He had made his brave sacrifice by then, prompted by Donovan writing to let him know of the men who had come looking for him and what they’d done to Linette and Estelle. Valentin had revealed in his letter that he couldn’t bear that any of them might suffer harm again on his account.
So they had decided not to tell anyone about Valentin’s decision, believing the truth too brutal. Instead, Estelle had thought all this time that he was a fugitive, while Donovan had long assured her that the lack of correspondence, other than Valentin’s first letter to say he was safe, was for the best.
“Oh, Donovan, I can’t imagine what he must have suffered, but at least now we know he’s alive,” Corie said as she reached out to grasp his hand.
She always drew strength from him, and she knew, he from her. At once he enfolded her in his arms, the two of them silent as they held each other. She knew Estelle would return soon from the kitchen, so finally, sighing, she drew back to look up into her husband’s beloved face.
“She’ll discover the truth soon enough. I hope she’ll understand why we kept it from her and forgive us.”
“I believe she will,” Donovan said softly, pressing a kiss to her temple and then another to her brow. “In the meantime, my darling wife, let’s share in her joy. It’s no small thing, attending a coronation for a prince. Valentin must remember us fondly to have sent a royal invitation…perhaps quite fondly.”
Corie saw it then, a teasing glimmer in his eyes that sent a delicious shiver plummeting to her toes. “You’re doing it again, aren’t you? Playing the matchmaker for another of my sisters—”
“What if I am? What was that pledge you and Lindsay made years ago? Not to marry anyone less—”
“Than the man of our dreams,” Corie finished for him, winding her arms around his neck.
“Exactly. We both know that Estelle hasn’t stopped thinking about Valentin for the past two years. Why else would she refuse attending her first Season this year, if not that her mind has been captivated by him? Her heart may not be so smitten, but who can say what might happen when she sees him again?”
“Shh, she’s coming back!” Disengaging herself from her husband’s embrace, Corie spun around as the door flew open to reveal Estelle looking as happy as she’d ever seen her.
Her face flushed pink, her eyes dancing with excitement, her rosy lips curved into a brilliant smile. Before Estelle could utter a word, Corie rushed forward and grabbed her by the hand.
“On to Mrs. Polkinghorne’s, shall we?”
Chapter 2
Mid-June, 1822
Chateau de Chevalier, Bratavia
“Your Highness, a letter has just arrived for you.”
Prince Valentin Chevalier turned from a window overlooking the castle courtyard, his breath stilled at the sight of an envelope atop the silver tray the footman held out to him.
An ivory envelope bearing the blood-red seal of Donovan Trent, the Duke of Arundale.
Valentin had seen the seal once before, upon the letter bearing grim news from Porthleven that had transformed him from a hunted fugitive to a shackled prisoner.
By choice…and he would do it all over again.
Anything to protect the loveliest girl he had ever seen, as well as her family, from further harm. Now he would learn, finally, if he might see her again, Estelle Easton no longer fifteen or sixteen years old, but a young woman of eighteen if he judged rightly.
Valentin hesitated. For some reason he could not bring himself to pick up the letter. So many unanswered questions stormed through his mind.
Would he discover she was recently married and unable to attend his coronation? Perhaps simply indifferent to his invitation and not interested in making the journey? Or perhaps even taken ill at some point during the last two years and no longer among the living—God help him, why would he torment himself with such a thought?
“My lord, shall I open the letter for you?”
Valentin slowly drew in his breath, not realizing his valet, Robert Benoit, had come up beside him. More a trusted friend than servant, he’d been imprisoned, too, but fortunately his treatment more humane though he now walked with a limp. Valentin shook his head no, and picked up the envelope that felt heavy in his hand.
It seemed the world around him strangely faded away as he broke the wax seal and pulled out a sheet of ivory paper bearing the Duke of Arundale’s bold handwriting. All he heard was the pounding of his heartbeat as he skimmed through the letter.
“Good news, my lord?”
Valentin exhaled slowly, the fierce drumbeat of his heart receding as he nodded at Robert.
“The Duke and Duchess of Arundale send their regrets, but Miss Estelle Easton and her sister Linette, Viscountess Linley, and her husband, Adam Whitaker, Viscount Linley, will arrive in Calais at the end of the month. Arrangements must be made to meet their ship, Robert, carriages and the best accommodations if they arrive too late in the day to travel here directly…”
Valentin fell silent and closed his eyes, allowing the tension that had built inside him since he’d sent the messenger to England to finally release from his body.
Allowing the news that Estelle was alive and well and would be attending his coronation to sink like a soothing balm into his very soul.
“You are in pain, my lord?”
Valentin opened his eyes to see that Robert’s face had grown anxious, the older man’s once dark hair now fully gray after two years spent in an adjacent cell deep in the castle dungeon. “Less than yesterday. Today is a good day. A very good day.”
Robert at once appeared to relax and gestured for the footman, who still stood at stiff attention, to leave Valentin’s private apartment. As the young man bowed and then hastened away, Robert turned back to Valentin. “Your privy council awaits you downstairs. You’ve scarcely slept these past weeks and there is yet so much to do—”
“How could there not be after two and a half years of rule by a brutal despot?” Valentin cut him off, his voice grown harsh. All he had to do was think of what he had suffered, Robert had suffered, and the good people of Bratavia had suffered at the hands of his uncle, Archduke Henri Chevalier, and worse still, his uncle’s accursed son, Gaston, and the happy news Valentin had just received seemed to recede beneath a cloud of choking hatred.
Thank God at least Henri had been shot dead during the violent coup that had freed Valentin at last, along with others left to rot in the dungeon. Sickened by the torture and cruelty, a guard had finally revealed to townspeople that Prince Renaud, Valentin’s father, was still alive and held prisoner, as was Valentin, though both were long believed dead.
Word had spread like wildfire throughout Bratavia, citizens arming themselves and storming the castle gates that miraculously were opened by that same guard, and Henri and his minions quickly killed or subdued.
Well, except for one. Valentin’s cousin, Gaston, had somehow escaped into the countryside to become a hunted fugitive, a price of gold bullion upon his head, dead or alive.
It wouldn’t be long before he was found and killed outright or returned in chains to face a tribunal and execution. Even that would not atone for the death of Valentin’s beloved father only weeks after the coup, his body broken though his spirit had remained indomitable until the end.
Prince Renaud had wept only once…when he saw Valentin after they had been released from their cells. Both of them filthy and bloodied, his father unable to rise from his stretcher though somehow he threw his skeletal arms around Valentin to hold him close…
His eyes welling at the vivid memory, Valentin swallowed hard and clasped Robert’s arm in apology. “Forgive me, my loyal friend,” he began, but Robert interrupted him by firmly shaking his head.
“No need, my lord. We’d do well to think of the future…and a certain ship arriving at the end of the month with a very special guest. Miss Easton must remember you quite fondly to travel all this way for your coronation. But after all, you saved her life.”
�
��And she, mine,” Valentin said under his breath, Robert falling into step behind him as he strode toward the ornately carved double doors leading from his private apartment.
After the cramped dimensions of his cell, he had not quite grown accustomed again to so much space around him, or so much opulence, though he had known this castle as his home since birth. He’d survived on so little that now, he could not abide too much food placed before him or too many servants hovering around him.
Finally he had banned everyone except Robert whenever he sought refuge in his private apartment, the solitude and quiet he found there much needed amid his newfound duties as the reigning prince of Bratavia. The upcoming coronation and ball afterward were a formality, the full weight of power already firmly upon his shoulders.
The double doors swung open without him so much as touching a gilded handle, the pair of armed guards standing outside hearing his footsteps approaching and springing into action. He nodded to them in acknowledgement, something he’d never seen his father do but which he felt he must to maintain a strong connection with his people.
The young men at stiff attention didn’t move a muscle, both of them close to Valentin’s age of twenty-one, which had been how old his father was when he assumed the throne. Already Prince Renaud had been married for several years to his first wife, Annelise, their son and heir apparent who died not long after birth followed a year later by Valentin’s half-sister, Hortense, who was eight years older than him.
Annelise succumbed to a fever not long afterward, and Valentin’s father took a second wife within the year, Simone, his mother. She, too, perished from illness, when Valentin was fifteen, but she’d been so loved by his father that he hadn’t sought a third wife. That had left Valentin to contend only with Hortense, his married yet childless half-sister the most insufferable woman he’d ever known.
Just thinking about her made Valentin grimace. He forced himself to think instead about the imminent meeting with his privy council as he took the steps of the grand staircase two at a time, Robert with his limp trailing behind him. Valentin was nearly to the bottom, too, when the massive crystal chandelier gracing the entrance hall seemed to rattle at the shrill feminine voice echoing from marble floor to ornately stuccoed ceiling.
“Valentin, dearest brother, wait for me, will you?”
“God help me.” Squaring his shoulders beneath his fitted cutaway coat, Valentin reluctantly slowed his pace on the last few steps, allowing Hortense time to meet him at the bottom of the stairs. He stood well over six feet, but she was an inordinately tall woman, even without the plumed bonnet atop her elaborately styled blond hair. At once she drew herself up to her full height and surveyed him from head to foot.
“My, my, Valentin, how handsomely dressed you are today! I’m glad to see it, too, after I had to berate your tailors for clothing you so plainly.”
“At my request, Hortense,” he began, but she pulled a painted fan from her sleeve and snapped it open almost defiantly in front of him.
“Nonsense! You’re our sovereign now, dear brother, and you must comport yourself like one. Decorum, decorum, I always say. There’s a right way and a wrong way for everything. You might have the barber trim that unruly blond hair of yours, though. It’s rather long at the collar—ah, but of course, I didn’t come here to critique you, Valentin. I’m sure you must be rushing off to some important meeting—”
“I am,” he interrupted her, his patience running thin. “Did you have something on your mind that explains your unexpected visit?”
“Well, of course I do,” she huffed, looking at him askance as if he’d just deeply insulted her. Yet in the next moment she took his arm and pulled him away from the stairs, glancing over her shoulder at Robert. “Must he shadow you so, Valentin? He’s your valet, not your personal guard, am I not correct?”
Ignoring her comment about Robert, Valentin attempted to politely disengage his arm, but Hortense held onto him all the more firmly. Her sickly sweet jasmine perfume so permeated the air around them that he had to stifle a sneeze.
“Oh, my, are you taking sick? And here you’ve made such a remarkable recovery since April, filling out so nicely from when I first saw you, all skin and bones—ah, such a dreadful sight.”
“Hortense, enough. The privy council is waiting for me.”
“Yes, you’re a very busy man, I certainly agree, which is all the more reason why you must allow me to lend you a hand in finding a wife.”
For a stunned moment Valentin could only stare at her, he felt so unprepared for what had just tumbled out of her mouth.
A wife? Yet Hortense didn’t seem to notice his astonishment at all, her lightly rouged and powdered face alight with excitement.
“Think of it, Valentin! You’ll have your pick of a bride from the finest families in Europe! I didn’t want to trouble you with all the details these past weeks, but I’ve received letters of inquiry already from the royal houses of Germany, Luxembourg, oh, so many others. A very select few are coming for the coronation, I’m sure you’re aware. You’ll have your chance to dance with each of these young ladies at the coronation ball—”
“No!”
Now it was Hortense’s turn to look wholly astonished, her jaw dropped, her cheeks flushed an even deeper red though she quickly recovered herself. Once again, she drew herself to her full height although she still looked up at him, her fan fluttering madly.
“No, dear brother? Surely I misheard you.”
“You did not. I’ll choose my own bride, if you don’t mind—”
“Oh, but I do mind. Papa asked me himself right before he died to see to this task and I have taken it upon myself as of the utmost importance. Did he not speak to you about it? He told me he was going to do so that very day.”
Yes, his father had spoken to him about finding a suitable bride, Valentin agreed heavily to himself as Hortense’s bright blue eyes began to well with tears.
“I’m crushed, Valentin, truly crushed. To deny me the chance to fulfill one of Papa’s last wishes—oh, how cruel of you! Unspeakably cruel!”
Valentin felt no pity at that moment, thinking to himself that Hortense had no idea at all of cruelty.
Somehow she had managed to endure only house arrest during their uncle’s rule, along with her henpecked drunkard of a husband, Edward Bertrand, Baron of Toulouse, who had held onto much of his sizeable fortune. There had been so many other pressing matters for Valentin to think about than to question them about it, but he was troubled that they had remained relatively unscathed while others had suffered.
It also troubled him that she’d begun to cry now, great heaving sobs that might soon become wails to bring everyone within earshot running to see what might be the matter. Only to stifle her ridiculous display, he took her by the elbow and tried to keep his voice as soothing as possible.
“Very well, Hortense, do what you will in regard to the coronation and ball. But I will have the final say as to whom I will marry, do you understand?”
Damp, fluttering eyelashes and hiccoughs greeted his pronouncement, but that was all Valentin would allow her. He released her arm and left her staring after him, while Robert fell into step behind him once again.
“A wise move to indulge her, my lord,” came his valet’s low voice, though he could not suppress a chuckle.
In a way, Valentin thought it all comical, too, and he might have chuckled as well if he didn’t know how frighteningly tenacious Hortense could be once she set her mind upon a task.
Like insisting upon redecorating many of the rooms in the castle once his mother had died, her father throwing up his hands and giving in to her after constant emotional outbursts and plaintive requests.
Like Hortense insisting that their father be buried next to her mother, Annelise, as the first wife of Prince Renaud, instead of his mother, and going so far as to badger Bratavia’s most senior judge to support her request.
And now this…her stubborn insistence upon helping him to
find a bride.
He would not put it past her to attempt to find some way to overrule him, if she found herself displeased by his choice. He may be the sovereign prince, but he didn’t doubt Hortense might be among those plotting to control him and his choices in matters concerning Bratavia…
“Enough!” he muttered to himself, the doors to the council room opening before him.
As the seven older gentlemen rose to greet him, he could not help wondering if any might prove untrustworthy or secretly plot to undermine him due to his relative youth and inexperience, though hopefully not. Several had been imprisoned as well, and all of them handpicked by his father a week before his death as men Valentin could trust, but he would be wise to be alert and wary.
Indeed, no truer words were written than Shakespeare’s, “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”
Chapter 3
“Oh, Linette, have you ever seen such a magnificent castle? It’s like out of a fairy tale!”
Estelle glanced at her older sister seated across from her in the rumbling carriage, Linette appearing as awestruck as Estelle felt at that moment. Meanwhile her handsome brother-in-law Adam, who sat next to his wife, holding her hand, chuckled at their wide-eyed excitement.
“One would think the two of you have never seen a castle before,” he teased, only for Estelle to gasp in wonder. She stared again out the open window, her gloved hands clutching the frame.
The most impressive metal gates she’d ever seen were opening to admit them onto the castle grounds, the dueling lions what she imagined must be the Chevalier coat of arms. Now Estelle could barely contain her breathless anticipation and some nervousness, too.
Within moments she would come face-to-face again with Prince Valentin!
Suddenly the past few weeks seemed a blur to her…all the preparations for their journey and the voyage to the French port of Calais. A royal representative from Bratavia meeting them as they disembarked from the ship and escorting them to the most exquisite accommodations where they had spent the night, and then this sumptuous carriage ride of several hours to convey them toward what she had dreamed about for over two years.
My Fugitive Prince Page 2
