After an hour, when she’d found nothing that would aid in her escape and had exhausted herself emotionally, she collapsed in the middle of Jascha’s enormous bed. She awakened sometime later to find herself surrounded by women, all veiled, all clad in the colorful, gauzy robes worn by Cabrizian females.
Mai was not among them.
“What the hell?” Kristin gasped, bolting upright and trying to scramble off the bed, but the women wouldn’t let her pass. They gripped her arms and legs, and one of them clasped the back of her neck in strong fingers. She struggled, but there were too many of them, and they subdued her. “Who are you?” she cried. “What do you want?”
“Open mouth,” one of them ordered. Gone were the gentle, subservient tones that had always been used with her before.
“Let go of me!” Kristin ordered. “Right now!”
When the women ignored her, she threw her head back and screamed Jascha’s name.
Her right arm was wrenched behind her back and pulled painfully upward. The command was repeated.
Kristin had no choice but to obey. She parted her lips, and a bitter-tasting wine was poured onto her tongue. Not daring to spit it out, she swallowed convulsively. “Stupid,” she muttered, addressing herself, coming face-to-face with a reality she’d refused to consider before. “Stupid!”
The women were stripping her clothes away, but when Kristin moved to fight them again, she found that her muscles had turned to rice pudding. She was helpless.
Her eyes filled with tears of frustration and fear. Jascha had lied, both to her and her family. These women were his wives.
She was raised from the bed and propelled into the prince’s private bath, where an enormous tub of inlaid tiles waited, filled with steaming, scented water.
The women—she tried counting them, but could not think clearly—lowered her into the tub and, remarkably, began to bathe her. They surrounded her and their swift, firm hands were everywhere, soaping her arms and legs, lathering her hair.
After a while Kristin was lulled into a state of half consciousness. They lifted her from the tub and dried her as carefully as they’d bathed her, and then she was ushered back to the bed again.
She felt silken sheets against her bare back as they laid her down. Now, she thought dreamily, they would let her rest.
But they didn’t. They began rubbing scented oil into her skin, covering her breasts, her stomach, her thighs. Something stirred in Kristin; she felt herself drifting through space, back to another time and another place.
“Zachary,” she whispered with a soft smile.
Her skin was powdered, her hair dried and brushed. Kristin lost track of time and reality.
A familiar masculine voice disturbed her erotic dreams. “Okay, princess, wake up. We’re going home.”
Slowly, Kristin opened her eyes. For a moment she thought she was still sleeping, because Zachary’s shadowed face was looming in the darkness, only inches from hers. “Zachary?”
“That’s me,” he replied, reaching under her and lifting her off the mattress. “It’s a good thing they used powder after they greased you,” he said, holding her up with one arm and pulling rough cotton trousers onto her with the other. “Otherwise you’d be slippery as hell and I’d probably drop you right on your hard little head. Not that it would make any real difference in your thinking processes….”
The effects of the drug the wives had forced on Kristin were just beginning to wear off, but she still felt woozy and very unsteady on her feet. She shook her head. “Zachary, is that really you?”
“It’s really me, princess. And keep your voice down. If His Highness finds me in the royal boudoir, I’ll be in for a rough three or four days in the dungeon.”
He pulled a shirt over her head and forced her arms into the sleeves. Then she rested her cheek against his chest, yawning. “How did you find me?”
“That’s a long story. We’ll talk about it when we’re at least fifty miles from this place.” He caught a curved finger under her chin. “Maybe it’s a good thing you’re stoned out of your mind,” he confided. “We’re about to climb down over the terrace, and there’s always a possibility one of the guards might wake up. Whatever you do, princess, hold on tight and keep that legendary mouth shut.”
Before Kristin could lodge any kind of protest, Zachary hoisted her over one shoulder and headed toward the terrace doors. It was dark and the ebony sky was littered with stars. When she saw the stone railing approaching, Kristin squeezed her eyes shut and sucked in a breath.
“Now remember,” Zachary told her in a rough undertone, “be quiet.”
There was an awful jostling sensation, and Kristin caught hold of the back of Zachary’s belt and hung on with all her strength. The fact that she’d been drugged did nothing to ease her fear when she opened her eyes and saw that they were descending a thin rope into the dark courtyard.
If she hadn’t still been holding her breath, she would have screamed her lungs out.
Presently they reached the ground and Zachary set Kristin on her feet, where she teetered for a moment, to flip the grappling hook loose from the terrace railing and wind the rope around one hand. Kristin lifted her hand to her mouth to stifle another yawn. “You’ll never believe what just happened to me in there—”
Even in the thin light of an autumn moon, Kristin saw the muscle tighten in his jaw. “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” he responded. “Now, let’s get out of here.”
Once they’d gained the palace wall, Zachary flung the grappling hook over the top, then wrenched on the rope to make sure it was secure.
“Not again,” Kristin protested.
“Get on my back,” Zachary ordered impatiently. “And for God’s sake, stop bitching. In case you haven’t noticed, your ladyship, I’m doing all the damn work!”
Kristin put her arms around his neck and climbed onto him piggyback style. “Think of it as just recompense for all the times I had to carry out the garbage and wash your socks,” she replied sweetly, her head clearing by the moment.
He started up the wall. “You never had to wash my socks,” he retorted, his voice sounding choked.
Kristin loosened her grip slightly. “It was a metaphor,” she whispered back.
“You know,” he grunted in response, straining to pull them both up the rope, “the prince probably deserves you. Maybe I should take you back there and let them finish the ritual.”
They’d reached the top of the wall, and Kristin could just rely make out the outline of a Jeep below.
“Jump,” Zachary instructed her. “We’re like ducks in a shooting gallery up here.”
Kristin’s heart hammered in her chest. “I’m not jumping!” she protested. “It must be ten feet to the ground!”
“Aim for the bushes,” Zachary answered, and then his hand pressed into the small of her back and she went sailing off the wall. He landed in the shrubbery only a moment after she did.
She flew at him, hands flying, bones aching from a jarring touchdown.
He caught her wrists and stayed the attack, and his perfect teeth flashed in an acid grin as he looked down at her. “No time for gratitude, princess. It won’t be long before they miss you.”
Kristin started to say that she didn’t want to go anywhere with him, but the memory of Jascha hurling her onto the bed stopped her. If Mai hadn’t come in when she had, Prince