“I don’t know why it works,” he told her, “but it does and it’s painless. And see? The salve works—one sniff and they drop off.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
Silence fell.
“So,” he said after a moment or two, “while we’re sitting here waiting for these things to finish their picnic, how about you tell me how a girl born in England came to be a princess of Zindaria?”
“My father was English, but Mama was a princess. Papa was ambitious. He’d inherited a substantial fortune, but his birth was merely genteel, so he found and married a princess—”
“Just like that, eh? How did he manage it?” Gabe inquired. “I have a friend who’d like to marry an heiress.”
“Oh, Mama wasn’t an heiress, only royal. She was the youngest daughter of the house of Blenstein, hereditary rulers of the tiny and very poor Principality of Blenstein before it was absorbed by the Austrian Empire, but she was a princess, and that was all that mattered to Papa.”
“And you were born here.”
“Yes, in Kent.”
“So how did you end up married to the prince of Zindaria?” he asked, adding, “Those leeches have finished now; they drop off when they’re full. You can turn around.”
Callie turned cautiously. “Good heavens.” The swollen eye was no longer so swollen. He could see out of it almost normally and the darkening color had faded considerably. There were two small bloody marks where the leeches had been.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it,” he agreed. “All the bad blood is inside them,” he said, holding out his hand. In his palm lay two bloated black leeches, now the size of giant slugs.
“Eeyech.” Callie averted her eyes and waited until he’d dropped the leeches back into the jar.
“There really is no need for you to accompany me,” she told him. “If we leave here quickly, Count Anton will be none the wiser. Nicky and I will do very well by ourselves. I did get him across Europe without assistance, you know.”
“I know, and I’m impressed. Nevertheless I shall escort you. You can’t pretend you wouldn’t welcome an extra source of protection for your son.”
She couldn’t. She’d be happy to have some protection. She just didn’t want it to be him. He unsettled her, the way he looked at her, teased her, treated her as something fragile and precious when she knew she wasn’t at all fragile. And nobody had ever thought of her as precious.
It was very seductive to be treated like that, and she had no wish to be seduced inanysense of the word.
She’d fallen into that trap before. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
The kisses in the stable had been difficult enough to resist, but if she lived to be a hundred, she wouldn’t forget that kiss he’d given her as he went off to rescue Tibby.
Hard. Possessive. Passionate.
She didn’t want to be squashed into a carriage for hours on end with a man who thought nothing of kissing a woman he barely knew, and whose kisses made her forget all her resolutions and go weak at the knees.
Besides he was bossy. Really bossy. All her life she’d been ordered around by men, her wishes ignored, her opinions spurned. Finally she was free: as a widow she owed obedience to no man.
And no man was ever going to take that freedom from her. Not even a blue-eyed devil who kissed like a dream.
But there was her son to think of. Gabriel had offered to protect Nicky as well. She knew he’d protect her and her son or die trying. One couldn’t ask for more.
But it was a lot to ask of a man, especially when you offered him nothing in return.
“You can’t risk your son’s safety merely because you’re cross with me,” he said quietly.
She looked at him, astonished. Was the man some kind of mind-reading warlock? But he was right. Despite her reservations about him, he was a strong, honorable, protective man and she would be criminally foolish to turn down his offer of protection.
“I will accept your escort, thank you,” she told him.
Gabriel would protect her son from Count Anton.
And she would protect herself from Gabriel.
