A/N: I didn't know there was a novelization and I haven't read it, so some things in this story might not be accurate to the novel. However, I would still really appreciate it if you all tell me if I do something different than the novel, in case I make any big mistakes—so thanks!

from Chapter 2:

"Why don't you leave the lady alone now?" a laconic voice interrupted.

"I'm not a la—"

"She's not a . . . Sire," le Pieu observed dryly, making his obeisance. "Forgive me, I didn't see you there. I'm afraid you've caught me in the middle of a . . .business transaction."

"Business?" Prince Henry asked, shock and disgust in his voice. "Unhand her at once."

Le Pieu turned, as if only just noticing that his hand had trailed down from her cheek to grip the soft flesh of Danielle's arm. The Baroness was looking on in amazement, as was everyone else. The prince's attention had seemed to be wandering in the last few minutes, but no one had really been able to tell where it had been wandering to, because his eyes had remained fixed on Marguerite and the baroness. And yet, it seemed as if he was trying to listen to another conversation at the same time. In the end, it turned out that he had been listening to Danielle negotiate with one of their best customers.

But why? What was Danielle to a prince? Perhaps, the baroness considered, swallowing a sigh, Le Pieu had made the move he had been threatening to make on Danielle for this past whole year. Part of her wished he just would, then Danielle would be out of her hair. But what was that to the prince? Why was it that that girl always called attention to herself, in every situation?

As the baroness considered this, the prince grew impatient. "I said now!" he exploded at Le Pieu, sudden fury evident in his voice.

"I'm afraid there's been some mistake," Le Pieu replied easily, his gritty voice half arrogant, half placating. His hand had eased on Danielle's arm, but it still rested there—casually, as if on a possession. Danielle frowned and jerked away. Le Pieu tossed her a look of scorn and returned his attention to the Prince. "This is not a lady, but a servant who tends the land my purchases help to thrive. She is merely a commoner, my Lord, sunk to a pitiable state, and I have showered mercy upon her. I was a friend of her father's—"

"You were never a friend of my father's. You were never a friend to any of us. We despise you, have always despised you, will always despise you—"

"Danielle!" the baroness interjected, at last realizing that it was necessary that she and Marguerite be a part of this scene, or else they would lose the prince's attention on Marguerite completely. Besides, she couldn't have Danielle making a spectacle in front of the prince—or Le Pieu. Though her notions of economy were vague, at best, she did know that Le Pieu's business—both through the market and under the table—were what kept her daughters clothed, groomed, and fed to their standards. To lose his patronage would be unthinkable, especially if loud, obnoxious complaints from Danielle were to risk Marguerite's chances with the prince. "Stop that at once! You know Monsieur Le Pieu—"

"I was a friend of her father's," Le Pieu continued smoothly, noticing that the prince's eyes hadn't left him and Danielle, and that the baroness was going on, virtually ignored by everyone. "And this is how she repays me." He gestured idly, with a flick of his wrist, at Danielle, who was glaring at him with hatred. "I have been attempting to oversee her father's estate . . . if only this little wild cat would let me, Sire. You see my predicament."

"I see it," Henry said, drawing himself up. "I see it quite plainly."

"Well then, my Lord," Le Pieu replied, smirking a little and dropping another half a bow. He looked up to find the prince's eyes still resting on him, and his smile grew more snide and self-satisfied. "Perhaps it's possible that you could help me—"

"I will help you do one thing, and one thing only," Henry replied steadily, his voice steel. "That is, to take your conniving hands off that woman, and to never threaten her, or even come near her again. If I even so much as hear of it, I would not only have you stripped of all ranks, lands, and titles, but you would be at my mercy, and believe me, monsieur, my mercy is not so . . . generous as you profess yours to be."

Le Pieu's lip slowly curled, but his hand dropped off of Danielle, and his eyes dropped away from the prince's. He bowed again, this time in an almost mocking way, removing his hat in a dramatic gesture. "I'm sorry my humble negotiations couldn't tempt you, your highness." He slammed his hat back on and began to walk away, but stopped before passing the prince, and said, so directly that Henry couldn't help but be surprised by his bravado, "The Crown is free to seize all goods promised me. In fact, I welcome you to her. She'll hiss and spit at you just as happily as she ever did at me."

Prince Henry might have struck him then, just for the insolence of that comment, but he held himself in check. He was outraged, but not only at Pierre Le Pieu. In fact, Le Pieu was a mere insect in the torrent of his rage. How something like this could be going on under the household of a name like de Ghent—how he could have just spent three hours in the company of the baroness and her daughters and heard nothing of the outrages being committed in this very market-place—most of all, how everyone could have just been standing there, ignoring that slime touching a woman who didn't want to be touched—in public, no less—how, when he had brought attention to it, everyone had merely stood there, accepting it—it was not to be borne.

"Why was a stop not put to this?" he demanded, of Danielle, of the baroness, of the attendants, of the crowd in general that had gathered. When no one answered, he clarified. "Why is it that a man was allowed to harass this woman—in public sight, no less—with no one putting a stop to it?" When still, no one answer, he felt like stomping his royal foot and commanding them to give him his way. Instead, he pinned the baroness with a stare. "Why would you let a man who dares to threaten a member of your household step anywhere near this stall? Why weren't authorities contacted?"

"Because the authorities don't care," a voice he recognized said, steady and forthright. His gaze whipped around to meet her blue eyes, which, as ever, were snapping fire and challenging his own. Danielle didn't have any problem with talking back to him. She obeyed her step-mother and it was true, only very rarely lashed out against her step-sisters; to them, she rarely spoke her thoughts. But the difference between their provocation and that of the prince was that she wanted her step-mother to love her—she could care less about the prince. He was someone who could effect so much change, and yet went about his petty ways like a spoiled child, eyes closed to all the good he could do around him. He was someone to whom she owed nothing, and so she spoke her mind.

"The authorities," she clarified, her voice clipped, "protect the Crown and the Crown's concerns. Is France really concerned—do you suppose, your Highness—with its people, their freedoms, and their right not to be harassed?" Danielle, breathing heavily, looked around wearily. "Or rather, is the Crown concerned with its wayward Prince, who doesn't even want the Crown?"

She was accusing him, he realized, with a surge of righteousness. The woman—streaked in dirt and cinders, no less—was actually accusing him of royal negligence in the middle of a busy street. Indignation began to burn in him with the strength that surprised him. He wanted to argue with her; he felt strangely energized, invigorated, almost excited. He wanted to raise to her challenge and debate with her, to find out how she thought the system could be improved, to find out more about the indecencies suffered by people such as she because people such as he hadn't taken the time to notice. He wanted to—

She never gave him the chance. She didn't care, at the moment, that it was well enough to argue with the prince in courtier's clothes in level tones, with everyone at a distance; and that it was another thing entirely to fly at him so unreasonably in the middle of the market-place, smeared with soot and sporting a gown of rags. She was too angry to pause and be decorous. "Why did you send him away?"

"What?" he asked, confused, and suddenly feeling deflated.

"That man," she expanded, gesturing in the direction of Pierre le Pieu, "is the only reason my father's land still belongs to . . . to us." It was a difficult balance, the matter of Le Pieu. She never encouraged his advances, and did all she could to let him know how much he disgusted her. And yet, she had never tried too hard to find a way to get rid of him—there were ways, she suspected; she could do anything if she put her mind to him—because he was, in the end, the one who, for the most part, kept the farm up and running. She would give much—even suffering the weekly arguments that ensured from letting Le Pieu know how much she despised him—if it meant she maintained her father's land.

"That scum," Prince Henry corrected, disdain in his voice, "insulted you, threatened you, and—and . . ." and touched you, he wanted to say. He couldn't express how much it had sickened him, seeing that man's filthy hand touch this woman. He recalled how his own hand had rested on her arm in much that same way, there, by the lake, and how soft she had felt beneath his fingers. Whatever her name or title, he still felt outrage at seeing the likes of that man touching her. No woman should have to suffer being touched in that way, if she didn't ask for it.

"No person should stand for that," he told her, voicing his thoughts. "Surely there are other ways for your estate to earn money than off of him."

"How am I to loan money or labor, in my position?" Danielle countered, spreading her hands. "The Crown seems to be more interested in making money in the Americas than its people here."

"Danielle, is this really any way to talk?" the baroness interceded, taking Danielle's hand. "Come, my dear, you've been through a miserable ordeal, and your sister is so worried about you. Come, let's have you home—"

Prince Henry, once again, was not paying attention to the baroness. He was looking at Danielle. There was that accusation in her voice that had knocked him flat the first time he had met her in the dress of a courtier. At any other time, he would have challenged it, perhaps as amused, fascinated, and mildly indignant as he had been that day, when she had called him arrogant. But he was still too outraged that anyone in his country should feel forced to submit to such indecencies merely to keep their land. Surely there was some other way, and this country-girl was blaming the king—his father, his heritage—for a problem that wasn't the Crown's fault, but that of her own negligence."Couldn't you sell some of the land . . . or something?" He trailed of in the face of her hardening features.

"You want me to split up my father's land? You want me to sell pieces of it, as if it was yards of fabric? You want me to—" Her chest was heaving. In all her worry over the estate, she had never once considered selling any piece of it. Every bit of it was dear to her, and what he suggested seemed close to sacrilege. "I would rather cut up my heart than sell my father's land!" she told him, her voice almost shaking with the emotion there.

He blinked, startled by the force of her comments, and it suddenly grew very quiet on the busy street. The prince, used to a hush falling when he was in a public place, hardly noticed. Instead, his thoughts were on her words. He had seen the passion in her that first day, when he had still thought she was a courtier. Even before that, he supposed, when she had hit him square in the forehead with an apple. But what was amazing was that even now, she still had it—facing him, a peasant to a prince, outraged that he could even suggest something which seemed such a simple solution to him. "I don't understand," he said slowly.

The anger left her face, and she regarded him. Her features softened into a look of longing, and a warmth that almost seemed like pity suffused her eyes. "No, you wouldn't. You own all the land there is, and yet you take no pride in working it."

He scowled, remembering again what she had said when he first met her. "First I'm arrogant, and now I have no pride? However do I manage that?"

There was something almost teasing in his tone that made the hush that had fallen over that area of the market-place grow quieter still. Rarely had anyone even heard of royalty conversing with commoners, much less had anyone seen it. And the conversation was so . . . unusual. The baroness was looking back from one to the other in alarm. She suddenly realized that there might be more between these two than she had at first thought—though how that could be, she could not divine. So startled was she, and Marguerite as well, that she was for once at a loss as to how to grab the center of attention again.

Danielle, however, blithely went on, unaware of the hubbub the two were causing. "Merely that if you don't know your people, Sire," she explained, "don't know the people who work their own lands or even care for their circumstances, you can't know what it is to love the place you were born in, to feel it as a part of you, a living part which grows and changes with you."

Suddenly, an image of the ruins at Amboise filled his mind, and he almost knew what she was talking about. And yet, for all his father commanding him to take responsibility for his actions and for his people, for all his tutors educating him on his responsibilities as a ruler, no one had ever once spoken about the land he would rule with the passion this commoner had just displayed. Perhaps, if someone had, he would have taken a greater interest. "I don't understand how you can feel that way," he stated, his eyes narrowing as he took a step toward her.

He was no longer aware that he was on display, in front of commoners and noblemen alike. He no longer really cared. He wanted to hear more. He wanted to hear if she felt about her estate the way he felt about Amboise; he wanted to hear how what she felt was different; he wanted to see if it was something he could apply to his father's demand that he be king, so one day he could take pleasure in the position—take pride in it, as she said. "I don't understand how something cold and inanimate can live in such a way for you." He momentarily remembered her passion for Utopia, that day—only day before yesterday, but it seemed so long ago now. He couldn't even feel that passionate about people, and she felt it for dirt and paper.

"I suppose it's partially to do with memory," she replied, her voice suddenly seeming to come from farther away. She ducked her head, but she wasn't aware of those watching them either. Instead, she was avoiding the prince's eyes, and aching for the fields and forests of her father's lands. "My father used to walk the fields with me, teaching me the ins and outs of them—how to work them, how to gain from them, how to live off them . . . how to love them. He seemed to know everything." She laughed a little, at that. "I would rather hear his voice again than anything in the world," she concluded, her voice filled with a longing that was not distant, but immediate, full of need, passionate.

"Marguerite!" the Baroness exclaimed suddenly, catching at her daughter as the blond swayed theatrically.

"Oh, what?" Marguerite murmured, only half standing, looking as if she would faint.

For a moment, Prince Henry scowled in the direction of the de Ghents, and turned for a single, reluctant moment to meet Danielle's eyes. Then he pulled a mask of concern over his features, and looked inquiringly at the baroness. "What seems to be—"

"It's nothing, your Highness," Marguerite assured him, her voice wavering. "I think it's only the heat. I must have—oh!" She fainted—or at least looked as if she did—dead away then in her mother's arms, and Henry shook his head.

"Have someone fetch water. And salts," he told one of the attendants. "You there—and you, you look sturdy—help mademoiselle Marguerite back to the palace; she obviously needs to be in a cool place." He said this last with a touch of dryness, and turned to the baroness. "I'm sorry, Madame. I think it is only a passing spell. She will be alright."

"But oh, how dreadful," the baroness exclaimed, leaning on his arm, which he had hastily offered before she fell on him. "Oh, I must be taken in with her! You cannot understand, your Highness, the concern of a mother! What if—"

As the baroness rambled on, Henry chanced a glance back to where Danielle had stood. Marguerite's fainting spell had caused a commotion, and the area was very crowded where he had been. He could see that she had already gone back to tending the prunes—her face still soot-smeared.

The concern of a mother indeed, he thought, tightening his hand on the Baroness de Ghent, and gritting his teeth against comment.