Chapter Five
The words were out of Gabriel’s mouth before he could stop them, stones he couldn’t unthrow.
“Dead?” repeated the woman behind him. “But are you certain? You knew him? Youknew Gabriel d’Orleans?”
They were coming to the ridge above the River Kennet. Gabriel considered lowering himself over the edge—simply swinging down and climbing to the water. The fog would swallow him up, and he would swim to his camp. This woman and her questions and her screams would live on without him. She would be frightened and confused, but eventually someone would find her. He’d saved her from Meade, it was enough.
“But when did he die?” she asked, her tone suddenly razor-sharp.
He ignored this question and weighed the odds. Was it possible she wasn’t the only person looking for Gabriel d’Orleans? She could be one woman alone, or there could be a bloody manhunt. For years, Gabriel had evaded government trackers and palace spies and even his own sister. He’d not hidden for years to be discovered now.
“How did he die? And when?” she pressed.
“I don’t know,” he said. “It was years ago.”
“No...” she said on a breath.
“Yes.”
Lies about d’Orleans had always rolled effortlessly off of Gabriel’s tongue, as easy as locking a door. But this lie felt flimsy and unrehearsed. Yes, he’d locked the door, but what if this woman managed to crawl through a window?
“If Gabriel d’Orleans is dead,” she was saying, “well... then... I’ve come for nothing. How can I return and tell them I came for nothing? This was our best, most feasible solution. Oh my God—what will become of us?”
Gabriel stopped walking and turned back. This felt like a trick question. Who were the “them” in this pronouncement? Return where?
It doesn’t matter.He forced his mind to become a blank slate of all the obligations he did not have—not to this woman, not to anyone.
“What is your business with Gabriel d’Orleans?” he asked. If he had any obligation, it was to the name.
“Your French pronunciation is so natural,” she observed. “But do you speak French, sir?”
Gabriel swore in his head. He’d said the name with perfect inflection; the pronunciation of a native, of a man saying his own name.
She caught up and rounded on him, stopping him on the path. Her eyes were the most defining feature on her face. Large and expressive; a dusky, foggy blue. He tried not to look at them. He tried not to look at any part of her.
When he didn’t answer—when he averted his gaze—she murmured, “A question for another time, perhaps.”
She’d lost her hat in the road, and her hair hung in limp, damp waves down the sides of her face. It looked dark in the moonlight, a striking contrast to her pale skin.
After a moment, she said, “Sorry—you asked about my business, didn’t you? I might as well tell you.” She took a deep breath. “Gabriel d’Orleans was my fiancé. Actually. If you can believe it. It was an arranged marriage. The betrothal was set in place by our fathers when we were toddlers.”
“Fiancé?” he rasped. Gabriel experienced the bottomless sensation of stepping from solid ground into a deep well.
The woman nodded. “I’ve come in search of him. Because I need his help.”
And now Gabriel was so deep inside the well, he could barely hear her.
“Sir?” she prompted.
He blinked at her. He gave a definitive shake of his head—No. And then he turned on his heel and trudged away. Actually, he ran.
“Wait—sir?” He heard footsteps behind him but he didn’t stop.
Was he running from her? Yes—yes he was.
Did he remember her? Yes—yes, God help him, he did. He was awash in memories: an earl’s daughter, the betrothal, the letters, his dead father, his former life.
He saw a brown-haired child in yellow ribbons, studying him with large eyes.
He saw his father, toasting an old friend.
He saw his father again, summoning him to the cavernous study inside the Palace Royale.
He heard the words duty and tradition and covenant; abond between two families.
But how had she—?
“Please stop, Mr.—?” she called from behind him. “Sorry, I don’t know your name!”
Oh the irony, Gabriel thought. He kept moving.
He’d hidden from his own sister Elise. For years, he’d hidden. He’d secluded himself so effectively, even she hadn’t found him. Oh, she’d come close; her investigators had cornered Gabriel’s emissary at a horse sale in Haymarket. They presented so much evidence and had so many good intentions, it had been impossible to evade them. When it was clear she intended to seek him out—to simply thrash through the forest and find him—he wrote to her and asked her to respect his privacy and the life he’d made and to keep away. It had been a harsh request, and he’d tried to soften it with the suggestion that they correspond. Elise had not understood but she’d conceded. She and her husband had also bought an estate not far from Savernake Forest. They were building a life in Wiltshire on the hope that he would, eventually, consent to see her.
But he would not consent. The melding of his old life and his new life was a collision he wouldn’t survive. He didn’t want his sister to see what he’d become—he didn’t want to be seen by anyone. It was simpler and less painful and safer for all of them if he was left entirely alone.
I want to be alone, he thought.
Behind him, the woman called out, “I cannot keep up with you, sir.”
Good, he thought.
“I’m usually not so feeble.” Her voice was winded. “My legs are not as long as yours. And I’ve not slept. Nor eaten. And I’ve been lost in a wood. Also—attacked. You, yourself, have both abducted me and now, ironically, are fleeing from me.”
“I’m taking you to the village,” he called, not looking back.
It was another lie. He had no idea where he was taking her. They might’ve been walking in circles. Or off the ridge into the river. Or into a bog. Gabriel was lost, and found, and falling, and drowning, and losing his bloody mind.
He stopped rushing away and turned. She trudged to him with determined strides, her cloak fanning out behind her.
“Why,” he demanded, “would the fiancée of Gabriel d’Orleans travel from... from...” He stopped, trying to remember the details of the betrothal.
“Guernsey,” she provided, coming up to him. “I’ve traveled from Guernsey. My name is Lady Marianne Daventry. I’m called ‘Ryan’ by those who know me.”
Her shoulders rose and fell with the force of her breathing. She staggered sideways and, on reflex, he reached out a hand.
Instead of clasping it, she took it up and shook it. “It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr.—?”
Gabriel frowned. “Why did you travel from Guernsey to meet a dead man?”
“Oh, right. That.” She retracted her hand. “Well, I came because I didn’t know he was dead, obviously; and it was my very great hope that he would address the very troubling—to put it mildly—matter of his cousin.”
“His cousin?”
“That’s right.”
“What problem is caused by his cousin?”
She sighed. “Well, the cousin of the prince—”
She stopped. She swallowed. “I might as well tell you, this man I seek, Gabriel d’Orleans, is French royalty. Or he was when France was ruled by a royal family. He is, in fact, an actual prince. His title is—was...”
And now she paused and looked upward, affecting the expression of someone reciting from memory. “I believe the full title is ‘His Serene Highness, Gabriel d’Orleans, Prince of the Blood.’ He was nephew to King Louis XVI. He went missing in the wake of France’s Revolution, and no one has seen him for more than fifteen years.”
She raised her eyebrows as if to say, Can you believe it?
Gabriel said nothing. In fact, he couldn’t believe it—couldn’t believe her. And yet—
“Prince Gabriel’s father was executed in the Revolution,” she explained. “His mother fled the country. And he and his sisters were separated and exiled to England for their safety. He was a boy at the time. I was a year younger—nine years old, perhaps?—and I grew up knowing that the missing French prince to whom I was betrothed, had, for all practical purposes, vanished.”
“Did you mourn him?” Gabriel asked from the bottom of the well.
“Mourn the prince?” She frowned. “Well, I did, actually. If I’m being honest. I’d only met him twice, and he was a boy and I was little girl but he...” and here she took a deep breath “. . . he’d written me letters in the years before he vanished. Not a lot, but enough for me to develop a fondness for him. I replied to his letters and—” She paused again, as if to collect herself. “Well, even as children, we acknowledged the strangeness of an arranged marriage. But he hadn’t seemed to hate the notion and neither did I. He seemed very wrapped up in the duty of the thing. There was an earnestness to him that I admired; I’ve never been much for cynics. And I lived on a remote island but had been engaged to an adorable prince—what’s to hate in that? Very little if you were nine-year-old me. I would be lying if I said I did not worry for him when he fled France; nor that I didn’t feel very great sadness when his letters ceased. It was a girlish affection, perhaps. But it felt very tragic at the time. It was tragic, honestly.”
Gabriel breathed in and out, searching her words for judgment or callousness. Searching for truth.
She tugged off her glove and smoothed back her hair with a small pale hand. “These days, I’ve no remaining energy to mourn the past—not when the present is so very distressing. Any sadness spared for the missing prince is inconsequential compared to the imposter prince.”
“What imposter prince?” asked Gabriel, annoyed at the man, whomever he was. He’d wanted to hear more about her girlish affection for the adorable prince.
“His cousin,” she reminded, sounding annoyed.
“Why do you call him an imposter?” asked Gabriel.
“Prince Gabriel’s cousin turned up at my front door claiming that, in the absence of the long-lost Gabriel, he had inherited the title, and that he was the new Prince d’Orleans. As such, he was now in possession of the d’Orleans coffers and d’Orleans property—and also he intended to take possession of me.”
“Possession of you?”
“Yes. To take as his wife. Because of my long-standing betrothal to the missing prince. This imposter prince and I are to be united instead of the actual prince and I. Regardless of the transfer of the title. Or how I feel about the matter, which is horrified.” She took a deep breath.
Gabriel stared down. Extreme shock felt like a blow to the head. Tiny lights flickered at the edge of his vision. He swayed on his feet. He hadn’t drawn breath since she’d said the word fiancé.
“Shall I carry on?” she prompted.
He blinked at her.
“I’ll take your undivided attention to mean yes.” A smile. “So now this imposter prince is endeavoring to... to... collect. Me. And assume possession of my family’s estate, which is an old manor house and lands called Winscombe. My father is very ill and we’ve fallen on lean times. Still, there is the house and acreage and sheep. I am the least of what he wants, honestly, but also the means by which he acquires the lot.”
She sighed and continued. “As I said, it’s a tragic tale with which I wouldn’t ordinarily burden a stranger. But you did ask. And I’m rather desperate to find any trace of the actual Prince Gabriel d’Orleans. So...”
“What do you expect Prince Gabriel to do?” His voice was a rasp.
“Well, I expected him to show himself. To reveal to this imposter that he is, in fact, not dead. There can be only one Prince d’Orleans, after all. Surely. Even in France.”
“Which cousin is claiming to be the new Prince d’Orleans?”
“What?” Her features twisted in confusion. “Do you mean what is the imposter’s name?”
Gabriel waited, his heart a hot ember in his throat.
“He’s called Maurice Emile... Something-or-other.” Her expression went sour. “And he’s frightening. Truly. I wouldn’t have left Guernsey, sailed to the mainland, and plunged into a dark wood, searching for an exiled prince, if the alternative was not truly frightening.”
Gabriel took two steps backward. Maurice. Snide and petty and selfish Maurice; disagreeable, even when they were boys.
“But how did you know to come here?” he demanded, trying to keep his voice calm. “To Savernake Forest? How did you find”—he paused—“your way?”
“I’ve a letter,” she said, and she began searching her skirts, digging deep into a pocket and coming up with a small leather satchel. She flopped it open and plucked out a piece of parchment, folded again and again.
“Remember I said Prince Gabriel and I used to correspond? My only clue was the last letter he wrote to me.” She unfolded the parchment, careful to protect the limp paper in the rising wind. “His letters before the Revolution discussed his life in the Parisian palace with his family. He spoke of the French Court, his lessons—typical ten-year-old things. And then the people of France revolted and the letters stopped. Until this one.”
Gabriel stared at the pale letter in her hand. The parchment was tattered, its age obvious even in the dark.
It was his letter.
She held his letter, written more than a decade ago. It had been the desperate effort of a terrified, lonely, uncertain boy, far from home. His childish attempt to behave with honor to the very end; to set things to rights.
Gabriel was gripped by an old heartbreak, stomach-churning and fearful. He took a step back. He scrubbed a hand over his face, trying to wipe away all the things he saw in memory and the vision of the woman standing two feet away. He contemplated turning on his heel and leaving her. He could dive into the forest, the only respite he’d known for years.
“ ‘Furthermore it would be imprudent to reveal my exact location,’” she was reciting, reading from his letter, “‘but I will say that I’m in the county of Wiltshire in the south of England, in an ancient forest called Savernake.’”
She lowered the parchment. “That is what he wrote to me in...” she referenced the letter again “...1799. So... close to twelve years ago? His last letter, as I’ve said. But it’s the only clue I have. I used it to map out my search for him. As impossible as it may seem.”
Gabriel was about to tell her that it did seem impossible; that she was asking the wrong man; that he didn’t understand any of it. The words were on the tip of his tongue. He need only articulate the lie.
She cocked her head and studied him. “But you claim that I’ve come all this way for a dead man?”
He blinked down at her, grateful for a question he could answer with a yes or a no. It was easier to lie in fewer words. And yet, he couldn’t speak. He was too busy swatting memories. Faces, smells, snatches of conversation—letters, swarming him like insects. How long had it been since he’d thought of the girl she’d been or the woman she might become? How long since he’d thought of her letters? Images and emotions flew at him from every direction. He was the prince, of course. He had been affianced as a child. He had written her, foolish boy that he’d been. He did have a terrible cousin called Maurice.
He was just about to agree with her—to tell her, Yes, for God’s sake, the prince is dead—when lightning popped, and thunder cracked, and the sky opened up. The forest was doused with sheets of cold rain. She made a squeaking noise and quickly folded the letter into the leather pouch. She ducked her head and fumbled with the hood of her cloak.
All at once, Gabriel remembered the spooked stallion he’d tied to the tree.
“Zeus,” he hissed, looking around, judging how fast he could get to the animal.
“What?” she asked, shouting over the sound of the rain.
“One of my horses! He’s frightened by the rain! I have to recover him! Can you—”
He looked at the sky. There was no help for it. He could hardly leave her in the middle of the storm. He’d have to take her to his camp and then recover Zeus.
“Can you run?” he shouted.
“What? Run? I suppose I can—yes.”
He took up her hand and set out at a sprint.