“Thank you,” she said, the mint puffing her cheek, “but I really can’t possibly—”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he chided, neatly cutting off her protest. “What if I were to insist?”
The innocent confusion in her eyes intensified. She looked overwhelmed. She stared at him with an earnest expression, diligently sucking the mint.
To his amusement, she obeyed his injunction, not attempting to speak again until she was finished eating it.
God, he wanted her. The shivery, wild thrill of pursuit cascaded through his body.
“Your invitation is very kind and I know you are probably only saying all this because you feel sorry for me in this ramshackle place with no one but a dear, mad old colonel for company”—Daniela glanced over her shoulder at her house—“but I assure you, Prince Rafael, I cannot possibly attend your party.” She hesitated. “If you truly wish to do me a good turn, see that the child, Gianni, does not spend the night in jail.”
He tilted his head with a cajoling little half-smile that had worked on females since he was a tot in the cradle. “If I do that for you, will you come to the ball?”
“Truthfully, I don’t see how I could—”
“Hush. It’s settled, then.” He gave her his most dazzling smile. “I will send a carriage for you at six tomorrow evening. That will give you plenty of time to dress. A lady friend of mine will lend you a brilliant gown and I daresay I can get my hands on a necklace of fire opals that would superbly set off your complexion. Trust me, I have an eye for these things. Until tomorrow night, my lady,” he said, lifting her hand from her side and kissing her knuckles lightly as he sent her an intimate look. Then he released her and turned away. With a cool smile of victory, he jogged lightly down the few front stairs and strode toward the grazing white horse, whistling “La ci darem la mano.”
“Sir, I said no.”
He paused, then turned, a little surprised, but pleased by her maidenly resistance. One didn’t want too easy a conquest. He rested his riding crop jauntily on his shoulder. “Lady Daniela, surely you are not averse to having a little fun in life?”
Her arms were folded tightly over her chest and she lifted her chin. “With all due respect, Your Highness, my friends have just been arrested. It isn’t a good time.”
“You should not be consorting with criminals in the first place, my dear,” he said with condescending patience, then smiled. “Our bargain is sealed. I will remove the child from the jail and see that he’s placed in safer quarters, and in return, you will dance with me tomorrow night—and you will try one of my chef’s pink cakes. I insist on it.”
She placed her hands on her waist, her brow knitted, her tone growing belligerent. “I said I will not come, sir. Are you deaf?”
Deciding that he adored the fight in her, he cupped his ear. “Pardon?”
“How can Your Highness ask me to be so selfish as to think of idle entertainments when my friends may be sentenced to hang tomorrow?”
Two realizations suddenly pierced Rafe’s brain, soaked as it was with music and amore. One, she still hadn’t taken the slightest hint about the true nature of his invitation; and two, her answer was no anyway because, it presently dawned on him, she was in love with that fiery young hothead he had just arrested.
Flat, unequivocal no.
The realization acted as a bucket of ice water dousing the gathering heat of his enthusiasm. He could scarcely believe it.
“Well, this is rich,” he said, staring at her, one fist cocked on his hip.
He recalled that the eldest of the rebellious young highwaymen whom he had sent to jail over an hour ago had been a tall, strapping farm boy of perhaps four and twenty, whose name the men had logged as Mateo Gabbiano. Clad in sturdy work clothes with a brown vest and a red bandanna knotted around his neck, Mateo Gabbiano had been the handsome sort of rustic youth, with curly dark hair and the kind of big brown eyes that melted tenderhearted women.
Aha. Now Lady Daniela’s indifference to him from the start made sense.
Having been worshiped and adored by women from the day he was born, Rafe had had too little experience with rejection to take it well.
His opinion of her plunged.
A scowl settled over his face. How could the foolish wench give her heart and perhaps her favors to a skulking criminal? he thought with an inward, aristocratic snort of disdain. Maybe she was lonely in this isolated place, but had the woman no feeling for her rank? How the devil could she choose that peasant over…him?
“Well, my lady,” he said with cold hauteur, “I’ll see what I can do for the boy. Fare you well.”
He pivoted and stalked down the few front steps of the villa, marching stiffly toward the white horse. His better sense pointed out that the highwaymen had made a dash for her property, and she might well be mixed up in their crimes. But if she was involved, he did not want to know it.
A few steps away, Rafe stopped and abruptly turned.
She was still standing there, her slim body silhouetted in the light from the lantern.
“Why did you pretend not to know who I am?” he demanded.
“To lower you a peg,” she replied. “Why did you spend an hour with a senile old man when you were so determined to catch an outlaw?”
“Because, my lady,” he said crisply, “there are times when an act of kindness outweighs one of justice.”
She was silent for a moment, holding his gaze. “I am obliged that you wanted to help me,” she called. “But instead, I shall help you.”
“Help me?” he replied in worldly sarcasm. “I doubt that.”
“Look into the books of this county’s tax collector, Your Highness, and you may find the real criminal at large.”
He narrowed his eyes. “What are you implying, madam?”
“You’ll see.”
He tapped his riding crop across his palm. “Graft does not flourish under my father’s rule. Not so much as a bee drinks from the wrong flower without the say-so of King Lazar di Fiore.”
“Tell that to Count Bulbati.”
“Who is that?”
“The man who raises my taxes each time I refuse to marry him.”
His attention came to a point like a saber. He made a mental note to look into it, then pushed the accusation of embezzlement aside, concentrating on her. “Why do you refuse him? Wouldn’t a prudent marriage relieve your situation here?”
“Perhaps. But firstly, Count Bulbati is a corrupt and greedy swine, and secondly, I shall never marry. Not anyone. Ever.”
“Why, for heaven’s sake?” he demanded in shock, as though he had not said those very words countless times himself.
She lifted her chin, starlight on her hair. “Because I’m free.” She gestured toward the villa. “Our house may need repair, but at least it’s my house, and all these lands…” With a sweep of her hand, she showed him the landscape. “Though they thirst with drought and the crops are low, they are my lands. All of it is entailed on me until my death. How many women can count themselves so fortunate?”
He glanced around, mystified that she felt lucky or grateful when he doubted she’d had enough to eat in days or maybe longer. “Looks like nothing but a lot of work and headaches to me.”
“I need answer to no one but myself,” she replied. “Why should I become the legal property of a person who is no better than me, and in all likelihood my inferior in most respects?” Her thin shoulders lifted in a shrug. “I don’t expect you or anyone to understand. It is merely the choice I have made.”
“The choice you’ve made,” he echoed, feeling disoriented merely talking to the chit. He could not fathom where she had come by her sturdy little opinions, but she certainly seemed in control of her life, which was more than he could say for himself.
The thought irked him.
Hearing riders approaching, he looked over and saw his men coming toward him from the woods. He saw that they had his gold but no Masked Rider. He sent a scowling look
over his shoulder at Daniela Chiaramonte, standing there on the step with her hands folded demurely over her too-skinny waist.
He had thought to leave two soldiers posted at the villa to protect her and her family, but he abandoned the idea, for he doubted that the Masked Rider posed any kind of threat to her, considering that the outlaw’s right-hand man was apparently her beau.
The thought made his mood fouler. “If you are quite through instructing me, Lady Daniela, the king awaits my arrival.”
“Goodbye, Prince,” she said politely. “And…happy birthday.”
Was the little baggage mocking him? He looked sharply at her, suspecting that he heard a faint trace of laughter in her voice. Still, for the life of him, all he wanted was to march over to her and kiss that smug smile off her lips; but oh, no, he was not going to do that. He was going to get on his horse and ride far, far away from her. He was good at forgetting women; he made up his mind to expunge this vexing little redhead from his memory on the spot.
Belatedly, he remembered that he had sworn off helping damsels in distress some years ago.
As he swung up into the saddle and urged the horse into motion, he mentally bade the eccentric Lady Daniela good riddance.
Don Giovanni himself would have been at a loss.
CHAPTER
THREE
Still out of humor with the world after his encounter with the vexing redhead and her unheard-of rejection of him in favor of a rustic, Rafe traveled the rest of the way to Belfort without event, though he was on his guard as they passed the poorer, ramshackle outskirts of Ascencion’s sprawling capital.
Nearing the heart of the cosmopolitan Italian city, graceful, wrought-iron street lamps lit the broad, cobbled thoroughfares. People had come out to enjoy the cool of evening. The streets of Belfort rang with laughter and argument from the coffeehouses and taverns they passed. People hailed him everywhere he passed. Dutifully, he waved as he cantered by on the strapping white stallion.
Moving down the street at a trot, the horse coughed under him with the hot, dust-laden night breeze. He patted the animal’s warm, damp neck and a puff of dust rose from it. He winced, for his own throat felt caked with fine clay.
Dust coated everything, with the drought in its fourth month. Even the hardy marigolds in the flower boxes of the tall, fashionable city row houses looked wilted. The elegant fountains in every garden square had been turned off to conserve water.
It would get worse before it got better, he thought grimly. It was early July, but soon the sirocco winds would come slithering up from the heart of the Sahara Desert, flattening North Africa, stretching over the limpid jade waters of the Mediterranean, to lie heavily over all of Southern Europe. During those two or three weeks each year, all hell tended to break loose on the island.
As they turned a corner, Rafe caught a far-off glimpse of a fanciful bronze cupola rising over the city roofs, gleaming in the starlight, but instead of heading for his pleasure palace, he was bound for the Palazzo Reale.
He cantered his white stallion into the wide cobbled central square of the city. Here the cathedral and the royal palace faced each other like stately partners in a minuet. Between them stood the famous bronze fountain dedicated to past generations of Fiore kings. Pigeons roosted for the night amid the glorious sculpture work.
Rafe swung down from the saddle and was quickly ushered by the Royal Guards through the gates. Glancing at his pocket watch, he hurried up the wide, shallow steps.
In the imposing entrance hall, he was greeted by Falconi, the ancient palace steward whom he had tormented as a merry youth in these halls. He clapped the frail, formidably dignified servant on the back, nearly toppling him, then quickly caught him.
“Where’s my old man, Falconi?”
“Council chambers, sir. I’m afraid the meeting is almost over.”
“Meeting?” he exclaimed, already in motion. “What meeting? Devil take it. Nobody said anything about some bloody meeting!”
“Er, good luck, sir.”
Rafe waved his thanks and strode quickly down the marble hall to the administrative block of the palace, his heart pounding. Hell, he’d done it again. When he arrived before the closed door of the king’s privy council chamber, he paused, bracing himself. Then he threw open the door, making an entrance with an air of supreme bonhomie.
“Gentlemen!” he greeted them, sauntering in with breezy nonchalance. “Good Lord, a full cabinet! Are we at war?” he asked with a grin, shoving the door closed.
“Your Highness,” the starchy old men grumbled.
“Hey-ho, Father.”
Reading a document at the head of the long wide table, King Lazar glanced at Rafe over the edge of the square-rimmed spectacles perched on his stubborn Roman nose.
King Lazar di Fiore was a large-framed, striking man, square-jawed and hard-featured, with salt-and-pepper hair shorn close and weathered brown skin. He frowned at Rafe, his piercing, dark-eyed gaze boring into him with his characteristic intensity.
Rafe took in that stare, wondering just how badly he had blundered this time.
From boyhood, he had studied his father’s every nuance of expression, not only for the benefit of learning to manage men, which his father did expertly, but also because his own young world had revolved, painfully, around trying to live up to the great man’s impossible expectations. Finally, he had accepted philosophically that he was never going to be enough in his father’s eyes. He would never quite live down The Debacle.
“We’re honored you decided to join us, Your Highness,” King Lazar remarked, inspecting the document in his hand again. “And no, we are not at war. Sorry to deprive you of that entertainment.”
“It’s just as well,” Rafe said as he dropped idly into his chair at the foot of the table, hooking his arm in lazy pose over the chair’s back. “I’m a lover, not a fighter.”
The ruddy-cheeked admiral of the navy cleared his throat, swallowing a chuckle. He was perhaps the only man in the room who understood and appreciated Rafe at all, or at least was not offended by him.
The same could not be said for the formidable pair on the other side of the table, Bishop Justinian Vasari and Prime Minister Arturo di Sansevero.
The two were a study in contrasts: the bishop big and bombastic, stocky as a bulldog draped in flowing, brocaded robes; all bark, no bite. He had a round, rubicund face and wild white wisps of hair that stuck out in all directions from underneath his velvet beanie. He was as sure of his God’s opinions on all matters as he was gratified by the constant pampering of his gardens at his rich palazzo. Mostly he was known to preach with a rolling, thunderous eloquence, and when he preached against vice and licentiousness, everyone knew to whom he was referring.
In short, the bishop saw the crown prince as the profligate prodigal son of a good and godly father, King Lazar. Fortunately, there was a second son, the cherubic, sweet-tempered, and obedient ten-year-old Prince Leo, who played Able to Rafe’s Cain in the bishop’s cosmology, though Leo’s nurse could well have attested that he, too, was a budding rogue. Bishop Justinian had been named by the king as Prince Leo’s legal guardian and had been granted the right of regency, which meant that if God ever smote Rafe down on account of his Roman orgies and drunken chariot races, the bishop would rule for Leo until the boy came of age.
For reasons Rafe could not comprehend, the people of Ascencion loved their fiery, pompous, high-living bishop.
The prime minister was Bishop Justinian’s utter opposite, though his opinion of Rafe was the same. Neat, quick, tidy, and discreet, Don Arturo was the consummate courtier. His keen, darting mind was like a silent, razor-toothed barracuda. Fortunately, the don was endowed with an unflinching loyalty to Ascencion. Slight of stature, Don Arturo had hooded brown eyes and a thin, spare mouth that only softened when he saw his sister’s children, his little nieces and nephews. He was childless, his wife having died two decades earlier, nor had he ever remarried. His work—Ascencion—was his life.
> Were Rafe to repent of his wickedness, the grandiloquent Bishop Justinian probably would have killed the fatted calf for him, but the prime minister, he knew, had more personal reasons to despise him.
Meanwhile, beside Rafe, his Florentine kinsman, the Duke Orlando di Cambio, tactfully slid him the notes he had been taking.
“Grazie, coz.” Rafe glanced over the page, feeling a little chastened by his cousin’s gesture. He knew most of the cabinet would probably have preferred to see Orlando gain the throne rather than he, were it possible.
With the stamp of the Fiori in his ruggedly handsome profile, Orlando, about five years Rafe’s senior, looked more as though he were his brother than distant cousin. They were both tall, broad-shouldered, good-looking men and arrogantly aware of their innate superiority. But where Rafe was a dark blond with hazel eyes, Orlando had jet-black hair and ice-green eyes.
Orlando was a bit of a loner, always dressed in black. A successful shipping merchant in his own right before he had left Florence and moved to the land of his ancestors, Orlando now served Ascencion under the Ministry of Finance. He had earned the trust of the cabinet and the king with his able mind and sober, reliable manner; the prime minister liked him particularly. For some months now, Orlando had been included in high-level meetings like this one because he was, distantly, of the royal blood.
“Habitual tardiness alludes to the sin of pride, Prince Rafael,” the bishop rumbled, grandly rolling his r’s.
“Well, I do apologize for the delay,” Rafe said to them all as he glanced over Orlando’s notes. He looked up innocently, hating his own need to give excuses, even if he did have a rather good one this time. “It so happens I was attacked by highwaymen.”
The bishop and some of the other advisers gasped, but Don Arturo rolled his eyes.
The king arched a brow at Rafe, who smiled cheerfully in return.
“Were you hurt?” his cousin Orlando asked in concern.
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