Provided, of course, that nothing went wrong.
Annie recalled the young maid, Kathleen, telling her that the servants traveled in and out of the palace without difficulty. “But we couldn’t actually go into the shops, could we? Not dressed as servants?”
Phaedra was already heading purposefully out of the library. “We’ll look through the windows,” she told Annie in an impatient whisper, “and if we see something we want, we’ll send for it later. Besides, we’ll have the run of the marketplace.”
Within half an hour, Phaedra and Annie had climbed, via a rear stairway, to the uppermost floor of the grand palace, where the female servants were quartered. The long, narrow chamber was vacant, since all the maids were working at various tasks in other parts of the house.
Annie hesitated in the doorway, touched by the row of Spartan, neatly made cots lining the wall, by the plain washstand and pitcher that stood next to each bed. On one pillow rested a bedraggled cloth doll, with a stitched-on mouth and single black button for an eye. The servants’ spare dresses—it seemed each possessed only one—were hung carefully from pegs arranged beneath the high windows. “Phaedra,” she said, “these things are all they have.”
Phaedra grasped Annie’s hand and tugged. “Don’t be a coward,” she said. “It’s not like we’re stealing the things we need—we’re only borrowing.” The princess took a gray frock down from its peg and held it against her chest. “If it’ll make you feel better, we’ll leave a few coins behind.” She preened as if she were holding up a jeweled gown of the finest silk instead of a rag that had been pressed and mended with pride. “What do you think?”
It seemed more diplomatic not to answer at all.
CHAPTER 9
Barely fifteen minutes later, Annie and Phaedra were wearing the ill-fitting frocks they’d “borrowed” from the servants’ quarters. Scarves covered their hair and shadowed their faces, and they were careful to keep their eyes down when they approached the tradesman’s gate behind the carriage house.
The guard on duty was a young man, with spots on his skin and a sullen set to his mouth, as though he’d been made to do better things than oversee the comings and goings of servants, messengers and errand boys. He allowed the disguised princess and her companion to pass with a desultory air.
Annie was naturally pleased that the venture would not be thwarted at this early stage, but it also troubled her to know how easy it was to leave the palace grounds. No doubt a clever person could contrive to enter the compound with equal facility.
Phaedra hooked her arm through Annie’s and hurried her along the narrow alley that ran parallel to the street fronting the royal residence. “Don’t dawdle!” she hissed. “We might have deceived that idiot of a guard, but if Chandler or Felicia happened to see us from a window, the jig would be up, my friend. And believe me, we’d sooner be caught by rebels than have word of this outing reach Rafael!”
Annie glanced anxiously back over one shoulder, her eyes rising to the narrow windows of the servants’ quarters. She wanted an afternoon of anonymity and escape as much as Phaedra did, and she wasn’t the least bit afraid of Rafael St. James. In fact, she’d welcome an encounter with the prince, however tempestuous, just so she could see him, touch him, and know for certain that he was alive.
All the same, when she thought of that room on the uppermost floor, and the occupants’ few but clearly cherished possessions, her conscience was pricked. Annie had never wanted for anything, but she had been taught to have compassion and respect for those who were not so fortunate.
Still, as Phaedra had already assured her, they would return the dresses and scarves, and offer a few coins in payment. No real harm would be done.
She hoped.
They reached the marketplace by a circuitous, winding route, carefully avoiding the wide, fashionable streets where servants did not walk.
Annie’s heart swelled with excitement when she saw the market, for it was teeming with noises and smells, colors and textures. She smiled, recalling her mother’s story about a similar place, a souk in the kingdom of Riz, and what had happened to her there.
Phaedra nudged her. “Keep your eyes down,” she said quietly. “Servants don’t gawk.”
Reluctantly, Annie lowered her gaze, but she took in her surroundings all the same, in furtive, side-to-side glances. Moving among the stalls, she admired everything from imported fruit to lengths of colorful grosgrain ribbon. At one booth, over Phaedra’s whispered protest, she purchased a small, pretty doll with a china face and a pink dress and bonnet. The merchant was happy to make the sale, it seemed to Annie, and not at all suspicious. Still, to assuage the princess, she tucked the toy into a corner of her basket and covered it with a cloth napkin.
Phaedra purchased half a dozen huge, succulent oranges and didn’t bother to hide them. After all, servants bought food of all sorts for their employers’ kitchens.
A few streets over from the marketplace was a square lined with elegant shops. Phaedra and Annie lingered in front of each window, admiring gowns and bonnets, shoes and parasols, books and paintings. Despite the uncertain political climate in Bavia, the merchants seemed to be doing a brisk business.
The two adventuresses were on their way back to the palace, by way of the marketplace, when a young man standing on a box in front of a fountain caught their attention. He was speaking with heated eloquence to a sparse but attentive audience, shouting about crimes against the people. The gist of his message chilled Annie’s heart.
This man wanted to see Rafael not only deposed, but hanged. Publicly.
Forgetting she was supposed to be a servant, Annie started toward him, fully intending to set him and all of the listeners straight where the prince’s true character was concerned, but Phaedra stopped her by grabbing her arm and hauling her back. Before Annie could pull free, or even protest, there was a great clatter at the end of the street and suddenly the square was filled with men on horseback.
They were soldiers, led by a fair-haired man with striking brown eyes. Even in the midst of chaos, Annie noted that there was something familiar about him as, brandishing swords, he and the other soldiers sent the small crowd fleeing in terror. The merchants in the market cowered in their stalls and those few shops that were nearby were immediately closed and locked.
The young man who had been speaking scrambled onto the fountain’s edge and yelled above the furor. “These are your prince’s own men! These louts who would trample you beneath their horses’ hooves and run you through with their swords serve Prince Rafael St. James of Bavia!”
“No,” Annie whispered, but even as Phaedra tried to pull her away, she knew by their uniforms that these soldiers were indeed allied with the crown. Even as she watched, a member of the militia leveled a gun at the dissenter and shot him in the center of the chest.
He toppled into the pool surrounding the fountain, his blood staining the water, and Annie screamed in horror.
“Stop!” she yelled, flinging herself at the nearest horseman, the blond man who had been giving orders from the beginning. She clawed at his saddle, trying to climb his leg, shrieking in furious, hysterical protest.
The soldier laughed, centered his boot in the middle of her chest, and pushed hard, sending her tumbling onto the cobblestones. Phaedra fell to her knees beside Annie, trying to shelter her and at the same time using all her strength to keep her from bolting back to her feet and flying at the man like a scalded cat.
“No, Annie,” Phaedra pleaded, in a sobbing whisper, “he’ll kill you.”
Frenzied, the riders began knocking down the merchants’ booths, upsetting carts and letting their horses trod upon precious fruit and vegetables. Vendors knelt on the ground, weeping over their lost goods, and Annie heard screams of fear all around her.
She and Phaedra clung to each other, in the middle of it all, their faces wet with tears. At some point, Annie came to her senses and crawled under a stone bench, pulling the princess after her.
&nb
sp; There they stayed until Rafael’s soldiers had grown weary of their game and ridden away. Not an hour had passed, according to the clock in a nearby tower, yet for Annie Trevarren, the whole world had been forever altered. She loved Rafael St. James as much as ever, but her loyalties had shifted to the side of the Bavian people.
Slowly, silently, still clasping the handles of their baskets, Annie and Phaedra made their way back to the palace. Once, along the way, the princess stopped to retch into the ditch.
When they reached the same gate they’d passed through before, the guard hesitated to admit them, peering at them through the bars.
Before Annie had a glimmer of what Phaedra planned to do, the princess pushed back her scarf and raised her head. “Admit us at once,” she commanded.
Recognizing her instantly, the guard reddened to the roots of his hair and fumbled to work the lock and open the gate. “Yes, Your Highness,” he babbled. “I didn’t know it was you, honest, I didn’t—”
Pale and shaken though she was, Phaedra swept through the opening in a grand and regal fashion. Annie followed, images of the murdered man bleeding in the fountain next to the market filling her mind. Her innocent, romantic illusions were gone and her heart was broken.
Rafael was not a storybook prince, as she had always believed. He was, instead, a despot, the head of an army of fiends. But that wasn’t the worst of it, oh, no—the most terrible thing was that Annie knew the truth about Rafael and loved him in spite of it. Which meant that she was either a madwoman or a monster in her own right.
Phaedra and Annie had almost reached one of the rear entrances to the palace when Chandler Haslett appeared, looking harried and furious. “Where have you been?” he demanded.
To Annie’s surprise, and apparently, to Chandler’s as well, Phaedra dropped her basket of oranges and went sobbing, into his arms. “It was terrible!” she wailed. “We were nearly killed!”
Chandler hesitated, obviously not sure where to put his hands, his gaze linked with Annie’s, and then embraced the princess in a gingerly manner. “What happened?” he asked again.
Annie bent to gather Phaedra’s oranges and put them back in the basket. After the chaos she’d just witnessed, she needed to have some semblance of order, however small. “There was a riot,” she said simply. “At the marketplace.”
Chandler gripped Phaedra’s shoulders and held her away from him. “Are you all right?” he rasped, and Annie knew the question was meant for both of them.
“I suppose we will be, eventually,” Annie answered sadly. Then, carrying Phaedra’s basket as well as her own, she proceeded into the palace, leaving the princess to weep against her future husband’s shoulder.
Once inside, Annie immediately sought out the rear stairway that led to the attics and the servants’ quarters. The room was empty, as before.
Annie took the china doll she’d bought at the market from her basket—miraculously, it had survived the episode intact—and laid it beside the rag doll resting on one of the cots. That done, she put one of Phaedra’s oranges on each of the beds and hurried out.
In her room, she took off the borrowed clothes, folded them carefully, and set them on the chest at the foot of her bed. Then, wearing only her chemise, Annie crawled between the covers, pulled them over her head, and wept until there were no tears left to shed.
Annie didn’t go down to dinner that night, nor did she eat the breakfast Kathleen brought to her room the following morning.
The maid gathered up the little stack of clothes Annie had worn to the marketplace the day before and hugged the garments to her chest. “It was kind of you to leave the doll, miss,” she said. “Little Nancy, she’s sure the angels brought it. She lost her mama to a fever last year and thinks a lot about such things.”
Annie, who was sitting in bed with her knees drawn up and her back to the headboard, closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed. “Did you ever wish you could be someone else—just stop being yourself and step into another person’s life?”
Kathleen looked puzzled, bless her. “No, miss. It would be foolish to think of such things, when there’s no way of doing them—wouldn’t it?” She paused and glanced toward the table, where she’d left a tray. “Won’t you please eat something, miss? It isn’t good to go hungry.”
Just the thought of food made Annie’s stomach do a somersault. The memories of the incident at the marketplace were still too fresh in her mind, and her heart was in pieces, jagged pieces that speared her insides like splintered glass.
She shook her head and Kathleen reluctantly left the room, taking the purloined garments with her.
The next morning, a formal announcement was made: The princess’s engagement ball had been postponed for a week. Annie wondered, somewhat cynically perhaps, how important that news would be to the merchants in the marketplace. Or to the friends and family of that slender, earnest young dissenter, who had died so ingloriously in the fountain pool.
For the first time since they’d met at St. Aspasia’s, Annie and Phaedra found that they had little to say to each other. Phaedra kept to her room during the days to come, playing endless games of solitaire, by Kathleen’s accounting, and refusing visitors. Annie spent most of her time in the garden beneath her terrace, trying to sort through her thoughts and emotions and making friends with the yellow cat.
She was there, in fact, when the clamor of many horses and men at the front gates indicated that the prince had returned from his travels.
Annie stood, then sat back down on the bench, then leaped to her feet. She wanted to see Rafael immediately, and never again, as long as she lived. She yearned to fling her arms around his neck and, conversely, to do him lasting and painful injury.
She heard the gates creaking on their iron hinges, heard the hooves of many horses on the cobbled driveway. She paced, damning Rafael with one breath, adoring him with the next.
Annie had been suffering in this state for about a quarter of an hour when the prince himself appeared at the edge of the little garden, his plain clothes dirty and rumpled, his hair shaggy, his jaw scruffy with the start of a beard. His gray eyes glittered with restrained passion, weariness and a benevolent malice.
She started toward him, her pulse leaping, then stopped herself, locking her fingers together. Like so many dark angels, Rafael was beautiful to look upon.
“How did you know where to find me?” she asked, though that was the least of her concerns.
Rafael arched one eyebrow and scratched his chin. Although the beard lent him a certain roguish charm, Annie reflected, somewhat fitfully, she liked him better clean-shaven. “The head of the palace guard told me,” he said. His tone was quiet, controlled, and there was something ominous in the way he folded his arms. Plainly, other things had been said as well. “Is it true, Annie, that you and Phaedra dressed as servants and went to the marketplace on your own?”
Annie squared her shoulders, raised her chin, and took one step backward. Her emotions were a confusing tangle—joy, because Rafael was home safe, trepidation, because she knew she and Phaedra had done a dangerous and stupid thing, for which he would certainly call them both to account, and lastly, a deep-seated, indignant wanting that could not be denied. Rafael was either a cruel leader or a heedless leader, or both, and innocent people were suffering because of him. And still Annie loved him.
“Yes,” she answered evenly. “That is true.”
Rafael’s right temple pulsed, and Annie sensed the burgeoning anger in him, but the prince did not move from where he stood. “What in the name of heaven would induce you—even you—to do something so outrageously, recklessly foolish?”
Annie’s stomach wobbled as she recalled the terror of that afternoon; she saw blood unfurling in gossamer folds in the fountain pool, turning the water to pink and then to scarlet. “Rest assured, Your Highness—I most certainly do regret the impulse that took me to that dreadful place.” She backed up to the bench, where the yellow cat usually sunned itself, and sank o
nto the cool stone surface. Despite the weakness that came from remembering all she had seen in that horrid place, Annie met his gaze directly, and continued with conviction. “Your people are justified in rising up against you. You are a tyrant, Rafael St. James, with no apparent compassion for the citizens of your own country.”
He whitened, beneath all that road dust and beard stubble, and Annie knew her words had struck him deeply. His right hand clenched at his side, and he started to speak, then stopped himself. Finally, he came and sat down on the bench next to her, though not too close. “Tell me what happened that day,” he said, in a quiet voice. “Tell me what you saw.”
Annie looked away for a moment, struggling to keep back tears of disillusionment, pain and the awful, lingering fear. Her throat constricted, and it took some effort to finally answer. “We were children, Phaedra and I, when we went off to the marketplace,” she said sadly. “Children, wearing disguises and looking for mischief. We bought a few small things and walked over to the square to peek in the shop windows. As we were passing through the market again, on our way home, we saw a man—he was very young, a student, probably—making a speech by the fountain.” She paused, her cheeks coloring, and would not let herself look away from Rafael’s face. “He was opposed to your government. While he was talking, soldiers suddenly converged on the square on horseback—it seemed they came from every direction—and they behaved as though they’d gone mad.” At this accounting, Rafael closed his eyes for an instant, and he braced himself visibly when Annie went on. “One of them shot the student, and he fell into the fountain, bleeding.” She stopped again, to swallow the bile that had surged into the back of her throat. Her hands were knotted in her lap, white-knuckled. “They tore the marketplace completely apart, your soldiers, trampling goods and terrifying the people. I’m sure others must have been killed or injured, besides the first man.”
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