“Where are you going?”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. His hair was more disheveled now, and he’d lost the suit jacket somewhere along the way. His smile was rakish. “Someone needs to fly this, don’t they?”
“And that someone isyou?” She gripped the bakery box and leaned forward. “Gabriel, please don’t tell me you’re one of those men who thinks he can fly a plane simply because you’re good with machines.”
His mouth curved in amusement. “It might be enjoyable to let you think that, but no, Evelyne. I have a license and everything. I imagine there ismuchabout me that would surprise you. Now eat.” He nodded at the box in her lap then disappeared into the cockpit.
He could fly a plane. There was indeed much about Gabriel that would no doubt surprise her. Everything about this night would be included in that list.
She was used to taking orders, so she felt compelled to do as she was told. She surveyed the offerings of the bakery box.
A few of the puff pastry appetizers that weren’t too appetizing this many hours on. Two rolls. And most importantly, a piece of wedding cake, wrapped up to protect the frosting.
She ate that first, though it probably wasn’t her best choice. Still, she’d been dreaming about this cake all week. Ines had impeccable taste in baked goods. Once she was satisfied on a taste level, she forced herself to eat the rest.
The plane lurched, and so did the food in her stomach, but she closed her eyes and breathed through it. The nauseaandthe knowledge that Gabriel was the one taxiing the plane out of the hangar. Onto a runway.
The sun was peeking over the horizon, painting the sky in blush pinks and oranges. Evelyne decided to take it as a good omen. As hope.
Hope was back. Freedom was here.
That spurt of joy was fleeting as they traveled. It would seem she’d doze off just as they arrived somewhere new and switched planes. At one point, they even had a private room on a railcar. Gabriel had presented her with a large meal there, and a shopping bag. Inside were silly tourist clothes—but anything was better than someone else’s coat and the godforsaken royal dress. The best part were the sneakers—a step up from the slippers she’d been schlepping around in.
When they boarded yet another private plane, Gabriel once again in the pilot’s seat, she was perilously close to crying. She didn’t know how many hours,daysit had been. She’d wanted escape, but she wasn’t sure how much she had left in her. Which no doubt made her weak.
“This will be the last one,” he told her gently. “We will have a bit of a drive once we land, but this is the last flight.”
Evelyne seated herself in the copilot’s seat. “Where are we going?”
He looked at all the dials and whatnot, didn’t even spare her a glance. “The States. A new continent seems safest.”
A new continent. A new life. Away from everything she’d ever known. The palace, her father. She was free… But at the cost of everything. Including… Alexandre. Would she ever see him again?
The thought brought a stab of pain, and tears to her eyes she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to fight if she stayed in that thought. “I know nothing about America,” she said instead of,will I ever see Alex again?She was afraid if she voiced that, she might fall apart completely.
“You know how to speak English. That should be enough.”
Evelyne did not knowhowspeaking the language would be enough. It had been one thing to insist Jordi run away with her, it was something altogether different to actually think about the practicalities of what running away meant.
She had been raised a princess in a small, isolated country. While she had suffered monstrous punishments at the hand of her father, she had also been waited on and pampered in other ways.
What would she do in America? How would she survive without Alexandre’s protection and guidance? It seemed unsurmountable.
And still, this horrible, terrifying unsurmountable was better than marrying the general.Everythingwas better than that, and she reminded herself of this again and again while Gabriel once again guided a small plane into the sky, taking her far away from the monsters that had stalked her pampered life.
Maybe somewhere between the two extremes lay a life worth living.
Gabriel was glad she was sleeping, even if he was concerned about the amount she’d done since this whole thing started two days ago now. She’d had a traumatic event. Sleep was good. He wished she’d eat more. Once he got her settled, he’d insist upon it.
He drove up the curving driveway to the home he’d procured for her. He’d had to pull some considerable strings to get a house off the market with no connection to him, but the thing about designing and implementing security systems for the rich and powerful was that he had just the kind of connections that could keep things…off the books.
He’d considered going small, rustic. Some tiny, rural town no one would ever expect to find a princess in, but Evelyne would not know how to surviverustic, and he doubted very much she could fit inwithrustic. Since Gabriel could not yet afford to risk hiring staff for her that might wonder who the regal beauty was, he thought procuring something she was better used to was the better bet.
So he’d gone with the grandandisolated. The rugged Maine coast boasted some beautiful homes, spread out and situated far away from any metropolitan center. The mansion he had procured for her stood on a sea cliff overlooking the crashing Atlantic. He could not staff it yet, until he found someone trustworthy and who had no chance of discovering who Evelyne really was. So she would be all by herself in all that space.
She would no doubt not find this ideal, but escape—even well-funded escape—did not always get to be ideal.
He turned the vehicle off, and this must have woken her, because she blinked her eyes open, straightened in the seat, gazing out the windshield at the grand house spread out before them, the ocean in the distance.
