Ever a Princess Page 3

  Unfortunately, she had wanted an English lord for a husband. And she had gotten one.

  Kirstin had never had any intention of preaching equality of the sexes to the ladies of London. She didn't care about equal rights. She cared about prestige—the kind of prestige that could only be achieved by being the wife of a peer. Kirstin didn't talk politics all the time, but her conversation began and ended with fashion and gossip. And that, Adam discovered, was a mixed blessing. Because there was a limit to the number of times a man—even an adoring and indulgent brother— could listen to her rapturous descriptions of bows and frills. And unless the lodge proved to have commercial potential, Adam didn't care a fig for the gossip of London society. Although he could successfully avoid constant association with Kirstin during the day, society demanded she have a suitable escort at night.

  Adam heaved a sigh. Wrestling with a dozen forks and spoons and knives and the dizzying array of plates and glasses included in the twelve-course dinners was such a chore, he and Murphy cut cards each night for the dubious honor of escorting her. So far, Adam had won the cut more than he'd lost and Murphy was suffering through the gossip and the fashion reviews. Still, Adam was honor bound to pay the man for his trouble and provide other amenities like cigars and fine liquor to make it up to him. Because the truth was that he liked Murphy O'Brien and he would have died of boredom on the crossing if Murph hadn't taken him up on the offer. Adam reached for his coffee cup, took a tentative sip and studied O'Brien over the rim. "Which reminds me, it's your turn to escort her into dinner tonight."

  "If you hate the job so much, how did you allow yourself to get talked into taking her back to her husband?"

  "You know what they say." Adam met O'Brien's gaze. "No good deed goes unpunished."

  "How's that?"

  "It all started with the party my oldest sister, Astrid, planned for my mother's sixtieth birthday. We all made the trip to Astrid's house—including Kirstin and her husband, the English lord..."

  "Like mother, like daughter." O'Brien chuckled.

  "Not quite." Adam pinned O'Brien with a look that told him he could do without the commentary. "The difference is that Kirstin wanted one. Even if the English lord was strapped for cash and looking to marry an heiress. Unfortunately, he's turning out to be the bad penny that turns up every so often asking for more. My father was just the opposite. He had plenty of money and he didn't stay around long after he married my mother because she encouraged him to go. She says she knew their marriage was a mistake from the start because they were so different. Personally, I've always thought he left before I was born because the thought that I might be a twin and a girl probably scared the bejesus out of him."

  Adam laughed. He had to admit his family was unique. All four of his sisters were twins. The two older ones were twins and the two younger ones were twins and they all looked alike. Like his mother, his sisters were all blonde and blue-eyed. He was the odd man out. The youngest child. The only boy. The only one in the family with dark hair and the one whose father decided a return to London was preferable to remaining in an ill-advised marriage to a widow with four daughters. "Anyway, Kirstin and His Lordship made the trip to Denver to celebrate my mother's birthday."

  "So it was a nice family gathering," Murphy commented.

  "It was hell," Adam said. "My mother is as stubborn and independent as ever. She's still running the farm in Kansas and worrying about the weather and the price of corn and wheat and she's become a leader in the women's suffragette movement." He smiled at the mental image of his mother carrying a placard. "I've always been proud of her strength and independence and I'm certainly in favor of women's suffrage, but I sometimes wish my mother..." He'd been about to say that he wished his mother hadn't been quite so independent, wished that she hadn't chosen her first husband's legacy over her second husband's love, but Adam shrugged off the thought. His mother was who she was and he loved her. She wasn't the type to show affection. It wasn't in her nature to boast or to coddle. Her nature was to push, to work hard to succeed, and to see that her children succeeded. And she'd been successful. "My sister, Astrid, is helping her husband expand his medical practice into a hospital, despite the fact that she's pregnant with her seventh child. And Erika has hired three new teachers—all suffragettes—for her school. Her husband is an engineer with the railroad. He travels a lot and Erika spends her energy on the school." Adam shrugged. "Greta and her husband purchased the farm adjacent to Ma's, and Greta gave up her position at the newspaper in town, but she's publishing a weekly bulletin for female farmers. And now, Ma, Astrid, Erika, and Greta have formed a Women's Temperance League with other local suffragettes." He glanced over at Murphy. "The other three of my sisters' husbands don't seem to find their politics threatening, but His Lordship..." Adam shook his head and swore viciously. "His bloody Lordship has turned out to be a real bastard. The legitimate kind. He beat the hell out of Kirstin because she dared—she dared—accompany my mother and sisters to a temperance rally. Kirstin was sporting a black eye when I arrived. And all because His Lordship is afraid she might take her suffragette ways back to England—to the wives and daughters of his House of Lords friends. The irony is that Kirstin only went to the rally because all of the other women in town were going. She didn't care about temperance or the suffragette movement; she went because she didn't want to be left out. But His bloody Lordship beat the hell out of her anyway."

  "Sheesh!" Murphy ran his fingers through his thick brown hair, shuddering at the thought of ugly bruises marring Kirstin Marshfeld's gorgeous flesh. "But I hate English lords. Bloody arrogant bastards, the lot of them." He looked over at Adam. "With one notable exception."

  "Don't make an exception on my account," Adam told him. "I agree with you."

  "But you're a..."

  Adam shook his head. "My father is the younger son of an English lord. He was supposed to inherit money and property instead of a title, but he'd never claimed his inheritance. Ma said he didn't need it. She said he had the Midas touch and loads of charm to go with it. He could have made a go of anything he tried, but when she met him, he was living for adventure. He wanted to see the world and although my mother loved him, she refused to give up the farm she inherited from her first husband in order to explore the world. At any rate, they parted company. Eventually my father had the marriage annulled. Although I wasn't born one, technically I became a bastard when my father dissolved his marriage to my mother in order to marry someone else." He paused. "Ma didn't get anything out of the marriage except me. But that was her choice. After she wrote to tell him I'd been born, he sent passage money to England for all of us and an old gold locket he told her to give to me." Adam pulled out his watch chain to show O'Brien the locket he wore as a fob. "She kept the locket and returned the money. This was my inheritance. When the marriage was annulled I was no longer entitled to bear the McKendrick name, but Ma insisted I keep it. She says it's the name I was born with and neither the law nor the church has the right to take it away." He shoved the watch back into his pocket and continued his story. "Kirstin's husband is the real English lord. I tried to persuade her to leave him, but she wouldn't consider it." Adam traced the rim of his Coffee cup with his index finger. "There was nothing I could do except promise His Lordship I'd kill him if he touched my sister in anger again. And I promised him I'd be watching from now on."

  "Did he believe you?" O'Brien asked.

  "He believed me enough to leave Kirstin to visit with Ma while he took the next train east and a boat back to England," Adam answered. "And so did the guy slapping one of the girls around in the Gold Nugget Saloon later that night."

  "Hence the first installment of the true adventures of the Bountiful Baron ..."

  Adam nodded. "There must have been a journalist in the saloon. Someone who heard me offer the girl a job and a place to stay. She turned down the offer of a job, but she accepted a train ticket back home to her parents' farm in Indiana."

  "The girl might have sold
her story to the dime novel."

  "Could be." Adam refilled his coffee cup, and then signaled to the waiter for a fresh pot. "Or Kirstin's decided on a novel way of earning pin money. However it came about, it's a pain in the ass."

  "Speaking of which," O'Brien said. "Where is Her Ladyship?"

  "Breakfasting in her stateroom," Adam replied. "She says it isn't done for a viscountess to be seen before one or two in the afternoon."

  "What does she do in there all morning?" O'Brien asked. "She can't be primping. She's already gorgeous enough to stop clocks."

  "1 don't know and I don't care as long as I don't have to listen to one more description of the new gowns she's ordered lor the Season." Adam waited until the waiter removed the empty coffeepot and replaced it with a fresh one. He refilled his cup and took a swallow. "Thank God we'll be docking in n few days. Her husband can listen to her for a while." He glanced at Murphy. "Don't get me wrong about this. I despise the man. I think Kirstin made a big mistake in marrying His Lordship and is making another one in going back to him. But it's her life and her decision. I worry about her. But my hands are tied unless she changes her mind about being a viscountess." He thought for a moment. "If she does, I'll only be as far away as Scotland."

  Murphy murmured an agreement. He'd spent enough time in Kirstin Marshfeld's company to know that she wasn't about to give up the prestige that went with an old and honorable title—even if that meant suffering beatings at the hands of her husband. And he knew Adam well enough to know that he felt duty bound to protect her—even if that meant protecting her from her own ambition. "Look at the bright side." He picked up the dime novel and waved it at Adam. "Nobody in Scotland will know about the Bountiful Baron."

  Adam saluted O'Brien with his coffee cup. "I won't have to look at that thing every time I turn around."

  "Or attempt to live up to his reputation." Murph grinned.

  Adam matched Murph's grin with one of his own. "You can bet on that. I've had my fill of blond, blue-eyed darlings. If they have 'em in Scotland, I don't want to know about it."

  "You're sure about that?" O'Brien teased.

  "Completely," Adam pronounced. "You can have 'em all."

  Chapter 3

  A Princess of the Blood Royal must attend all loyal subjects of the House of Saxe-Wallerstein-Karolya

  —Maxim 5: Protocol and Court Etiquette of Princesses of the Blood Royal of the House of Saxe-Wallerstein-Karolya, as decreed by His Serene Highness, Prince Karol I, 1432.

  There is trouble, YourRoyal Highness. "

  Giana sighed. "Max ..." She had reminded him a thousand times that it did no good for them to travel incognito, pretending to be a family, or to remain in hiding if he insisted nil speaking Karolyan and using her title every time he addressed her. She was supposed to be the daughter of a well-l raveled cook and butler. Max was supposed to be her paternal uncle, and Josef and Brenna, her cousins. They had come to Scotland on holiday from their jobs in the household of a recently deceased Slovenian countess to visit Gordon, her mother's brother. English was to be spoken at all times, but Giana had learned to make allowances when she and Max were alone.

  Max glanced over his shoulder to be certain no one overheard. The habits of a lifetime were difficult to break. "We're alone, Your—Giana."

  She dropped the dress she had started mending into the basket sitting on the stone floor of the massive gathering room. It was too dark to sew. The daylight had faded with the gloaming and a soft mist had begun to fall and the fire in the huge hearth gave meager light. The gathering room had become her favorite room in the lodge. The stone walls, high ceilings, and exposed timbers of the gathering room reminded her of the summer palace at Laken. Giana squared her shoulders and prepared for the worst, as she calmly waited for Max to explain. He didn't have to announce bad news. She could tell by the expression on his face that the news he bore wasn't good. "Is there news of Victor?"

  Max shook his head. "No, Your Highness."

  "Then what?"

  "We must find another hiding place," he told her. "The owner of this one is on his way here."

  Giana frowned. After spending six weeks crisscrossing the back roads of Europe from Karolya to the Mediterranean and up through Spain and France, Giana and Max had finally felt safe enough to lead their little band of refuges to their current hiding place—an uninhabited hunting lodge hidden deep in the highlands of Scotland where Isobel's brother, Gordon, was gamekeeper and caretaker. The empty hunting lodge had been a godsend. Isobel had lived in Karolya for more than twenty years, and the fact that she and Langstrom lived and worked at Laken, away from the capital, made the likelihood of any of Victor's minions realizing that she had a brother in Scotland remote. "But Gordon said Lord Bascombe hadn't come to the lodge in years. He hates the place."

  "Gordon was correct," Max told her. "Apparently, Lord Bascombe hated the lodge enough to sell it. There was a telegraph awaiting Gordon in the village saying the new owner is on his way to inspect the property. He instructed Gordon to make the lodge habitable."

  "When?" Giana breathed.

  "Any day now," Max said. "The telegraph operator waited for Gordon to come into the village to collect his mail and messages instead of riding out here to deliver them." He glanced at the princess. "I'm afraid that doesn't give us much time to find another place, Your Highness."

  Giana worried her bottom lip with her teeth. "Do we know if the person who purchased the lodge is someone who might recognize us?"

  "The origin of the name is Scottish," he said. "But according to the telegram, the gentleman is from America."

  Giana smiled. "Then we need not worry about finding a new place to hide, Max."

  "Why not?"

  "We shall be safe and comfortable here until it's time to return to Karolya and reclaim the throne." She hoped she sounded more confident than she felt.

  "How can you be so certain Highness?"

  "It has become common knowledge, among royals, that Americans pay little attention to our goings-on."

  "But, Princess, we cannot remain in a lodge the new owner expects to find uninhabited," he protested.

  She thought for a moment. "We can if we're the staff."

  Max groaned. He recognized the look of determination in her eye. "The staff? Highness, please ... I beg you to reconsider."

  "It's perfect, Max." Giana smiled. "We'll become the staff."

  He bit back another groan, but he couldn't prevent his wince. Princess Giana's last attempt at domesticity had been an unmitigated disaster. She'd set herself and the palace kitchens in Christianberg on fire in a failed attempt to master the art of French cuisine. She hadn't been burned, but in her efforts to gain practical experience in homemaking skills, the princess had reduced the goose she'd been preparing to ash, and her skirts and the oven had suffered irreparable damage. The palace chef, always temperamental at best, had refused to continue the princess's cooking lessons and had forbidden Her Royal Highness from entering his domain. Even Isobel, who was the most forgiving of souls, forbade the princess to try her hand at meal preparation, saying they could not afford to sacrifice the lodge's only working cookstove.

  Max tried again. "Your Highness, I beg you to remember your Sixteenth."

  Giana's smile faded. According to Karolyan custom, young girls born to common families could not marry until they reached the age of six and ten. In order to prepare for that momentous rite of passage, they spent their fifteenth year learning the skills they would need to care for a husband and family. Although the custom excluded females born to the nobility, who were often betrothed before they reached the age of consent, Giana was the exception. As heir apparent to the throne, she was expected to set an example and encourage every girl born in the principality of Karolya to prepare for her Sixteenth by learning to cook and sew and clean. Prince Christian and Princess May had arranged for the palace chef to teach her to cook and for individual members of the staff to teach her ordinary housekeeping skills. "That was an ac
cident, Max."

  "Of course it was, Your Highness, but the fact remains that you have no practical experience in staffing a hunting lodge." "I've greater practical experience, Max. I grew up in a palace."

  "Growing up in a palace and working in a palace are two very different things."

  She frowned at the secretary. "I am aware of that. But I've watched the staff. And I do have some experience aside from cooking. I learned to perform other vital tasks in preparation for my Sixteenth. I swept and mopped the floor and dusted furniture and helped beat the rugs, and I washed dishes and clothes."

  She neglected to mention that those lessons had come to an end when she left her lawn nightgowns and delicate undergarments soaking in lye and forgot to rinse the floor of the entry to her father's reception hall after washing it. The lye soap had eaten holes in all of her underclothes, and the palace seamstresses had had to work around the clock to make new ones, and a German ambassador had slipped and fallen on the hard marble floor leading into the reception hall, sending two Papal emissaries skidding across the floor, where they'd landed at the feet of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Papa had laughed about it later, saying the ambassador had rolled through the emissaries like a bowling ball through pins, but he'd declared her lessons in scrubbing floors and doing laundry at an end.

  Her other lessons continued, and two days later she accidentally demolished several pieces of her mother's priceless Venetian crystal by plopping them into scalding hot dishwater.