Read Online The Runaway Princess by Christina Dodd - Free Book Online Page B

like a living illustration of William Harvey’s Studies of Anatomy .
    Too intimate. Much too intimate. Hastily, she asked, “Would you like a bite?”
    â€œ I ate my dinner.”
    Briefly she considered crooking her arm under his chin and choking him. Unfortunately, that wouldonly work if he had a neck, and he didn’t. So she ate the sour bread in a brooding silence, which affected him not at all, then she brushed the crumbs off his shoulder.
    The trail dipped down into a woods. Nearby a stream trickled over stones, and at the sound, her al ready dry mouth parched.
    But she suspected he would take a request for a halt badly. Craftily she asked, “Aren’t you getting tired of carrying me?”
    â€œNo.”
    She’d forgotten. A man never admits weakness. “Perhaps we need to stop and allow your bodyguards to catch up.”
    â€œThey’ve gone different ways to throw Dominic off our track”
    She didn’t want to say it, but she had to. “I’m thirsty.”
    He halted in mid-stride. “How can you be thirsty?”
    â€œThe bread was dry.”
    â€œThe bread was dry,” he repeated. “I should have stopped and buttered it. And toasted it before the roaring fire created by the bomb .”
    The man had an incredible and uncalled for capacity for sarcasm. “No, Your Highness, but a glass of wine wouldn’t have come amiss,” she said tartly. “Let me down by the brook and I’ll get a drink.”
    He sighed like the blacksmith’s bellows, but he changed directions and followed the sound to the creek bank, releasing the fastening of the cloak as he walked. The ease of her victory surprised her,and she wondered at it, but when he swept off the cloak, she hopped off his back, glad to get away from the brooding disapproval, if only for a moment.
    The chill of a mountain night struck her through her gown, and she shivered. The stream ran almost at her feet, catching bits of moonlight as it filtered through the trees. The damp air smelled of moss and pine, and Evangeline took a grateful breath before kneeling at the edge of the water.
    He towered over her. “How will you drink?”
    â€œI’ll form a bowl with my hands.”
    â€œThat sounds easier than it is.”
    â€œI’ve done it before,” she said haughtily. Tapping the shallow depths, she found a spot lined with rocks where she hoped the water ran dear. Cupping her hands, she brought them to her mouth in one efficient swoop. She slurped undaintily, but she didn’t care.
    â€œWhere did you learn that?” he asked.
    She turned her head and looked up at him, a dark shadow in a land of shadows. “In Cornwall on a bracing walk through the countryside.”
    He snorted and moved down the bank, and she continued drinking until her thirst was quenched. As she dabbed at the water she’d splashed on herself, she heard similar slurping sounds from downstream.
    Danior had been thirsty, too.
    Damn the man, he’d been thirsty, and he hadn’t wanted to admit it. If it hadn’t been for her insistence, he would have gone forever without stopping until he’d dropped from dehydration.
    Had Leona said anything about this masculine aspect? Something about how men created a great and boundless exasperation?
    â€œI’m going upstream a little further,” she announced softly.
    The slurping noises stopped. “Why?”
    She had known he was going to ask that. “I have other needs.” She enunciated her words carefully, the way she would when teaching a small, intractable boy.
    â€œAh. That’s fine, but don’t go too far.” He slurped again. The man was drinking like a long-unwatered horse. “And don’t think you can escape me.”
    â€œI am hardly likely to try in an unfamiliar wood in the middle of the night.” No, not here, but when they reached the convent. The bread and water put heart back into