Read Online Princess Annie by Linda Lael Miller - Free Book Online Page A

Trevarren,” Rafael responded, and then he strode out of the chapel, leaving Annie alone with the stained-glass windows, the altar and the hard pews with their high, curved backs.
    She was devastated. She’d been so certain that Rafael would see reason, so sure that his love for his sister would prevail. Now she knew the bitter truth—the prince of Bavia cared most about protocol, about another man’s promise, made long ago. Phaedra’s welfare was obviously a secondary matter to him.
    Annie sat in the chapel for some time, watching colored dust particles dance in the light flowing through the stained glass windows. Then, to put off facing Phaedra with the wretched facts for a little longer, she made the decision to go riding and took herself off to the stables.
    The grooms were busy, swapping stories and playing dice with the soldiers, and Annie did not interrupt them. Instead, moving as quietly as she could, she selected a dapple gray mare, slipped a bridle over the animal’s head and led her out into the sunlight.
    “I’m trusting you to stand here while I go inside and find a saddle,” Annie told the horse, one finger upraised to convey sincerity. “We females must depend upon each other, since men are so unreliable.”
    The mare nickered and tossed her head, as if to agree, and Annie went back inside. Perhaps, she reflected, as she pulled a saddle and blanket off a wooden stand, it had been unfair to say all men were unreliable. Her father wasn’t, although Annie had to admit it sometimes took rather a lot of hectoring on her mother’s part to keep Patrick Trevarren on the straight and narrow. Her grandfather, Brigham Quade, and all her uncles, were trustworthy men, too, insofar as she knew.
    Returning to the stable yard, Annie found the mare waiting obediently, reins dangling.
    Swiftly and skillfully, for Annie had learned to ride before she could recite the alphabet or button her shoes, she saddled the horse, gathered up the reins, and mounted. She threw her thoughts ahead to Crystal Lake as she rode along the keep’s western wall, giving a wide berth to the castle proper.
    Phaedra had been regaling her with tales about the magical lake ever since they’d become friends, a few years before, when they’d arrived in Switzerland almost simultaneously. They’d both been lonely and afraid in those first weeks at school, and Annie had grieved at being separated from her parents and younger sisters.
    Just remembering brought a lump to her throat as she and the mare trotted along. Patrick and Charlotte Trevarren had feared that their eldest daughter was growing up to be an incorrigible hellion, agreeing that Annie needed refinement and the company of other young girls her age. After much discussion, they had decided that boarding school was the best answer.
    They’d been right—Annie could see that in retrospect—but it had been a difficult and painful time for all of them.
    In any case, Annie and Phaedra had soon become devoted friends, and they’d managed to carry on their separate traditions of mischief even at St. Aspasia’s. To their credit, though, Annie reflected with a smile, the good sisters had smoothed away some of their rough edges and taught them to at least pass themselves off as ladies.
    Recalling her own escapade on the parapet, however, and Phaedra’s climb up a ladder to the balcony, Annie wondered if all those classes in feminine deportment had not been a waste of time after all.
    She passed several crofters’ cottages, for the walls of St. James Keep enclosed a small village, as well as the castle itself, and rode into the peach orchard beyond. Since it was early May, there were still blossoms on the trees, and their scent was luscious. Annie’s nerves were soothed; it was as though she had entered some enchanted place where there was only gentleness.
    She was so absorbed in her fancies that she didn’t hear the other horse and rider approaching until they were right beside her.