Light seemed to fill her being as her gaze traveled over him. A smile broke over her lips and she rested her hands on her waist. “Well,” she said archly, “if it isn’t the mysterious
R
!”
At her greeting behind him, Rafe abandoned the plentiful roses as he flashed a mischievous grin, turning around to face her. But when he saw the stunning young female standing in the doorway, his eyes widened and he nearly lost his tongue.
Smiling brilliantly at him, her cheeks glowing, her vivid aquamarine eyes shining with kittenish playfulness, his fresh young bride-to-be dropped him a delicate curtsy. “Thank you for the flowers, Your Highness.”
“Good God!” he exclaimed, staring at her. “You are ravishing.”
Still holding the curtsy, she swept her startled gaze up to his. He strode across the small room to her in an instant, lifting her to stand erect before him.
“You marvelous creature, let me have a look at you.” She blushed as he strolled in a circle around her, his gaze purely drinking her in. “My, my, I shall have to reward Madame well for this.”
“You are teasing me,” she said, throwing him a scowl.
“I am not. Your dress, your hair…” He felt the fine mint-green silk of her gown between his fingers, tugged one of the curled ringlets framing her face in roguish affection, then suddenly threw his head back and laughed in delight, clapping his hands together once loudly. “You are perfect, Daniela! Truly perfect.” Abruptly, he seized her hands and began pulling her toward the door. “Come! It’s time to separate the wheat from the chaff. By God, you are going to help me cut loose the dead weight around here!”
“What do you mean?” she asked, hurrying to keep up with his long, cheerfully brisk strides. “Where are we going?”
“I want you to meet my friends.”
She planted her slippered feet on the ground and stopped. He turned to her in question, still amazed by her transformation. Whether it was her fine new clothes and stylish appearance that flattered her so well, or adequate food and a good night’s rest, he did not know. He had merely come to check on her, not wishing to leave her stranded alone in her rooms all day, but now all he could think of was showing her off, throwing her in everybody’s faces, as it were, after he had spent the past thirty-six hours defending his decision to marry her. One look at her should be enough to quell their objections permanently.
Daniela Chiaramonte had been made for him.
She held her ground, giving him a pleading look. “I don’t want to meet them. They are going to hate me!”
He stared at her coral-pink lips. “Hmmm?”
“I robbed practically all of them, Rafael.”
Ignoring her words, he leaned down, helplessly drawn, and tasted her lips with a soft kiss.
She closed her eyes, going still under his light, caressing kiss, then abruptly she pulled back, scowling up at him again. “Did you even hear me?”
He smiled wistfully at her, holding in check sweet visions of how he would rather have spent his afternoon. “All I could hear was angelic strains of song, my dear. Did you not hear them, too?”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but a smile tugged at her bewitching mouth.
“Listen,” he whispered, leaning toward her again. He slipped his arm around her slim waist and pulled her gently to him, kissing her tenderly once more. “Did you hear it that time?”
Dreamily, his bride opened her eyes and gazed up at him. Lifting her hand, she cupped his cheek. “You are a lunatic,” she said softly.
With a sudden good-natured growl, he grabbed her and picked her up in his arms, tossing her bodily over his right shoulder. He laid a jovial slap on her backside while she shrieked and swung her slippered feet. “Come, my dear! It’s time to meet the court.”
He strode energetically down the hall, carrying her like a marauder making off with his prize.
“Put me down! Put me down!”
“Do you ever wonder what might have happened if I had been the outlaw and you had been the princess?” he asked, noting with a grin that she really wasn’t fighting very hard. He turned his head to bite her hip through mint-green silk before setting her gently on her feet outside the door to the salon where he’d left his friends.
She was laughing, her face red from being held upside down, and he felt himself flooded with a wave of intense desire. He could hardly believe his good fortune that soon without guilt or taint or compunction he could take her to his bed, enjoy her, keep her entirely to himself—his wife. Her laughter was quickly stifled by the heat in his stare. She took a step backwards from him, her eyes turning wide and uncertain and shy. He smiled faintly, wondering if anyone had ever told her before how adorable she was, for she seemed entirely innocent of her own allure.
He bridled the passion in his gaze before it sent her fleeing in fright. “If anyone in there is rude to you, they’re gone from this court. Understood?”
“You would make your friends leave for me?” she asked, looking awed.
He traced the delicate curve of her cheek with his knuckle. “I have many friends, but only one wife. No unhappiness shall touch you under my roof, Daniela. I will look upon any insult to you as an insult to myself.”
“You are more than kind,” she said rather faintly, then cleared her throat and assumed a more businesslike air, “but I can take care of myself, you know. I’m not sure I am comfortable being placed in the middle between you and them.”
At the moment, he felt prepared to slay dragons for her, but perhaps he was coming on too strong. “My lady, suffice it to say that you are my choice, and I am their lord. Think of it as a test of their loyalty to me.”
“Oh,” she said, nodding gravely. “All right.”
“Ready?”
She smoothed her dress. “I suppose. I will try not to embarrass you.”
He gave her a reassuring smile. “Just be yourself. I’ll be right beside you.” A surge of protectiveness moved through him as he opened the door for her.
She seemed to brace herself, then forged in with a queenly stride. Rafe watched her hungrily, full of quiet pride in her as she entered the room ahead of him. Her flowing, graceful walk held him fascinated, her light skirts swirling around her slim, neat legs, until she took a seat in a wing chair in the center of the room. Her spine was straight as she sat primly, her head high, her work-reddened hands folded demurely in her lap.
Rafe sauntered in behind her and stood guard behind her chair, leaning on the back of it in a casual pose, his narrowed eyes full of cool warning as he bade his friends approach her, introduce themselves, and congratulate her on their happy news.
Elan liked her at once, Rafe saw in relief. His cousin Orlando treated her with polite reserve, but the haughty Adriano and the ever-sarcastic Nic were deferentially courteous only because Rafe was standing menacingly behind her chair. Daniela did not offer any of them her hand; this pleased him. She handled herself with lofty, commanding poise, saying little. After presenting a few of the others to her, Rafe was satisfied.
He placed her hand on his arm and led her from the salon, glad to have her to himself once more. As they walked down the hall, he noticed she looked a trifle shaken.
God knew he had hundreds of urgent tasks to handle, but all that seemed to matter at the moment was being with her—preferably far away from the prying eyes of the court. He slipped his arm around her slight shoulders and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “You did well.”
She glanced up at him uncertainly. He grinned with sudden inspiration.
“Come! There’s something I want to show you.” Seizing her hand, he tugged her down the hall, cajoling her with his softest, most irresistible smile when she protested.
Within an hour, they were aboard his sleek thirty-foot sloop, cutting through the placid waves out into the harbor. Rafe felt free. Standing at the wheel with his shirtsleeves rolled up and his long hair loosed and blowing in the evening breeze, he was aware of Daniela watching him furtively as she poked through the contents of the picnic hamper. One of the servants had handed it off to him before he had abandoned his staff, guards, and the stragglers of his entourage on the shore.
He glanced up past the sails at the violet-blue sky, where a few early stars had poked through. Before them, the western horizon was golden and pink, like a cherub waking. The yacht rode low in the water. When they had sailed perhaps a mile out from the island, he tied the wheel in place and climbed up into the rigging to lower a few of the sails, slowing them to a gentle, rocking crawl.
Daniela watched him and ate a peach.
He smiled to himself as he tied off the topsail and jumped down to the glossy, polished deck. Judging by her impressed look, she hadn’t suspected he knew how to sail without deckhands to order around, he thought in amusement. But, a prisoner of his rank and his own reputation, this boat had been his sanctuary: here was the only freedom he had ever really known. He savored the solitude the sea offered. Moreover, he was constantly surrounded by flatterers, but the vastness of the eternal ocean reminded him of his own insignificance and thus kept him humble.
As he sat down on the deck beside her near the bow, he wondered what she would say if he told her he had never brought a woman aboard before.
She offered him a cube of cheese impaled on a cutting knife. He declined with a wave of his hand, then looked around for the bottle of the light young wine he’d brought up from the compact but well-stocked cabin. He found it, then dug about aimlessly in the hamper for the corkscrew, frowning. She handed it to him with a small smile. He took it from her and stole a kiss.
“Sometimes when I was a boy,” he said as he stuck the corkscrew in and began turning it, “I used to dream of packing my belongings on this little boat and sailing away forever. Running away from home. I wanted to be an explorer in the Congo and the Far East, but I was stuck here—fortunately.” He looked askance at her, his eyes sparkling. “I would have surely died of malaria or been eaten by cannibals upon setting foot in the jungle, eh, coddled rich boy like me?”
She was laughing at him.
“What?”
“Only
you
could find cause to run away from such a life. No doubt it was
torment
being adored by everyone—the future king, born with the silver spoon in your mouth, the apple of your mother’s eye—”
“Now, now, it was no bed of roses!” he protested, laughing with her at his own expense. “I had my trials and tribulations, like anyone.”
“Like what?” she retorted as he pulled the cork free.
“It so happens a great deal has always been required of me. I have been drilled on a hundred subjects related to statecraft since I was old enough to walk,” he announced over her scoffing.
“Such as?” She reached into the hamper, then turned to him, holding up two glasses.
He poured the wine. “Rhetoric, history, logic, composition, philosophy, languages—dead and living—algebra, finance, military engineering, architecture, comportment, ballroom dancing—”
“Ballroom dancing!”
“One doesn’t want to trip over one’s feet when one lives in the public eye.” He finished pouring the wine and replaced the cork, setting the bottle aside.
She handed him one of the glasses, then folded her arms over her bent knees, smiling at him. “What else did you have to learn?”
“Learn? No, not learn, my dear—
master
,” he corrected her as he clinked his glass lightly with her own in a cursory toast. “My father would have it no other way. ‘You must be the strongest, the smartest, the best, Rafael,’” he said, affecting his father’s stormy countenance. “‘No weakness.’ That was the motto I was assigned.”
“Fairly rigorous,” she remarked as she took a sip of wine.
Watching her, he did the same, wondering how it would taste on her lips.
“Why was your father so strict?”
Rafe lowered his glass. “Well, he believes, as I do, that the only effective means of rule is by example. If men sense weakness or inferiority in a leader, they will fall on him like wolves on a wounded calf.” He noted her grimace and gave her a smile, determined to keep the tone light. “To wit, I was given every tool possible with which to make myself into a model human being. How did I do?”
“I’m not sure,” she replied with a wily grin that charmed him utterly.
Smiling, he wondered if she was aware that she had sidled up infinitesimally closer to him. He was sitting with one hand braced behind him. Now her shoulder nestled into the space beneath his arm, as though she were slowly relaxing into him by degrees. He made no move toward her for fear of scaring her away. She crossed her dainty ankles and flexed her stockinged feet. She had slipped off her shoes.
“Tell me more about what it was like growing up as the future king. Was it very hard?”
“Well, there were the academic subjects—reading, writing, and so forth; the social graces; the athletics—which I enjoyed tremendously, by the way; and the fine arts—those I did not master,” he added. “I have no artistic or musical talent whatsoever, but I do have taste, so Father couldn’t fault me on that.”
“I mean how did it
feel
?”
He stared dubiously at her for a moment. “It was fine.”
A chestnut curl fell coyly by her cheek when she tilted her head, smiling skeptically at him.
“I don’t know. Everyone was jealous,” he admitted, gently tugging the curl like a spring; then he released it and watched it bounce back up into shape. “The first law of survival which you must understand in your new life as princess, Daniela, is that every living soul in the court has an agenda. Because of what you can do for them if you choose, they’ll laugh at your every joke and praise your every thought, but you never know who your real friends are.” He chucked her softly under the chin and gave her a wink. “Except for me, of course.”
She smiled warmly at him. Her eyes were as clear as the water, and she was as unafraid as a child. A flicker of guilt for bringing her into the dangerous world of the palace slid through him. She was unprepared for it, such an innocent. He would really have to look out for her.