Prince Charming (43 page)

The thousands who looked on did not know the half of what it took for him to stand here with such solid composure, she thought. Truly, she was in awe of him, knowing the full extent of his worries and seeing him so self-possessed, but she supposed all his training had been for moments of crisis like this.

The manhunt for Orlando was on, though Rafael was still keeping the matter as quiet as possible to avoid embarrassment to the royal family. He wanted Orlando to be taken alive, if possible, so that King Lazar could confront him when he returned. He had ordered the prime minister placed under house arrest until his role in the suspected conspiracy became clear.

The arrest of Don Arturo had complicated matters anew with the powerful Bishop Justinian, for the prime minister and the bishop had been great friends for years. Once more, the bishop had opposed Rafael, this time trying to forbid him from giving Adriano a proper Catholic burial. The death wound, the bishop proclaimed, was clearly self-inflicted.

Rafael swore on the sword of his ancestors that Adriano was no suicide but had been murdered. Dani asked him gently about it and he admitted to her that it was, of course, a bold-faced lie, but the sin was one he was willing to take upon his own soul. Adriano had known no peace in life; Rafael was determined that at least in death his friend’s spirit should find rest.

Word of the dispute between the revered bishop and the rake prince spread. In the end, Rafael had thrust Bishop Justinian aside again and imported for the day the same amiable cardinal who had married them. Dani suspected the easygoing Roman was so obliging because he was eager to have a future king in his debt. Dani knew Rafael’s unwillingness to budge before the bishop’s wrath surely worried many of his ardently Catholic subjects, but whatever the cost, the prince saw his friend buried in hallowed ground.

She felt sad for Adriano and for Nic, though she had found both of them a bit difficult to get along with. Standing by the gaping grave with Rafael as the final prayers were said, her real sorrow was for her husband and Elan.

Holding Rafael’s arm as the huge throng of mourners began filing out of the crowded but quiet cemetery, Dani tensed as Chloe Sinclair came walking toward them, her lovely face mottled red with pain and tears behind her black net veil.

Chloe said not a word but walked right up to Rafael and flew at him with her fists. “How could you let this happen to him? He loved you even more than I did, you bastard, and you let him die! It’s your fault!” she shrieked.

The Royal Guardsmen quickly closed in on her before she could prolong the hysterical scene she was making.

When Rafael and Dani were sitting across from each other in the state coach a few moments later, she reached over and touched his knee softly. He looked over, haggard and weary.

“Don’t listen to her, love. It was not your fault,” she said softly.

He nodded, but he didn’t looked convinced. He wrapped his hand around hers and sat staring out the window, brooding and remote.

Shadows hugged his body as Orlando slid through the inky night, seizing his opportunity while the Royal Guardsmen around the prime minister’s palazzo rushed to investigate the simple distraction he’d created. He used the fleeting interlude to vault the wrought-iron fence along the sides of the property, its spikes gleaming in the moonlight, then he climbed, quick as a spider, up the rose trellis to the second floor, where he dove in through an open window.

He cursed as he landed with a thud on his shoulder where Rafe had stabbed him, but he was in. Climbing stealthily to his feet, Orlando stole through the darkened house, past the study where the haunting portrait of Don Arturo’s dead nephew hung like a shrine over the mantel. He glided silently up the curving white staircase until at last he stood looming over Don Arturo, who was snoring softly in his bed, his nightcap skewed.

Orlando sneered faintly in the dark, resenting the fact that he still needed the physically weak but politically powerful little man to achieve his ends.

Now that he had been charged with the murders of Nic, Adriano, and the three Royal Guards, he knew his “mentor,” the preening fool, was probably having doubts about his protégé. Orlando was yet in the subtle process of laying his final, greatest trap for his golden brother, but when the jaws of fate had snapped on Rafe, then, more than ever, he would need Don Arturo to bulwark his credibility. At great risk to himself, he had come to ensure that the prime minister was still his ally and the prince’s enemy.

He had to play his hand with exceeding care, he knew, for only Don Arturo had the power to sway the succession of the throne in his favor when the direct male line had perished. Otherwise, the crown might go to one of the king’s Spanish grandchildren.

With that thought, he donned a mask of loyal anxiety. “Don Arturo! My lord! Wake up!” he whispered.

When he touched the man’s shoulder, he startled awake. “Who’s there?”

“Shhh! It is I. We must talk. I don’t have long.”

The dignified old man rubbed his eyes. “Orlando! How on earth did you get in here? Oh, never mind—give me a moment. Got to take a piss,” he grumbled.

Orlando paced, rubbing his hurt shoulder a bit as Don Arturo stomped out of bed, went behind the Oriental screen in one corner of the room, and relieved himself in the chamber pot. When the diminutive man stomped back out again, he was wearing a banyan robe over his long nightshirt, but he had removed his dangling nightcap.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your sleep, my lord.”

“It’s all right, lad,” he muttered. “I’ve bloody little else to do, locked up in here.”

“It is shameful what my cousin has done to you—as though you had done something wrong! How are you faring?”

“I’m fine. You’re the one I’m worried about. I know they are hunting you. I imagine you’ve been on the run. Have you eaten? Something to drink?”

“No, sir.”

“Do you need money?”

Orlando looked at him sharply, taken aback by his solicitude. Then he looked away. “No, sir. You are…kind. I only came here to explain and to tell you I will get you out of this shameful confinement when the time is ripe.”

Don Arturo pursed his shrewd mouth and rested his hands on his waist. “Orlando, you are wanted for murder. First that chef dies and now they say you murdered two of the prince’s friends and three Royal Guardsmen—”

“The only one I killed was Nic, and it was in self-defense!” he interrupted impatiently. “Di Tadzio blew his own head off and the guards met their fates in a medieval spike pit which they could have easily avoided if they had been watching where they were going. Instead, they were out for my blood and they got careless. It wasn’t my fault.”

“Their deaths were an accident?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “Sir, Rafe is setting me up, don’t you see? He’s trying to make me out as the villain and appear innocent himself! I think he is even going to try to pin the king’s poisoning on me!”

“Calm down, boy—”

“You know he is not to be trusted! Everything has turned in his favor. You and I are the only ones left who can stop him! If he turns you against me, too, I tell you, sir,” he said with a show of anguish that would have fooled even Chloe, “I am a dead man!”

“There, now, settle yourself, lad. No one’s turning me against you.”

Orlando suddenly stepped toward him and clasped the older man hard in a filial embrace for a moment, then released him, hung his head, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Forgive me, sir. I beg your pardon for this display,” he murmured. “I’m injured, I’m alone, they are hunting me like hounds on a fox, and I…I must go to ground for a while to survive.” He took a deep breath and met the don’s startled gaze. “But I have devised a plan to rescue you from this shameful confinement when the moment is right.”

“You have? How?”

“I have sent for men who work for me at my warehouses in Pisa. Rather rough types, I admit. At the appropriate time, I will order a sneak attack on the Royal Guards ringing your house. My men should be able to put them down without much noise, then they’ll don the Royal Guards’ uniforms. That way, when my men conduct you out of here it will appear that all is normal.”

“‘Put them down?’” Don Arturo shuddered. “You don’t mean murder them, I hope.”

“It can be done without killing, I suppose.”

“Your men will face steep charges if your plan fails. It is a crime to impersonate the Royal Guardsmen. Yet…” he paused. “If you bring me together with the rest of the cabinet, we can surely take power back from Rafael until the king returns from Spain.”

“Precisely,” Orlando said, though of course, by his design, King Lazar would never return alive.

“All right.” The man clapped his arm soundly. “Good work, Orlando.”

He nodded curtly. “I must go.” As he stalked across the room, mentally rehearsing his escape, Don Arturo spoke abruptly behind him.

“You…remind me of my nephew if he’d lived to be your age.”

Orlando paused and looked over his shoulder. The don’s lined face was wistful, his expression faraway.

It was the closest thing to an open declaration of affection that anyone had ever given Orlando. He stared blankly at the old man with an odd, twisting pain coming up in him from his belly. Stiffening, he tamped it down under the shield of ice he had formed in himself at an early age. Without answering, he turned away and left.

For the next two weeks, they followed the plan Dani had suggested. Rafe knew that her purpose in undertaking a tour of Ascencion was to win Their Majesties’ blessing in spite of her notorious background as the Masked Rider, but for him, staying constantly on the move was a deliberate tactic for ensuring her security.

He knew he was the ultimate target of Orlando’s malice, but he would not put it past his half-brother to attack Dani as well, especially now that Rafe knew she had rejected Orlando’s advances. He kept her constantly in his presence, both of them ringed at all times by a contingent of twenty of the fiercest Royal Guards. With but a few servants and their small but heavily armed escort, they traveled light, meeting the common people and surveying the current state of affairs in all the diverse regions of Ascencion, from the wooded mountainous interior, to the fertile farm plateaus, to the quaint fishing villages that dotted the coast.

When they met with the crowds of loyal subjects who came to greet them and to hear his brief, cheerful speeches, the uniformed guards maintained a secure barrier around them.

Wherever they went, the guards’ hard-eyed gazes scanned the mobs constantly for Orlando. Rafe knew they thirsted to avenge their fallen mates who had died so hideously.

He, too, thirsted for vengeance for Nic and Adriano, and for his father’s suffering.

Anger waited in him like a crouched lion.

Thoughts of Orlando gnawed constantly at him. The manhunt continued, but the so-called duke eluded all attempts to capture him.

Sometimes Rafe trembled with an odd, sudden chill in the crushing heat, fearing that somehow Orlando might slip past all his protective measures and snuff out Dani’s life as casually as he had Adriano’s and Nic’s. That terror shadowed him, but he hid it from her, ashamed to face the knowledge that by forcing her—blackmailing her—into marrying him, he had tumbled her headlong into danger.

As the weeks passed, the siroccos rolled over the island, a tyranny of humid, suffocating heat. The distended underbellies of the heavy clouds swelled with the pent-up moisture of the winds’ journey over the Mediterranean, but still the skies refused to relent and give forth rain.

The heat and the mounting barometric pressure affected man and beast. Tempers ran short among the disciplined Royal Guards. Their fretful horses balked and nipped spitefully at each other, beset with fat stinging flies, the only creatures that could thrive in the oppressive heat. As the royal party traveled from town to town, the land under the horses’ hooves languished in dust.

Rafe knew he was drifting deeper into himself: Fear for Dani’s safety was not the only cause of his increasing uneasiness. Rationally, he knew that Dani was loyal to him. He knew that she was in love with him, and yet the small, niggling weed of mistrust that Julia had sown in his breast so many years ago clung stubbornly, refusing to be uprooted. He did not realize how deeply his heart had been scarred.

The more he loved Dani, the greater grew his sense of risk. Was it wise to let himself care so very deeply for a woman? How could he trust his own judgment?

But these fears he kept to himself, ashamed and confused by them, when her every glance was filled with devotion. He knew it was ridiculous to fear betrayal from so steady an ally. He was determined to overcome this weakness. Besides, her clear, guileless smile had the power to chase his fears off utterly—and yet, they always had a way of creeping back, where they would lurk just under the surface of the happiness he shared with her.

Fear, however, was nowhere near his mind that evening at dusk as the cicadas screamed gleefully in the heat and fireflies drifted. Thunder rumbled miles away over the eastern horizon and a feeble breeze limply stirred the leaves of the oak under which he sat.

There was a smell of an impending summer storm in the air. He thought he’d felt a raindrop twenty minutes ago—but nothing.

It had been another long day of traveling, touring another little town in the drought-stricken midlands, addressing the common folk, and being feted at lunchtime by the local gentry and the town mayor. The royal party had taken over a comfortable travelers’ inn for their short stay. The guardsmen discreetly ringed the property.

Rafe sat under a large tree in the field behind the inn, dozing after he’d finished reading Elan’s update from the Palazzo Reale. Elan suggested cutting back water rations again.

Please, God, You’ve got to give my people rain,
he thought as he dragged his burning eyes open and watched Dani exercise the white mare he had given her as a wedding present.

As she cantered the dainty Arabian in a figure eight, he mused with a private smile that riding was her second favorite way of releasing tension.