Princess of Fortune. Miranda Jarrett
grace that he could understand and respect.
He studied her now, her dark lashes feathered over the curve of her cheeks. Her breathing was deep, making her mostly bare breasts rise and fall above the low neckline of her gown, and with an honorable effort he forced himself to look back to her face. She wasn’t priggish or overly modest, he’d grant her that. Earlier he’d judged her handsome at best, not pretty, but the more time he spent in her company, the more his opinion was changing. She was pretty. Too pretty, if he were honest, and he shook his head as he considered all the trouble such thoughts could bring him.
Her eyes fluttered open, and she stretched her arms before her, relishing the motion like a waking cat. “We have reached the Willoughbys’ house, Captain, have we not?”
He hadn’t even noticed the carriage had stopped. “Ah, it seems we have.” He leaned from the window, swiftly scanning the front of the house and down each side of the street. “Here, let me help you down.”
But she drew back, her chin down and her arms folded over her chest. “I should prefer you to go first, Captain. To make sure that all is as it should be.”
He nodded, understanding, and privately pleased that she’d put her trust in him. Once more he scanned the quiet square, then held his hand out to her.
“All’s snug, ma’am,” he said gallantly. “Come ashore whenever you’re ready.”
But instead of taking his hand, she slipped past him unassisted, dangling her bonnet from her wrist by the ribbons. She hurried up the steps by herself, leaving him once again feeling chagrined and in the uncomfortable position, for any captain, of following instead of leading.
Perhaps, he thought, they’d not made such progress, after all.
“How was your drive, ma’am?” Lady Willoughby was asking as the princess handed her hat to a maid. “Was it pleasant?”
“‘Pleasant’ is not the word I should choose.” The princess paused before the looking glass, patting and plucking at her hair where the bonnet had flattened it. “Unless, of course, your English definition of pleasure is to be beset by murderous anarchists. Isn’t that so, Captain Greaves?”
“We did have our adventure, Lady Willoughby,” Tom said. The countess looked bewildered, yet also clearly relieved that she was no longer the one responsible for the princess’s “adventures.” “But no real harm was done, as you can see. You are certain about not summoning a physician, ma’am?”
“No, no, no.” The princess frowned at his reflection behind hers, clearly displeased that he’d been considerate enough to ask again. “You will come with me now to the garden, Captain.”
She was leading again, and again he was left to follow, this time down the hallway through the house, and he did not like it. He did not like it at all. “Where in blazes are you going now?”
She stopped and turned to face him. “I am going to the garden, Captain,” she explained with the kind of excruciating patience reserved for small, simple children. “You are joining me. There we shall speak to one another. Then when we are done, we shall leave.”
She glanced past him, back to the hovering maidservant. “I want a pot of chocolate brought to me in the garden, a plate of toast, browned on one side only and the crusts cut away, and a small pot of orange marmalade. I will also require a basin of cooled water—cooled, mind, and not cold, or warm, or scalding, or I shall send it back—and a linen cloth for drying.”
So the old princess had returned, ready to demand the sun and the stars, and expecting to get there, too.
Not that he was above giving orders himself. “Another place, ma’am. Not the garden.”
She stopped again, so abruptly they nearly collided. “The garden is safe. The admiral said it was. There are tall brick walls on three sides, and the house on the fourth has the only entrance.”
“I’ve had men on my crews who could scale a twelve-foot wall like cats,” he said. “They’d be over a garden wall in less time than it takes to say it.”
“Ohh.” Her bravado faltered as her face fell, and again he glimpsed the princess from the carriage. “I have sat there for weeks and weeks, not knowing. Now, however, I see that such a place would not be—would not be wise.”
“No, ma’am.” He didn’t elaborate, and he didn’t have to. “Surely there’s another room in this house, a parlor or library.”
She nodded, and turned the knob on the nearest door. “This is the earl’s library.” She went to stand in the center of the room, before the empty fireplace. “You must understand, Captain, that I have not been here before. So many books depress me. Do you care to read, Captain?”
The room was little used and gloomy, with the louvered shutters over the windows closed tight against the sun’s damage to the bindings. There’d be little threat to her in here, that was certain.
“I do,” he said. “On blockade duty, or a tedious voyage with foul weather, a book is often my best companion at sea.”
“I have never found the patience for reading.” Even now she was pacing, short steps that crossed and recrossed the patterned carpet. “I haven’t the concentration. But that is not what we must discuss, is it?”
“Why don’t you sit?” He held a silk-covered armchair for her. “I don’t intend this to be a trial for you, you know, and I—”
“My father is a good king.” Her words were coming out in a rush, as restless as her pacing. “He is fair, and just, and good. I do not know why that—that woman would say otherwise, because it is not true. You must understand that, Captain. You must.”
“I put no weight in what she said, ma’am.” He was careful of what he said, too. He knew little about her father either as a king or a man, but since a country takes its character from its leader, Tom had his doubts about the King of Monteverde, no matter how his daughter pleaded for him. “Every country has its malcontents, and always has. It’s the French and Buonaparte that’s made them bold now.”
“I thank you for your understanding, Captain.” She bowed her head and spread her fingers in a graceful fan of acknowledgment. It wasn’t hard to imagine her at home in a court’s ritual formality, just as he could easily picture her in the thick of that same court’s self-indulgence and flirtation. What was difficult was seeing her so sadly out of place here in London, a bright exotic bird trapped among the dry leather spines of the earl’s library. “And I thank you also for saving me as you did. I thank you with all my soul and my heart.”
He cleared his throat, uneasy with such lavish gratitude. “I was but following my orders, ma’am.”
The wariness remained in her manner, but there was a dare there, too. “You could have followed them without risking your own life. It was all so very fast, you know. No one there would have faulted you. To have seen me die would have likely pleased them more, to see if my foreign blood was as red as this velvet.”
“Don’t jest like that,” he said sharply. “I’d no intention of letting you be murdered.”
“No?” She stopped pacing and looked directly into his eyes, though he could not tell if she were teasing, or taunting, or simply seeking the truth. “You would have been free of the nuisance of me, Captain. Has that no appeal for you?”
“None,” he said firmly. “Not only did my orders oblige me, but my conscience, as well. And no more of this talk from you, mind?”
Her smile spread slowly, lighting her eyes as she turned her face up to his. He’d never expected her to be shy, but that was there, too, an unmistakable undercurrent to the vulnerability he’d glimpsed earlier.
“You did not have to save my life, yet you did,” she said, her voice low and breathless. “I did not have to thank you, but I did. Is it such a marvel that I trust you, Captain, like no other in this whole English country?”