Page 2 of Lord Fournier’s Shameless Princess (Scarlett Affairs #4)

10 Frederickstrasse

Karlsruhe, Baden

March 12, 1804

L iesel slid from her poor horse’s back, looped the reins over the front hitch, and climbed the broad portico steps of Baron Fournier’s grand stone and timber mansion. She was bone tired. Cold to the bone, too. Worse, she was a dirty mess in her male riding coat and dusty Hessians, but she had no choice about her sad appearance. No choice about what she had to do.

She picked up the lion’s head knocker and let it bang on Fournier’s front door. It took her two more appeals to get his man to answer.

“Prinzessin!” Fournier’s aged butler remembered Liesel, his wild white brows high with surprise. It was gratifying, if embarrassing, and it eliminated so much explanation of who she was. He most likely thought her here to upbraid his master again. Far from it.

“Please, sir. I need to see Baron Fournier.” She saw his dismay at her appearance. Worse, he frowned, looking down his long, lean nose at her. He recalled how rash she’d been months ago when she had barged in and taken the house by storm—and confronted his master, naked at his bath. “I will be good. I have come a long way. Please.”

He peered over her shoulder and saw her steed, the mare’s head hanging, exhausted from her frantic ride.

“ Javohl , do come in.” He examined her sorry state and, from his frown, found nothing new to like. Especially not her leather riding breeches that fit her like new skin. But he did welcome her inside. “ Mein Herr is not here.”

“May I wait? It is most important. A matter of life and death, truly.” Out of a tinge of guilt and need, she had to add, “I do apologize for my rudeness when I was here last.”

The butler’s aquiline features did the impossible and softened. “Princessin, might you like food, drink…or perhaps a bath?”

The last word had her blinking at him to kill the surprise at his acceptance. She’d expected his hauteur, not his kindness. “ Ja, bitte . And care for my horse.”

“ Natürlich .” He arched a brow and gave her a ghost of a smile. “Tea? Soup?” he asked.

“Whatever Cook has in the kitchen at this hour will please me. Danke schon. ”

He spread his hands wide. “Your cape, princess?”

She picked at the fingertips of her worn leather gloves, then surrendered them with her old tri-collared coat—happy to get rid of the thing, actually. She’d worn it the past few weeks because it was wool, warm, and serviceable as part of her disguise. She’d bought it from a farrier in Ettenheim from whom she usually hired horses. Now, she did not need it. Her masquerade, like her mission, was at an end. She was here because she needed not just a new cloak, but new clothes and, most of all, a new friend. Would that Lord Fournier could forgive her rash behavior of months ago and become that necessary ally. If he did not, she knew no other in Baden to ask. Two of her best friends in Ettenheim had gone missing lately, and…

She swallowed against her horror of what had most likely happened to them.

“Come this way.” The butler curled her coat over his arm and sniffed at the appearance of her waistcoat and shirt sleeves. Her casual male attire affronted the servant, but riding alone for miles to get here tonight had nothing to do with formality.

She had urgent business here, so she brushed off his criticism. She followed him up the magnificent staircase, which she had not taken much time to admire previously. Up they trod to the first floor and down the wide, ivory-painted hall so gilded in gold leaf that her tired eyes burned. She did not remember the beauty of this house. The tranquility, either. She breathed it in. How she welcomed it after the chaos she had witnessed. She followed silently and in wonder, like a child who goes to the village square in hopes of mummers and magicians and toffee candies to make life sweeter.

“ Bitte, please be comfortable, princess.” Fournier’s butler stood aside and indicated the settee across the room. The walls were a deep forest green, the furniture opulent swirls of gold-painted wood, while the upholstery contrasted in bright yellow Chinoiserie. Here was quiet and repose. “I will return with refreshments, and send Lord Fournier to you as soon as he arrives home.”

“ Danke schon , Herr…?” She wished to observe all the rules of etiquette this night. Gratitude and polite regard were the first she should employ.

“Bartel, princess.”

“Thank you, Herr Bartel.” Then she sank down onto the most comfortable chair she’d known in weeks. In warmth and safety, she gladly waited in the enchanting home of the man she had insulted and shamed not so long ago.

*

Dirk had had a long journey, endless in distance as well as heartache. What he’d seen last night in Offenburg, forty miles to the south, angered him. Frightened him, too. But affairs were beyond him now. He could not save the young heir to the Bourbon throne who lived in the small town of Ettenheim sixty miles south.

The Duke of Enghien’s refusal of Dirk’s help to leave Baden defied reason. Or rather, most reason. Only one had kept him tied to his home these past three years—his charming wife. The love of his life, Charlotte de Rohan, also adored her house, her family and friends. The young Duke of Enghien humored her and would not leave.

“He may also do it at the cost of his life.”

“ Mein Herr ?” His stableman to whom he handed the reins of his mount questioned his ramblings.

“Talking to myself, Braun. I must, to keep my sanity. Excuse me.” He peered through the shadows in his dimly lit stables. “Whose horse is that? Do we have a visitor?”

“ Ja, Mein Herr . A young lady came an hour ago. Her horse is almost lame with the hard ride she asked of him.”

Dirk walked over to the next stall and ran a hand down the horse’s long, tangled mane. The animal, a mix of Arabian and some other, snuffled at the caress. He could think of few ladies who would come to him all of a sudden, riding a horse so near the end of its stamina. Only one woman came to mind as a lady who might call on him in desperation. His blood burned to think Liesel of Rittenburg would come to him once more—and tonight of all nights—seeking solace. “Not to worry, my friend,” he crooned to the horse. “Braun will see you thorough this.”

His staff were stout-hearted folk who served him faithfully. With what he had seen this day in Offenburg, he would soon have to dismiss them all. They would be at the mercy of their margrave, that slippery fellow who had aligned himself with Bonaparte last year and put his own people under the burden of tax and conscription for the French first consul. Dirk had long predicted it would come to this, after Enghien proclaimed himself secure and cited the border between Baden and eastern France as the barrier to invasion. But the border was porous, made of the River Rhine. A good boat—even a sturdy pontoon in dry season—would serve an adventurous Frenchman to cross quickly. To hell with diplomatically sacred borders. What was sacred to Bonaparte?

Only his own neck.

Dirk took the yard from his stables to his kitchen door. Yesterday, he had seen Bonaparte’s close friend and general leave the city of Strasbourg, France with more than three hundred French dragoons and a detachment of gendarmerie at night. The party of perhaps a thousand armed men headed across the Rhine for Offenburg, Baden. That friend of Bonaparte’s, General Armand Caulaincourt, rarely left the Little Corporal’s side, usually only for secret personal missions. For him to leave Paris and come to Baden boded only ill. Dirk feared what ill that was. They’d come to harass Enghien. Or worse.

He flung wide the kitchen door and bade the surprised cook and kitchen maids a good evening.

“All is well,” he assured them with a wave and the small smile he could muster. It would have to suffice. What they did not know about the French intrusion into their margrave’s territory would not worry them.

Only when I begin my preparations to leave for England will they seek the cause and begin to fret.

He turned for the servants’ stairway. He was two steps up when a man’s voice beckoned him from below. He swung around.

“Bartel. Forgive my entering by the back door. Braun tells me we have a visitor?”

“ Javohl . It is Princess von Rittenburg. I have placed her in the green salon, Mein Herr.”

“Well, well. She barges in once more. Plus I need a bath, too!” He could find irony in her appearance, even if Bartel saw none. Still, for a man who had a reputation as a rake, Dirk had limits to how frankly and often a woman might show her interest in him.

But his mind filled with reasons why she’d come to him. What does she know about what occurs in the south?

“ Mein baron …”

“What is wrong?” His butler looked flustered. “Is she demanding?”

“No, sir. She is in a very sad state.”

Dirk’s first thought ran through him like an alarm bell. “Is she hurt?”

“No, sir. But she is pale, tired, unkempt, and wearing men’s clothing.”

Running from something or someone. Or to me? This time for help. If she had any indication of what he’d seen last night, beautiful Liesel was here to seek refuge or help. This time, he doubted she wished to rant and rave at him. Far from it. If she knew what happened south of them, she needed his assistance. Perhaps more.

Bartel joined him on the stairs. “I have provided food and wine, sir. She needed it badly.”

Dirk handed over his hat and cloak. “Good. I’m in no condition to receive her at once. My ride was long. But do tell her I will go to her in a few minutes. Did she indicate what she wished to discuss?”

“Not a word, sir.”

She saves her news. I do not blame her. Those throughout Baden will be frightened by it. “I will ask for a hot bath before I see her, Bartel. Don’t bother to call for Otto. I will not need a valet tonight. I will be quick. Tell her I will be down in ten minutes.”

Fear ticked through his veins. What had Liesel seen or learned? The lady had her own reputation as one who was in command of herself. No other lady had ever stood up to Queen Charlotte of Great Britain and refused to marry one of her cousins because she did not like his bodily habits. Even more scandalously, she had proceeded to live her life in Society as a free lady, until about two years ago, when she had simply disappeared from the ton . Only to appear on my doorstep last year.

Now she is here once more.

According to rumor, since last June, she had been seen in Strasbourg, Berlin, and even Vienna. Dirk had not seen her since she last appeared in his boudoir. But now she needed him, at least for an urgent discussion. Whatever her problems, a woman chased was a woman who needed help and even comfort. Dirk would provide both. That was his mission for so many along the Rhine these past months. But more than that, she was the sister to one of his best friends—and Dirk would move heaven and earth to aid her.

In his suite, he stripped off his riding clothes. A shambles, they were. Fit only for burning. Two footmen came with bathwater, and he submerged himself and washed quickly. His mind whirled with what Liesel knew, and he worried where she had been.

Dirk hoped she knew nothing of Caulaincourt and the French. He would say nothing to Bartel. If that was her news, he’d ask her not to reveal anything to his staff. He wished to minimize his servants’ alarm about the French contingent until he had them organized, all house weapons cleaned and ammunition ready.

His household and groomsmen were hardy Germans of kind heart and good minds. But if the Margrave of Baden knew that the French had invaded his territory of Offenburg forty miles south—if that ruler had even secretly permitted the French access to his domain—would not that man also allow them to march north and accost the last British citizen who remained in his capital? For if they took Dirk, he had no doubts the French had no compunction about attacking anyone who tried to prevent them from taking him away. That meant his loyal servants. And he would not have them pay that price.

Now, here in his house, he also had the honor of hosting the headstrong beauty who’d once more arrived at his house at the most inauspicious moment. He’d hear her out, but he had suspicions that what she required of him was more than supper. What he owed her was more than succor. He would not allow the French to seize her either.

Unnerved, Dirk emerged from his rooms. Refreshed bodily as much as he could be, he was presentable. Yet his whole being burned because he knew his lovely visitor was at risk, too.

Bartel awaited him at the landing.

Dirk followed him down the long hall to the main salon. “ Danke schon , Bartel. I wish not to disturb the rhythm of the house more than I have.”

Dirk turned away, flames of anger at the French licking at him. What he had seen in Offenburg had sealed the fate of those who lived in his beloved grandmother’s province.

Now, everywhere, there would be war.

And his visitor was one he had to save from its horrors.