To Protect a Princess by Jess Michaels

Chapter 21

Ilaria squeezed the inside of Jonah’s elbow gently as they walked along the lane. It had taken three tries to get out of the bed, three very pleasurable tries, but eventually they had made their way down to the village and seen the shops. Now they were strolling arm in arm in the sunshine like they were a couple. Like this was just a day in their life together.

“You just let out the most contented little sigh,” Jonah said.

She laughed. “I was pondering the pleasure of this experience of normalcy outside the castle walls.”

“I’ve been to that beautiful castle in Athawick and your equally lovely townhouse in London—do you consider them prisons?”

“A prison can be pretty,” she said softly. “But I don’t think I can say that exactly. I never felt…held captive, but I’ve certainly been limited. Even before we came to London, I was not allowed to just roam the streets or go into a shop like I just did. I feel almost like an average person.”

“I do not think you could ever be that.” He covered the hand on his elbow with a gentle squeeze.

“Do you think anyone recognized me?” she asked. “That gentleman on the street was watching me quite closely.”

He glanced down at her. “Oh yes, I marked that interest, I promise you. But I don’t think he stared because you are Princess Ilaria. He stared because you are impossibly lovely.”

She felt her cheeks heat with a blush and ducked her head. “It’s so strange. When people look at me while I have a tiara on my head or am standing beside the king or queen, I know they are looking at an institution. To have them see me as just a person is truly a revelation.”

“Well, I’m glad you had a good time,” he said. “Come, let’s go off the path a moment.”

He guided her from the road and down a small hill. She caught her breath as she gazed down at the valley beyond them. It was all green rolling hills and a small lake in the distance. They walked in comfortable silence until they reached it.

“Beautiful,” she said on a sigh. “No wonder you haven’t sold the house here.”

He released her arm and walked away, the quiet suddenly turning from comfortable to something else. She watched him pace to the lakeshore and pick up a stone. He worried it in his hand a moment before he threw it in.

“I know I should sell the cottage,” he set. “Or let it at the very least. But it is…it’s the last vestige of the life I had before. The life with actual meaning.”

“The loss is keen, I know,” she said softly. “And I do understand it, I think. But Jonah, I think it’s a fallacy that your new life couldn’t have meaning.”

He pivoted back. “How? Strutting around Shrewsbury, being a bloody landowner?”

She wrinkled her brow. “First off, being a bloody landowner is no small future. You said yourself that the reason you resigned your commission was so you could focus on those who depend upon you there. I may be a sheltered little fool in a great many ways, but even I know that a good landlord can be a lifeline and a bad one can destroy everything.”

He shook his head. “Wonderful, so I’ll fill in little boxes in a ledger and approve improvements to retaining walls. What a life that is.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Then stop moaning, Jonah, and make it a better one.”

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“I realize that the shock of having your entire world changed has thrown you into a…a funk.” She moved toward him and caught his hands. “But you aren’t trapped, Jonah. No one is going to force you to do anything you don’t wish to do.”

She realized she was referring to herself, but pushed those thoughts aside to focus on the man standing before her. The one who was looking at her like she had sprouted a second head.

“If you don’t like your path, change it,” she continued. “Why not go into politics? What do you call it here…stand for a seat in the House of Lords—”

“I’m not eligible for that. I would have to stand for the House of Commons,” he said. “And half those constituencies are owned by aristocrats. The entire system is corrupt to its bones.”

“A Whig to your very core,” she said gently.

He lifted his chin and fire snapped in his eyes. “Proudly so.”

“Then do what will change what you don’t like: work to reform that system. It seems the world is ripe for it. You could make your corner of it a better place, Jonah, not just for yourself, but for those without a voice, without a vote, without a hope. Is there any more meaning than that?”

He stared at her for a beat and he almost looked impressed. “The princess is an idealist.”

She nodded. “I am. I may have to accept that my world is set in stone, but I must hold on to hope that the wider world isn’t. That people who care about what is right and good and just will change the course of the future for the better.” She reached up and patted his cheek gently. “Rather than mourning what they’ve lost.”

He pursed his lips. “Yes, so you’ve said.”

“I just think that your father, difficult as he was, gave you an opportunity as much as a curse. You can see it as one or the other, but you will choose your own path in the end. And that is a lucky thing, Jonah. Not everyone gets to do that.”

“You mean you.”

She sighed and stepped away from him. She couldn’t touch him when this topic was in play—it seemed too cruel. “You and I have been over this subject again and again. No matter what I want, my future, like yours, could and I suppose should be for bigger things. Knowing my brother’s position is being threatened from within makes the consolidation of power via my marriage even more important. It is not my choice, but my choice can be to accept it. To stop fighting it as I have been.”

“So you will marry Bramwell,” he said, his tone hollow.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “I must, it seems. To believe otherwise was a fallacy from the start, I think.”

He threw another rock into the water, this time much harder, and the splash created waves that eventually faded to ripples and then disappeared. Like they had never happened. She couldn’t help but see the metaphor to this time with Jonah. Right now it mattered more than anything, like those waves that had disturbed the water. But eventually she would have to forget, or at least not dwell on the past, on the moments with him.

“May I make one more suggestion about your future?” she asked.

He snorted out a laugh and glanced at her over his shoulder. “As if anyone could ever stop you from doing anything.”

She would have smiled at the quip, but she couldn’t manage it, considering what she was about to say. “You should…” She trailed off, unable to say the next word.

“I should what, Ilaria?” he asked, facing her. “I may be a bit of a prick about it, but I do value your counsel.”

“You do?”

“Yes.” He moved toward her a step. “You are cleverer than anyone I’ve ever met by half. I see you watch those around you, making a study of them and then formulating little plans of how to use what you see. You even did so with me when we first met.”

She smiled. “I was there to meet the ship and the dignitaries and I saw you and…it was like everything else fell away. All I could see was this dashing man in his uniform, with gray eyes that seemed to see far more than the surface. And then you talked and you were intelligent and amusing and it was very much not fair.”

“Not fair?” he repeated with a light chuckle.

“Yes. I was rather hoping you would be uninteresting so that the attraction would fade. Instead, you made me spend the next month tracking your every move, trying to find ways to be seated next to you or be part of any party you were a member of.”

“And here I was, just trying to catch a glimpse of you,” he murmured.

“It seems we wasted a great deal of time,” she said.

He shrugged. “Not that I could have done anything about it, even if I’d known you felt an attraction. Can you imagine? I would have been court-martialed. Thrown out of your country if not beheaded or taken to a dueling field by your brother.”

“Grantham has obviously guessed about you and me now, and he seems to have no desire to duel you,” she said.

He pursed his lips. “You were about to tell me more about what you think I should do with my life. What is your suggestion?”

Her distraction had kept her from thinking the dark and dangerous thoughts she had prior but they returned now. Her breath became shaky and she knew her voice was the same when she said, “I think you should marry, Jonah.”

His lips parted and he backed a long step away, as if he could escape the inevitable. “Ilaria, this is not a topic you and I should discuss.”

“Of course it is,” she said. “It may be painful, but you and I are exactly the people who should discuss it. Because I…”

She stared up into his eyes and wished she could just pause this moment forever, never have to say the next words, never have to walk away from this man. But that was not possible.

“I love you, Jonah.”

His expression twisted in enormous pain, as if she had stabbed him through the heart. And perhaps she had done so at that.

She continued, “And I know you love me too.”

* * *

Jonah had always remembered his dreams. Sometimes he wrote them down when they were particularly interesting or he thought they contained some important message he needed to explore. In so many of them in the last two years, Ilaria had played a starring role. And her one line, the only thing he could ever remember her saying in them, was exactly what she had just said.

I love you, Jonah.

Only the difference was that in a dream he could wake and push those words aside. Dismiss them as some silly game of his mind. But now Ilaria stood before him, sunlight glinting off her dark hair, tears glistening in her brown eyes, and there was nothing but truth and certainty on her face as she said those words in reality.

As she called him out for his feelings without a thought for what it would do to him. To them.

He pivoted away, trying to calm his racing heart and shaking hands. Loving her for saying out loud what they had been avoiding. Hating her for peeling away the binding on a wound he knew would never heal.

“I’ve never said that I…that I feel such a way,” he whispered.

She caught his arm, her fingers burning him even through all the layers of clothing. He was marked by her, branded—he could never erase that from his mind or his body or his soul.

“Then tell me you don’t love me,” she said.

He ground his jaw. “I can’t,” he admitted at last on a huffed out breath of frustration. “Does that please you, Ilaria? To make me admit it?”

“Does it please me that the man I love with all my heart, the man I will always love, feels the same way about me?” she asked. “Yes. There are only a handful of people in this world who would be so lucky.”

“Lucky?” He lifted his eyebrows and anger sparked in his chest. “You are trying to tell me that this feeling that is burning me alive, that will haunt me until the last day I draw breath, is lucky? When one moment ago, you were demanding that I find someone to marry? Someone who isn’t you, princess.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and wavered a moment. Then she swallowed hard and said, “Yes. It is unfair that we can’t be together. Neither of us asked for the circumstances of our birth or our lives, but who does? So if I cannot have you, Jonah, then I would wish you to be happy. To not be alone.”

He caught her upper arms gently and drew her closer. “Understand this, Ilaria. If a person cannot be with the person they love…they are always alone.”

Her face crumpled and she leaned forward to rest her forehead on his chest. His anger dissipated and he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. How many more times would he be allowed this opportunity? A handful? A dozen? And then it would be over.

“I’m not trying to hurt you,” she said, her voice muffled against his coat. “I’m just trying to find a way where we have some control over what is about to happen. I’m trying to move on with my life but to be able to know that you are well and as content as you can be. So that I can be the same.”

He cupped her chin and tilted her face toward his. “I know,” he whispered. “I know that you are very much accustomed to being able to dictate what happens. But there is no amount of your blessing that will make this right. We’re going to have to feel this heartbreak, Ilaria. Sooner rather than later, I think.”

A tear slid down her cheek and he caught it with his thumb, wiping it away gently. His own eyes burned with similar tears as the reality of their situation was magnified by the declarations of their hearts.

“Then I don’t want to waste another moment that we do have,” Ilaria said softly. “Let’s go home, Jonah. Back to this dream we’re able to live in for a while. Let’s go home and pretend that we’re living our future together.”

He nodded and leaned down to kiss her. Her arms came around his neck and she clung to him, her desperation plain in the way she trembled in his arms. He felt the same and he hated it. He didn’t want this to be desperate or painful. He wanted these moments they had left to be wonderful.

So he broke their kiss and caught her hand. “Come on,” he murmured, his voice rough with desire and emotion.

She walked bedside him the rest of the way without speaking. Her fingers merely flexed against his, little tremors that were like a vise grip around his heart. The tension between them seemed to rise with every step, and by the time they reached his door, longing all but vibrated between them.

He struggled to get the door open, and the moment he did, he caught her waist, dragging her against him as they staggered inside. He kissed her while he kicked the door shut and then they stumbled into the parlor off the foyer. She lifted into him, cupping his face just as he cupped her backside, and shifted her against him with a heavy groan.

She sucked his tongue, gently at first, then harder, and starbursts of pleasure erupted all over his body. He pressed his fingers into her skin, grinding her against him as he sank onto the settee in the middle of the room. She straddled him, her skirts tangled around her legs, her kiss growing more and more desperate when he unfastened the first button along her spine.

He was vaguely aware of a rapping sound, constant and piercing through the haze of desire and heartbreak that swirled around them. She pulled away.

“Someone is knocking,” she murmured, shifting onto the settee beside him.

He glared toward the door. “So they are. Stay here?”

She nodded and reached up to refasten the top button of her gown as he got to his feet, trying to think of anything that would ease the raging erection pressing to his trouser front and exited the room. When he pulled the front door open, he found a young man waiting there.

“What is it?” he all but snapped. Ilaria was in the next damned room, after all, and their time was limited.

“Sorry to disturb, sir,” the intruder said, and it was then that Jonah noted he was dressed in Athawick livery. “But I have a message from London.” He handed over a folded sheet. “Marked urgent by the king himself.”

Jonah felt the blood leave his face as he snatched the message and turned it over. The crest on the wax seal was, of course, not of his own king, but Ilaria’s. He broke it open and read over the few lines within, his heart sinking with every word.

“Do you have a reply, sir?” the messenger said when Jonah had lowered the missive with a shaking hand.

“I…not yet,” he said. “The driver who brought us here, Baker, he is at the Cresthold Inn up the lane in the village. Join him there and wait for the reply. I will bring it myself shortly.”

“Yes, sir,” the messenger said, and then executed a sharp turn that any military man would have been proud of and hustled to his waiting horse.

Jonah shut the door and pivoted back toward the parlor, but before he could move toward it, the door opened and Ilaria appeared, face pale. “A message from my family?” she whispered.

He nodded.

“What does it say?”

He moved toward her, hand outstretched as if he could make this better for her. Fix it when he knew he couldn’t. All he could do was be here.

“Sasha was attacked in London last night,” he said softly. “They think by the same man who tried to harm you.”