A Deal With Her Villain Prince

Juliette heard a moaning and froze in her tracks.

Who could it possibly be? Juliette, young princess of Lancaster, touched the shirred bodice of her blue high-waisted gown uneasily. Only Caleb, her beloved fiancé, was supposed to be in these gardens.

She knew he must be here because her father’s farrier had told her so when she was in the stables earlier. She usually met Caleb there when he rode over to meet her.

But today he had arrived earlier than expected and gone off to the sunken rose gardens on his own. She couldn’t understand it, but of course she followed him.

And now this moaning, accompanied suddenly and shockingly by a voice Juliette knew all too well...

“Oh, yes! Yes, more, please, Your Grace! Take me here, please, I will die if I can’t have you today!”

It was Alaya, her maid! Panting and whimpering like a mare in heat! What had happened to the modest, pious young-lady-in-waiting?

Juliette’s hands balled up into fists, and her eyes narrowed. With the wind tossing her ebony hair, and a red silk cloak billowing around her shoulders, she looked the picture of a proud, haughty princess.

With bated breath, she waited to hear the voice of the knave who had despoiled her childhood friend’s honor.

Caleb’s mocking laughter filled the air. “Rein yourself in, my little one. I can’t very well fuck you in full view of the castle, can I?”

Juliette thought she might faint. That was Caleb, her Caleb, her betrothed, the duke. The man she was supposed to marry in a week!

“They won’t see us, nobody knows we’re here,” said Alaya pleadingly. She didn’t sound afraid. She sounded yearning, lustful, even.

Juliette could just see the edge of a bright yellow gown peeping around the edge of the grand old oak tree.

It was true. This place was sheltered in foliage and hidden from the castle. Juliette and Alaya had often come here together, to exchange secrets and gossip in some privacy.

Caleb’s hand appeared on the trunk of the ancient oak. His voice grew deep as he leaned over his lover.

“And if we get caught, that’s both of us beheaded for treason, more than likely,” he drawled. “Have you no care for my life, little bird?”

Little bird. Juliette felt winded with shock, yet her feet wouldn’t move to let her escape from this humiliating scene. Little bird, he called Alaya.

To Juliette, he only used her titles and her name, never endearments such as these.

She could feel her anger rising. She was heiress of a royal bloodline, not a meek little village maiden to be so disregarded, so betrayed.

Her bright blue eyes narrowed as the thought crossed her mind that if her father knew about this, the king might indeed take heads for this flagrant disrespect.

Observe, for instance, his bannerman’s disloyalty. Was not Caleb bonded by ancient oaths to serve at the king’s pleasure, and by extension the entire royal family’s?

For a moment, Juliette, daughter of a long line of ruthless warriors, contemplated the thought of bloody vengeance. It was only the renewed moaning and groaning of the illicit couple that made her turn her head away.

She wrenched herself from the horribly tempting need to listen to their most intimate speech, to demand an explanation, and then to punish them both most horribly.

Alaya was now twining her arms around Caleb’s neck, pressing herself against his powerfully muscled form.

He, in turn, was shamelessly letting his hands roam all about the supposedly chaste lady’s lush curves.

Juliette couldn’t stand to watch anymore; couldn’t bear to look away either. She bit her full lower lip, not able to help herself from wondering how it might feel to be kissed like that.

And with a man’s open mouth, too! Surely this was most immodest, unchristian even. Though the sight of it made her shiver in something more than disgust.

There was a scuffling behind the oak tree, and then both parties emerged, looking disheveled and distinctly annoyed with each other.

Juliette shrank back hurriedly into the covering shade of a rose trellis. Offended and heartbroken she might be, but she was not yet ready to confront her betrayers.

“Alaya, I’ve told you time and time again, we cannot take risks like this! Five years I spent courting the second in line to the Lancastrian throne, shall I throw it all away for a desperate wench so easily?”

“Desperate? I?” Alaya’s voice was shrill with disappointed rage. “Am I the one who whores my own self for more lands and a higher title, Your Grace? It is only for my love of-”

Caleb casually backhanded his lady love, watching as she reeled from the force of his open palm. Juliette’s hand went to the silver chain around her neck, reaching for her pendant as was always her custom when in trouble.

There was a crystal rose enclosed within a delicate little case of silver filigree swinging from the end of the slender chain.

A token of love from Juliette’s mother. The pendant was her last gift to her older daughter shortly before her death.

Queen Maribella had been greatly admired for her beauty, but it was her kindness and grace that made her beloved by her subjects. After she passed, the kingdom mourned her loss for years.

And her daughter had wanted to give her crystal rose to such a worthless, faithless, hellish fiend of a man as Caleb Spencer, Duke by title and demon by disposition!

Alaya hardly seemed to notice his callousness, his cruelty. She spat at him like a hellcat, raising her own hands like claws. She even hissed.

“Don’t speak about love to me, my girl,” said the blackly sneering duke. “A romp in the hay in exchange for your mistress’s secrets, that’s all you ever wanted from me!”

“I wanted you! You! Had I been the princess, I would scarcely have been so oblivious of your attentions, nor would I protest my maidenly innocence so much as to drive you into another’s arms! How I’ve kept my mouth shut around that stuck-up little prig all these years, I hardly know myself!”

Caleb bared his teeth at her. “You’d do well to shut your pretty little mouth for good, Alaya. Have I not promised you gold and silks and horses of your own, once I’ve married your mistress? After she gives me an heir, you and I can do what we want, after all!”

“Oh, a son from her, yes! Five years at her beck and call, all those nights on my back for you, and you will not once consider marrying me instead!”

Juliette’s throat constricted. Five years. She herself was barely twenty one, Alaya only two years older. So when she was sixteen, her own maid stole her betrothed, and she never knew a thing about it.

All these years of closeness with her dearest friend, closer to her than her own brother and sister, her true ally, and not once did Alaya mention that they both loved the same man, despite all the other secrets they shared.

Juliette’s eyes were brimming over with heartbreak and self-pity, now. Her girlish dreams of marrying a noble duke were crushed forever. Young as she was, she knew she’d never give her heart so trustingly ever again.

She turned with her fist still tightly clenched to her chest, walking away as quickly as she could. She had to go tell her father, her older brother as well, that she could not marry Caleb, Duke of Spencer after all.

Thankfully they were out scouting, so she would have some time to compose her thoughts. Time to find the words to express her regret, without revealing the humiliation.

Maybe they would understand, and be kind. She hoped so. Or maybe they would be angry, and threaten to send her to a convent.

Juliette gulped miserably. Her younger sister Skyler, extremely clever and virtuous to boot, would never disappoint their father like this. And the Crown Prince Marcus, himself expected to marry well for the sake of the succession, wouldn’t even understand it.

Probably. Probably she was doomed to die alone and unloved, like Elaine, the Lily Maid of Astolat. Juliette’s eyelashes fluttered woefully.

So much for the Arturian tales! Chivalry was declared dead on arrival in these dark times. Juliette swore to herself she would never be so- so oblivious again.

What else had they called her? Ah, yes. A prig. And stuck-up, as well. What an unloveable princess she was turning out to be, for all her dreams of being cherished in the holy state of matrimony a week hence.

She hurried along, but then realized she’d lost her way in the high hedges of the court maze.

Juliette turned back to find her bearings, and found herself face-to-face with her knavish betrothed instead. He was still tucking his fine linen shirt back into his breeches.

Behind him, Alaya stopped short with her thin lips shaped in an “O” of shock. Her royal mistress ignored her presence entirely.

“Your Grace,” said Juliette, in a voice with only a little tremble in it.

“Highness!” exclaimed the duke. He brushed his chestnut brown locks back from his forehead hastily, looking thoroughly disconcerted. “I didn’t know- that is to say, I wasn’t aware that you were nearby.”

Juliette raised her eyebrows and released the pendant, letting her hands fall to her sides in a fine display of contempt.

“I make no doubt of that, my dearest love,” she said icily. The steel showed through the soft words, and the duke flinched.

Alaya found her voice, but to no real effect. She began to stutter and stammer weakly.

“H-highness, I was just coming to find you. Since His Grace arrived early, I knew you would w-wish to be prepared to see him, so I-”

“Silence!” The command came out like a thunderclap. It was easy to see the young princess was enraged.

The maid shrank into herself. The duke shifted uneasily. And Juliette bared her teeth at both of them in the most lady-like way she could manage, thoroughly enjoying their discomfort.

Caleb tried to smile weakly, but Juliette was having none of it. With the first word that escaped his mouth, she erupted.

“Highness-” said Caleb. And Juliette drew her hand back and slapped him across his lying, treacherous mouth.

From not too far away, on the roof of the rose pavilion, a pair of amber eyes spied upon the scene.

Entranced by the princess’s beauty, but interested as well in this sudden turn of events. With a grand royal wedding barely a week away, banns already put up, and nobles and courtiers assembled from thousands of miles around, surely a broken betrothal would cause a huge embarrassment for the Lancastrian king!

She was a fool, to be sure, this spoiled little princess. But young and beautiful, and not lacking in dignity. Nor in courage, truth be told.

A clever man could make use of this information. A clever spy could certainly profit by listening closely to what many of the assembled noblemen would pay dearly to know.

The spy raised one scarred eyebrow thoughtfully. He considered that there might be a way to use the princess’s heartbreak to his own advantage...