In that, Weltrude was wrong. Laurentia had freely given the secret to Dom, and all she’d been foolish enough to do was fall in love.
“No one really wants you for yourself, a spoiled, insolent, impetuous girl like you.”
There, you’ve said it. Give me my letter! “I know that, too.”
“Yes. Well.” Weltrude rose. “As long as you don’t think anyone cares about you anymore. Your people hate you for bringing this on them. Your father still lives in the palace, of course, but he’s nothing but a puppet doing as de Emmerich tells him, and de Emmerich does what I tell him.”
“I see.” The thought of the indignities suffered by her father grieved Laurentia past bearing.
“You should be glad I’m the power behind de Emmerich.” Going to the iron door, she banged on it. As the guard noisily turned the key in the lock, she said, “If it weren’t for me, de Emmerich would have killed your father days ago. I believe de Emmerich used to be a friend of your father’s, and your father discarded him for some reason.”
“Because de Emmerich is a treacherous swine?” Laurentia inquired in a polite tone that only emphasized the brutal words.
“It could be that.” Weltrude opened her handbag and brought out the daily letter from King Jerome.
She placed it on the table and looked Laurentia directly in the eyes. “But he’s no more treacherous than you, my dear Laurie. You destroyed your own father.”
In that, Weltrude was right.
Laurentia watched the guard bow the wretched woman out of the cell, saw the door shut, heard the rattle of the key. Only then did she snatch up her precious letter.
The seal had been broken, of course. For security, Weltrude said. So she knew they weren’t planning insurrection.
Laurentia smiled.
But the letter said no more than it had in previous days. King Jerome was well. He hoped she was well. She was not to worry. All was going as they had foreseen.
She brushed her hand across her suddenly wet eyes. The letter gave her comfort, yes. It told her everything she wanted to know. But... but how she wanted to see her father, talk to him, hug him again and have him tell her he loved her. In those few minutes before the guards had come to take her away, her father had taken the blame for insisting Dom be her bodyguard. She had taken the blame for falling blindly in love. Then they’d abandoned their futile self-reproaches and spoke of the plans they’d made. Plans they would now put into action.
Laurentia resumed her pacing.
Down the hall, she heard the key turn in the lock, and she paused. Weltrude allowed only herself as visitor. Supper had already been served. There were no other prisoners here. So why the change in routine?
Had someone, somehow, found out what she was doing?
She couldn’t hear footsteps, but then, she never could. The door was thick and strong. She could only stand and wait, heart thumping, staring at the door.
The key grated in the lock. The door swung back.
And she heard Dominic of Baminia, the biggest bastard in the whole world, say, “Thank you, Toti. There’ll be more when you let me out.”
The pain of hearing his too-familiar voice almost doubled her up.
This had never occurred to her. That Dom would have the audacity to come to Bertinierre, to her prison, and mock her? No. She hadn’t thought that even Dom could be so cruel.
Stepping forward, she blocked the entrance. She didn’t glance at Dom, or in any way acknowledge him. “Toti, I give you the word of a princess you’ll get your reward if you’ll take him away.”
Dom crowded her into her cell by his sheer bulk. “Get out, Toti.”
Toti grinned, stupid as always, and shut the door. The key rattled in the lock, leaving Laurentia alone— with Dom.
She didn’t take the time to brace herself; she didn’t dare. If she thought about it, she’d never find the courage. So she looked right at him, absorbed the pain of seeing him without recoiling, and said, “I’d ask why you came, but I’d guess the answer would be to laugh in my face.”
His face, that fallen-angel face with a day’s smudgy growth of whiskers, changed from watchfulness to a grim impatience. “You don’t know me well.”
“No, I don’t know you at all.” He flinched, and she enjoyed that.
“But you do,” he said. “In the biblical sense.”
She should have known he wouldn’t let her get away with winning even a verbal battle. He would attack on any front, strip her defenses down with reminders of her own idiocy, and leave her, again, bleeding and helpless.
Only she wouldn’t let him. If she woke in the night with tears on her cheeks, he would never know.
“Yes.” She nodded judiciously. “That part I quite enjoyed. I think you must be a good lover.”
He ceased his satisfied survey of her prison to consider her incredulously. “You think?”
“Perhaps you don’t realize it, but since you left I’ve been unable to investigate any other men or their abilities.” She gestured around the bare chamber. “The possibilities here are limited.”
“No one’s touched you, then.”
He wore a different outfit than she’d last seen on him, rather elegant if one liked black leather trousers and a black leather waistcoat. She would swear his black shirt was silk, with close-fitting sleeves and a tight-fitting collar, and if he had a jacket he had failed to bring it into the cell. Only his boots were the same, heavy and black.
She wanted to ask where he was going dressed in such a bizarre manner. She chose not to care. “No one comes near.”
Dom nodded. “I told de Emmerich they weren’t to hurt you.”
Her breath caught on a jagged bit of emotion. Funny how it affected her to hear Dom admit his culpability. She knew he had used her. She knew she’d been stupid. But to have him admit he’d known, planned for her incarceration, talked to de Emmerich about her and how he made a laughingstock of the princess of Bertinierre ... “Good of you,” she said.
He considered her, glowering in the plain, short-sleeved dimity gown Weltrude had allowed her. “I didn’t come to ridicule. I came to help.”
She snorted. Weltrude wouldn’t approve, but now everything that Weltrude had ever taught her was suspect. “Help? Help do what? Prepare me for a lifetime in prison? Prepare me for death? Strangle me? Break my neck?”
He moved forward, stalking her, tightening the dimensions of the room with his determination. “You’re not going to die here!”
She gave way, stepping sideways, keeping herself away from corners. “Not here, but if your de Emmerich gets his way—probably on a gibbet in Omnia’s square.”
“Listen to me.” He caught her shoulder, halting her retreat. “It won’t come to that.”
His touch hadn’t changed. It didn’t matter what she knew of him, how he had betrayed her. Her flesh warmed, her heart warbled, each strand of hair and toenail and elbow longed to unite with him.
With a jolt, she realized why he had come. “Is this part of your fee?” she asked hoarsely. “I’m not broken yet, so they send Dominic of Baminia in to finish the job? Or do you get paid extra for torturing women and children?”
His eyes narrowed.
“I recognize that look.” She pointed her finger into his face. “That means you’re losing your temper. Or not. Maybe it just means you’re acting like you’re losing your temper. Just like you acted like you desired me, you acted like you could be trusted, you acted—”
He folded her finger back into her hand, then jerked her forward by her fist. “I did desire you.” He brushed her other hand aside. “I can be trusted.” He scooped her up by the waist and brought her full against him. “And I am definitely losing my temper.”
The feel and scent of him enraged her. She wanted to flail at him, to flatten him. “Do you think I’m afraid? Of your anger? Under your tutelage, I have done the worst thing a princess can to do her family and her country. I no longer fear lightning, or tidal waves, or raging boars, and I mo
st certainly do not fear you.”
With exaggerated and mighty patience, he asked, “You’re not going to listen to me, are you?”
That patience, that patronage sent her over the edge into rage. “I was a fool over Beaumont. I was a fool over you. The third time isn’t going to happen, Dom.”
He held her. Just held her and looked at her, his eyes like coals from the hottest part of the fire. “You said you loved me.”
Victory at all costs. He would leave her no defenses, fling up each individual weakness to her until she crumpled.
Very well. She understood war now in a way she had never understood it before, and she had her weapons, too.
“I said a lot of things. I meant them at that moment. A lifetime has passed since then.” Grabbing his hair, she yanked it, then stomped her heel hard on the instep of his foot.
He let her go and grabbed for his foot.
She backed rapidly away. “Love withers, Dom, at the sound of laughter, and you were laughing at me every moment we were together.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Dom thanked God for his heavy leather boots, because they were the only things that saved him from a broken foot.
He looked up at Laurentia who stood, her back against the door, exuding absolute unbridled pleasure, and he thanked God for something else.
“Your Highness, you’ve forgotten one thing.”
She was smart enough to be wary of his cordial tone. “What’s that?” she asked cautiously.
Putting his foot on the ground, he stomped it a few times to ascertain its soundness. “We’re locked in here.”
He saw her breasts rise under her quick breath.
“You just tried to hurt the ruthless mercenary bastard who took your virginity and left you sleeping.”
“And betrayed me.” She had every vertebrae on her spine pressed hard against the door now, but she was still defiant.
“And betrayed you,” he echoed. “Do you remember that piece of advice I gave you after your second kidnapping attempt, Your Highness?”
She slapped the flat of her hand against the door in a rhythmic motion.
Oh, yes, she remembered. He could tell. “Never hurt a man just enough to make him angry. You want to disable him completely, Your Highness, because an angry man is hard to handle. Do you remember the other thing I told you, Your Highness?”
She balled her hands into fists and began to beat against the door. She didn’t turn her back on Dom.
Good. She was smart enough to be worried. She was brave enough to be defiant. She wasn’t afraid of him. Good, also.
And she was still furious.
That was fine with him, because he was furious, too. She loved him, she’d said so. He loved her, he’d discovered that. But damn her, she ought to trust him.
He spoke through clenched teeth. “I told you, after you had incapacitated the man, to run like hell. Well, Your Highness, you haven’t left yourself anywhere to run. We’re in a tiny prison chamber and no one can hear you.”
“Toti’s got to release you,” she said.
“Toti’s not going to release me.” He knew that as well as he knew his father’s name. “I blithely just walked into de Emmerich’s trap, and he’s not going to let me go until I give him the Pollardine diamond.”
She stopped beating on the door and stared at Dom. “The Pollardine diamond? How did you get that?”
“I took it off their sleeping king and held it as a guarantee. A guarantee which I have sacrificed by coming here.” Smiling with false affability, he sat in the narrow chair and yanked off his boots. “Your Highness, you’re stuck with me.”
“Wh-what are you going to do?”
As if she didn’t know. “I have just spent the most miserable week of my life,” he said. “I had planned to spend two full days and two full nights with you, convincing you in every way I could imagine that you were my woman. Mine, now and forever. But I had to leave early because you told me about Chariton and I knew if I didn’t leave, he’d be at the door, telling you the truth about me, and I’d never complete my commission. That’s a hell of a way to end a career, Your Highness—in prison.”
She laughed bitterly. “I know that.”
He glared and stripped off his waistcoat. “So I hurried away, barely giving poor Oscuro a rest, trying to find Pollardine’s army, and I get there too late, thank God, and almost get cheated out of my pay and almost get killed.”
“I wonder which one concerned you most.”
“Then as fast as I could, I headed off to Sereminia.”
“Sereminia?” She blinked.
He relished her confusion. “Sereminia, my former home. There I found out that the victor always writes the history books, and my brother the king was the victor. I was a nobody, a worm he had crushed beneath his heel.”
“If only that were true.”
She didn’t think him a worm. He chose to consider that an advance. “But I accomplished my mission there. It took a few days; they needed my advice about the best way to conquer Bertinierre—”
She looked truly aghast. “You brought another army down on us?”
Damn her, damn her! He got his shirt off in record time and started peeling off his trousers. “But when I was done, I leaped on Oscuro and hurried to Omnia.”
“You invited Sereminia”—she developed an odd expression—“to invade us?”
“When I got here, I inquired first about you.” He pointed at her. “Not about Brat, not about Ruby, but about you, because all the time I was gone all I could think about was you. All I could worry about was you. All I wanted was you. Princess Laurentia, who loved me. Princess Laurentia, who wanted to wed me.”
Now she turned her back on him and started beating on the door and yelling. “Toti, open this door. Toti!”
She had finally gotten smart.
He tossed his trousers over his waistcoat and shirt, and stalked toward her wearing nothing but the outfit he’d been born in. “Princess Laurentia, you and I exchanged vows, whether you want to admit it or not, and I’m going to damned bloody well teach you that when you make a vow, you keep it.” He could have picked her up from the back; instead he availed himself of the chance to unbutton her gown.
When she realized what he was doing, she tried to face him, but he’d had some experience with struggling women—a lot of noblewomen liked to pretend to be unwilling—and Laurentia’s fury interfered with her judgment. If she’d dropped to the floor she might have had a chance, but all she did was struggle, and he took care of that with one arm across her back.
“When I get out,” she snapped in royal wrath, “I will have you horsewhipped!”
“I have a better idea.” He finished unbuttoning and stepped away and just as he knew she would, she flung herself around and her gown slipped off.
She grabbed for it. It drooped around her arms. The straps of her chemise could not have been simpler: no lace, no ribbons, just pure, plain white cotton so thin as to be transparent, and beneath that— nothing.
Just as he’d hoped. “You never wear a corset, do you? I like that in a woman.” Lifting the holster, he extracted his pistol.
“In prison? There’s no one to see me here!” She answered him, but her gaze wavered between him, cock proud and ready, and the gun.
“There’s no one to see me, either.” He was so aroused he just wanted to pick her up and bury himself in her, but he had something to prove to her. “No one’s ever going to know what passes between us this night.”
“Night?” She glanced up toward the window where the spring sun still shone from the west.
He checked the pistol. It was loaded. He advanced on her. She shrank against the door. Taking her hand in his, he wrapped her fingers around the gun. “I’m going to take you. There’s only one way out.”
She stared at his hand on hers, at the gun she held so unwillingly. “What’s that?”
“You have to shoot me.”
Slowly, she lifted her gaze to his
face.
With a gesture that offered himself to her, he said, “Go ahead. The guards can’t hear. We’re too far away. There’s been so much gunfire, no one on the street will even notice. And I won’t stop you.” He grinned at her in challenge.
Immediately he realized the grin was a mistake, for Laurentia’s spine straightened. She dropped her gown. Smiling back at him, she stepped away from the door. It wasn’t a pleasant smile.
“Do you have a cigar?” she asked.
“A cigar?” He did. When Danior had discovered he liked them, he had given him a box. “Why?”
“Get it.”
He didn’t understand, but he knew he wasn’t going to like this. He fumbled with his waistcoat and got a cigar out of the inner pocket.
She gestured with the pistol. “Put it in your mouth and step against the wall.”
He moved back to the far wall, which wasn’t nearly far enough. What had possessed him to try and prove anything to Laurentia? She had a grudge against him, a grudge even he could understand, and he could tell by the sparkle in her eyes and the thrust of her shoulders that his provocation had infuriated her.
“Put the cigar in your mouth and turn sideways,” she commanded.
“But if I turn sideways . . .” Sadly enough, he was still aroused.
“You said you wanted a demonstration of my shooting ability.” She was still smiling. “I’m going to shoot the cigar out of your mouth.”
He would see that smile in his nightmares. “Pistols are notoriously hard to aim, and you’ve never shot that particular piece.”
“You’ll just have to trust me, won’t you?”
God had answered his prayers last time. Would it be too selfish to beg God for his own safety now? Did he even deserve his prayers to be answered? Thrusting the cigar between his teeth—lucky for him Danior smoked long cigars—he turned sideways. He glanced at Laurentia out of the corners of his eyes. She was lifting the pistol in both hands, an intent expression on her face.
Compulsively, unable to help himself, he found himself praying.
“You’ll want to cover your ears,” she advised. “It’s going to be loud.”
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