The Princess

by Elizabeth Elliott

  He took a step back from me, and I had the strangest impulse to invite him to spend the afternoon with me. I tamped down the wistful urge. “Thank you for your advice, Father. I appreciate the time you took to visit with me today.”

  He waved off my gratitude as he walked toward his soldiers. Four were already mounted and waited near the gates. He held up one hand when I started to follow. “I can see myself out. Return now to your betrothed.”

  I gave him a low curtsey. “Farewell, Father.”

  The name was starting to sound more familiar on my tongue. It stirred an odd sense of nostalgia, a yearning for something I’d never had and never knew I missed.

  My thoughts were in turmoil as I watched him mount up and ride away through the gates. My father’s care and concern for me had sounded genuine. Then again, he was smart enough to coerce my loyalty with any weapon in his arsenal, including kindness and a fatherly embrace. How much could I really trust him? I muttered a silent curse at Faulke for making me question that trust.

  When I turned to make my way back to my company, I stopped in my tracks and forgot all about curses.

  Faulke was standing on the path at the end of the maze, obviously waiting for me.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Magician

  I struggled to make sense of his presence, even as I drank in the sight of him. His dark hair and clothing created a pleasing contrast to the bright green foliage of the maze hedges that towered above him. Time seemed to slow, while all the colors of the garden grew more vibrant.

  I would illuminate him this way, I thought as I took a moment to enjoy the picture he presented. He looked every inch the noble warlord. And then there was the perfection of his face, the intensity in his eyes. What I saw there made my heart flutter against my chest while some invisible force tried to draw me toward him.

  Aye, he was handsome, but that was not what held my attention. There was something else about this man that made him different. Perhaps it was the way he looked at me, as if I were some puzzle he needed to solve. Perhaps it was simply the novelty of knowing we would soon be wed.

  I couldn’t say how long we stood and stared at each other. It was one of the oddest things that had ever happened to me, and yet these strange staring contests were becoming almost commonplace between us. My pulse slowed. Even my breathing slackened and a malaise settled over me like a warm blanket. I don’t think I could have moved if my life depended upon it.

  In the midst of all this strangeness, everything felt right. It felt right to look at him. It felt right to be near him. I took a step forward, knowing it would also feel right to touch him.

  That step forward is what finally broke the spell. I shook my head to clear away the cobwebs and saw him mirror an almost identical move.

  “You followed me?” I asked. I continued to walk toward him, as if it had been my idea all along rather than some strange compulsion.

  “I did not eavesdrop,” he said defensively. “I could tell your foot was hurting when you left. I thought you might want to lean upon my arm on the walk back.”

  So much for disguising my limp. I would wave him away and claim I was fine. “I would welcome your assistance.”

  Ach. Foolish, foolish girl. It was too late to take it back. I kept my gaze on his boots until he came to a stop before me, but then he did not offer his arm. I looked up to find him watching me, studying my face. He looked puzzled.

  “Isabel?”

  I lowered my gaze and refused to stare cow-eyed at him. Instead I gestured toward the path. “Shall we?”

  “Wait.” He gave me an uncomfortable look as he raked a hand through his hair. “There is one other question I wanted to ask while we are alone.”

  “Aye?”

  He stared down at me, then made a frustrated noise. “I do not know what comes over me when I am in your company. Truly, I am not this ill at ease with most women.”

  Yes, I had heard that he was greatly at ease with most women. My nails bit into my palms. “Why is that, I wonder?”

  “Aside from the fact that you are the king’s daughter?” he asked, even as he shook his head.

  Yes, I was a royal, but surely he had encountered noblewomen before me? I was no different from them; well, except for my awkwardness around him. His awkwardness left me baffled. This should be nothing new to him. He had a wealth of experience, not only with women, but with marriage to strangers. It should not hurt my feelings that he found me so strange that I made him uncomfortable. “What do you wish to ask me, Lord Faulke?”

  Again he stared into my eyes so long I wondered if he was trying to read my thoughts. “Will you kiss me?”

  I blinked once. “I beg your pardon?”

  His mouth twisted into a humorless smile. “Most women do not find me quite so repulsive as you seem to, Princess. If your aversion to me is as strong as it seems…”

  If he thought I found him repulsive, then I had disguised my emotions far better than I had imagined.

  “ ‘Repulsive’ is a rather strong word.”

  “I suspect that is close enough to the emotions you feel in my company.” He tilted his head to one side and frowned at me. “My second wife had no wish to wed, not me, not any man. If your feelings are similar, I will do whatever I can to end this betrothal rather than force another woman to the altar. I was told that you and your husband were estranged for many years before his death, but perhaps those reports were mistaken. Do you still mourn him? Or is it just me that you find unappealing?”

  I wondered where he got his ideas. And then I wondered about his second marriage to Edith, the woman who wanted to be a nun rather than a wife. It must have been truly horrible, if he was willing to risk the king’s wrath to avoid another like it.

  “I realize that I am somewhat out of practice, but I seem to recall less arguing in the interludes that lead up to a kiss.”

  Now it was his turn to blink.

  He studied my face, I studied his mouth. It really was a fine mouth. Before I could think better of the idea, I took a step forward, rested my hands on his arms, then leaned up to press my mouth to his.

  He stood frozen in my embrace, his lips soft but unyielding. Either he hadn’t actually wanted to kiss me, or he’d decided rather quickly that he disliked it.

  How humiliating.

  I’d had to rise up onto my tiptoes to reach his mouth. In an abrupt move, I settled back onto my heels and drew my hands away from his arms.

  “There. I did as you asked—”

  He reached out and brushed his thumb against my lower lip, his gaze intent on my mouth. “Do it again.”

  My cheeks caught fire. Did I do it wrong the first time? While I debated how to do it right, he seemed to grow tired of the delay. His hand went behind my neck to cup my head, and he urged me closer.

  “Again,” he ordered.

  I complied. This time I felt his arms go around me the moment our lips touched, and he drew me closer until our fronts were pressed together and I rested intimately against his body. We both gasped a little at the contact. Being pressed against him was every bit as distracting as being picked up and held in his arms.

  The hardness of his body was such a contrast to the softness of his lips that I had to concentrate to get the kiss right this time. Until his mouth opened. And then I lost my ability to concentrate on anything at all.

  Kissing was not a foreign concept to me. I had done it often in the first years of my marriage.

  Nothing I did with Hartman had prepared me for the intimacies Faulke introduced. The things he did with his tongue reminded me most vividly of the things a man did with his body to a woman in his bed, of the things this man would soon do to my body. No one had ever kissed me this way before. I should be shocked and disgusted by such a lewd invasion. Instead I felt a growing ache low in my belly and I pushed my hips closer to h
is.

  I had always pulled away when Hartman kissed me in earnest. Our mouths never seemed to fit together the way they should. Now I realized that Hartman had been a terrible kisser, whereas Faulke was a master. Although Faulke’s kisses demanded all of my attention, they were not demanding. He lured me closer, made me crave more, and somehow communicated a lifetime of carnal information with his mouth. My arms wrapped around his neck so tightly that I was probably strangling him. I didn’t care. Who knew kissing could be this pleasurable? I was greedy and wanted more.

  My body shuddered against his and I let myself sink into the sensations, trying to enjoy myself as much as possible before the unpleasant parts would start. I tried to keep my breasts flattened against his chest so he could not easily grab at them, but perhaps my worries were unfounded. He seemed in no rush to hurry things along. His hands lingered on my back and hips as the kiss went on and on. Indeed, his hands kept moving up and down my sides, and then all the way to my legs until he caught one of my knees and lifted it higher. My core pressed against his hip and then I could feel the hard ridge of his sex between my legs. A sound came from his throat that was part groan, part growl. And then in an abrupt movement he pushed me away from him.

  I was so astonished by the sudden end to the kisses that I backed up until I felt a stone bench against my legs, and then I half sat, half fell onto the seat. My breath came hard, sounding as if I had just run up a flight of stairs. I could feel my heartbeat in my ears.

  What on earth had just happened?

  I looked up at Faulke and found him staring back at me. This time there was no anger in his expression. He looked stunned.

  That look could mean anything, I told myself. I didn’t know him well enough to judge. Just because he didn’t smile and say, That was the best kiss of my life, didn’t mean there was anything wrong with my kisses or with me. So I had more or less tried to climb inside his mouth. Surely his kisses had the same effect on other women?

  He slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Well. That was not a ringing endorsement. I felt my shoulders begin to slump until I purposely forced them to square off.

  “I was certain you would cringe away from me.” He reached toward me as if to test his presumption. When I remained where I was, his fingertips brushed the curve of my cheek and left a tingling flush of heat in their wake. “I thought you would never willingly touch me.”

  I hadn’t imagined I would melt into a puddle simply because a man touched my cheek. I should laugh and make some jest that would dismiss what had just happened between us. He had been stunned because he did not think I would kiss him back, not because he found the experience life altering. Apparently that experience was mine alone. I cleared my throat. “Why would I cringe away from you? You do not frighten me.”

  “There are many men who cannot make the same claim.” He laughed out loud, a deep, masculine sound. “Then again, I suspect you frighten more men than I do.”

  That was not a compliment, but I was still too astonished by his kisses to take offense. And actually, he did frighten me. More than he knew. If he could weaken my knees with a simple kiss, I could only imagine what would happen if he tried to seduce me in earnest.

  Avalene’s words echoed in my head: He has seduced scores of ladies. Now I had a taste of how it was done.

  His smile faded. “Did I just insult you again?”

  Aye, you did. “I rarely take offense at the truth.”

  I put my fingers to my cheek and traced the same path his fingers had taken. It had been almost five years since a man had kissed me, or touched me so intimately. How could I have forgotten so much?

  No, I had forgotten nothing. Hartman had never touched me the way Faulke did. I looked down at his hands. They were nicely shaped, the fingers long and slender.

  I wanted him to touch me again.

  Ach. I needed to be away from him before I did something stupid. Or said something stupider.

  “I suppose we should rejoin the others,” I said, fixing my gaze on a spot just over his shoulder. I would not look into his eyes again. That way lay disaster.

  My whole body tingled. I’d never felt anything like it. I envisioned an afternoon spent with a nice cool compress over my forehead. Just as soon as I could get the Segraves to leave. Surely they wouldn’t stay much longer. I wondered what Richard was doing, if he had tried to speak to Gerhardt, or even to my ladies.

  “Now?” he asked. Something dark passed through his eyes, gone so quickly I wondered if I had imagined it.

  Somehow I managed to sound calm and logical. “My captain is not very talkative, my ladies know little French. They are probably all staring at each other in awkward silence. However, if Mordecai is still with them, he also speaks German. I would rather not speculate on anything he might have to say to anyone.”

  For a horrible moment, I thought Faulke was going to object, to insist we stay here and…Ach, I had no idea what we would do, but if it involved more kissing, I was in serious trouble. I stood up again and barely winced when I put weight on my injured foot. “Are you ready?”

  * * *

  —

  WE WERE BOTH silent on the walk back to the orchard. I kept my gaze firmly on the path…except for the times I peeked at him from the corner of my eye.

  Not that Faulke paid me any attention. He looked unsettled. Brooding. It was a good look on him, all dark and dangerous. So far today, every single thing made him more appealing to every one of my senses. And then I had fallen into his arms like one of his harlots.

  Perhaps I could convince him to grow out his beard again and keep it covered in mud. Not that a bit of mud would ever erase my memory of what he actually looked like beneath it. Or disguise the deliciousness of his smile. Or temper what his voice sounded like when he whispered in my ear. Oh, I was in so much trouble.

  Both of our steps slowed when we rounded a curve in the path and found that even more people had arrived. Three more people, to be precise. Two men who wore my father’s colors and a lady.

  Faulke leaned down and murmured in my ear, “If we keep going for strolls around the gardens, perhaps some of these people will begin to leave us.”

  The casual remark deserved some sort of pithy response, which might have been possible if his voice hadn’t melted most of the bones in my body. I tried a polite smile that disappeared the moment our eyes met. Just like that, we had another one of those disturbing staring contests. It was ridiculous, how easily it happened. The gardens disappeared, our audience ceased to exist, and I could almost feel myself being drawn toward him.

  All of it felt familiar. He felt familiar. We were barely acquainted, yet I felt as if he was a friend from long ago that I had just rediscovered. We were connected somehow, communicating in a silent exchange on a level I had never experienced before, and had no idea how to interpret. It was unnerving.

  I tried to remind myself that everyone could communicate without speaking. A smile or a frown, those were easy enough to interpret. Many times I didn’t have to say a word and my ladies could judge my mood. However, this was something entirely different from gauging an emotion. We were exchanging…something. Knowledge of some sort. I just wasn’t certain what kind of knowledge.

  Or maybe it was all in my head.

  “Princess?” Gerhardt’s voice came from far away.

  I watched Faulke do another slow blink at the sound of my name. As easily as it had started, the spell was broken. Everyone had certainly noticed our odd behavior, and yet I was just as certain that no one would remark upon it. Well, with the possible exception of Mordecai, but he had taken my seat at the table and seemed absorbed with the task of leafing through my drawings.

  My smile turned brittle as I spoke to Gerhardt in French, just to be polite. “How popular we are today. You must introduce our newest visitors.”

  T
he newcomers hastily lowered their gazes when I turned my attention to them. The two men wore spurs, which marked them as knights, and the chests of their bloodred tunics bore the king’s device: three golden lions. That would make them my father’s knights. The woman stood between the two men. She had brown hair plaited in a simple braid and her face was angular with pale blue-gray eyes, a wide mouth, and lips so red they must have been helped by a rouge pot. Her sky-blue gown was sewn from rich samite, and it emphasized the strange color of her eyes.

  Even as I wondered who these people might be, the men bowed and the woman curtseyed as Gerhardt began their introductions. Gerhardt gestured toward the older man first.

  “Sir Crispin de Pomeroy, and his wife, Lady Blanche,” Gerhardt said, his French precise and efficient. He nodded toward the younger man. “Sir Walter de Gardanne. He is Lady Blanche’s brother, and Sir Crispin’s second in command. His Highness, King Edward, has appointed Sir Crispin to be the new captain of your English guard.”

  So, Sir Roland’s replacement had already arrived. Gerhardt went on to make my formal introduction to the trio, along with my usual list of titles. They looked suitably impressed. All three kept glancing over my shoulder, and I swore I could feel Faulke’s presence behind me, an almost palpable awareness that said he stood a step behind my right shoulder. I kept a close eye on the new arrivals when Gerhardt introduced Faulke, and included his title as my betrothed. None of them looked surprised. Apparently word spread fast at my father’s court.

  Sir Crispin stepped forward and sank to one knee before me. “I am yours to command, Your Royal Highness.”

  Not so high these days, I thought. “My crown belonged to my husband, Sir Crispin, and now to his brother. With my husband’s death, I am once again a mere princess. Rise, sir.”

  He arose easily from his knee, a feat Sir Roland had struggled with even when he was in the best of health. Sir Crispin’s brown hair bore touches of gray at his temples, and there were a few lines around his hazel-colored eyes, but he was decades younger than his predecessor and looked in his prime. He was not what I expected. The unexpected always makes me uneasy.