A/N: This chapter begins with a continuation of the scene from the previous chapter and ends with a scene that continues with the next chapter. Sorry about splitting up the scenes, if it's at all confusing. Thanks for reading and shopgirl909, I hope you've had a better day today!

from chapter 4:

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?"

Danielle stared at him blankly. "Your step-sister, I believe?" he prompted. "Last I saw of her, she was fainting dead away in her mother's arms. I trust she is recovered?"

She blinked several times, as if coming out of a dream. Of course he would ask after Marguerite. For a while, she had forgotten that he was a prince, and had foolishly thought that he cared what she—a commoner, a 'rustic', after all—had to say. She had forgotten he was only making the best out of his forced company with a servant, and that as soon as she bored his Royal Idleness, he would be interested in something else. He was interested in Marguerite. "She is recovered," Danielle said at last, eyes cast down.

Henry's brows rose at her reaction. "Perhaps I should call on her," he mused, more to himself than in question to her.

"The family is from home," Danielle replied dully.

Henry raised a brow. "Perhaps they're back by now."

Danielle shook her head. "They've gone to church, and won't be back until three hours past noon. They heard the prince—I meant, your Highness—you . . ."

"Ah yes," he said sardonically, nodding in understanding. "I was, after all, slotted to visit the cathedral sometime today—so everyone could gawk, it seems—before Leonardo decided to up and disappear," he mulled. He pursed his lips and turned back to her suddenly. "And you? You didn't wish to attend church?"

"I didn't wish to gawk," Danielle replied promptly. Her eyes widened as she realized the snappish derision of her comment, and she stared at him in dumb surprise.

"You're gawking now," he told her, lifting a brow.

His tone, she realized, was teasing. The beginnings of a grin lit her face, and her voice was half shy, half playful when she answered. "It's hardly my fault, Sire."

"Oh?" he asked, shifting his weight. He pursed his lips, unused to someone teasing him in this way—in a way that wasn't, for once, flirtatious, but merely a battle of wits. And he liked her wits. "And why—"

"Ah, there you are," a voice said. "I've been looking for you everywhere."

Blinking, Henry rounded on the voice. "Signore da Vinci! Looking for me, you say? Where have you been? I was forced to cancel several important appointments on your account."

"Bah," da Vinci murmured waving an idle hand at the prince. His eyes suddenly lit on Danielle. "Is this the man I met being chased by a pack of dogs, a bunch of gypsies, and the royal guard, all for the sake of a woman?" He winked at Danielle and then suddenly turned back to Henry, his eye critical. "Or is this the stodgy spoiled Prince? Where's your sense of adventure, eh?"

Henry rolled his eyes. "My escape, you will have noted," he replied, annoyed, "was unsuccessful. It's back to Court and tennis and father's miserable appointments for me, I'm afraid." His voice was bitter, not at all light.

"What you need, my boy, is a happy medium."

Henry frowned. "Signore da Vinci, you may be a genius, but I have no idea what you are talking about."

Da Vinci shrugged. "She does," he said simply, indicating Danielle. "Why don't you ask her?"

Danielle, startled, looked from the signore to the prince, but Prince Henry's mood had changed. Da Vinci had reminded him of his inescapable duties at Court, and while they did not please him, he was tied to them. As many times as he had tried to escape, he had been brought back—and as many times he had planned such escapades, he had known his plans would fail. Even if he escaped the guards and the physical barriers of his heritage, he had been raised a prince. He was conditioned to it. Try as he might, he didn't know how to live any other way.

Resenting this knowledge, hating it, in fact, he looked at Danielle and bitterly envied her freedom. Of course she might talk with fire and passion. She was free of the idle trappings of court, and would never have the pressures of a throne upon her. In that moment, he resented her utterly. "She," he announced, regarding Danielle and speaking to da Vinci, "is merely a commoner. She can know nothing pressures of royal life. For that matter, what can you? Perhaps, signore, you had better stick to your paintings and machines."

Frowning, da Vinci looked from Danielle to Henry and back again. He was not offended by Henry's comment, thought he was certain at that moment that the Prince of France was a bit more of a fool than he had thought before. No, he was not offended, but intensely aware of what the prince was feeling to have merited such a harsh retort. He merely shrugged in reply, and the prince kept his eyes pinned on Danielle, who's cheeks had gone pink with indignation at the comment. Otherwise, she displayed no reaction, and kept her head down.

Perhaps it was this deference that reminded Prince Henry of his resolution. He would never escape; his dreamy behavior had to end here. Now. He had to stop wasting his time with this nobody—who he wanted so desperately to defy him just now, to berate him, to tell him that he was wrong and that all his dreams could be fulfilled if he merely took her hand and . . . But she was silent. Docile, just like any other subordinate. "Perhaps later today I will look on Marguerite de Ghent," he said casually, but there was spite, there, too. "It was such a bad spell she had. I spent the night worrying over her." He paused. "You may tell her mother that." With that, Henry strode off along the lane—not back through the orchard along the short-cut on which they'd come, but another way.

Da Vinci shrugged. "Look up, child," he told Danielle. "He will recognize you for who you are, in time."

"Recognize me?" Danielle asked, startled. "What do you mean?"

"Oh look! That nice young lad has found my kite," da Vinci said, blinking, looking off in the distance at Gustave. "Such friendly people 'round here, wouldn't you say?"

He hobbled off after his kite, and Danielle was left standing there, trying to fathom all that had happened.

"Should I be sick or well?" Marguerite demanded in a high voice, tearing about the bedroom in a flurry of red. Dresses were heaped about the floor, on the bed, across the bureau. Paulette and Louise were cowering against the back wall. "Mother!" Marguerite shrieked, in nothing but her chemise and petticoat. She slammed the blue dress onto the floor beside her and stamped her foot! "Mother!"

"Marguerite, why aren't you dressed?" the baroness asked, aghast, as she sailed into the bedroom. "He'll be here in any minute!"

"He's been here any minute for the last hour," Paulette said under her breath, but did not dare speak up.

"I can't decide whether to be sick or well," Marguerite said petulantly, and her mother nodded in understanding.

"Danielle," the baroness called, making her name three syllables and the last incredibly high.

Danielle hurried up into the room, covered in dust, soot, and cobwebs. From the moment she had told her step-mother and sisters what the prince had said, the bustle in the manor hadn't stopped—nor had the commands, cleaning, and shrieking. She had been lucky enough to be absent the last time the prince had stopped by, and had no idea that her step-mother and Marguerite would become this exasperating. If she had suspected they might, she probably wouldn't have told them that he was coming again—despite the fact that he had commanded her to.

"Yes?" she asked, with a sigh, having trouble sounding biddable when there was so much work assigned to her already. Jacqueline had edged into the room, ignored since the news had come. No doubt she wanted to know what was going on.

"Tell us what the prince said," the baroness commanded Danielle. "I want to hear it exactly, word for word."

"I already told you a thousand ti—"

"I'll have none of your cheek, Danielle," her step-mother admonished, her features growing hard. I want to know what was said, now."

Danielle sighed again and recited once more. "He asked how Marguerite was, and I told him she had recovered."

"How dare you tell him I was well!" Marguerite interjected, but her mother hushed her.

Danielle glared at Marguerite, but continued, "He said that perhaps he should call, as she was fainting the last time he saw her, and it seemed such a bad spell."

"Yes?" Rodmilla prompted. "Yes, yes, then what was said?"

Danielle shrugged. "I told him the family was from home, and—"

"How could you! She's ruined us, mother!"

"Well," Jacqueline said genially, "it wouldn't have been very helpful of her to say we were home when we weren't. Then you would've missed him altogether."

Marguerite groaned and threw herself back on the bed. "Hush, you," the baroness admonished Jacqueline, and turned sharply back to Danielle. "Now, the rest, and no more of your stalling."

Danielle rolled her eyes. "He said that he would call later to check on Marguerite, and that he had spent the night worrying over her." Danielle winced a little, at that. The thought of any man dreaming of her sister made her feel slightly ill, but the fact that it was the prince . . .

What galled her most about it was that she had been up half the night too, but not at all with worry over Marguerite. No, she had been thinking of the note of challenge in the prince's voice during their argument in the market-place. She had been wishing, for once, that she was a courtier, so that she might debate so freely with him all the time without it being inappropriate. She had been thinking of his eyes, his large hands touching her, pulling his cloak over her, the smell of him—"He said," Danielle forced out, "that I might tell her mother that."

The baroness clapped her hands in delight, as she had when Danielle first told her that the prince was coming to call. She and Marguerite had already discussed (amidst orders that the house be cleaned and refitted from top to bottom, that Marguerite be scrubbed and clad to look like a queen, and the flying of dust and dresses) all the ins and outs of what the prince might have meant by wanting Danielle to tell Rodmilla that the prince had been up half the night worrying over her daughter. Neither had suspected that the comment might have been made in bitterness, for Danielle's ears, not theirs.

"My daughter, a queen," the baroness breathed, her eyes lost for a moment in the distance.

"Mother, focus," Marguerite demanded, as she often did when preoccupied with a matter of supreme importance, such as what brooch she should wear that day. "Would it be more effective if I was dying, very ill, just recovering, or fully recovered?"

Rodmilla's lips pursed, thinking quickly. "Not dying, surely. Then you would need to be in bed, and it wouldn't be proper for him to see you."

"But not fully recovered, either," Marguerite went on, her voice shrill. "Then he will no longer be worried about me, and might not visit again." Danielle rolled her eyes and began to withdraw, but Marguerite saw the movement and suddenly her face was mockingly innocent. "That is, he'll visit again no thanks to you, Cinder-soot. Mother, I don't think she really wants me to be queen."

Rodmilla spared a glance down her nose for Danielle. "All I can say is that it's a good thing you think on your feet, Marguerite, fainting like that when you did. If your sister didn't have so much ingenuity," the baroness went on, looking at Danielle derisively, "I don't know where we'd be. The prince would have scorned us, after the way you spoke to him at the market-place."

"Really, Cinderella, what were you thinking, even talking to him? He's a prince, and well . . ." Marguerite looked Danielle up and down. "Well, the most you'll ever know of royalty is what it feels like to be the royal chimney sweep, when I am queen."

"Actually," Jacqueline interjected, her voice prim and informative, "if Danielle hadn't been talking to the prince, you wouldn't have pretended to faint, and he wouldn't be coming here to come check on your health." She blinked, smiled, and shrugged, and concluded—as if innocently, "So, you really should be thanking her."

All eyes in the room turned to Jacqueline, who looked from her mother to her sister guilelessly. "Oh . . ." her mother started, waving her hand at her younger daughter, ". . . Go eat some pastries. That way, we won't have you stuffing your face in front of the prince after he arrives, and we won't have to listen to your chatter before."

"Right," Jacqueline responded sharply, and turned on her heel.

"Well?" the baroness demanded, after her daughter had left. "What is everyone standing here for? Get to work!"

Prince Henry rode ahead of his entourage in the direction of the de Ghent estate, feeling invigorated by the late afternoon sun. He couldn't help feeling alive, despite the feelings with which he had started the journey.

He had regretted, later, telling the servant-girl that he would be by later that day to check on Marguerite de Ghent. He was not really interested in Marguerite, no matter how pretty she was. He knew it was his duty to at least try to find a wife, but he had been feeling bitter and resentful—of Danielle, for somehow, by her mere existence, managing to confirm that all his dreams were impossible, of his father, for forcing this on him. For, despite the king's unexpected concession to allow him to marry who he chose, Henry had felt more trapped than ever went he had prepared this afternoon to court the de Ghents.

But now the crickets chirping, and twilight would be upon them—that soft, magic hour that he loved, that seemed to make everything mysterious and still undetermined. And, to his surprise, Henry found himself rather looking forward to visiting Marguerite, though he could not fathom why. He supposed she might make a very powerful, ingenious and compelling queen . . . Perhaps, though he could not force love, he could do his duty in this regard and at least find a woman to marry for whom he felt respect.

Suddenly, Henry felt a good deal better. Besides which, Jacqueline was very nice, and the estate was very pretty, and Marguerite . . . He found himself thinking of blue eyes that were not Marguerite's at all, and, as he arrived in the courtyard of the manor, he quite suddenly cursed himself this journey. He was able to admit to himself only too late that he was eager to visit Marguerite not to see Marguerite but to see someone else entirely.

He had already been spotted, and the eager faces at the window had already disappeared. An old man that Henry recognized had come to clasp the bridle of his horse, and Laurent and the rest had already crowded in behind him. If he had thought he was trapped before, he was most certainly trapped now. Sighing, Henry dismounted, and handed his reins to a servant. He was so accustomed to doing that, to being attended to, that he almost didn't notice that that servant was none other than Danielle.

His eyes darkened slightly as he glanced again at her, but there was no other sign of recognition. He treated her as he might treat every other servant—with royal disregard, and was shown into the manor with a flourish by someone and an announcement by someone else. Danielle watched for just a moment before clicking her tongue to the horse. The baroness had commanded her to help stable the horses, embarrassed that there were barely enough stalls to house the entire convoy.

"Tend to them, Danielle, and make sure those servants get it right! We can't have the prince thinking that even his steed isn't treated like the highest royalty." She'd flicked her hand at Danielle. "And then come right back, do you hear? And for heaven's sake, don't open your mouth to the prince. Marguerite can't save our dignity by fainting every time you embarrass us. A single slip, Danielle, and it's off to the Americas with you!"

Danielle sighed and the horse behind her butted her with its nose. "Sorry, roan, no apples today," she told it quietly, wrapping an arm around its neck as she led it. "There's nothing, today."