Linda Lael - Escape from Cabriz

“I did get there before the wedding, didn’t I?” he asked, glancing back at her.

Kristin sighed. “Yes. But I wouldn’t have gotten married anyway—I’d already told Jascha the ceremony was off.”

“I don’t think he was convinced,” Zachary replied.

She ducked to avoid a low-hanging branch, and her nostrils were filled with the sudden and paradoxical scent of Christmas. “Why not?”

“When I got there you were naked as hell, and you’d been powdered and perfumed for a night of pleasure, that’s why.”

Kristin blushed, remembering the strange, decadent sensuality of the experience. She’d grown up in Cabriz, but there were a great many things about its culture she didn’t understand. After all, she’d always been very sheltered, living within the embassy walls, taking her schooling from a governess. She didn’t speak.

Zachary looked back at her again, but the expression on his face was unreadable in the thin moonlight. “They were the Cabrizian equivalent of a harem, princess. It’s their job, among other things, to prepare a new bride for their husband’s enjoyment.”

Kristin had already come to that conclusion, and she was ashamed of her naïveté in believing Jascha when he’d promised she’d be his only wife. “I know that, Zachary,” she said quietly. “You can spare me the Cabrizian culture lesson.”

He reined in his horse to ride beside her, even though the path was really too narrow. “If you knew, why the hell did you agree to marry the bastard?”

She sighed and ran one hand through her hopelessly tousled hair. “I didn’t figure it out until tonight,” she confessed, unable to meet Zachary’s eyes. “Jascha promised—”

“Jascha promised,” Zachary interrupted, and his voice conveyed such contempt that Kristin began to feel defensive.

“He was there for me when I needed him, Zachary,” she said evenly.

Zachary glared at her for a moment and she saw the muscles in his throat work, then he rode ahead of her again.

Typical, Kristin thought. Whenever the conversation took a direction Zachary didn’t like, he simply clammed up. In all the time they’d been together he’d never told her anything about his childhood or his family, if he had one. All she knew for sure about his past was that he’d never been married and that he’d joined the agency right after he left the air force.

“What if I hadn’t wanted to leave Jascha?” she asked.

The path was broader there, but Zachary didn’t wait so she could ride beside him. “I wouldn’t have forced you,” he replied quietly.

“Even though your orders were to bring me back no matter what?”

She saw the broad shoulders tighten under his battered leather coat. “I’m not here under anybody’s orders,” he answered.

“Not even Dad’s?”

Zachary permitted himself a raspy chuckle. “Well, he did offer an opinion.”

“I can imagine,” Kristin replied ruefully. She and her father were certainly not close—she’d never, to her knowledge, done a single thing that pleased him—but she liked to think the man cared about her, at least a little.

The glimmer of the moon showed a rocky plateau up ahead, followed by another steep incline. “Why did you do it?” Zachary asked hoarsely. “Why did you come over here, when you knew the country was in an uproar? Did you love him that much?”

Kristin bit her lower lip, searching her mind for satisfactory answers. God knew, those were questions she’d asked herself often enough during the past few weeks as the fighting had grown worse and Cabriz’s relations with other governments had collapsed. “A year ago, when Jascha and I started seeing each other again, in New York, things weren’t so volatile over here. And there was the fairy-tale aspect of it all—we were on the covers of magazines, and Jascha sent flowers every day….” She stopped and glanced at Zachary, trying to read his reaction in the set of his frame, but he gave her no sign of his feelings. “I got swept up into the storybook-princess element of the thing, and it wasn’t until I came over here that I began to have doubts.”

For a long time the only sounds were those of night creatures prowling the nearby woods and of the horses’ hooves on the stony ground. Then the question came again.

“Did you love him?”

Kristin had been stalling, but she still wasn’t prepared. “I don’t know, Zach.”

He didn’t reply, and they began the ascent up the side of the mountain. Kristin felt as though the weight of her backpack alone would pull her over the horse’s rump and onto the ground.

Finally they reached fairly level ground again. “Where are we going to sleep tonight?” she asked, breathless from the effort of holding on to the pommel of her saddle.

Zachary gave her a sour look. “The Ramada Inn,” he answered.

Kristin felt anger swell inside her, but she was too tired, cold, hungry and frightened to give free rein to it, so she just rode quietly until her temper had deflated a little. “There’s no need to be snide,” she pointed out.

Holding the reins in one gloved hand, he bent in a mocking bow. “I beg your pardon, your ladyship. I’ll try to keep a civil tongue in my head from now on.”

Tears pressed behind Kristin’s eyes and clogged her sinuses, but she held them back. “I haven’t had my dinner, you know,” she said, keeping her chin high.

Zachary produced something from the pocket of his leather jacket and shoved it at her.

She took the item from him with trembling fingers. It was a candy bar—her favorite combination of chocolate and coconut—and though it was a little squished, it looked like a feast to Kristin. She thanked him, unwrapped it with awkward haste and indulged in a bite.

“Want some?” She felt duty bound to offer, though she hoped Zachary would decline.

He shook his head. “No, thanks. I’ll have something when we stop for the night.”

So they were stopping. Kristin was relieved to hear that. “Umm,” she said, enjoying her candy bar.

Zachary spared her a grin. “Did you think I’d forgotten what you like?”

Her throat constricted with unwanted emotion. It was just like him to remind her of old times, when they’d lived together. He’d left her favorite candy on her pillow in those days, or tucked it into her pocket, or hid it in her camera case.

She blinked several times and swallowed hard. “I doubt if you’ve given me a thought since the day I moved out of your apartment,” she said evenly.

They were moving into the trees again, and Zachary rode ahead, forcing Kristin and her horse to fall in behind. He spoke in a terse voice. “Then you’re wrong. I’ve thought about wringing your neck a million times.”

Kristin sighed. Despite the jacket Zachary had bundled her into, she was cold, and the candy bar had only taken the edge off her appetite. Worse, she was beginning to consider the reprisals Jascha might use if they were caught. “If you hate me so much, why did you come into Cabriz to get me?”

He didn’t look back. “Because I get a kick out of sneaking into countries with names that sound like a line of sportswear,” he answered tartly.

“Jascha will kill you if he catches us.”

“You’d better pray he doesn’t, princess. He’s probably not real fond of you right now, either.”

Kristin remembered the look on Jascha’s face when he’d been about to force himself on her, and she shuddered. “I don’t know what’s come over him lately. He was always so sweet, and so gentle.”

Zachary’s tone was wry. “Little things like the overthrow of a throne tend to upset a guy.”

Kristin’s weary mind had gone on to other possibilities. “What will they do to Jascha—the rebels—if they do overrun the palace?”