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

S he fiddled with the folds of the yellow cotton gown as she appeared on the threshold of the breakfast room the next morning. Fournier stood to pull out her chair and ask her to sit near him at the circular table. “I see one of the maids has a few items that fit you.”

She acknowledged that with a grin. She had on a shift, a petticoat, and no drawers or corset. She liked stays to control the sway of her breasts, but the maid had none that would fit her. Trousers she really loved, and she hated to give them up. Still, she would be grateful and pleasant. “Thank you, kind sir. I have not worn a gown in many days. It feels odd.”

He fought—she saw him do it—not to smile like a rogue as her breasts hung full in the gown. “The color becomes you.”

She tipped her head demurely, though she hoped she did not blush like a silly coquette. She was a princess, not a tart. So she sat primly beside him as he passed her a scandal sheet.

He covered her hand before she’d had a chance to read it. His touch, like those yesterday, inspired a tenderness in her she’d not known from many in the past few years. Whatever this man gave soothed her, and she valued it, indeed yearned for it, more each time he dared.

The look in his hazel eyes contrasted with the caress of his hand. The light in his gaze told of sorrow and trouble. “Bartel cannot get false papers for a lady until later today. You and I leave here tomorrow. That cannot be too soon. This,” he said, fingering the sheet, “foretells no good.”

The news was bad. It announced that a contingent of French soldiers had taken up residence in Offenburg, south of Karlsruhe. Liesel knew they intended to be a raiding party, destined to head further south to Ettenheim.

Fournier was focused on all he had to do to help her. “I continue to prepare today for us to leave. Eat, sleep, rest. Our journey will not be easy.”

*

Two hours later, he called everyone in the house and stables to the green salon. She went, too, wanting to be near him. His presence was a balm, giving her confidence and hope, two things she had not had from any man in years. More than that, the memory of being held in his arms yesterday sang through her like a new and startling melody. No man, except her father and brother, had ever embraced her with such tenderness.

She shook off the distraction. Dirk Fournier was to be her friend. Nothing more.

Liesel perched on the window seat as he addressed his full, assembled house staff. Her frazzled mind welcomed his careful preparations not only for her and him to leave, but for his servants’ future. As she watched him with his servants, she saw they cared for him, and he for them.

He stood before them, friendly but fatherly, his affection for them apparent in his despair at his parting. Precise and thorough, he told them they were to keep the house open and make it appear that he was still in residence. If guards came from the palace of the Margrave of Baden or from any other source demanding to see him, they were to say he had left hours ago to visit a friend in Rastatt to the south. They were to say he planned to return in a week. After that, they were to remain, going about their normal duties for at least two more weeks before closing up the house permanently.

To each servant, he gave wages for another four months. He thanked them for their kind service over the past two years. His cousin Wilhelm Leber, who lived in Durlach, at the older, eastern edge of the city, would provide all with good references. Leber would say he had been their employer for the past two years. Therefore, none of them need fear retaliation by the French or their margrave, if either should be so rash as to attempt it.

Though Dirk wished he could say he would return to them before the four months ended, he could not promise that. He cited his grandmother, who’d loved this little town and spoken often to him of the grace of those who lived here. He expressed heartfelt wishes he might stay, but circumstances concerning the French and their own ruler, the margrave, meant that, as a British citizen, he had to leave.

They buzzed in alarm.

“I urge you to remain calm,” he told them, his hands up as if he were cautioning children not to fear a dragon. “We have all heard the rumors this morning of the French crossing the Rhine into Baden. We have no confirmation of that from the palace this morning, but I am certain the margrave would issue an alarm were that a possibility. Rest assured that I doubt the French will come here to Karlsruhe. They have no reason for it. You are safe. If anyone comes, they will come for me only, and I will be away soon into the mist. Now, one more note. The lady who is my guest”—he smiled at Liesel and kept her nameless—“and who arrived here last night comes with me. For those of you who have learned her name, I ask you to be discreet and speak of her not at all outside the walls of this house. It is her life we save by doing so.”

At Dirk’s dismissal, they went away, many in anguish, a few in tears, all in dismay. More news from the south had come from a merchant of cheeses who had come to the kitchen door. He blurted that he’d heard a rumor that French gendarmes and five thousand soldiers had come to seize the Bourbon heir to the throne of France.

Fournier closed the salon doors after his servants had left him. “They are fine people. I fear for them.”

“You are well liked. They will miss you. I understand why. You have thought of their welfare as well as your own. And mine, too.” How was he so generous? She knew few men his equal. “I fear I am taking you away from your home and your duty before you are ready.”

He poured them both coffee from the sideboard and strode toward her as she sat on the settee. He put the cups before her, then returned to bring two plates heaped with healthy slices of strudel. His smile was rueful. “Careful, Your Highness. You sound as if you may find me acceptable.”

“I do,” she confessed. She’d known so many men, titled, wealthy, self-seeking. “I have not been fair to you.”

His gaze locked on hers, and in that moment, she felt a stir of interest that had no basis in their plight or their shared mission. She had never experienced such a pull of her desire, and she blinked at the force.

“You are not to blame for our need to leave Karlsruhe. Circumstances demand it. It is time for me to leave here, and it is high time for you to return home. Rainer works somewhere, God knows where that is, and your sisters and brother are now our right concern.”

But within her, a great new fear rose. All for him. “Many know where you live and how you have escorted so many princes and dukes from their confiscated lands to safety. The French mark that against you. Someone will come to take you away. Someone will look for you.”

He shook his head, then took a drink of his coffee. “Do not fear, princess. Put your mind to the task and push aside your fears. I have ordered diversions. You and I will go undetected.”

He’d told her that yesterday he had ordered his houseman, Bartel, to pension two of the staff. Bartel was to send out a man and a woman who had the same height and weight as his lordship and her. On the Rhine, the former footman and upstairs maid were to hire a boat south to Basel, Switzerland. They were to take moderate accommodations, stay for a day or two to note if anyone followed them. Then, seeing themselves clear, they were to head toward Stuttgart, going by way of small towns. Eventually, within five or six days, if they were not followed, they could return to their families in Baden. His lordship had given them more than enough German coin to cover their expenses.

Fournier did the same with another set of his former staff that very day. Sending off a male house servant and a former lady’s maid, Fournier ordered them to travel northwest toward Kaiserslautern. That route took them nearer French territory, a good deflection for a man who should not seek the company of any French.

It was not until the next morning that Bartel had secured papers for “Frau Schmidt” so that the two of them could leave. Soon after a hearty meal of sausage, eggs, brown bread, and coffee, they left his house at dawn. For expediency, they rode away from the little capital of Baden on horseback, he in simple burgher’s attire he told her he’d kept in his wardrobe, she in men’s attire that had belonged to Fournier’s valet Otto. Prudently, they did not sail the Rhine. They could not predict if French forces commanded boats or barges up river. It was faster to go by water, but it was also more dangerous.

They both traveled quickly north, undisturbed as two riders of nimble, sturdy horses. Then, in a small village east of Karlsruhe, Fournier had bargained his two fine mounts for the purchase of an old Berliner.

Now, he and she made their way northeast to Heidelberg. He told her he had friends in the old university town. “One is a professor of chemistry. His wife is his assistant with experiments. They make a merry couple, a marriage built of mutual interests.” Fournier told her that Professor Neuhaus and his wife, Gertrude, would welcome him and his friend without any questions. “They know my purpose here.”

That was so. In his friends’ grand old sandstone gatehouse high on the banks of the Neckar River, his friends took one look at Fournier and welcomed him as if he were family. About Liesel, they asked not who she was, nor why she wore men’s clothes. They simply accepted her. Diedrich Fournier was that well known to them.

But those in the ancient university town were nervous. French soldiers strolled the narrow streets. Armed and belligerent, they called out insults to many residents.

“If you talk back,” his friend warned them that night at supper, “you can be arrested for breaking the peace.”

Being sensible, the couple offered them the makeshift bedroom in their rafters. Their large room was clean and neat, but had only one bed made of numerous eiderdowns.

When Liesel saw the size of it, she put her hand to Fournier’s to stop him from making an arrangement of pillows on the wooden floor. She’d expected these kinds of accommodations from the moment he had told he would help her get to Rittenburg.

“You will join me on that pile of feathers.” She shook her head. “You need your rest as well as I. We can lie together and not be together.”

He readily agreed. For that, she was grateful—even if, in the wee hours, their bodies moved toward each other, and at the merest touch of hand to arm, or fingers to waist, one of the two would waken, startle at the proximity, and move away. That was only natural, wasn’t it, for people who were joined together only out of purpose?

They stayed for two nights with the Neuhauses, eating heartily, strolling their hosts’ garden, and sleeping like the dead. The only reason they remained that long was that more French soldiers patrolled the streets the next day. Leaving through the massive Tor gates was not possible, as the French blocked the passage across the river.

The professor declared it unsafe to try to cross. “Your papers are good, Dirk, but we don’t want to test how good, do we?”

But the third morning the two of them had been there, the streets were clear. The French had gone. South, said rumors.

Liesel was happy to leave late that morning to climb into a sumptuous traveling coach that Fournier had hired. Off they went northwest through the territory of Hesse toward Rittenburg.

*

Twelve hours later, after three coaching stops to change horses and dine, dusk colored the sky in skeins of blue. Liesel tried to sleep, shifting on the bench to get comfortable. Finally, on a huff, she pushed up.

Wrapping a woolen blanket around her, she sought to push it up under her head to make a better pillow.

“That is not working, is it?” Fournier’s voice, rough with sleep, reverberated from his own seat across from her. In the shadows of the bouncing coach, she saw traces of his smile. “Here, take mine.”

He was becoming more charming as the days and nights wore on—and it was his selflessness that she admired. What was more, he was one of a very few sincerely engaging men. Who else would pass the time in a miserable coach and make up poems with her? Or discuss the merits and demerits of Henry VIII’s reformation of the church? “Thank you. But no.”

He’d done so much for her. She would not take his coach blanket from him. The night was as cold for him…and she still felt guilty she had been so rash and attacked him that first night last year, when she’d found him in his bath.

She lay down, curled up like a cat. But for her long legs and arms, she’d fit. He certainly didn’t. So much taller and broader—so muscular—he edged himself against the corner of the cab. She smiled. Last night their bodies’ natural surrender to each other on their fluffy bed of eiderdown meant they slept through the hours and she awoke with his arm around her waist, her back to him.

“Not enough exercise today,” he said to her with humor. “I feel the same. Once we get to your palace, we will have to avail ourselves of the gardens before we hurry off to England.”

She pushed her straggling hair back from her face and closed her eyes. “We’ll hike up the hills and practice our fencing.”

“You fence?” he asked with a chuckle in his voice. In the darkened coach, she could not view him clearly. He was a silhouette against the moonlit sky, a big man with platinum hair expertly cut and combed but ruffled now, a handsome creature with long face and handsome, square jaw.

“Why not?” she teased. “Don’t you?”

“A mark of a man’s worth? Ha! I went to Heidelberg, Fr?ulein. Yes indeed, I do fence.”

“Good. We can wear each other out.”

“I have not practiced in a long time.”

“Now, then. It will do you good.”

He traced a finger from his temple to the arch of his cheek. “I once thought little of the sport.”

She leaned forward. “A scar? I wondered. It’s healed now. Do you mean to tell me that you won’t take it up?”

“I do.” He crossed his arms. “My cut was deep. I bled like a stuck pig. I care not to do it again. You understand, I’m sure.”

“So we will play with covered tips. Just for fun. No need to mar each other’s beauty.”

He gave her a lopsided grin. “There is no time when I would try to do that. One’s honor in university is never to disfigure women.”

“I just want to play, Fournier.” She snuggled into her blanket and smiled at him wistfully. “Don’t you play?”

In the dark, she detected a distinct distaste for their topic. “I never play with women.”

That took her breath. She felt singed. As the crux of his problem with British Society and the lady whom he was accused of ruining, did his vehemence tell her something else?

She didn’t know whether he was warning her that he’d keep his distance from her—or if he meant never to be untrue to her.

*

Play? Play lent a new concept to this task before them. Play meant fun. Play meant cooperation. Fencing was one thing. Walking gardens, quite another. They had no time for that.

He had no desire for it. That way was timeless ease, the wall between them opened with laughter and frivolity. He must not walk into that breach. For surely, that path led to more than the delight of awakening and finding his arm around her, his hips too near her own, his desire for her too evident.

He rolled up the oiled cloth that covered the window. The fresh night air cooled his heated head.

She was his charge. His duty. Never to be more.

“I cannot conceive of play,” he said.

“No?” He couldn’t tell if she were frustrated or simply curious. “Why not?”

“First of all, my princess, we do not have all the time in the world to play. We have three children to ready for a harrowing journey.”

She threw him a scowl. Once more her look said he had not needed to be so angry. “Really, Dirk. I can call you that, can’t I?”

For two who sleep together? Hell. Why not? Call me infatuated. Consumed. Flummoxed!

She sat forward and fixed him with the hard eye of a royal who knew her power. “We have servants. They will pack.”

“Pack! Do not joke.” Oh, he was being a bastard now.

“Yes. I’m sure Mara will want her dolls and Nikky his toy soldiers.”

“Princess—”

“Heaven only knows what Katrin will take with her. Cook, perhaps for her apple tarts. Kat loves everything she eats.”

“Princess!”

“And don’t you think it about time you called me Liesel? I mean, we’ve been cooped up together for days. I will call you Dirk, so why not?”

“No.”

“No?” She frowned at him, acting like a girl toying with him. “We are friends by now, aren’t we? I do hope so.”

He growled and sat forward, grabbing her hands. He was not her friend. Well, yes, he was. But he liked her too much to be so removed a creature as a friend. She was too precious to him to even think he might lose her to anyone. “Listen to me, princess.”

“Liesel.”

“Ugh! No toys. No dolls. We pack a change of clothes and sandwiches.”

“Well, that’s not going to last us. We need—”

He groaned and dropped her hands. I need to stop touching you. Stop looking at your eyes. Wanting to bury my nose in your hair, your throat. They were together night and day. Stuck in small carriages. Tangled in eiderdowns. Tied by need and duty. “We need speed. We need to be away. Fast. Do you understand?”

“If the children are occupied in the coach, then—”

He cocked an ear. Put up his hand. “Wait.”

She had to be quiet.

He shook his head. Outside, did he hear the sound of horses’ hooves upon the road? “Liesel! Listen!”

She sat up straighter. “What?”

“Please, be quiet.” Two riders. Two horses followed them.

She stilled. “I hear them.”

“Take this.” He slid his knife from his boot, and would have pressed it into her hand before she brandished a wicked smile—and a tiny silver stiletto of her own. “Ah. You came prepared, princess.”

“Liesel.”

“Exactly. I am pleased.”

“I am too.” She threw off her blanket and put her booted feet to the floor. “Diedrich.”