Princess Annie (24 page)

Phaedra looked genuinely sorrowful. “Oh, Annie,” she murmured. “Rafael will never marry you. He couldn’t, with Bavia collapsing around him.”

Rafael had told Annie the same thing, in so many words, and she’d believed him. Phaedra’s words certainly came as no surprise, and yet for Annie the pain of hearing them and accepting them all over again was devastating.

She swallowed hard to keep from wailing in grief.

Never particularly tactful, Phaedra went on. “Even if there wasn’t a war coming on—one Rafael cannot and will not run away from—he would have to marry someone with a title.” She straightened her kid gloves. “He might make you his mistress, though, provided he lives long enough to set you up in a proper house.”

Annie had sacrificed a great deal to share that one night with Rafael St. James, but she didn’t regard herself as his inferior, title or no title. Furthermore, her love was an eternal one, with no beginning and no end, and she had no intention whatsoever of living out the remainder of her life in a gilded cage.

“Phaedra,” she began, when she could trust herself to speak in a moderate tone, “there are times when I’d like to push you out the nearest second-story window. I love Rafael—in fact, I adore him—but I won’t be a paramour to him or any other man.”

Phaedra flushed a little, and subsided. “What will you do, then?” she asked, after a long and awkward silence, her voice small.

Again, tears threatened. “I don’t know, precisely,” Annie said, when she’d braced herself up. “On the one hand, I wish I’d never heard of Rafael, or of Bavia. On the other, I wouldn’t trade what happened last night for a month in heaven.”

The princess didn’t answer. Instead, she turned her attention back to the book of poetry again.

They reached St. James Keep in good time, and the wheels of the carriage and the hooves of the team and the soldiers’ mounts clattered loudly over the ancient wooden drawbridge. Metal squealed against stone as the portcullis was raised, then lowered behind the band of travelers with a rib-shaking crash.

Annie kept to herself for the rest of the day, walking in the gardens, reading in her room, taking her meals in the kitchen with the servants.

After sunset, she was standing on one of the parapets, gazing toward Morovia, when she saw a vague crimson glow shimmering in the night sky. Others must have spotted it, too, for an alarm was raised and there was much running, shouting and maneuvering within the vast keep.

Annie managed to stop one of the soldiers dashing by, catching him by the sleeve of his tunic. “What is it?” she demanded. “What’s happening?”

The young man bobbed his head once, in hasty deference, and said, “It appears that the capital is under attack, miss,” before racing off to be about his duties.

Morovia—the palace—
Rafael
. Annie sagged against the wall, breathless with shock and horror and near to swooning. It was happening at last, the war Rafael had been expecting for so long was finally beginning! She closed her eyes tightly against the terrible, bloody images that rose before her, but there was no blocking them out.

Bavia was at war, the loyalist army was in chaos, and Rafael himself was the enemy’s prime target.

Annie managed to keep herself from fainting, but her stomach was threatening violence of its own and she was trembling so hard that she had to keep one hand on the wall as she made her way along the walkway toward the nearest staircase. She wished frantically that she’d stayed in Morovia, though she knew she would have been more a hindrance to Rafael than a help. She imagined saddling a horse and racing back to the capital on her own, although she was well aware, all the while she was formulating the fantasy, that it would be impossible to do. As well as foolish.

At the bottom of the stone staircase, in the torchlit courtyard, she watched as more soldiers rushed about, carrying rifles and even crossbows, preparing to defend the keep. Annie stood still for a few minutes, caught up in the maelstrom, but then she hurried across the courtyard and into the castle. She raced up the main stairs and along the hallway to her chamber.

There, she ransacked her trunks and the clothes the maids had already unpacked, tossing petticoats and camisoles, stockings and nightgowns in every direction. Finally, she found what she was searching for—her breeches and shirt. She put them on, after fairly tearing off her dress and underthings, and was hopping about trying to pull one riding boot onto her foot when Phaedra burst into the room, her gray eyes enormous.

“It’s the end!” the princess cried. “We’ll all be killed!”

CHAPTER 12
 

O
range and crimson flames leaped in the darkness, consuming filth and splendor, dreams and nightmares, loyalties and defiances. Chaos was the order of the night, and as Rafael gazed out over the blazing city from one of the high windows in the Parliament building, his emotions reflected what he saw.

He despaired because the world he knew and—for all its myriad flaws—devoutly loved, was in the throes of violent death. At the same time, he rejoiced in the certainty that Annie was reasonably safe behind the ancient walls of St. James Keep. Grief for the people of Bavia, both rebels and patriots, tore at his spirit. Yet Rafael was exultant because Annie Trevarren had received him into her bed, and her body, and he had found in the abjectness of that intimacy a solace unlike anything he’d ever known before. Annie had depleted him, exhausted every secret reserve of passion, demanded everything he was and everything he had. And by taking him to the edge of utter destruction, she had resurrected him.

For a moment, Rafael closed his eyes and allowed himself to savor echoes of the excruciating joys and glories he had found in Annie’s arms, but the present loomed fierce and fiery before him, and would not be denied for long.

Nor would Barrett, who stood at Rafael’s side and laid a hand on his arm. “The army awaits your command to either defend Morovia or to flee,” his friend said solemnly. “Have you made a decision?”

Rafael bid a silent farewell to the homeland he had known—one that had, perhaps, never truly existed outside his own thoughts—that pastoral principality overlooking the sea, that green and rocky place where tinkers wandered in brightly painted wagons and sheep grazed upon the hillsides. Letting go was as painful as a lance wound.

“Yes,” he answered at last, turning to look into Barrett’s wan and worried face. “I want you to dispatch troops into the countryside to defend the villagers and crofters against marauding rebels. I will return to St. James Keep to see Phaedra married, and then you, Barrett, will escort my sister and her new husband safely over the French border.”

A shadow appeared over Barrett’s eyes, a shade of frustration or anger or pain—Rafael could not discern which. “And then?”

“And then you will keep going. You will dismiss your men and start over somewhere else—America, perhaps, or Australia. There’s a fund on deposit for you at the Carver Bank in London, enough to ensure that you won’t want for anything while you’re reestablishing yourself.”

Barrett was silent for a few moments, looking not at Rafael but at the burning city beyond the window glass. Finally, still without meeting Rafael’s eyes, he asked, “And what about you?”

Rafael gave a sigh that was almost explosive in its force. “We’ve discussed this before. I’ll be staying in Bavia.”

“Until the keep is overrun and you are led into the main courtyard with your hands bound, and hanged?” Barrett asked, and although he spoke quietly his words carried a sting.

Rafael set his jaw and then relaxed it again, forcibly. “A very melodramatic image, Barrett,” he said. “Perhaps you should consider writing bad plays for a living.”

“Listen to me, damn you!” Barrett rasped. “I’m not leaving this blasted country without you. If I have to knock you unconscious and carry you out of here in a barley sack, I’ll do it.” He paused to draw in a ragged breath and released it again. “My God, Rafael,” he went on, “do you think I could live out the rest of my life knowing I’d abandoned the best friend I ever had?”

Turning from the window and, however momentarily, from the hellish flames reflected in the glass, Rafael spoke gently. “Your responsibility to protect me will end, Barrett, the moment you ride over the drawbridge at St. James Keep for the last time. Perhaps it would be better—and kinder—if I relieved you of your duties now.”

Barrett’s face contorted as he struggled to rise above his emotions. “We’ve been friends for more than twenty years,” he pointed out, and his voice was taut with fury. “What about the responsibilities that come with
that,
Rafael? Will riding over a drawbridge or surrendering my commission put an end to them as well?”

Rafael’s patience was wearing thin; he dreaded the parting from Barrett with his whole soul—only saying good-bye to Annie would be worse. The last thing he needed, considering all he had yet to face and deal with, was to be reminded of a bond that spanned much of his life. For that reason, he spoke harshly as he strode across the chamber to the doorway.

“For God’s sake, Barrett, you sound like a woman who’s just been cast off by a lover. Stiffen your backbone and keep your feelings to yourself or resign—one or the other. I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to your sentimental ramblings.”

Barrett was seething, Rafael could feel fury emanating from the man like heat from a stove, but he said nothing more until they had descended the broad staircase that led to the building’s huge, marble-floored foyer. There, in his military stance with hands clasped behind his back, Barrett addressed the prince with the cool formality of a stranger.

“I would recommend that you leave Morovia as soon as possible, sir,” he said, his gaze impassive and focussed on a point just beyond Rafael’s left ear. “I can have an escort ready within fifteen minutes. In the meantime, what do you want done with the prisoners—Covington and the others, I mean?”

The muscles in Rafael’s neck clenched, producing an instant headache. He could not abandon the men to the rebels, but to set them free, even in the midst of a revolution, would be a travesty of justice.

“I want them brought to the keep for trial,” he said at last.

Barrett offered no comment, but simply inclined his head in a brisk, cold expression of obedience and walked away to speak to his lieutenants, who stood a little apart, awaiting their orders.

Within a quarter of an hour, just as Barrett had said, a sizable detachment was assembled in the street behind the darkened Parliament building. There were at least fifty men, by Rafael’s estimate, and his own horse was saddled and waiting. Covington and his band of outlaws were marched out of the stockade where they’d been held since the night before, their hands manacled behind them, and put into two large prison wagons.

Rafael watched them impassively, but he was thinking of Felicia’s terrible grief, hearing her frantic pleas, feeling her trembling in his arms when he’d tried, without success, to comfort her. Refusing her entreaties had been among the hardest things he’d ever had to do, but a young man had been killed and several merchants had been injured, while many others had lost their livelihood. To release Covington and the others would have been wrong.

He had mounted the gelding when Lucian rode up beside him and executed a mocking salute. “A moment of your time,
sir,
if you please,” Lucian said. His horse, a nervous bay, sidestepped fitfully, its hooves making a clatter on the cobblestones.

Rafael ignored the sarcasm in Lucian’s tone and manner and treated him as he would any soldier. “What is it?” he asked, somewhat curtly.

Lucian drew nearer and spoke in an urgent whisper. “It would serve you right, you arrogant tinker’s bastard, if I kept what I know to myself and let you ride straight into the trap that awaits you. For Phaedra’s sake, and for Annie’s, however, I will resist the temptation!”

Swiftly, Rafael swung his arm, backhanding his brother so hard that Lucian nearly toppled from the saddle. The boy recovered with surprising promptness, wiping blood from the corner of his mouth and glaring at Rafael with a pure and elegant hatred.

“I, too, have been tempted, more times than I can count,” Rafael told him furiously, “to do what I just did. Do not push me any further, Lucian, for I swear by all I hold dear that if you do, I’ll drag you off that horse and beat you senseless, right here and now.”

Lucian neither flinched nor fled, but there was a grudging civility in his voice when he spoke again. “The rebels want Covington and his band of merry men,” he said, nodding toward the prison wagons. “You’ll save a lot of lives, including your own probably, if you surrender them now.”

Rafael leaned forward, resting one arm on the pommel of his saddle, his eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he regarded his young half brother. “How do you know what the rebels want?”

The dilettante-soldier stiffened slightly, but smiled. “I hear a great many things, now that I’ve been banished from the royal hearth.”

Rafael straightened as Barrett rode toward them. “Tell your contacts, whoever they are, that these men will stand trial at St. James Keep, and their fate will be decided by a jury of ordinary people, drawn from the villages and farms—not by a mob.”