His broad back was completely bare, river water streaming from his short pale hair, the lightest strands shining almost platinum beneath the August sun. Droplets travelled slowly down the thick column of his neck and spread across the extraordinary ridges and hollows of muscle covering his back before narrowing toward his waist.
Through Maria's tear-blurred eyes, those winding trails of water began playing strange tricks upon her imagination. The enormous muscles seemed to arrange themselves into the suggestion of a face: heavy ridges forming a troubled brow, deep hollows becoming mournful eyes, and lower folds shaping something like a great unhappy mouth.
And the face appeared to be crying. Water gathered in the grooves beneath its imaginary eyes and ran downward in long, shining trails.
Maria's expression crumpled.
The sight was so terribly sad that she began crying harder herself, even though she knew she ought not to. Mama was safe now, after all, and surely those imaginary tears were not for Papa—not in the way Mama's had been.
Maria still could not understand how Mama could mourn him. She knew that a daughter was supposed to honour her father, and she understood that, cruel as Papa had been, he had still fed them, clothed them and kept a roof over their heads. Even so, she simply could not make herself grieve for him.
The thought broke apart as her gaze drifted absently along one shining trail of water running farther down the stranger's back, and Maria suddenly realized something she had somehow failed to comprehend until that very moment.
The knight had apparently misplaced considerably more than his armour, for he was not even wearing trousers. Just above the clear waters of the Vistula, Maria could see enough of his broad, powerfully built backside to make the truth quite impossible to misunderstand.
Her eyes widened, and heat rushed at once into her cheeks. Then the stranger saw her, one brilliant icy-blue eye met hers, and for a dreadful moment Maria thought she might simply faint.
She tried very hard to think of Jesus. Of modesty. Of Sunday Mass and every other wholesome thing a respectable Christian girl ought to be thinking about when unexpectedly confronted by a naked knight in a river.
Then he smiled at her, and Maria promptly forgot about Jesus.
Something about that face struck her as familiar. She had seen it before—printed in newspapers and magazines, attached to a name known throughout Europe. The pale hair, those extraordinary blue eyes, the handsome young face.
Maria's stomach fluttered. She clasped both hands tightly before her chest, scarcely able to contain the astonished squeal rising in her throat. Some foolish part of her wanted to cry out his name and rush toward him as though her storybook prince had somehow stepped bodily from the page, but one glance at Tomasz stopped her immediately.
Then Oskar, trying to calm the two at the riverbank, raised one immense hand, palm outward in peace. His arm bent with the gesture, muscle gathering almost absurdly beneath the wet skin, and Tomasz's confidence died at once. The boy stared at the tremendous arm, glanced involuntarily at his own thin one, and seemed to reconsider several things about the immediate situation.
Oskar decided diplomacy had finally been given its chance.
"Easy, little ones. This prince means your fair mother no harm. Iron though my strength may be, I reserve it for those who would fight me—not frightened ladies."
He thought that sounded rather heroic.
Unfortunately, the words rolled from his immense chest with something perilously close to a lion's rumble, while the reassuring smile he attempted bore an unfortunate resemblance to the pleased grin of some enormous predator. Tomasz flinched at once and tightened his grip upon the stick, though Maria reacted rather differently, nearly squealing as her eyes shone at the sight of him.
Oskar sighed inwardly and made another attempt at diplomacy.
"Indeed, it is I. Now, be at ease. I have not come here for either of you, save to see to your mother's safety, and when she is ready, she may leave whenever she pleases. I ask only that she make for the riverbank rather than continue attempting to drown herself in the Vistula, particularly when it has become painfully clear that she's quite a poor swimmer."
He glanced down at the woman in his arms, who was still making stubborn attempts to pull herself downstream toward the place where the body had vanished beneath the water.
"My lady," he said, his voice softening despite its natural depth, "could you please calm down already?"
The woman immediately tried once more to pry his hands away.
"Never!" she cried.
Oskar frowned. Then, falling back upon the same simple instinct he used whenever one of his own children became frightened beyond reason, he gently settled his right hand over the crown of her head.
The effect surprised them both.
For a moment she simply stopped. Perhaps it was the unexpected gentleness of his touch, or perhaps only then did she properly notice the warmth of his immense bare body surrounding her and realise that, despite all his impossible strength, he was making no attempt to hurt her. Whatever the reason, the fight seemed to drain from her all at once.
Oskar smiled faintly, relieved to have finally gotten through to her.
Then her face crumpled. One sob escaped her, followed by another, and suddenly all the fury that had kept her upright gave way beneath the weight of everything that had happened. She sagged against him, weeping helplessly into the shelter of his arm.
Oskar watched her quietly, and the last trace of amusement faded from his face. He could not leave her standing there staring into the empty stretch of river where the dead man had vanished, so he gently turned her in his arms and drew her toward him.
The movement brought them into considerably closer contact than either of them was properly dressed for. Her breasts pressed against his bare body, while lower down the softness of her body brushed intimately against his flaccid cock. Oskar gave a low, involuntary grunt at the sensation, then firmly pushed the distraction from his mind. There were rather more important matters at hand.
He guided her against his chest until she stood facing him. Even upright, and still partly balanced upon his much larger feet, the top of her head reached only somewhere around the centre of his chest. There she finally surrendered to her grief completely, burying her face against him while her shoulders trembled. Oskar settled one enormous hand across her lower back and the other protectively behind her head, enclosing her without squeezing, as though sheer size alone might shelter her from anything else the world intended to inflict upon her.
The gesture meant little more than this: whatever had just been torn away from her, she was not entirely alone. For the moment, nothing else was going to happen to her.
She was safe.
"Come now, lady," he said softly. "I know this is difficult for you. More difficult than anything I could repair by saying a few pretty words, certainly. But try to take some heart in knowing that, although your roads may have divided for a time, this need not be the end. For death, is but another path, one each of us must eventually take. And perhaps, somewhere beyond it, another road will find its way beneath your feet, and if your hearts truly desire it, your paths may one day meet again."
To his surprise, she listened. Perhaps it was because his voice came from so close that the words slipped easily into her ear beneath the murmur of the river, or perhaps exhaustion had simply robbed her of the strength to resist anything more. Whatever the reason, she gradually became still. Yet when his meaning reached whatever part of her grief remained capable of hearing, fresh tears welled in her eyes and spilled silently against his chest.
The children could hear him as well. Oskar knew it, and after a moment his words ceased to be meant for the woman alone. He bent slightly over her, still speaking close beside her ear, while his deep voice carried easily across the shallows toward Maria and Tomasz upon the bank.
"I know you must hate what has happened," he continued with quiet tenderness. "You must be asking yourselves why it had to come to this. Perhaps some part of you does not even wish to walk any farther. But know that many others before you have lived long enough to see terrible times come, and terrible times pass. You are not alone in this."
His hand moved slowly over the back of her wet hair.
"You may wish none of this had ever fallen upon you. I wish that as well. But it has, and now the choice left to you is what you will do with the life and fate that have been placed before you. And if you cannot yet find reason to live for yourself, then live for others. Do some good. Protect those who still need you. Try to leave something kinder upon this good green earth God has given you to love, to breathe upon and to walk across."
The woman's sobbing weakened slightly, though her fingers remained curled against him.
"Life will show you wonders and horrors both," Oskar went on. "You will love things and lose things. You will be hurt, and you will heal. Learn from all of it. Let every joy and every sorrow shape you into someone stronger and wiser than the person who first began this journey. And when at last your own road reaches its proper end, perhaps there will be another beyond this one. But that time is not now."
For a few strange moments the Vistula seemed almost to fall silent around them. The current still rolled around Oskar's legs, reeds whispered along the bank and water murmured against mud and stone, yet his words seemed to carry above all of it and settle heavily upon everyone listening. Maria had gone completely still. Even Tomasz had ceased shouting. Farther upstream, Shadowmane lifted his head from the grass, one dark ear flicking toward the familiar voice.
Encouraged by the sudden quiet, Oskar decided perhaps he could do a little more.
He had been about to speak kindly of the dead man—to tell the woman that her husband had surely loved her and the children, that whatever else had happened, he had taken up a rifle believing he was defending his family, and that such courage ought to be remembered rather than followed into the grave.
Then his eyes fell upon the hands pressed against his chest, and he realised that there was no wedding ring.
Oskar hesitated, and for the first time he properly considered the woman held against him. She seemed remarkably youthful, perhaps somewhere around his own age, with smooth features that hardship had worn but not aged beyond their years.
The corpse had been different.
Oskar thought back to the face that had drifted past him in the river. He had called the man middle-aged without much attention, but there had been grey in his hair, thinning around the crown and the heavier marks of years across his face. Fifty, perhaps. Maybe more.
Surely the dead man could not have been her husband, and yet she had been prepared to drown rather than release him, clinging to his body even as the Vistula threatened to carry them both away. Whoever he had been, he had plainly meant everything to her, and Oskar's rather innocent reasoning soon arrived at what seemed to him the obvious explanation: the man must have been her father. Somehow, that possibility made the tragedy seem sadder still, and his expression softened as he lowered his voice and gently brushed a wet strand of hair away from her face.
"Now, lady, please. For the sake of your father, keep living. I am certain that is what he would have wished for you."
The woman went strangely still, because for one confused moment the words carried her somewhere very far away. Her father had been dead for so long that she could scarcely summon his face anymore. There remained only fragments: a voice perhaps, the impression of hands, something warm and distant belonging to a childhood almost completely buried beneath everything that had followed.
Why was this enormous man speaking to her about him?
Her crying faltered at the thought, and Oskar mistook the reaction for success.
"You are young," he continued gently. "You have children who need you, and there is still a great deal of life ahead of you. I cannot promise that it will be easy. Nobody has the right to promise another person that."
His hand moved soothingly through her wet hair.
"But for the sake of your father, and for the sacrifice he made in taking up that rifle because he believed he was defending you, please keep living. If nothing else, live so that his brave memory does not end here with him."
That was when she understood that he meant Piotr.
Her whole body stiffened, and for an instant she could scarcely believe what she had heard. Father. Brave. Gentle protector. The words seemed so grotesquely wrong that they almost felt deliberate. He was calling Piotr an old man to her face, reducing the life she had spent tied to him into something absurd and shameful, as though this giant man somehow knew that people had looked at them before and wondered what a woman her age was doing beside a man so much older.
Worse, he was praising him. Speaking of sacrifice. Speaking of protection. As though Piotr had gone out with that rifle for her. As though this giant knew anything at all.
On the bank, Tomasz stopped as well. His face darkened immediately at hearing his own father called his mother's father.
Maria understood something different, and her eyes widened.
"Oh no," she whispered.
She knew Oskar had not meant it cruelly. That somehow made no difference now. She knew Mama well enough to recognize the terrible stillness that had come over her.
Oskar finally noticed the change in her as well, and the faint smile upon his face disappeared.
"Lady?"
Her nails suddenly dug into his chest. Then she erupted.
The first slap cracked across his chest before Oskar had even understood that she meant to attack him. Another followed almost immediately, then another, her open hands striking wildly at his chest and shoulders as grief, humiliation and fury seemed to pour out of her all at once.
"You—!"
Oskar recoiled, though considerably more from surprise than pain.
"What did I—?"
She struck him again before he could finish. There was nothing practiced or calculated about the assault. She was plainly not a violent woman and had no idea whatsoever how to fight; every blow came crooked and frantic, driven entirely by emotion rather than technique. She slapped at his chest, struck his shoulders and shoved uselessly against the immense solidity of him until, in desperation, she finally curled one hand into a fist and drove it straight into his ribs.
It was a terrible punch.
Her knuckles met what felt like a stone wall wrapped in warm flesh, and pain immediately shot through her hand and wrist. She cried out and recoiled, clutching at herself.
Oskar's expression changed at once.
"Oh, damn it!"
All surprise vanished from his face as he reached for her hands, suddenly far more frightened that she might injure herself against him than concerned by anything she could possibly do to him.
"Stop! You're hurting yourself!"
The warning only made her struggle harder.
Somewhere beneath the grief and fury, she was waiting for what experience had taught her must inevitably come next: the answering slap, the fist across the mouth, some hard and humiliating blow meant to remind her what happened when a woman dared strike a man.
But nothing came.
Oskar did not hit her. He did not shout at her or wrench her arms painfully behind her back. Instead, he caught both of her wrists with extraordinary care and held them still, using scarcely more pressure than was necessary to keep her from striking him—or herself—again.
From the riverbank, Maria screamed.
"Mama, stop!"
Tomasz shouted something furious in return, apparently as offended by Oskar's earlier words as he was suddenly delighted to see his mother attempting to beat the German Crown Prince senseless.
Then the woman changed tactics. Her knee drew slowly backward beneath the water.
Oskar noticed almost immediately. The Heart of Light flared within him, sharpening his awareness until the movement seemed obvious and a dozen possible answers unfolded through his thoughts in the space of a heartbeat. He could turn aside. He could catch her leg. He could shift his hips beyond her reach or simply restrain her completely before she managed another attack.
Yet every solution presented the same problem.
She was so small compared with him, so exhausted and emotionally shattered, that almost anything he did with genuine force might hurt her. Worse, Oskar understood that overpowering her now—however easily he could do it—might frighten her far more deeply than simply enduring whatever she intended to do.
With weary resignation, he therefore arrived at the least elegant solution imaginable.
He let her hit him.
Her knee drove upward between his legs and found the one portion of his otherwise absurdly durable body that remained painfully, inconveniently human despite the extraordinary scale surrounding it.
Oskar folded sharply at the waist.
"Fuck!"
Tomasz erupted into triumphant cheering from the bank. Maria reacted with considerably greater horror.
"Mama, no! Stop it! Please stop fighting him!"
The woman herself went suddenly still. Her fury vanished for a heartbeat beneath an expression of startled disbelief, for the impact had felt rather different from what she had expected and, more importantly, the kick had upset her own balance far more effectively than it had upset his.
She had driven her knee upward with all the force she possessed, but because Oskar had been the only solid thing supporting her in the current, the movement acted almost as much like a shove against herself as a blow against him. Her bare feet slipped across his beneath the water, her weight shifted backward, and before she properly understood what had happened she was already falling away from him.
Her eyes widened, and then she screamed. Her fingers scraped desperately across Oskar's wet chest in search of something to hold, but found no purchase, and almost at once the Vistula began dragging her backwards. She slipped beneath him, arms flailing, and Oskar moved before she could disappear under the water again.
Both his hands plunged beneath the surface and caught her firmly beneath the buttocks. With one effortless motion he lifted her bodily from the river.
She gave a startled yelp as the bottom vanished beneath her feet. Instinct overwhelmed thought. Her arms flew around Oskar's neck and clung there, while her legs tightened as far around his enormous torso as they could manage. Oskar straightened to his full height with her held securely in both hands, her entire weight resting easily in his palms as he raised her high enough that she could no longer slip away from him.
The position brought them suddenly, almost absurdly close.
Maria and Tomasz cried out from the bank, but neither adult seemed to hear them. With the enormous difference in their height, Oskar had lifted her until her face was only slightly below his own, forcing her to tilt her chin upward to meet his eyes. Her breasts were pressed firmly against the broad shelf of his upper chest, their softness compressed against his collarbones and the base of his neck as she clung tightly to him. Her wet hair brushed his shoulders; her arms remained locked around his neck; and Oskar could feel every frightened breath she drew against him.
And just like that, quite suddenly, the ridiculous battle between them stopped. And for the first time, they truly looked at one another.
The woman stared. With her arms still locked around Oskar's neck and her face scarcely below his own, there was no longer any enormous shoulder or confusion to hide him from her. Wet, near-platinum hair swept back from his brow, and beneath it those unmistakable icy-blue eyes regarded her from a face she had known for years.
Her breath caught, for she realised it then, it was him. Prince Oskar von Hohenzollern, the Crown Prince of Germany. The impossible young prince whose strange life she had followed from afar since girlhood through newspapers, borrowed magazines and whatever stories others would read aloud to her. She had watched him grow from the forgotten prince who had nearly died into something Europe seemed incapable of ceasing to talk about.
And, to her everlasting shame, on lonely nights she had sometimes imagined those enormous arms around her instead, now they were. Heat flooded her face. She could only stare at him, utterly overwhelmed by the absurdity that the distant prince of those secret dreams was standing in the Vistula with her wrapped around his body.
Oskar's reaction was considerably simpler. Good Lord, she's cute.
Only now did he properly see the little woman he had rescued: wet brown hair framing a soft heart-shaped face, enormous grey-blue eyes shining beneath dark lashes, and delicate features utterly incapable of looking threatening despite everything she had just done to him.
She was nothing like his wives, who could sometimes seem like goddesses made flesh, nor like the polished beauties of Berlin. Yet she possessed an appeal of her own.
She looked soft, sweet, almost painfully harmless which made something old and instinctive stir up inside him. A woman like this ought to be somewhere warm and safe, not shivering amid all this misery. His thoughts went instinctively to home—to his great sprawling family, his wives and children surrounding her with warmth and affection until that frightened look disappeared. Without meaning to he imagined her belonging there completely: sharing his bed, becoming his, and one day smiling among his women with her belly rounded by his child.
His body responded before his better judgment could intervene, stirring inconveniently.
Oskar swallowed, faintly ashamed of how easily a pretty woman could still undo his good sense. Yet those enormous grey-blue eyes held him, and almost without thinking he raised one hand to cup her cheek. His palm nearly swallowed her delicate, heart-shaped face, and for an instant the desire to shelter her—to take her away from all this misery and keep her somewhere safe—became almost overwhelming.
Then she recoiled.
It was scarcely a movement, but Oskar felt it immediately. Her shoulders tightened, her hands rose defensively against his chest, and her gaze dropped as she seemed to shrink within his arms, bracing herself for something she plainly believed inevitable.
Oskar went still.
She thought he was going to hit her.
His eyes flicked toward Tomasz upon the bank, and the boy striking his sister with such casual certainty suddenly acquired an uglier significance. Lessons like that were usually learned somewhere. And after everything this woman had just done—screaming at him, fighting him, even striking a prince—she apparently expected punishment so instinctively that her body had prepared for the blow before her mind could intervene.
Whatever amusement remained in Oskar vanished. If anything, the realization only deepened his fierce desire to take her somewhere no one would ever make her flinch like that again.
Instead of striking her, his thumb passed gently beneath one eye and wiped away a tear. Then he lowered his head until his forehead rested softly against hers.
"Easy," he murmured. "I'm not going to hurt you."
For a moment she remained rigid in his arms. Then, cautiously, those enormous grey-blue eyes lifted to meet his again.
"You know who I am." A crooked little smile returned to his mouth. "And yes, if the newspapers are to be believed, I have acquired something of a reputation as a ladies' man. But whatever else you may have heard about me, I have never raised my hand against a woman in anger—not even the exceptionally troublesome ones who seem convinced that the word no is merely the beginning of a negotiation."
For just an instant Patricia and Elise passed through his thoughts. That description certainly covered them.
The woman continued staring at him, and Oskar, encouraged by the fact that she had at least stopped shrinking away, attempted to coax something resembling a smile from her.
"The worst you are likely to suffer from me," he added, "is perhaps an unexpected kiss—and, should you prove exceptionally naughty, a corrective swat upon the backside."
She went utterly still, staring up at him with enormous eyes while her lips parted soundlessly. Oskar held her gaze for a moment, then another, until the meaning of that expression finally reached him and his own smile slowly began to fade. Perhaps, he reflected, telling a frightened woman he had known for less than ten minutes that the worst she had to fear from him was an unexpected kiss and a swat on the backside had not been the wisest attempt at reassurance.
He was just opening his mouth to repair the damage when a horrified voice rang out from the riverbank behind him.
"Mama!"
Both adults turned toward her.
Maria had dropped to her knees upon the riverbank, almost as though she were in prayer, staring at them with enormous tear-filled eyes. Yet the horror upon her face had very little to do with anything either adult imagined.
"What are you doing?" she cried. "Don't push him away! Mama, this is your chance! Believe in yourself for once!"
The woman went scarlet. She understood the implication of her daughter's words immediately—and, perhaps even more embarrassingly, the wholehearted approval beneath them. Maria was not frightened by the enormous prince holding her mother. She was practically begging Mama not to let him go.
"Forget Piotr!" Maria continued, sudden anger sharpening her voice. "Forget that evil drunken villain! He would not even marry you properly because he said it was a waste of money! Look who is holding you now, Mama. Just—just go for it!"
Oskar stared at the girl, utterly lost as to what precisely she expected her mother to go for. Before he could ask, however, Tomasz snapped beside her.
"How dare you speak of Father like that!"
He wheeled upon his sister and raised the stick with both hands, this time plainly intending to bring it down with all the strength he possessed. Maria screamed and threw her arms over her face as she fell backward.
Earlier, Tomasz's slap had come too suddenly for Oskar to intervene. This time he saw the blow coming, and instinct took over so completely that he forgot everything else—including the modesty that had kept him standing in the river in the first place.
One moment he was waist-deep in the Vistula; the next the water seemed to burst apart around him. The woman gasped and immediately tightened both arms around his neck as Oskar surged through the shallows with her still held effortlessly against him.
"STOP!"
The roar struck the riverbank before he did.
Tomasz froze.
Oskar emerged from the water in several enormous strides, streaming from head to foot and visibly furious, while the woman remained clinging tightly around him. Tomasz recoiled at the sight and stumbled backward onto his backside in the mud. Even then he stubbornly kept the stick pointed toward Oskar, looking less like a threatening young man than a frightened boy attempting to ward off some immense beast that had risen from the river.
"Put the stick down, boy."
The command rolled from Oskar's chest with enough force that Tomasz's hands began trembling.
"She insulted Father!" he protested.
"I heard what she said," Oskar replied, his voice hardening. "And I saw what you were about to do. Again."
Tomasz swallowed.
Oskar frowned down at him, and the authority in his voice came so naturally that he scarcely seemed aware of it.
"Has nobody ever taught you that a man must know how to restrain himself? Any fool can become angry. Any fool can swing a stick or strike someone weaker than himself. That does not make him strong."
His gaze shifted briefly toward Maria, still curled defensively in the grass.
"She is your sister. You are supposed to protect her, not teach her to fear you simply because she says something you dislike."
Tomasz's face twisted stubbornly. "But she—"
"No."
The single word stopped him cold.
"Violence is the last tool, boy, not the first. You use it when every better choice has failed and when someone genuinely needs defending. You do not use it because your pride has been wounded or because another person refuses to obey you."
The stick slowly began to lower.
"If you wish to grow into a man worth respecting," Oskar continued, "then learn to master your temper before it masters you. A strong man who cannot control himself is not strong at all. Strength without restraint is merely another kind of weakness."
Tomasz stared upward at him. One of Oskar's enormous feet had come fully onto the riverbank now, planted firmly in the mud, while the rest of that impossible body loomed above him ready to move if he raised the stick again. Whatever remained of the boy's courage finally failed. His fingers opened almost involuntarily, and the branch dropped into the grass.
He remained where he was, rigid and wide-eyed, like prey that had suddenly understood exactly how badly it had misjudged the predator standing before it.
Maria cautiously lowered her arms.
What she saw almost stole her breath. The Iron Prince stood over her brother like some enormous bear confronting a troublesome dog, and Tomasz—Tomasz, whom nobody ever corrected, who had always been permitted to shout and threaten and strike whenever anger took him—sat frozen in the mud and actually listened.
For perhaps the first time in Maria's memory, her brother could not simply force everyone around him to submit to his fury.
The woman saw it too.
Oskar had stopped Tomasz without striking him, humbling him without cruelty and trying instead to teach him what strength was supposed to mean. It was the same impossible gentleness he had shown her from the beginning. He could have overpowered her at any moment, yet even when she fought him, all that strength had ever done was keep her safe.
With Piotr gone, everything familiar seemed to have vanished downstream with him. Home, certainty, even the miserable knowledge of what tomorrow would bring—gone. Yet Oskar remained beneath her, solid and warm, holding her as though nothing in the world could reach her while she was in his arms.
And it was then that something inside her gave way. Before she could properly think about what she was doing, she tightened her arms around his neck, leaned forward and kissed him.
It was brief and terribly uncertain, scarcely more than the soft press of her lips against his.
Oskar froze.
His eyes widened slightly as she drew back, and for a moment he simply stared at her with an expression of complete bewilderment. As if asking, what the hell was that?
She saw the question plainly enough. Mortification struck her like a hammer.
Oh God, what had she done? She had kissed him. She had actually kissed the Crown Prince of Germany, like an idiot.
Her face burned scarlet, and before Oskar could say a word she ducked her head and buried herself against his chest, refusing absolutely to look at him. Perhaps, if she remained there long enough, the Vistula might rise and mercifully carry her away.
Oskar blinked once more. Then he felt the little woman clinging desperately to him, apparently attempting to escape the consequences of kissing him by hiding against the very man she had kissed.
A slow smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Damn, that's cute.
His hold tightened slightly in reassurance, one arm keeping her securely against him while his other hand settled protectively behind her wet head. For a brief moment, the entire miserable situation seemed almost absurdly sweet.
Then Oskar remembered the boy.
Still wearing that faint, amused smile, he lifted his gaze toward Tomasz.
Tomasz saw it, and from where the boy stood, there was nothing sweet or innocent about that smile. His father was dead, floating somewhere down the Vistula, while Maria had already denounced him and practically urged Mama into the German's arms. Now Mama herself had kissed the man whose armies had invaded their land, destroyed their home and humiliated Tomasz before the women of his own household. Worse still, Oskar stood there holding her as though she belonged naturally in his arms, smiling down at Tomasz with all the effortless confidence of a man who knew perfectly well that the boy could do nothing about it.
And Tomasz could do nothing, for he was too weak. The realization seemed to hurt more than everything else combined. For one terrible moment he looked very young. Tears gathered in his eyes, his mouth worked soundlessly, and something frightened and helpless crossed his face before fury rushed in to bury it.
In that instant, all the lessons Papa had beaten into him seemed suddenly proven. Strength was what mattered. Strength gave a man authority. Strength made others obey. Strength gave him a household, women, respect. And women, left to themselves, were exactly what Papa had always said—emotional, foolish, disloyal creatures who needed a man strong enough to keep them in order. Father was dead, and almost immediately Mama and Maria had turned toward the strongest man in sight.
Tomasz was alone.
Oskar opened his mouth, perhaps about to offer another infuriating piece of wisdom, but Tomasz scrambled to his feet before he could speak.
"You whore!" he screamed at his mother, then turned his tear-filled glare upon Oskar. "German bastard!"
The woman flinched.
"Watch your mouth, boy," Oskar warned.
"Fuck you!" Tomasz backed away, his voice cracking beneath the force of his rage. "You can have them! I don't care! They're stupid women anyway! I don't need weak, weeping girls living off my work!"
Oskar stared at him, momentarily too astonished to answer.
Tomasz glared back, and then Oskar saw something in the boy's face that troubled him far more than the stick ever had. The fear was gone. So was the ordinary heat of childish anger. What remained beneath the tears was colder.
Hatred.
"I'll show you," Tomasz said. "Just wait."
Then he turned and ran, plunging through the reeds until snapping branches and shaking leaves swallowed him from sight.
For half a heartbeat Oskar considered following. Then he stopped. Fear could be managed. Resentment sometimes faded. Anger often exhausted itself once the blood cooled, but hatred was different.
This, he thought grimly, was occupation reduced to a single family. Some people could be persuaded. Others would obey because resistance frightened them. A few might even come to love what German rule brought.
And some would hate him regardless.
Those were the ones he had to watch—especially the men and boys. A woman might curse him from a doorway or weep when German soldiers passed, but it was the men, and the boys rapidly becoming men, who were most likely to disappear into cellars and forests with rifles in their hands. Fourteen looked young when the boy before you was crying. Put a rifle on his shoulder, give his grief a uniform and surround him with older men promising vengeance, and youth ceased to make him harmless. A bullet fired by a fourteen-year-old killed just as efficiently as one fired by a forty-year-old.
Hatred left unattended did not remain hatred for long. It found other men who shared it. Then it found weapons, hiding places and causes grand enough to justify whatever came next. Sabotage. Assassination. Partisan bands. Rebellion.
Oskar's expression hardened.
Tomasz was fourteen years old. That should have made the thought absurd, but Oskar knew better. The boy might be frightened and powerless today; in a few years—or perhaps only a few months under the right influence—he could become something considerably more dangerous. Tomasz would have to be dealt with somehow, as would others like him throughout the conquered lands.
Just not now.
Chasing a grieving fourteen-year-old through the reeds while completely naked and carrying the boy's equally naked mother was unlikely to improve anybody's opinion of the German occupation.
Reality had become rather difficult to ignore.
Oskar looked down at the woman still clinging to him. Only then did she blink and glance toward the reeds through which Tomasz had vanished.
"What happened?"
Oskar stared at her. Apparently, she had missed almost the entire exchange.
With another weary sigh, he finally stepped fully out of the Vistula and onto the muddy riverbank. Before he could answer her, however, a small, strangled sound came from nearby.
Maria was still sitting in the grass.
Unfortunately, Oskar's emergence from the river had removed the last convenient barrier between the girl and considerably more of the Crown Prince than he had ever intended to display. Her gaze dropped almost automatically, then froze.
For a moment she simply stared with the expression of someone whose already overburdened mind had encountered one final piece of information for which it possessed absolutely no remaining capacity.
Her eyes widened, and her face, already crimson, somehow became redder.
"Is that…" she murmured faintly, apparently speaking to nobody in particular. "A German sausage?"
Oskar's eyes widened.
"Maria, don't—"
Too late.
The girl seemed to overheat all at once. Her eyes rolled upward and she collapsed softly backward into the grass.
Oskar stared at her, then toward the reeds through which Tomasz had vanished, and finally down at the woman still clinging to him.
A long breath escaped his nose.
"Damn," he muttered. "That could have gone considerably better."
The woman blinked up at him, thoroughly lost. She had heard shouting—something about a whore, perhaps, and considerably more besides—but between Tomasz, Maria, Oskar, and the lingering horror of having just kissed the Crown Prince of Germany, her mind had ceased arranging events in any sensible order.
Seeing little purpose in continuing to stand there completely exposed, Oskar moved beneath the willows and lowered himself onto the grassy edge of the bank, leaving his long legs partly submerged in the Vistula. The woman came down with him almost automatically and settled across his lap, remaining close against his chest as though letting go had simply never occurred to her.
For several seconds she forgot everything else again.
Her hands rested uncertainly against Oskar's bare chest, small palms spread over warm, wet muscle while she stared at him with the dazed expression of someone still waiting to discover whether the kiss had actually happened. Her cheeks remained painfully hot. Oskar, however, seemed to have already placed the matter somewhere behind questions of rebellious boys, unconscious daughters and German military administration.
Then something rustled in the grass beyond his shoulder.
The woman looked past him.
Maria lay sprawled beneath the willows.
"Oh!"
She twisted slightly in Oskar's lap, peering anxiously around his shoulder. "Maria?"
The girl did not move.
Her mother stared for another moment, then seemed to settle upon the reassuring conclusion that her daughter was at least breathing.
"Oh, she will be all right," she murmured, sounding rather more hopeful than certain. "Eventually. I think."
Only then did she look around for Tomasz.
Her brows drew together.
"Where is the boy?"
Oskar glanced toward the battered reeds marking his escape.
She followed his gaze and appeared to understand only that Tomasz was gone, not why.
"Oh." She considered this with surprising calm, then gave a small shrug and settled back against Oskar. "Do not worry. Tomasz is a big boy. He can take care of himself."
Oskar slowly leaned his head back and stared through the willow branches toward the sunlight overhead.
"Yes," he said.
The woman looked up at him.
"That," Oskar added, "is precisely what worries me."
She frowned, plainly having no idea what he meant, and after a moment her attention drifted helplessly back to his face.
Oskar's thoughts, unfortunately, had already returned to Warsaw. He drew a long breath, and some of the softness gradually left his posture as duty reclaimed him.
"I really must go now, lady," he said. "So, if you are able to stand, please do. I have rather important matters waiting for me."
The effect upon her was immediate. Her grey-blue eyes widened, her fingers tightened instinctively against his chest, and a small, almost desperate plea escaped her before she seemed able to stop it.
"No—wait. You can't."
Oskar looked down at her, startled by the urgency in her voice. The alarm upon her face was unmistakable; for some reason, the mere thought of him leaving seemed to frighten her.
"Did I…" She hesitated and swallowed, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. "Did I do something wrong?" Her cheeks coloured. "Was it the kiss? Was it… not to your liking, Your Highness?"
Oskar blinked.
For several seconds the question drove Tomasz, Warsaw and every darker concern entirely from his thoughts. He simply stared at the small, anxious woman in his arms, who apparently believed that one shy kiss had somehow displeased him enough to make him leave.
Understanding arrived at last, followed almost immediately by amusement. A quiet laugh rumbled from his chest, but the instant he saw hurt flicker across her face, he stopped.
"No, lady," he said, his expression softening again. "That is not the problem."
She searched his face uncertainly. And Oskar rather conscious of their circumstances, glanced down between them—and seemed to finally fully take in the situation himself.
She was still astride his lap, legs parted across his enormous thighs, her small hands resting against the broad expanse of his bare chest. His own hands nearly encircled her waist, palms feeling the softness of her stomach and the curve of her backside where she rested against him. Lower down, their bodies were pressed together with an intimacy neither had apparently possessed enough spare thought to notice until now.
Oskar swallowed, and she followed his gaze.
"Oh."
Her eyes widened.
Then she felt it too. A startled squeak escaped her as Oskar began, quite involuntarily, to harden beneath her. Her face went scarlet. She immediately pulled her chest away from him and covered herself with both arms, suddenly acutely aware of just how completely naked she was.
Oskar reacted almost as quickly. Both hands left her at once. One went awkwardly through his wet hair while the other settled safely against his own side.
"Well," he rumbled, with a nervous little laugh. "This has become rather awkward."
She stared at him over her folded arms,and realised that he wasn't touching her, which struck strangely hard.
"I don't even know your name," Oskar continued, apparently deciding that talking was safer than thinking about their present position. "And much as I would prefer not to abandon you here, I cannot remain. There are thousands of people in Warsaw who require the same reassurance and assistance that you and your children do."
Responsibility returned to his voice, and soon he was speaking about shelters, kitchens, medical stations, displaced families and whatever arrangements the new administration would make for women left without providers.
Zofia understood perhaps half of it.
Russian was her second language, and Oskar's increasingly official vocabulary soon became a great rumbling fog of words. Administration. Distribution. Accommodation. Assistance. In her exhausted imagination they amounted to something considerably simpler: standing in a soup queue, sleeping beneath canvas, and waiting for strangers to decide what became of them tomorrow.
So she stopped listening to the words and watched the man instead.
He wanted her. That much was becoming embarrassingly difficult to misunderstand.
Yet the supposed great womaniser of Europe was sitting beneath a willow with a naked woman upon his lap and doing everything in his power not to take advantage of it. His hands remained carefully away from her. He could scarcely look below her chin. Even the faint colour in his cheeks betrayed him.
A peculiar thought began forming.
Perhaps the newspapers had got Prince Oskar entirely wrong.
Perhaps women did not surround him because he relentlessly pursued them. Perhaps an absurd number of women simply discovered, sooner or later, that beneath all that terrifying muscle and princely authority lived an enormous soft-hearted fool who was remarkably bad at refusing them.
Her lips curved into the faintest smile as she slowly lowered her arms. Oskar, meanwhile, had progressed halfway through some earnest explanation of German lessons when she raised both hands and began knocking her little fists against his chest.
He stopped midsentence and looked down at her. "What?"
Zofia struck him again. There was scarcely any force behind it; against a man like Oskar, there could hardly have been. Yet the simple act sent a peculiar thrill through her. Only minutes earlier she had attacked him in genuine fury and instinctively waited for the punishment that experience had taught her must follow. It never had. Now she struck him again, almost experimentally, and once again the terrifying Iron Prince did nothing except stare at her in growing confusion.
The realization was strangely intoxicating. Here was the Reaper of the East, the monster Russian soldiers supposedly fled from, a man who could overpower her without the slightest effort, and she could beat her fists against his chest while he merely sat there looking bewildered. For once, another person's strength did not make her powerless.
"My name," she said, pouting up at him.
Oskar blinked. "Your name?"
"You keep calling me lady." She gave his chest one final, indignant knock. "I have a name."
His confusion softened into amusement. "Then perhaps you might finally tell me what it is."
All that newfound courage deserted her at once. Her eyes dropped and a blush crept back into her cheeks.
"Zofia Nowak."
Oskar fell quiet for a moment. "Zofia," he repeated.
Hearing her name carried in that immense, rumbling voice sent a little shiver through her. This time, when Oskar looked at her, he seemed to forget that he had been trying not to. His gaze lingered upon the wet brown hair framing her heart-shaped face, her enormous grey-blue eyes and, for one helpless instant, the pale curves she had only just stopped concealing.
His composure suffered another small defeat.
Zofia felt it too, and the realization sent a breathless little shiver through her. Oskar swallowed and dragged his attention resolutely back to her face.
"Zofia," he murmured, a smile slowly appearing. "That is a very pretty name for a very pretty woman."
Something in her expression changed.
Before embarrassment, fear or good Christian sense could reclaim her, Zofia rose onto her knees upon his enormous thighs, wound both arms around his head and kissed him.
Oskar went utterly still.
For one heated moment he simply sat there beneath her, blue eyes wide with surprise, as though his mind had somehow failed to anticipate that the shy little woman who had spent the last several minutes blushing at him might actually do it.
Then something in him broke loose.
His arms closed around her with sudden, instinctive certainty. One swept around her body and drew her tightly against him while the other cradled the back of her head, thick fingers disappearing into her wet brown hair. The startled silence vanished as he kissed her back with an intensity that made Zofia gasp against his mouth before clutching him even more tightly.
Oskar moved.
The world seemed to turn beneath her. One moment she was kneeling across his thighs; the next her back met the soft grass beneath the willows and Oskar was above her, having turned and lowered her there with such effortless care that she scarcely understood how it had happened.
For several seconds neither spoke.
Zofia lay staring upward, brown hair spread across the grass, her chest rising quickly beneath him. Oskar supported his enormous weight upon his arms and looked down at her, whatever remained of the diplomatic prince rapidly losing ground to something considerably older and less civilized.
The sight of her beneath him did not help. Neither did the way she looked back.
Heat rose through him, and Zofia's eyes widened as she became acutely aware of just how thoroughly his body had responded to her. For an instant all her newfound courage deserted her.
Oskar noticed.
His expression softened immediately.
One great hand came down, not to seize her, but to cup her cheek. His thumb passed gently beneath her eye as he lowered himself until their faces were scarcely apart.
Zofia's nervousness eased, until she smiled.
That was all the permission Oskar's remaining restraint could endure.
He kissed her again.
This time Zofia met him eagerly, both arms wrapping around his neck as Oskar gathered her close, and whatever words either of them might have found disappeared beneath the rustling willows and the quiet murmur of the Vistula.
Somewhere nearby on the riverbank, Maria began to stir.
Her eyes opened blearily to the rustle of grass and the sound of hurried breathing beneath the willows. Still dazed, she lifted her head and looked toward the noise.
Then she froze.
Her mother was locked in the Iron Prince's arms beneath the trees, clinging to him with an enthusiasm that left very little doubt that their earlier quarrel had somehow reached an entirely different conclusion. Oskar held her close while she buried her fingers in his pale hair, and whatever Maria had expected to discover upon waking, this had certainly not been it.
She stared.
Her eyes widened.
"Oh, good heavens—"
That was apparently all her recovering mind could endure. Her eyes rolled upward and she promptly collapsed back into the grass.
Oskar never noticed.
For the moment, at least, the German administration of Warsaw would simply have to manage without its Crown Prince. He had become rather thoroughly occupied with comforting one particularly lonely Polish mother who, after everything the day had taken from her, appeared equally determined not to let her unexpected prince disappear quite so quickly.