The Ring and the Crown (The Ring and the Crown 1)

“Where is everybody?” she asked, when the driver did not appear. The roads were notoriously dangerous, and no one traveled without at least a team of armed men.

“Let me see,” Louis said. He walked toward the horses, which were idling by the road, lazily eating grass. What he found when he came closer caused him to shout, “Isabelle! Run!” All their servants had been slain—the driver, the footmen, and even the young pages. Their bodies lay on the side of the road, red with blood.

She whipped around in time to see a marauder knifing Louis in the back. He fell to the ground, blood pooling in his mouth, a surprised, shocked look on his beautiful face. “Louis!” she screamed, just as a cloth was placed on her head and everything went black. She was surrounded. She tried to kick and scream, but there was nothing she could do—there were too many of them. As she was bundled up and taken away, all she could hear were men speaking in French, and she could understand them perfectly. “Kill the boy, but keep her alive.”

Meanwhile, deep in the heart of the city, Marie walked quickly through the streets, zigzagging, trying to find her way back to the palace. She had never walked through the city much before, and she got lost quickly. She was horrified to see how people lived—the poor children in the streets with their hands out, begging. The dirty sidewalks were full of horse dung; the sky was clogged with gray smoke. The abject poverty in front of her moved her to tears and mortification. How could she sleep on a comfortable bed, dine on rare and fanciful treats, when children were going hungry just a few blocks away from the palace gates? She had to do something about this…she had to.

Marie made another right turn, and realized she was in a small, dark alley that was ominously empty. It occurred to her that she was alone and unarmed, and London was notorious for its thieves and criminals. It was one of the things she would have worked on if she were queen—to make the streets safer for everybody.

“Looky here, boys,” came a low rough voice. A hard-looking man emerged from the shadows. He was not alone.

“Please, let me pass,” she said.

“What do you have in your bag, missy?”

“You can have whatever you need—let me pass,” she said. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“No clue.”

“I am the Princess Marie-Victoria,” she said, bearing herself up to her full height and speaking to him with her mother’s voice—the voice that inspired total obedience. The voice of the queen.

“And I’m the King of Romania,” the bandit laughed.

There were four of them. She wouldn’t get away. But she could scream, and so she did—she screamed at the top of her lungs—and then they surrounded her, and she screamed even more—and she thought she would die, or worse—and they pushed her to the ground—and she closed her eyes then, because now she was too frightened to scream, and she only wanted to live. But then, just as suddenly, someone was pulling the men off of her, and she was safe and unharmed.

Gill! she thought. He found me. Then she saw it was not Gill, but someone else—a boy with dark hair and blue eyes. “Wolf!”

“Stay back, Marie—let me take care of them.” Wolf had no weapon. Already he had a cut lip and his fists were red with blood, but the men looked even worse. They surrounded him menacingly, and one pulled a broken pipe out of his pocket.

“Hey boys, now, that’s not so nice—picking on a girl alone in the city,” Wolf said.

“Go on, boy, nothing for you here. There’s four of us and only one of ya.”

“Then it’s an even fight.” Wolf smiled as he dispatched them in quick succession. A flurry of fists and feet: roundhouse to the jaw, karate chops, well-aimed punches to the gut and face. In a few moments they were all in a heap on the street.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, as he helped her to stand.

“No, just shaky,” she said, taking his hand.

He pulled her close and held her in his arms until she stopped trembling. “You’re all right now—you’re safe, you’re with me.”

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked.

“I went to the Knight’s Arms, but you weren’t there. I thought you might be lost, and I know you—you always think if you keep turning right, you’ll find your way somehow. Remember how we learned the passageways that way? So I kept turning right, and here you are,” he said.

“You knew I was at the Knight’s Arms?” she said, staring at him. Then she realized she had stumbled upon the answer to another mystery. “It was you—you gave Gill the money. You were the friend who helped us get away.”

“Yes. I’m sorry, Marie, I thought I was helping you,” he said. “I thought I was doing the right thing for you. It was wrong of me—it put you in too much danger. But I only wanted your happiness. I thought it was what you wanted.”

“It was, but it isn’t now,” she said. “I made a mistake. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Her heart ached, because she knew what she had to do. She had always thought of herself as gentle and soft-hearted, but in the end she had been as abrupt and brusque as the Merlin. She had left Gill at the inn without even saying good-bye.

Wolf nodded. “But when Leo was shot and they said you were missing, I realized my mistake. The palace needs you—you belong back in St. James, and I came to fetch you, to bring you home.”

Marie stared at him. “Leo was shot? Is he dead?”

“I don’t know,” Wolf said, anguished.

She nodded. She could hardly stand him let alone love him, but she felt for her friend Wolf and his loss. Still, she had to act fast. “We must leave immediately,” she said, remembering what had caused her to return in the first place. “When we get back, I need you to do something for me. The five hundred barrels of Burgundy—the duke’s wedding gift—send them away. Put them on a boat and have them destroyed.”