As a princess, Her Serene Highness Olympia of Oriens felt she was unimpressive. She was quite a common height, not petite or lofty, too plump to be delicate but not substantial enough to be stately. She didn't live in a palace. She didn't even live in her own country. For that matter, she'd never actually seen her own country.

She had been born in England, and had lived as long as she could remember in a substantial brick house with ivy on the walls. Her home fronted on the main street of Wisbeach, facing the north brink of the River Nen. It possessed the same laconic, self-satisfied elegance as its neighbors, a little string of successful bankers, solicitors and gentleman farmers tucked deep among the canals and dikes and marshes of the misty fenlands, which Olympia supposed were about as different from the mountain passes of Oriens as it was possible for landscape to be.

She drank tea with her governess-companion, Mrs. Julia Plumb, and was dressed by an experienced lady's maid. She ate dishes provided by a German cook, had two housemaids and three men to keep the stable and the large garden behind. In a cottage at the back of the garden lived Mr. Stubbins, her language master, who had taught her French, Italian, German and Spanish, plus the Rights of Man and the truths held to be self-evident among enlightened thinkers like Mr. Jefferson, Monsieur Rousseau and, of course, Mr. Stubbins.

She dreamed, in her yellow chintz-hung bedroom above the river, of widening the boundaries of her life. She dreamed mostly of returning to Oriens -- where she had never yet been -- and leading her people to democracy.

Sometimes Olympia felt she had a great bubble of energy within her, a bubble that threatened to expand and explode in the quiet landscape of her life. She should be somewhere, accomplishing something. She should be making plans, executing agendas, fomenting rebellions. She should not be waiting, waiting, waiting for life to begin.

So she had read, and dreamed, and heard in her mind the crowds cheering and the bells ringing freedom through the streets of a city she had never seen. Until one week ago, when the letter had arrived, and real life had begun with an unpleasant jolt.

Now, amid the befogged and treeless desolation of the marsh a few miles beyond Wisbeach, Olympia stood on a set of sandstone steps, gazing reverently up at the snow-dusted walls of Hatherleigh Hall. He was in there somewhere, girded in this modern Gothic mansion that loomed up out of the fens in a dark jumble of spires, towers and gargoyle-infested flying buttresses. Captain Sir Sheridan Drake -- descendant of Sir Francis; decorated veteran of the Napoleonic and Burmese wars, of battles in Canada and the Caribbean; celebrated naval tactician; and most recently, created Knight of the Most Honorable Order of the Bath for his valor and selfless heroism in the Battle of Navarino.

Olympia slipped her hand from her muff and adjusted the coverings on the potted fuchsia she was carrying as carefully as her cold fingers would allow. She hoped the plant hadn't frozen on the four-mile walk from town; it was the only one still alive of the five she'd carefully potted in honor of the naval victory at Navarino as soon as the Cambridge and Norwich papers had announced that Captain Sir Sheridan was coming home. A potted plant perhaps had not been a perfect choice of tributes, but she did not excel at needlework, so an embroidered banner had been out of the question. She'd fantasized about a presentation-sized oil painting of the glorious naval battle, but that was far beyond her pin money. So she'd settled for the plant, and a gift from the heart -- her own small, leather-bound and gilded copy of Jean Jacques Rousseau's The Social Contract in the original French.

She knew just what Sir Sheridan would look like. Tall, of course -- splendidly tall in his blue captain's uniform with immaculate white breeches, a white-plumed chapeau bras and gold epaulettes. But he wouldn't be handsome in the ordinary style. No; she envisioned a plain face, a dependable face, saved from homeliness by kind eyes and a noble brow, and perhaps even some freckles and a touching way of casting down his eyes and blushing when confronted with a lady's regard.

She'd pondered what to say to him for days. Mere words seemed inadequate to express her admiration each time she thought of how he had thrown himself beneath a falling mast in order to save the life of his commander and then boldly leapt overboard into shark-infested waters to prevent a live bomb from destroying the ship. She wished she had something more than a frozen fuchsia plant to honor him. And yet she'd dreamed, deep down in the depths of sleepless nights, when the house seemed very quiet and her life seemed very small, that he would smile and understand, and value a potted fuchsia as if it were a medal of royal gold.

But those were dreams. Now that she was here at his door, her heart beat a slow thud of self-conscious terror, confirming her worst suspicion about herself -- that in spite of what she wished to be, and ought to be, and would need to be, she was a coward at the bone.

The bell sounded dully beyond the ornate door when she pulled the chain. The moment she let go of it, a quantity of heavy snow cascaded from the portico's roof, pouring over her shoulders and bonnet and landing on the stone with a muffled thump. The front door of Hatherleigh Hall opened just as she was wiping her face and peering out through the broken and bedraggled plume of a green-dyed hat feather.

A small brown man with bare feet and a red fez on his shaved head stood in the doorway, trailing multitudes of blankets wrapped snugly around his body. The servant ignored Olympia's snow-damage and made a rakish bow, sweeping the step with the corner of a blanket. He looked up at her, blinking and squinting with dark eyes in a round face. "O Beloved," he said in a liquid soprano. "How may I serve thee?"

Olympia, standing with snow in small piles on her shoulders and a lump melting off the tip of her nose, wished she might sink through the stone. Finding that option closed, she forged ahead as if nothing had occurred and placed a slightly damp calling card in his shivering hand.

"Ah!" he said, tucking it beneath his fez and hitching up the blankets. Leaving the front door standing open, he led her through the vestibule and across the polished chessboard of pink-and-white marble into the looming depths of a great hall.

Olympia darted discreet glances at the shadowy cavern. Carved wood flowed up the walls in ornate rhythms, punctuated by dusty banners and dark glittering sunbursts of steel: broadswords and sabers, axes and pikes and pistols, all arranged so artistically that they seemed something else entirely until she looked twice.

With much nodding and bowing, the servant told her she must wait at the foot of the paneled staircase. Instead of walking up the stairs he mounted the banister, sliding himself to the top like a monkey up a palm tree, where he disappeared into the gloom above. Far off in the house she could hear the slap of his feet on smooth wood, and then his voice, awakening echoes in the huge hall. "Sheridan Pasha!" The name was followed by the little man's faint shriek. The sound of a scuffle drifted from the darkness. "Sheridan Pasha! No, no! I was not sleeping!"

"Lying dog." A distant male voice carried clearly on the cold air. "Give over those blankets."

The little man cried again, a sound that rose to a mournful ululation. "Sheridan Pasha -- I beg you! My daughters, my wife! Who will send them money when I am a dead and frozen corpse?"

"Who sends them money now?" The unseen speaker gave a snort. "They only exist when it suits you anyway. What the duece would you do with a woman if you had one? Look here, you Egyptian donkey -- there's a hole in this shirt I could poke a nine-pound cannon through, and I've got no shaving water."

The servant replied vigorously to that, a plaintive rise and fall of tones in a language foreign to Olympia, who spoke five fluently and could read and write in four more. The deeper voice answered in English, the thump of footsteps closer and clearer as the speaker moved down the corridor toward the stairs. "Well, send her to the devil! Damned if I'll be ambushed by another bombazine horror in a hideous hat." Disgust reverberated in the air. "Females! The streets ain't safe. Get her..."

In the midst of a curse he appeared in the shimmer of candlelight, half naked, a white towel slung over his shoulders and shadows tarnishing his bare chest. He carried the blankets bundled loosely in one hand. His fawn breeches and black boots blurred into the gloom at the top of the steps.

He saw her. He halted. A faint spark of dull gold flashed from a crescent-shaped pendant as it seemed to twist in the light and come to rest against his chest. He closed his fist over the towel on his shoulder, hiding the crescent in shadow. Olympia clutched her gifts tighter, peering through her hat feathers as he stared down at her in abrupt and heavy silence.

He wasn't at all what she had imagined.

Tall, yes -- but not plain, not dependable, not kind. Not by any stretch of fancy.

The gray eyes that regarded her were as deep and subtle and light-tricked as smoke from a wildfire. The face belonged to an archangel from the shadows: a cool, sulky mouth and an aquiline profile, and Satan's own intelligence in the assessing look he gave her. The candles behind him lit a smoldering halo of reddish gold around his black hair and turned each faint, frosted breath to a brief glow.

He was not homely, He was utterly and appallingly beautiful, in the way the gleaming steel blossoms of murder and mayhem adorning the walls of the great hall were beautiful.

"Who the dickens are you?" he asked.

Courage, she said to herself. It didn't help. She straightened her snow-crusted shoulders, attempting at least the image of composure. She dropped a slight curtsy. "Olympia St Leger. One of your new neighbors. I've come to welcome you to Hatheleigh."

He looked down at her from the landing with no sign of concern for his state of undress. "Good God," he said, and raised the towel to scrub at a spot under his chin. "I ain't worth the trouble, I promise you." He flipped the cloth over one shoulder and watched her a moment longer, his head tilted a little to one side, like a sleepy panther mildly intrigued by a mouse. Then he turned and bellowed over his shoulder, "Mustafa!"

"Sheridan Pasha!" the little servant cried. "I was not sleeping!"

"Yállah! Brother of vermin, do you see this? Miss...St Leger, was it?...has been soaked. Take her the blankets."

Mustafa appeared, catching the woolen bundle that his master tossed at him. He slid down the banister, his loose white trousers flashing in the dimness. Whispering under his breath, he placed the blankets over her, fussing about and smoothing the corners into place. Olympia noticed for the first time that he, too, wore around his neck a golden ornament shaped like a crescent moon, with a tiny star hung just above the lower point. She peeked up at Sir Sheridan, but could no longer see his pendant in the shadows and the way he held the shaving towel.

Mustafa stepped away when he was satisfied and bowed toward the top of the stairs. "You will have a tâte-à-tâte, yes? I bring refreshment."

Sir Sheridan made a sound, midway between a word and a groan, which didn't sound promising to Olympia -- but Mustafa was already gone into the dark nether regions beneath the stair.

"I don't mean to impose upon you," she said quickly.

"Don't you?" He stepped onto the first stair, but instead of descending, he only sat down where he was, resting one boot on the top step and the other on the next level down. "What exactly do you mean to do?"

She controlled the urge to moisten her lips nervously. It wasn't going at all well. He wasn't dressed. She shouldn't have come. She ought to leave. She wished, rather desperately, that he'd turned out to be plain and freckled and shy after all. And wearing clothes.

She drew the blankets a little closer around her shoulders and disengaged the wrappings from the fuchsia plant. "Well -- I've brought you...ah, a gift." Why did it seem like such a silly idea now? "It isn't much. That is -- not as much as I would have liked." Unprotected by the muff, her cold fingers were stiff and clumsy. The wrappings fell away to the floor, and the plant drooped forlornly in the freezing air, its bright flowers gone limp and withered. "In honor of your arrival, and your selfless valor on behalf of your country." She bit her lip. "But I'm afraid it's dying."

"Is it?" he murmured. "Most appropriate."

She looked up, and pulled the copy of Rousseau from inside her muff. She lifted her skirt and started to step onto the first stair. "I also wished to give you--"

"Don't!" His command froze her in place as if her limbs didn't belong to her. "Don't come farther."

"Forgive me!" She backed up hastily. "I didn't mean--"

"Just stay there." He stood up and descended midway down the staircase. Then he hiked himself over the banister and pushed away, dropping a full six feet off the other side. His boots hit the marble. The great hall sent back a volley of echoes.

He came around the newel-post toward her. There was an efficient grace to his movement, a swing and balance that seemed to assess the ground beneath him, to interpret and exploit terrain instead of merely walk upon it.

"The first ten stairs can't be trusted," he told her. "They're meant to collapse under weight at random moments."

She looked from his impassive face to the stairs and back again. The feathers hanging in front of her face swayed as she turned her head.

"It's a joke," he said.

He was taller than she'd realized. She had seen paintings of red Indians that looked less intimidating.

He lifted his eyebrows. "What's the matter? No sense of humor, Miss St Leger?"

"Pardon me. I didn't realize it was meant to amuse." She paused uncertainly and then added, with more honesty, "I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Sadly overcivilized, I see. You've probably never understood the sport in pulling the wings off flies, either."

She thought of explaining that she was considered a humorless person by most of the residents of Wisbeach because she often failed to laugh at the proper subjects, such as a goat with its horns caught in a hedge, or a drunken tavern girl falling in a wet ditch. However, she decided to omit that particular information, unwilling to expose herself. Sir Sheridan was a stranger, relentlessly disconcerting, not the least because he was not dressed, and she had never before seen a man undressed at close range -- or any range at all that she could remember, discounting marble statues. She found it beyond her ability to look only at his face; from behind the protection of the feathers, her glance kept skipping downward, to his shoulders, his chest, the base of his throat.

Observing him from the edge of her vision, she realized with a faint sense of confusion that there was no pendant resting on his chest after all, nothing but a curve of muscle that must have caught the light and created the illusion. His skin was dark and gold and smooth and mysterious. She wanted to touch him.

"My father," he said conversationally, "delighted in maiming flies. Did you know him?"

"Oh, no. Not at all, I'm afraid. He kept quite to himself after he moved here, you see."

She hoped that was a polite way to avoid saying that the elder Mr. Drake had lived in such isolation in this house built for him in the midst of a fog-ridden marsh that he hadn't even shown himself to his steward, but left the man notes of instruction. These missives told the steward precisely where to place each of the paintings, bronzes, medieval manuscripts, weapons and gemstones the reclusive owner ordered his agents to purchase. It had been the chief topic of conversation in Wisbeach for the first five years of Mr. Drake's peculiar residence, but after eight, it had again lost place to Lord Leicester's prize bulls and the weather -- only to receive an enthusiastic revival recently at the news of the old man's death and of his famous son's imminent arrival.

"That's just as well," Sir Sheridan said. "He seems to have arranged for several entertaining pitfalls for the unwary when he built this place."

"Did he?" Olympia was trying, with limited success, to keep her eyes decently averted from his body. But she was cheating. As she peeked, he suddenly shuddered: an uncontrolled, startling move.

Sheridan crossed his arms and rubbed himself amid the shivers. "Deuced cold in here," he said between his teeth -- which was certainly no lie, though he mentioned it chiefly as bait to draw this implausible creature out into the open about her motives. He had yet to determine what she wanted out of him, coming unchaperoned and uninvited as she had; whether it was money, blackmail, minor sin or complete seduction, or just a tale to boost her backwater status among the local gossips.

She looked up at him through the ridiculous mess of wet feathers on her hat, her face obscured by ostrich plumes except for the plump, winsome curve of her chin and one cheek. With the intense silence that seemed to characterize her conversation, she held out the blankets Mustafa had given her. As they slid from her shoulders, he had an intriguing closer view of her high, generous bosom, nicely adorned by moss-colored satin trimmed in black.

Sheridan had spent a sizable portion of his recent visit to London in observing the current state of feminine fashion -- from both inside and out. He judged Miss St Leger's costume to be expensive and strictly in style, not to mention appealingly hourglass in shape. However, his concern with fashion being only a minor extension of his interest in what was underneath, he was well aware that the silhouette had little to do with the figure inside it. In this case, he felt, the initial inspection clearly warranted further investigation.

As a first step toward carrying out his dishonorable intentions, he made a brief, noble issue out of taking the blankets, gently refusing to accept them until she was practically begging him to leave her in the cold. The odd little chit became almost frantic over it, to the extent of offering him her redingote, too, and babbling on about how he must be unused to the climate, having just arrived from the Mediterranean. She actually began to unbutton her collar.

He watched in astonishment as she stripped off the coat. His suspicions heightened. He wondered if this weren't some ploy to get her undressed, in which event he could expect Outraged Papa through the door at any moment.

The awkward disrobing revealed an abundant figure in a stylish green gown, with a large diamond pendant at her throat. Sheridan glanced down at the offered redingote, mentally transforming the pearl buttons and expensive braided trim into shillings. He looked up hopefully. If Papa was this well padded, Sheridan hoped he'd hurry, and he needn't have gone to so much trouble, either.

"Miss St Leger," he said, as amiable as the spider to the fly, "it's far too cold for either of us to stand here. Won't you join me somewhere more comfortable?"

The feathers on her hat bobbled. It was like talking to a sheepdog. He resisted the urge to stoop down and peer up at her from below, instead throwing the blankets around his shoulders and drawing her firmly onto his arm.

He cast about quickly for a place to take her, and settled on the tiny study near the front door as the only suitable option. It had been used recently by the steward, which suggested it was relatively free of his father's vicious pranks. It also contained a sofa of convenient length for criminal conduct.

Mustafa appeared with a tea tray just as they were crossing the hall. While Sheridan settled Miss St Leger on the couch, Mustafa successfully re-created the din of a minor war with the coal scuttle. The skirmish, including full artillery, ended with Sheridan sending him to the devil -- in Arabic, so as not to offend delicate feminine ears -- and building the fire himself.

He sat down next to his guest. "May I take your hat, Miss St Leger?"

Her fingers curled. Behind her, a bank of tall windows painted with a collection of fictitious heraldry dyed the light gold and green, bringing out deeper colors in her dress. She fiddled with the comer of the leather book in her lap, saying nothing.

"Are you hiding under there?" he asked, careful to keep his tone light.

She hesitated, and then said, "Yes. I suppose I am."

He liked her voice. It made him think of sable pelts, husky and soft. Sheridan reached up and gave the green ribbons a gentle tug, pulling the bow free. "I'm afraid, Miss St Leger, that I must claim the right to actually see whom I'm entertaining. How do I know you aren't one of those sthaga fellows, come in disguise to assassinate me?"

A poor topic for levity, that, since it wasn't entirely out of the realm of possibility and thus no joking matter.

"No," she answered, very serious. "I understand you to mean the thuggee sect of India? Why would you think so?"

He ignored that piece of witlessness and lifted the huge, drooping mass of millinery from her head. She instantly lowered her face, staring at her lap, so that nothing was visible of her beyond the cluster of sunflower curls that framed the netted bun on top of her head. Intrigued by the curve of one plump cheek, he lifted her chin and made her look toward him, ignoring her flinch as he touched her.

His first impression was of green eyes, wide as a baby owl's and just as solemn. Dumpling cheeks, a straight nose, and a firm little mouth -- all ordinary, and all in common female proportion. There was nothing notably strange about her features -- and yet it was an odd face, the kind of face that looked out of burrows and tree-knots and hedgerows, unblinking, innocent and as old as time. If she'd had whiskers to twitch it wouldn't have surprised him, so strong was the impression of a small, prudent wild creature with dark brows like furry markings.

Strangely, she made him want to smile, as if he'd just pulled aside a branch and discovered a nightingale staring gravely back at him from its nest. He found himself reacting in the same way, consciously containing his moves and his voice, as if he might startle her away.

"Hullo," he said softly, giving her a light, suggestive chuck beneath her plump chin as he let her go. "Honored to meet you, Miss St Leger."

She held out the book. "This is for you."

Sheridan looked down at the small volume. He opened it in the middle, read a line of some French nonsense about the "social compact," and then a phrase asserting that when a prince told a citizen it was expedient he should die for the state, that citizen ought to die.

A nice idea. He hoped Monsieur Rousseau had been fortunate to experience the social gratification of perishing with a bullet in his belly and his legs torn off by cannon shot. Personally, having been invited to die more frequently than was polite in the interests of a bunch of blockheaded bureaucrats, Sheridan looked upon the sentiment with some skepticism.

He flipped back and paused at the flyleaf. In a careful hand, Miss St Leger had written something in Latin. Since Sheridan's formal schooling had ended at the age of ten, he could only frown at it and hum-hum and look wise, not wishing to tarnish her image of hire, which was clearly exalted and ought to be taken advantage of before the new wore off.

"Thank you," he said, looking up at her. "I'll treasure this."

Her lips parted slightly. She managed to smile without smiling, her serious face ashine with pleasure -- real pleasure, which was something he recognized only because he'd never seen it before, not on any of the hundreds of faces which had smirked vainly or proudly or coyly at him as he played out his hero farce.

It was Sheridan who looked away, feeling unexpectedly awkward. She was outlandish and yet curiously lovely in her sparrowish, humble way. It made him uncomfortable. He was partial to beautiful women; he liked prettiness as well as the next man. But this was something different. Something that touched him in obscure and half-forgotten places. In his soul, he might have said, if he'd thought he still had one to stir.

Which he didn't, as he proved to himself by lowering his eyelids and enjoying the deliberate and easy kindling of more familiar sensations. Her dress, cut in a modish horizontal line across her bosom, revealed quite enough to assure him that nothing artificial amplified the swell of her breasts. The straight neckline made an inviting path, starting low on her shoulders and crossing the opulent expanse of skin at a point that on most females would have been perfectly modest, but which on Miss St Leger clearly showed the shadowy prelude to a luxurious cleavage.

He shifted the blanket a little to hide his interest, which was rather more than intellectual, and bought some time by pouring for them both. Undecided on the best approach to achieving a considerably closer acquaintance, he found himself sitting next to her and sipping like a schoolboy at a charity tea.

Her motives still baffled him. It was beginning to look unlikely that Outraged Papa would appear. Possibly she was going to ask Sheridan for money for Distressed Needlewomen or something, but if so, she was taking her sweet time about it. He looked at her slantwise and saw her chew her lower lip, obviously working herself up to the point.

He sipped again and waited to see what it was. Watching her face, rolling sweetness on his tongue, savoring both after months of forced abstinence from every civilized pleasure, he slowly allowed himself to slide into tranquil sensuality. He appreciated simply existing, enjoying the cool air on his face and the warmth the blankets radiated back from his bare skin, the feel of his spine pressed up to the solid horsehair couch. His career had taught him one true thing amid the folly -- there were few enough moments of peace in life. He took this one and treasured it with sincere gratitude, which was as close to religion as he came these days.

Miss St Leger stopped chewing her lip. She seemed content with the silence, sitting with the mute patience of a dog or a cat, staring pensively into the struggling fire. Her lowered profile emphasized her chubby chin, creating a picture that Sheridan found genuine and vulnerable to the point of painfulness. She should have known better than to display her little faults so conspicuously; any other woman he'd ever met would have. Spinsters whose beauty had gone to wattle still had the presence of mind to preen and maneuver themselves into presenting their best angle to a new acquaintance. He wondered if she had ever set out to seduce a man before.

He caught himself in that thought. Vain bastard he'd become, with all the misplaced glory and its agreeable effect on females -- but for God's sake, what else could she possibly want from him? To call like this, alone, unchaperoned...he'd been out of the country for a long time, but not that long. Morals had not become so cavalier in his absence. The consequences for her were monstrous, and yet there she sat, asking nothing, hinting nothing. If she'd simply wished to bestow upon him a dead pot plant and seditious literature, she could have had them delivered. And certainly ought to have.

As he observed her in musing silence, a novel thought occurred to him. It slipped through his mind so subtly that it seemed to mingle like smoke with his physical perceptions, with the way the dim light through the stained-glass window fell across her hair in little iridescent rainbows, and the scent of old tobacco and dust lingered in the room. He wondered, absurdly, if this was what she had come for -- simply to sit in the stillness and be alive and share it with him.

Something inside, some tiny something he hadn't even known was there, seemed to unfold, to spread tentative petals open like a desert flower sensing rain.

She turned and looked up at him, her great, unblinking eyes full of cryptic forest wisdom. He thought foolishly: Let me stay here. I need this.

"I've come to ask you a favor," she said.

If she'd dashed him in the face with her tea dregs, she could not have shattered the instant so effectively. He set his cup on the saucer. "Naturally." He smiled, aware of the way his mouth didn't quite manage humor, but caught at irony. "What is it, Miss St Leger?"

Olympia had been gathering herself piece by piece to get to this moment, amazed in every second at his tolerance and simple hospitality. It was immensely encouraging, far more than she'd expected, that he would sit so patiently while she dealt with her terror. Afraid now that her daring would collapse if she hesitated, she began to speak as quickly as possible.

"Of course I have no right to ask anything of you, I know," she said. "But I am desperate." She hesitated, saw one dark eyebrow begin to arch at that, and rushed on. "I must leave the country, and I don't know how to go about it, and I have no one I can ask to help me."

He put his cup on the side table. The sofa creaked as he stood up, pulling the blankets over his shoulders. At the hearth, he picked up the iron poker, rotating it in both hands for a moment, looking down at the brass handle. Then he turned to the fire and shifted some of the coals.

Facing away from her, he asked, "What have you done?"

"Oh, no," she exclaimed hastily. "You mustn't think that! I haven't explained myself well, of course -- but please be assured there is no crime of any sort. I haven't done anything. I'm not fleeing, exactly. It is that I must get to Rome as soon as possible. The reason is..." She wrapped her fingers around themselves and squeezed. "Personal."

He looked sideways at her. "I see. Personal."

It seemed astonishingly rude to reserve her reasons, now that he'd pointed it out. But the whole thing was awful and outrageous anyway, almost unreal, so impossible did it seem that she'd actually come here, that her body had taken the steps her mind had only imagined.

He stood in stillness by the fire, The blankets had slipped off one shoulder to hang down his bare back. She stared at his arm, the long, relaxed curve of muscle down to his wrist and hand, where his fingers rested loosely around the poker. Behind him, amber light picked out the pattern on the stylish wallpaper in a dull sheen of gilt.

"It isn't completely personal," she added. She stared at her lap, and then forced herself to look up at him again. "It is in the cause of liberty, in a way. I suppose that must sound peculiar. But I...I seem to have some political significance, you see, and I am to be coerced into something that will be very detrimental for my...country."

"Miss St Leger, I'm afraid I don't understand a word of what you're saying."

"Perhaps you won't believe me," she said. "That's why I didn't tell you instantly, because I wouldn't blame you if you thought it was a hum. But I am not an Englishwoman. I'm actually--" She hesitated, and lowered her head. "I'm actually what the world is pleased to call a -- a royal personage. King Nicolas of Oriens is my grandfather."

The poker clattered against the hearth.

"It's true," she said.

"Good God." He stood up straight. "Good God. Do you mean you're a bloody princess?"

Copyright © 1989 by Laura Kinsale