From Kiss to Queen (16 page)

M
ark flopped back on the small patch of sand at the base of the cliff and rubbed the sockets of his eyes until they burned, then ran his hands repeatedly through his hair until it hurt, and then slowly beat his head in the sand in rhythm to the throbbing pulse causing his headache. Three days; the woman had given her word to stay a mere three days ago, and Mark figured he'd aged two decades. At this rate he wouldn't live long enough to wear the crown, much less get married.

She was going to kill him first.

It was as if Jane Abbot had folded her angel wings and packed them away that night in the library. The next morning a mischief-making little witch with Jane's beautiful, shining gray eyes had been sitting beside him at breakfast;
not from the foot of the table and not halfway down. Beside him. All warm and smiling and confident. A woman on an adventure who'd decided she was safe now. A woman on a two-week vacation to a foreign country.

In truth, she was the Jane Abbot who had pulled him from the lake, fired her gun at his assassins, then threatened to throw him back into the water. That woman had returned with a vengeance, apparently determined not to miss a thing.

The confident set of her shoulders all through breakfast should have warned him. Her questions to his brothers and father about Shelkova should have warned him. That sparkle in her eyes should have warned him.

But he'd simply been too besotted to care.

Mark worried his father was in danger of having a real stroke. If he hadn't just walked out of breakfast and gone about his duties, he would have noticed when Jane had walked out of the palace to explore the city of Previa—alone. Sighing, rubbing his temple to relieve the persistent pressure, Mark pictured the last three days in his mind . . .

First had been the panic when Aunt Irina had come to him around ten that first morning after searching the palace high and low and asked if he knew where Jane was. Hell, she told him she'd even dared venture into the kitchens looking for Jane. Irina's alarm had in turn alarmed
him
, since his aunt rarely panicked. Mark had calmed her, promised to find Jane, then gone on his own search.

He'd finally ended up at the gates. “What in hell do you mean, she left two hours ago? You just let her walk out of here
alone
?” he'd shouted at the sentries.

They'd paled and shaken their heads, and then offered him those heads on a platter.

Mark had walked back into the palace and gone in search of his brothers.

Sergei, Dmitri, and Alexi had returned home four hours later, their shoulders slumped and their tongues wagging with amazing tales of a foreign woman who had been seen everywhere in the city but was nowhere to be found. Mark had just picked up the phone to call out the army when he'd spotted his future bride calmly strolling in through the gates, leading the sorriest-looking horse he'd ever seen.

He'd met her at the stables . . .

“Jane.”

“Oh, there you are, Mark. Come see. Look what I've brought you.”

Mark looked at
her
, wondering why she wasn't dead from his glare. But she was still standing, still smiling, and still patting the pathetic excuse of a horse.

“Isn't he beautiful?”

Mark forced himself to look away from the blissfully unaware Jane to the . . . horse. His eyes focused and widened in horror. The beast was thirty years old if it was a day. It was obviously a work horse. Maybe. Once. When it was still alive. Right now it looked like it was barely breathing. Its eyes were closed and its head was hanging down to its knees. The poor horse's back was so swayed it was a wonder it didn't snap beneath its own weight.

“Jane. That horse isn't beautiful, it's pathetic,” he whispered.

She slapped her hands over the horse's ears and glared
at Mark as if he'd just run up and hit the poor beast. The poor beast didn't even flinch. Maybe it
was
dead.

“What a terrible thing to say,” she scolded, her chin tilting in what he recognized as her stubborn mode. “He is too beautiful,” she went on, moving her hand lovingly over the horse's neck. “He's just old. And tired.” She suddenly beamed a brilliant smile. “I bought him.”

For the life of him, Mark couldn't think of a thing to say. She sounded so proud of herself. And expectant; like she expected him to praise her.

“May I ask what you bought him with?”

Her chin instantly lowered along with her eyes. “I signed a voucher for him. The guy who sold him to me will be coming here tomorrow to get his money from . . . you.”

“How much money?”

She cocked her head. “I'm not sure.” She named a figure and Mark merely closed his eyes again. “But you can take the money from my backpack—there's seventy-five dollars in there—and exchange it for Shelkovan money.”

“Jane,” he said calmly, “you just paid the equivalent of nine hundred American dollars.”

“Oh.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “So how do you intend to pay for this . . . ah, horse?”

She frowned. She bit her lip. And she pondered. Suddenly she smiled. “I'll get a job.”

Mark dropped his arms and stepped toward her. “You will not.” He suddenly grinned. “Besides, where would you work?”

“I saw all sorts of neat little shops in town. I'll get a job at one of them.”

His grin just as quickly vanished. “You can't. Or have you forgotten the men who tried to kill me?”

“You brought me here claiming I'd be safe, and now you're saying I won't?”

“Only in the
palace
,” he growled, trying to rein in his temper. “Not traipsing the streets of Previa
alone
.” He suddenly grinned. “And how can you work if you don't speak Shelkovan?”

She shrugged. “A dishwasher wouldn't have to speak at all. And I'll find a restaurant that's close by.”

“You only have the use of one hand.”

She shrugged again, turning back and crooning to her new, expensive pet. “I'll be able to take off the sling in another day or two.”

Mark reached out and grabbed her good arm. “You will not wash dishes,” he said, leading her from the barn and waving to a gawking stableman to tend the horse.

“Wait!”

He stopped and looked down at her.

“Tell the man the horse's name is Arthur. Tell him to take good care of him. He's hungry and his feet need trimming.”

“Arthur?”

“I named him after King Arthur of the Round Table. Don't you think he looks like a majestic warhorse that would have carried such a noble knight?”

“I think,” Mark had muttered as he walked back in the stables, “that if King Arthur rode such a horse, it's no wonder there's no trace of his kingdom today.”

Mark rubbed his aching temple again and opened his eyes to the star-filled night, remembering the battle of
wills that had followed the scene in the stables. For the last two days Arthur had been eating his ancient head off and Jane Abbot was anything but contrite.

She'd simply sat through a long, frustrating evening of five Lakelands trying to drill it into her head that she couldn't go roaming around town alone. And she couldn't drag home pathetic creatures. Jane had smiled and nodded, said she was sorry for worrying them, then simply gone to bed.

The next morning she hadn't even appeared at breakfast. It was learned, some two hours later, that she'd left the palace grounds and gone in search of a job.

She'd taken a young maid with her.

For translation, Jane had told Mark when he'd found her trying to bargain with the proprietor of a small inn, conning the poor, besotted fellow out of a job. She'd not ventured out alone, she'd pointed out, pointing to the poor maid quietly sitting in the corner of the inn's kitchen. At that imbecilic excuse, Mark had dragged her home and up to her room, where he threatened to lock her if she stepped foot off the grounds again.

Growls and threats, apparently, weren't enough to deter her. The next morning Mark learned from Alexi that Jane was gone again. This time she'd cajoled one of the gardeners into joining her.

“The gardener?” Mark had whispered so he wouldn't shout.

Alexi nodded. “She's assuming because he's male that you would approve, is my guess.”

“Which gardener did she take?” Mark asked, closing his eyes and praying for patience.

“Duncan.”

Mark didn't shout; he bellowed. “He's nearly eighty years old!”

Alexi shrugged. “He's also as soft as butter when it comes to pretty women. Don't glower, brother. Sergei, Dmitri, and I will go bring her back,” he offered with a resigned sigh. “They can't have gotten far. Duncan is as slow as cold molasses running uphill in winter. We'll find them.”

But all they'd found was Duncan at the gates, out of breath and frantic, wringing his hands and nearly in tears. There had been a street scuffle involving something to do with several women—of questionable morals—being kicked out of their apartments, and the police had been called. Jane, it seemed, had waded into the foray and started yelling at the authorities. In English, Duncan told them as he trembled with worry. The last the old man saw of Jane was when the police were lifting her into the back of their van. He'd tried to intervene, but had been knocked down by the mob that had gathered.

Mark listened from the front steps of the palace, until he let out a roar loud enough to make the guards at the front gates flinch. And then he took off, on foot, for the police station, which was a good five blocks away. Sergei, Dmitri, and Alexi followed, their mouths slackened and their eyes full of worry. It had been years since any of them had seen Mark in a blazing rage. All three brothers were thankful, on Jane's behalf, that he'd chosen to walk, figuring it might buy the angel enough time for her rescuer to calm down enough not to throttle her.

Which Mark was seriously contemplating doing to her
for blatantly disobeying him. If she'd been looking for work again, he would definitely throttle her. If she'd been looking for adventure, well, by God, she'd found it, hadn't she. And if she'd been looking to test his patience, she'd finally found his limit.

What he did, however, was go weak in the knees when he saw her.

She was a bedraggled mess, sitting forlornly in the corner of a cell, several women crammed together on an opposite wall, all of them bickering in Shelkovan. Jane's shirtsleeve was torn, her hair was back in knots, and one cheek was smudged with dirt. Her knees were muddy and she was cradling her tender arm to her chest, her sling nowhere to be seen.

At Mark's roar, silence fell in the overcrowded jail and several police officers scurried back, bumping into the confining walls. Mark swung around and pointed at one of them. Sweat broke out on the poor fellow's forehead as he listened to a scorching tirade from his future king. With shaking hands, the man finally fumbled his keys free and unlocked the cell.

Mark stood in the opened door of Jane's prison and counted to ten, breathing as deeply and as slowly as he could. He didn't say a word; he didn't dare. He simply walked in the cell and carefully led an also-silent Jane out to one of the policeman's cars. Sergei drove. Alexi and Dmitri elected to walk home. After, they promised Mark, they looked into the inciting incident that had caused their angel's halo to slip a bit.

The ride back to the palace was silent. The trip to
Jane's room was silent. And in silence, Mark had left her in the care of Aunt Irina.

Now being reasonable men, tonight Mark, his father, and his three brothers had ganged up on Jane again and tried to explain to her that the Lakelands had enemies. That a maid or an aging gardener couldn't help if those enemies found her.

“Then give me my handgun,” she'd countered.

Two Lakeland men had choked on their drinks, Sergei had gotten up and walked out of the room, and Reynard had clutched his chest. Mark had simply snorted. “You can't go running around the city with a .357 Magnum in your pocket.”

“But I have to work. I owe you eight hundred and twenty-five dollars for Arthur.”

“I will pay for Arthur,” Mark had gritted. “Consider him a wedding present.”

She hadn't liked his mentioning the wedding. That much had been evident in her scowl. Jane had simply gotten up and followed Sergei out of the room.

All of which was why Mark was hiding down on the beach—what little of it there was before the tide came back in. Shelkova was not known for its beaches. It was known for its rugged coast, fine timber, and hardy people. Soon, Mark was afraid, it would be known for its outrageous queen.

He'd paid for Arthur when the man had come to the palace today looking more pathetic than his horse, which is why Mark had paid him the full amount.

And he'd gotten to the bottom of the police
confrontation in the streets. Three aging prostitutes had been evicted from their home by a landlord who wanted to bring in younger tenants. Mark had threatened to have the landlord evicted. The women were back in their apartments and now had jobs at parliament. They weren't very high-level jobs, but would give the women a satisfying living. And they were perfect jobs, Mark had cynically decided, figuring the women would probably be running into plenty of their old
acquaintances
at work.