The Wild Princess

Seventeen



She wouldn’t have known that someone had entered the room but for the sudden draft that breathed across her bare skin a moment after Donovan rolled off of her. Only then did she hear the voices.

Still half asleep, woozy from the wine, Louise left her lovely, dreamy lethargy with reluctance. She instinctively reached for the silk robe to pull it back up over her. She’d leave it to her lover—Her lover! She had a lover—to chase off whoever had intruded upon their intimacy. But when the voices rose, filling the room with bursts of angry words, her eyelids fluttered open.

Donovan stood naked, his manly bottom turned to her as he shouted and waved his arms at someone she couldn’t yet see. “Least you could do is bloody well knock. What are you doing here? You were supposed to be at the—”

“Which one of your tarts you got in here now?” an unfamiliar voice asked.

“Don’t be talking like that in front of her,” Donovan scolded. “She’s special she is.”

This generated a great deal of amusement from not one person but, it sounded to her, like two. Two men, from the raucous bass boom of their laughter. Inside the room now. And she was . . . well, rather indecent at the moment.

It occurred rather fuzzily to Louise that she should probably make herself more presentable and help Donovan chase off these two jokers, whoever they might be. But her head felt as capable of thinking as a bushel of turnips. She reached down and pulled the silk robe up to her chin.

As her fingers moved up her body she realized how embarrassingly few articles of her clothing remained where they should have been. Her eyes shot wide open at the suspicion that events might have transpired she couldn’t quite recall. Not in detail anyway. And that made her wonder how much time had passed since she’d climbed the stairs to an unexpected taste of heaven in Donovan’s arms.

The fogginess in her brain altered in an instant to a throbbing sensation, which was far less pleasant. Louise pressed her palms over her face, feeling as if she needed to hold it in place. The room swam. Her stomach soured. At last she forced herself to drop her hands and locate Donovan again.

He was stepping into his trousers, tugging them up to his waist while the heated conversation among the men continued. But now he no longer blocked her view of the two intruders. Older men. Both much broader in the shoulders, fuller in the belly than her young lover. The dark-haired, taller of the two tried to get a look at her even as a half-clothed Donovan dodged back in front of him to keep him from seeing her.

“I doubt she’s any different than the others,” the other man said in an offhand way. “Yes, let’s do have a peek at her, Gabe. Weren’t you saying you were short a model for tomorrow?”

“Ah, yes.” His friend laughed. “I need a Mary for my stable scene. Think she’d suit, Donovan old boy?”

Louise roused herself enough to pull up her blouse, which had fallen beneath her breasts. She was beginning to recall details now. Donovan’s hands soothing her. His kisses. His . . . forbidden caresses. She’d let him do things to her that she’d admittedly enjoyed, though now that the wine’s effects were retreating, she suspected her mother might object rather strongly. Her governesses had often emphasized that princesses ought never to allow themselves to be caught alone in a room with a grown man who wasn’t family. No reason was ever given for the rule.

Now, she believed she knew.

Her face flushed with heat at the thought of their recent intimacy. But she wouldn’t have wished away her night with Donovan for anything.

It seemed laughable to fear something so beautiful and natural. This was how lovemaking happened. This secret way of showing tenderness and passion was what being a woman was all about. And after all, she was eighteen years old . . . and a woman.

A surge of excitement and pride nearly chased away the worry that she’d unwittingly crossed a forbidden line. But sorting out these tangled feelings, and the arbitrary rules of society, would just have to wait. She had rather more pressing wardrobe issues to deal with.

Her skirt and petticoats and chemise, in extreme disarray, had become bunched up around her waist. She tugged them down under cover of the robe. Where her drawers had gone, she’d no idea.

Meanwhile, Donovan was having little luck trying to physically force the two men out of the room. Decently covered now, Louise sat up straight, tossed off the robe, and swung her legs off the side of the divan. She planted her bare feet firmly on the floor and stood up, hands on hips, aiming her haughtiest glare at the two strangers.

“These are not public rooms, gentlemen,” she announced quite loudly. “How dare you barge in here like this. I demand you leave at once and give us our privacy.”

Her little speech had an unexpectedly powerful effect. Eyes wide, jaws dropped, the pair appeared stunned to the point of speechlessness. Louise combed her long, brown hair away from her face with her fingers, patting the waves into place, feeling sure the pair would now tactfully depart.

However, the strangers appeared to have frozen into biblical pillars of salt. They stared at her, shifted horrified gazes to each other then back to Donovan.

The one called Gabe was the first to move, and it now occurred to her that this was probably the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti. So perhaps he had a right to be here, as this was his studio. Still, she thought his manners quite abominable.

Having recovered his mobility, Rossetti stepped forward with a vicious snarl, grasped Donovan by the shoulders, and gave him a rough shake. “Tell me this isn’t who I think it is. Tell me, you fool.”

Donovan turned to look at her, and for the first time, his eyes looked worried and his bravado visibly leaked away. He lifted his lips in a tremulous smile. “Mr. Rossetti. Mr. Morris. Really, it’s all right. She wanted to be with me. She did. She came of her own free—”

“Tell me her name. This instant!” Rossetti’s eyes blazed, dark fired and fearsome as a hellhound’s.

“I am,” Louise said, taking an only slightly tipsy step forward while thrusting her chin high, “Princess Louise Caroline Alberta of England—Your Royal Highness to you gentlemen. And now I demand you leave us.”

Rossetti’s companion let out an audible whimper and fell back two steps, a hand over his heart, gasping for air. “Gads! What have you done, boy?”

In the awkward silence that followed, Donovan regained his composure. “You have no right to criticize me, Morris. The way you and Rossetti use this studio, your women coming and going, day and night. Why can I not have a little fun as well?”

Fun? she thought.

Her head was hurting worse after the exertion of standing up and defending herself and her lover. Louise plopped back down on the divan, exhausted, and dropped her face into her palms. But not before she saw Rossetti lunge forward and cuff Donovan on the side of his head. The violence of the blow sent the young man staggering. He fell to the floor with a look of shock and wounded pride.

“Stupid boy! Have you no sense at all? Do you have any idea of the trouble you’ve made for yourself? For all of us? What do you think our good queen will say when she learns her daughter has been fornicating with a guttersnipe?”

Louise winced, her eyes still covered. The artist made their love sound wicked, dirty . . . and it wasn’t. It was a wonderful, sweet miracle. Couldn’t he see that? Their bodies had fitted together so perfectly. It was as if they’d been fashioned to become one. Adam and Eve. Tristan and Isolde. Paris and Helena. They were meant to be together.

She loved Donovan. And he clearly loved her if he wished to be so tender and close to her. How could true love shared between a man and a woman be wrong?

But in the weeks that followed, she remembered bitterly, the dangers of a princess falling in love with the wrong man became all too clear.