Princess Annie Read Free Page A

far. Then, swallowing, she returned Rafael’s icy stare, wondering what she’d ever seen in him and knowing, at the same time, exactly what. He was strong, he was handsome, he was good, and she couldn’t so much as think about him without feeling a tug in her heart and a less prosaic response somewhere else.
    “No,” she conceded. “I haven’t.”
    Only then did the prince unwrap his fingers from around Annie’s arm. Mr. Barrett proceeded down the hall, with Lucian following at a reluctant pace and casting backward glances over one shoulder, but Rafael remained, towering there in that chilly passage like some dark specter.
    Phaedra, loyal friend that she was, lingered stubbornly.
    “Do not delude yourself into thinking that I will forget this incident, Miss Trevarren,” Rafael said, bending until his aristocratic nose was almost touching Annie’s impertinent, faintly freckled and upturned one. “We shall, as I said, take the matter up again in the morning.”
    The prince had plainly meant to intimidate Annie, and he’d succeeded, but she was too proud to let him see her trepidation. She squared her shoulders, lifted her chin, and refused to lower her eyes. Annie had learned long since, that one must, in the words of the Bard, assume a virtue if one has it not.
    Rafael shook his dark head, murmured something blessedly incomprehensible and walked on with a brisk stride.
    Phaedra immediately linked her arm with Annie’s and demanded in a whisper, “Are you mad?”
    Annie didn’t know whether her friend was referring to the ill-advised episode on the parapet of the tower or the more recent exchange with Rafael. She was completely deflated, and now that the prince wasn’t there to see, her shoulders sagged and her eyes brimmed with remorseful tears. What had she been thinking, to risk so much for a mere view of the landscape?
    The two girls were headed toward their adjoining bedchambers, which were in the west end of the keep, before she replied. “I don’t know what gets into me sometimes,” she despaired. “I just get ideas—these incredible urges to climb things. The inspiration seemed harmless at the time, I assure you, and the lake was unbearably beautiful, blue as lapis, even with the rain coming on.” Annie paused to emit a violent sneeze, and Phaedra muttered something and stepped up her pace, forcing Annie to hurry, too. “Trees, drainpipes, trellises, the rigging of my father’s ship—” the errant houseguest went on, “I’ve scaled them all. There are times when I simply must see the world from a new perspective.”
    Annie had been nine years old when she’d decided to get a look at her surroundings from the crow’s nest of the Enchantress, and she’d gotten the one and only spanking of her life after her father brought her down from that lofty perch. Her mother, Charlotte, usually her most ardent supporter, had offered no protest whatsoever, which meant it must have been a very foolish thing to do in the first place. For reasons of pride, Annie did not recount the experience to Phaedra.
    The princess, a hoyden of some repute in her own right, was shaking her head in an irritatingly superior way. “What will become of you, Annie Trevarren?” she fussed, with a lofty sniff. “Just look at you—dressed like a boy, climbing out of windows like a monkey! How do you expect to find a man and get married when you behave like a barbarian?”
    To Annie’s vast relief, they had gained the doorway of her room. She longed for dry clothes, a fire to warm herself by and a nip of sherry, though not necessarily in that order. Her desire to avoid a lecture she’d heard a hundred times before from the nuns at St. Aspasia’s, among others, was even greater.
    She put her hands on her hips and stared back at Phaedra, who now wore a familiar expression of baffled concern.
    “There are other things in life besides finding a man and getting married, you know,” Annie said, though, at the moment, she