Authors: Seducing a Princess
Oblivion was painfully distant, for Will did remember. She’d been so young then. His parents had adamantly rejected the idea of their union. Perhaps that alone would have been enough to convince him to pledge his troth, but there had been more. She was bright and lively, the antithesis of everything he’d known. His mother had reminded them both that the daughter of a bankrupt squire was quite beneath them. His father had threatened to disown him, but what could they do? Will was the only remaining heir. Edward, robust and commanding, had taken a commission and died at sea. Caroline had quietly succumbed to a fever. She would have married more wisely, or so his mother had said. But Will knew better. She would have dutifully married whom their father commanded, if indeed, she had been allowed to marry at all.
So Will had chosen his own bride, for he had seen the disastrous results of arranged marriages among the peerage. Unfortunately, one could not easily outmaneuver one’s own dark heritage. It was in his blood. Like a poison in his veins.
Cask sighed. “Smart as a whip, our Elli. Everyone knew it.”
She was that. Inquisitive and clever and quick. But life was strange, and it had turned out that clever and quick wasn’t what Will had wanted after all. Despite what he’d told himself all his life, it seemed he wanted a woman like his mother. Lady Edwina. Cold and remote and calculating. Or, at least, that was what he deserved. For he
surely hadn’t deserved Elli, and she hadn’t deserved him. Indeed, she hadn’t needed him, not to make her happy, not to make her complete. She was that and more without him.
“Even the old king mourned her loss,” Cask said.
Everyone did. Even himself. Didn’t he?
“Are you quite well, Will?”
“What?” William asked, then smoothed his face into a semblance of cheer. “Yes, certainly.” He lifted his cup in a sort of toast. “But not quite as well as you, aye?”
Cask scowled for a second, then took the bottle and tipped it toward William’s cup. “That’s because you’re far behind, old man. Drink up.”
“I intend to.”
“Cheers.”
“Aye, cheers,” Will repeated.
“Ahh, there’s Riven,” Cask said. “I’ve promised to speak to him. You’ll excuse me?”
“Certainly.” And gladly. Will needed no help getting drunk. He was, after all, a man of some experience. In fact, he would see to it immediately, he thought, and emptied the bottle. But memories stormed through his mind like winter clouds.
Elli’s laughter. Caroline’s sadness. And his own frozen inability to
do
. Caroline had needed so much. Elli had needed so little. Yet he had somehow failed them both.
Everyone missed her. Even the old king, Cask had said. But…Will gazed into the empty bottle. His mind twisted muzzily. When had Elisabeth met Sedonia’s late king? She’d shown little interest in politics. Which was strange, perhaps, considering the bright enthusiasm she had felt for other things. Science for instance. She had been startlingly well educated for a woman. Lady Edwina had fervently disapproved, but all things botanical
had intrigued Elli, and Will could hardly complain, for her interests kept her well involved, so little was expected of him. It had not taken him long to realize he could never give her what she needed. Could never be the kind of man she deserved. Far better that she lock herself away in her musty little cell and fiddle with things in which he took no interest. Herbs and flowers and formulas and suppositions of all sorts.
Yes, Elli was missed because of her effervescence, but she was respected for her mind. Lord Thorndale himself had once asked her to perform some sort of experiment for the crown, but she had refused his request.
It was strange then that Thorndale had come to Landow to deliver his condolences after her death. Strange, Will thought, and frowned into his empty cup. After all, they hadn’t really known each other. Had they? But Cask implied that even the old king had mourned. Of course that was ridiculous. Cask was drunk. Although Will remembered seeing a parchment with the king’s own seal in Elli’s study. True to his cool, noble nature, he hadn’t inquired about it, and she hadn’t seen fit to explain. But he wondered now. What had she been working on those last few days in her study? Those days when she’d barely slept? Had she discovered something that excited her, or had she simply found isolation preferable to his own dark company?
When the servants had gone through her chambers, they had found no documents they thought significant, though Mrs. Angler had mentioned that the place was “upturned.” But Will had assumed it was simply Elisabeth’s usual manner. She had never been a tidy person, tending to storm through life. In the confines of her own study, she was all but buried behind her material, her plants, her experiments, her data. The leather-bound
books she kept for each procedure had been strewn about her work space. All but the blue one he’d given her for Christmas. That one had never been found, but she was prone to losing things.
She never walked when she could stride. She didn’t discuss when she could argue. And he saw little reason to argue back. When she declared her intentions to take the baby to visit her sister one late-December night, he’d made no objections. Neither had he offered to accompany them. She was well able to care for both of them.
And the fire that had consumed her carriage—it was a beacon to the end of her life. Fitting for the exuberance of her existence. She had ordered her driver to flee the highwaymen who had tried to stop them. The hostler had done so and taken a corner too quickly. She and Michael had been thrown out. The lantern had burst, sending hot oil onto the seats, which had been tossed about during the commotion.
There was no mystery there, he thought, and toddled across the floor in search of more libations. But his mind was spinning now, for a thousand details gnawed at the part of his brain that still breathed through the drunken stupor.
The thieves had pursued her. So why hadn’t they stolen her rings or the pearl necklace he had given her at their wedding? The necklace that had remained about her throat even at her funeral.
Ahh there. More wine. Finally. Will poured the drink himself, wondering at the coolness of it as it sloshed over his fingers.
Her skin had felt just as cool when he’d first seen her limp body. As cool and pale as the pearls the brigands had left behind.
Cask had suggested that they must have been fright-
ened off before they could finish their looting, but something was amiss with that theory.
His mind tilted, suggesting a thousand shadows. Thieves. Murderers. Fire. Darkness.
How had she known the king?
He stumbled into a tall man with a cane. “Cask!” he said, barely recognizing his own voice. “Where’s Cask?”
“Lord Enton,” said the elderly gentleman. “Are you quite well?”
“I need to speak to Cask.”
“The baron of Bentor?”
“Where is he?” Will snarled.
The tall man’s face swam before Will’s eyes, and he stumbled.
“You’d best rest a bit before—”
“Where?” he asked again, but someone else spoke.
“I believe I saw him in the garden with a young lady.”
“Lady?” Had Cask been with Elisabeth? He’d always admired her. Had she told him about their troubles? Had she told the king? Did they discuss her experiments, her interests? Had another become the confidant he should have been—had yearned to be?
A door opened, and suddenly he was outside. The air felt cool against his face. Refreshing. Reviving. But off to the right a shadow slipped into darkness. Brigands! Thieves! Highwaymen! They were all around him. And they knew things! Secrets to which he was not privy. Why had they accosted his wife? Why had they left the necklace? Where had she been going? And what of the blue leather book? Yes, she oft lost things, but in his heart he knew she would never misplace her data. Where was it?
The thieves knew.
Off in the darkness he heard a hiss of laughter.
“Damn you!” he growled, and tottered in that direc
tion, but just as he turned the corner, a shadow slipped out the gate. “Where are you going?” he yelled. From his left a trio watched him in silence, but he ignored them, for he almost held the secrets in his hand.
Laughter came again, that niggling wisp of humor at his expense, then he was running. Once through the palace gates, he stumbled to a halt. For a moment he remained silent, listening, watching. His exhalation curled like dragon’s breath into the chill darkness.
And then, far off, the laughter again.
Bile churned in his gut. Rage roiled in his soul. Revenge! That was what he needed. No more of this cool civility. No more spineless silence. It had gotten him nowhere thus far. Nowhere but alone and miserable.
“Revenge!” he snarled, and stumbled into the night.
T
he air outside Malkan Palace was cold, but the baron of Landow felt hot, invigorated, invincible. He was no longer the dolt. No longer the ineffective fool. This night he was a man.
The road tilted beneath Will’s feet, and he stumbled, falling to his knees, but in a moment he was up again. “I’ll know the truth!” he yelled, and the sound of his own voice, powerful in the darkness, drove him on. He laughed. Freedom, knowledge, action. They were his.
Off to his right a chaise longue paralleled his moonlit course. The staccato clop of the horses’ hooves echoed against the cobblestones. The liveried driver took one glance at him and laid the whip to the matched bays.
Fear. It emanated from the elegant hostler, and he should be afraid, for the Lord of Landow was no longer a foolish fop, an impotent leftover stifled by his own nobility. He was vengeance. He was power. Out to learn the truth and demand retribution. But not here. Not in this neighborhood, where his contemporaries hid their sins behind noble titles and posh pretensions.
He stumbled onward. Manors gave way to shops. Shops to ragged cottages. Fatigue crept up his legs. Or perhaps it was the cold that slowed him. But he would not quit.
Off to his right, something rustled in the shadows. He stumbled past. He was William Enton, baron of Landow, and nobody’s fool.
“Nobody’s fool,” he said out loud.
A dog growled, all but shapeless in the darkness.
“I’ll have my answers!” he shouted. The words fell into the night like a stone in a fetid pool, brewing in silence. But he cared not. He was not afraid of silence, for he had lived it all his life, trapped in his own cowering web. “I’ll have answers.”
And then, from the darkness someone responded. “But what is it you’ll have answers to, guv’ner?”
Will started, his body stiff and slow, his mind reeling. “Who are you?”
“Me?” A small man stepped from shadows into shadows. “They calls me Nome. And how ’bout you, guv’ner. What’s your name?”
Will straightened, wobbling a little with the effort. The street was as dark as hell. Not a lantern shone, not a flicker of light gleamed from the fickle moon. “I’ll ask the questions,” he said.
“’Ear that?” asked Nome, and even inebriated, Will could hear the grin in his voice. “’E says ’e’ll be askin’ the questions.”
“That don’t seem very polite.” Another man stepped out of the darkness, but where Nome was small and lean, the newcomer was broad, hulking behind his mate like a looming gargoyle, his sleeves too short and his gigantic hands bare.
“Now, you mustn’t be jumpin’ to conclusions, Frank,” crooned the smaller of the two. “The gentleman ’ere ’as questions.”
“Course ’e does,” Frank said, and the two chuckled together.
“What’s your question, my lord?”
Will’s mind was spinning like a child’s top. Like Michael’s top. The one Elisabeth had bought him for Christmas. But Michael had been dead for months now, as had his mother, killed by highwaymen.
“You’re thieves,” he hissed. Happy—no,
thrilled
to have someone to blame.
“Us? No,” argued Nome. “We’re naught but honest—”
“Oh come now,” argued another, and suddenly there were three shadows in the darkness. “You might just as well tell the gentleman the truth, Nome. He deserves that much. They are thieves,” said the newcomer. “And murderers.”
“What you doing ’ere, Vic?” Nome’s tone turned low and gritty, heavy with malice.
“The same as you, I suspect—wondering what such a fine gentleman is doing in this particular part of town?”
“Who are you?” Will asked, for the voice of the newcomer was neither coarse nor common, but similar to his own.
“Are we exchanging niceties this evening?”
“Get lost,” Nome said, stepping forward. “’Fore you find yourself in more trouble than your dear old da can buy you out of.”
“I would love to oblige, but I fear I’m a bit short of gambling money this night,” Vic argued, “and it occurred to me that this fine gentleman may wish to contribute to the cause.”
“You’re a thief?” Will rasped, and Vic laughed.
“Consider me your favorite charity.”
“I ain’t jestin’, Vic, back off ’fore Frank ’ere gets ’is back up.”
The big man lumbered forward, but in that moment a pistol appeared in the gentleman’s hand. Even in the
darkness, Will could see the silvery gleam of the short-cropped barrel.
“I know you’re a fool, Frank, but if you don’t wish to be a dead fool, you’ll stay put.”
“’Ey.” Nome stepped back a pace, hands uplifted. “I don’t want no trouble ’ere.”
“Then take your idiot friend and find other prey.”
“Idiot.” Frank’s voice rumbled in the darkness. “I ain’t no idiot.”
Vic chuckled. “Keep telling yourself that, Frankie. Now, sir, if you’d hand over your purse, I’d be much obliged.”
“You’re a thief,” Will repeated.
“An investor,” Vic argued, his tone going hard as he stepped forward. “Now give over your valuables.”
Will reached inside his coat, but in that instant a dozen hard memories struck him. Terror and sorrow and raging regret. And suddenly he was charging.
A gun exploded. Fire burned his chest. He staggered. Someone cursed. Another screamed, high-pitched and truncated. The muted sound of shuffling feet filled Will’s senses. He dropped to his knees. In the swirling darkness he could see two men locked in each other’s arms. They waltzed slowly together, their heads close, their bodies swaying. He heard music, far away and haunting, then, like an open grave, the earth rose up to greet him.
“Get up!”
Will opened his eyes. Fresh snow had fallen. Even in the darkness, the whiteness was startling, and beautiful. In his mind a few soft strains of a Viennese waltz still lingered. Had he been dancing? He turned his head slightly. Snow settled on his cheek, cool and tentative against his skin. He gazed into the ebon sky. Silvery flakes floated
down like sparkling manna. His breath curled into the air like frosted angel wings, but he felt strangely warm. Where was he? Who was he, he wondered.
Will. The name drifted down like the snowflakes, but nothing else troubled his flickering mind, no memories, no explanations. But it hardly mattered. He was content. Restful, lazy, and—
“Get up!” The voice came again, and Will scowled, still watching the enchanted flight of the snowflakes. Sleep called mistily. His eyes fluttered closed.
“They’re coming. Get out of here ’afore it’s too late.” Someone grabbed his arm, shaking madly, awakening the pain.
It roared through him like an ogre, shattering his apathy.
He struggled to sit. His head throbbed violently. “Where am I?”
“The watch is coming!”
“The watch.” He touched a shaky hand to his forehead. It thrummed with shattering pain. “Who are you?”
“Hurry!” A young man leaned close. “’Less you want to end up like your friend there.”
“Friend?” Will glanced down. His coat was gone, as were his shoes. He turned slowly, bewildered and groggy and there, not five yards away, a body lay crumpled on the dark, scattered snow. Blood! He could smell it now. Could sense it. He scrambled to his feet, bracing himself against the shock as he would against a gale. “Who is that?” he rasped.
Running footsteps sounded in the darkness. The boy jerked around, then swiveled back. The whites of his eyes gleamed. “Stay if you like,” he rasped, “but I’m gone.”
And with that he turned and sprinted into the night. It
was then that Will saw the blood on his hands. Panic struck him like a blow. What had happened? Who was he?
Music. Pain. Thieves. The watch was coming!
Mind spinning, he stumbled after the boy.
“Halt! You there! Halt!” Footsteps pounded after him. A bullet whined overhead. He was running flat out now, his feet numb against the frozen earth as he raced down an alley. Another shot. Something struck him, nearly knocking him to his knees, but there was no additional pain, only need, only desperation. He stumbled around a corner, but in that instant hands reached out and yanked him down. He tried to fight his way free, but weakness conspired against him. He was already on the ground. No. In the ground. A grave? Was he dead?
“Lie still,” someone hissed, and he felt the cold bite of steel against his neck. A gun? He had seen one only hours before. He remembered a blast and jerked at the vivid jolt of memory. “Don’t say a word.”
He didn’t. Couldn’t, for he knew nothing. But no, that wasn’t true. He knew he wanted to live. Suddenly and certainly. He held his breath and trembled. Foot beats battered past, nearly atop him. He started, cringing away from the galloping watch, but a hand covered his mouth, blocking any sound. The footfalls rushed away. The cold steel eased away from his neck. The hand slipped from his mouth, and the boy crept out from behind him, crouching on the earth above. Where were they? Not a grave, but some kind of hole beside a tumbledown cottage. Will shuttered again, grappling for reality.
“Who are you?” he asked, but the boy was already retreating.
“You’d best get gone afore they come back.”
He tried to think, to focus, but the world spun in a hazy circle. Brigands, watchmen, thieves, gentlemen. Fire, dancing, death, music. It all roiled together. He stumbled to his feet, his head throbbing madly. “Who am I?”
“You’re dead is what you are if’n the watch finds you.”
“Dead?” A woman’s face appeared in his garbled mind. Pale and cold and stiff. He winced at the sight, though he didn’t recognize it. “Dead?”
“I gotta be goin’,” the boy rasped, and spun away.
“No. Wait.” Will grappled at his sleeve. “Where am I?”
“This here’s Darktowne,” he said, “but some folks call it hell.”
Pain again, sharp enough to double him over. The world spun slowly around him. “How’d I get here?”
“The usual way, I suspect.”
Will straightened. Pain tore through him, throbbing in his chest, dancing in his cranium, threatening to tear his skull asunder. “I don’t…I didn’t—”
“They’re comin’ back,” the boy hissed, and, yanking his sleeve from Will’s grasp, sprinted away.
Will glanced behind him. Someone shouted. Pain melded with confusion and pounded in his brain. Survive. He must survive. That’s all he knew. There was nothing he could do but follow the boy. He stumbled forward. The earth threatened to swallow him up again, but he lurched on. Something lay across the floor of the alley. Will tripped. Someone cursed, but he was already careening onward. A dog leapt from a doorway, snarling at the end of its chain. Will reeled away. Seeing the alleyway that opened to his left, he staggered in that direction. Up ahead, the boy whipped around a corner and out of sight. He tried to yell after him. No sound came, but he was already running.
Frantic voices garbled behind him.
Another shot rang out. If the pain increased, Will couldn’t tell it. But his legs pumped faster. His lungs burned. The alley opened into a street. Nowhere to hide! He charged to the right and stopped, searching wildly. A tilted shay, a fetid pond. But there. A door. He lurched toward it. His fingers fumbled at the latch, fighting to obey the commands of his scrambled brain. But the door refused to open. Someone shouted again. He turned. Didn’t want to die. Not now. The footfalls pounded as if they galloped through his very brain.
The pond. Dark and still. It was his only hope. Without another thought, he raced toward it and leapt. The water hit him like the blow of an icy mallet, stunning him on contact. It swallowed his body in aching cold, covered his head. He couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Must survive. Must hide. But panic was tearing at his lungs like wicked talons. He resurfaced with a start, gasping and frozen.
Men were shouting.
“Where’d he go?”
“Gone.”
“Both of ’em?”
“There was only one.”
Three watchmen milled about not forty feet from the water’s edge. A bit of clarity slipped back into Will’s shocky brain. He shivered violently and forced himself back into the hopeless depths. Blackness swelled over his head. Death crept in, cold and ugly, breathing on his neck.
“God’s nuts, man, get off me, you’re heavy as a bloody gilt.”
Will’s teeth chattered. He was lying half in the water, his muscles frozen, his hands curled uselessly against the
stiff mud. The boy extracted himself from the pond, dripping as he went. Snow melted beneath the rivulet from his body.
“Get up if you’re gonna come.”
It was almost impossible for Will to follow the boy with his eyes. “Where y’ goin’?” Almost impossible to speak.
“The Den. You comin’?”
Perhaps he tried, but it was difficult to be certain, for another spasm shook him, draining any remaining strength. “Can’t.”
The boy shrugged and turned away.
Will tried to draw his knees toward his chest. Muscles screamed with muted pain. He tried to clasp his legs, to curl into a ball, but his arms refused to move.
“You just gonna die? That what you want?” The young man had returned, shuffling his feet and dripping on Will’s back. “You gonna just give up?”
Will barely managed to turn his head, to stare into the boy’s face. It was long and drawn, full of angst and life and feeling. Had
he
ever been so alive?
“That’s what they want, you know.” He jerked his head toward the alley. “You give up, they win.”
Who were they?
“Y’ gotta fight.”
“Why?” He wasn’t certain if he said the word out loud. Music was playing again, drowning reality.
“Cuz otherwise you’re dead, and you don’t get no more chances. That what you want?”
Perhaps he managed to shake his head. Perhaps he forced himself to his feet, or perhaps the boy dragged him up. He couldn’t be certain. But after that there was nothing but pain—the staggering first steps that shattered every muscle, the trumpeting sounds that rattled his
head, half-seen terrors as he stumbled through the night. And finally, when he knew he could go no farther, when every fiber in him screamed for relief, the movements ceased. His head spun, and his legs buckled.
He had nothing left. He was no one. Vague images of faces entered his consciousness like old ghosts and disappeared completely. Nothing but blackness remained, too deep even for hopelessness.