by Princess
The whole day, she wasn’t allowed to see Cara. With parasols to shade them from the sun, Els and she took a long walk on the beach, trailing their bare beet in the sand and trying to make sense of it all. Followed by a retinue of servants and chaperons at a respectful distance, they stopped now and then to gaze at the white sails of Ascencion’s fleet in the bay.
Serafina had never seen Els in so serious and sad a mood. Fortunately, the redhead’s distress over Cara’s downfall helped distract Serafina from her realizations about Darius. As a couple of hours passed, she was even able to convince herself that he had been just as upset this morning about losing her as she was over losing him. Indeed, maybe he had been so stiff and cold because Papa had been standing there.
She knew he had tried to be gentle, breaking the news to her about Cara this morning. He had probably wanted more than anything to take her into his arms and comfort her, but he had been unable to. After all, no one had forced him to stand out there waiting for her carriage to arrive.
Hope clung like a thorn in her flesh. Her one consolation was that maybe, just maybe, he would come to her tonight. That, she told herself, would be the decisive factor.
The day dragged by and she didn’t see him again.
Late into the night, she lay awake, willing him to appear, trying to conjure him, her demon love, but the secret door never opened, and quietly she cried herself to sleep.
It was two A.M. Darius was sitting idly in his suite, just sitting hour after hour, smoking, thinking, and staring at the wall. Holding his dagger by its ebony handle, he would hurl it at the wall, where it would stick in the plaster with a shuddering thud. He would stare at it awhile, get up, wrench it out of the plaster, sit down. Repeat. Ignoring his hunger. Organizing and reorganizing his plans in his head. Asking himself questions he’d already answered a hundred times, and willing himself to see some other solution he might have missed.
He didn’t want to die, but too bad, he thought. He crushed out another cheroot in the already full ashtray and sat for a long time, slouching in his chair, watching the shadow of the dagger meld into the other shadows.
The blackness was closing in on him. It took all his strength not to go to Serafina. He would not give in to it. A clean break was best for her, no matter how much she needed him in this moment, nor how frightened he was and how alone.
He sat back, silently tortured, weighed down in the chair by his exhaustion.
For a long time, he listened to the song of crickets beyond his windows, breathed the cool night air perfumed by lilacs, almost dozing in the chair until the silence was broken by the creak of the door.
He looked over in surprise and saw it was not the servant he’d sent to the cellars for some wine, but Teresa, one of his former lovers. He looked away as his mood turned blacker.
He wished the dagger was in his hand, for it would have delighted him to send it plunging into the door next to her head. She locked the door behind her and crept toward him. He rested his chin on his fist, waiting.
She came to stand before his chair and offered him a hesitant smile. Despite his hostile stare, cautiously she came closer, as he knew she would. He tensed as she lowered herself to her knees between his sprawled thighs.
Without expression, Darius watched her slowly begin to touch him, watched her fingers savor the satin of his waistcoat and, bolder after a few minutes, undo his cravat. He wondered why he was so numb. What was wrong with him that always drove people to act this way with him?
She reached between his legs, subtle as ever.
“No,” he mumbled, but he didn’t push her hand away.
She caressed him upward, his belly, his chest.
“No?” she asked with a knowing look, banked lust under her heavy-lidded eyes.
“Leave me alone,” he said in a strangled whisper, but she just untied the neck strings of his shirt, boldly raking his bare chest with her nails. At last he felt his skin catch fire in the wake of her clawing touch that hurt in a way she could not know.
Her hot hands massaged the tired muscles of his thighs through the sturdy cloth of his black trousers, curled around his calves. He heard her breathing coming faster, deeper.
He still refused to speak to her or make any move toward her, hating her. She pressed herself against him, wrapping her soft arms around him, brushing his clenched jaw with her cheek, kneading his neck in her trembling hands. He was so weary. He felt like he was being raped for the hundredth time, too weary to struggle anymore. He just wanted her to go away. He smiled bitterly at her angry groan when she pressed her lips to his and he declined to kiss her back. Why should he?
She left his lips to tease his earlobe between her teeth.
“Please, Santiago, let me,” she whispered into his ear, an exasperating tickle.“I’ll do whatever you want. You know I’m good, let me, ooh, Santiago . . .”
The whine of a bitch in heat. She sickened him. His own lust sickened him. Hands on her shoulders, he didn’t know if he was forcing her down or holding her off. They stared at each other.
God, he loathed her, but he rather liked her red mouth.
Something in his eyes must have made her think she’d won.
“Mmm,” she said, settling closer between his open thighs. But when she reached for the buttons on his falls, he began to panic.
It had never mattered before that he didn’t want these women. What mattered was that they wanted him. Somebody, anybody, wanted him, even if it was only for this.
Not this time.
His hold on the woman’s shoulders tightened. “Teresa,” he said harshly.
She looked up at him, her eyes bright with the fever of desire, her tongue skimming lightly over her lips. He stared intensely at her.
“I don’t want you,” he said. “Go.”
Taken aback, her eyes widened, then she gave him a worldly smile. “You don’t?” she asked, caressing his hardness through his clothes. “What game are you playing, gorgeous?”
He stopped her, grasping her wrist and slowly twisting. “No game. Get out.”
She pulled her hand free of his grasp, staring at him in confusion and the start of fear. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Get out!” He suddenly stood up and pushed her, deeply angry all in a flash. She fell back, catching herself on her hands as she stared up at him in astonishment.
“I said get out,” he said savagely, restraining the urge to kick her.
In seconds, she was gone, slamming the door behind her.
Sitting back down in his chair, he waited for the pounding of his heart to slow to a normal rhythm. He raked a hand through his hair, got up, and went to the door, locking it. Then he turned slowly and leaned his back against it. He realized he was shaking. He wrapped his arms around himself and hung his head.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next morning, Serafina stood on the stepping stool before the full-length mirror, gazing in apathy at her reflection while the seamstresses put the final touches on her bridal gown. Her mother had overseen all the wedding preparations and now beamed with pride, gazing at her.
“You look perfect,” the queen announced.
Serafina forced a wan, answering smile. Her mother, she supposed, attributed her bleak mood to the shock of Cara’s betrayal.
This morning, she had learned that Cara had been interrogated for hours last night and had finally signed a confession to the charges of treason. Taking pity on her, the queen had asked that Cara’s sentence be commuted. Now Cara was to be banished, but the men would hang.
Hating herself for her own hopeless naïveté, Serafina was beginning to see the wisdom in Darius’s philosophy of trusting no one.
“Would Your Majesty care to see our progress on the child’s christening gown?” the head couturiere asked the queen while her assistants worked on Serafina’s magnificent train.
“I would!” Mama said brightly.
The couturiere led the way into the adjoining room. The moment the queen left the fit
ting room, her ladies-in-waiting all began gossiping in hushed voices.
Serafina rolled her eyes and ignored them, then scowled down at the young seamstress who had accidentally pricked her calf with her needle. “Ouch!”
“So sorry, Your Highness!” the girl cried, turning pale.
“Hrmph,” she said, then returned her attention to the murmured conversation going on behind her.
“. . . can’t believe he threw you out of his room!”
“Yes, he was positively wild with rage! I thought he would do me some violence!” said the graceful, doe-eyed Lady Teresa.
Serafina turned suddenly.
The women stopped.
“Whom are you gossiping about?” she demanded, staring haughtily at them. She knew from long experience that if she did not use her rank against them, they would use their greater numbers to try to intimidate her.
They glanced at one another.
“I asked you a question.”
“No one, Your Highness.”
She gave them a look of derision and turned back to the mirror.
“. . . was alone with him for a few days, wasn’t she?”
“You don’t suppose . . . ?”
“Too scandalous!”
“We all know he is a very bad boy.”
“Never,” someone whispered. “He’d never risk angering the king.”
Eyes ablaze, Serafina gritted her teeth and stared straight ahead.
“Don’t worry, Teresa, here’s what we’ll do. You and I will go to him together tonight, like that one time during Carnivale—”
Serafina pivoted in fury, ignoring the seamstress’s noise of distress.
The ladies stared at her like little girls caught passing notes by the school headmistress. She suddenly realized they were as fiercely curious to ask her about her sojourn in the country with Darius as she was to find out what they were saying about him.
Disparaging herself for sinking to their level, she decided to switch tactics.
“Is this gown really all right?” she asked prettily, pouting. “White makes me look fat.”
“You’re not fat,” the buxom blond Lady Antonia said hatefully.
Fashion and insecurity they understood.
They clamored to assure her she looked ravishing.
“Ah, Your Highness . . .” Julia Calazzi began.
“Yes?” she asked innocently.
“How did you find your stay in the country?” Julia asked politely.
Serafina’s heart wavered dangerously. If she let herself think of the tumbledown villa with its peeling yellow paint, she knew tears would rise in her eyes.
She shrugged. “Boring.”
“Was Colonel Santiago civil to you?”
“Rude as ever,” she replied.
They looked relieved.
She hated it that she couldn’t gloat to them how devoted and warm he had been. After all, maybe it had all been a game to him. That was all she had intended to say on the matter, but then, because she couldn’t resist, she added archly, “I did overhear him playing his guitar one night. The melody was very sweet.”
“He plays the guitar?” Teresa exclaimed.
Julia’s shrewd gaze flicked back to Serafina.
Serafina smiled back at her coolly and thought, I hate your guts.
“Of course he plays the guitar, Teresa,” Julia said smoothly. “Everyone knows that. But I know something about him no one does.”
“Oh, really?” Serafina retorted.
Julia held her silence with a smug smile.
“Well?” Antonia demanded.
“It is a great secret,” Julia said gravely, relishing the moment.
Serafina rolled her eyes and let out a vexed exhalation. “His real name,” Julia announced grandly, “is Count Darius Santiago.”
The women exclaimed in amazed protest. In the mirror, Serafina pinned Julia’s reflection in her stare. Julia met her gaze with a veiled look of triumph.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Serafina remarked while the others fussed and cooed. “Why would you start a rumor like this? Just to cause trouble for Darius? Don’t you know he is illegitimate, or do you simply not care how much the fact hurts him?”
“He is not illegitimate anymore, as he knows full well. Oh, my dear, did he not tell you? His father acknowledged him right before he died.”
“Really?” Antonia exclaimed.
Julia nodded sagely. “When the old count learned how well Darius has done for himself, he was eager to claim him for his son. Lord knows, his other sons are wastrels.”
“He has brothers?” the women cried eagerly.
“Half-brothers. Two of them, both older,” Julia clipped out.
“They were the count’s legitimate sons.”
Serafina could barely find her voice for shock. “Who told you this?” she demanded.
Julia sipped her tea. “Someone at the bank where Santiago stows his millions.”
The others exclaimed anew. “Millions?”
Serafina arched a brow at the woman, taken aback. What game was she playing? “Have you been prying into all of his affairs, then, Lady Julia?”
“I know everything about him,” she replied. “Everything.”
Serafina folded her arms over her chest. “How, pray tell, would the banker know about Darius’s father?”
“Simple, my dear Principessa, because of the drafts which Darius withdrew on his father’s behalf.”
Serafina stared at her. “You mean to say his father wanted money from him?”
“Naturally. The man was a penniless drunkard.”
Amazed and a little infuriated that she should learn such intimate details of Darius’s past from this source, Serafina turned back to face the mirror, utterly routed.
She was also appalled to think that the callous man who had not acted the smallest part of a father to Darius when he was a boy—a man who had not protected him or provided for him, but had left him to fend for himself—had had the nerve to come looking for a handout.
“Oh, Your Highness, I almost forgot to mention . . .” Julia’s smile was as smooth as the flat of a razor, but a few words sufficed to flick the blade. “Did you hear the news? Your husband arrived just after breakfast.”
She stared at her, turning pale. “He’s not my husband yet.”
Julia took another sip of tea, then smiled. “Goodness, how we’ll miss you when you’re gone.”
Serafina was suddenly out of patience. “Enough!” she snapped at the seamstresses ringing her in. They scrambled out of the way as she stepped down off the stool before the mirror and marched toward the dressing room, ignoring Julia and the others giggling at her.
“I will make a fine countess, don’t you think?” Julia was asking the others blithely as Serafina slammed the door.
A few minutes later, she was striding down the hallway with one burning purpose in mind: to find Darius Santiago and give him a piece of her mind about his petty secret-keeping. Omission of the truth amounted to the same as lies, and she was sick of his spy machinations—and sick as well of her own naïveté. She had thought they were as close as two people could be, but he had been playing her false all along.
What an accomplished liar he was! she thought, her hackles up for a fight. She knew exactly why he had not told her about his title. He had hidden behind his lowly, half-Gypsy status because he did not want her to gain any inkling of the fact that he was, in reality, a perfectly eligible bachelor.
She had never cared what his birth was or what he owned. She had only ever loved him for himself. Why did that terrify him so much?
No doubt he would give a great sigh of relief when she was finally married to Anatole and could no longer plague him with her tedious, adolescent infatuation! But he had not found her breasts tedious, had he? she thought in a perfect fury, for if she didn’t stay angry, she was going to start crying, and if she started, she was never going to stop.
“Where is he?” she
muttered under her breath. The pair of footmen posted at the end of the hallway glanced at her in alarm as she passed. She strode out of the block that housed the royal living quarters and into the main corridor, where the courtiers and ladies lurked. She passed the open doors of the blue salon, where she saw, and was seen by, half a dozen of her devotees.
Young, clean-shaven faces lit up. She rolled her eyes and marched past the doors, continuing on her way, curls flouncing angrily down her back.
“Princess Cricket!”
“Principessa! Wait!”
She clenched her jaw, ignoring them as they ran out of the salon after her.
“May we walk with you?”
“This place has been a mausoleum without you!”
“What about the ball tonight? Is Prince Tyurinov going to let us dance with you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even want to go,” she grumbled.
“He’d better! The man’s too jealous by half. You must save a dance for me—”
“And me!”
“All of us! Where are you going in such a huff, my lady fair?”
“Come play billiards with us!”
“You should have seen the joke we played on Roberto while you were gone—”
In truth, she adored her silly friends—it was, in part, for their sakes that she was marrying Tyurinov to prevent a war, for she could not imagine any of these pampered dandies surviving a battlefield. At the moment, however, she was in no mood for them.
Full of high spirits, giving her compliments, telling her jokes and exchanging boasts, they chattered rapidly as they followed her in a pack down the main hall. She paid them little mind, glancing in every gallery down the main hall. No trace of Santiago anywhere.
Maybe he was in bed with a new lover already, she thought in despair, someone he would have no qualms about giving himself to completely, as he had denied her the consummation she had all but begged for.
As she crossed the sprawling marble entrance hall, from which five hallways led to the various wings of the palace, one of the boys grabbed an orange lily from the huge bouquet on the center table and swept down on one knee in front of her.
“For our goddess,” he said in playful gallantry, his eyes teasing her as he held out the flower.
