E-Book Overview
The Princess Contessa of Constenopolie has just learned of her true identity-that of an orphan adopted and raised as a decoy to protect the real princess. That doesn't make Contessa less of a royal target.
E-Book Content
ACE BOOKS, NEW YORK
An Ace Book, Published by the Penguin Group Copyright © 2005 by Dawn Cook. ISBN: 0441013554 BOOK DESCRIPTION: Princess Contessa's dreams of living happily ever after marrying a prince are shattered when her "parents" reveal that she's actually a street urchin they raised as their daughter to thwart assassins from their real target.
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To my parents, who sort of gave me the idea… I’d like to thank my editor at Ace fantasy, Anne Sowards, who helped make this a better story, and my agent, Richard Curtis, for without his efforts, there’d be no story at all.
One
It might have been chance that kept my attention tight across the street and upon the mud-splattered gypsy van, but I doubted it. Nebulous coincidences like chance aren’t allowed sway in my life, everything being planned to the moment if I didn’t arrange for spontaneity. No… it was probably my thirst for something outside my ken, my wish to see what lay around the corner just outside my sight and understanding. Either that, or I was bored out of my mind. “Look, Kavenlow,” I said, squinting in the sun at the gaily painted gypsy van. “A palmist. Here.” I dumped my latest purchase of fabric into his arms. “I want my fortune told.” “Tess.” The man lurched to keep up with me as I started forward. “We should get back. It’s not safe for you to be out this long.” “Oh, may God save you,” I complained. “It’s not even noon yet. I’m safer here than in my own rooms.” Whether fortunate or unfortunate, it was true, and I confidently made my way across the busy street, a way parting itself for me as I cut across the narrow avenue for the wood-slatted, horse-drawn van parked in the shade of the closely packed buildings. There was a huff of exasperation as Chancellor Kavenlow hastened to catch up, and I slowed. I gave the thickset man a surreptitious look to gauge his irritation as he came even. His lightly wrinkled face was taut, his cheeks red from the sun’s heat. The fingers gripping my packages were strong from reining in unruly horses, their tips stained from the ink I had spilled during my history lesson yesterday. His neatly trimmed black beard and hair were grizzled with white, as were his thick eyebrows. But his jaw yet carried the firm sensibility I relied upon. He was still my dear Kavenlow, the one to whom I went first with my questions and last with my complaints. Right now, his brow was creased in bother. I winced, thinking I’d reached the balance where my parents’ anger at him for letting me stay out this long outweighed the scene I would make if he bodily dragged me shrieking back behind stone walls. It hadn’t happened since I was thirteen, but the remembered humiliation still brought a warmth to my cheeks. It had been cold when we started out, and he looked uncomfortable under his cloak; he had been carrying mine most of the morning. His boots were dusty, as was the bottom half of my dress, the street having turned the lace-strewn white cloth a begrimed yellow from my knees down. Seeing him so irate, I resolved to stop at a winery on the way home to bribe him into a better mood. If the truth be told, the black leather jerkin and dagger on his belt made him look more like a master horseman than a ke