Three Nights With the Princess Read online

  A fall down a well would have jarred Thera less than the sound of Lillith’s voice at that moment. She jerked her head back. A moment passed before she collected her wits enough to understand that she was caught hard against Saxxe Rouen’s big body and was being kissed within an inch of her virtue . . . and that she wasn’t struggling. Indeed, she had never felt less like struggling in her life.

  A blink, a gasp, and a sputter later, she realized that it wasn’t Saxxe Rouen she was annoyed with . . . it was Lillith! And the realization sent her twisting out of his arms and staggering back toward the edge of the water with her pride burning and her face aflame.

  “My lady?” Lillith choked out, drawing her startled gaze.

  “I was . . . helping your lady with her garments,” Saxxe said in a voice as thick and engulfing as light fog. “She was . . . overwarm.”

  Thera could only gape at him, then groan with impotent fury. No reasonable explanations were possible; what had happened was painfully obvious. The only course left open to her was escape.

  She snatched up her skirts and shouldered him aside to pick up her surcoat and thrust her feet clumsily into her shoes. But as she stalked back along the stream toward the horses, the full horror of what had just happened came crashing down on her. She had been entranced, ensnared, and then kissed . . . which was bad enough. But what was worse—she couldn’t seem to summon a single shred of outrage about it!

  She licked her lips and felt her knees going weak at the realization that her tongue was retracing the path of his. He had swirled and laved her lips . . . slid his tongue . . .

  Agghhh! She headed straight for her horse and fumbled to empty the sand in her shoes, then to insert her foot into the stirrup. Lillith hurried after her, calling her name, but she clamped her jaw and waved her hand in a curt gesture. She didn’t want to speak of it, didn’t want even to think of it. But when Saxxe approached from behind, seized her waist, and boosted her into her saddle, she couldn’t resist one quick glance . . . and was confronted by both his tawny eyes and the terrible truth about what was happening inside her.

  She was enthralled by him. The way he was shaped and moved made him absorbing to watch and strangely exciting to be near. And his suggestive talk had a way of stirring things inside her . . . making her feel hot and flushed and a little light-headed. He had treated her like a woman instead of a princess . . . and she had responded like one.

  Saxxe Rouen made her feel like a woman. With a woman’s desire.

  The thought nearly knocked her out of her saddle. He was filthy, savage, and greedy beyond all bounds. He was violent and boastful and ignoble and profane. But he was also male in an extravagant and unfettered way that she had never experienced before. There was something dangerously appealing in the confident sexuality he exuded with every movement of his big body.

  She wanted him.

  In that moment, her own traitorous desires joined Fate and Saxxe Rouen on the list of things she had discovered were outside the realm of her royal will.

  Kicking her mount into motion, she charged across the stream. As she rode hard toward the hills with the others in her wake, the sultry air pulled some of the heat from her glowing face and burning pride, and her princess self reassembled around the newfound gaps in her sense of authority. She might have no control over the humiliating lust he generated in her, but she certainly didn’t have to act on it. She was a princess, after all. And he was little more than a barbarian.

  * * *

  As a precaution against possible confrontations with the soldiers in black, Saxxe and Gasquar led them away from the trading road . . . despite Thera’s heated protests. The terrain grew difficult, becoming rocky hills and steep, densely wooded valleys inhabited by small, swift-flowing streams. They were forced to proceed slowly through thick stands of trees, struggling from hilltop to hilltop where they could catch glimpses of the sun to guide them. The clouds had billowed steadily higher, past midday, and by dusk they loomed like great city walls in the west. Then the towering masses began to move eastward . . . borne on gusty, changeable winds that whipped them higher and higher, until they spilled over into the rest of the sky, blotting out the sun.

  Saxxe finally halted them on a slope overlooking a thick stand of woods, and together he and Gasquar studied the sky and upturned leaves, then began to search for shelter. Thera watched their faces as they exchanged terse words and felt a sinking in her chest.

  “We’re lost, aren’t we?” she demanded loudly, over the rush of the rising wind.

  “We are not lost,” Saxxe called back irritably. “We are near the Brittany road.” He swept the thick trees in the valley below with a dark look and added under his breath: “Somewhere.”

  “We should have kept to the road itself,” she declared.

  “We’re in no further danger from those marauders—there is naught between us and the western sea that is worth taking.” Except her hidden jewel of a kingdom, she thought. “The great Charlemagne himself found nothing in Brittany worth conquer—”

  A huge drop of rain smacked her on the forehead and slid down her nose. She gasped, shocked by the force and coldness of it, and suddenly there was another on her cheek, then another; huge, hard drops that stung her skin. She fumbled for the cloak draped over the back of her saddle and glanced up to find Lillith doing the same.

  “It’s starting,” Saxxe called, looking skyward, and the wind-driven drops began to pelt them from all sides. “This way—into the trees!” He charged off down the hillside. There was no time to argue, only to sling their cloaks around their shoulders and give their mounts a heel.

  Before they had gone a hundred yards, the rain was coming down in knifelike sheets, tearing at their clothes and battering their faces. They made it to the edge of the trees just as the first fork of lightning ripped through the sky. Dismounting hurriedly, Thera grabbed Lillith and headed for the shelter of a huge old oak, where they huddled miserably as the elements heaved and clashed around them. The rain drove relentlessly through their garments, until they were trembling from both cold and fright.

  A huge furry beast reared unexpectedly out of the gloom and charged them . . . trapping cries in their frozen throats. Then it retreated as abruptly as it had come, and it took a moment for Thera to realize that it had been Saxxe, and that he had thrown a skin cover of some sort over them. The cover repelled the rain, and as they braced it with their arms, they were soon able to wipe their faces and catch their breaths.

  “I h-hate storms,” Lillith said from between chattering teeth.

  “As if we didn’t have en-nough t-trouble . . . now this,” Thera gritted out, trying not to shiver inside her cold, wet garments.

  “Trouble.” Something in the way Lillith said it made Thera look at her.

  “Don’t even think it . . . much less speak it!” Thera commanded, knowing that when the word trouble tumbled from Lillith’s lips, the word prophecy could not be far behind. And she was too miserable to suffer being harangued about the calamities caused by her royal virginity.

  As the lightning and thunder passed, the relentless rain lingered, saturating every wormhole and animal burrow, and filling every depression in the ground . . . sending them scrambling up onto the exposed roots of the huge old tree. Then came the final stroke as darkness fell over the rain and mud, compounding their desolation.

  Saxxe appeared once more out of the gloom, startling them. This time he brought Gasquar, a few sharpened branches to prop the skins upon, and the dismal news that there could be no fire to cook the grouse he had taken earlier. Cold and wet and hungry, Thera couldn’t even summon a protest when Saxxe and Gasquar invaded the makeshift shelter and removed their wet, shaggy cloaks.

  A moment later she was glad to have held her tongue, for they hung their garments up along the sides to further block the rain, creating a surprisingly effective shelter in the steady downpour. Then before her aching eyes, they produced a half-filled wineskin and a bag of rolled oats, and passed them ar
ound. When she took the wineskin from Saxxe, her whisper of thanks was embarrassingly genuine.

  “Well, I cannot have you either freezing or starving before we reach your home, demoiselle,” he said with a wry half grin. “Else I will have no reward for my efforts.” His mention of her debt caused her to stiffen and wrap her icy fingers tighter around the wineskin. He must have read her thoughts for he settled a searching look on her. “Speaking of rewards . . . I believe I was to claim one this night.” He made a tsk of disgust. “I fear we shall have to settle that particular debt another time, demoiselle.”

  Thera nodded and sank back against the tree trunk, feeling as if a huge weight had slid from her shoulders. Suddenly the rain didn’t seem quite so relentless or the darkness so gloomy . . . for these clouds did indeed have a silver lining.

  “Entendez. This rain . . . it is nothing,” Gasquar declared with an expansive wave of his hand. He settled himself on the protruding tree root beside Lillith, causing her to huddle toward Thera, and wiped his wet beard and chest, slinging the water casually aside. “Why, once when we were in Venice, it rained for twelve days and nights. The water . . . it came higher and higher . . . and there came such a flood that the goldfish in the doge’s palace pond escaped and made a “fortune teaching the rats in the bishop’s palace to swim.” He flashed a wicked grin and Thera couldn’t contain a giggle of surprise.

  “Lies and falsehoods . . . every word,” Lillith grumbled, turning an indignant look on Thera. “The wretch hasn’t a truthful bone in his body.”

  “Non—I swear, it is true, ma belle dame.” He edged closer to her, his eyes dancing in the gloom. “It was a sight to see. I watched from the roof of a great house, and I laughed so hard that I slipped and fell into the floodwaters and was drowned myself. Alors . . . I was washed all the way to the sea . . . where I was caught in a fishing net, sold for a flounder, and fricasseed back to life by the cook of a convent in Naples.” His face nearly split with a grin. “To this very day I have a great reverence for fat nuns, saucepans, and gravy.”

  Saxxe and Thera burst into laughter, but Lillith raised a cold fist and shook it at him. “You!” Her dark eyes snapped. “Each lie is more outrageous than the last! Is there not a single drop of shame in you?”

  “Draw in your claws, demoiselle,” Saxxe said with a final chuckle, settling on a root near Thera’s feet. “When Gasquar gets started, he blows like the khamsin . . . and just now we can use all the heat we can get.”

  Thera bit her lip to stifle yet another unexpected laugh. It didn’t seem possible that she was sitting in the midst of a howling storm, drenched to the bone, faint with hunger . . . and laughing. She glanced at the glowing white of Saxxe’s teeth and eyes, and felt her face warming.

  “The khamsin? What is that?” she asked.

  “It is the desert wind that sometimes blows through Egypt and the Holy Lands in the spring and summer,” Saxxe answered, toying with the oats in his hand. “It is hot and salty and as dry as a drunkard’s cup. When it begins, everything in its path stills in trembling expectation . . . even flies in the marketplace stop their buzzing.” His voice quieted. “All nature holds its breath. For in its wake, the khamsin leaves dust-choked springs, crops withered and stripped, and tents buried under shifting mounds of sand. It can be a terrible and fearsome force.”

  Thera suffered a chill at the dark current of memory she sensed flowing beneath his words. “And you have felt this desert wind?”

  “I have.” He turned to meet her gaze, and his shaggy hair and woolly beard seemed to fade into the dimness, so that his glowing eyes filled her vision. “When you are caught in its stinging fury, there comes over you a curious sense of peace at being held by a power so much larger than your own. You cannot fight it, and so you must let it carry you where it will. The desert tribesmen . . . they shrug and say you must drive your tent peg wherever the khamsin sets you down.”

  Thera was silent for a moment, pondering those unsettling words . . . an oddly poetic bit of insight from a crude and opportunistic soldier for hire. Then her eyes slid into his, and she glimpsed unexpected depths of experience and reflection in them, and she felt an odd stirring in her chest. The desert . . . she had read about it. Egypt and the fabled Holy Lands . . . she had listened to her trading envoys describe them at length, and had often felt a pang of envy that they had traveled so far and seen so many wonders with their own eyes.

  Saxxe Rouen had seen them, too . . . had felt the hot desert wind and learned to call it by its name. What other things had those canny green-gold eyes seen and that powerful frame experienced? She wasn’t sure it was wise, but she had to ask.

  “And where has this khamsin carried you, Saxxe Rouen?”

  There was a change in his expression. She had no idea what it meant and held her breath.

  “To the four corners of the world, demoiselle. Beyond the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Carpathian mountains . . . across the Agean and the Adriatic and the Black seas . . . along the mighty Rhine, the Jordan, and the Nile rivers. It has carried me into bedouin tents and caliphs’ palaces . . . into both prisons and cathedrals . . . into mighty castles, rich burghers’ houses, and simple cottages. There is little I have not seen”—his voice lowered to a rough whisper—“and done.”

  “And your tent peg? Where have you driven it?” Thera focused intently on his reply. She had to know. Did he have a home? A wife? A woman? His teeth flashed in the darkness . . . a grin that said he knew full well what she asked.

  “Gasquar and I have never stayed in one place long enough to set up . . . a tent.”

  That earnest claim produced a small slide of relief in her . . . which must have shown outwardly, for Saxxe’s smile broadened. Their gazes met, and she shivered and glanced away, humiliated by her curiosity about him. She raked a critical look around their rough shelter.

  “Nay . . . your tastes clearly run to cruder lodgings.”

  He shifted and scowled, considering his response.

  “I love the taste of luxury as much as the next man, demoiselle,” he said with vengeful calm. “Why else would I bother with you?”

  The truth in his voice stung Thera sharply. Until that moment, she hadn’t thought about why he might want her. She had just assumed . . . A taste of luxury? Was that what she was to him? Heat bloomed in her face and she huddled back against the tree trunk, drawing her knees up under her sodden cloak and wrapping them with her arms. The prospect that he found her wealth more alluring than her person dealt an unexpected blow to her fledgling womanliness, and she retreated instantly into her princess self. He would play hob getting a taste of anything from her, the off-eyed ox!

  Gasquar rubbed his beard, watching the pair glowering and bristling at each other in the strained silence, and chuckled. “Ahhh, demoiselle . . . if you think this is poor shelter, you should have been with us once in the Agean Sea.”

  “Not again.” Lillith rolled her eyes.

  “The galley on which we sailed was rammed and sunk, and we were forced to take refuge in the belly of a whale,” he continued, bracing his arms on his knees and leaning into his tale. “Regrettably, nine other soldiers—six Turks, two Spaniards, and a one-eyed Dane—had taken shelter there ahead of us. Now, it is a well-known fact that a whale cannot hold more than eight men at a time. A fight broke out over which of us would have to leave, and the thrashing and bashing were so fierce that the poor whale . . . he grew annoyed, sailed straight onto the beach, and spit us all out!”

  Lillith hissed and he raised his hand in self-defense. “I swear by my old father’s beard—it is true!” His eyes twinkled. “And as the whale swam out of sight, we heard him grumble that the Spaniards had left a foul taste in his mouth.”

  Thera tried to stifle her laughter with her hand, but some of it escaped. And with that small encouragement, Gasquar launched into yet another fishy tale.

  The time passed as the patter of falling rain and Gasquar’s banter continued apace. Each monstrous tale deepened Lillith
’s annoyance, but strangely dispelled Thera’s. As her tension subsided, a deep chill invaded her limbs and she was grateful that Gasquar’s bawdy, irreverent talk kept her from thinking about their miserable situation.

  But inevitably her eyes fell on Saxxe, who now sat with his arms propped across his knees and his chin on one fist, seeming untroubled by the wet and the chill. The dim light lent a dark luster to his bare shoulders, and she could almost see the heat radiating from his half-naked body. She blew a drop of water from her nose and closed her eyes, hearing his voice: There is always plenty of heat in my blankets.

  As she slipped from the realm of conscious will, she thought of the desert wind Saxxe had spoken of . . . dry and hot . . . imagined it blowing against her skin, then into her mind, bringing with it vivid images from afar. The sound of bells and cymbals . . . distant chants and the rustle of tents in the wind . . . the mingled scents of cinnamon and saffron . . . She slipped into unguarded dreams, where those exotic sensations blended with memories of his warm eyes . . . the feel of his hands sifting through her hair . . . and his moist breath trickling across her lips.

  He became one with the four winds . . . one with the warmth of the sun . . . one with the whispers of her desire. And somewhere in the darkness of that night, in the depths of her heart, he became much more than just a barbarian.

  * * *

  That same night, two days’ ride away, the Duc de Verville sat in a large, silk-draped tent that was warmed by ornate braziers and lighted by fine beeswax tapers that had once graced the altar of a nobleman’s chapel. He sipped port from a silver goblet and, with an imperious finger, sorted through a mass of tarnished metal and ill-cut stones spread on a blanket before him.

  “A pathetic lot,” he said, wincing. “Times are bad indeed when all you can get from raiding a nobleman’s treasury are his lady’s rings, a pearl or two, and a few odd links of silver. It’s a wonder the good earl didn’t die of humiliation well before I parted him from his head.” He flipped the edge of the blanket over the jumble of metal and waved an imperious hand that set three servants scrambling. “Put this dross in one of my chests with the rest of the plunder.”