Free Dark Angels by Karleen Koen

while he waited to be allowed inside. “Too soon you’ll be gone from me. I’m going to write to you. Tell me I may write to you.”
    There was a smile from her, but no answer.
    “I’m going to write to your father, tell him my intentions. I’m going to come over to France to present myself to him.” He was on yet another day of determined, persistent wooing.
    “What will you say when you present yourself to him?”
    “I will say I love your daughter with all my heart and wish to make her my wife.”
    Taking advantage of the empty hallway, he leaned forward slowly, giving her time to pull away, which she did not do. He put his mouth on hers, their first kiss, what he’d been working toward since the moment of seeing her. He let his mouth stay gentle, but he reeled with the feel of her lips, their taste, the scent of her hair, the desire he felt for her. “I will lay down my life for you,” he said, lifting his head, looking her straight in the eye. “I will make you proud of me.” There was strength, certainty, in his face, in his voice.
    “I have no fortune.”
    “Neither have I. We’ll make our fortune together.”
    The door to Princesse Henriette’s chamber opened. Reluctantly, he released Renée’s hand, walked inside.
    It was a large chamber, windows cut high in the stone walls so that sunlight gathered and fell in pools. Ladies-in-waiting sat in chairs in the sunlight, talking, embroidering, and their needles stilled as they watched Richard walk forward. In one of the pools sat Princesse Henriette, small spaniels in her lap and at her feet. In a corner of the chamber was a huge bed. Gold embroidered silk swirled down from a gilded crown, swirled around bedposts to land in a spill of silver fringe. Seed pearls picked out a pattern of crisscrosses which quilted the silk into a thicker material for the bed curtains. Lace, the most costly, so fine that it was called “stitches in the air,” hung down in festoons from the top of the bed frame. The coverlet was quilted out of the same gold silk, shiny and wondrous, as if all the precious metal in France had been melted down and poured to make it. A crown was embroidered in its center, and the same lace finished the edges. It was costly, delicate, as fragile as if fairies had crept in at night and woven it from moonlight. The bed coverings had been brought from France with the princess, as if there were nothing fine enough the English could manage.
    Richard blinked his eyes at the finery on the bed. The cost of the coverings could dower his remaining unmarried sister. The princess smiled at Richard. Masses of chestnut curls were held with pearl pins over each ear. Her eyes were large, very round, very blue. She was twenty and five, had lived all her life in France, at the French court, having been sent to it as a babe as war tore apart her family and kingdom. She had married the brother of the king of France and so was the grandest princess in that kingdom, after the queen. “Leave us,” she said to her ladies. “Except for Verney and Keroualle.”
    There was a murmur of talk, the sound of skirts swishing against the stone floor, heels tapping. All eyes were on Richard, not all of the glances friendly. Richard bent and put out his hand to a spaniel. The dog, pretty and cautious, blue bows tied over her ears, smelled it, put out a hesitant pink tongue, and licked his fingers.
    “She likes you,” said Princesse Henriette. “You’re the hero of the hour.”
    “Am I?” He answered her French with his own, and she smiled. His accent was perfect.
    “You know you are. I wanted to thank you myself for what you did.”
    “Any man would have done the same.”
    “On the contrary, Lieutenant Saylor. Verney, if you please.”
    Alice walked forward, put something into Princesse Henriette’s hand. She, in turn, held it out in her palm to Richard. It was a ring, a twisted gold band with an emerald held by tiny golden dragons. “It was my