A good woman would have been shocked. Laurentia was curious. She explored the length of him, trying to get an idea of what, really, he kept within his trousers.
But before she could truly glean the knowledge she sought, he snatched her fingers away. “Damn you, Laurentia, if you continue there’ll be nothing left to fulfill your desire.”
Now that she didn’t understand.
“Your Highness.” He still held her wrist, and he kissed her fingers with mocking respect. “You aren’t the first princess I’ve kissed, you know. There have been others. One who was curious about how a mercenary made love. One who thought I would be rough and hurried, and she liked that way until I taught her better. I taught them passion, they taught me refinement. They made me the man who could walk into your ball and convince those other upstarts I was your suitor.”
But if he thought he could make her hate him with a few phrases of disdain, he was a fool. She had a mind of her own. “If you give me their names,” she said, “I’ll pen them a note of thanks.”
He studied her. “Who?”
“Those other princesses who taught you to kiss.”
She had startled him, she could tell. Then he laughed, a long, low belly laugh, and he whispered, “I can’t even remember their names.”
“Will you remember mine?”
Her temper eased his aggression as her compassion could not. His grip loosened; now he cradled her. “Yes,” he said, “for I fear it is written on my heart.”
She didn’t believe him. The only thing written on his heart right now was the old drive to survive, and the new drive to do right by his fallen comrades. But if she could keep him at her side long enough, maybe together they would raise a monument to his friends, and maybe then he would treasure her name and person.
Tilting his head back to hers, he began to kiss her again.
And at the door, someone coughed.
Chapter Twenty-one
Dom responded with the instincts of a cold-blooded warrior. He thrust Laurentia against the post and threw the chair out of his way. He got a swift glimpse of alarmed mahogany brown eyes in a feminine face before he had the interloper pinned to the wall, his knife to her throat.
“Identify yourself,” he commanded, his voice a low growl.
“Dom, no!” He heard Laurentia hurrying toward him, her heeled boots echoing on the wooden boards. “It’s my messenger.”
He didn’t release the girl, didn’t take his gaze away from her apprehensive regard as he spoke to the princess. “You didn’t tell me anyone would be arriving.”
“I’m telling you now.” She tugged at the arm with which he held the messenger’s throat. “Let her go. For heaven’s sake, Dom, she’s a woman.”
“I’ve seen women who would just as soon eviscerate a man as sew him a shirt.” But Laurentia wasn’t lying, he was sure. He didn’t know why she would and, more important, the peasant girl he held was plain, young, and white-faced with apprehension. Slowly he loosened his grip. “Who is she?”
“Her name is Rosabel, and she doesn’t deserve this.” Laurentia shoved at his shoulder. “Let her go!”
He heard the snap of command in her voice. Laurentia could act the role of princess when she chose. He freed the girl, but demanded his due. “What do you need a messenger for?”
Laurentia royally ignored him. She placed her arm around this Rosabel’s shoulders and led her inside. “We’ll get you some water,” she said soothingly. “He must have given you a fright.”
“Who is he?” Rosabel asked.
He stalked after them, and it irked him that Laurentia answered her question before she answered his.
“He’s my bodyguard,” Laurentia explained.
“He’s not your usual bodyguard,” Rosabel said.
While Laurentia placed the messenger in a chair, he leaned against the rickety table and glared.
The girl, dressed in a peasant’s plain, dark costume, glared back. She had an attitude about her that Dom remembered, but couldn’t identify at first. But he knew for sure she didn’t like that he had pinned her to the wall or that she’d been frightened.
Laurentia brought Rosabel a ladle full of water, and while the girl drank, Laurentia went to the food cupboard and rummaged through it. “How was the journey here?”
“Good.” Rosabel cast a contemptuous glance at Dom. “Until I got here.”
Then it struck him; Rosabel acted with the flair and defiance of the younger Brat, performing any task, accepting any dare, doing anything to escape the ordinary run of life.
“I’m sorry.” Laurentia placed a hearty meal on the table. “He’s really harmless.”
Dom didn’t immediately grasp that she was referring to him, but when he did he finally had had enough of the chatter. As the girl pulled up her chair and dug into the food with all the enthusiasm of a half-starved waif, Dom caught Laurentia’s arm as she bustled past, and for the last time asked, “Who is she?”
“Who are you?” Rosabel demanded. “You look just like King Danior.”
Dom recoiled as recognition struck. He didn’t know her, but those eyes . . . “You’re Serephinian.”
“Sereminian,” Rosabel corrected. “No one calls themselves Serephinian, or Baminian, either, except for the people too old to adjust.” The girl, who must be all of eighteen, ran an insulting gaze over him. “So who are you?”
Dom leaned toward her, coiled and ready to strike terror back into her heart. “I’m Dominic of Baminia.”
Rosabel stared at him for a moment. Then she threw back her head and laughed. “He’s dead.”
Dom jerked back. Dead? Dominic of Baminia wasn’t dead. He was the scourge of the Two Kingdoms.
“With that face, you have to be some kind of relative of the Leons,” Rosabel said, “but don’t try and palm off that Dominic-twaddle. I’ve heard it before, and that dark, dangerous line hasn’t seduced me yet.”
Dom heard Laurentia giggle, then choke back her mirth. He didn’t dare look at her. He’d just been slapped in the face with his own mortality.
“Did you bring the packet, Rosabel?” Laurentia asked when she had control of herself.
Rosabel looked at him mistrustfully before she jerked her head toward the back door. “It’s in the usual place.”
Laurentia went to the food cupboard again, and from the bottom shelf she pulled out an overlarge black rucksack, woven of wool and with straps to fit over the shoulders like a child’s sling. She dragged her apparently heavy burden to the table and placed it beside Rosabel.
An earthy, minty odor wafted to his nose, and he tried to place it.
“I have everything for your return journey right here.”
“She’s going to carry that back?” Dom studied the bony girl. “She has a pony, right?”
Rosabel grinned at him, not at all offended. “A pony would attract attention. I have an ancient donkey.” She hefted the sack in both hands.
Dom watched the muscles ripple in her arms. If he were still in the mercenary business, he would have recruited her.
“A good harvest,” she said to Laurentia.
“Very good.” Laurentia glanced at him, waiting for the questions.
He wasn’t going to reveal his ignorance in front of the little urchin Rosabel.
“Come back in a fortnight,” Laurentia continued. “There will be more. Much more.”
They were talking in code, one Dom didn’t understand but deeply resented.
“As you command, Your Highness.” The girl showed some manners when she stood and curtsied deeply to Laurentia.
Laurentia rushed to assist her in lifting the rucksack onto her shoulders, and while Dom didn’t want to help Rosabel, he had to assist the princess. So he gently pushed Laurentia aside and settled the weight on the girl. The scent of mint and earth strengthened, bringing up memories of standing in a forest in Baminia, of stepping on an herb—
But he forgot about that when Rosabel looked him over and snorted. “Dominic of Ba
minia.”
With a sense of relief, he watched her trudge out the door. “If that’s how they’re raising girls in Sereminia”—he made sure he used the correct designation so he wouldn’t sound like an old gaffer— “then the country’s gone to hell while I’ve been gone.”
“How old are you, Dominic?” Laurentia asked in a merry tone.
Why did she want to know? “Thirty-three.”
“You sound as if you’re eighty.” She began to clean up the clutter of dishes left by Rosabel, but Dom stopped her with a question.
The most important question, he suspected, he would ever ask. “Why was that woman here? What was that all about?”
Laurentia hesitated, searching his features as if she could read his character in his face. Then she nodded firmly, took him by the hand, and led him back onto the porch. She pointed to the chair where he’d been sitting before.
He righted it and seated himself, sinking slowly onto the hard seat, watching her watch him.
She perched on the wide railing. “Do you know what mentha nobilis is?”
“No, I—” He stopped. That scent from the bag.
The scene from the forest.
Dom stepped on an herb, and one of his revolutionaries grabbed his arm and jerked him aside.
“That’s a bad omen, Captain,” he said.
“What?” Dom asked.
“Stepping on”— the revolutionary shifted his gaze away from Dom’s— “on the royal maywort.”
Royal maywort. Another one of the superstitions surrounding the imperial family in Baminia, and in Serephinia, too. Lifting his foot, Dom ground his heel into the soft, mossy-looking plant and looked challengingly at his man.
Who paled, backed away, and muttered, “Bad luck. Bad, Captain.”
Mentha nobilis. Royal maywort. Dom hadn’t believed in omens or luck, but apparently he didn’t have to believe to be defeated.
“Mentha nobilis,” he said, “is an herb that grows in high elevations, in secluded places, in Sereminia. It’s reputed to be a remedy for flesh and plants.”
She smiled at him like a teacher pleased with her pupil. “That’s right. Dried, it’s very light, but very potent. Sereminia has a tradition of spreading it on its crops, especially the barley. It’s supremely effective at warding off blight—and Bertinierre just happens to be the best place to grow mentha nobilis.”
Slowly, the truth began to dawn on him, but he didn’t dare believe it yet. “In Sereminia, it grows wild.”
“Sereminia has not been able to cultivate it. We have. Mentha nobilis is a fickle plant, but apparently there’s something in our mountains it loves. So we have a most satisfactory arrangement with King Danior and Queen Evangeline. We grow this herb, they pay us for it, and their crop yields have increased twofold.”
His mind grasped the significance at once. “They don’t buy the herb from anyone else?”
“Right after King Danior and Queen Evangeline took the throne the country was in desperate straits.” She considered him with a clear gaze. “You know.”
He satisfied himself with a tight nod.
“So Papa gave them whatever mentha nobilis we grew, which wasn’t a lot since we had little use for it. Our crops had no blight. A few eccentrics drank it brewed like tea.”
“It tastes like dirt.”
“You have tried it?”
“My mother made me drink it when I was sick.”
Laurentia smiled at him for too long. “She loved you very much.”
“Yes.” Yes, he knew that, but his mother’s love hadn’t saved them from scorn, from poverty, from humiliation. He had had to save himself—and he’d been too late to save her. He had never forgiven himself for that. If he could have just grown up a little faster... “Tell me about the herb.”
“After five years, Papa received a proposal from the royal family of Sereminia. They would pay us well for any royal maywort we produced if we would sell to them and them alone, and they would buy from us and us alone. With the help of the herb, they had surplus grain to sell and the treasury was full.” Her shoulders were back, her chin tilted up; she was very picture of pride. “And our treasury is full, also.”
“Why doesn’t everybody know?”
“It’s such a small thing. The farmers harvest and dry the herb. The king’s agents collect it, and none but a few understand its importance.”
“Why the secrecy?” As if Dom didn’t know.
“Our relationships with some other neighboring countries are not as cordial as our relationship with Sereminia, so we find the secrecy prevents any misunderstandings.” She leaned forward. “You do realize the magnitude of this, don’t you? There are only three people in all of Bertinierre who know this. Three people, and now you.”
He understood the magnitude. Yes, he did. Mentha nobilis, a damned plant that tasted like dirt, was the source of wealth he’d come to discover. A stupid little plant was powerful enough to change the fortunes of two countries. No wonder de Emmerich couldn’t figure it out. The simplicity was the secret of its success. That, and the stealth that kept the business so secret most people realized nothing about the transaction. Dom wanted to laugh out loud.
Yet... at the same time, shock held him immobile. Laurentia had freely given him the secret he had come to discover. He hadn’t had to seduce her, she’d just told him, and just because he’d beat up a kidnapper without the wit to stay alive in the king’s own prison.
Brat, bless her, had pointed out the obvious. De Emmerich had set the kidnappers on the princess. De Emmerich had hired him. De Emmerich trusted no one to do as he commanded. So de Emmerich had to have convinced one of the servants or the courtiers in the palace in Plaisance to turn traitor. The poisoning of the prisoner confirmed that, and knowing someone was a traitor, Dom had watched with a cold and analytical eye.
Ambition rode Francis, Comte de Radcote, with an unrelenting spur. Weltrude ... some people might say a woman would never act with such perfidy, but Dom knew better. The female of the race could often be the most vicious, and Weltrude, never beautiful, no longer young, and in a position that lost importance every day, had reasons to resent Laurentia. Dulcet, Countess de Sempere ... the princess allowed Dulcie to be her confidant, so she was the most dangerous of all.
“Who’s the third person who knows about this secret?” Dom asked, hoping to pry the truth from her unwary grasp.
Waving an airy hand, she dismissed his question. “That’s not important. What is important is what I realized yesterday, when you rescued me. Then, and only then, did I recognize you were truly a man of honor, a man who had given his word to protect me and risked his life to do so. You are more noble than those with bloodlines they can trace for a thousand years. You are a better man than any of those pompous windbags who don’t even know the meaning of loyalty. And I wanted you to know”—her eyes filled with tears, and her voice wobbled—“how much that means to a princess.”
She’d forced him to talk, had drawn out the story of his childhood, listened when he went on and on about his mother and how she’d earned a living. About him and what a sensitive little bastard he had been. About the humiliations and the hatreds that had nurtured his hatreds.
Laurentia hadn’t mocked him, or laughed at him. Indeed, she had brought him up here to show him the deepest secret of Bertinierre, and nothing in his confessions had changed her mind.
Stupid damned woman. What was she trying to do, make him love her?
He jumped back, slamming the back of his head against his chair.
Hell, no. He didn’t love her.
And what would it matter if he did? He had no options. He had to pass the secret to de Emmerich.
Dom looked at Laurentia, petite and earnest, framed by boughs and generous to her bones.
He didn’t love her, but here in full sight of Bertinierre, he made his vow. He would come back.
He would do his best to negate the harm that must inevitably come to Laurentia. And before he left, he would l
ay his claim on her.
Laurentia didn’t know what to think. She didn’t know what she’d expected when she told Dom the truth, but certainly not this tight-lipped concentration. Quietly, she slipped into the chair next to his, and together they sat in silence, waiting, waiting . . . for what?
Laurentia didn’t know. She wanted to ask Dom what he thought, again impress on him the importance of silence, but he sat in his chair, his head tilted against the headrest, so motionless she couldn’t see the rise and fall of his chest. He might have been asleep, except his eyes were open, staring out into the treetops as if he could read the future in the wind that stirred them. His manner reminded her of her father on those days when he had to sit in judgment in the royal courts.
Yes, Dom was acting like a man with decisions to make.
No, like a man who had made decisions.
Eventually he stirred, and without looking at her asked, “Do you have any other secrets you want to tell me?”
“No,” she said faintly. “No, that’s the only secret I know.”
“Then,” he said, “take off your clothes.”
Chapter Twenty-two
The thin mountain air must be affecting her brain, Laurentia thought... “What did you say?”
In a leisurely manner—no, a lordly manner—Dom turned his head and looked at her, his pure blue eyes hot as embers after a forest fire. “Take off your clothes.”
Her breathing developed a serious hitch.
He went on, “I haven’t been able to think of anything except you, bare beneath that jacket, since you told me you’d left off your shirt. That was what you intended, wasn’t it?”
“ ‘Intended’ is too strong a word,” she said, her voice thin.
One of his hands stroked down the smooth wood on the chair arm. Slowly, sensuously. “What word would you use, Your Highness?”
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