A/N: The lines from the movie and the paraphrased quotes from Jane Eyre aren't mine. This chapter cuts off in rather an odd place; sorry, it was getting too long.
Panther28: In chapter 2 of my story, Jacqueline told Henry that Danielle was their step-sister. I reread that part and realized that perhaps it's not clear that Henry perfectly understood Danielle's relationship to the baroness, but a little further on I think the narrator makes it pretty clear. Henry understanding this is important in the last line of chapter 3, and will be important later, so tell me if you think chapter 2 still doesn't make it clear, and I will do some editing. Thanks for everyone's interest!

"Look, Gustave, it's floating!" Danielle exclaimed, reeling in the string of Signore da Vinci's flying machine.

"I don't know what you're so happy about," Gustave replied, half sullen. "You argue with the Prince of France in front of everyone, right after he's taken interest in Marguerite. Even if they do get married you'll never see the light of day as punishment."

"I'm in the sun now," Danielle replied, throwing back her head and reveling in the feel of the air against her skin.

"Only because the baroness hasn't gotten around to it yet," Gustave replied unhappily, and went back to his painting.

"I can't see why it bothers you so," Danielle rejoined, after a moment. "I could care less."

"The prince would be your brother-in-law," Gustave told her, trying to rub it in, "and you would be bringing them breakfast in bed."

"Yes, but then they would move into the palace and I could stay with the manor—turn things around; that's all that matters." What Danielle had told the prince at the market-place was true. She loved this place, and just now she could be carefree because she was luxuriating in the air of it, the freedom. There was nowhere else she wanted to be, and the rest of the world just seemed to fall away. It really didn't matter.

"And I suppose if you saw him again you'd simply . . ."

"I'd walk right up to him and say, your Highness, my family is your family. Please, take them away."

"Good. Because here's your big chance," Gustave told her, his eyes widening as they confirmed what he had thought he had seen approaching on the horizon. "He's headed this way." He laughed to himself at that, wondering if Danielle would make good her word. He doubted it.

As Danielle saw Prince Henry, Laurent, and the rest of the royal entourage slowly following approach, she hastily reconsidered her last statement. Gustave was right after all, and suddenly the fresh air wasn't so pleasing, and hardly so free. Had the prince ridden this way because he was going to visit her step-sister? Suddenly, the thought of the two of them courting made her feel ill. Besides which, she had several times, now, confronted the prince when it was most obviously not her place to do so. Her step-mother had been infuriated by the incident in the market-place, and the gossip had been horrific. She didn't like to think of what they would say if she got into yet another such debate with the prince.

Then again, why should she? He had chosen, for reasons she had yet to fathom, to take interest at the market-place and perform a random act of kindness such as might benefit the people of France, should he ever choose to extend his charity to them. However, there were no such circumstances at hand today; there was no reason why she and the prince might even converse at all, even if he was here in the middle of her field on horse-back.

She tried not to think about how charming, really, he looked on horse-back, or the fact that she really would actually prefer to talk to him than not.

He was drawing to a stop, now, Laurent several paces behind. "Have either of you seen—" he began, and stopped as his eyes abruptly focused on the peasants before him. "You," he stated, his voice half a question—half an accusation. Danielle and Gustave had fallen into their curtsies and bows, respectively, when the prince had started talking. The prince rolled his eyes impatiently. "Rise. I said look at me. What . . ." He trailed off as she did rise, obeying him, and his horse, feeling the sudden laxness in the reins, danced a step back. The prince re-gripped the leather, but his eyes remained fixed on Danielle.

She looked at him as if . . . as if she was the princess, and he was merely . . . No, it wasn't quite that either. The expression in her eyes wasn't derisive, merely challenging. She looked at him as if meeting the eyes of an equal—as if she were a countess, and fit to meet the eyes of a prince. And that, he saw suddenly, was part of what was wrong with his life. Countesses didn't look at him that way; queens didn't look at him that way. They cowered, or fawned, or flirted, but even the most daring at him looked at him as a name and a title, either to be worshipped or to be won. Not a single one of them looked at him as if he was just a man.

Except for the country girl standing before him.

Henry swallowed and edged his horse forward. When he spoke, his voice was hard. "I'm looking for Signore da Vinci. Have either of you seen him?"

Danielle shook her head, and the boy beside her shrugged. "No, we haven't," he expanded, squinting into the sun up at the prince.

Henry blinked, annoyed. Why was it that their royal guest paid no heed to royal convention at all? It made for a most trying schedule. He tried not to consider that Laurent must often think similar thoughts about him. "Is that not his flying contraption?" he asked, pointing to the string still trailing in Danielle's fingers.

Gustave shrugged and Danielle said, "Maurice found it in the trees outside the vegetable garden," she explained. "It must have crash landed sometime when the signore was flying it." The prince narrowed his eyes and Danielle looked down, opening her arms, as if to prove her innocence. "I wanted to see if it still worked," she explained, hefting the roll of string in her hand.

There was a long pause. "Where was it you say the kite landed?" Henry asked finally, glancing up to the trees in the distance.

Danielle looked up and met his eyes, but it was Gustave who answered. "The vegetable garden." The prince raised a brow, and Gustave turned around so he could point. "You go between these haystacks, down through the line of trees. There's a path, and you turn left, then go through the gate to the orchard. There's a shorter way of course, but I'm telling you the shortcut. Half-way through the orchard you make your way right, and it's a bit of a walk until you—"

Henry rolled his eyes again, and his horse mirrored the sentiment with a few restless steps. He put an effective stop to Gustave's babbling by dismounting with an abrupt, elegant movement. "You," he said decisively to Danielle. "Show me the way there. I think the signore may be looking for his contraption, in which case he might be somewhere along the way to your . . . vegetables. You," he admonished, turning to Gustave, "I want you to search around these fields and the general vicinity, in case my guest is wandering about lost in search of the kite."

The prince spared a glance for Danielle and took a stride forward before half turning back to Laurent. "I won't be long," he told the captain of his guard, and went off in the direction in which Gustave had pointed, leaving his horse to be tended by the royal guard. Danielle handed the roll of string to Gustave and followed the prince, careful to keep her head down and to remain several paces behind.

When they reached the line of trees Gustave had indicated in the distance, the prince, who had been moving quickly, stopped short. Danielle, startled, almost fell in beside him, before remembering the respectful distance she was meant to remain behind. "What, no harsh words?" he asked the trees, without looking around at her.

"I'm sorry, your Highness?" she asked, tilting her head.

"It seems that whenever we have met before, madam," the prince elucidated, stepping into the wooded area—more slowly, now—"you have had something to tell me, and usually quite sharply, about something you seem to think I am doing wrong."

"I only—" Danielle began, and realized she was doing it again. "I apologize. Forgive me, your Highness."

Ahead of her, the prince's powerful shoulders shrugged. "Perhaps," he answered cryptically. He wasn't sure if he wanted to forgive her. He wasn't sure if he could forgive her.

She haunted his dreams.

He had thought, that day by the lake, that at least now he knew she was merely a commoner, his night wouldn't be disturbed by her. And yet last night had been filled with thoughts of what she had said during their argument in the market-place, his mind compelled by her love of her land. Once again he realized that if he had ever been strong enough to hold such fervent passion in his body, such feelings for the land of France would go hand in hand with ruling it well. He would not then be reluctant to take over the throne, but eager—eager to care for France, to improve it, to help its people and make swell its produce.

Through the night, trying not to think too hard of her eyes, her lips, he had not been able to get over her words—wanting to hear more, to discuss with her, to understand her thoughts and share her ideas. To know from her what it was like to be that passionate about something. Anything. "Tell me, how do you do it?" he asked abruptly, frustration evident in his voice. This time, he did glance back at her, his eyes flicking over her as she bent under the branch of a tree, and again he looked straight forward.

"Do what?" she asked, frowning.

"Live each day with that kind of . . . passion. Don't you find it exhausting?"

Danielle shrugged, and then, without thinking, said simply, "Only when I'm around you." Abruptly realizing what she had just said, she tripped over a root in the ground. Henry, moving quickly, steadied her with his arm, but she had fallen forward so that it was against his chest that she began apologizing. "Forgive me, Sire; I didn't mean to say—your Highness, I—"

She was going to bow her head an curtsey again, he thought. It annoyed him when people did that, bowing and bobbing her presence, but now it made him positively angry. He jerked her steady, his hand gripping her arm. "Don't," he said, his voice low, and released her. "It's not you."

He pushed on ahead, picking up pace again, and it was only after several moments that he realized his teeth were gritted and his eyes were closed, his breath coming heavily as he tried to regain his composure. He was not aggravated by her apology or her comment, though he wished he was. He was angry at himself, that those words—only when I'm around you—could strike him so.

Something was rising in his breast that shouldn't be there. Did she mean she only felt so passionate around him? That he made her question her convictions the way she made him question his lack thereof? That in some way he shook her soul the way she shook his? A peasant shouldn't make him ask such questions of himself—and then she had fallen against him, dramatic curves coming to discovery under his hands as if he had never felt the lines of a woman before. Her shoulders, her hips . . . his hands ached to rest again on those hips, to pull them in against his. All these were things his body shouldn't be feeling in the arms of a commoner.

Frustrated, he slammed the orchard gate without bothering to hold it for her. He had been trained to be a gentleman, but a prince rarely used such skills. It was so when he went on walking, teeth still grit and eyes glued sightlessly to the path before him, when he commanded her, quite simply, to speak.

Her voice was a moment in coming. "What shall I say, your Majesty?"

"Anything," Henry replied, swatting at a low bough of an apple tree. He shrugged. "Everything. You seemed to have no trouble holding your tongue last time I met you here."

"That's not fair, Sire," she remarked, and hastily bit her lip.

"That's the spirit. Go on."

"I am willing to entertain you, if I must, your Highness," Danielle replied, pique in her voice, "but it's unfair of you to expect me to know what would please you to speak of, seeing as how I have only managed to irritate you in our past conversations, as you yourself have only just now pointed out," Danielle responded, reason and annoyance in her voice.

Henry's mood was lightening. He rather liked aggravating her; it was as if there was a lack of control in her that couldn't stop her from rising to the occasion. He liked that sort of freedom, that sort of straight-forward out-spokenness. It was what he longed for and was unable to express, as heir apparent to the throne. "I don't care if you please me," he told her flippantly. "It pleases me to be displeased."

She remained silent, whipping at the boughs behind him and saying nothing. He knew his request must seem to her born of royal idleness and arrogant boredom, and that for lack of anything better he was commanding the only subject at hand to entertain him. Had it been several days ago, in the company of another, it might have been. He wanted her to know now, quite emphatically, that it was not. "Tell me of your father," he said gently, and moved in step beside her so he could look at her while they walked.

Her face suddenly looked withdrawn—far more than it had moments before, when she had been only annoyed. "Why?" she asked.

He shook his head and pursed his lips, not looking at her for a while. When he did speak, his voice was full of frustration. "Yesterday, in the market-place . . . you spoke of walking through the woods with your father, do you remember?" He didn't glance to see if she confirmed it, because he was shaking his head again, lost in his own thoughts. "You had more conviction in that single memory . . . than I have in my entire being."

It angered him to no end. He hated that it was true—first, that she had that conviction in the first place, when even the end of the world might only strike him as he was now with passing interest. Second, that he found it so thrilling. Was it because he lacked so much depth, because he really did have so little feeling in him, that a country commoner of no importance could engage him so? Or was it that she was right—that the 'everyday rustic', as he had called them, really did have a thing or two to teach him?—Or was it something more?

Her soft voice cut into his thoughts. "When I think of him," she told him, "I think of books. I think of the way he would stay up late reading to me, and I would fall asleep listening to the sound of his voice. It was the best times we had together—there was magic in those hours, in that fire-light."

There was something full and warm in her voice and words that made his questions and anger fall away. The tenderness there was not meant for him, but it soothed his nerves, and for a moment he allowed himself the idle fantasy that she knew his mood, and that there was something gentle in her nature that wanted to soothe him. He wished, for a single, inexplicable moment, that that tenderness in her voice was for him, after all.

"When he would go away on travel," she continued, "I would read the book he had brought for me the last time, and always feel that much closer to him. He died when I was eight, but it's the same way still. Utopia was the last book he gave me, and I read it to remember him."

He made the mistake of glancing at her, and he was unable to look away. She had that far-away quality in her eyes; her lips had fallen open in remembrance. "I can see how, then, books touch you so," he said slowly, contemplatively.

She nodded. "It is he touching me, through the words of others. He was addicted to the written word; books were a part of who he was. In reading More and Ronsard and Sidney I read him too—they make it so easy to remember, to get lost in thoughts and ideas that were my father's also."

He shook his head, recalling a thought he had had yesterday in the market-place. "In all my years of study, not one tutor ever demonstrated the passion you have shown these past few days," he mused, voicing the thought.

Danielle blushed and looked away. "You asked, Sire. I don't know how else to speak. My mouth has the tendency to run away without me."

"It is your mouth—" he began, and stopped abruptly, not knowing how to finish or what it was he had been about to say. Frustrated, he demanded, "Tell me more. I want to hear more about him."

They had reached the point where they should turn out of the orchard to reach the vegetable garden, and she gestured a little to show him the way. "We used to walk together, here," she said finally. "I remember it in the spring-time, when the apple-blossoms are just dying, and covering the path with white. It would be like a carpet, and he would carry me on his shoulders. He. . ."

He was trailing along behind her now, thoughtful, seeing it as she described it. He was reminded once again of Amboise, and heard in her voice the love he felt for that place—a love he had never really considered before and had never thought of expressing.

"He was a big man, my father . . ." she went on, "big, and the handsomest in the world, I used to tell him." She laughed a little. "He told me once that someday I wouldn't say that; that someday I would find . . . find someone I thought was . . . was . . ." She frowned, stopping by a particular tree and looking up. They were at the vegetable garden, at the place where Maurice had found the kite.

"Yes?" he asked her, realizing he was holding his breath. He wondered that the wind didn't still and that the birds didn't hush in anticipation of her reply.

She shrugged. "Nothing, really. My father had many dreams for my future. I don't suppose they will all come true."

"I can relate to that feeling," he said under his breath, somewhat petulantly. He had had many dreams in his youth, all of which he realized were meant to become null and void the moment he accepted the throne. He longed to tell her that, suddenly—to confide in her, to share his dreams and feelings. He wanted her to know, and he wanted her to help him escape. He wanted her to dream with him.

But there was nothing for it. The most he could ever do was listen to her memories as they approached a vegetable garden, and remain aware throughout that it would never be enough to revive or sustain those dreams so long buried. Those dreams would have to be sacrificed. He could never have what he wanted, and somehow, for reasons he couldn't define, this girl standing before him proved that. Things might be different if she had blue blood in her, though he wasn't sure why.

Whatever the reason, it was best not to think about it, he concluded. He was supposed to be looking for a wife, not mulling over his impossible and dying dreams while wandering the country-side with a random nobody. Wouldn't the king be thrilled at his use of his time? The reminder of duty irked him, as it always did, but the king had, after all, made concessions, and Henry had precious little time. The world was not a fair place, and woman and her common blood seemed to him sudden proof of that. He might as well make do with what little he had been given. With this resolution, he asked abruptly, "How is Marguerite?"