So, a gentle and tender prince as well as a modest one. A warm-hearted prince.
And a resourceful one!
Shakuntala repressed a giggle. Childish! Stop.
It was difficult. The princess had an excellent sense of humor, when her temper was not aroused. And, for all its tension, the episode had been rather comical.
The prince had found her in the cupboard where Raghunath Rao had hidden her. Just as planned. On a shelf barely big enough to fit a girl, a jug of water, a bit of food, and—her nose wrinkled slightly, remembering—a bedpan. With a stack of linens piled on top of her.
As soon as he had taken possession of the guest suite in a corner of the palace, Prince Eon had sped to open the cupboard and retrieve Shakuntala. In passable Marathi, the prince had begun to explain the details of the scheme. Shakuntala had kept her eyes averted, for the most part. The prince had been in a hurry to wash the blood and gore off his body. (The princess, hearing the sounds of the battle raging in the palace grounds, had been hard-pressed not to climb out of the cupboard and watch.)
So his man—dawazz was his title—had poured the bath for him right there in the bedchamber, while Eon stripped himself naked. Shakuntala had peeked, once, not so much out of girlish curiosity as imperial assessment. A very impressive body, the prince had. But she had been far more impressed by the casual, unthinking way in which he cleaned the grisly residue of mayhem from it.
So. A courageous prince. Skilled and experienced in battle, for all his youth. As princes must be, in the new world created by the Malwa. She had approved. Greatly.
The sound of voices—Rajputs quarreling with foreigners—had come through the door. The prince’s man immediately seized a huge spear. But the prince hissed quick instructions in their own language. Suddenly, the dawazz leaned the spear against a wall and began ambling toward the door, wearing such a grin as Shakuntala had never seen in her life.
The prince instantly raced to the cupboard and removed the traces of Shakuntala’s habitation. There was very little to hide—simply an empty water jug and a bedpan half filled with urine. The prince placed both items in plain view, after emptying the bedpan in the bloody water of his bath.
Then, before she quite realized what was happening, Eon had seized her and flung her onto the bed. A moment later, the prince—still naked—was lying completely on top of her. He swept the bed linens over them, and immediately began heaving his buttocks vigorously. Shakuntala herself had been completely hidden—partly by the linens, but mostly by the prince himself. He was not that much taller than she, but twice as broad. She had felt like a kitten lying under a tiger. She could see absolutely nothing except the prince’s bare chest.
A moment later, the voices had entered the room, still quarreling. She could understand the Rajput, now. Belatedly, Lord Venandakatra had ordered a search of the entire palace and its grounds. The Rajput officer in charge of the squad was apologetic. Without quite saying so, he made clear that he thought the entire exercise was idiotic. A great lord in a childish snit, squawling at the world indiscriminately. The criminals had obviously fled the palace entirely. Hadn’t the three Ye-tai dogs guarding the front gate been found butchered, the morning after the massacre? Almost two full days had passed since. It was absurd to think—but—orders were orders.
Prince Eon had raised his head, then, a bit. Roaring royal outrage. But his buttocks never ceased plunging up and down, his groin thrusting at her own. Her body, of course, was still clothed. But the Rajputs had no way of seeing that. The only visible part of the princess was her hair. Long, black hair, in no way different from that of most Indian women. And then, a moment later, a little hand which reached up and clutched the prince’s neck with apparent passion. Quite apparent passion, judging from the unknown girl’s soft moaning. (Shakuntala hadn’t been quite sure she was making the right noise. But, like all bright girls in a large and crowded palace, she had done her share of eavesdropping, in days past at Amavarati.)