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ask the same of you, since you are trespassing on my property.”
    “You don’t know who I am?” he said in apparent astonishment.
    “We’ve met?”
    His eyes narrowed. He looked her over as though she were an insect. His haughty stare climbed from her threadbare slippers, to her stained apron, up to her defiant face.
    She wanted to laugh at his arrogance. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest and lifted both brows, regarding him in cool surprise, but inwardly her heart was pounding with anger and fright. It was all she could do not to shrink back from his outrageously rude scrutiny.
    So he was used to ladies in silk and satin, ladies who would never dream of speaking crossly to their golden god. Perhaps she was in rags, but she knew a scoundrel when she saw one. They didn’t call him Rafe the Rake for nothing.
    He frowned at her, looking irritated, then his gaze moved to the entrance of the sprawling but dilapidated villa behind her, with its tangle of overgrown white jasmine dripping from the red-tiled roof. Above the doorway, her family’s coat of arms was depicted. He narrowed his eyes, staring at it.
    “Whom do I have the pleasure of addressing?” he asked warily as he rested his riding crop over the horse’s neck.
    For a second, she hesitated to tell him her name because of her crimes.
    He scowled impatiently. “Are any of the family at home?”
    She went pale, staring up at him. For a moment she wanted to die. This beautiful god of a man thought she was a servant.
    Suddenly the door banged from the porch behind them.
    The prince glanced toward the villa again. Dani turned. Maria uttered to the saints and Dani’s heart sank to see Grandfather shuffling out in his nightdress and cap, holding the candle. He was wearing only one bed slipper.
    “I’ll go to him, my lady,” the old woman murmured, leaving Dani there glaring up at Prince Rafael, daring the infamous, selfish, oh-so-fashionable rake with her challenging stare to say one word of mockery about her grandfather.
    Instead, the prince merely studied the testy, senile old duke curiously.
    Then Dani froze as her grandfather’s raspy voice floated out across the lawn.
    “Alphonse? Dear Lord, my king, is it you?” Grandfather cried.
    Dani saw an ineffable expression flit over the prince’s fine features. She glanced warily at him then turned and gasped to see Grandfather running unsteadily toward them. The lit candle he’d brought fell out of his hand onto the dry grass, which started to burn. Maria shouted and quickly put out the fire while Dani turned and tried to catch Grandfather. Prince Rafael dismounted with quick, neat grace, just in time to intercept the old man as he burst past her.
    “Easy, there, old fellow,” the prince said softly.
    Dani stared at the pair, wanting the earth to swallow her as Grandfather grasped Prince Rafael by the shoulders with tears in his eyes. “Alphonse! You! You look precisely the same, the same, my dear friend! You never changed! How did you stay so young? Oh, but that is the royal blood for you,” he said in heartfelt warmth, his bony fingers digging into the prince’s powerful arms. “Come and have a drink and we’ll talk of the old days at school when we were boys…oh, such days!”
    “Grandfather, you are mistaken,” Dani chided, agonizing privately for her grandfather’s dignity. She laid her hand on his thin arm. “This is Prince Rafael, King Alphonse’s grandson. Come back inside now. You’ll catch a chill—”
    “It’s all right,” Prince Rafael murmured to her, meeting the ancient knight’s frantic, joyful, searching stare with a calm, steadying gaze. “King Alphonse was my grandfather, sir, but are you not Colonel Lord Bartolomeo Chiaramonte, his great friend?”
    As quickly as the recognition of his mistake had sent a crestfallen stoop into the old man’s shoulders, his bleary eyes brightened with a renewed spark of hope at the prince’s question, as if he thought, Yes, I am