Prince Charming (7 page)

“Tell that to Count Bulbati.”

“Who is that?”

“The man who raises my taxes each time I refuse to marry him.”

His attention came to a point like a saber. He made a mental note to look into it, then pushed the accusation of embezzlement aside, concentrating on her. “Why do you refuse him? Wouldn’t a prudent marriage relieve your situation here?”

“Perhaps. But firstly, Count Bulbati is a corrupt and greedy swine, and secondly, I shall never marry. Not anyone. Ever.”

“Why, for heaven’s sake?” he demanded in shock, as though he had not said those very words countless times himself.

She lifted her chin, starlight on her hair. “Because I’m free.” She gestured toward the villa. “Our house may need repair, but at least it’s my house, and all these lands…” With a sweep of her hand, she showed him the landscape. “Though they thirst with drought and the crops are low, they are
my
lands. All of it is entailed on me until my death. How many women can count themselves so fortunate?”

He glanced around, mystified that she felt lucky or grateful when he doubted she’d had enough to eat in days or maybe longer. “Looks like nothing but a lot of work and headaches to me.”

“I need answer to no one but myself,” she replied. “Why should I become the legal property of a person who is no better than me, and in all likelihood my inferior in most respects?” Her thin shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I don’t expect you or anyone to understand. It is merely the choice I have made.”

“The choice you’ve made,” he echoed, feeling disoriented merely talking to the chit. He could not fathom where she had come by her sturdy little opinions, but she certainly seemed in control of her life, which was more than he could say for himself.

The thought irked him.

Hearing riders approaching, he looked over and saw his men coming toward him from the woods. He saw that they had his gold but no Masked Rider. He sent a scowling look over his shoulder at Daniela Chiaramonte, standing there on the step with her hands folded demurely over her too-skinny waist.

He had thought to leave two soldiers posted at the villa to protect her and her family, but he abandoned the idea, for he doubted that the Masked Rider posed any kind of threat to her, considering that the outlaw’s right-hand man was apparently her beau.

The thought made his mood fouler. “If you are quite through instructing me, Lady Daniela, the king awaits my arrival.”

“Goodbye, Prince,” she said politely. “And…happy birthday.”

Was the little baggage mocking him? He looked sharply at her, suspecting that he heard a faint trace of laughter in her voice. Still, for the life of him, all he wanted was to march over to her and kiss that smug smile off her lips; but oh, no, he was not going to do that. He was going to get on his horse and ride far, far away from her. He was good at forgetting women; he made up his mind to expunge this vexing little redhead from his memory on the spot.

Belatedly, he remembered that he had sworn off helping damsels in distress some years ago.

As he swung up into the saddle and urged the horse into motion, he mentally bade the eccentric Lady Daniela good riddance.

Don Giovanni himself would have been at a loss.

  
CHAPTER  
THREE

Still out of humor with the world after his encounter with the vexing redhead and her unheard-of rejection of him in favor of a rustic, Rafe traveled the rest of the way to Belfort without event, though he was on his guard as they passed the poorer, ramshackle outskirts of Ascencion’s sprawling capital.

Nearing the heart of the cosmopolitan Italian city, graceful, wrought-iron street lamps lit the broad, cobbled thoroughfares. People had come out to enjoy the cool of evening. The streets of Belfort rang with laughter and argument from the coffeehouses and taverns they passed. People hailed him everywhere he passed. Dutifully, he waved as he cantered by on the strapping white stallion.

Moving down the street at a trot, the horse coughed under him with the hot, dust-laden night breeze. He patted the animal’s warm, damp neck and a puff of dust rose from it. He winced, for his own throat felt caked with fine clay.

Dust coated everything, with the drought in its fourth month. Even the hardy marigolds in the flower boxes of the tall, fashionable city row houses looked wilted. The elegant fountains in every garden square had been turned off to conserve water.

It would get worse before it got better, he thought grimly. It was early July, but soon the sirocco winds would come slithering up from the heart of the Sahara Desert, flattening North Africa, stretching over the limpid jade waters of the Mediterranean, to lie heavily over all of Southern Europe. During those two or three weeks each year, all hell tended to break loose on the island.

As they turned a corner, Rafe caught a far-off glimpse of a fanciful bronze cupola rising over the city roofs, gleaming in the starlight, but instead of heading for his pleasure palace, he was bound for the Palazzo Reale.

He cantered his white stallion into the wide cobbled central square of the city. Here the cathedral and the royal palace faced each other like stately partners in a minuet. Between them stood the famous bronze fountain dedicated to past generations of Fiore kings. Pigeons roosted for the night amid the glorious sculpture work.

Rafe swung down from the saddle and was quickly ushered by the Royal Guards through the gates. Glancing at his pocket watch, he hurried up the wide, shallow steps.

In the imposing entrance hall, he was greeted by Falconi, the ancient palace steward whom he had tormented as a merry youth in these halls. He clapped the frail, formidably dignified servant on the back, nearly toppling him, then quickly caught him.

“Where’s my old man, Falconi?”

“Council chambers, sir. I’m afraid the meeting is almost over.”

“Meeting?” he exclaimed, already in motion. “What meeting? Devil take it. Nobody said anything about some bloody meeting!”

“Er, good luck, sir.”

Rafe waved his thanks and strode quickly down the marble hall to the administrative block of the palace, his heart pounding. Hell, he’d done it again. When he arrived before the closed door of the king’s privy council chamber, he paused, bracing himself. Then he threw open the door, making an entrance with an air of supreme bonhomie.

“Gentlemen!” he greeted them, sauntering in with breezy nonchalance. “Good Lord, a full cabinet! Are we at war?” he asked with a grin, shoving the door closed.

“Your Highness,” the starchy old men grumbled.

“Hey-ho, Father.”

Reading a document at the head of the long wide table, King Lazar glanced at Rafe over the edge of the square-rimmed spectacles perched on his stubborn Roman nose.

King Lazar di Fiore was a large-framed, striking man, square-jawed and hard-featured, with salt-and-pepper hair shorn close and weathered brown skin. He frowned at Rafe, his piercing, dark-eyed gaze boring into him with his characteristic intensity.

Rafe took in that stare, wondering just how badly he had blundered this time.

From boyhood, he had studied his father’s every nuance of expression, not only for the benefit of learning to manage men, which his father did expertly, but also because his own young world had revolved, painfully, around trying to live up to the great man’s impossible expectations. Finally, he had accepted philosophically that he was never going to be enough in his father’s eyes. He would never quite live down The Debacle.

“We’re honored you decided to join us, Your Highness,” King Lazar remarked, inspecting the document in his hand again. “And no, we are not at war. Sorry to deprive you of that entertainment.”

“It’s just as well,” Rafe said as he dropped idly into his chair at the foot of the table, hooking his arm in lazy pose over the chair’s back. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”

The ruddy-cheeked admiral of the navy cleared his throat, swallowing a chuckle. He was perhaps the only man in the room who understood and appreciated Rafe at all, or at least was not offended by him.

The same could not be said for the formidable pair on the other side of the table, Bishop Justinian Vasari and Prime Minister Arturo di Sansevero.

The two were a study in contrasts: the bishop big and bombastic, stocky as a bulldog draped in flowing, brocaded robes; all bark, no bite. He had a round, rubicund face and wild white wisps of hair that stuck out in all directions from underneath his velvet beanie. He was as sure of his God’s opinions on all matters as he was gratified by the constant pampering of his gardens at his rich palazzo. Mostly he was known to preach with a rolling, thunderous eloquence, and when he preached against vice and licentiousness, everyone knew to whom he was referring.

In short, the bishop saw the crown prince as the profligate prodigal son of a good and godly father, King Lazar. Fortunately, there was a second son, the cherubic, sweet-tempered, and obedient ten-year-old Prince Leo, who played Able to Rafe’s Cain in the bishop’s cosmology, though Leo’s nurse could well have attested that he, too, was a budding rogue. Bishop Justinian had been named by the king as Prince Leo’s legal guardian and had been granted the right of regency, which meant that if God ever smote Rafe down on account of his Roman orgies and drunken chariot races, the bishop would rule for Leo until the boy came of age.

For reasons Rafe could not comprehend, the people of Ascencion loved their fiery, pompous, high-living bishop.

The prime minister was Bishop Justinian’s utter opposite, though his opinion of Rafe was the same. Neat, quick, tidy, and discreet, Don Arturo was the consummate courtier. His keen, darting mind was like a silent, razor-toothed barracuda. Fortunately, the don was endowed with an unflinching loyalty to Ascencion. Slight of stature, Don Arturo had hooded brown eyes and a thin, spare mouth that only softened when he saw his sister’s children, his little nieces and nephews. He was childless, his wife having died two decades earlier, nor had he ever remarried. His work—Ascencion—was his life.

Were Rafe to repent of his wickedness, the grandiloquent Bishop Justinian probably would have killed the fatted calf for him, but the prime minister, he knew, had more personal reasons to despise him.

Meanwhile, beside Rafe, his Florentine kinsman, the Duke Orlando di Cambio, tactfully slid him the notes he had been taking.

“
Grazie,
coz.” Rafe glanced over the page, feeling a little chastened by his cousin’s gesture. He knew most of the cabinet would probably have preferred to see Orlando gain the throne rather than he, were it possible.

With the stamp of the Fiori in his ruggedly handsome profile, Orlando, about five years Rafe’s senior, looked more as though he were his brother than distant cousin. They were both tall, broad-shouldered, good-looking men and arrogantly aware of their innate superiority. But where Rafe was a dark blond with hazel eyes, Orlando had jet-black hair and ice-green eyes.

Orlando was a bit of a loner, always dressed in black. A successful shipping merchant in his own right before he had left Florence and moved to the land of his ancestors, Orlando now served Ascencion under the Ministry of Finance. He had earned the trust of the cabinet and the king with his able mind and sober, reliable manner; the prime minister liked him particularly. For some months now, Orlando had been included in high-level meetings like this one because he was, distantly, of the royal blood.

“Habitual tardiness alludes to the sin of pride, Prince Rafael,” the bishop rumbled, grandly rolling his
r
’s.

“Well, I do apologize for the delay,” Rafe said to them all as he glanced over Orlando’s notes. He looked up innocently, hating his own need to give excuses, even if he did have a rather good one this time. “It so happens I was attacked by highwaymen.”

The bishop and some of the other advisers gasped, but Don Arturo rolled his eyes.

The king arched a brow at Rafe, who smiled cheerfully in return.

“Were you hurt?” his cousin Orlando asked in concern.

“No harm done. All but one of the thieves are already in custody. My men search for the last remaining fugitive even now.”