The Secret Princess Read Online Free PDF Page A

because he’d seen her lowly servant’s state but because he’d witnessed her fall. But her horror ran far deeper than that.
    “What are you doing here?” She looked around quickly but saw no one. Perhaps there was still time for him to escape unseen, before he was captured. “You must leave immediately.”
    The man shrugged off her concern. “I have yet to learn your name.”
    “You won’tlearn it here.” She resigned herself to ruining her shoes in the mud. They were half-ruined already, and the man’s safety was a far greater concern than her shoes. “Follow me. This way.” If they hurried, she might be able to sneak him out the postern gate before anyone realized he was among them. She took a few steps in that direction, then looked back to find he hadn’t budged.
    And she’dfinally made it out of the deepest mud. She wasn’t fain to tromp back through it again. “Please—whoever you are. I’m trying to help you.”
    The man shook his head, looking far too sure of himself, his air dangerously confident.
    She took a reluctant step back toward him. “I saved your life once before—you said you owed me for that. Do me this one favor, then, and follow me.”
    Her wordspenetrated the armor of his self-assurance. The man tipped his head, signaling deference to her, and moved toward her around the worst of the muck.
    Relief gripped her with such a strong hold she wondered at the ferocity of its power. She told herself her reason for helping him was no different than it had ever been, but her heart betrayed another reason. Did she care about him?
    As oneChristian cared for another. That was all. Surely that was all. Whatever prayers she’d prayed for his recovery, the man was impossibly stubborn. Once she got rid of him, she’d do well to forget all about him. What was he thinking, coming here after she’d done her best to warn him away? The man must be daft.
    She slipped into the narrow pathway between the stables and the rear wall. To herrelief, the man quickly joined her, though she realized an instant too late the space was barely wide enough to accommodate both of them.
    He stood so close she could smell the clean scent of the woods on him even over the odor of the pigs that clung in dripping mud to her clothes. Evelyn told herself her embarrassment didn’t matter nearly as much as the man’s safety. Still, she wished shedidn’t smell so awful.
    “The postern gate is this way.” She pointed eastward along the wall. “I’ll take you as far as the gate and watch to be sure you escape safely, but I can’t risk being seen helping you escape.”
    “I don’t believe that’s necessary.” His eyes narrowed slightly.
    Evelyn looked up at him, distracted by her wonder that he lived, that he was here talking to her, closeenough to touch. His white teeth flashed in the sunlight as he spoke, framed by that smile that was almost a smirk. What had he said? “What’s not necessary?”
    “Endangering yourself for me. I came to see King Garren. He’ll receive me.”
    “He’ll imprison you.”
    “That would be politically unwise.”
    Evelyn opened her mouth to assure the man that many of the king’s decisions could bedescribed as such. In fact, King Garren tended toward unwise decisions as a rule. But before she could speak, a familiar scream rang out from the kitchen.
    “Cook.” Evelyn saw the man’s concerned question clearly on his face. “Probably saw a large rat or—”
    “A bear!” The cook’s shrill scream echoed against the stone walls.
    “—a bear,” Evelyn finished.
    “My bear.” The man turnedback toward the great hall.
    “You brought—?” Evelyn started to ask, then realized the answer. “The pelt?”
    “With the head,” he explained, quickly skirting the worst slime of the barnyard. “It adds value.”
    Evelyn’s stomach swirled with sickening fear as she followed him back to the kitchen and through to the great hall. There was no stopping him—he’d gotten too much