is Cabriz, not America,” Jascha pointed out. “Things are different here. Now, do as I say before I decide you must be disciplined.”
“Disciplined?” Kristin’s fury was so great that it rose into her throat and swelled, making it impossible for any more words to pass.
Jascha was livid. He called out a word Kristin couldn’t translate, and the guard from the entryway appeared. A rapid conversation passed between them, of which Kristin caught only a few words. Then the guard took her arm and dragged her roughly toward the door.
Kristin struggled, but it was no use. “Jascha!” she cried, in an angry plea for reason, as she was propelled out of the study and up the stairs.
Minutes later, Kristin was flung unceremoniously into a large room and the door was locked behind her.
Wildly, she looked around. The place was huge, and sumptuously furnished. The chairs and sofas were all upholstered in colorful silk, and heavy damask curtains surrounded the enormous bed, which stood on a dais. There was an ivory fireplace, even though the temperature in that part of Cabriz never dipped low enough for a fire, and a beautiful Louis XIV desk stood in front of the windows.
Kristin’s anger reached ferocious proportions when she realized that this was Jascha’s room, and she’d been sent here, like a mischievous concubine, to await the prince’s convenience. She hurled herself at the giant door, hammering at it with both fists and screaming, “Let me out! Damn you, Jascha, let me out!”
After a while Kristin sagged against the wood, exhausted. It was hopeless; no one in the palace, not even Mai, would dare to flout Jascha’s authority by releasing her. She was going to have to find her own means of escape.
She went to the terrace doors. For a moment Kristin had hope, but then she looked over the stone railing. It was at least a thirty-foot drop to the courtyard below, and there were no trees or trellises to climb down.
Momentarily defeated, she went back inside, out of the blazing midafternoon sun.
She searched the desk drawers for a key, but found nothing other than a stack of letters scented with some spicy perfume and written in Cabrizian. Although Kristin could understand the language if it was spoken slowly and clearly, she had never learned to read it.
Still, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the letters had been written by a woman. Feeling more a fool than ever, Kristin put the envelopes back where she’d found them and continued her exploration.
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
