The Prince Kidnaps a Bride

To Bernadette and Roberto—

Thank you for being so patient with me

through six years of learning to write.

I’d be lying if I said

that I enjoyed every minute,

but I’ll never forget you

or what you taught me.

F
rom the time Crown Princess Sorcha was three, she prayed for a baby brother. A baby brother would be a prince and the heir to the throne of Beaumontagne, leaving Sorcha free to be like other children.

Well, not like other children, but at least like her sisters, who were mere princesses.

Unfortunately, to the little family’s deep distress, when she was six, her queen-mother died bearing a third daughter.

So Grandmamma came to live with them.

Sorcha never forgot that day.

The opulent traveling coach drew up to the great door of the castle, and Grandmamma stepped out—ancient, tall, skinny, with regal bearing, a thick, carved cane, white hair, and cold blue eyes that froze Sorcha down to her bones. From that moment, Sorcha grew up under the direct glare of Grandmamma’s critical gaze. Of course, Grandmamma also made sure that Princess Clarice and Princess Amy were supervised to within an inch of their lives—no one could accuse Grandmamma of shirking her duties—but it was Sorcha who occupied most of her time and attention.

Grandmamma approved Sorcha’s tutors and made sure that Sorcha was taught everything a crown princess should know—language, mathematics, logic, history, music, sketching, philosophy, and dance.

She made sure that the elderly archbishop of the
church
of
Beaumontagne
visited every Sunday, rain, snow, or shine, to teach the princesses their religion, and when he left, Grandmamma personally drilled Sorcha on her catechism.

She instructed her in geography, showing her maps and demanding she know rivers, mountains, and seas. Somehow, Grandmamma managed to make tiny Beaumontagne, perched on the spine of the Pyrenees between Spain and France, sound like a center of culture and learning—in fact, the most important country in Europe.

In a private weekly session, Grandmamma taught Sorcha the art of governing, posing intricate crises that would face a queen and demanding Sorcha unravel the problem. Grandmamma made Sorcha argue law, taking either side as Grandmamma required and with Grandmamma as her opponent. And Grandmamma never let an occasion pass without reminding Sorcha that the crown princess and the crown princess alone was responsible for the continuation of the Beaumontagnian royal line.

From Sorcha, Grandmamma demanded perfection.

Which was why, at the age of twenty-five, Sorcha found living in a convent on a tiny, rocky, barren island off the isolated coast of Scotland a freedom she cherished. Her duties there were simple. She prayed. She read. She gardened. She wore a brown habit. To differentiate her from a novice, she wore no headdress, and because she was a princess of Beaumontagne, the silver cross of her church hung on a chain around her neck.

She kept the plants alive in the greenhouse in the winter and in the garden in the summer. She ate with the nuns and slept in her bare little room. And after so many years of listening to Grandmamma’s voice nagging on and on, she cherished the silence.

Yet one night almost three years ago, she had had a dream.

A dream? No, it had been more than a dream. It had been a vision of unremitting darkness... and empty years.

The air was foul. The indifferent stones closed in around her. No voice disturbed the silence. No hand reached out to bind her wounds or cure her pain. The bones of rats were her bed and the long drape of cobwebs her blanket.

She was buried alive.

And she didn’t care. Somewhere close, water seeped into a pool, and the slow drip which had once driven her mad now contributed to her indifference. Her world was sorrow and loneliness. She was dying, and she welcomed the end of desolation, of grief, of anguish.

Her fingertips touched the skeletal hand of Death...

Sorcha woke with a start and a horrified gasp.

The cross she wore around her neck seared her chest. She wrenched it from beneath her nightgown and in the darkness of her cell the silver gleamed like a blue coal. It blistered the palm of her hand, but she grasped it as tightly as she could, desperately needing its comfort. Sitting up in her bed, she trembled, gasping for air, wanting nothing so much as to breathe, to escape, to live!

And the first light of dawn shone in her cell, and the first seabird called its high, sweet call outside her window.

She ran to the window, wrapped her hands around the cold bars, and looked out at the ocean, trying to clear the remnants of that awful dream from her mind.

Yet she couldn’t, and in all the time since, never had she regained her serenity. Day after day she found herself donning her brown wool cloak and wandering over the island as if seeking something.

Or as if something were seeking her.

On an island off the northwestern

coast of Scotland
1810

S
orcha didn’t really know what she was watching for; she’d watched all summer and seen nothing except for the passing of the bright, brief warmth. She had seen the full moon at the end of October and then a fortnight later she’d observed Mr. MacLaren’s arrival in the shallow harbor where, twice a year, he came from the mainland to off-load supplies of meat, wine, and cloth. She’d viewed the clouds of the first winter storm that had roiled on the horizon, then roared over the island like a greedy giant, thrashing at the sea, turning it green and wild.

All of those events had been nothing more than the normal cycle of life on the island.

Today she walked along the rocky beach and picked up driftwood cast up from the storm. The waves still raked the shore and the clouds raced across the thin blue of the sky. Ice settled in hollows that never saw the sun. The wind whistled in her ears and caught at her clothes. Her red hair escaped her scarf and tossed around her face, and she blew it out of her mouth in disgust. She ought to go back, but the convent needed fuel for their meager fires, and besides, she felt as wild and restless as the sea.

She combed the length of the beach and piled bare, salty branches on the ragged old length of cloth. Then she stood still. If she looked in one direction, she saw only the thin line of the horizon where the ocean met the sky, but if she looked the other direction, she saw the Scottish mainland, a hump of brown and green. She hadn’t set foot on the mainland in seven years, yet she couldn’t shake the sense that something needed to be done.

The annoying logic Grandmamma had insisted Sorcha learn poked at her conscience like a hot embroidery needle.

Poppa was dead. He’d died in battle regaining his kingdom from the revolutionaries.

According to the newspaper Mr. MacLaren had brought, Grandmamma was in charge of the government of Beaumontagne and governing wisely.

Therefore, Grandmamma’s trusted servant should have appeared to demand the return of their crown princess.

So where was Godfrey? Why hadn’t the big, bald, muscle-bound messenger yet come?

In the ten years of her exile in England, Sorcha had seen Godfrey one time, when he came in the middle of the night to secretly remove her from the home of the exiled Beaumontagnian loyalists who sheltered her. On her desperate, hurried trip north, he’d warned her over and over that the war was going badly and that assassins sought to kill her. He insisted she must stay at the abbey until he came to tell her it was safe.

Now she had to wonder—was Godfrey dead? Was that why he hadn’t come for her? Should she take matters into her own hands and go to Beaumontagne?

As she stared out at the whitecapped waves and contemplated going out into the world, she shivered in fear.

Grandmamma had given Sorcha the best education, but she had never been able to teach her courage.

A patch of sunshine moved across the water, turning it to blue, and as Sorcha watched, a movement caught her attention. She shaded her eyes with her hand and looked. A small unmanned fishing vessel drifted along, bobbing on the waves, and she clambered over the rocks, keeping it in sight, wondering if someone had been caught on the ocean during the recent storm and needed help.

That was one of their primary objectives at the convent, to render help to the hapless, stranded sailors who washed up on the shore—and pray for and bury the dead.

A current caught the boat and tossed it toward shore.

She looked around for a long stick, anything to use as a hook, but found nothing. “Come on,” she urged the little vessel. “Come closer.” For she didn’t want to plunge into the icy waves to retrieve it, and duty, her ubiquitous duty, would require the sacrifice.

The skiff seemed to hear her, coming closer and closer. She climbed higher on the rocks, trying to peer inside, to see if a body lay sprawled on the boards... then, like an unruly child, the boat stopped and hovered just beyond the breaking waves.

“Don’t stop now!” she shouted.

The boat bobbed a few feet farther out.

Throwing off her cloak and boots, she used the length of cord around her waist to tie up her skirts and with a grimace, she plunged into the waves. The freezing water snatched the breath from her lungs, stung her bare legs, weighed down her skirt. She fought the draw of the undertow, the slap of the surf, dragging herself toward the bow of the little boat. It slid toward her on a cresting wave; she grabbed at it and missed. She eyed the surf, judging her moment, and grabbed again. She caught the side of the boat, pulled herself up for a brief glance inside.

Nothing. No body.

She released a sigh of relief and worked her way up to the bow. Using the strength developed from long hours of physical labor at the convent, she dragged the vessel in to shore. The crunch of the wooden bottom on the sand was the sweetest sound she’d ever heard, and she groaned as she pulled it up on the beach, placing it well away from the greedy waves. Wiping her hands against her bodice, she turned—and a man loomed over her.

She screamed.

He jumped back. He wore coarse, damp, wrinkled clothes. He had big, broad shoulders. His pungent odor reminded her of rotten fish and seawater. A dark, scraggly beard rimmed his chin and a mustache overhung his upper lip. He’d tied a rag over his head and half his face.

He looked like a monster.

She screamed again.

“Don’t do that!” He extended his rough, workingman’s hands, palms up, and in a reproachful tone said, “You scared me.”

“I
scared
you
? You scared
me.”
She placed her hand over her racing heart. “Who are you?”

“I’m Arnou the fisherman.” He spoke in English, but with an odd accent, an accent she couldn’t quite place.

“What are you doing here?”

“I wanted that boat.” He pointed and grinned like an idiot. “I’ve been watching it bob around the island. I thought it was a goner for certain. What you did was brave!”

In a flurry and a fury, she let down her skirts. “You mean you watched me?”

“Well... yes.” He frowned as if puzzled. “What else should I do?”

“Help me?” Picking up her cloak, she flung it over her shoulders. Her teeth were chattering and the wind plastered her wet clothes to her frigid body.

“That water’s cold. I didn’t want to go in.”

“But it was all right for me to do it?” Indignation rose inside her, but not even that could warm her.

“I didn’t ask you to, but I’m grateful you did!”

Her indignation faded. The man was amiable, bumbling, and appreciative. He seemed like an affable little donkey except... well, he was big. Tall, muscular, with the hardness of body brought by years of too much labor and too little food.

Still he grinned, a big, stupid oaf who hadn’t the sense God gave a pile of seaweed. “Guess I’d better pull the boat up on shore a little farther, eh?”

“I guess you should.” She stomped her feet into her boots, groaning at the scrape of the sand against her skin and the cold ache that permeated her bones.

She didn’t wait for him, but headed up the stairs cut into the rock. The wind pushed her up toward the lichen-covered walls of the convent and she hurried along with clumsy eagerness. She had to get inside—and fast. She’d started losing feeling in her fingers.

The strange man’s odor caught up with her first, then she heard the stomp of his clogs. “So is this the famous Monnmouth Abbey that rescues sailors and sends them on their way?”

“Yes.” How odd. He knew the name. Almost no one had heard of the abbey, and those who had, thought it was a sailors’ myth.

“Do you live here?” The narrow stairway kept him behind her, but he was close, almost breathing down her neck.

“Yes.” He would assume she was a nun. The men always did, and she let them believe the lie.

“With hair like that?” He chortled.

He set her teeth on edge. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“It’s as orange as a carrot.”

She swung around to face him.

He had that dim-witted grin on his face again.

“It is not!” She hadn’t heard that stupid insult since the last time she’d met that superior beast Crown Prince Rainger de Leonides... and he was now dead.

“Has to be a carrot.” The fisherman’s brow wrinkled in earnest thought. “A beet is too red.”

And not that she rejoiced in Rainger’s death—if he hadn’t been her fiancé, she could have ignored his smirk more effectively—but she hadn’t missed being compared to a carrot.

She said a quick prayer for his soul and one for her own uncharitable thoughts. She turned away from Arnou, took two steps—and slipped backward on the slick rock. She flailed her arms. Tried desperately to gain her balance. Experienced the horrifying sensation of falling.

He caught her.

In fact, his hand must have hovered at the base of her spine, for in one smooth motion he grabbed her, set her on her feet, and helped her find her balance. Then, with a funny expression of mortification and distress, he wiped his hands on his shirt.

Two impressions struck her in swift succession—that he smelled much, much worse than she’d first realized, and that he was impossibly warm. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”

“I got caught in the storm.” As if expecting a sudden gust, he looked up at the sky in alarm. “Aye, in the storm. It whistled and blew, and my boat sank.”

“Your boat sank? What do you mean?” She pointed toward the skiff. “That’s your vessel.”

“No, it’s not.” He gave a decisive shake of his head. “Or it wasn’t before now. Of course, if no one else claims it, it is mine.”

“You said you wanted the boat, that you watched it bob around the island... .” He
hadn’t
said it was his skiff. She’d just assumed that it was. “Whose vessel is it?”

“Dunno. Someone who doesn’t know how to secure his possessions, heh?” He chuckled.

Her gaze flicked to the boat, then to his face. “How did you get here?”

“I clung to the debris from my skiff and the wind blew me to your shore.”

“Then where’s the man who came with the boat?”

“I dunno. Maybe he fell out.”

“You haven’t seen any signs of another man?”

“No.”

So a sailor
was
dead. She shivered and started toward the convent again. “How long have you been here?”

“A few hours.”

“Why didn’t you come right up to the convent?” The wooden gate rose before them.

“Because I wanted the boat.” He was talking in circles.

She made an exasperated sound.

The fisherman lifted the great iron ring attached to the front of the gate and let it fall against the boards.

The sound echoed through the inner corridors.

Turning suddenly, she caught him staring at her through his one exposed eye, and for a single, frightening moment, nothing about him seemed foolish. Once again, he was a monster.

“Why do you wear that scarf over your face?” she asked sharply.

With an amiable grin, he tugged at his forelock. “I lost an eye. ’Tisn’t a pretty sight, all red and scarred, so I keep it covered.” He started to lift the rag. “Want to see?”

“No!”

From within the abbey, she heard a sound like the shuffle of dry leaves—she knew from experience a starched habit made just that noise. The door swung wide. An elderly nun stood back, her gaze lowered, her hands tucked into her sleeves.

“Sister Theresa, we have a traveler cast upon our shores.” Sorcha stepped into the foyer. “Tell Mother Brigette he requests shelter until he can return to his own world.”

At the sound of Sorcha’s chattering teeth, dear Sister Theresa looked up. Her reserved demeanor fled and she crooned, “By our Lord, darlin’, did ye fall in the drink? Hurry, we need to get ye warmed and bathed before ye catch yer death.” She wrapped a dry blanket over Sorcha’s shoulders and gave her a hug. “To the infirmary wi’ ye!”

“Yes, Sister.” Sorcha was in no condition to argue. Great shudders wracked her.

Now Sister Theresa looked at Arnou. She caught her breath at his stench. Pointing to an invisible spot on the floor, in a tone of pure steel-willed command, she said, “Ye! Traveler! Stand right there until someone comes to get ye. Don’t move! Don’t touch anything! And don’t get anything dirty.”

Arnou shuffled inside.

Sister Theresa joined Sorcha and helped her down the corridor. “Keep yer chin up, dear, we’ll get ye there.”

Sorcha nodded, knowing that in the infirmary heated bags of sand would warm her feet. Sister Rebecca, the infirmary director, would dose her with honey collected from the bees in Sorcha’s own garden. Yet her footsteps dragged as she walked through the stripes of sunlight that shone through the high windows. She couldn’t rid herself of the feeling she was abandoning Arnou.

“Miss!” he called in his rough voice.