by Princess
It was a sight he would have liked to have thrown in his father’s face.
He went into the musty little library that was to be his office and found his aide unrolling the maps for his review, efficiently weighing the scrolled edges with paperweights.
The boy was a godsend.
Alec glanced dubiously at his haggard commanding officer. “Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes, sir. Shall I have the servant bring it in here?”
Darius growled wordlessly.
“Coffee?”
He nodded and dropped wearily into the wooden chair behind the desk. He stared down at the maps, bleary-eyed, then put his wire-rimmed reading spectacles on to read over his paperwork, while the younger man hastened out of the room to fetch coffee. Alec had scarcely closed the door, however, when Darius heard a warm, scratchy voice in the hall.
“Good morning, Lieutenant! Where is the Colonel, please?”
An instant cascade of thrills rushed through his weary body, bringing a surge of new life. He whipped off his spectacles just as Serafina burst triumphantly into the room.
Alec peered in worriedly behind her. “Her Highness—uh— sir—”
Darius let out a sigh. “Never mind, Alec,” he said. “That will be all.”
Alec glanced curiously from Serafina to him. Darius regarded the princess as she blithely shepherded Alec out of the library, closed the door behind him, then turned and leaned against the closed door, both hands behind her. She grinned at him.
“May I help you?” he asked dryly.
She let out an irrepressible laugh as if he’d said something marvelously witty, then ran across the room to him, skipped around the desk, and threw her arms around him, planting a kiss on his cheek with a loud smack.
“Good morning, Darius!” She squeezed him about the neck.
“Good, you’re awake.” He pulled aside but not entirely away, scowling. “We must review security procedures.”
“Nonsense, we must have breakfast.” She loosened her hold around his neck but kept her arms draped around him as she smiled prettily at him. “Come and eat with me. Breakfast is almost ready.”
His mouth watered. “I have work to do.”
“Don’t work, play with me. You’re on holiday!”
“On the contrary, Your Highness, I’m in hell.”
She knitted her brows at him. “That’s not a very nice thing to say.” She released his neck and rose. She hopped up and sat on the desk, right on the maps. Planting both hands behind her, she leaned back across the desk, using her body to block him from his paperwork. “Tell you what. I’ll help you with your work, then you can finish all the sooner and play with me.”
He looked up at her and found her smiling innocently at him. She crossed her ankles and swung her slippered feet.
I really don’t have a prayer with this girl, he thought.
“How is your shoulder feeling today?”
“Fine, Your Highness.”
“No, no, no, don’t call me that.” She wagged a finger at him. “I’m not the princess here.”
“Oh? Who might you be?”
“I’m not sure yet. No one in particular. I’ll let you know when I find out.”
He abruptly yawned. He covered his mouth, eyes watering. “Pardon me.”
Suddenly she gave him an appalled look. “You haven’t been to bed yet, have you? Darius!” she cried. “Go. This instant!”
He regarded her dully.
When he made no move to obey, she sprang off the desk and came around to his side, pulling on his hand. “Come on.”
He didn’t budge.
“I’m putting you to bed!”
He let out a furious growl and yanked his hand away to rake it through his hair. “Don’t say such things to me.” He rested his elbows on his desk and glowered at her as he rubbed his throbbing temples.
“Why not? You put me to bed last night, didn’t you?”
He shot her a haughty look, then sat back, sullen, in his chair.
“Oh, Darius, my fierce one,” she said with her sweet, soothing laugh. She touched his face, trying to make him look at her, but he jerked his chin away, scowling.
She lowered her hand, gazing at him while he stewed. Studying him intently, she rested one juicy hip against his desk, her slim arms folded under her breasts. “You’re very handsome when you scowl.”
He gave her a dirty look.
Laughing softly, she reached out and gently smoothed his hair out of his eyes. “You need to learn to relax—”
He grabbed her wrist and forced her hand away. “Stop touching me, for God’s sake! Why are you always touching me? What are you trying to do to me?”
She stared at him with a look of surprise that swiftly turned to hurt. “I only meant to be friendly.”
“Well, don’t!” He looked away, heart pounding. He shoved his fingers through his hair in agitation, then got up roughly from the chair, crossing the library toward the door. He opened the door and held it for her, though she hadn’t moved from the desk. His soldierly stare bored straight ahead. “If you please, Your Highness, we have security procedures to review.”
He felt her gaze on him turning cold.
She crossed the room and brushed past him at the door, her tone as flat as his. “Very well. Carry on, Colonel.”
He walked her through the house, showing her how to slip away without a trace, teaching her how to hide.
He was the expert on that, she supposed. He introduced her to all the villa’s exits and the hiding places built into the floors and walls, issuing commands and detailing procedures of exactly what she was to do in case of emergency.
Her mood was so glum after his violent rejection of her attempt to be affectionate that Serafina barely paid attention as she followed the stern and exacting Colonel Santiago through the villa. On their impromptu tour, she was more interested in the house than in Darius’s tedious lecture on security procedures.
She saw a morning room with lace curtains and a lemon tree in a clay pot in the corner, the topmost branches of which reached all the way up to the dentals of the white crown molding. They went through a long, rectangular drawing room. Here, as throughout the house, the rugs and furniture were all slightly threadbare, and everything was dusty with disuse. Yet, to her, the villa’s shabby gentility was a welcome contrast to the palace, with its soaring spaces of pristine white marble.
She paused to glance out the mullioned windows and found that the parlor overlooked a charming flagstone patio. Through the old, bowed glass, she saw that the back garden had been allowed to grow into a wild thicket. An old grape arbor stood in the center of the garden with a rough-hewn table underneath the tangled vines. Impatiently, Darius summoned her to the next room and continued his lecture. She only half-listened.
Across the hall from the drawing room lay a stately dining room, dominated by an old mahogany table with seating for twelve and huge mirrors on each of the four walls to maximize light from the cobwebbed chandelier.
Gazing at the room, she glanced over and found Darius staring at her. He looked away.
She lowered her lashes. “I like this place, Darius,” she ventured quietly. “It feels like a home, doesn’t it?”
“How should I know?” he asked blankly, then he left the room.
With waning patience, she followed him upstairs. To her surprise, he showed her that there was even a hiding place in the pink bedroom. Darius pulled back the pastoral-fantasy tapestry rug to reveal a floor compartment big enough for a person to hide in.
“You get in here if I tell you to. No arguments. If the French discover our location, they may try and steal you again.”
“Darius, really,” she said in boredom. “Captain Orsini will find them in time.”
“Orsini couldn’t find his arse in his britches,” he muttered as he closed the wooden door and pulled the rug back into place.
She chuckled.
“Now I have one more thing to show you.” He stood and offe
red a hand, helping her up. “I chose this villa as your safe house because it lies over the secret royal tunnels. If we are attacked, I will of course defend you with my life, as will every man here—”
She winced. “Don’t say things like that.”
“We will defend you with our lives,” he continued, “but if we fail—in particular, if I should fall to the enemy—you will have to evacuate the property alone. Come with me and I’ll show you what you are to do.”
But she had gone pale, staring at him.
He glanced at her, tilting his head. “Have I scared you?”
How could he talk about the possibility of his own death without the slightest fear or the slightest sign of interest?
Her fright seemed to amuse him. “Oh, little Cricket, don’t fret,” he said, giving her a mocking but indulgent smile. “You are perfectly safe here. The chances of their finding us are very slim,” he went on. “This villa is remote. We’re well manned. I merely like to be prepared for the worst. Come. This way.”
Wrapping her arms around herself, she followed him outside, down the few stone steps from the entrance, down onto the unevenly cobbled drive, where weeds sprouted up between the stones.
Lifting her gaze to the cloudless azure sky, she took a deep breath of the cool mountain air. It was a fine day after the night’s storm. Every emerald leaf beamed with captured droplets.
He walked on ahead, but she turned back, shaded her eyes, and gazed up at the sun-blasted, tumbledown villa.
The red tile roof was bowed, a few shutters were missing, and here and there the pastel-yellow paint was peeling, but its large stones were sturdy, and its form was one of elegant, Palladian symmetry. On the sides of the house, the once-sculpted topiaries were overgrown into green, misshapen hulks. The flower beds had run amok with tall white daisies and bright gold black-eyed Susans. Closer to the ground, clouds of scarlet geraniums shook in the dry highland breeze.
She was charmed. A little tender loving care is all you need, she thought, then her protector’s voice broke into her reverie.
“Serafina, do stop dawdling.”
Her patience with him was wearing thin. If he had called her by her title, she would have given him a scathing set-down for his insolent tone. However, he had used her name, so she forgave him and hurried after him. Together they walked across the compound to the path leading into the property’s woods.
As they walked, Darius noticed his men’s furtive glances at the goddess.
Don’t any of you even look at her. He sent the soldiers back to work with a menacing glare, bristling with a surge of the same bizarre possessiveness he always felt around her.
“Hurry up,” he muttered, slowing his longer paces and waiting for her to catch up.
Neither of them spoke as they entered the path, but he was acutely aware of her as she strode gracefully through the dappled woods by his side. He listened to the soft rustle of leaves and pine needles under their feet, then looked over his shoulder and briefly scanned the woods to make sure no one was following.
He stole another covert, sideward glance at her lovely, pale face, but he only succeeded in getting caught up in her beauty each time he looked at her. He was beguiled by her classical profile, the sweep of her long, feathery lashes.
“This way,” he murmured, brushing her hand to get her attention. Hands like silk, how soft they had felt on his skin, stroking him, healing him. He gritted his teeth. “Go to the left where the path forks, then look for the white poplar. Remember it. It marks where you must turn off the path,” he instructed her.
She took a long look up at the towering tree.
He glanced at her, homed in on her snowy throat where her soft, fluttering pulse beat. His gaze floated downward over the silken expanse of her chest, modestly revealed by a square-collared, girlish dress. He looked straight at the lush swells of her breasts, and saw that her nipples were erect, pressing against the soft, light blue muslin.
He dropped his gaze, his mouth gone dry. “Come, Princesa.”
He led her toward the stand of firs, mentally cursing himself but helpless before the fact that, truly, she had the most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen, two ripe, generous handfuls, peaches from the Garden of Eden.
Exactly, he thought. Forbidden fruit.
It was just as well he was going to die soon, because he didn’t much care to linger in a world where such breasts could exist but he could never kiss them, fondle them.
It would be so easy.
“These three big pines—the tallest ones—form a triangle,” he explained in a martial tone. He swept a few needle-laden branches out of her way and indicated for her to walk into the center of the tiny grove.
She brushed past him into the small open space within the wall of pines, where she folded her hands demurely behind her and watched him with an expression of virginal hunger.
That look nearly snapped his control. He let the branches fall.
“It’s a trapdoor,” he said. “See if you can find it. Open it.”
Obediently, she fluffed out her skirts and swept down to her knees, then began feeling around through the thatched grass and pine needles.
Hands on hips, Darius watched her brush the pine needles away from the iron latch. The way she bent over her work merely enhanced the sweet fullness of her cleavage, then suddenly she gave a little cry of pain. He looked up quickly from her chest to her face just as she popped her finger into her mouth.
“What happened?”
“A pinecone bit me,” she said with her pout.
Dryly, half-wanting to throttle her, he lifted one brow at her. A second later, he became caught up in the prospect of her finger poised between her full lips. On her knees on the soft green forest carpet, sucking her finger, she was somehow the most innocently erotic thing he’d ever seen. He stared at her, mesmerized.
She removed her finger from her mouth. It came out glistening wet. She shot him a look of defiance and wiped her finger on her dress. “It doesn’t hurt,” she said in a parody of him. She seized the handle in both lily-white hands that had never done a day’s work, and strained against the rusted trapdoor. “It’s stuck!”
He fought the urge to help her. “You must be able to do this yourself.”
“I can’t!”
“You can,” he said quietly. “What if I can’t always come to your rescue? You must be able to survive on your own.”
“Fine words from you,” she muttered, but she kept trying. “My brother is mapping these tunnels for Papa. I bet you didn’t know that, in your omniscience.”
He shook his head.
“The maps are going to be Rafael’s present for Papa’s fiftieth birthday. My mother is making a big surprise party for him. You’ll probably be there, won’t you? I won’t. I’ll miss it, of course. I’ll be in Moscow. With my husband.”
No, you won’t, he thought, but he bit his tongue, gazing at her as one soft, sooty curl came free of the bow and fell against her rosy cheek. You are so pretty.
When the door suddenly creaked free, she plopped back onto her derriere with the force of her pull, but she glowed with a blush of self-satisfaction and sat there grinning at him.
He made a mental note to oil the hinges so they wouldn’t squeak. If there was an emergency, she would have to make as little noise as possible.
“Hurry,” he sternly prompted. “They’re coming. They’re armed. And if they catch you, your family loses everything.”
Her grin dissolved. She quickly rose and ventured down the steps to the underground tunnel. His heart clenched at the way she moved like a frightened kitten down there in the dark. Gingerly, she lifted the cobwebbed torch from its holder.
“Light it. The flint should be there.”
She searched.
“You’ll have to find the flint, shut the trapdoor, and only then light the torch,” he directed. “They mustn’t see the light or they’ll find you.”
“I’ve got it.”
Once she
had located the flint, she struggled to pull the trapdoor shut over her.
Darius waited above for many minutes, pacing like a man with his wife in labor, while she worked below to practice lighting her torch with the flint.
“I can’t do it!” came her furious voice, muffled through the earth.
He leaned down near the seam of the door so she could hear him. “Keep trying. You can do it, Serafina.”
“I can’t do anything!” she wailed. “I’m just a—a useless hothouse flower!”
He smiled as he sat down on the closed trapdoor to wait. “Aren’t you the girl who smashed Philippe Saint-Laurent a facer? Stop being a baby. I’m not letting you up until the torch is lit.”
He heard more grumbling from below. “Disgusting, drippy, icky cave. Probably infested with bats. Something’s wrong with this flint. . . .”
He chuckled to himself.
Finally, she completed the drill. He opened the trapdoor for her and watched her come back up the steps. Pleased with herself, she preened a bit. He hid his amusement and closed the trapdoor, covering it again with the thatch.
They strolled back to the house, then their companionable silence turned awkward as they arrived once more at his make-shift office in the library. He stole a glance at her and realized in regret that it was wisest to part company with her now. He crossed the office to his desk, where he sat down and began sorting through the maps. He could feel her staring at him.
He ignored her.
“Darius?”
“Yes, Your Highness?”
He heard her hesitation. “What are you going to do now?”
“Work.”
“Aren’t you going to eat breakfast?”
“I’ll get to it.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
“No, thank you.”
Silence.
He stole a wary glance at her from under his forelock and saw the waver of vulnerability on her soft, plump lips.
“What is it?” he asked coolly, refusing to succumb to the tug at his heart.
“What am I to do now?” she asked in a small voice.
He shrugged. “I am here to protect you, not entertain you, Your Highness.”
She spoke in a tone of strained patience. “I know that.”
