Royal Renegade

by Alicia Rasley

  "Isn't that your primary motive for marrying Cumberland?" The words came out more harshly than he intended. "Or are you putting that down to patriotism?"

  As usual, she ignored his question to pursue her own tangent on the issue. "Do you really think royal marriages make any difference at all? Why, the House of Hanover is linked to all the royal houses of Europe, and Britain still stands alone against Napoleon. All those royal brides and grooms seem entirely irrelevant to global matters. I can't imagine that Britain will support Russia only because our two families are linked." She gazed him earnestly, seeking some assurance he knew he had no right to give.

  But he felt immeasurably better at her disinterest in this royal marriage, and didn't care to examine why. "Now who is being literal? Royal marriages are merely—what was your word? Metaphors. Unless, of course, kingdoms are linked in actuality by marriage, as happened when George I brought the kingdom of Hanover with him to Britain."

  "I haven't any kingdom to bring with me, for my grandfather lost Saraya Kalin decades ago," the princess said with a sigh of relief. "I don't even have a dowry, only twenty thousand pounds in the Bank of England, and that's my own funds, which I shan't give away to a husband. I can't understand why any self-respecting prince would take me, can you?"

  He forbore to answer, only commenting, "If it is in Britain's interest to become allied to Russia, that is what will happen, and the marriage will be a symbol. If it is not, no marriage will make a difference."

  She regarded him solemnly from under those dark lashes. But with unusual tact, she did not acknowledge his last remark, which, they both knew, was far out of the purview of his duties as an escort. Then, as suddenly as she had appeared, she slid back along the deck, refusing on principle to hold on to the railing although the sloop tipped up under the force of a roller. When she regained her balance, she threw him a reassuring smile over her shoulder and vanished down the stairwell.

  As he turned slowly back to the rail, Devlyn wondered if she knew how potent that smile was. Each time she smiled at him, it stopped him dead in his tracks. Her always pretty face became radiant, her eyes sparking like emeralds, her velvety skin glowing like pearls. That smile was the very personification of joy, coming entirely from within, from some warm little part of her.

  He hoped no man would ever be fool enough to tell her about the power of that smile. If she knew how she dazzled, she would smile whenever she wanted to get her way. And then that smile would lose all its magic, and life would lose a little reason for joy.

  As Devlyn entered his cabin a little later, Dryden followed him. After the hatch was shut, Dryden regarded him with embarrassment and Devlyn knew he was in for some friendly advice.

  Theirs had always been an awkward relationship, though as boys they hadn't regarded it much. Then they had been merely a titled, if impoverished, youth and the more affluent son of the bourgeoisie. They had run together in childhood in the village of Devlyn on the south coast. In their later youth, their common alienation drew them together.

  Devlyn was literally alienated, orphaned and destitute from the age of ten. On his holidays from school, he had no place to go but an abandoned forester's cottage on the estate that should have been his. John's estrangement was more spiritual than actual; the apothecary's son, he was a restless sort even as a child, but as the elder son he was expected to take up his father's profession. He wouldn't, he swore to Devlyn often enough, and he didn't. Proud as a prince and twice as able, he scorned all careful trappings of the middle class and early vowed to make his own way, legal or no.

  The friendship, even then, was mostly John's doing. In the quiet viscount he must have sensed some corresponding need to take control of life. So every school holiday John would come to the forester's cottage with a cache of stolen food and supplies. Sometimes they would slip into the stables at Devlyn and take a couple of horses out, John telling him, "Mike, you owned the whole estate once and you were never the one who let the place to that damned nabob. So the horses are yours by right." John was always one for finding rights the magistrate would never have countenanced, and Devlyn, less righteous then, always went along.

  Mostly they sailed, first on makeshift rafts and then on a sailboat they built painstakingly with scraps of lumber one summer. Devlyn liked it well enough—the carpentry work, the sea air, the illicit thrill of crossing the channel to enemy France. But he never had the passion for sailing that John did, and he knew someday his friend would find a real ship and leave dull Dorset behind for good.

  They never talked much, but understood each other well enough. Of course, as they grew older, their different paths in life intruded on the quiet camaraderie. But they still raised a glass together when they encountered each other in the village, and occasionally John sought him out in London. Once, out of nowhere, he had appeared in the army camp at Torres Vedras with a case of fine cognac, insuring Devlyn's popularity as a dinner partner for a year or so. They still cared for each other, in the bemused, uncomprehending way men care for their boyhood friends.

  But always between them was an issue neither felt capable of resolving or indeed even of discussing.

  As he dropped onto the narrow bed, Devlyn covertly studied the lean and sophisticated captain. John looked nothing like his younger brother, who was typical of the broad-faced, fair yeomen of Dorset. John's hooded eyes and angular face, his graceful, long-limbed figure, had always been the cause of gossip in the village. A stranger might suppose him as a throwback to some unknown ancestor, an Egyptian or Assyrian shipwrecked two millenia before on the shores of Lyme Bay.

  But that was not the answer the villagers of Devlyn had come up with when they first saw the lord's son and the apothecary's son together. And that wasn't what John had drunkenly proposed when they were fifteen and toasting his decision to change his name to Dryden and run away to sea. "I look more like you than like my brother, you know. Do you think your father—my mother?"

  Devlyn was drunk enough then not to take much offense, instinctively realizing that John searched for a connection that his own family couldn't offer. And Devlyn knew too much about his late father's proclivities to attempt a defense of his honor. "I'm only four months older 'n you. But I suppose some men take mistresses when their wives are unavailable. Your mother though?" They both contemplated the timid dumpling Mrs. Manning and shook their heads. "Perhaps you were my father's by-blow by another woman, and he switched you at birth with the Manning child. Can't imagine why. To keep an eye on you?"

  "He never paid me any mind. Doubt he remembered my name."

  "Don't take offense," Devlyn had said consolingly, for he rather liked the idea of a brother. "Toward the end he didn't remember my name either. Here." He wrenched off the signet ring with a sapphire in the center of the "D," the only legacy of value the bailiffs had allowed him to keep. "You can have half my debts too. You wear this half the year and I'll wear it the other half." And they did that first year, John punctiliously posting the ring back from Madagascar in August. But when February came about again, Devlyn didn't know where John was, and after that he never bothered to make the transfer. Now, unconsciously, he twisted the ring on his finger and then gestured to John to sit on the hardback chair at the table serving as a desk.

  The captain pulled the chair out and straddled it backward. He looked away out the porthole, speaking with the awkward impersonality that so often characterized their exchanges these days. "I won't tell you how to go on. But if you were on my crew, I'd be less than pleased with you for having a visitor on your watch."

  Of course, he would know about the princess's visits.

  An effective captain always knew all that transpired on his ship. But he should know Devlyn too. "I am not neglecting my duty to you. I keep watch just as well."

  John nodded in palpable relief that this spot of unpleasantness was done, and Devlyn realized there was some other motive for this visit. "Oh, I'm not worried about that. I have every confidence in your concentration. You'd neve
r let yourself be distracted by mademoiselle, however distracting she is. And I gather you haven't much choice in the matter. An imperious little chit, isn't she? Who is she, by the way?"

  The sudden question made Devlyn withdraw for a moment, wondering whether to trust John. But the captain's lean face showed only concern and curiosity. "Come on, Devlyn. They wouldn't have sent you if she wasn't some important personage. And she looks important. Those elegant little gowns she wears must run three hundred guineas each."

  Devlyn shrugged. "She's a Russian princess. She's meant for Cumberland."

  "The duke? The murderer?" John made the same gesture the princess had, dragging his finger across his throat. "They're marrying that girl to a murderer?"

  Devlyn felt something—shame?—twist in his chest. "No indictment was returned."

  "Catch a British jury indicting the king's son," John scoffed. "He's a fiend, that's what I hear. Incest, rape—"

  Devlyn cut him off. "I've heard the rumors, too."

  "More than rumors. I've a colleague who sold him a firecracker from the Spanish Inquisition. Do you know how the bishops got conversions to the one true faith with that little device?" Curious in spite of his disgust, Devlyn shook his head, and John flushed. "Well, you can guess. Paid a packet, Cumberland did. And I don't think he's founding a museum of implements of torture."

  "Now that's a little wild, don't you think?" Devlyn returned in reasonable tone. But his fingers tightened spasmodically into claws. "He won't turn her on the rack. Besides, I think she means to scarper once she gets to England. She's not as naive as she looks. She finagled twenty thousand pounds out of the tsar before she left, and even a princess won't starve on that."

  "Good for her," John remarked with palpable relief. "I've carried my share of illicit cargo, but I haven't ever engaged in the slave trade. And she's pretty pleasant, for a princess, though she carries herself like she owns the world. So now you can stop worrying about her, can't you?"

  "Was I worrying about her?" Devlyn asked idly, looking down at his clenched fist, wondering what good it would do him.

  "You tell me. You've been doing something about her, that's clear enough." When Devlyn didn't answer, John went on awkwardly, "Come on, Mike. She's beyond your touch, you know. And what do you think would happen if you did what you're contemplating?"

  "What am I contemplating?"

  Devlyn managed a bland, inquisitive expression, but perhaps his old friend knew him better than he thought. For John ignored that question to answer his own. "There goes your career. And everything else. I'd hire you, I suppose, but you'd would make a lamentable smuggler—too damned honorable."

  This last bit of raillery was meant to drag them away from the dangerous subject of Devlyn's contemplations. He appreciated that, as he appreciated his friend's concern. But he only pulled off his boots and leaned back against the wall, angry that he had become so transparent under the princess's influence.

  So he gave into a malicious urge for turnabout, in the process changing the subject. "I hear your father finally gave up on you and handed the store over to Dennis the Dullard."

  Dennis the Dullard was what they always called John's honest, hardworking younger brother. He was just right to run an apothecary shop, and it was a testament to Mr. Manning's belief in primogeniture that he had waited so long to appoint the boy heir. John was the elder son, at least as far as Mr. Manning knew, and John should take over the shop. Unfortunately, John preferred smuggling Greek statuary and Etruscan pottery and impressing the dons at the Royal Academy with his knowledge of classical art. "Yes, Father has finally given up hope that I'll see the error of my ways and come home and mess about in gingerroot and spider eggs and whatever other concoctions he sells. Poor Dennis. All he's ever wanted is the shop, and it's a grudging legacy at best. Father won't give over, you see. He still mans the counter and orders Denny about like a shopboy." John flexed his arms back to stretch his shoulders out, as if the memory of the little shop made him stiff. "Do you remember when you hit me?" he asked suddenly.

  Violence between them had been so rare that the fact Devlyn did remember said something about their friendship. They had never been rivals, runabouts, more like, or just partners. And they seldom talked enough to argue. But one afternoon when they were thirteen or so, John had come sullen after another fight with his father. "I wish I were an orphan, too," he declared, and Devlyn had hit him. Just once in the jaw, just enough to knock him dizzy. John had gotten up and gone away and stayed away for a week. When he finally returned to the forester's cottage with a towel full of teacakes, they said nothing about the fight. Never had, in fact, until now.

  John's gray eyes were inward-focused, almost opaque. "I told you I wanted to be an orphan. I didn't want all that burden of love and responsibility and expectations. Still don't. But you really were an orphan and would have given your right arm for someone to feel responsible for. And you still would, wouldn't you?"

  "You have, I hope, a point to make here," Devlyn broke in coldly.

  "We always want what we can't have." John gave a sigh for the injustice of fate, then, observing his friend's scowl, rose from his chair and headed for the door. "Just keep it in mind, will you? And that's all the philosophizing you're likely to hear from me this voyage. Southhampton in nine days—and what a treat it will be to dock legally for once. In daylight, no less. I hope it doesn't spoil my crew for our more specialized work."

  Chapter Eight

  At sea

  A few days later, Tatiana came up the hatchway and scanned the deck, wary of meeting her companion. Buntin believed that a future royal duchess should do naught but read etiquette books and practice condescending nods. Fortunately Buntin spent most of her time in their small cabin, huddled in her bunk and dreaming of landfall.

  Tatiana was a more accomplished sailor; indeed, she loved watching the crew at duty. When she was sure she was unobserved, she clambered into a launch boat hung on divots off the deck. With the tarpaulin making a tent over her head, she was sheltered from the wind and from view, while still able to see most of the deck.

  She drew her feet up, tucking her plum wool skirt under her slippers, and surveyed her small kingdom. The sailors worked around her in the pale afternoon sunlight. A disciplined crew, they kept to a routine, and the middle of the afternoon was left for minor maintenance tasks. So one young lad desultorily polished up the oaken rail, while Bookie, the grizzled bos'n, mended a sail with a needle as thick as a pencil lead.

  The Coronale was gliding past the coast of France, a dangerous stage that required the constant supervision of the captain. Tatiana could see Captain Dryden now on the other side of the bridge, where he stood in conversation with Michael. They both leaned over the rail, the breeze ruffling Michael's curls as he pointed north toward England. Tatiana's heart gave an odd lurch. Lately, her body was given to extravagant responses to the sight of the major. This warning signal was unnecessary, for she was in no danger with a cautious man like Michael. He was her protector, after all; he would not let her come to harm.

  If only she could be so sure he was in no danger with her.

  But she recalled poor Peter Korsakov's exile, and imagined how much this friendship could cost Michael. She had to be more careful with him than she had ever been, because she sensed he was taking less care. As he relaxed with her, laughed, gave way, she knew Michael was letting down the guard of a lifetime. Once she had had to coax a smile out of him as she might coax wet kindling into flame. Now it was the work of a moment. She had only to speak in cant, or refer to some empress ancestor, or ask him a simple question, and that slow, reluctant smile would lighten his cool features and bring a glint to his cloudy eyes.

  It was hard to believe, when he smiled like that, that any ill could come of their camaraderie. But they both knew how limited this friendship must be, which was why they spoke of the future only in the most oblique terms. Lately Michael had been coaching her on military strategy, explaining why Napoleon's rumored
plans to invade Russia must fail. General Wellington would never act so impulsively, Michael had told her last night. "The General never makes a move without calculating the cost. He asks what can go wrong, what's the worst that can happen. He's realized that Russia is a fiercesome place to wage war, to move and shelter and feed four, five hundred thousand troops. But Napoleon wants it all right now, just like a child with a new toy, no matter what it costs. Which is why," he had concluded, his eyes narrowed as if he could see the armies clashing already, "we will win the war, and your little Corsican admirer will lose everything he has conquered."

  There was a message there for her, she thought, nervously unknotting a bit of rope hanging from the side of the boat. Don't do anything rash, he meant. Consider your options. Think about the consequences. Choose well. Grim thoughts, but cleansing in their cold realism.

  Michael had disappeared below, taking the sun with him, and even Tatiana, weaned on Russian snowmelt, began to shiver. She looked in dismay at the ruin her fingers had made of the rope and dropped it into the bottom of the launch. W hen she was sure she was unobserved, she clambered down to the deck. It would not do to have the Captain Dryden discover her refuge, for he would have some good nautical reason why she should be barred from it.

  General Wellington's stern questions echoed in her mind as she stood on the deck watching the storm clouds mass above the eastern horizon. What could go wrong? Napoleon could indeed invade Russia, making a new alliance a necessity and a royal marriage more than just a gesture. What was the worst that could happen? Cumberland could be just as awful as she feared, and she would have to marry him anyway. And she could want to marry someone else.

  Bookie lumbered past her toward the helm, breaking into her reverie. All around her, the crew was coming to life as the glowering clouds rolled toward the sloop. Even as the first drops of rain splattered against her face and the deck, the wind whipped up the sea and the mist tasted salty on her lips. She looked back to see Captain Dryden near the helm, his booted feet planted securely, his shouted orders ripped away by the wind. When he saw her, he crossed the deck in a few strides. "You'll have to go belowdecks, mademoiselle. We're in for a bit of a gale. Nothing to worry about," he hastened to assure her, misunderstanding the excited flash in her eyes. "We'll just be blown a bit off course, I think. These gales come up sudden, but they die away pretty soon, too."