had done earlier. “You don’t think it can happen, do you? Well, consider this, Your Highness: After you’ve perished at the hands of the rebels, lovely Annie will need consoling. She’ll be grateful for my tender sympathies, and we both know, don’t we, Rafael, how easily gratitude can be mistaken for love?”

  Terrible images whirled through Rafael’s mind—he saw his own grave, not on the hillside next to Georgiana’s, but at the edge of some blood-washed battlefield. He saw the fiery Annie, weeping for him, envisioned Lucian hovering at her side, waiting like a scavenging bird, catching her when she was most vulnerable. And he knew that to warn Lucian off now would only feed his determination to make his plan succeed.

  Rafael was silent.

  Lucian crossed the room, filled a second snifter, brought it back and set it down in front of Rafael. “Will you not drink to my happiness, Brother?”

  By some miracle, Rafael kept himself from knocking the snifter to the floor in a fit of rage or flinging its contents into Lucian’s smug face. Instead, he spoke calmly, coldly. “Report to Barrett within the hour,” he said. “He’ll assign you a horse and a bedroll for the journey.”

  Lucian’s smile evaporated. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve just been conscripted,” Rafael replied. “You are now a soldier in the Bavian army.”

  “You bastard,” Lucian breathed. He’d gone white to his hairline and probably his knees as well. “You bloody gypsy bastard! You can’t do this to me!”

  “I can do it,” Rafael said, “and I have. Now, report to your commanding officer or I swear by all that’s holy, Lucian, I will have you locked up.”

  “You know I’m not a soldier! I’ll be killed—”

  Rafael leaned to one side. “Guard!” he called, and instantly the door opened and one of Barrett’s burliest men stepped over the threshold, bowed and awaited the prince’s command. “Well?” Rafael inquired, his gaze fixed on his brother’s face. “Will you show yourself to be a brave man, or a coward?”

  Lucian had turned a disturbing shade of gray and broken out in a cold sweat in the bargain. Rafael might have taken pity on him, if it hadn’t been for Lucian’s earlier boasts about the plans he’d made for Annie Trevarren.

  “Rafael, in the name of heaven—”

  “Choose.”

  Lucian closed his eyes briefly, and when he opened them again they glittered with a new and much deeper hatred than ever before. “I’ll serve in your damnable army,” he muttered. “But watch your back, Your Highness, because I’m going to make you suffer for this.”

  Rafael spoke to the guard. “My brother wishes to help defend his country,” he said dispassionately, never taking his eyes from Lucian’s face. “See that he’s outfitted as a soldier.”

  The moment Lucian and the guard were gone, Rafael fell back in his chair, staring at the glowing amber liquid in the crystal snifter Lucian had set before him so triumphantly. And even though he wondered if he hadn’t gone too far this time, he had to smile when he thought of his spoiled younger brother wearing rough clothes and sleeping on the ground.

  Annie endured a second seemingly interminable fitting of Phaedra’s wedding gown that morning in the solarium. The third time she looked for Rafael on the balcony, he was there, standing in the same spot as before.

  Annie’s heart quickened at the sight of him, like a bird taking wing. Her first instinct was to lower her eyes demurely, but her native stubborness prevailed and she held his gaze. She had meant everything she’d said the previous evening, after pushing Rafael into the fountain pool, and it would be foolish to pretend that nothing had happened.

  Rafael waited, in silence and shadows, while Miss Rendennon, unaware of his presence this time, completed her endless rituals of pinning and snipping, tugging and twisting. Even when the dressmaker had gone, he didn’t speak or move.

  Wearing only her chemise and a pair of cotton stockings, Annie was painfully conscious of Rafael’s gaze, yet she felt triumph, for even from that distance she sensed his desire. Slowly, resisting the maidenly urge to cover herself in haste, Annie put on the pink shirtwaist and black sateen skirt she’d worn to the fitting.

  When Rafael made no move to come down the stairs, Annie climbed them herself, her heart pounding, her cheeks aching with heat, and stood facing him.

  His gaze remained fixed on the floor below, and his powerful body exuded both tension and restraint. A pulse leaped along the edge of his jaw.

  Annie hesitated, then took a step nearer, laying a hand on his arm. Even through the fabric of his shirt, she could feel the sudden hardening of his muscles and the heat of his flesh. He started to wrench away, then stopped, turning his head toward Annie at last.

  She saw anger in his eyes, and the profoundest of sorrows. Their need for each other shimmered between them, like a heat mirage.

  “I came to say good-bye,” he said, after a l
ong, charged silence.

  Annie had expected recriminations, arguments, even fury from Rafael, anything except that quiet, unemotional farewell. She let her hand slip from his arm, too stricken to speak.

  Rafael reached out and touched her hair, but the gesture was an unwilling one, and he quickly withdrew. “I’ll be gone a week or ten days,” he said. “In the meantime, soldiers will escort you and Phaedra and Felicia to the palace in Morovia to prepare for the wedding ball. During that time, I want you to put aside all your foolish fancies about me.”

  By biting her lip, raising her chin and thinking defiant thoughts, Annie managed to prevent herself from bursting into tears. “Are you in love with Miss Covington?” she asked. That was the one thing that would have turned her from her course; she would not interfere if Rafael had given his heart to another woman.

  He hesitated, just long enough, and when he averted his wondrous silver eyes for a fraction of a moment, Annie knew the truth.

  “Suppose I am?” he stalled.

  Annie folded her arms and smiled, waiting.

  “All right,” Rafael snapped, in a harsh undertone. “I love her! Are you happy?”

  “Ecstatic,” Annie replied. “You’re lying.”

  He swore, grasped her chin in his right hand—another grudging gesture—and bent his head to touch her lips with his own. The contact was featherlight at first, but in the space of an instant, it became a deep, ferocious, soul-jarring kiss.

  Annie was transported, conquered, thrilled and terrified, and when Rafael finally tore his mouth from hers, she sagged against him, unable, for the moment, to stand on her own.

  He murmured an oath as he held her, but hold her he did, and Annie smiled into the hard warmth of his shoulder. Rafael did not belong to Felicia or to any other woman; she’d seen it in his eyes when he’d tried to lie, and felt it in his kiss. He wanted her, Annie, and as stubborn as he was, he would not be able to resist his own nature for long.