“This one, too, Your Highness?” the captain asked, dangling Gianni by his arm.
“All of them,” he said crisply. “There is one more of their gang still at large. The leader. A boy of about eighteen. He is on foot, with a gunshot wound to his right upper arm. He is no doubt still hiding in the woods, where I’m sure you will find my gold as well, since these brigands had the wits at least not to get caught with it on their persons. And by the way, gentlemen,” he said to his men, “if any of you steal from me when you find my gold, you will suffer the same punishment as these thieves. Go.”
The men glanced at each other uncertainly.
“Go, damn it, before he gets away!”
Dani and Maria jumped at his roar, holding on to each other. Dani was trembling. Maria glanced quickly at her in fright, for she had seen her wounded arm. Maria, of course, knew of her illegal activities.
“My lady, please tell my mother what has happened,” Mateo called tensely to her while his brothers were herded into the very carriage they had robbed. His dark, expressive eyes were full of fury. It was strange to hear him use her title for the benefit of the men present.
“Don’t worry,” she answered, playing her role as lady of the manor, and wincing as they shoved him into the carriage with his brothers. “This has all been a misunderstanding which I am sure will be remedied by morning!”
“Who are you?” the prince suddenly demanded, discovering her for the first time. Arrogant as Lucifer, he stared down his patrician nose at Dani from astride his towering steed.
Maria’s arm tightened around her waist, as if trying to squeeze a civil answer out of her rather than the stinging retort on the tip of her tongue, but his high-and-mighty manner was quite offensive. Nor did it escape her that their positions were most woefully switched from a short while ago. She lifted her chin. “I am the lady of this house and I might ask the same of you, since you are trespassing on my property.”
“You don’t know who I am?” he said in apparent astonishment.
“We’ve met?”
His eyes narrowed. He looked her over as though she were an insect. His haughty stare climbed from her threadbare slippers, to her stained apron, up to her defiant face.
She wanted to laugh at his arrogance. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest and lifted both brows, regarding him in cool surprise, but inwardly her heart was pounding with anger and fright. It was all she could do not to shrink back from his outrageously rude scrutiny.
So he was used to ladies in silk and satin, ladies who would never dream of speaking crossly to their golden god. Perhaps she was in rags, but she knew a scoundrel when she saw one. They didn’t call him Rafe the Rake for nothing.
He frowned at her, looking irritated, then his gaze moved to the entrance of the sprawling but dilapidated villa behind her, with its tangle of overgrown white jasmine dripping from the red-tiled roof. Above the doorway, her family’s coat of arms was depicted. He narrowed his eyes, staring at it.
“Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he asked warily as he rested his riding crop over the horse’s neck.
For a second, she hesitated to tell him her name because of her crimes.
He scowled impatiently. “Are any of the family at home?”
She went pale, staring up at him. For a moment she wanted to die. This beautiful god of a man thought she was a servant.
Suddenly the door banged from the porch behind them.
The prince glanced toward the villa again. Dani turned. Maria uttered to the saints and Dani’s heart sank to see Grandfather shuffling out in his nightdress and cap, holding the candle. He was wearing only one bed slipper.
“I’ll go to him, my lady,” the old woman murmured, leaving Dani there glaring up at Prince Rafael, daring the infamous, selfish, oh-so-fashionable rake with her challenging stare to say one word of mockery about her grandfather.
Instead, the prince merely studied the testy, senile old duke curiously.
Then Dani froze as her grandfather’s raspy voice floated out across the lawn.
“Alphonse? Dear Lord, my king, is it you?” Grandfather cried.
Dani saw an ineffable expression flit over the prince’s fine features. She glanced warily at him then turned and gasped to see Grandfather running unsteadily toward them. The lit candle he’d brought fell out of his hand onto the dry grass, which started to burn. Maria shouted and quickly put out the fire while Dani turned and tried to catch Grandfather. Prince Rafael dismounted with quick, neat grace, just in time to intercept the old man as he burst past her.
“Easy, there, old fellow,” the prince said softly.
Dani stared at the pair, wanting the earth to swallow her as Grandfather grasped Prince Rafael by the shoulders with tears in his eyes. “Alphonse! You! You look precisely the same, the same, my dear friend! You never changed! How did you stay so young? Oh, but that is the royal blood for you,” he said in heartfelt warmth, his bony fingers digging into the prince’s powerful arms. “Come and have a drink and we’ll talk of the old days at school when we were boys…oh, such days!”
“Grandfather, you are mistaken,” Dani chided, agonizing privately for her grandfather’s dignity. She laid her hand on his thin arm. “This is Prince Rafael, King Alphonse’s grandson. Come back inside now. You’ll catch a chill—”
“It’s all right,” Prince Rafael murmured to her, meeting the ancient knight’s frantic, joyful, searching stare with a calm, steadying gaze. “King Alphonse was my grandfather, sir, but are you not Colonel Lord Bartolomeo Chiaramonte, his great friend?”
As quickly as the recognition of his mistake had sent a crestfallen stoop into the old man’s shoulders, his bleary eyes brightened with a renewed spark of hope at the prince’s question, as if he thought,
Yes, I am not forgotten. I matter still!
He was nodding, the end of his nightcap dancing. “I attended Santa Fosca with that great man and, oh, we were merry then,” he said in a choked voice.
Moving with tender gravity, Prince Rafael put his arm around Grandfather’s frail shoulders and gently turned him around to face the villa. “Perhaps you will tell me of my grandfather as I walk you back to the house, Your Grace. I never knew him….”
Dani stared, an inexplicable lump rising in her throat as Grandfather went obediently with him.
It was the last thing in the world she had expected, but she knew then as surely as she stood there that Rafael di Fiore was indeed a prince.
As he listened attentively to her grandfather’s enthusiastic ramblings, he sent her the slimmest glance over the old man’s head, with an arrogant, scoundrelly half-smile that seemed to say,
I thought you didn’t know who I am.
She narrowed her eyes, then followed at a safe distance.
He stayed for nearly an hour.
The whole time, Dani could not bring herself to go into the threadbare salon where he sat with Grandfather, golden, magnificent, larger than life, like a visiting archangel.
As she had failed to recognize his true identity out on the dark road, likewise, when he had stepped into the lit foyer, she saw she had woefully underestimated just how good-looking Prince Rafael di Fiore was.
With an annoying chivalry which must have been injected into him in the womb, he had waited for her to come safely inside, even holding the door for her before he would follow Grandfather down the hall to the sitting room. She didn’t need any male’s protection—but she had thanked him anyway, blushing, to her mortification.
She had brushed by him with a wary glance up at his face. That was when she had seen that, just like the papers said, he truly did have sweeping, gold-tipped lashes veiling his deep-set eyes. His eyes were subtle and cool, dark green dappled with fractured chips of gold, like sunlight flung into a shadowy pine forest.
Light from the modest chandelier had haloed his thick, golden mane, and when she looked up, his chiseled face was so far beyond handsome that she had to catch her breath. With a classical perfection beyond wishes, beyond dreams, his face was incandescent with the fierce, burning beauty of an archangel fallen to earth—a prince of angels, not a mortal man at all.
With his chin slightly lowered, his expression had been intense but coolly serene, with smoky, sensuous interest in the depths of his gaze as he watched her pass.
She had felt bewilderingly delicate, feminine, and small next to him; had been jolted by the sudden consciousness of her own naïveté beside the high sheen of his hard, worldly polish. He smelled of brandy and dust from the road mingled with the faint, pleasing note of some clean, dashing, no doubt expensive cologne. And she had felt the heat radiating from his hard, athletic body.
He had said not a word, but had locked the door behind her, then had gone after Grandfather, marching down the hall with a swift, lordly stride that seemed to claim for his own every inch of the ground beneath his feet. He moved with the self-assurance of a master swordsman.
To her annoyance, her heart had not stopped pounding since.
His dynamic presence seemed to fill the house, luring her like a siren’s call and making her impossibly nervous. She couldn’t even clear her mind to begin thinking up a plan of how she was going to rescue her friends from jail. She only knew it would require a trip into the great, noisy city—a daunting proposition. Instead, she put her strategy-making off for later and went to spy on Grandfather and Prince Rafael.
Listening outside the salon door, she heard him let out a robust laugh at the old man’s stories of schoolboy antics. Apparently King Alphonse had been as thorough a rogue in his youth as his notorious grandson. He was incredibly patient with Grandfather’s meandering tales, she thought, cocking her head as she eavesdropped. She never would have believed so famous a rake could have a kind heart. She felt almost guilty for robbing him.
When Maria came bustling past her to bring the men wine, Dani dove behind the corner of the wall so she would not be seen when the housekeeper opened the salon door. Fortunately, the woman had also managed to bundle Grandfather into his dressing gown so he looked slightly less ridiculous.
“My lady, you are being rude. It is the
crown prince
,” Maria hissed, frowning at her.
“I don’t care if he’s Saint Peter, I’m not going near him!” she whispered, frantically beckoning the old servant in alone. Maria cast a long-suffering glance heavenward, pushed the door open with her meaty hip, and went in.
Dani sank against the wall, her pulse racing, her wounded arm throbbing. She told herself the reason she stayed away was for fear that he might begin to suspect the truth, but even as she clung to this excuse, she knew it was a lie. The fact was, he was gorgeous and fascinating and she was poor and unsophisticated and desperately shy. She knew he only sat with her grandfather out of compassion, but her pride could not bear it if he turned his pity next on her.
Eventually, however, she could not stand her curiosity any longer. Sidling into the room yet hanging back like a cautious but hungry alley cat, she ventured into the salon, her feelings in a tumult of guilt, worry, excitement, and animosity.
“And here is my granddaughter, Your Highness,” the duke said with a wreath of smiles. “Daniela.”
Prince Rafael rose and smoothly bowed to her. “My lady.”
Feeling instantly put on the spot, she managed to curtsy. “Your Highness. Please, do sit.”
As he nodded politely, swept back the tails of his coat, and sat, crossing his legs in a pose of cool, masculine elegance, she had to shake herself out of a stare. Silently, she went over to the slipper chair and lowered herself into it, her heart beating rapidly.
Grandfather looked from her to Prince Rafael with a twinkle in his rheumy eyes. “What do you think of her, Rafe?”
“Grandfather!” Dani gasped.
The prince blinked. His startled look vanished. “Well, I don’t know anything about her, I’m afraid.”
“Then I shall tell you a few things about my Daniela, since she is too shy to tell you herself.”
“Grandfather!” Surely she was going to fall out of the chair and expire on the spot of mortification.
The prince’s eyes danced in the candlelight as he regarded her in mischievous amusement.
If only he were a little less beautiful, perhaps she might be a little less agonized.
“Do go on,” he said.
“Daniela has been looking after me since she was nine years old, after the nuns tossed her out of the fourth school we had sent her to.”
“It was only the third, Grandfather. I’m sure His Highness is not interested in this!”
“No, please. I’m all ears,” he said, plainly amused at her discomfort.
“Daniela received an education more befitting a lad, you see. That is why she isn’t tedious to be around, like so many of her sex. When other little ladies were learning how to do needlepoint, she was learning how to mix gunpowder. I taught her myself,” he added proudly.
“After Grandfather retired from the artillery, he took up making the fireworks displays for some of the local festivals,” she hastily explained to the prince before he began to suspect anything involving gunpowder.
“Why, my Daniela could ride her pony standing astride its back when she was barely ten!” Grandfather went on.
“Astonishing,” the prince exclaimed lightly.
Dani dropped her head, her cheeks flaming.
“I’m not embarrassing you, am I, my dear?” Grandfather asked, lifting his bushy white eyebrows. “Dear me, perhaps I’ve said enough.”
“I should think so,” she said, shooting Grandfather a scolding look.
He gave her a wide smile of childlike innocence.
Then she realized the prince was staring at her with an odd, musing expression, his hand idly obscuring his mouth, his elbow resting on the chair arm. Her heart skipped a beat at the smoky sensuality in his eyes. She looked away, blushing anew.
“Well,” the god said suddenly, “I really should be on my way. My father is expecting me.”
Dani let out a slow exhale of relief as His Highness rose and leaned down to shake hands in farewell with His Grace.