Escape from Cabriz

by Linda Lael Miller

  Zachary snatched back the reins and held them impatiently while she prepared to travel.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” she told him sheepishly. She’d never even been to camp, let alone roughed it in a foreign wilderness, and all those trees were giving her the willies.

  “Pick a bush,” Zachary responded.

  Kristin started to protest, then stopped herself. It was clear enough that Zachary still thought she was a spoiled, immature little rich girl, and she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of showing weakness. “Thank you,” she said with dignity, rising to her feet and walking regally across the small clearing.

  When she returned, Zachary was waiting to strap a pack on her back.

  “What’s in this thing?” She frowned as she tried to hoist herself into the saddle, pack and all. The horse sidestepped nervously, and the saddle tipped. The next thing she knew, Kristin was between the animal’s legs, and it was prancing in a frantic effort to keep itself upright.

  “You been gaining weight lately?” Zachary asked as he caught the horse by the bridle and then soothed it with a pat on the neck.

  After scrambling back to her feet, and out of the way of the horse’s hooves, Kristin glared at him. “I beg your pardon?”

  He shrugged and then made a beckoning gesture. “Come on, I’ll help you into the saddle.”

  Kristin was still insulted. “If you’re sure you won’t get a hernia from the effort,” she replied stiffly.

  He laughed. “It may be too late. After all, I just carried you down a rope and up the palace wall.” With a sound meant to indicate herculean effort he lifted her into the saddle, and she clung to the pommel with both hands, hoping he wouldn’t see how afraid she was.

  It didn’t help that he swung into his own saddle as easily as a TV cowboy. “Relax, princess,” he said, and it was the first kindly tone he’d used since he’d awakened her in the palace. “These animals are hardly more than plow horses. They’re not going to hurt you.”

  Kristin lifted her chin. “I’m aware of that,” she lied in a lofty tone of voice.

  Zachary chuckled and shook his head, then spurred his horse toward a break in the trees. “Follow me, your ladyship.”

  Her lips moving in silent mimicry of his remark, Kristin gave her mount a nudge with one heel. “How did you know which room I’d be in back there?” she asked when about fifteen minutes had passed. Even though she didn’t like Zachary—indeed, he was the last man in the world she would have wanted to rescue her—she was curious. Besides, five days was too long to keep quiet.

  His broad shoulders stiffened in the bright moonlight. “That didn’t take a genius—you were about to marry the guy. I looked up an old friend who used to work in the palace, and he sketched the floor plan for me.”

  Kristin was silent for a few moments, absorbing the fact that Zachary thought she’d been sleeping with Jascha. She didn’t know why, but it hurt.

  “I did get there before the wedding, didn’t I?” he asked, glancing back at her.

  Kristin sighed. “Yes. But I wouldn’t have gotten married anyway—I’d already told Jascha the ceremony was off.”

  “I don’t think he was convinced,” Zachary replied.

  She ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch, and her nostrils were filled with the sudden and paradoxical scent of Christmas. “Why not?”

  “When I got there you were naked as hell, and you’d been powdered and perfumed for a night of pleasure, that’s why.”

  Kristin blushed, remembering the strange, decadent sensuality of the experience. She’d grown up in Cabriz, but there were a great many things about its culture she didn’t understand. After all, she’d always been very sheltered, living within the embassy walls, taking her schooling from a governess. She didn’t speak.

  Zachary looked back at her again, but the expression on his face was unreadable in the thin moonlight. “They were the Cabrizian equivalent of a harem, princess. It’s their job, among other things, to prepare a new bride for their husband’s enjoyment.”

  Kristin had already come to that conclusion, and she was ashamed of her naïveté in believing Jascha when he’d promised she’d be his only wife. “I know that, Zachary,” she said quietly. “You can spare me the Cabrizian culture lesson.”

  He reined in his horse to ride beside her, even though the path was really too narrow. “If you knew, why the hell did you agree to marry the bastard?”

  She sighed and ran one hand through her hopelessly tousled hair. “I didn’t figure it out until tonight,” she confessed, unable to meet Zachary’s eyes. “Jascha promised—”

  “Jascha promised,” Zachary interrupted, and his voice conveyed such contempt that Kristin began to feel defensive.

  “He was there for me when I needed him, Zachary,” she said evenly.

  Zachary glared at her for a moment and she saw the muscles in his throat work, then he rode ahead of her again.

  Typical, Kristin thought. Whenever the conversation took a direction Zachary didn’t like, he simply clammed up. In all the time they’d been together he’d never told her anything about his childhood or his family, if he had one. All she knew for sure about his past was that he’d never been married and that he’d joined the agency right after he left the air force.

  “What if I hadn’t wanted to leave Jascha?” she asked.

  The path was broader there, but Zachary didn’t wait so she could ride beside him. “I wouldn’t have forced you,” he replied quietly.

  “Even though your orders were to bring me back no matter what?”

  She saw the broad shoulders tighten under his battered leather coat. “I’m not here under anybody’s orders,” he answered.

  “Not even Dad’s?”

  Zachary permitted himself a raspy chuckle. “Well, he did offer an opinion.”

  “I can imagine,” Kristin replied ruefully. She and her father were certainly not close—she’d never, to her knowledge, done a single thing that pleased him—but she liked to think the man cared about her, at least a little.

  The glimmer of the moon showed a rocky plateau up ahead, followed by another steep incline. “Why did you do it?” Zachary asked hoarsely. “Why did you come over here, when you knew the country was in an uproar? Did you love him that much?”

  Kristin bit her lower lip, searching her mind for satisfactory answers. God knew, those were questions she’d asked herself often enough during the past few weeks as the fighting had grown worse and Cabriz’s relations with other governments had collapsed. “A year ago, when Jascha and I started seeing each other again, in New York, things weren’t so volatile over here. And there was the fairy-tale aspect of it all—we were on the covers of magazines, and Jascha sent flowers every day….” She stopped and glanced at Zachary, trying to read his reaction in the set of his frame, but he gave her no sign of his feelings. “I got swept up into the storybook-princess element of the thing, and it wasn’t until I came over here that I began to have doubts.”

  For a long time the only sounds were those of night creatures prowling the nearby woods and of the horses’ hooves on the stony ground. Then the question came again.

  “Did you love him?”

  Kristin had been stalling, but she still wasn’t prepared. “I don’t know, Zach.”

  He didn’t reply, and they began the ascent up the side of the mountain. Kristin felt as though the weight of her backpack alone would pull her over the horse’s rump and onto the ground.

  Finally they reached fairly level ground again. “Where are we going to sleep tonight?” she asked, breathless from the effort of holding on to the pommel of her saddle.

  Zachary gave her a sour look. “The Ramada Inn,” he answered.

  Kristin felt anger swell inside her, but she was too tired, cold, hungry and frightened to give free rein to it, so she just rode quietly until her temper had deflated a little. “There’s no need to be snide,” she pointed out.

  Holding the reins in one gloved hand, h
e bent in a mocking bow. “I beg your pardon, your ladyship. I’ll try to keep a civil tongue in my head from now on.”

  Tears pressed behind Kristin’s eyes and clogged her sinuses, but she held them back. “I haven’t had my dinner, you know,” she said, keeping her chin high.

  Zachary produced something from the pocket of his leather jacket and shoved it at her.

  She took the item from him with trembling fingers. It was a candy bar—her favorite combination of chocolate and coconut—and though it was a little squished, it looked like a feast to Kristin. She thanked him, unwrapped it with awkward haste and indulged in a bite.

  “Want some?” She felt duty bound to offer, though she hoped Zachary would decline.

  He shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll have something when we stop for the night.”

  So they were stopping. Kristin was relieved to hear that. “Umm,” she said, enjoying her candy bar.

  Zachary spared her a grin. “Did you think I’d forgotten what you like?”

  Her throat constricted with unwanted emotion. It was just like him to remind her of old times, when they’d lived together. He’d left her favorite candy on her pillow in those days, or tucked it into her pocket, or hid it in her camera case.

  She blinked several times and swallowed hard. “I doubt if you’ve given me a thought since the day I moved out of your apartment,” she said evenly.

  They were moving into the trees again, and Zachary rode ahead, forcing Kristin and her horse to fall in behind. He spoke in a terse voice. “Then you’re wrong. I’ve thought about wringing your neck a million times.”

  Kristin sighed. Despite the jacket Zachary had bundled her into, she was cold, and the candy bar had only taken the edge off her appetite. Worse, she was beginning to consider the reprisals Jascha might use if they were caught. “If you hate me so much, why did you come into Cabriz to get me?”

  He didn’t look back. “Because I get a kick out of sneaking into countries with names that sound like a line of sportswear,” he answered tartly.

  “Jascha will kill you if he catches us.”

  “You’d better pray he doesn’t, princess. He’s probably not real fond of you right now, either.”

  Kristin remembered the look on Jascha’s face when he’d been about to force himself on her, and she shuddered. “I don’t know what’s come over him lately. He was always so sweet, and so gentle.”

  Zachary’s tone was wry. “Little things like the overthrow of a throne tend to upset a guy.”

  Kristin’s weary mind had gone on to other possibilities. “What will they do to Jascha—the rebels—if they do overrun the palace?”

  He waited a long time to answer, and when he spoke his voice was gruff with reluctance. “They’ll kill him, princess.”

  The grief that surged through Kristin shouldn’t have come as a surprise, but it did. Jascha had been her friend, if not her lover, for a very long time. After she’d lost Zachary, the prince had dried her tears and listened patiently while she tried to work out the things that had gone wrong.

  Her shoulders hunched under the heavy load of the backpack and tears trickled down her cheeks.

  Zachary must have known she was weeping—try as she might, she couldn’t seem to cry quietly—but he didn’t make any comments. He did take the reins from her and lead her horse behind his.

  By the time he brought both horses to a halt in the shelter of a small circle of trees, Kristin had recovered some of her dignity.

  She felt abject relief when Zachary reached out, still mounted on his horse, to unfasten and remove her backpack. “I can hardly wait till we get the fire built,” she said with a sigh, summoning up a tremulous smile.

  He swung down from the saddle, carrying her backpack, and tossed it into the leaves that covered the ground. “No fire tonight, your ladyship,” he answered in clipped tones. “We’re still too close to Kiri, and there are probably patrols out looking for us right now.”

  Kristin shivered and glanced around at the woods. They looked eerie in the silver glow of the stars and moon. “Do you really think so? It would make better sense if they started out in the morning.”

  He shrugged out of his backpack and set it down beside hers. “Right. And if we just follow the yellow brick road, we’ll be home in Kansas by morning and Auntie Em will bake us an apple pie.”

  It was a struggle, but Kristin managed not to lose her composure. She watched as Zachary took the reins of both horses and started off toward the woods, and when it was clear he wasn’t going to apologize for patronizing her, she stormed after him.

  “Why do you always do that?” she demanded.

  “Do what?” Zachary retorted, all innocence. A stream flowed a few yards ahead, shining like a silver ribbon in the night.

  “Why do you always make me out to be so damn naive? I happen to have a degree in journalism, you know, and I’ve been all over the world on professional assignments!”

  While the horses drank, Zachary turned to Kristin, his nose less than an inch from hers. “Some assignments—you took pictures of embassy parties and wrote cutesy articles to go along with them. And as for this little adventure, you came halfway around the globe to marry a prince who already has half a dozen wives, in a country that’s been teetering on the edge of disaster for ten years, and then you have the gall to stand there and ask me why I think you’re naive?”

  Kristin stepped back, strung, and would have fallen if Zachary hadn’t been so quick to reach out and steady her. She blinked, unable to refute the charge that her job with Savoir Faire had amounted to little more than writing the occasional society column. “I didn’t know about the wives.”

  Zachary let her go. “In fifteen minutes,” he said, “you’ll have convinced yourself there were never any wives. Well, you have it your way, your ladyship. You’ve always arranged the world to suit your perceptions, anyhow. Why should this be any different?”

  “You’re being cruel, Zachary. I’m not trying to deny that I made a mistake.”

  “A mistake? Sweetheart, you’ve made a dozen. Why did you think all those women were hanging around? Did you have them pegged as members of the palace sewing circle?”

  Kristin’s eyes brimmed with tears and she whirled to walk away, but Zachary reached out and caught hold of her arm, turning her back to face him with surprising gentleness.

  “Kristin, I’m sorry,” he said softly. Unwillingly.

  Kristin bit down hard on her lower lip.

  Zachary touched her cheek, brushed away a tear with the edge of his thumb. “Don’t cry, princess.”

  When Kristin didn’t respond, he released her and turned back to the horses. She walked a little way upstream and knelt down to splash clear, icy water onto her face.

  It restored her a little, and when she joined Zachary in the clearing she was almost her old self. He tied the horses where they could graze, then knelt beside her and took a bedroll from her backpack.

  “It’s going to get cold tonight,” he said as he zipped his sleeping bag and Kristin’s together.

  Kristin’s eyes widened. “You mean we’re sleeping in the same bag?”

  Zachary gave her one of his impatient looks. “It’s not like we’ve never shared a bed,” he pointed out.

  Kristin’s mind filled with sweet, fiery and completely unwanted memories at the prospect. “But we’re not—we were involved then.”

  “Relax, your ladyship. I don’t intend to touch you.”

  Chilled, not only by the night wind but by the timbre of Zachary’s voice, Kristin shivered. “I’m hungry,” she said.

  He reached for one of the backpacks again. “I’ll get you something. Take your clothes off and get into the sleeping bag.”

  Kristin had been unlacing one of her clunky hiking boots, but she stopped cold. “You expect me to strip? In your dreams, Zachary Harmon.”

  Holding a package of something in one hand, he turned his broad and singularly imperious back. “Get undressed,” he reiterate
d. “If you don’t, your clothes will draw moisture and you’ll end up with pneumonia.”

  Kristin studied his back, trying to decide whether he was telling the truth or not. “If you’re lying to me—”

  He turned to face her, tossed the small package into her lap and took off his hat. The moonlight shimmered in his rumpled brown hair. “I’ve never lied to you in my life,” he said. And he unzipped his jacket and laid it aside, then pulled his shirt out of his jeans and began to unbutton it.

  Kristin’s cheeks felt as though they’d caught fire, and she dropped her eyes. “All right,” she said. “I’ll take off my clothes. But you have to look the other way until I tell you it’s okay.”

  He turned away in a leisurely fashion, and Kristin heard a slight clinking sound as he unfastened his belt buckle. “Were you this shy with the prince?”

  Kristin wasn’t about to dignify that question with an answer. She took off her hiking boots and socks, then the odd, rough-spun pajamas. Beneath them she was naked, and she practically dived into the double sleeping bag, pulling the top up to her chin and huddling as far as she could to one side.

  She squeezed her eyes tightly shut when Zachary slid into the bag beside her, but she could feel the heat of his body, and she was awash in memories of other nights.

  “I thought you were hungry,” Zachary remarked.

  She opened her eyes and felt around on top of the sleeping bag for the packet he’d given her earlier. “I am,” she said. The stars seemed to crowd around the moon, determined to outshine it.

  Instead of the packet she found rock-hard thigh, which she released instantly.

  Zachary laughed. “Here,” he said, dangling the packet in front of her face.

  Kristin snatched it out of his hand and sat up so rapidly that the sleeping bag nearly slipped down to reveal her bare breasts. She held on to her virtue with one hand and used her teeth to tear open the little bag.

  Inside were roasted peanuts, and Kristin gobbled them down, thinking sadly of the spicy, scrumptious meals that were served at the palace.