The Reluctant Princess

by Christine Rimmer

  Elli went looking for her own clothes, the ones she had brought from home. After a ten-minute search, she found what she needed, a pair of jeans, a dark T-shirt and her trusty comfy sneakers. She pulled her hair back into a ponytail and put on the blue visor she always took with her on trips—not because it would be bright outside, but because maybe, if someone happened to see her, they wouldn’t guess who she was.

  She had the way scoped out: down the back stairs. The stairs led to a long, narrow hall on the ground floor. At the end of that hall, there was a servants’ entrance. From there, it wasn’t that far to the stables.

  Elli found it kind of funny that her father would take such care to place guards at her door—and then leave the back stairs unattended. But then, as far as he knew, she had no reason to sneak around at night. And maybe the cook and maid were supposed to keep an eye on her. Who could say? Maybe the guards were only for her protection—or their presence was simply part of palace protocol. It didn’t matter. No one would see her leave if she could help it.

  At eleven-forty, she slipped out the door in the kitchen. She met no one on the dim, narrow stairs. A guard patrolled the area outside the back door. But luck was with her. His back was to her. She slipped across the short space of grass and into the cover of the trees.

  A gap in the garden hedge was her gateway into open parkland. She ran across the damp grass that shimmered in the faint glow of deepest twilight. She reached the stables and the training pens within minutes and ducked quickly into the shadows cast by one of the long, steep-roofed buildings.

  From there, she had an unobstructed view of the round pen where she’d found Hauk training the high-stepping mare that morning. He wasn’t there.

  She took off her visor and smoothed her hair. It was still a few minutes till midnight. Maybe—

  Right then, a big hand closed around her mouth. She was yanked back against a hard chest.

  She knew instantly who held her—knew the feel of him, the scent of him. He took his hand from her mouth and turned her to face him.

  “Oh, Hauk…”

  He gestured for silence and grabbed her hand.

  She followed him willingly, a silly grin on her face, around the end of the building and through the open door into the stable. From a few of the stalls she heard soft whickering sounds. He pulled her on, between the rows of stalls to a door at the back. They went through it. He shut the door behind them and flicked a switch on the wall. A bare low-wattage bulb suspended from the rafters popped on.

  It was a tack room, windowless, with straw on the floor and bits and bridles hanging on pegs. There were rows of saddles and shelves stacked with blankets.

  He led her over to a long, rough pine bench. “Sit down.”

  She obeyed him, dropping her visor next to her and folding her eager hands in her lap so that they wouldn’t get too bold and start grabbing for him.

  He loomed above her, looking down, his expression depressingly grave. “You shouldn’t be here. This is wrong.”

  “Lovely to see you, too.”

  “I told you there could be nothing more, ever, between us. I told you—”

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “You’re a fool and I’m—”

  “—here,” she finished for him. “You’re here. You came.”

  “Because I—”

  “Oh, don’t say it. Don’t tell me any lies. We both know why you’re here and it’s nothing to do with my wish being your command.”

  “There can be no more between us.”

  “Oh, stop,” she hissed in an impassioned whisper. “Stop right now.” She shot to her feet and he backed up a step. “You’ll never convince me you mean that—and if you believed it yourself you wouldn’t have to keep saying it over and over and over again.”

  “Keep your voice down.”

  “All right, fine,” she whispered. “My voice is down. But I will talk. I will say what I came here to say.”

  “Oh, you’ll talk,” he muttered. “I know you will. You’ll use that clever tongue of yours until you have me convinced that black is white and up is down.”

  That hurt, for some reason. She dropped back to the bench. Gripping the edges of it, she looked down at the straw beneath her sneakers. “I just…I want tell you. I have to tell you.” She looked up, into those eyes she wanted to look in for the rest of her life. “I love you, Hauk. I’m in love with you.”

  He blinked. His face went utterly blank—a stunned kind of blank, the way a man would probably look right after an enemy shoved a knife between his ribs.

  Her heart was breaking. “Oh, please. Don’t look at me like that. It can’t be as bad as that.”

  “Elli…”

  Her name. Her first name. He had said it. He had said as if it was all he ever thought about.

  Joy leaped like a hungry flame within her. She gripped the bench harder. It seemed very important not to fling herself at him, not to force an embrace when he wasn’t ready for one.

  “I love it when you say my name,” she whispered. “You do it so seldom.”

  “It’s not appropriate.”

  She couldn’t keep from scoffing. “As if I care. As if that matters in the least. As if what’s appropriate has a damn thing to do with—” She cut herself off. To rant at him was not the way. She sucked in a calming breath and she tried again. “Hauk. Listen. Could you…do you think it might be possible that you could love me back?”

  “What I feel means nothing.”

  She felt her anger rising. She put all her will into keeping it down. “What are you talking about? What you feel is half of it—half of what we need, to start building something, together, you and me.” She swallowed hard and she lifted her head high and she told him what she wanted. “Hauk. I know I’m rushing this, but you’ve boxed me into a corner here. There’s no other way but to tell you now, to…say it all, now. This may be my only chance.”

  He started to speak.

  “Please,” she said.

  He gave her a tight nod.

  And she told him. “I want us to be married. I know what this is, between you and me. I know you’re the man I’ve been looking for. I want you. I want to be the woman you finally make love with all the way. Because I want to be your wife. I want my babies to be your babies. I’ll…take your name proudly. As our children will. Please. Won’t you just consider it?”

  For a moment, in his eyes, she saw that he wanted exactly what she wanted.

  And then he denied her again. “You don’t understand. You refuse to see. Some things are never done.”

  “You mean, because you’re illegitimate?”

  “A fitz can only be allowed to reach so high.”

  “You’re saying it’s never happened? No one like you has ever loved someone like me?”

  “Certainly it’s happened. And those lovers either gave each other up. Or it ended badly. In mutual bitterness. Or worse. Men—and women—who reach too high tend to die in mysterious ways.”

  “I won’t believe that. My father would never—”

  “Elli.” His voice was so tender. All the love he wouldn’t declare was there in it. “I didn’t say the king would have me killed. I don’t believe that either.” For a split second, his eyes shifted away and she wondered if maybe he did believe exactly that. And then he was looking straight at her again. “I don’t know what would happen to me. I doubt, other than the shame of dragging you down, that it would be anything I wouldn’t survive. But I know, unequivocally, that you would be disgraced to stoop so low.”

  She jumped to her feet again. “No. No, you don’t know that.” She drew herself up. “All this…fitz thing, it’s nothing to me. If people look down on me for loving you, then those are people whose opinions I don’t give a damn about. Oh, Hauk. Maybe I don’t get it. Maybe I don’t understand how really powerful this thing is, this judgment of a person by what his parents did. Maybe I’m asking for disaster. But then again, maybe you underrate yourself. Maybe you’ve b
een trained since childhood to see yourself as so much less than you are. Maybe if we went to my father, together—”

  He didn’t even let her finish. “No. It’s no good. I want you to go back, now. To your father’s house. Tomorrow, when you come to ride, someone else will be assigned to ride with you. You won’t see me. Please don’t ask for me. Don’t look for me anymore.”

  She stared at him. It seemed impossible that he was doing this—sending her away like this. Forever.

  She couldn’t stop herself. She tried one more time. “Just…think about what I said. Think about it. That’s all. Because deep in your heart, you have to know that love is never wrong. If you never…come to me, I truly hope that someday you’ll find someone. That you’ll love her as you won’t let yourself love me. That your life will be a good life, a happy one. A full one.

  “And for myself, I hope the same thing. That I’ll get over you. Find someone else. Make myself the kind of life I’ve always wanted, with a good man. And our children. But that isn’t going to happen for a long time. So if you change your mind—”

  “I won’t.”

  She felt the tears gathering. She swiped them away and turned briefly to grab the visor she’d left on the bench. It took her a minute to collect herself, a minute in which she fought, as she’d fought since he’d brought her into that windowless room, to keep from throwing herself on him, to keep from crying like a baby, begging him to give her—and all they might share—some kind of a chance.

  Finally, when she thought she could speak without bursting into tears, she said quietly, “I’m just telling you. I’m here. I’m ready. If you dare to reach for me, I’ll be reaching back. I won’t disappoint you. I’ll never let you down.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Hauk stood by his word. The next day, when Elli went out to ride, a captain of the guard was waiting for her. She smiled and greeted the man politely and mounted the sweet-natured gelding he’d already saddled before she got there. By ten, she was back in her rooms. She showered and changed and then went down into the city with Kaarin and a few of her other ladies. They shopped. They did lunch.

  The days went by in a whirl of tours and endless state dinners with dancing afterward. Elli tried to smile through it all, to forget about Hauk and enjoy her visit to her father’s land. It wasn’t easy. But most of the time she thought she managed pretty well.

  She and Osrik shared a third private meal on Friday night. He asked her if she was troubled. He said he’d noticed that sometimes she seemed a little sad.

  Elli lied. She told him there was nothing important, that it was all pretty overwhelming, being here, being pampered and photographed and constantly in the limelight. But really, she was having a wonderful time.

  After dinner, Kaarin joined her in her rooms to give her a few instructions about the part she would play in the various ceremonies at May Fair the next day. Kaarin left around eleven.

  Elli dismissed the maid and went to bed. She slept well, for once. She woke in the morning feeling surprisingly rested, thinking that over time, she would be all right.

  Today would be rough. She’d have to see Hauk again—probably give him the victor’s token if he won in the mock-battle as her father seemed certain he would.

  But once she got through that, it would truly be over. He’d be gone. She wouldn’t have to wait and wonder if maybe he’d change his mind and come to her. Or if maybe she’d just happen to run into him somewhere and have to exercise all her self-control to keep from saying or doing something they’d both regret.

  When he returned from his leave, she’d be home in California. Slowly, over time, she’d get used to the idea that she’d loved him and he couldn’t let himself love her in return. Her heart would heal.

  Over time.

  By one in the afternoon, Elli had been introduced to more prosperous freeman merchants than she cared to count. She’d been photographed with her father and her ladies, with various adoring princes and a phalanx of elected officials called assemblymen, who were roughly equivalent to congressmen in America.

  It was a beautiful day, breezy and cool in the morning, slightly warmer now the afternoon had come. The parkland was lush with spring green, the leaves of the aspen trees quivering sweetly in the slight sea-scented wind. The sky overhead was cloudless, a clear, cool blue.

  Like Hauk’s eyes, she couldn’t help thinking, though she knew that such thoughts did her no good at all.

  “Princess Elli, Princess Elli! Best oatcakes in Gullandria,” called a merchant from a nearby booth. Elli led her chattering ladies over there. She took a bite of the offered oatcake, chewed, swallowed and announced, “Outstanding.” Though of course, she wasn’t really any kind of judge of a good oatcake.

  “Princess Elli! This way!”

  Obediently, Elli turned to the cameraman, making certain the proud merchant would be in the shot with her.

  “Have another bite!” shouted the cameraman. Elli bit into the oatcake as the merchant beamed with pleasure and the cameraman got his shot.

  An hour or so later, when Kaarin whispered that it was time to meet His Majesty again in the royal box at the edge of the area designated as the battlefield, Elli was glad to go.

  Though her chest felt tight and her stomach unsettled at the prospect of seeing Hauk for the last time, it was a relief to escape the endless photo-op for a minute or two. The past week in Gullandria had brought her a true understanding of the ambivalence of public figures toward the press. They could suck a person dry with their cameras and their shouting and their constant demands.

  She climbed the steps to the high box and took the seat next to her father. He smiled on her fondly, caught her hand and brought it to his lips. The rows of people across the open field from them and in the stands around them cheered at the sight.

  The fight was nothing like she’d expected it to be. It was absolutely wild, with no order or discipline that Elli could see. The men poured onto the field at a run and then turned without ceremony and began hacking away at each other. Elli watched with her heart in her throat.

  Battle garb included leggings and soft boots. Some wore light chain mail, “Called a byrnie,” Kaarin, who sat behind her, whispered in her ear. “Or Odin’s shirt, or a battle-cloak…” Some wore rough shirts that ended above the knee and were belted at the waist. Some wore breeches belted with a sash—and nothing above the waist. “The king’s berserkers,” Kaarin told her with pride. “They fight bare-chested.”

  Hauk was one of those. The sight of him stopped Elli’s heart dead in her chest—and then sent it racing triple-time.

  Kaarin said, in a throaty, excited whisper, “He’s magnificent, isn’t he? The king’s warrior? Too bad he’s a fitz.” Elli felt her blood rising. It took all the self-control she possessed not to turn in her seat and inform the Lady Kaarin that Hauk was the finest man she knew and this whole narrow-minded prejudice against people who’d had the misfortune to be born to unmarried parents made her sick to her stomach.

  If she could be certain that was all she would say, she might have done it. But her emotions rode a razor’s edge right then. She might say anything. She might blurt out that she loved him. For herself, that wouldn’t matter. She’d be proud to announce her love to the world.

  But she hadn’t forgotten the way Hauk’s gaze had slid away the other night, when he’d said he didn’t believe her father would harm him if he knew what they felt for each other. There seemed no reason, since what they felt for each other wasn’t going anywhere, to put her father to the test.

  Somehow, she stayed facing front—and luckily, she didn’t have to look composed.

  Nobody did. The spectators shouted and stomped and called out coarse encouragements.

  Weapons were axes and spears and heavy double-edged swords. Each man carried a brightly painted round shield. Along with all the shouts from the stands, the men on the field yelled and cursed and let out wild, mad-sounding shrieks. Add to all that the clanking and thudding of we
apons—blade to blade, ax to shield.

  Blood flowed—but not too much of it. Elli kept telling herself it was all just a show.

  But then, near the center of the melee, the first man went down. He shouted in pain, dropped, sprawled—and lay still.

  Elli let out a sharp cry of dismay.

  Her father patted her hand. “They train fiercely to make it a good show. Watch closely. When a weapon touches a man at a vital spot, he has to go down.”

  “You mean he’s not dead?” Another man fell, right then. Elli stood and peered closer. Then she dropped to her chair again. “You’re right. I think he’s breathing.”

  Her father chuckled. “My daughter, in this battle, all the dead still breathe.”

  One by one, the men fell. When a man went to the ground, he stayed there, unmoving, until the field was littered with the breathing “dead.”

  The spectators quieted as the fight wore on. And fewer men fighting meant the blows seemed to ring out louder, the individual battle cries seemed all the more powerful, all the more fraught with deadly intent.

  Hauk fought on. Elli couldn’t take her eyes from him. He was so beautiful, the dragon rearing, the lightning bolt striking, laying low all who dared to challenge the sharpness of his sword. The powerful muscles of his arms and back gathered and flexed with each blow. He’d been cut, here and there, and his body ran sweat. His smooth skin gleamed in the sunlight, streaked with red.

  In the end, as her father had predicted, all the men had dropped to the field save one. And that one was Hauk.

  He stood in the center of the wide grassy space now littered with the fallen and he turned in a slow circle, raising sword and shield as he moved.

  The crowd went wild, screaming, “The king’s champion! The king’s warrior! The victor!”

  The wild shouts faded. Someone started clapping. Within seconds, the others joined in, clapping in a steady rhythm.

  One loud voice shouted above the clapping, “Hauk!” And the name became a chant. “Hauk, Hauk, Hauk, Hauk!”