Royal Renegade (10 page)

"You should, too." Belatedly he recalled his resolution to warn her away from treasonous speech. "If you tell the Prince Regent that you have more claim on the English throne than he does, he will not be enchanted, especially as you are to be marrying into the family. He might take it as a threat, you know."

"I never said I had a claim on the English throne. Why would I want it?" she demanded with a toss of her bright curls. "It seems a dangerous seat—the occupant either goes insane or is beheaded."

"Don't say that either," Devlyn broke in, feeling beset on all sides. He gripped the rail with both hands; it was gratifyingly solid and sensible and didn't shimmer like starlight under his eyes. "We haven't beheaded a king since Charles I, and no queens since Mary, and she was Scots." Of course, he added silently, England might soon have to revive the custom for Russian princesses, if she wasn't careful.

But the princess's evanescent mind had flitted away from beheadings. With a light glance from under dusky lashes, she inquired, "Is Devlyn your name?"

"My title."

"What is your name then?"

It was an ordinary enough question, and he couldn't think of a reason not to answer, so he replied warily, "Michael Dane."

"Mikhail," she said.

"Michael," he repeated firmly.

"Mi-chael. Oh, what a lovely name." She smiled up at him, and he was surprised by a desire to kiss her, for she was exactly the sort of girl he had always avoided, young and fickle and innocent and well-born. Very well-born. Empress Maria Theresa indeed. But why should he be surprised to be wanting her, for she had twisted and turned him so much he was paradoxically attracted to her. "Michael," she repeated, now high-handedly claiming the privilege to address him so, "and you may call me Tatiana. '

"I shan't call you that, Your Highness."

She dimpled at him, and the effect, even through peripheral vision, was dazzling. "Oh, I think you will. 'Your Highness' is so cumbersome, and rather archaic in these modern times, don't you think? And I told you we are becoming kindred spirits."

He rubbed his forehead hard, feeling another headache come one. "We are not kindred spirits. We are nothing alike. We have nothing in common."

"We are both orphans."

All the laughter in him, which had been incipient while she chattered, vanished with her casual words. He was silent, for she was right. Then he shrugged. "That's an easy bet, for I'm eight-and-twenty, and few of us have our parents so long."

"But you were orphaned early, as I was. I can tell, for there's an aloneness about you—When did your parents die?"

Reminding himself that she was a princess, and he could not politely refuse to reply, he said curtly, "My mother and sister were killed in an accident when I was six. My father died four years later."

"How sad. I am so sorry," she said, and she looked up at him with honest sympathy softening her bright eyes.

Annoyed, he said, "There's nothing to be sorry about, Princess. It has nothing to do with you."

Startled, she looked back at him, her eyes now full of hurt again. "It's only that I've experienced it myself, as I told you last night. Of course, I never had a sister, though I often longed for one. Was that the hardest to abide? It must have been, because an adult's death is sad, but a child's death is truly a tragedy."

He wanted very much to order her to leave, but he didn't trust his voice. How sure were her random shots. At first, of course, he'd missed his mother most. But as he grew it was his lively little sister's loss he most mourned. Damn her, how did she drag such nonsense from him. He hadn't thought of his childhood in years, buried it deep, for it did him no good to recall that chaotic time before he had gotten control of his life.

Devlyn suddenly remembered that his parents planned a whole family of "M's"—another girl named Melody and a boy named Mark. At six, utterly unacquainted with the processes of procreation, he thought Melody and Mark already existed and attaining them was merely a matter of hitching up the carriage and driving somewhere and picking them up. After the accident, their fates haunted him, although he had sense enough not to mention it to his father. He used to dream about Melody and Mark, smaller versions of Merry and himself, waiting on the steps of an orphanage for a family who never came.

Princess Tatiana was immune to silence, probably because she filled it so well. "Do you think she would still be a Merry today? Or would she have matured into a Merrilee? Perhaps she would be a proper young matron, supplying you with a half-dozen nieces and nephews, and despite your seniority, reminding you to wear your woolen scarf into battle." She added wistfully, "I suppose it's odd that I like to imagine how lost loved ones might have turned out. I often wonder what my mother would be like now, rather sweet but a little distracted, always ready to put aside her work to talk to me but never completely understanding. It just helps me remember that they actually existed, when everyone else is so set on denying that. If there's no one else left, you have no one to remember with, and your memories become more and more like dreams, until finally they seem entirely unreal."

He made some gesture of impatience that she must have taken as affirmation, for she continued in a wondering tone, You see how alike we are. That's why we are so drawn together." There was no mischief in her eyes now as she tilted her face up to look at him, only an odd understanding, and he wondered if, in fact, she did understand him. But the last thing he wanted was understanding. He was suddenly weary of her company, and wanted only to return to his solitary watch and his solitary life.

So he answered with quiet savagery, "You'd do well not to tell a man that you are drawn to him, Princess. If he reciprocates your feeling, he will take advantage of you; if he does not, he will take you in dislike."

He was glad of the flash of pain in her green eyes, glad that the dancing light was extinguished, that her mouth trembled with hurt and not laughter. "Now go on back belowdecks, Your Highness. I told you it is improper for you to be here with me."

Long after she disappeared, he could conjure up the image of her brutally biting at her lip to keep from crying, her small fists balled up on the railing. He'd done it again, rejected her innocent friendship, only this time he'd remained stalwart in his cruelty.

She stayed away for a week, avoiding any contact with him as if he were the devil, or, more likely, a bishop. Once she banged her head ducking into the nearest open hatchway when she saw him belowdecks. Devlyn heard her stifle a cry of pain and almost went to her. But with an unwilling rush of empathy he knew that her embarrassment would be more intense than the physical pain, and continued on his way.

But on those night watches, which now lasted so much longer, Devlyn had the time to contemplate the one-person invasion force Russia had sent to his homeland. The princess seemed younger than twenty, although her body was supple, womanly, and her sulky lips promised more than they could probably fulfill. She had a child's lack of discretion; the intensity of her joy and her anguish was overpowering. And all the provocative behavior her companion doubtlessly lamented was the product of innocence, not corruption. She was just teasing, he thought, trying out the femininity she only recently discovered in herself. Her emergence into womanhood, like a butterfly from a chrysalis, was lovely, a gift of benevolent nature, delicately hurtful to watch. Once she was wed to that monstrous Cumberland, and her innocence would be only the first casualty.

But her fate wasn't his worry. He would deliver her to Wellesley and go back to the war and forget her and her unsettling ability to ferret out feelings he had buried long ago.

One night a week out of Gibraltar, they came within a quarter-mile of a warship, French, by the looks of her. But the moon had set and he couldn't decipher the standard flying above her. He and the helmsman doused the running lights, and the cabin boy, nesting in a dinghy, was dispatched to wake the captain. They'd had a few similar encounters earlier in the voyage as they left the Aegean Sea, but their small sloop, as Devlyn had predicted, attracted no undue attention. This ship didn't even hail them, didn't notice them probably. Devlyn sensed the helmsman holding his breath as they passed the great ship, her masts towering above them, her sails the only spots of light in the dark night.

Once they were a safe distance away, Captain Dryden observed with a wry glance, "Now I know I will never be able to impress you again with the adventure of free trading. Believe me, most of our voyages are not so uneventful. Occasionally we even have to make a run for it."

Devlyn replied that he wasn't finding the voyage the least bit tedious and realized that his courteous statement was quite true. This voyage had been an enlightening experience; whether due to his unwonted solitude or the presence of the princess, he didn't like to examine.

The next night, as they approached the coast of Spain, she came out on deck, sliding the last few feet to the rail as the sea had turned a bit rough. She flung back her ruby velvet cloak in a dramatic gesture but refused to look squarely at him. Her full mouth was set in a resolute line at odds with her tentative glance, quickly repealed, at his face.

"I didn't want you to think you had defeated me. I am not so easily vanquished."

"This is not a battle," he said quietly, breathing evenly despite her nearness.

"Yes, it is—for you." She didn't explain this, only adding with a shrug of one small shoulder, "Oh, I'll go along well enough without you, although I do not often get to offer my friendship and it does hurt to be refused. But others will want to be my friend, I know it. I am not vain, but I do think I can keep people amused. I made even you smile, didn't I? And someday I might even find a friend as fine as you."

He was about to protest that they were not friends, that she was merely his charge and an unwanted one at that, but she turned those expressive eyes on him and said very kindly, "But I shan't think you'll ever find another friend like me, for you don't want one, and no one else will ever disregard your wishes and insist on being your friend despite your cruel nature and utter lack of imagination."

He shook his head then, hiding his smile, glad she was back, wishing she would leave. But seeing only his gesture, she bored on relentlessly. "Oh, I know you don't want me, but I am your friend, and I will not let you push me away, and someday your heart will melt a little and you will know I was right and you will thank me for it. You don't need to say anything, and we shan't speak of this again, because I've spent a week gathering courage to push myself forward like this. For you're so hard, Michael, you are, and I shan't ever be so bold again."

She couldn't let it go, however, and had to add, in an ostentatiously wise voice, "Do you know the Russian fable of the oak and the reed? The oak was so hard and strong and stood so straight that he scorned the little reed, which was slender and weak and bent with every breeze. Then a typhoon hit, and the terrible wind crashed through and tore the oak down, while the reed merely bent and sprang back again unharmed."

"Typhoons," he replied after a moment's contemplation, "occur only over the sea, and I hardly think you'd find many oak trees there."

Her chuckle shimmered in the cool air. "Oh, Michael, I was speaking metaphorically. You are always so literal." She touched his bare hand so lightly that he thought he might have imagined it, and then she was gone.

Chapter Seven

At sea

During the next week, the Coronale sailed unaccosted through the Straits of Gibraltar and into the Gulf of Cadiz. From here, the voyage was a familiar one for Devlyn, as he had sailed home from Cadiz or Lisbon several times in the last four years. When they edged close to the coast, he could recognize landmarks like Cape Saint Vincent, where Britain had won a great naval battle, and Settibal Bay just south of Lisbon. Soon he would be only miles offshore from the army encampment, and he wondered at his own lack of curiosity. The army could have been overrun, the war lost, for all he knew. On this sloop, he was effectively cut off from all the intelligence and information that had shaped his days for so long. And he didn't miss it at all.

The princess joined him occasionally on the night watch, apologizing that she couldn't always slip away from her companion. Devlyn found himself waiting each night for her cheerful greeting, and was both relieved and disappointed whenever she did not come.

When she did join him, they kept their conversation light, confined to neutral topics like life in England and literature. They did not discuss her future or his past, or anything of note at all. She was charming, effervescent, alluring, and he longed for the sight of the English coast so he would be free of her finally.

She liked to ask his advice on how to go about in society, even when he warned her he seldom did. "But you are such a good observer, Michael," she coaxed. "Tell me all you can remember."

He’d given up telling her not to use his Christian name. And now, her eyes were so soft with pleading that he searched his memory for social rules. Surely he'd had some instruction on them at Eton, but, if so, having never had much of a chance to put it to use, he'd forgotten it all.

"When I'm home on leave, I've more interesting things to do than dance attendance on the patronesses at Almack's in hopes of getting a voucher. Let me think now. We men don't have to worry about breaking the rules, you see, for ladies are the ones who suffer disgrace mostly. Oh, I know you can't dance more than twice in one evening with the same man. And you can't dance with any man who hasn't been vetted by your chaperone."