Royal Renegade (14 page)

Princess Tatiana stepped nimbly into the footprints he left behind. As they moved farther from the roaring ocean, she lowered her voice. "You trust Dryden to return for us?" she asked.

"Yes," he answered, rather surprised himself at his confidence. "He's one who completes his job, you see. And after all our sails together, he feels responsible for me. Besides," he added with the ghost of a grin, "your companion's wails will persuade him if nothing else does."

He could hear the smile in her voice when she responded more cheerfully, "Buntin has threatened to abandon me before, but I think, when presented with the opportunity, she will renege. She also is one to complete her job, and she sees that job as getting me safely married to that murderous royal duke of yours."

He took her elbow to guide her along the steep path. "Do promise me that you will refrain from calling Cumberland a murderer in polite company—or impolite company, either."

"At least until we're married. And then I understand I can properly call him anything I wish. That's how you English treat your spouses, isn't it?" she finished lightly.

Her cynical tone was borrowed, he knew, from the scandal rags she had toted along in her baggage, and bothered him less than that disquieting first statement. "You are ready to marry him, then?"

She regarded him sideline from those slanted eyes. "Isn't that what you want? After all, you were sent to escort me to the wedding.'.'

"Of which your bridegroom remains blissfully unaware."

"I'm sure he, like you, will be prevailed upon to do his patriotic duty, however unpleasant," the princess replied.

"Do you think marriage to you would be so unpleasant?" He meant to say it censoriously, for he didn't like that new cynical tone of hers, but somehow it came out differently. She tempted even his voice into waywardness.

"Unpleasant? Not at all," she laughed, losing her breath but regaining her good humor as they reached the top of the hill. "I think I would make a delightful wife. Don't you?" Before he could ready an answer, she added, "No, I meant that your duty has been unpleasant. Dancing attendance on me must be a far cry from your usual combat."

He took her hand to stop her so they could catch their breaths after the long climb. Her hand was cold and shook a bit, so he continued holding it. "This is not what I would term dancing attendance, Your Highness. But you are right, this is not the sort of duty I joined the army to find. It has not, however," he allowed, "been entirely unpleasant."

"No? What have you found pleasant?"

Her piquant face glowed even in the darkness at his half-compliment. But he arrested whatever arrant urge had inspired his foolish comment. "Oh, I have always found midnight strolls along the beach most enjoyable. This has surely been the highlight of our voyage so far, wouldn't you agree?"

Disappointed, she pulled her hand away and peered into the darkness. The rain had mercifully let up in the last few minutes, leaving behind a fine mist that chilled them merely to the teeth, not to the bone. "Here's a road. Do we go right or left?"

"Left. As I make it, we're north of Coutances. We're still south of Cotentin by a few miles." As he spoke, he was recalling more about this coast. The Channel Islands, which he and Dryden visited as boys, lay only ten miles to the west over the Pass de la Deroute, from which he had so recently tasted. A scrubby forest adjoined the road on the east. "Let's hold close to the treeline, in case anyone should happen by. Although why any sane person would be out on a night like this, I don't know. Perhaps we'll find a dry barn to pass what remains of the night."

For a half mile or so along the deserted road they trudged in silence, which he finally broke. "You never answered my question. Have you decided to marry him?"

He sensed rather than saw her shrug, a gesture of resignation at odds with what he knew of her character. "Everyone wants it so, isn't that true? Alexander, the Prince Regent?"

"They are not everyone," he said quietly.

"Buntin, too. I think she will die of apoplexy if I defy so many assorted heads of state. She is rather intimidated by authority."

"But you are not." It was not a question, but she answered it anyway.

"No, I am not. But I am a princess, after all, and political marriages are hardly unknown among my fellows. Of course, I never thought of myself as an instrument of diplomacy." In a return to the artless fashion that suited her so much better than her assumed sophistication, she confessed, "I always hoped I'd marry for love, you know, like my parents. They grew up in the palace together, for they were cousins, and even as children they planned to marry. They were neither of them close enough to the succession to be of any use, in the way I am suddenly of use. So I've their example to overcome, before I can resign myself to another sort of marriage." When she looked at him, her green eyes were alight with that inquiry that he had learned to distrust. "And your parents, did they marry for love?"

"I scarcely remember their marriage at all," he said dampingly. "I was hardly out of leading strings when my mother died."

"But surely you recall if your father was devastated by her death," she continued relentlessly.

Devlyn supposed it was his native courtesy that kept him from telling her to hold her tongue. In fact, he was so polite—a credit to his mother's early training, perhaps—that he actually replied to that intrusive question, one he had never thought to ask himself. "Perhaps he was. He drank himself into oblivion after that. I always assumed he was merely in transports of guilt."

"I have no memory of it," he said coldly, struggling to regain command of the conversation, but in his head finishing, except waking up to find my world changed beyond knowing. At any rate, as I said, I know nothing of the reasons for my parents' marriage, nor do I care."

Tatiana's voice got a bit dreamy. "I would. I would hate to think I was conceived in less than love. Wouldn't you?"

"I have never given any thought to my conception at all, and still don't consider it an edifying topic of conversation," he answered curtly.

She must have sensed his anger, for she paused for a moment, only to renew the conversation on a teasing note that drew them both away from the cliff where her earlier questions had led them. "So you think conception is a less than edifying topic? But, Michael, I should think it most edifying. In fact," she murmured, slipping a cold hand into the crook of his arm, "I was so counting on you to edify me about that topic—about—oh, edify me only in conversation, I mean!" She stopped in her tracks, all teasing forgotten, for once speechless, for once shocked by the course her wayward tongue started her on.

And he began to laugh, there in the misty darkness, there in the enemy land, at the war between fear and mischief on her pretty face, at the round 0 of her full mouth, at her dusky eyelashes spiky with tears or rain, at her great green eyes aglow, finally, with relieved laughter. "Oh, Michael," she whispered, collapsing against his chest, “you are right. I am so fortunate that you are proper and forbearing and all that is chivalrous or else I would truly be in the soup, truly I would. Wouldn't I"

So he smoothed back the dark tendrils from her forehead, wondering if she had lost her bonnet somewhere in the storm, or more likely, if she had skipped out into the torrent bareheaded, the better to experience the adventure of the gale. “You can," he replied quietly, "expect too much of chivalry, you know."

The dimple balanced on the corner of her lovely mouth then disappeared as she put on a serious expression. "Oh, I have entire faith in your chivalry, Michael." She was waiting so expectantly, her eyes half-closed, her slender body suddenly warm even in the rain. So, hating himself and her, he obliged her, kissing that sulky mouth, tasting the rain on her parted lips, the seawater on her throat where the pulse throbbed. Her wet hair slipped like satin through his fingers as his hands slid down her shoulders to her arms and finally to the sweet curve of her waist.

As he knew she would, she gave herself entirely to this new experience, melting into him with the abandon hinted at in those wicked eyes of hers. When he could stand it no longer, he let her go, setting her back on her feet as gently as he could make himself, his hands sliding back along her supple figure before he finally released her.

Her mouth curved into a smile as she glanced up at him through those spiky lashes. "How chivalrous you are, Michael, to edify me this way." And then her eyes were teasing again, her voice low with mock-sultriness, as she once more drew back, drew back and yet at the same time, with the lightest of touches, nudged him over that precipice that perhaps only he perceived.

***

It was just like Michael, Tatiana thought resentfully, to be furious with her because she had let him kiss her. She should have expected he would not react in the standard way, with professions of gratitude and vows of eternal adoration. No, naturally Michael was now striding ahead of her, his jaw set like marble, his heart' likewise hardened to her. And this after he gave her kisses of such aching sweetness, after he touched her with such barely restrained passion.

"It's not fair," she said aloud, and he stopped and turned, and to her surprise he agreed with her.

"No, it’s not.” He waited for her, and she was too glad to be in charity with him again to ask him whether what he thought was unfair was precisely what she thought was unfair. "I shouldn't have done that," he said finally.

"Why not?" she inquired resentfully, for he was ever withdrawing as soon as he gave her anything of himself.

He laughed then, without a great deal of humor, she thought, but he did laugh. "You are engaged to another, for one thing."

"Not really," she answered, for she didn't think she would marry Cumberland, especially not now.

Michael jammed his hands into his pockets and strode on into the darkness. Hurrying to catch up, she realized that he was angry more with himself than with her. But somehow that wasn't very consoling.

"And for another," he added, his usually cool voice edged with self-contempt, "you are under my protection, and not the sort of protection that allows for that kind of activity."

She wasn't quite sure what he meant, but nodded as if she did. She studied his arrogant face, shadowed now by the darkness and his anger. "Is that all?"

"Isn't that enough?"

Relieved of a worry she wasn't aware she had until this moment, she blurted, "I thought you might be married, or betrothed."

He gave her a curious look. "If I were, I assure you I would not have kissed you, Princess. That sort of criminality, at least, I am confident I would rise above. Even with a temptation such as you about."

It was too dark to see his eyes, and they ordinarily revealed little at any rate. So she asked artlessly, "Do you find me so tempting then?"

"Not at all." He regarded her coolly as he voiced this lowering view, and she sensed she had angered him again, although she didn't know quite how.

In despair, she fell silent. She would never understand him, never, if she knew him for the rest of her life. Perhaps she had spent too much of her time with guileless children, who behaved in relatively predictable ways. Perhaps all adults were so inscrutable. If so, she was in for a time of it in London, for she would never know the way to go with a city full of enigmas like Michael. All she knew was that he had kissed her, and now he was furious with her.

"Michael, don't be angry. Or at least tell me why you are." In her anguish she dropped her last little bit of sophistication and stood there before him, knowing she looked as bereft as she felt.

Finally he sighed, and took her hand, and they began to walk again down that dark road. "Why did you do that really?'

She didn't bother to ask what he meant by "that," for they both knew who had initiated their brief intimacy. "I wanted to know what it was like, to be kissed."

"And now you know. Have done and leave me in peace."

But she couldn't, even knowing that she might push him further out of patience with her. Haltingly, she explained, "I must make a decision, you know. And I have nothing to make it with. I don't know what Cumberland is like, I don't know what men are like, I don't even know what passion is like—or didn't until now. I do know, however, that I can trust you—oh, don't scowl, Michael, I mean it for the best, for you are the best, you are—and I thought that we could just pretend, you know. Oh, now I'm more confused than ever, and you are furious with me, and I have ruined our friendship, haven't I?"

At least he didn't tell her that they had no friendship to ruin. In fact, he said, his hand still warm on hers, "No, you haven't, though I'd just as soon never have met you." Eventually he added, "Don't do that again, Your Highness, not with me or any other man. Men don't pretend with passion, you see. We take it seriously, at least in one respect. And I suppose you were right to trust me, for most men would not let you practice kissing on them without expecting to proceed to more advanced lessons."

That isn't what I meant, she almost said, but he had stopped and put his finger on her lips to hush her. She followed his gaze ahead to a dark building looming in a clearing.

A yard overgrown with weeds surrounded the cottage, but Tatiana would have known anyway that the place was deserted. There was a sad sense of neglect and loneliness hanging about the yard and lurking behind the dark windows. The home was orphaned, as surely as were the two travelers who availed themselves of its shelter.

With military briskness Michael soon had them inside in front of a pleasant fire. Tatiana lit a brace of candles, not enough to be conspicuous from the outside, but enough to illuminate all but the corners of the main room, which must have served the functions of kitchen, salon, and workroom for the unknown resident.