The Reluctant Princess Read online

  “You are jarl. High jarl. A princess.”

  “Did you think I’d forgotten?”

  “You are a princess and a princess keeps her word.”

  The ducks drifted, elegant and easy, on the pond. The tree branches swayed in the slight breeze. A hundred yards away, on a swath of green across the street, a woman and a small blond child sat on a pink blanket beneath an oak, eating ice cream. The cars rolled past on the street, each one observing the speed limit. Everything seemed peaceful and perfect. Idyllic.

  Except between Elli and Hauk. Between them, the air crackled. With hostility. And with heat.

  She demanded with a low voice, “Do you know more of what drives my father than you’re telling me?”

  “No.”

  “If you did know more, would you tell me?”

  “I can’t say. It would depend.”

  “On?”

  “What I knew. What I was ordered to keep to myself, what I thought wise to keep to myself.”

  “So, I can’t really trust you, then. You could be lying to me now. You would lie to me now—if my father had ordered you to lie, if you thought you should lie.”

  “You knew that from the first. And you can trust me. To take you where you need to go, to keep you safe.”

  “Where I need to go?”

  “Yes. By your own vow, I will take you where you need to go.”

  She was recalling the things her mother had said. “Do you think it’s possible that my father hopes I might somehow claim the throne of Gullandria once he’s gone?”

  “No.”

  He had replied almost before she had the question out of her mouth. She couldn’t hold back a sharp little laugh. “Well, you had no trouble answering that one.”

  “You think like an American.”

  “You said that before.”

  “And it remains as true now as it was then. There will be a kingmaking when your father is gone. And a prince will be chosen to succeed him. A prince. Not a princess. And certainly not a princess raised across the sea, a woman not even brought up in our ways.”

  She looked at him sideways. “You could use a woman ruler. You might learn a few things. You could get out of the Dark Ages and start treating women as the equals they are.”

  “A woman may never sit on the throne of Gullandria. But that doesn’t mean a woman doesn’t have rights—more rights, in some cases, than a man.”

  “Rights like…?” She began walking along the path.

  Hauk fell in step with her. “She can own property. She is equal, as an heir, when a parent dies.”

  “Equal in terms of property rights. Well, good. That’s something. But you said more rights.”

  “Yes. Our marriage laws give the woman the power. You’ll recall I told you that a man can’t divorce after his wife gives him children?”

  “I remember.”

  “I didn’t tell you that a woman can divorce her husband. A woman has the right to divorce at any time, simply because she believes the marriage is un-workable.”

  “I assume there is some reasoning behind that.”

  “It is thought that a woman is more responsible in matters of hearth and home, that she would be less likely to break the vows of marriage for frivolous reasons.”

  Elli hated to say it—but she did, anyway. “I don’t agree with that. I think men and women should have the same rights. I don’t think one—either one—should have more power than the other.”

  “You have plans to change our laws?”

  “It was just an opinion.”

  “There’s an old saying. An opinion means only as much as the power and intention of the one who owns it.”

  She arched an eyebrow at him. “Are you implying my opinion doesn’t mean much?”

  She could have sworn he almost smiled. “It’s only a saying. Take what you will from it.”

  Ahead of them on the path, an old man tore at a loaf of bread and tossed the pieces into the pond. The ducks gathered, nipping up the soggy bits. Bold pigeons scrambled around at his feet, gobbling the crumbs that fell to the walk from his hand.

  Elli paused. “You think maybe my father plans to marry me off to someone, then?”

  Hauk paused, too, and they faced each other once more. “It is not my place to think. Not about the intentions of my king.”

  “You’ve said that a hundred times. But I mean, you know, go with it for a minute. What would be gained, if he married me off to some prince or other?”

  Hauk lowered his head, a gesture she had come to realize was meant to display his subservience. “I cannot play this word game with you. I have already said more than I should have.”

  “Why? We’re just…talking. Just sharing opinions.” She gave him a grin. “Minus power. And intention.”

  “You have a fine mind. And a devious one.”

  “Hey. I guess I’ll fit in just great at my father’s court.”

  “I think you will—and I cannot help you scheme against my king.”

  “I’m not scheming. I’m only—”

  “Enough.” He walked on. The old man saw him coming and stepped out of his path. The pigeons scattered.

  Elli had to hurry to keep up.

  A short time later, they went back to the apartment where Elli found two messages on her machine. One from a girlfriend and one from a guy she’d known a couple of years ago, while she was still in school at UC Davis.

  Hauk stood right there as she played the messages back. He shrugged. “Just leave them. You can answer them when you return.”

  “Well, that’s reassuring. You seem to think I will return. Too bad my own mother fears otherwise.”

  He had that locked-up-tight look he got whenever he decided that responding to her would get him nowhere.

  He was right to get that look. She said, “I’ll answer them now, thank you very much.”

  He made her return the calls on speakerphone. He stood there, listening to every word as she told her girlfriend she couldn’t do lunch this weekend and asked for a rain check, then told the old school friend, David Saunders—in town just for a couple of days on business—that she wouldn’t be able to meet him for a drink. She was leaving town tomorrow. A family trip. David said maybe next time.

  “That would be great. Give me a call.”

  “You know I will.”

  She hung up and glared at Hauk. “You enjoy this? Listening in on my private conversations?”

  “No.”

  “Then maybe you should stop doing it.”

  He turned away, shaking his golden head.

  And that angered her.

  More than angered her.

  All at once, she was utterly furious with him. She grabbed his arm.

  He froze.

  Beneath her hand, his silky flesh felt as it if had been poured over steel. Her palm burned at the contact, her fingers flamed. The heat seemed to sizzle along her arm, blazing on, up over her shoulder and down into the center of her, making a pool of molten fire in her lower belly.

  She let go, brought her hand to her mouth—and it was like touching him all over again, pressing her skin that had been on his skin against her lips.

  She lowered her hand, slowly. Carefully. She felt shaken to the core—and ashamed of herself, too. “I…uh…sorry. Honestly. I got so angry. It was stupid. I shouldn’t have grabbed you like that.”

  His eyes seemed to bore holes right through her. “Pack. Now.”

  She bit her lip, shook her head.

  “You will destroy us both,” he whispered.

  “No. That’s ridiculous. It’s an…attraction, that’s all. It happens between men and women. It’s natural. We don’t have to act on it. And if we did—which we won’t—it would be nobody’s business but yours and mine.”

  He was scanning her face again, his gaze burning where it touched. “You understand nothing.”

  Fury flared again within her. She ordered it down. “Well, then.” She spoke calmly. Reasonably. “I guess you’d b
etter explain it to me.”

  He didn’t reply—not right away. She started to think he wouldn’t reply. But at last, he said, “I am assigned to bring you to your father. That is all the extent of the contact you will ever have with me. Whatever your father has planned for you, I am not a part of it. I could never be a part of it, not in any way.”

  “My father told you that?”

  “He had no need to tell me. It’s fact, pure and simple. It’s true that if fortune smiles on me, the daughter of some minor jarl might agree to reach out and clasp my hand in marriage. But no king would willingly give his daughter to a bastard. Some doors, as I told you, are forever closed to me.”

  “Not to me, Hauk. Never to me. I’m the one who decides who I’ll be with, not my father. He has no rights at all when it comes to my private life.”

  “That may be. I am in no position to say. However, your father does have rights over me. He has all rights. I live and breathe for him. All my acts are acts in his service. I am his warrior. It is a high honor. And a sacred trust.”

  Chapter Eight

  By tacit agreement, there was silence between them.

  Hauk went where she went within the apartment. In the living room, she sat on the couch and he sat in the easy chair. She read—or she tried to read, though she continually lost her place and had to go back and reread whole passages to have any idea what she was reading about. She could feel his eyes on her the whole time—or so it seemed.

  But then, when she couldn’t stand it a moment longer and glanced up, he would be looking not at her, but beyond her, into the distance. His body would be so very still and straight. She would stare at his chest, wondering if he was even breathing.

  Eventually, he’d draw himself back from whatever distant meditative state he’d put himself in. He’d meet her eyes.

  And she’d know that he had been there all the time, watching—and yet not watching. Across the room from her. And a million miles away.

  Around five, she gave up on her book and went into the spare room. She tried to pretend Hauk wasn’t sitting on the futon behind her as she paid a few bills to get them out of the way and answered a few last e-mails, then put her various listserves on No-mail.

  By seven or so, she was starting to get that frantic feeling—that feeling that if they remained alone in her apartment, just the two of them, for much longer, she would do something unforgivable.

  Start screaming like a maniac. Start throwing things—favorite figurines, a lamp or two.

  Climb him like a big tree, grab him close and kiss him, force him to put aside everything he believed in and make love with her.

  Oh, how had this happened? How had this gone so dangerously far so very, very fast?

  She honestly wasn’t some sex maniac. Okay, she wasn’t a virgin—but she was no wild thing, either.

  Serious relationships? She’d had a few—well, if you included her two high-school boyfriends. One in sophomore year and one when she was a senior. At the time, she’d been certain she would love each of those boys forever and ever. But she’d grown up and so had they.

  Surely this crazy attraction to Hauk was like her schoolgirl crushes—destined to flare high and hot and then, soon enough, fade away. It was the lure of the forbidden. And they’d both get over it.

  Maybe he was right. She should throw some stuff in her suitcase and tell him she was finally ready to head for Gullandria.

  But somewhere deep inside, she had a true stubborn streak. She wasn’t leaving until she had to leave and she didn’t have to leave until tomorrow. She shoved the chicken she’d never gotten around to roasting into the freezer and told Hauk they were going out for dinner.

  He didn’t argue. He didn’t say anything. He kept his sculpted mouth shut and his expression closed against her, as he’d been doing for hours by then.

  She took him to a restaurant over in Old Sacramento, where the food was excellent and so was the service. The steward brought the wine list. She waved it away.

  Yes, a glass of wine or two would have soothed her frayed nerves right then. But she couldn’t afford to be soothed. When they went to bed tonight, she would need all her inhibitions firmly in place—and not because she feared that Hauk might make a move on her. He had way too much self-control to do that.

  No, he wasn’t the one she was worried about. It was herself. She would need to fight her own wayward, hungry heart and her yearning body, too, if she planned to get through the whole night without doing something they would both later regret.

  Hauk spoke with the waiter briefly but politely. He didn’t speak to Elli, not the whole time they sat at that table. Anyone watching them probably would have guessed that they’d either been forced against their will to share a meal—or they were locked in some private battle, some intimate tiff, and currently refusing to speak to each other. Both speculations would have been right on the money.

  Too soon, the meal was finished. It was only 8:15. She didn’t want to go back to her apartment, not yet. She wanted it to be late—after midnight at least, when they got there. She wanted to be really, really tired.

  But every nerve she had was humming. She felt as if sleeping was something she would never do again. And she’d made the mistake of drinking two glasses of water with her meal.

  She had to use the ladies’ room.

  Hauk stood outside in the hall. She hoped it embarrassed him, to lurk there by the ladies’-room door. She used the facilities and she washed her hands, glancing now and then at her unhappy face in the wide mirror above the sink.

  She was blowing her hands dry when the small window over the center stall caught her eye. It was a single pane of pebbled glass, roughly a foot and a half on each side, hinged at the top. To open it, you undid the latch and pushed it outward.

  She was reasonably certain there would be an alley on the other side. It wouldn’t be that difficult to hoist herself up there, to slither through it and…

  What? Run away? Go into hiding and terrify her mother and Hilda and her sisters, too? Go to the police? Tell them that her father was having her kidnapped and she needed protection?

  After they sorted it all out, they might even believe her. And just maybe they’d be able to protect her. It was a good chance, with all the publicity that would ensue, with her face and the faces of everyone in her family splashed all over the tabloids, that her father would back off, give up on whatever scheme he was hatching.

  Hauk would be disgraced for letting her get away. And she would stay right here, in Sacramento, where she belonged. She would not see Gullandria—or her father, after all. And she would never see Hauk again.

  The dryer had turned itself off. The ladies’ room seemed very quiet.

  Behind her, the door to the hallway swung open. She turned. It was Hauk. He looked at her and he looked at the window above the center stall and then at her again.

  “So all right,” she muttered. “I was tempted. But notice I’m still here.”

  “Ahem. Do you mind?” A short, cute redheaded woman had appeared in the open doorway beside Hauk. She craned her neck to look up at him. “Read the sign on the door. Ladies. That is so not you.”

  Hauk retreated and the redhead came forward. The door closed with him out in the hall. The redhead pretended to fan herself. “Is that yours? Oh, my, my…”

  Elli let a smile answer for her. She hooked her purse over her shoulder and went out to join her jailer.

  Out in the parking lot, the attendant brought her car. She tipped him and got behind the wheel. Hauk hunched himself down into the passenger seat.

  Elli drove—out of Old Sac, out of town, beyond the city lights.

  More than once, she felt Hauk’s brooding gaze on her. She knew he was wondering where they were going. But he didn’t ask.

  Which was just as well, since she didn’t know, anyway. She held the wheel and watched the road ahead and kept on driving.

  They ended up on the river road, rolling through a string of sleepy little
one-stoplight towns. When she was in her teens, she and her sisters and their friends—or sometimes she and one of those two boys she’d thought she loved so much—would come out here.

  With a boyfriend, she’d end up parked by the levee, in the shadows of the cottonwood trees, kissing until her lips hurt, moaning and sighing and declaring undying love—all, of course, without going all the way.

  Back then, Elli and her sisters would talk about sex all the time. They were young and they were curious about all the new and bewildering yearnings their bodies could feel. They had one girlfriend who’d gotten pregnant and had to leave school. And another who had tested positive for HIV.

  Sex was so tempting. And yet they understood it could also be dangerous, that it had consequences, serious ones. They had formed a pact, the three of them. They called themselves the NATWC—the Never All the Way Club. Whenever one of them would go off to be alone with a boy, a sister was always somewhere nearby to raise a fist in the air and announce with pride, “NATWC!”

  It had worked. They all three remained full-fledged members of the NATWC—at least until college and then…

  Well, even triplets, at some point, have to make their own decisions about love and sex and how far to go.

  Elli made a turn, toward the river. She parked beneath a cottonwood and she got out and climbed the levee. Hauk, of course, got out, too. He followed in her wake, a shadow—always with her, never speaking.

  The mosquitoes were still out. As usual, they found her delicious. She slapped at them now and then. Sometimes she got them—and sometimes not. The ground beneath her sandals was soft. The wild grasses, still moist and green in early May, brushed at her ankles as she climbed.

  She reached the crest of the levee. It stretched out, a wide path, in either direction. Below, by the light of the fading last-quarter moon, the river looked dark and oily, flowing easily along. There were dangers, beneath the surface. Swirling currents. Undertows.

  But from here, it looked so serene and slow. Hauk stood beside her. As usual, he made no sound. She couldn’t even hear him breathing.