Page 91 of A Problem Princess

“I willmakethem listen.” Determination blazed through her. It was her turn to protect him, and she wouldn’t fail him. “They have to believe me.”

He faintly shook his head. “Whitehall needs a public excuse for your disappearance, one that doesn’t involve Scepter. They can never admit to the country how close we’ve come to revolution or allow doubts about the royal family to stir in their subjects’ minds. Blaming me is their best option.”

“Then they can blameme.” She pushed herself to her feet and gestured in the air, having no idea in what direction lay Lord Harrowby’s town house. “They can say a group of Luddites attacked the house, and I’ll say I ran away of my own volition and was too frightened to return. That I made you and the aunties stay with me.”

“They won’t listen to what you say.”

She put her hands on her hips. “I’ll make them.”

“Listen to me.” He crossed the room to her and took her shoulders in his hands. Neither cared that he’d just broken all propriety by stepping into the bedroom with her. “What happens to me doesn’t signify.” His gaze drilled into hers. “What’s important is putting you inside Westminster Hall in your uncle’s place. The men of the Armory will make certain that happens. That’s all you need to be concerned about.”

Not by a goodly ways!“And what happens to you?”

“Once you’re safely inside Parliament, I’ll flee to the Continent and wait there until everything has settled. In a few months, I’ll know whether I can return.”

In a few months? She wouldn’t be able to survive the nextfew hourswithout him at her side. “Take me with you.” She grabbed his lapels. For God’s sake, she’d beg if she had to! “Please, Clayton.”

Unable to hide his grief, he took her hands and raised them to his lips. “I can’t do that. We both know it.” Mercifully, instead of reminding her that generals didn’t marry princesses, he said, “You’ll be needed in Monrovia. You’ll need to guide your country forward and assure Europe that the principality is as strong as ever.”

She blinked rapidly to clear the stinging anguish from her eyes, then bit her lip and forced a jerking nod. She knew her duty, even now, and even though it was destroying her.

But she couldn’t stop a tear from breaking free and falling down her cheek.

His broad shoulders slumped, and he reached up to brush it away. “Cordelia, please believe me. If I could find a way, I would never—”

An explosion reverberated through the Armory.

Cordelia ran into Clayton’s arms. Putting her safely behind him to protect her with his body, he yanked his pistol from its holster and pointed it at the door. She flinched and stifled a scream as a second explosion followed the first.

Below, shouts and confusion rose in the wake of the explosions. Then came sounds of running and gunshots echoing against the thick stone walls of the building. Metallic bangs against the front gates and doors were met by the clank of weapons being removed from the training room downstairs and the thumping chains of the portcullises slamming down into place.

“Clayton!” Brandon Pearce raced up the tower, taking the wooden stairs three at a time in great leaps. “We’re being attacked! They’re after the princess!”

Merritt Rivers charged behind on Pearce’s heels, three swords in his hands. “Pearce!”

Merritt tossed Pearce a second sword, and he caught it one-handed in midair.

Lady Bromley and Lady Agnes scurried out of their room to see what was happening. They were wrapped in each other’s arms, a mix of excitement and terror flashing across their faces.

“Go!” Pearce ordered. He and Merritt took positions at the top of the stairs, drawn swords in all four of their hands. “Get her out of here.”

“But the aunties!” Cordelia cried out as Clayton grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her forward, not toward the stairs that curled down into the octagonal main room but upward toward a ladder at the very top of the tower. “I can’t leave them!”

“We’ll protect them,” Merritt assured her, then flinched as another explosion blasted from the main door. The sound of metal on stone screeched through the Armory, followed by shouts and the clash of swords and axes. The fortress had been breached. “Go!”

Clayton shoved her halfway up the ladder and scrambled up after. He reached over her head to throw open the wooden hatch and pushed her up onto the roof in front of him. He dropped the hatch in place and rotated a metal bar over it to secure it.

Below them in the yard rose the deafening noise of battle—shouts, the clash of metal, the small blasts of pistols.

Clayton led her to the edge of the crenellated roof and peered down at the ground. A fierce curse tore from him.

“This way!” He raced with her to the edge of the tower and down a narrow metal ladder to the roof below.

She struggled to keep up and to ignore the pain rising in her still-tender ankle, and her lungs burned as she gulped in giant mouthfuls of air. But he didn’t slow their escape and pulled her to the far end of the roof. He grabbed a rolled-up rope and metal rung ladder, the kind used on tall ships, and unfurled it down the side of the stone building.

He pointed at the ladder and ordered, “Down.”

She froze, frightened of heights and terrified of the battle being waged around her. “I can’t!”