That made him feel marginally better, until he got back to the cart.
The women were talking. If there was one person he didn’t want Laurentia talking to, it was Brat, but what could he say? Don’t talk to Brat, she’s gotten soft, she might slip and warn you.
“We can wrap his ribs tightly,” Laurentia was saying, “but he won’t be able to pull his cart for some time.”
“No,” Brat answered. “The bone’s badly cracked. He won’t be able to do much for several weeks, and he’ll be in pain for months.”
Dom dropped the bandages by Brat and grimly sacrificed some of de Emmerich’s cash to salve Brat’s guilt. “I’ll make sure he’s cared for.”
“Why? You had nothing to do with his injury.” Laurentia picked up the ball of bandages and began unwrapping them. “You saved him. He’ll stay at the palace, perhaps perform light labor as he’s able, until he can work again.”
That’s why, Dom wanted to say. I don’t need you charming the man who knows what an imposter I am.
Even Monty saw the drawback to her plan. “I’m grateful, Your Highness, but that’s not necessary.”
“The palace contains many chambers, Monty. You’ll be no trouble, and eventually you can be a help.” Laurentia smiled on him, and the big stupid dolt went soft as a mushroom.
“Let me lift him while you wrap his ribs, Your Highness,” Brat said.
“He’s heavy.” Laurentia frowned as if having tall, strong Brat lift a man worried her.
“Then Dom can lift him and I’ll wrap his ribs.” Brat glared meaningfully at him, as if having the small, delicate princess close to such dubious company worried her.
Well, it worried him, too. Yet before he could agree, a man pushed forward out of the crowd. “Let me.” He smiled, an amiable fellow with brown hair, a light complexion, and a proper accent that told Dom he must be one of the suitors.
“An excellent notion,” Dom said, intent on whisking Laurentia away.
But his bad luck had not yet run its course. Ruby took her finger out of her mouth and pointed at him. “Dom.”
Laurentia broke into a grin. “She’s so bright! Is she yours, Gloria?”
Gloria? Laurentia knew Brat’s real name? Why, he could remember when Brat had pounded grown men to a pulp for calling her Gloria.
“Yes, that’s Ruby.” Brat confiscated the bandages, nudged Laurentia aside and as the stranger carefully lifted Monty, began the process of tightly swaddling his ribs.
Now Laurentia turned a gentle smile on the child and held out a hand. “Greetings, Ruby. Are you having fun today?”
Assailed by an eighteen-month-old’s shyness, Ruby put her finger back into her mouth and nodded.
Laurentia coaxed Ruby to answer, and Dom’s anxiety mingled with pride as the child toddled to Laurentia. But pride for who? For the child who leaned against the kneeling princess and babbled in her thankfully incomprehensible language? Or for Princess Laurentia, who seemed to enjoy the babble, keeping one arm around Ruby, and holding her as if she were precious?
Nudged from behind, Dom turned to an old couple demanding his attention. The man’s hands were callused, his nails thick, yellowed, and split. The woman wore a colorful bandana to keep her braids out of her face, and the sun had etched premature lines into her skin. Dom, whose life had so frequently depended on his ability to sum a man up, found himself thinking, Farmers. Then he looked into their shrewd eyes and thought, More than farmers.
That they brought themselves to his attention surprised him. Normally, respectable people sensed the wildness he exuded, and even in a crowd he found himself alone.
No such wariness tinged their smiling regard. “Her Highness is good with the babes, isn’t she?” the wife asked.
“Very good,” Dom said.
“She’s always been that way around children. Loves children, does our princess.” The husband tucked his thumbs into his suspenders. “Isn’t that right, Minnie?”
The wife nodded at him. “That’s true, Roy. Young man, you’ll not have to worry she is like those other noblewomen who allow governesses to raise their children.”
Dom began to see the direction of the conversation, and found himself torn between embarrassment and a deep-seated, almost belligerent pleasure.
Like the archer, Minnie and Roy thought he was the princess’s choice as husband, and they had leaped ahead to that part of her marriage which mattered to them, the production of heirs.
But before the princess could hug a child of her own, she would have to lie beneath a man. And these people thought she would lie beneath him.
He glanced at Laurentia again. She knelt on the grass, all uncaring of the stains on her skirt, and smiled at Ruby in an unselfconscious manner.
What a smile! With absolute abandon, she lavished delight and joy on a child because she knew Ruby would demand nothing in return. Laurentia couldn’t smile like that to her subjects or her father. They wished her to wed, and wed for their own selfish purposes. She couldn’t smile like that at her suitors, or they’d get above themselves. She couldn’t smile like that at her servants or her soldiers or her bodyguard... but he wanted her to. That smile made him want to turn her face to his and kiss it off her lips. Then charm her enough to bring it slipping back again.
Minnie interrupted his reverie. “To a man like you, family has to be important.”
Dom took a step back. Laurentia didn’t seem to be listening, but he didn’t want her overhearing this conversation. “A man like me?”
Minnie got flustered. “We were told you were a ... a mercenary and a bastard.”
When he turned to grin at her, all aggression and teeth, she took a step backward, close to her husband.
“Woman, I told you not to listen to rumors.” Roy rebuked her, yet at the same time he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and glared up at Dom.
A hundred times along the roads of war, Dom had met men like this. For his wife, Roy would challenge even a warrior in the prime of his youth. He would fight and he would die for her, because they were one, welded together by time, experience and the one condition Dom thanked God he had never experienced—that emotion the romantics called love.
Dom knew himself stupid to be offended when someone mentioned a condition he himself had proclaimed. He’d learned on the streets of Plaisance to fight anyone who called him “king’s bastard.” Fighting eased the pain of his father’s abandonment, the anguish of seeing his mother die, the helplessness of a boy taken by women intent on using his youth to briefly regain their own.
He was no longer that boy, and it was time to stop frightening old peasant couples with his narrow-eyed intensity.
Slowly, so as not to further alarm them with a sudden change in mien, he eased the smile from his lips and proclaimed his condition with appropriate solemnity. “No, your wife is right. I am a bastard.”
Minnie recovered first. “I would think it important that your children be part of a good family.”
“Very important,” Dom agreed. Now Laurentia held the child in her lap, her head bent to Ruby’s, the soft nape of her neck exposed by the upward twist of her hair. Brat watched Princess Laurentia with a sentimental glint in her eye. That worried Dom yet again. She’d already questioned his orders once. He didn’t dare have Brat fretting about the decency of their mission, not when she’d already proved she’d lost that vengeful edge that had driven her for so long.
Dom laid his hand on Minnie’s arm. “Doesn’t it bother you your princess might marry a bastard?” Immediately he regretted his question. But he really wanted to know what had made these peasants think they had the right to speak so freely to the man they thought to be their future prince.
“Pish-posh.” Minnie spoke stoutly. “Princess Laurentia has a good head on her shoulders, and with you at her side, watching her like a donkey who scents his mate—”
Dom threw back his head and laughed out loud. When he looked down at her, she projected the air of an offended matriarch, and he f
ound himself apologizing. “I’m sorry, I’ve never been called a donkey before.”
“I’m surprised,” she snapped. Without drawing breath, she continued, “When you’re beside her, Her Highness has that glow about her.”
“Woman, you’re talking too much,” Roy said.
“No, I’m fascinated.” Dom never meant anything so much in his life.
Minnie ignored them both. “When we saw Her Highness today, I told my man, I said, ‘Princess Laurentia is old enough to choose who she wishes.’” She nodded with the authority of a seasoned matchmaker. “At least you have the look of sanity about you.” The husband jostled her elbow, and she said, “Well, he does!”
But although Dom could see she found it difficult, she obeyed the unspoken command to cease.
More than farmers, Dom thought again. “You seem to know her well.”
“We’ve served the royal family for years. Even our son—”
“Woman, you’re talking too much,” the husband interjected.
“Your son?” Dom urged.
“Our son’s in the royal service also,” Roy said simply.
Tucking her lips in tight, Minnie glared at Dom as if she knew how he wanted to grab her and question her.
Instead he took her hand and kissed the swollen knuckles. “Thank you,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure speaking with you.”
As he knew she would, the old woman smiled at him, for few could resist when he was charming. But then she did the most extraordinary thing.
She curtsied.
To him.
Royal servants were dragging Monty away on a sling. The crowd around Dom was dispersing. Ruby stood with her mother, holding her hand while Laurentia spoke earnestly. Dom stared at the place where the old farmwife had stood, the image of her bobbing figure emblazoned on his mind long after she had left.
Taking a breath, he eased the constriction in his chest.
The old woman had curtsied. To him. As if she’d meant it when she said it didn’t matter if he were a bastard and a mercenary.
He looked up at the princess. She had taken Ruby’s other hand and was swinging it, and Ruby squealed with delight. Brat surreptitiously wiped her nose on her sleeve. The fellow who had helped with Monty stood off to the side, watching the tableau with interest. Too much interest.
It was time for Dom to whisk Laurentia away.
Chapter Eleven
Brat adjusted Ruby in her arms as he escorted Laurentia off, and she easily read the warning glance Dom cast back at her. Don’t bungle this, he warned mutely.
She wouldn’t, but she didn’t like the whole mad scheme.
“Mama.” Ruby laid her hand on Brat’s face and turned it toward her.
Brat looked at her daughter absently, her mind on the man who had been her commander for so many years. “What, Ruby?”
Ruby smiled, a bright toothy grin. “Nice mama.”
Brat focused on her child, the sweetest, brightest, most adorable child ever created. “You are a darling.”
Ruby. A gem found in the wilderness of her life. She would do anything for Ruby: steal, cheat, murder.
Yet as the baby grew into a child and that child observed and imitated every act her mother performed, Brat realized the truth known by all mothers everywhere.
It was up to her to show Ruby right from wrong.
She settled the child more firmly on her hip. “Do you want a biscuit?”
“Sweets!” Ruby shouted.
“Biscuit,” Brat said firmly, and started toward the baker’s pushcart.
She, Brat, a nameless, homeless bastard from a whorehouse, had to become a woman her daughter would be proud of. But how?
“You’ve been so good to help one of my subjects,” Princess Laurentia had said. “As a thanks, come to the palace and let me find you new clothing.” She’d waved off Brat’s horrified objections. “I have so much, and yet you have more than me. I envy you your lovely daughter.” She had caressed Ruby’s silken hair, smiled at Brat’s child as if she really loved her, and confided, “I hope when I marry I have a child half as fair. So you’ll let me do this.”
Brat’s numb nod of agreement had met with beaming satisfaction from the princess. The princess knew how to be good. She’d been taught from the cradle.
No one had ever taught Brat anything except survival. She’d spent her life despising folks who went to their churches every Sunday to pray to some mythical God for help. They were dupes, she said, supporting some fast-talking priest so he didn’t have to work. She didn’t need that kind of narcotic to keep her happy with her life.
She drank too much, laughed too loud, fought too hard, and never ever found peace.
Then she’d been raped.
Even now sometimes when she shut her eyes she could see the pockmarked face, feel the pressure of rough hands, smell his sour stench...
The scent of fresh bread drew her the last few steps to the pushcart.
The baker watched suspiciously as Brat dug the copper out of her pocket and handed it over. Then Ruby smiled at him, and he melted like butter on one of his hot cross buns. “You’ve got a beautiful girl there,” he said, handing over the largest turnover in his case. When Brat would have pointed out she’d paid for a biscuit, he added, “Children grow fast. Can’t ever give them too much to eat.”
Brat smiled at him, too, adding her pleasure to Ruby’s.
Then, juggling the turnover and her daughter, she looked around for a place to sit. All along the perimeter of the meadow, families sat in the shade of the trees. They ate or lounged, watching their children play, talking . . . being normal. One oak in particular caught Brat’s eye, for under the tree sat the women who held sleeping babies, the women dressed in a widow’s black, the women alone.
The old Brat would have disdained such a seat. Now she found herself trudging toward that tree, gripped by a shyness almost too painful to bear.
Stupid thing, really, that rape. A moment of inattention, a moment of pain, disgust, and wretched humiliation. Not worth brooding about.
Except she hadn’t been able to stop crying, or blaming herself for saying the wrong thing, dressing the wrong way, somehow enticing that brute of a sailor ... Dom and his mercenaries had been furious, roaring about as if anger could cure her hurt. She thought probably they’d hunted down her rapist and killed him, and that seemed just. If ever a man needing killing, it was him. But then, with typical male ineptitude, her mercenaries had tried talking her out of her grief. It wasn’t as if she was a virgin, they’d said. Sure, she’d always chosen her mates before, but this wasn’t that different. And besides, she’d got her first experience in the brothel.
Where she’d been forced.
Rape made the difference between pleasure and pain, between joy and humiliation.
That knowledge changed her relationship with the troop. Before they’d all been tough together, comrades in battle. Now she forced them to view their actions as others viewed them.
And when she’d discovered she was pregnant! Ah, they almost ran into that battle in Greece.
Conversation died as Brat approached the lady-tree. Even Ruby clutched her harder, warned by her mother’s rigidity that she should be alarmed. Brat smiled at no one in particular and asked, “Is it permitted for me to sit here?”
With her Sereminian accent, she didn’t sound like these people of Bertinierre, and she felt like a target standing there.
Then one of the old women leaning against a trunk moved aside. “Sure,” she said in the overly loud manner of the deaf. “Sit down and feed the baby.”
Conversation started again as Brat settled her back against the tree. Adjusting Ruby in her lap, she fed her bits of baked apples and raisins baked in the bread-like dough. All the while she relentlessly remembered.
Only Dom had come back for her, a warrior who worked his way out from under a pile of bodies and staggered off the battlefield. They’d fled into the mountains, burdened by her increasing bulk, stunned by the magni
tude of the disaster, missing their friends. She and Dom were nothing but walking corpses—until she’d given birth to Ruby.
Then they’d discovered a new purpose. A purpose that drove them to succeed.
Yet Brat no longer wanted the old successes. The ones they knew how to achieve. She wanted to do what was right.
If she only knew how.
Ruby was drooping now, and Brat adjusted her in her arms. As the toddler slipped off to sleep, Brat finished the turnover. Her own eyelids were drooping, but old habits died hard. She looked around the meadow first, noting the courting couples strolling arm in arm, the two men who had stripped down to their breeches and wrestled in front of a growing crowd—and that Dom and Princess Laurentia were nowhere in sight. Brat sighed, worried but unable to do anything but listen to the laughter of the children and the conversations nearer at hand.
Dom would do what Dom knew how to do, seek a fortune the way he knew how, even if his actions destroyed this bucolic scene and the princess who fascinated him. He tried to pretend he would seduce her only for the job. For his honor. She knew better; he stalked Laurentia with a sexual intensity that scorched the air around them.
Brat’s eyelids slipped lower. She drifted on a current of light slumber, safe yet aware.
Then she came wide awake, her heart pounding, sweat beading her flesh in clammy heat. She gathered the sleeping Ruby firmly in her arms, preparing to flee, as her gaze darted around, seeking the peril. She saw again the couples and the crowds. Children still laughed, women still chatted, but somewhere danger threatened and the hair on the back of her head lifted in response.
At last she saw him. A man, standing in the clearing not far away. The sun beat on his brown hair and light skin, and while he stood no taller than she did she had the impression of solid strength.
She recognized him. He was the man who had held Monty as she wrapped his ribs, the one who’d observed Dom and Princess Laurentia so intently. The one who had made her stir restlessly beneath his regard.
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