Princess Annie by Linda Lael Miller

By now, he was probably in bed with his mistress, appeasing the passions he had not allowed himself to satisfy with Annie.
    She had learned a great deal that afternoon; she had seen Rafael’s erection, and felt it against her buttocks and lower back as they rode back from the cottage with Barrett and his detail of men. Lying in the warm, scented water of her tub, Annie closed her eyes and imagined what it would be like to have him mount and conquer her. The thought made her breath quicken and her heart race, and inspired an achy throb down below.
    She might have died of her unfulfilled wanting, she supposed, if Phaedra hadn’t chosen exactly then to burst into her chambers, uninvited, her eyes alight with mischief and some secret she would almost certainly refuse to reveal.
    “The keep is overflowing with gossip,” Phaedra said, in an eager and delighted whisper. “Everyone says that you and Rafael were alone together in the cottage by the lake. Rumor has it that your hair was loose when they found you, and Rafael wasn’t wearing a shirt, and your clothes were mussed and misbuttoned. Tell me precisely what happened—as if I couldn’t guess!”
    Annie was mortified that a reputation could be ruined so quickly and wondered how she would ever face people, when everyone knew such intimate things about her. “Nothing happened,” she lied. “We were caught in the rain, that’s all. The cottage was nearby so naturally we took refuge there.”
    “Very well, then,” Phaedra responded petulantly, “don’t tell me. Sooner or later, you won’t be able to contain the truth any longer, and it will all spill out!”
    Annie considered sinking beneath the surface of her bathwater and drowning herself, but the chances of rescue were too great, with Phaedra right there. “Nothing happened,” she said again, hoping there were no angels listening in, and putting a mark by her name in some heavenly ledger. As it was, she was probably going to be ushered straight through Purgatory when she died and handed over to the devil’s own gatekeeper.
    Mercifully, Phaedra was consumed by some news of her own, something besides the secret shining in her eyes. She was bursting with excitement. “Felicia brought a dressmaker with her,” she said. “I’m to have the grandest gown in all of Europe!”
    Annie was startled out of her own woeful reflections, gaping at Phaedra, openmouthed. Several flustered moments passed before she managed to sputter, “But you said—last night—Phaedra, have you gone mad?”
    The princess laughed. “No,” she said, fetching a towel and handing it to Annie. “I’ve simply had a change of heart. It’s going to be a marvelous wedding, Annie, like something out of a fairy tale. I’ll have a glass coach, and six white horses to pull it—”
    “Phaedra,” Annie said, using the towel as a curtain while she stood and then wrapping it around herself and stepping out of the tub. She took her wrapper from the bench in front of the vanity table and slipped behind a screen to put it on. A moment later, she was crossing the room again, laying a hand to the princess’s forehead.
    There was no fever, but Annie’s alarm was not assuaged.
    Phaedra grasped her hand. “Don’t worry, pet,” she said earnestly. “I shall be happy, I promise.” Her shining eyes lent a certain truth to the declaration.
    Still, having just learned how glorious it was to be touched and caressed in the most intimate ways by a man she cared for, Annie was even more of a firm believer in marrying for love. “Have you developed tender sentiments toward Mr. Haslett after all?” she asked hopefully.
    “Something like that,” Phaedra said cryptically.
    Annie was not reassured, but there was nothing she could do to change matters at the moment. She would, of course, give the situation a great deal of hard thought. There was more to this drastic turnabout than Phaedra was telling, that much she knew by instinct.
    “You and I are about