She had somehow caught this magnificent gentleman’s eye and would have to send him on his way without so much as a word. She could not risk drawing attention to herself with an altercation. No scenes. No fuss. Invisible.
He stopped directly in front of her, dangerously close.
She lifted her head until his face came into view. Her breath caught.
He was even handsomer than she’d first thought. Strong jaw, wide mouth, black curls tumbling into breathtaking golden-brown eyes. It was truly unfair to have so much beauty stuffed into one man. Englishwomen no doubt crossed the street at a run to “accidentally” swoon into his embrace.
She gestured for him to go away.
He didn’t move.
She made emphatic get-out-of-here arm movements that were impossible to misconstrue.
He tilted his gorgeous head. “Who are you running from?”
Kuni pressed her lips together. Attractive gentlemen were the hardest to be rid of. They couldn’t imagine a woman not wanting them around.
Yet she dared not give him a scalding setdown. If her brothers were in earshot, the sound of her familiar voice would give her away. A dramatic scene would be even more likely to draw them in her direction.
Instead she pointed at her throat and shook her head vehemently, as if she were mute. There. That would shoo him off.
To her surprise, he appeared delighted by this development, and immediately began moving his hands and fingers in a series of rapid, meaningful gestures Kuni couldn’t follow in the least.
Sign language. This angelic male specimen was fluent insign language. He was too perfect to be real.
If this had been Balcovia, any of the princess’s companions would have faked a swoon into his arms.
“Please go,” she hissed in her best English accent. Two syllables. Easy.
His chiseled jaw fell open and his golden-brown eyes widened in shock. “You’reBalcovian?”
What? How? Why?
Kuni glared at him in consternation.Shewas the trained soldier on a secret mission, yet he kept quickly and casually outperforming her every maneuver. Perhaps her reconnaissance report ought to recommend that the king’s Royal Guard should employthischaracter along with herself.
“I beg you to be gone, you great snuffling rose blossom!”
He genuflected. “I am here to save you.”
She yanked him back up before anyone saw him bowing at her. “I forbid you from saving me. I command you to be gone.”
“You ‘command’ me?” He frowned in befuddlement. “What kind of person gads about ‘commanding’ other people—” He stared at her and lowered his voice to a whisper. “Are you aprincess?”
“I am not a princess,” she said quickly.
Too quickly.
Something in her tone or her face made him think his guess was not too far off the mark. He brightened as though she’d given him a gift he’d been waiting for all his life.
He tilted his head toward the sun. “I knew this day would come.”
She took advantage of his inattention to hurry past him.
He was at her side before she’d completed her first step.
“How did they lose you?” he asked in wonder. “I can barely tear my eyes from you for even a second. I fear no other woman will ever look as fine.”
She refrained from acknowledging she felt much the same way about him. In another context, she might have let him have a waltz or two. Perhaps even steal a kiss beneath the moonlight. But she was not here for flirtations.
