Princess (45 page)

Right now, he thought, the five guards he’d left to look after her were probably loading onto the coach those traveling trunks she had been packing. He dreaded facing the empty villa when he went home. Home. Whatever that was.

He was glad he had told Serafina his disgusting secrets, driven her off forcefully rather than waiting around for her to leave him, he thought as he searched the sky. At least now it was over, no more waiting for the blade to drop. One day she’d thank him for this. For him, there was nothing left to do but get on with his life. If Ascencion didn’t want him anymore, he would go to Sicily and help Richards in his “intriguing enterprise.”

He was still brooding on his loss when a deep, cold voice rose behind him.

“You.”

Darius whirled around, his back to the low stone wall. Lazar stalked toward him like a grand, angry lion.

Darius lifted his hands calmingly. “I just came to help.”

“Don’t you try to play me, Santiago,” he growled.

Darius dropped his gaze, incredulous at the man’s sustained hostility. “Fine. I’m leaving. Excuse me.”

“You’re not going anywhere till I’ve had a piece of you!”

He very nearly laughed. “Sire.” He edged away from the wall, for there was a very long drop to the sea on the other side of the wall, and one never knew what an outraged Italian papa might do. “I’m getting out of here, don’t worry,” he said. Turning his back, he started walking away calmly, coolly.

Lazar tackled him.

“Ouch,” Darius grunted as he hit the ground, banging his knees, his hands thrown out to catch himself just in time.

The big royal clod didn’t know his own strength. Darius rolled, dodging a blow.

“Leave me alone! I married her, didn’t I?”

“Only because I caught you, you schemer!” The king took a swing at him.

Darius ducked and kept trying to back away. “That’s not true! I would have married her anyway!”

He realized only after he’d said it that it was the truth.

“After all I’ve done for you, this is how you repay me—you seduce my innocent baby girl!”

Darius laughed. “Oh, I have news for you about your innocent baby, old man. You want to see her claw marks on my back?”

Lazar let out a wordless bellow of fury and cuffed him alongside the head with his fist.

Darius caught himself against the tower wall and whirled back to him, taunting him. “That’s it, isn’t it? You can’t accept that your little girl has gone and grown up on you!”

“I trusted you with her! You think I’m deaf
and
blind, that I don’t hear of your conquests? You’ve had every hot-blooded bitch in the kingdom, but you couldn’t leave one innocent young girl alone! You seduced her just like your countless others!”

“No!”
He stepped toward Lazar and shoved him. “Not like the others! You know nothing of it!”

“How dare you?” Lazar uttered, shoving him back.

“Why don’t you stop putting your own blame on me? Can’t you just admit you made a mistake, promising her to Tyurinov? You had no right signing that betrothal before you heard from me, but you were taken in by him! If it weren’t for me, that mistake could have cost us her life. I’m the one who cared enough about her to learn the truth. You’re the one who sold her for an easy way out!”

Lazar made a sound of fury and hurled himself at Darius again. They went scuffling across the flagstone.

“Why didn’t you come to me at once when you learned about Tyurinov’s first wife? I could charge you with treason for keeping it from me!” Lazar bellowed.

“Because you, Your Majesty, are a hothead. Look at you now. The situation called for subtlety. Damn it, leave me alone, I’ve had enough!” Darius shouted as he elbowed Lazar hard in the kidney, spun free, and caught him a in a choke hold from behind. Trusting he’d proved his point, Darius dropped him and walked a few paces away, raking a hand furiously through his hair.

As soon as he turned his back, he was tackled again.

This time, the bigger man got the best of him, pinning him in a headlock. “What about the chaperons?” he demanded.

Darius shoved uselessly at the stonelike choke hold around his neck. “I’m sorry, I lied! But it was what she wanted.”

“She put you up to it? She told you to lie?”

“No,” he growled. “But I know how those people just gnaw at her spirit. Nobody has ever known how to manage that girl but me, you know that. You never bloody could! You let her walk all over you and twist you around her finger! I just wanted to be with her. Is that so wrong? Damn it, Lazar, she was my only hope.”

The king stared down at him for a minute.

“That I believe,” he declared, slamming him onto his back on the flagstone. Fists on his waist, Lazar stood over him like a wrathful Jehovah, his foot planted on Darius’s chest.

Darius didn’t really feel like fighting anymore. The flagstones were almost comfortable, tired as he was.

“Answer me one question,” Lazar said ominously.

“What?” he muttered, lifting his head.

“Do you love her?”

He dropped his head back against the sun-warmed stone, then winced at the bang, and just lay there, eyes closed in defeat.

“Do you love her?” he demanded.

“Why do you think I went to kill Napoleon, you clod? I only wanted her to be free.”

“You knew there was no way you could come back alive.”

“Yes.”

“And yet you went there.”

“Yes! I love her! What do you want to know? I love her more than I love my own life.”

Her father folded his arms over his brawny chest and stroked his chin, glowering down at him. “You really piss me off, Santiago.”

“Mutual, Sire.”

“Santiago.”

“What?” he growled.

“If you love my daughter so much you were willing to die for her, why the hell did you never come to me and ask me for her hand?”

“Because you would have said no,” he said wearily.

“Is that so?”

“Maybe you would have said yes out of obligation, because of the bullet I took for you.”

“I’m the king. I don’t
have
to do anything.”

Darius fixed him with a sullen, moody stare.

Lazar shook his head. “You’re a proud, obstinate fool,
magnifico
. I would have said yes, and been damned glad of it.” He removed his booted foot from Darius’s chest and bent to offer a hand to help him up.

Darius watched him warily, too weary to move. “You would have said yes? To me?”

Lazar only chuckled softly, sadly, and shook his head, his hand outstretched. “Get up, son.”

“You like to help me clean up, don’t you? Yes, that’s a good kitty,” she murmured softly to her fluffy white cat, petting the crouched animal as it hungrily gobbled the scraps of Darius’s breakfast, which she had splattered against the wall many hours ago.

The yellow villa was quiet under the gathering sunset.

While the cat feasted, Serafina stood, her expression mournful as she wiped down the soiled wall with a wet cloth. All she could think was how awful her temper tantrum must have made her look in front of Darius. He had known starvation, and here she was, throwing a perfectly good plate of food across the room so it was fit only for a cat.

Spoiled, rotten brat, she thought in self-contempt.

Many times she had marveled at his capacity for violence, but tonight she was awed, looking back on the gentleness he had always shown her, both as her lover and as her guardian when she was a child. He had endured a nightmarish existence, yet somehow he had always managed to keep the small, pure flame of his humanity alight in the darkness. That was the fire that burned, always, in his onyx eyes, and the poignant sweetness that spoke to her in his guitar’s tender music.

She knew he did not want to face her again after the things he had revealed, but there was no way she was leaving him now—or ever. He would never have to be alone again, nor face the demons of his past alone. He had only told her his secrets as a means of driving her off, she realized, but it had sealed her devotion to him. At last, she understood so many of his actions and reactions which had bewildered her before. She loved him completely, both the shining knight in him and the lost little boy. At last, she was needed and wanted for herself. She had found her purpose in giving to him.

When she was done cleaning up the ruined breakfast with her cat’s help, she went searching for the medal of the Holy Virgin, which he had torn from his neck.

She found it all the way over by the entrance to the morning room. Picking it up, she discovered the chain was broken beyond repair. She brought it to the pink bedroom where her jewelry box sat on the bureau. She poked around in the jewelry box, determined to find a suitable replacement for the relic. Still sniffling, her nose stuffed up and head throbbing from so much crying, she carefully extracted a sturdy gold chain from the knot of tangled necklaces.

The gold chain was even finer than the original silver one. It did not match as well, but it was stronger. Carefully, she restrung the medal on the gold chain, then put the necklace in her pocket, savoring the thought of putting it on him anew.

Perhaps it was mere superstition, but she did not like knowing he was out there doing something dangerous without its protection.

Bored and a little lonesome, the necklace wrapped loosely around her hand in her pocket, she wandered from room to room, restless for his return.

Everywhere she turned, the yellow villa offered images for her to meditate, memories of moments that Darius and she had shared in this magical place, both the good and the bad.

She toured the library where she had teased him and tweaked his pride. She lay awhile on the shiny dining room table, gazing up at the fresco of Mars and Venus caught for all to see in Vulcan’s golden net. At length, she decided to go back up to her room and try to make herself presentable for her husband’s return, but upstairs, she took a moment to continue her exploration. Out of curiosity, she went to the one room she had never entered, a narrow door at the end of the hall.

Opening the door quietly, she found herself for the first time in his quarters.

Her gaze traveled over the small, spartan box of a room. The narrow bed, fit for a servant, was tautly made. The cover was brown and the sheet was white. Beside it, one serviceable taper sat on one humble, no-nonsense table. His reading spectacles were on the table, too, and the sight of them clenched her heart somehow, this token of his hidden vulnerabilities and lovable little human flaws.

On the left wall, his orderly clothes hung on pegs. All the same, all black. The canvas curtain was neatly drawn over the window. Not a painting hung on the walls, which were of a nondescript color. Her throat closed, gazing at this dismal space. It was the most depressing room she had ever seen.

This is not a life, Darius. This is a prison sentence. But I
swear I’ll get you out of here.

Just as she pulled the door closed with a sniffle, she heard hoofbeats outside, and the sound of her five guards suddenly hollering. It couldn’t be Darius who had arrived, she thought, for the men’s voices sounded hostile. Then her eyes flared.

She stood frozen at the sound of a guttural Russian accent.

Under a canvas pavilion not far from the scene of the battle, Darius took a heavy hero’s supper with the king, the crown prince, and the top officers present. All congratulated him on his nuptials.

They were all suddenly so happy for him, Darius didn’t know how to tell them he’d already fumbled the marriage. His failure in Milan was nothing compared to this one.

His mind wandered again and again back to his wife as the men talked of the battle and agreed that their defenses were better than expected. When Rafe began boasting of how they would hold off Villeneuve when he came, Lazar voiced the opinion that, knowing Horatio Nelson’s cool nerves and expertise, Villeneuve might not come back from the West Indies at all.

Finally, Darius nudged the prince into confessing about Julia and the tunnels.

Lazar was still bellowing at the lad when Darius took leave of them, chuckling ruefully as father and son shouted at each other, Italian gestures flying. He left his men at the feast. They had earned a celebration and, for his part, he wanted to be alone with his grief when it came time to face the empty yellow villa.

The whole long ride back to the villa astride his borrowed horse, Darius’s mood was empty and sad. He was tired from the day’s exertions, sated from the heavy meal, and he rode the horse at a lazy, ambling walk, dreading the thought of facing his empty house.

He was beginning to wonder about the wisdom of ending it with Serafina. If Lazar thought him worthy of her, perhaps . . . perhaps he wasn’t as bad as he thought.

He couldn’t go on like this, hating himself. It was pointless, he thought. If he wasn’t going to find a way to get himself killed, then he was going to have to learn to live in his own skin somehow, and he would need her help to learn how to do that. She was his strength, his truest friend. She was his reason for living . . . and he had driven her away.

The road was quiet. He saw no one the whole journey. He watched birds swoop between boughs. Far above, a hawk soared, circling on an airy spiral.

The hot day cooled to dusk. As he neared the yellow villa, he grew more anxious about whether or not he would find his wife there. He had ordered her to go, but one never knew when she would choose to obey or defy. In this case, he wasn’t sure which he preferred.

Now that she knew all the truth about him, she wasn’t going to want to stay, anyway.

He thought for a while on the things he loved best about her and would miss most—her mischief, her sparkle. Her pout and her haughty scowl, when she was in her Queen of Sheba mood. And the sweetness of her soft arms around him as he drifted off to sleep.

The prospect of returning to his old life without her was unbearably bleak, but all he could do now was keep his desperation concealed beneath the surface of stoic resolve. Whether she chose to stay or go, either way, he would face her decision with equanimity.

The sun’s glow was fading in the western sky as dusk deepened to night. Wearily, he let himself in through the tall iron gates and led the horse to the stable. His heart sank, for not a soul was in sight. Not a candle burned in the window.