Page 5 of Lord Fournier’s Shameless Princess (Scarlett Affairs #4)

“D irk.” He leaned forward, trying to see whoever chased them. “Nice knife.” Their coachman gave a cry and a lash of his whip to the horses. “Do you shoot, as well?”

She balanced herself on the bench as the coach lurched forward. She cast him a stern look of reproach. Then snorted. “Very well. Have you a pistol?”

He dug one from beneath the cushions of his seat. It was a beauty, too. Long, silver plated, with an ivory handle.

“My, my. That is lovely.” She pointed at him and smiled, but she was still put out. “But did you load it?”

“Of course I loaded it.” His attention was still focused on whatever he might glimpse coming at them from behind. Even with his dodging, he had challenges to see them clearly.

She bent, opened her small saddlebag at her feet, and extracted her lady’s pistol.

“Nice,” he praised her.

“Loaded, too,” she said with an arched brow and great satisfaction.

“You surprise me. Constantly. Liesel .”

“So good to meet your approval. Diedrich .”

“Dirk.” He winked at her. “No more arguments.”

Her attraction to him multiplied, but the moment was full of danger. No time for admiration or conflict between them. “We must best them.”

“Those who fight together are friends.”

Their coachman yelled, working hard to harry the horses.

“Those who flee together should be,” she replied.

“Now is the time,” he said, and nodded for her to brace herself.

Their speed increased. She swayed forward with the surge, almost falling into him.

“What say you?” she asked him in a shout as she tried to keep her voice up against the clatter of their old coach. God knew she had trouble balancing on the jiggling seat. “Can we outpace them?”

“Depends—their horses against the fittings of this coach.”

She shook her head. “Ba! It’s old, Dirk.” She’d gotten a good look at the fittings in the stables where he purchased it. The wheels looked new, but the two of them had not experienced much comfort. “The frame could crack with too much pressure.”

He indicated his gun and hers. “We’ll fight so none of that matters.”

She nodded, her eyes locked on his as one rider came abreast of their window.

Dirk gave her one last, reassuring look, then knocked his pistol against the frame of the window. “A little closer, you bastard.”

She eased toward the window and copied his position, her pistol to her own frame.

But the first horseman’s partner came right up behind him, brandishing a very long gun that made Liesel wince. It appeared to be a rifle, one used for hunting. Unless the man was a contortionist, his weapon was nigh unto useless.

Dirk fired at them.

In a haze of smoke and surprise, she took aim at moonlight glancing off the shiny, threadbare coat of one attacker.

“Got him!” Dirk yelled in triumph. Then he fired off another shot at his mate.

She inched around the window again, aimed at a hazy figure, and fired. But her pistol coughed. Damn. A fine time to choke. But she glanced at his friend’s very ugly face and knew she had to do one thing.

She fingered her stiletto and gauged how far he was from her. She waited one tiny moment…and flung it at him.

The man yelped like a stuck pig. A hand to his cheek, he yanked like a clown at the long Tuscan blade sticking from his skin. His words were blue, his tone angry, his blood dark.

She fell back against the squabs, grinning, proud of herself. “Gone!”

Dirk sat, eyes wide, staring at her with pride. “His pronunciation lacked a certain…” He circled a hand in the air.

“Precision?” She gave a shaky laugh. “I do applaud anyone who takes time to make good conversation.”

The two highwaymen had fallen by the wayside. And their coachman yelled to their team of horses to get them on their way.

“I plan,” said Dirk with a wide grin and no small bit of awe, “on keeping you with me.”

She preened, teasing him with a shrug of her shoulder. “For conversation?”

“For self-preservation!”

*

The next night, dusk had fallen as their coach raced through the walled medieval gates of the city of Rittenburg. The gilded town clock visible for miles down the gently flowing Main River stuck half nine as the coachman approached the red-and-white stone Renaissance palace that had once been Liesel’s home.

She leaned nearer the open window, the night breeze refreshing her as much as the return to her city. She’d not seen her home since October. That had been a hurried midnight affair to check on rumors that her brother had appeared there.

In Berlin, it was said, he had attempted to assassinate the French envoy, Anton Marchand, then flee home. But Rainer had not been there that night. Nor had he planned to kill anyone. So said their Burgmann, Herr Becker. True, Rainer had left her an encrypted note, denying any rumors of his attempt to kill the Frenchman. But neither had she heard, after that night in October, where her brother had gone.

Tonight she returned home to do the work that Rainer should have done that night. Any night. But they were not people who did the expected, the ordinary. Wherever Rainer was, he had reason to be there and not here. She knew that. She trusted him for that. Now she was picking up his pieces.

She shook away Rainer’s failure to keep their family from abduction, then let a sigh seep through her lips, the wind blowing about her hastily pinned hair. She breathed in her childish delight at the sight of her graceful ancestral abode. Her throat closed with all the emotions rising up to choke her. For years, she had pushed all tender emotions aside, just as she’d been told it was her duty to do. But suddenly, her lips trembled and she could not stop them.

Dirk pressed his handkerchief into her hands. “A true beauty, it is. I have always felt rejuvenated looking upon it.”

Liesel dabbed at her eyes. These past few days she was becoming a woman who wept. At the moment, she could chalk it up to arriving home. But she suspected that her display was the revelation to him not only of her fear and gratitude, but also of a tingling new emotion that stirred her to desire the affections of Dirk Fournier. All those feelings were delicate as lace, the threads bound together much too strongly. She should cut them, destroy them. But each time he touched her or smiled or curled his arm around her in the still of the night, she was more prone to accept his kindnesses, more eager to receive all the tenderness he wished to grant her.

Now, he was proclaiming he loved her home just as she had. How could she not smile at him and seek all his memories to thrill her? “You have been here often?”

“Three, four times.”

She was surprised at that. He was a friend of Rainer, and her older brother was a man of great camaraderie with friends too numerous to count. Still, she had not imagined Dirk within those regal walls. As tall as Rainer and her father, as stout-hearted, Dirk Fournier was a man of the world, loving and treasuring the beauty that man and God created.

“I cannot recall the number, only the refreshment of it,” he went on, his gaze sweeping the night, the stars, and the nearing edifice of the palace many declared as the finest in Renaissance architecture. “When I was studying at Heidelberg, a cousin of yours invited us to come. We were four Englishmen who gladly accepted. Your father and mother’s hospitality and Rainer’s welcome always made it a happy holiday.”

She grew wistful, suddenly as eager as a five-year-old to stop the carriage and run home like a child. She’d race, yelling, full of wild tales, arms out toward Mama and Papa, who grinned, ready to embrace her and whisper words of love.

Her tears cascaded down her cheeks. She did not stop them, letting them flow. She was delighted, saddened. Tonight, her parents were not there. Both had gone to their graves three years ago. By their decree, she had left them. Little had any of them known she was never to see them again. Her return now with this man who was her new friend, with Rainer somewhere in the wide world, meant she would be mother and father to her younger siblings.

She could not wait to see them. Her fingers clutched the door handle.

Dirk peeled them away, cradling them in his hands. “You don’t want to fall out.”

“No, no. But it has been ever so long.” She sniffed, ashamed now to let him see her so undone. “Too long.”

He viewed the edge of the copse along the river as they took the turn into the grand circle before the main entrance. He narrowed his gaze, at once wistful, a longing in his voice she caught as poignant. “I am glad we bring you home, Liesel.”

She inched forward to hold the picture of her ancestors’ palace in her mind and heart. “When I left, they told me I could not return. Not for years. I was so…heartbroken and…and…”

“Lonely? You can say it. Only I am here to hear it, Liesel. I know what it is to be alone in the world and to wish to see those we love.” He focused on their entwined hands as his bass voice fell to miserable depths. “One should always be able to go home.”

In a burst of compassion, surprising her, she did not think before she asked, “Can you not return home?”

He inhaled, bringing himself to awareness. “Too many in England wish to see me punished for my supposed sins.”

“They have already done much to hurt you.” She knew the story of his past, the honorable, disgraceful, talented, mischievous Diedrich Werner Maxim Fournier, eighteenth Baron Fournier of Fournier Park.

He was related through his father to the Norman conquerors of France, and through his mother he was a distant cousin to the German Margrave of Baden and to the House of Hanover. As the sitting baron to a title and estate many centuries old, he had also indulged in the prerogatives of his social status. He’d become a talented gambler, losing fortunes and promptly gaining them back. Never had he become known as a debaucher of women. Still the accusation that broke him was that he had ruined one young lady and refused to marry her or claim her son as his own. He’d fought a duel for his honor, nicked his opponent in the contest, and, as the winner, left the field.

The lady had retired to the wilds of Northumbria, had her baby, and lived, so it was said, in a tiny cottage by the sea. Her family had barred Dirk from White’s, his club, cast him from his investors group, then asked that he be removed from Parliament. White’s was easy—Dirk left town. The removal from the investors was trickier—Dirk removed his funds. From Parliament, the task was impossible. Still, he had left English shores—and become an agent for Scarlett Hawthorne and, in the past two years, a savior to many German princes.

Inhaling, he looked at Liesel with satisfaction that burned away her sadness for him. “Despite it all, I do work that satisfies me.”

She assessed him. Handsome, forthright, courageous Dirk Fournier. “You choose the most dangerous work of all.”

“The same as you, Elizabeth von Rittenburg.”

“With you,” she had to admit, “I will be more successful now than in the past.”

“You do yourself a disservice by your disclaimer, my dear.” His endearment rang through her like rich, dark wine. His gaze twinkled with an admiration she’d not seen in any other man’s. He was strong and sweet. His grasp held more of her than her hand.

She breathed, her heart a deep staccato as he pushed a curl from her cheek and crooned, “There is no work as vital as saving friends and family from despots.”

Oh, her sorrow swamped her when she had to kill the urge to reach across the divide and kiss his lips. Princesses did not invite intimacy.

Instead, she sat in her place and gave him a triumphant smile.

The coachman slowed their conveyance and stopped before the massive steps and portico. The red stone castle glimmered pink and glorious against the pale yellow and blues of coming night. Even in the fading sun of day, she could see how the steps had cracks, weeds had grown up in the forecourt, the street had not been paved in far too long, and, at the top of the steps, the wide double front doors were still black with age. The iron fittings shone silver, but that too was marred, as if intruders with mallets had banged upon the ancient portals.

Whatever had happened here was unknown to her. She’d make certain Rainer heard her anger over that. He’d tell her all from now on. She was his heir, and heirs were essential to the continuity of the state. Had they not learned that after the Bourbon king and queen were beheaded? Had no one learned that last week, when that upstart Bonaparte sent troops into another country to threaten the only male heir to the French throne?

“You are right,” she said to the man who was now her confidant. She was suddenly afraid to go inside and learn how her family had changed since she left them. “We stay only as long as we must. Then we leave with the most precious things we possess.”

My family…and each other.