Runaway Princess

Chapter One

The Pyrenees, 1816

"Who could she possibly be?"'

Ignoring such vulgar speculation as beneath her, Miss Evangeline Scoffield posed at the door of the dining room and, with icy dignity, waited for the maitre d'hotel.

Bowing, he twitched his mustache as he asked in French, "Your usual table, Mademoiselle?"

The flurry of whispers started in a dozen languages.

"Probably a wealthy widow..."

"Perhaps from one of the noble families of Europe. Napoleon displaced so many, you know..."

Evangeline knew that none I of the travelers who had flocked to this spa-not the Spanish lord, not the Prussian general, and certainly not the over-loud Englishwoman—could imagine the truth.

"'Thank you, Henri," Evangeline answered in his own language, blessing him with a wistful smile. "You are too good."

Henri's eyes glistened with pleasure. "I live only to serve you."

With a recently acquired, and to her, quite surprising, sense of drama, she replied, "To serve me could prove dangerous."'

"For you, I laugh at danger."

"Believe me, I am not someone to whom y ... read full excerpt from: Runaway Princess ebook