Page 128 of The Discount Damsel

Millie loosened the tension in her thighs but kept the rope snug between her feet. Jax lowered them down hand by hand. The muscles in his arms bulged under the extra weight, but the confident smile never wavered.

“Tuck your butt in and push down on my thighs with your arms. Thatta girl.”

Sir Roger, Sir Beauregard, and Duncan cheered when they reached the bottom. Millie collapsed on the sand in an undignified heap, and of course Jax performed one of his acrobatic dismounts, flipping and landing with legs straight as a pin and his arms up to receive the praise due him.

“Thank you, thank you. I’ll be here for the foreseeable future!”

Laughing, he bent to help Millie to her feet. And was shouldered out of the way.

Jax stumbled back, hands lifted in apology, as Bradley appeared, grabbed Millie’s elbows, and hoisted her upright.

“Gently,” she admonished. Millie hunched over to assuage the fire that shot through every muscle. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

She made the mistake of looking down at her hands, then promptly pitched forward and vomited into the sand.

CHAPTER 53

NOT A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS AND AN UNEXPECTED GIFT

The apprentice was stewing hotter than a witch’s cauldron at full boil. His grip was blistering on the princess’s elbow as he steadied her up the stairs. Finally, his pinching fingers became too insufferable to withstand. Millie tried to shake him off and couldn’t.

“I’m sorry I compared you to Viscount Saltreave, alright?” she snapped. “There’s a reason why I told him I’d rather be doused in honey and take my chances with a bunch of grizzly bears instead of marrying him. He would’ve ignored my plight. You didn’t. Congratulations, you’re the better man.”

Momentarily taken aback, Bradley asked, “He proposed to you?”

“Of course he did. I was that coxcomb’s ticket to a pampered lifestyle. Now unhand me.”

He didn’t, continuing to propel her up the stairs where the healing supplies awaited them.

“Only my hands are hurt. My legs work just fine. Let me go! What is the matter with you?”

“Why him?” Bradley demanded. “Why did you trust Jax to help you instead of me?”

“That’s what’s upsetting you?”

“I was right there⁠—”

“Because he earned it!”

He jerked to halt as if he’d been slapped.

The princess finally wrenched herself free and whirled on him to poke him in the chest, remembered the state of her hands, and thought better of it. “He’s showed up every day to teach me. He didn’t just up and abandon me. He talks to me, doesn’t treat me like I’m a walking venereal disease. And because he offered me help, you arrogant prick, not a rescue. I may be a princess locked in a tower, sir, but I am certainly not a damsel in distress!”

This was about their training sessions, or rather, the lack thereof. Bradley had returned that duty to the old hedge knight, thrust it upon him, actually. But how could he not after what had transpired between them? He’d fantasized about her, and not merely in the safety of his dreams. How could he trust himself to touch her platonically, as her mentor, instead of the way that secret, buried part of him ached to?

He’d had no choice but to avoid her, to protect both their honors. Then she’d gone and claimed him kith and kin to Viscount Saltreave, a notorious poltroon, and that was a notion that she needed to be disabused of immediately.

Bradley voice was like granite. “I did not abandon you.”

With an exasperated scoff, Millie resumed her trudge up the stairs. “Whatever, sir.”

He lunged after her. “Not the way you think I did.”

It was important that she understand. Normally he could not care one whit about what anyone thought of him, but this mattered. This was about his integrity, and that cut far deeper than any opinion about his humble origins or food preferences or obsessive perfectionism. Perhaps it was because she had so much of it herself.

The princess dismissed his protest with a wave of her hand and a scornful pfft. “It doesn’t even matter. We’re not friends, right?” She said it as if to remind herself as much as him. “We’re just tolerating each other for Dirk’s sake. So you can keep your savior complex to yourself and I’ll focus on becoming the most infamous lady pirate captain this world has ever seen—on opposite ends of the tower.”

That would be for the best, for reasons different than before. It had taken far too much effort to ignore her when she’d climbed that rope this afternoon. Then she’d started to tease him, her sassy, light-hearted banter making his pulse skip. Enough to befuddle him into talking about his past. Caelus above, he shouldn’t have revealed anything about that.