The Reluctant Princess

by Christine Rimmer

  Her father cut another bite of lamb. “He’s asked for leave. I’ve given it.”

  Her heart sank. So. He was gone. Still, she spoke as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “Leave? But wouldn’t he get that anyway?”

  Her father finished chewing and swallowed before he answered. “You may be right. I’ll think about it. A week from tomorrow, he’ll fight for us. He’ll win. He always does. When I crown him the victor it’s customary that he will claim a prize. Perhaps I’ll grant him some attractive property—something with a few good buildings, with promising mineral rights and a large flock of karavik.”

  Elli was stuck back there at the word fight. “Fight for us?”

  Her father chuckled. “Next week is an annual celebration, May Fair. We always hold it in the parkland, below the palace grounds. This year, in your honor, we’re adding a few extra events to the festivities.”

  “Extra events that include fighting?”

  “Picture a medieval fair. With battle reenactments and horse races—well, not precisely battle ‘reenactments.’ This will be more a battle game. Each man for himself, as it were.”

  “I’m confused. I thought you said you’d given him leave.”

  “Him?”

  “Hauk. FitzWyborn.”

  “Ah. Yes, I did. But not till after the celebration. He’s my warrior, after all. He fights in my name.”

  As soon as Osrik’s daughter left the room, Medwyn slipped from his hiding place behind the heavy drape in back of the bust of Odin.

  Osrik turned to his friend. “It went well, don’t you think?”

  Medwyn nodded. “She is lovely. Intelligence shines from her eyes.”

  “And good at heart, as well. You noted how she thought of FitzWyborn, how she was concerned that he receive his due?”

  Medwyn didn’t answer immediately.

  Osrik chuckled. “I know that thoughtful look, old friend. Speak up. What’s bothering you?”

  But Medwyn only waved a long, pale hand. “It’s nothing, nothing at all. My son is a lucky man.”

  The heavy curtains were drawn at all the windows, making it as dark as it would have been at home, where the sun set and true night followed.

  But Elli couldn’t sleep.

  She couldn’t stop thinking of Hauk. She missed him terribly. And the idea that she’d see him only once more, from a formal distance, while he did whatever he did when he fought in her father’s name…

  Well, she wouldn’t accept that.

  It wasn’t right. It hurt too much.

  Something had to be done.

  But then again, what if she’d read him all wrong? What if he didn’t feel for her as strongly as she felt for him? Maybe even if he could give himself permission to love her, he wouldn’t. Maybe she simply wasn’t the woman for him.

  That was possible. Though in her soul, she didn’t believe it.

  But it could be the truth. It might have to be faced—and to do that, to face that, she had to see him, to speak with him.

  She just couldn’t stop hope from springing up inside her, from whispering in her ear that there had to be a way.

  And for more than just a private moment.

  A way for the two of them. A way that they could be together—proudly. And openly. If he only wanted that, yearned for that, as she did.

  Damn it, this was the twenty-first century. The woman tenth in line to the British throne claimed no title, had a stud in her tongue and had lived openly with a commoner boyfriend. And that was a good thing, the way Elli saw it. A woman ought to be able to live her life without everyone around her bowing and scraping and calling her “Princess.” A woman ought to be allowed to follow her heart. And no honest man should have to turn away from a woman he could love simply because some cruel cultural stigma declared him beneath her.

  That morning, in Boston, Hauk had taken her totally off guard. She’d been too stunned and hurt to muster her best arguments. He owed her another chance to state the case for love.

  And Elli Thorson intended to see to it that she got what he owed her.

  She spent the sleepless night making plans.

  First of all, she needed to get in touch with him. And she didn’t have a clue where to go to look for him. She considered confiding in Kaarin, asking her if she knew where the king’s warrior might be found.

  But on second thought…

  Kaarin seemed nice enough, but she was so clearly an aristocrat, a little bit formal, very aware of her place. Elli’s instinct was that it would be unwise to share secrets with her. And at this point, really, all she had were her instincts.

  Maybe she could befriend the chambermaid or her cook. Elli had no doubt both of them would have the information she sought—or would know where to get it.

  Elli had grown up with servants around her. Besides Hildy, who was really like one of the family, there were always a couple of maids and often a chauffeur living in the apartments over the garages at the house in Land Park.

  “Never underestimate the knowledge of your servants, girls,” her mother had told her and her sisters when they were only children. “They know everything about you. They know all the secrets you don’t want to admit they’ve learned. Treat them with respect and fairness always, and as a rule they’ll repay you with loyalty and hard work. Treat them shabbily and they will sell your secrets and never think twice about it.”

  But to befriend the servants would take time. She only had a week. She would have to watch and listen—see if she got a sense that either the cook or the maid might be someone who would help her get to Hauk.

  Oh, this was all so…difficult. Was she making too much of it? Should she simply do what she’d do if she were home in Sacramento? Ask anyone who might have information—Kaarin, her father, the chambermaid, the cook? And take it from there.

  Her instincts kicked in again. And they told her no. They told her to proceed with caution.

  For two days, Elli learned nothing about where to find Hauk. She thought she would go stark, raving head-banging nuts—longing only for a word with him, and getting instead formal audiences with her father and numerous princes and well-born ladies, enduring extended tours of the Grand Assembly chambers and the harbor area, of a farm outside the city and a huge, hangarlike workshop where talented craftsmen still built the sleek, narrow Viking-style ships for pleasure use and for racing.

  And feasts. They had huge dinners both nights, followed one night by music and dancing and the other by long renditions of a couple of the lesser-known Norse myths as recited by a leading poet/minstrel, or skald.

  The night they had dancing, she was led out onto the floor by a number of handsome princes. One she thought especially good-looking—and probably a danger to any girl whose heart wasn’t already otherwise engaged. Finn Danelaw was his name. She would have enjoyed flirting with him if she were capable of flirting with anyone right then. In fact, she could almost have been angry with Hauk for that, for stealing away her pleasure in the company and conversation of other men.

  Finally, Sunday night, as she lay in bed, awake as usual, doubting she would ever speak to Hauk again, she figured out how to find him. It was so simple, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t thought of it earlier.

  Monday morning, she requested an extensive tour of Isenhalla and the grounds and parkland surrounding it. Her father thought it was an excellent idea. He had matters of state to attend to, however, and couldn’t take her around himself. He assigned the job to the prince who’d met her at the airport.

  She and Prince What’s-it spent the morning and early afternoon inside the palace, touring the endless, echoing rooms. Elli expressed fascination with all of it—the precious antiques, the Austrian crystal chandeliers, the huge tapestries in the formal audience hall that had come from France and were over five hundred years old.

  The prince finally led her outside. They wandered through the formal gardens. She admired the tennis courts and the green swathe of velvet-textured grass where the courtiers
played croquet.

  Her heart knocking harder in hope and anticipation, she asked to see where the soldiers of the palace lived when off duty. Though Prince Whoever-he-was clearly didn’t approve, he took her to the long, high-roofed barracks. He even allowed her a quick look at the yard and the enormous, fully equipped gymnasium where the men trained.

  Elli saw a lot of soldiers. But not the one she sought.

  Next they went to the stables so she could have a look at the famed longhaired white Gullandrian horses.

  And there he was.

  In a round pen, working with a young and spirited mare.

  Elli’s pulse went racing and her whole body felt suddenly light as a sunbeam. She balanced on air.

  She turned a blinding smile on Prince What’s-his-name. “There’s Hauk FitzWyborn. My escort here, to Gullandria. I have to say hello.”

  “Uh,” said the prince, for once at a loss for words. “Oh, well. Of course, Your Highness. Whatever you—”

  She didn’t hear the rest. She had eyes and ears for one man only and that man stood in the center of the pen, working a long lead, guiding the plucky mare to prance in a circle and toss her snowy head, her long mane and silky coat streaming in the breeze.

  He saw her as he guided the horse around to where she stood. He never paused in working that lead, in coaxing the horse on in a circle. But for a split second, his gaze met hers.

  The world was in that second. The universe in that shared look.

  She knew then with absolute certainty that the problem was not that he didn’t want her.

  The prince came and stood beside her. She stared at Hauk, smiling. Waiting. Absolutely calm—at least on the surface. Inside she was all quivers and needles and pins.

  In the end, he had no choice but to lead the mare from the pen and hand her off to a groom. He came toward them, so stunningly male all the breath flew right out of Elli’s body and every last drop of saliva dried up in her mouth.

  “Your Highness,” he said, removing his rawhide gloves, then bringing his big fist to his chest and dipping his gold head. “Prince Onund.”

  Elli swallowed to moisten her bone-dry mouth and resisted the urge to remind Hauk playfully that she’d given him an order a week ago and she expected him to obey it. He was never to call her Your Highness again.

  But his beautiful light eyes had warnings in them. Say nothing too casual, betray nothing of what has been. She heard them as if he spoke them aloud.

  “Hauk. Good to see you.” She held out her hand. He had no choice but to take it. She saw his eyes narrow—just a fraction—when he felt the tiny folded square of paper she passed him. But his face, as always, remained carefully controlled. He bowed over her hand and released it. Her skin flamed where his had touched it.

  She granted him a cool smile. “I hope you are well.”

  “My health, Princess, is excellent.”

  Princess. Your Highness. She could see that gleam in his eyes. He was enjoying the opportunity to disobey her command.

  Prince Onund spoke up, putting clear emphasis on the first syllable of Hauk’s name. “FitzWyborn works frequently with the horses. He seems most comfortable in the company of livestock.”

  Elli had learned a few things at her mother’s knee. One was how to deliver the look. The look was designed to put upstarts in their place. The look clearly said, If you don’t watch it, you’ll never do lunch in this town again.

  She turned the look on the prince. That shut him up. She turned back to Hauk. “I guess I never mentioned while you were…making sure I arrived here safely, that I love to ride.”

  Okay, it was a serious exaggeration. She’d never be the horsewoman her sisters were—Liv because she had to do everything well, Brit because riding a horse, like flying a plane or mountain biking, came as naturally to her as breathing. But Elli had ridden. Aunt Nanna kept horses at her vineyard in Napa. All three girls had learned to ride as children. “I think, tomorrow, I’ll go riding. I’m sure I can dig up some suitable clothes.” There were clothes for days in the huge closets in her dressing room. It only made sense that riding gear would be among them. “Since you’re the expert around here when it comes to horses, I’d like you to ride with me, Hauk. Would you mind?”

  He looked at her coolly. Distantly. She wondered if she had it all wrong after all, if he really wanted nothing to do with her—if he’d felt only relief once he got her off his hands last week.

  But then he said what he had to say. “I would be honored, Your Highness.”

  “Thank you. In the morning, I think. Early. That way I won’t disrupt whatever schedule my father has planned for me. Say, eight? I’ll meet you right here.”

  “As you wish, Princess.”

  “Great.” She turned to the prince. “Well, Onund. Why don’t we go on in and have a look at the stables?”

  The prince’s worried expression brightened considerably. “Certainly, Your Highness.”

  “And then maybe we could check out the progress they’re making on the preparations for Saturday’s big celebration.”

  “Absolutely.” The prince offered his arm. Elli took it. “This way,” he said.

  They turned for the stables.

  Hauk put his fist to his chest and lowered his head. He didn’t look up until the prince had led the princess through the open stable door. Then he stuck his fist in his pocket, letting go of the small square of paper she had passed him.

  He wasn’t going to take it out. Ever. He would forget it was in there. To him, it would be as if it didn’t exist.

  Hah.

  And while he was at it, he’d forget to draw his next breath.

  He lasted less than an hour. Then he flung himself down under a birch tree out in the horse paddock, near the clear, narrow creek. There was no one nearby. A gelding and a pretty mare nibbled grass over by the fence. They weren’t the least interested that the king’s warrior had lost so completely what he once prized most: his self-control.

  Hauk shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the tree trunk—hard. The impact should have knocked some sense into him. But it was no good.

  His blood whispered her name as it ran through his veins—her true name, her given name: Elli, Elli, Elli, Elli…

  His hands shaking like those of a palsied man, he took out the little bit of paper and spread it open on his thigh.

  It read, Meet me. Here. Tonight at midnight.

  Chapter Fifteen

  As far as Elli was concerned, there were way too many hours to live through until midnight. Every one of them seemed to take a lifetime to go by.

  At eight that evening, she and her father had dinner again in the private audience room where she’d met him that first night. She was glad for some time alone with him. She had questions she needed to ask—about her lost brothers, about whether he thought their deaths were really accidental.

  Her father answered thoughtfully. “There’s always the possibility that treachery was involved. In both cases. But our best people looked into Kylan’s death—police and the NIB.”

  “NIB?”

  “National Investigative Bureau—similar to your FBI in America. They found no evidence that the fire was set. And all our reports about Valbrand are the same. No foul play. There was a storm. He didn’t survive it.”

  He spoke with sad conviction. Elli found she believed him—or at least, she believed that he believed what he told her. If either of her brothers had been murdered, she was certain her father didn’t think so. Osrik must have insisted that the investigations be thorough. And he honestly seemed satisfied that they’d turned up nothing suspicious because there was nothing suspicious to find.

  He’d spoken so frankly of her brothers, she dared to ask the other question that had troubled her all her life—the question her mother would never answer.

  “What happened, between you and Mom? What made her take me and my sisters and leave here forever?”

  He looked away. “Your mother will have to answer tha
t one.”

  That was all he would say—the same thing her aunts always said. Elli found herself wondering if she’d ever learn what had ripped her family apart all those years ago.

  At a little after ten, she left her father to return to her rooms. She walked back alone. As she’d become more accustomed to the layout of the palace, she’d been allowed to find her way around on her own now and then.

  Of course, when she got to her suite, the two guards were waiting. She was reasonably certain they’d have reported to her father if she hadn’t shown up, that they’d be reporting to her father if she left again. She doubted there was much Osrik would do with that knowledge—unless he heard she’d gone somewhere he didn’t approve of.

  Like maybe out to the stables to get it on with a guy whose name began with Fitz.

  Elli was beginning to see now that the fitz thing was a big problem. She’d heard it more than once—in the way that jerk Onund had said FitzWyborn, in any number of casual, cutting remarks. “Hopeless as a fitz,” was a favored Gullandrian pejorative. “Bastard son of a fitz,” was another—meaning that one’s father (or mother) hadn’t learned his lesson by being born in shame, but had gone ahead and produced a few fitzes of his own. And “fitzhead.” Now, there was a colorful one.

  It all seemed utterly ridiculous to Elli. But it must have been terrible for Hauk, growing up. The constant abuse had to be killing.

  It was a miracle he’d turned out as he had, honorable to the core. So very strong. And good.

  The guards opened the doors for her and she entered her rooms. The chambermaid was waiting. Elli thanked her and told her she wouldn’t need her until seven the next morning. The girl smiled slyly, dropped a curtsy and left. There was a boyfriend. Elli had seen them, in the shadows on the back stairs, sharing kisses. Elli was glad her maid had found a special guy. It was one less pair of prying eyes to worry about when midnight came.

  Elli’s cook, who had a real fondness for schnapps, would already have retired to her room with her bottle. No worries there.