Miranda Jarrett

by Princess of Fortune

  “You’re the evil one, Pesci!”

  “Evil, evil.” The old man squinted, an evil eye indeed. “Did you know your darling muse has already spread her legs for another, my lord? She shares the bed of the man who guards her.”

  Darden swore. He was shaking from this terrible conversation, his forehead slick with sweat. “You don’t know that!”

  “My men went to hunt for her and the jewels, my lord. Her bed was empty. His was not. I tell you, she is a born whore.” Pesci smiled, clearly relishing Darden’s reaction. “And you lied about the jewels, my lord. If she had such a cache here in London with her, my men would have found them.”

  “Maybe she gave the jewels to Greaves,” Darden suggested, grasping for a way to shift Pesci’s focus from the princess to the captain. “Maybe he has them hidden in his rooms, or in his belongings. Maybe he’s taken them to Whitehall for safekeeping!”

  “No, my lord. A Fortunaro would never share such a treasure with another. She will think only of herself, in this and in everything. Your muse has no soul, my lord, no heart. She is as rotten, as corrupt, as every other in her family.”

  “But the captain—”

  “I have no quarrel with the captain, my lord, nor will I.”

  Darden shook his head, denying everything. Yet still he could see his hopes for marrying the princess crumbling inside him, breaking apart in the place he liked to think held his heart, and with it was faltering the creative spark she’d inspired.

  But maybe all he needed was another tumbler of brandy to make him think clearly. Yes, that would help. Brandy always soothed him, didn’t it? A quick sip or two, just to make him sort out the truth from Pesci’s lies, pure love from false hopes.

  “I tell you, old man, you are wrong about the princess,” he said, one last bit of defiance. “She is not like you say, not at all.”

  “Then go to her, my lord, and judge for yourself.” Pesci seemed spent, done. Carefully he tucked the little triangle back inside his scarves and shawls. His eyes were heavy lidded, as if he were in danger of falling asleep, and he leaned so heavily on the shoulder of the boy that the child sagged forward, his head hanging from supporting the man. “But know that I will find her, too, my lord, and when I do, she’ll be gone from you forever.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  “You say there is more to come after this, Tomaso?” Isabella sighed happily as the curtain dropped for the last time. “I’d be content if that one play were all, though I do believe that one player was not right for Apollo. He was far too stout for his costume, and I do think his whiskers were pasted on his cheeks. How sorry for the god of light!”

  “It’s all trumpery, lass.” Tom laughed. He’d thought the play the silliest nonsense imaginable, but Isabella had enjoyed herself so thoroughly that he had, too, sharing her delight. “They say the ancient gods were immortal, but these poor players aren’t. Forty years ago or so, when that old bloke first took the role, he was probably as perfect an Apollo as ever you’d wish to find.”

  “Oh, you are so very logical, Tomaso.” Isabella scowled fiercely, as if to chase away his logic. “I suppose that is excellent when you are at sea, but you are supposed to be whimsical and impractical when you are watching a play.”

  “One of us must be practical and logical, lass.”

  “Meaning you, and not I?” She flipped open her fan and pouted over the top, teasing. “I can be perfectly practical when I must, yes?”

  “Do not make me answer that, Bella,” he said gravely, but she only laughed. Yet he wasn’t entirely teasing. All the time that the portly Apollo was declaiming on the stage, Tom had been watching the other boxes around them as well as the pit below. It came naturally, this watchfulness, and life at sea had taught him to glean the significance from the smallest ripple of water, or to spot the black pinprick on the horizon that could be the top of an enemy’s mast. Now he was searching the well-dressed crowd instead of the water, looking for a pistol barrel, or the glint of a knife blade, searching for anything or anyone that didn’t seem to be as it should.

  Perhaps the admiral had been right, after all, and Tom had overestimated the danger. Perhaps the three men who’d attacked the princess and Darden were also the leaders of the Trinita here in London, and their plotting had died with them.

  Perhaps, but not likely.

  Tom had purposely not told the usher or other attendants that the woman on his arm was the Princess di Fortunaro, and they were so well trained in discretion that none had asked. He was sure that most guessed he and Isabella were lovers, and there was no help for that. He could ask her not to wear a tiara, but there was no way he could make her put aside the happy glow on her face.

  Again he glanced over the outside of the box. “The ballet should start soon. Would you like me to send for a dish of sweets, or a cup of punch?”

  “You see, there you are, practical once more.” She snapped her fan shut and held it alongside her face, lightly tapping her cheek. “And being practical myself, Tomaso, I’m considering more than a cup of punch.”

  “You are,” he said, a statement, not a question. She was, of course, planning something, though he wasn’t yet sure what.

  “Yes, yes, yes,” she said. “I’m considering how dark it is in the back of this box, and how, once the ballet begins, everyone will be looking at the stage and not at us. I’m considering that plush-covered bench, back there in the shadows.”

  “Bella,” he said, his mouth turning dry because now he could guess exactly where this was headed. Already she’d discovered that she liked variety, and with her, he’d discovered he liked it, too, no matter how impractical it would be. Damnation, he was hard in his breeches already. “Bella, recall where we are.”

  “I do.” She smiled, a wicked, seductive smile he’d come to recognize. She leaned from her chair closer to him, heedless of how near she came to spilling her breasts from the front of her gown as she rested her little hand on his knee. Her voice was low, husky, just for him. “And I’m considering, Tomaso, how it’s been at least four hours since you last made love to me. Is there anything more practical than that?”

  “Only if I’d said it first, Bella.” He covered her hand with his own, sliding slowly up her bare arm. He’d never have enough of the touch of her skin, as velvety soft as that on a peach. “Though I’ll grant that you—what in blazes is that?”

  They both turned toward the box’s door and whoever was knocking on the other side of it.

  “Don’t answer it,” whispered Isabella breathlessly. “Then they’ll go away.”

  “They won’t,” said Tom, and the knock came again, more insistently, to prove him right. With a muttered oath of frustration, he lifted his hand from Isabella’s arm and eased his knee away from her hand. “And the door’s not latched shut anyway. Enter!”

  One of the theater’s attendants swung the door open, bowing at the same time. “His Lordship the Marquis of Banleigh.”

  “Darden.” Tom didn’t bother to hide his feelings as he rose to bow curtly to the marquis. Like it or not, he did have to acknowledge the differences in their rank, even with such a sorry specimen as Darden. “What devil has brought you here?”

  “No devil.” The marquis made a graceful leg to Isabella, taking her hand to kiss the air over her fingers. “Rather it is Her Royal Highness that has drawn me here—a tiger moth to her fiery flame!—ready to pay her the tribute she deserves. You are enjoying the theater, ma’am?”

  “I was.” Isabella pulled her hand back, making it into a tight small fist of protest in her lap. “Mind what I say, Darden. I am here tonight not as the princess, but simply as the guest of Captain Lord Greaves. I hope you can respect that, and my privacy with it.”

  “But you are a princess, ma’am,” he said, striving to be disarming. “And a most divinely lovely one, too. What could possibly be gained by pretending you are otherwise?”

  He placed another chair beside Isabella’s, sitting close beside her as if she hadn’t
spoken at all. Though Darden was, as always, beautifully dressed for evening, the greenish cast to his skin and the dark circles ringing his eyes were at odds with the fine linen and black broadcloth, and he was speaking too quickly, as if speed would mask the slurring.

  Tom didn’t know which disgusted him more: that Darden had blustered his way into their box, or that he’d needed drink to give him the courage to do it.

  “The princess asked you to leave, Darden.” Tom stood beside her chair, stopping just short of resting his hand possessively on her shoulder. “She was a sight nicer about it than I’ll be, too. Clear off, Darden. Go, now, before I have to toss you out myself.”

  Darden tipped back his head so he could look down his nose at Tom. “You forget yourself, Greaves,” he drawled. “Or rather you forget who I am, to address me so.”

  “I’d say it’s you who’s forgotten to oblige Her Royal Highness’s wish.”

  “But you see, Greaves, I’ve done exactly that.” He swung around in his chair to face Isabella, placing his open hand dramatically over his heart. “I’ve obeyed you, ma’am, and I have followed your wishes in a way no other could. You have seen today’s Herald Gazette?”

  Again Isabella drew back, away from Darden. “I do not read the English papers. I find the language oppressively taxing.”

  “But you should see this particular edition, ma’am. You must!” He drew a newspaper from inside his coat, smoothing the folds lightly between his fingertips before he handed it to her. “See what I have done for you, ma’am, precisely as you wished!”

  With obvious reluctance Isabella took the paper, staring down at the page where he was pointing. She wasn’t pretending when she claimed she didn’t read English. She’d told Tom much the same thing before, and he’d never seen her willingly do it. But she was reading now, frowning, her lips moving slightly as she struggled with the foreign English words.

  “It’s exactly as you wished, ma’am,” Darden said excitedly, so eager for her approval that he didn’t see the shock growing on her face with each word she read. “I do believe I’ve captured the essence, the very heart, of your family’s heroic struggles against the base upstarts trying to wrest your country from you. An epic piece for an epic battle, ma’am, when right and nobility of spirit shall truly triumph!”

  “No,” she said, her voice shaking as she stared at the paper in her hands. “That is not what you have done, Darden. What you have written, what you have printed for all the world to read—ah, santo cielo!”

  Darden pursed his lips and frowned, clearly stunned by her reaction. “Perhaps as you say, it is the language you find difficult. Perhaps you are unaware of the subtlety of the meanings I have given the words.”

  “Subtlety!” She shoved the paper back at him. “There is no subtlety in this, Darden, not in a single word of it!”

  He held the paper with the rejected poem cradled in his hands as if it were a wounded bird. “But you could not have read it all, not so swiftly!”

  “I have read enough to judge it.” Her face was flushed, her eyes so bright with agitation that Tom couldn’t tell whether she would strike Darden or burst into tears. “I have read enough to see how you have portrayed me!”

  “That’s enough, Darden.” Tom grabbed the marquis’s arm, determined to send him from the box. He didn’t have to read any of the poem. The damned thing had wounded Isabella, and that was reason enough for him. “You’re leaving now.”

  Isabella nodded, quick little jerks of her chin that betrayed how upset she was by Darden’s offering. “I asked you not to do this, Darden. How right I was not to trust you!”

  Darden struggled in Tom’s grasp. “I’ve shown you as you are, ma’am, a princess rising like a phoenix from the ashes of her homeland!”

  “You have made me into a hateful, selfish shrew, with no regard for anyone other than myself!” The tears were there in her voice, a tremble of white-hot fury. “You say I would trample the babies of my people and laugh at their suffering, that I might make myself richer by their deaths!”

  “That was an allegory, ma’am,” protested Darden. “A poetical fancy, no more! How could you not see that?”

  “What I see is how you have insulted not only me, but all the Fortunari, from ancient times until now.” She rose, furiously swinging her skirts around her legs, and snatched the paper back from his hands. With the paper raised high, she ripped it in half, then in half again, letting the pieces flutter like inky ribbons to the floor at the marquis’s feet. “What I see, Lord Darden, is how much you despise me, to have treated me so callously, and with such cruelty, for your own amusement.”

  Aghast, Darden stared at the tattered remains of his poem as Tom roughly pulled him back toward the box’s door. “I do not despise you, ma’am! That is as far, far from the truth as is possible—”

  But his words were drowned out by a trumpet’s fanfare from the orchestra, calling attention once again to the stage. The portly actor who’d played Apollo had shed his false whiskers and buskins, and now, in a flowing purple robe, was holding his hands up for silence. He didn’t get it, but the chatter and bustle dulled enough for him to be able to roar over it.

  “Fair ladies and kind gentlemen,” he began, rolling his r’s for extra effect. “We are most honored here in our little playhouse by the presence this night of an esteemed guest. A gallant salute, if you please, for Her Royal Highness the Princess Isabella di Fortunaro of Monteverde!”

  He swung his arm up to indicate their box, leaving no question which belonged to the princess. The orchestra began a hearty, if ragged, version of the Monteverdian national anthem, while Isabella—Tom’s own dear, darling Bella—stood riveted in place alone at the rail, stunned by the unexpected, unwanted attention.

  And the attention was there. As the music rattled on, more and more faces turned to gawk at the princess in the midst, with envy or curiosity, admiration or lust. Yet somehow Isabella faced them all, standing straighter, her small figure more regal, more the perfect image of a Fortunaro princess with every unsteady note of her country’s anthem.

  She was, decided Tom, absolutely magnificent.

  She was also as easy a target as he’d ever seen.

  “Damnation, Darden,” he said. “That infernal actor, the music—you did this to her, didn’t you?”

  Darden groaned, pressing his palm to his forehead as he slumped against the wall. “I thought the princess would want to be noticed. She told me she wanted to do what she could for her country by drawing attention to herself. She told me—”

  But what Tom was hearing was the first catcalls over the music, a handful of jeers scattered throughout the crowd, all proof that others had read Darden’s poem. Tom wouldn’t wait for more.

  He slipped his arm around Isabella’s shoulder, sheltering her. “Come, lass. There’s no dishonor in retreating to fight another day.”

  “I should wait for the end of the music,” she protested. “It’s not right for me to—”

  The apple struck the chair beside her, landing on the seat with a hard thump that sprayed chunks of brown, rotting fruit over her skirt.

  “Now, Bella, this way. Now. Now.”

  This time she didn’t argue. Ducking her head against any more apples, she took Tom’s hand, her fingers damp with more fear than she’d shown.

  “Where’s Darden?” she asked breathlessly as they hurried from the box into the hall. “Where has he gone, the wretched coward? You did not read the poem, Tomaso. You don’t know what he wrote about me. And now he has just run away?”

  “He’s gone to the devil, if there’s any justice.” More people were clustered in the hall than Tom would have liked, loitering there before they returned to their seats, and blocking the way to the lobby. “More likely he’s gone skulking off to the nearest tavern to—”

  “Look, it’s that foreign princess!” called a man. “There, with her bullyboy! Another bleedin’ Mary-Antoinette, are you, hussy?”

  At once Tom turned arou
nd, back the way they’d come, pushing a path through the others as fast as he could, before anyone else recognized her. At the end of the hall was a door to a back staircase, and he forced it open and pushed her inside, latching it shut behind them. He didn’t know if they’d be followed. He didn’t wait to find out.

  “Down the stairs?” she asked breathlessly, bunching her skirts in one hand as she began down the narrow, twisting staircase.

  He nodded, leading her. He’d only done this once, years before, when he’d come with a friend who’d fancied one of the actresses. “This goes to the stage and dressing rooms. We’ll leave by the back door, through the alley.”

  She nodded, her face tense. “They’re following us, Tomaso. I can hear them. Oh, santo cielo, why do they care so much about me?”

  “I don’t know, lass.” He could hear them now, too, someone pounding on the latched door at the top of the stairs. “This way, here.”

  He shoved open the door at the bottom of the stairwell, and they were suddenly on the edge of the stage itself. Dancers with rouged cheeks and plumes in their hair hurried past them, ready to take their places for the ballet.

  “Here now, you two, you can’t be here.” The man blocking their path wore a leather apron, his sleeves rolled high over his arms and a dented, pinchbeck crown perched on top of his graying hair. “Manager’s orders, Cap’n. No visitors backstage until last curtain. That means gentry, too, no exceptions.”

  “But we don’t wish to be here, sir.” Somehow Isabella had put aside her fear and now smiled up at the man, beseeching him with a sweetness no male could refuse. “We were looking for the door to the alley. You see, there’s a—gentleman following us that we do wish to avoid, and—”