Chapter 2
Rosie
“Oh, gods!” I sink back against the wall, covering my face with my hands, and let out a blustering sigh.
My knees are suddenly weak, and the last thing I need to top off this high point of my existence is to add a fainting spell into the mix.
While all those lovelorn, wandering balladeers might approve, I don’t think my pride can stand it.
“Are you well, Princess?” The stranger’s voice is a soft panther’s growl that makes my toes curl inside my slippers and sends delightful shivers up my spine.
He’s suddenly nearer than he was a moment before.
Near enough that I can feel his breath against my forehead.
I can’t help thinking how nice it would be to let him support me rather than this cold wall at my back.
Those big hands of his wrapped around my rib cage, that broad chest a pillow for my whirling head…
Which is nonsense, of course. And I won’t entertain such thoughts a single moment longer.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I snap, peeking at him from between my fingers. “Gods, but you’re a loomer, aren’t you?”
He blinks down at me. His face is shadowed, but the flickering scintil glints in the depths of his eyes. “I beg your pardon?”
“You!” I wave a vague hand. “You’re looming. You’re positively the loomiest man I’ve ever met. If they held loom tournaments, you’d take home all the colors. You’d be festooned in them, which wouldn’t suit your dark and mysterious ethos one bit but would certainly liven up this uniform.”
He blinks again. Then takes a demure step back, just enough to allow a bit more of the scintil light to illuminate his godlike frame, calling attention to the way his shoulders strain the seams of his tunic and the laces of his cuirass.
It’s not as well tailored as one might expect, almost as though it were made for a much smaller man.
Odd, for the High King’s guard is usually impeccably presented.
Though I can’t say Captain Norlan or any of his men wear their uniforms with quite such… flair.
My stomach gives a little flutter. But I’m probably just hungry.
It’s been a while since breakfast. “Thank you,” I say, and lower both hands from my face.
Now the crisis has passed, I find it much more difficult to meet the stranger’s eye.
But I can’t let him know it, so I force myself to hold his gaze. “Do you think it worked?”
“What worked, Princess?”
I wince again at the hateful title. “Taigan. The prince. Do you think he bought it?”
“Your overwhelming impulse to kiss strangers? No.”
I grimace. “Damn.” Then hopefully: “Do you think he thinks we’re carrying on some sort of dalliance? Oh, I should have thought of that to begin with! Maybe if I convinced him I’d fallen madly in love with one of my guards—”
“It would be difficult considering I’ve only just arrived today.”
“Love at first sight?”
“Did you actually see me?”
“I mean, I saw someone.”
“But not enough to form an instant and irresistible passion, I trust.”
“Well…no.”
“Then not, perhaps, the best strategy.”
I narrow my eyes up at him. High up at him. In fact, my chin tilts so far back, my head hits the wall. “It doesn’t have to be real. Just convincing enough.”
“Convincing enough for what?”
“To repulse Prince Taigan, of course.”
“Ah.”
“Do you think he is though?”
“Is what?”
“Repulsed.”
The lines of his face tighten slightly as he considers.
I find my gaze drawn back to that scar, which slices so neatly through his eyebrow.
The roped and puckered tissue trailing across his upper cheekbone ought to be off-putting, but somehow, I can’t help wanting to reach out, to run my fingertips along its length.
I knot my fists and put them both behind my back. I’ve just kissed the poor man; if I start pawing at his face, he’ll run for the hills! Though he doesn’t strike me as the easily frightened type. Not even by hysterically affectionate young women.
“No.”
The word emerges in a deep growl. I flush. Did he just read my mind? I’ve lost track entirely of our conversation, caught up in my study of his features. “I’m sorry?”
“Prince Taigan. He will not be repulsed by your advances on me.” His gaze drops slowly, taking me in.
Not a lascivious gaze, nothing to make my skin crawl.
Just an easy, considering inspection. Then his black eyes lift again to meet mine.
“It would take a great deal more effort to make yourself repulsive.”
My brow knits. “Was that a compliment?”
“If you like.”
“I’m not sure I do like. I’m unused to receiving compliments and can’t say I know what to do with them.
Mistress Iliyani used to tell me I had more brains than one might expect from such a flibbertigibbet.
And Tim, her other apprentice, once informed me my face was ‘like a flower or something.’ Which was basically poetry coming from Tim.
I’m not sure if ‘you’ll have to work harder to make yourself repulsive’ is quite on par. ”
The stranger raises one eyebrow. “I am not the poetic sort.”
“No. You loomers so rarely are.”
He shifts on his feet. A slight change of position, but something about it conveys an impression of tremendous power only just contained.
I’m suddenly aware of how alone we are in this passage.
Ordinarily there would be two or three other guardsmen within view, pretending to be alert through their yawns.
But a quick scan up and down the stone passage reveals no one.
Several of the scintils have gone out as well, the flickering magelight extinguished and the small globes empty.
It would be an excellent place for an assassin to swoop in and do his business entirely undetected.
It’s a good thing at least one of my guards hasn’t abandoned me.
“Well,” I say, my voice cracking a little as I push away from the wall. “I suppose I ought to be—” The words don’t fully emerge before I’ve taken half a step, caught my foot in the full mass of layered skirts my newly assigned waiting woman insists on smothering me in, and tumbled headlong.
The stranger steps forward. In a single graceful motion, he grips one of my flailing arms by the elbow.
His other hand slips around my waist, right back in that warm spot where it had been when he shielded me from Prince Taigan, and I find myself once more pressed against that hard, muscular chest. An intimacy that really shouldn’t feel so familiar.
His sharply exhaled breath heats my forehead, and his heartbeat thuds through his cuirass.
His arms are like a steel cage, pinning me to him.
My heart stutters, and I choke on the little scream in my throat.
I lift my gaze to his. His very close, very dark gaze. Staring intently. Burning away every rational thought. How would he react if I popped up on my toes and caught his lips with mine once more?
Did I really just think that?
Warmth flooding my veins, I push against his chest. Rather to my disappointment, he lets go immediately this time.
I stagger back only for a terrible rip to rend the air.
I look down in horror—the front laces of my bodice have caught on his cuirass buckle and torn open, exposing rather a lot more lace-trimmed chemise than is altogether decent.
“Oh gods!” I grasp hold of the laces, trying to wrench them free.
There’s another terrible rip. Somehow, I’ve managed to snarl myself on his second buckle now.
“Blight these fancy trimmings! I’m going to have words with Philippa, so help me.
She’s trying to kill me with fashion, but I swear I won’t go down quietly! ”
A large hand wraps around mine, stilling my frantic scramble.
“Allow me, Princess.” With careful deliberation, he draws my hands away and begins unwinding the snarl I’ve made.
His fingers are so long, so dexterous, not what one would expect from a guard.
They look more like a musician’s fingers, nimble and quick, ready to coax sighs from his instrument.
But I know as well how strong his grasp can be.
That image of him holding Taigan suspended is still vividly emblazoned across my memory.
Heat rushes to my belly. I’m suddenly painfully aware of just how close we’re standing to each other.
Close enough that I can feel his breath against my all-too-exposed bosom.
I try to step back only to yank a particularly obstinate loop tighter, further binding me in place.
The stranger pauses, waiting for me to still again.
Then without a word, he goes back to work.
There’s something altogether unnerving about his silence.
A breathless giggle bursts from my lips. “I suppose you have some experience unfastening women’s bodices?”
He pauses again. His gaze flicks ever so briefly to meet mine. Then back to the task at hand.
“I mean, I’m not implying…That is, it’s a good thing if you do, right? I wouldn’t want to be caught like this with a novice. Tim the apprentice couldn’t have managed his own trouser laces, poor boy, much less assisted a woman in need.”
This time he doesn’t look at me. He draws a long, slow breath through his nostrils. Have I annoyed him with my rambling? Mistress Iliyani always said I never met a silence I couldn’t fill. Why can’t I for once get ahold of my tongue? I really should kiss him again. Just to occupy my mouth.
“Perhaps it would be simpler if you used your knife,” I say quickly, determined not to let that impulse carry me away with it.
He freezes. Both hands are so suddenly still, they might be carved from cold marble. But his eyes lift from the laces and fix intently on my face. “What knife?”
I snort. “Don’t play all innocent. I saw that blade in your hand. You’re lucky Taigan didn’t spot it earlier. He’d go straight to the king telling tales!”
“True. Men like that don’t know the meaning of shame.”
“That’s a swift judgment to pass on a fellow you’ve just met.”